Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture

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it's not possible. It just is -not- possible to do a pop culture encyclopedia no matter how hard one tries to. If you're going to do one, though, the key ingredients are to pick the lasting phenomenas and to assure your reader there's a depth in it worth covering.

Schilling doesn't cover most of what I remember from Japan. He doesn't cover rock music. He doesn't cover kogaru. He doesn't cover ramune or pocky. Honestly, on an encounter level with other similar books I've found myself insulted by the lack of knowledge presented in their so-called "encyclopedia". But with what he covers, he covers it well and authoratatively and with an expressed but not hideously overt sense of irony about the entire situation.

I've found myself keeping it for a reference piece because what he does cover tends to get incorporated into a lot of what he doesn't.

Before you purchase this book, as yourself, "when have I ever seen a review of popular culture that covered everything?" The answer, probably, is never, and if so, this book won't change that. The author states as much in the introduction. Having said that, the book is very good at what it attempts to do, namely give novice readers a basic understanding of the key elements of Japanese popular culture in the post-War era. A book which covered every fad, popular music group, TV program and movie during that time period would be larger than several phone books and would have a hard time selling. What this book does well is describe, in a fair amount of detail, the important cultural icons, from Misora Hibari and Sazae-san, through Pink Lady and Doraemon, ending with SMAP and Sailor Moon. If you're looking for a primer on Japanese pop culture over the last 50 years, this is the book. If you already have deep personal knowledge or are interested in only one thing (like anime), you may be disappointed. One other small problem with the book is that because it is in print form, the information is fixed in time, but Japanese culture goes on. In other words, some of the stuff in this book is dated. The concept of the book might better be served by a web site, but I doubt that Mr. Schilling could make a profit with such a site. If anybody decides to try though, please let me know. I'd visit!

Instead of cataloging the people and subcultures on the commercial fringe that Americans and other non-Japanese may be more familiar with, Schilling takes care to give the reader a broad view of actual Japanese pop culture from the post-WWII period through the mid-nineties. As to the criticism that Schiller chose to leave many things out of his encyclopedia: any other 320 page encylopedia on pop culture that spanned fifty years would be much the same. As Schiller says himself in the Introduction, "The book could easily have contained twice as many articles, but I tried to put more emphasis on depth than breadth of coverage ..." I feel I now have a better understanding of Japanese 20th century pop culture, not just of the quirky, fringe, or subcultural elements that happen to make their way to other countries or have a large presence on the internet.

This book is a disgrace to Japanese pop culture. I lived in Japan for 28 years before I moved here to America last year, and I remember there being a lot more than that. There was no color, some pictures were difficult to make out, and the author was very sloppy on the outline. I would rate this book a zero if I could.

After living in Japan for a few years I was really looking foward to reading this book and taking a stroll down memory lane. I couldn't believe how much of Japanese pop culture the author chose to leave out,not to mention this book is visually dull. For the money I paid I would have at least exptected "color" pictures. For other types of books this wouldn't matter but I would think if your going to write a book of this kind, ideally a comprehensive VIEW of popular culture in Japan, detailed photographs would have been nice instead of the minaturized black & white photos that show up every 2-3 pages. Besides if your going to write this like a coffee table book,you might as well throw some pretty pictures in.

I like this book very much, and can let foreigner know Japanese culture more and more, deep and deep.

I lived in Japan for five years from 1991-1996. This book is manna from heaven by a guy who knows everything. I recommend it for greenhorns FOB and longtime permanent residents of Japan. With over 20 years in Japan, Schilling certainly knows his way around!