The following account has been generated through an interlocution between Ryotaro Mihara, an anth... more The following account has been generated through an interlocution between Ryotaro Mihara, an anthropologist, and Nao Hirasawa, the CEO of Graphinica, Inc. Graphinica is a Tokyo-based computer graphics (CG) animation production studio. It is well recognized among the global animation community for a number of popular animated titles, including Expelled from Paradise (Seiji Mizushima, dir. 2014), Hello World (Tomohiko Ito, dir. 2019), and Netflix original Record of Ragnarok series (Masao Ookubo, dir. 2021). Hirasawa is also the founder of Arch Inc., an animation planning and producing company. Mihara has been conducting his fieldwork at Arch since 2018, observing their works of developing animation projects as well as participating in them, especially their attempts to expand their business scope outside Japan, as Arch’s “Global Business Advisor.” Leveraging this connection, Mihara interviewed Hirasawa regarding his experience in leading Graphinica in the midst of the pandemic, and discussed the implications on the future of the animation business. Hereinafter, subject “I” refers to Hirasawa and “we” refers to Graphinica, unless otherwise stated. The following account is, however, a co-authored work: Mihara wrote the English draft, as well as its Japanese translation, for Hirasawa’s review, and revised the text with Hirasawa, through which Mihara enhanced his understandings on the mechanics of anime production. Hirasawa, on the other hand, also developed his thoughts through the revision by remembering relevant events in response to Mihara’s comments and agreeing (and disagreeing) with Mihara’s suggestions regarding how his experience should be contextualized (especially in an academic context). The authors, in this regard, produced a collaborative ethnographic account, written jointly with an anthropologist and his interlocutor (cf. Van Maanen 1988) in the context of business anthropology.
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have... more This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro-American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls "strategic essentialism", the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime's businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.
This article proposes the concept of ‘involution’ as a perspective to understand the socioeconomi... more This article proposes the concept of ‘involution’ as a perspective to understand the socioeconomic dynamics of the domestic business practices within the Japanese animation (anime) sector in relation to its overseas performance. There is a counterintuitive gap between the prevalent assumption that anime is globally popular and its weak overseas performance. Leaving the detail of anime's business aspects relatively unexamined, the literature on anime has particularly failed to address the ‘inward-looking’ feature of the business of the Japanese anime sector. Based on long-term fieldwork of the business players in the Japanese anime sector in Tokyo, this article suggests ‘involution’ as a key concept to fill this void. This concept, developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, refers to the process by which a group develops internally by sticking to existing modes of operation rather than by opening up to the outer world. This article depicts how we might understand the socioeconomic dynamics of the Japanese anime sector's mainstream domestic market centrist mode of operation in the context of involution. It also explores how the concept could catalyse us to envision the alternative future of anime, other than assuming anime's global popularity: the involuting Japanese anime sector might be allowing Euro-American and Chinese internet conglomerates to intervene and take over, turning the Japanese anime sector into one of their subcontractors from which they can exploit the sector's creativity.
"VOCALOID Opera AOI with Bunraku Puppets" is a 30 minute-length opera film in which real Bunraku ... more "VOCALOID Opera AOI with Bunraku Puppets" is a 30 minute-length opera film in which real Bunraku puppets and puppeteers perform with the songs of VOCALOID (the singing voice synthesis software developed by Yamaha Corporation) created under the official authorization of the Japan Bunraku Association. I am in charge of the global promotion of this film, and gave an introductory presentation at its world premiere screening in London Hyper Japan (Japanese culture convention) at July 2014.
The following account has been generated through an interlocution between Ryotaro Mihara, an anth... more The following account has been generated through an interlocution between Ryotaro Mihara, an anthropologist, and Nao Hirasawa, the CEO of Graphinica, Inc. Graphinica is a Tokyo-based computer graphics (CG) animation production studio. It is well recognized among the global animation community for a number of popular animated titles, including Expelled from Paradise (Seiji Mizushima, dir. 2014), Hello World (Tomohiko Ito, dir. 2019), and Netflix original Record of Ragnarok series (Masao Ookubo, dir. 2021). Hirasawa is also the founder of Arch Inc., an animation planning and producing company. Mihara has been conducting his fieldwork at Arch since 2018, observing their works of developing animation projects as well as participating in them, especially their attempts to expand their business scope outside Japan, as Arch’s “Global Business Advisor.” Leveraging this connection, Mihara interviewed Hirasawa regarding his experience in leading Graphinica in the midst of the pandemic, and discussed the implications on the future of the animation business. Hereinafter, subject “I” refers to Hirasawa and “we” refers to Graphinica, unless otherwise stated. The following account is, however, a co-authored work: Mihara wrote the English draft, as well as its Japanese translation, for Hirasawa’s review, and revised the text with Hirasawa, through which Mihara enhanced his understandings on the mechanics of anime production. Hirasawa, on the other hand, also developed his thoughts through the revision by remembering relevant events in response to Mihara’s comments and agreeing (and disagreeing) with Mihara’s suggestions regarding how his experience should be contextualized (especially in an academic context). The authors, in this regard, produced a collaborative ethnographic account, written jointly with an anthropologist and his interlocutor (cf. Van Maanen 1988) in the context of business anthropology.
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have... more This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro-American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls "strategic essentialism", the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime's businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.
This article proposes the concept of ‘involution’ as a perspective to understand the socioeconomi... more This article proposes the concept of ‘involution’ as a perspective to understand the socioeconomic dynamics of the domestic business practices within the Japanese animation (anime) sector in relation to its overseas performance. There is a counterintuitive gap between the prevalent assumption that anime is globally popular and its weak overseas performance. Leaving the detail of anime's business aspects relatively unexamined, the literature on anime has particularly failed to address the ‘inward-looking’ feature of the business of the Japanese anime sector. Based on long-term fieldwork of the business players in the Japanese anime sector in Tokyo, this article suggests ‘involution’ as a key concept to fill this void. This concept, developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, refers to the process by which a group develops internally by sticking to existing modes of operation rather than by opening up to the outer world. This article depicts how we might understand the socioeconomic dynamics of the Japanese anime sector's mainstream domestic market centrist mode of operation in the context of involution. It also explores how the concept could catalyse us to envision the alternative future of anime, other than assuming anime's global popularity: the involuting Japanese anime sector might be allowing Euro-American and Chinese internet conglomerates to intervene and take over, turning the Japanese anime sector into one of their subcontractors from which they can exploit the sector's creativity.
"VOCALOID Opera AOI with Bunraku Puppets" is a 30 minute-length opera film in which real Bunraku ... more "VOCALOID Opera AOI with Bunraku Puppets" is a 30 minute-length opera film in which real Bunraku puppets and puppeteers perform with the songs of VOCALOID (the singing voice synthesis software developed by Yamaha Corporation) created under the official authorization of the Japan Bunraku Association. I am in charge of the global promotion of this film, and gave an introductory presentation at its world premiere screening in London Hyper Japan (Japanese culture convention) at July 2014.
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Papers by Ryotaro Mihara
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/31093/
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.
Teaching Documents by Ryotaro Mihara
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/31093/
This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i.e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising.