Asian Popular Culture

John A. Lent is publisher and editor of the International Journal of Comic Art and founding Chair of the Asia Pacific Animation and Comics Association. He was a university professor for fifty-one years.Lorna Fitzsimmons is associate professor and Coordinator of Humanities at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles.

• IntroductionChapter 1. Weiqi Legends, Then and Now: Cultural Paradigms in the Game of Goby Marc L. MoskowitzChapter 2. Locating Play: The Situated Localities of Portable and Online Gaming in East Asiaby Dean ChanChapter 3. Regionalism in the Era of Neo-Nationalism: Japanese Landscape in the Background Art of Games and Anime from the Late-1990s to Presentby Kumiko SaitoChapter 4. Otaku Evolution: Changing Views of the Fan-boy in Kon Satoshi's Perfect Blue and Paprikaby Joseph Christopher SchaubChapter 5. Breaking Records: Media, Censorship, and the Folk Song Movement of Japan's 1960sby James DorseyChapter 6. Mad-Cow Disease and Alternative YouTube Videos: Brechtian Politics of Aesthetics in Grassroots Media Spectacles, Voluntary Mobilization, and Collective Governance from Korea's Candlelight Movementsby Gooyong KimChapter 7. Reaching Beyond the Manga: A Samurai to the Ends of the World and the Formation of National Identityby Michael WertChapter 8. Zen Dog: Lian Hearn's Hybrid Otori Pentalogyby Sheng-mei Ma

Emerging popular cultural and new media forms which have tended to evade historical and critical attention, now get thorough analyses by a diverse set of critics who create points of cogent analysis on the vast and diverse global map in Lent and Fitzsimmons' book. Clarity in these particular views creates a sense of the enormous change emerging in the cultures of Asia.