2025/01/01 by Ryotaro Mihara · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Japanese History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/09555803.2024.2446885
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This paper argues that the field of Anglophone anime studies is not free from decolonisation issues that warrant evaluation, especially from the viewpoint of Orientalism proposed by Edward Said. Although more than two decades have passed since anime became a popular subject for research and teaching in Anglophone higher education institutions, critical writings in the field are yet to fully examine the impact of Orientalism on the ways in which they try to make intellectual sense of this area of Japanese visual culture. This paper argues that the field of Anglophone anime studies should itself be scrutinised in relation to how it canonises a specific ‘style of thought’ (as Said terms it) in understanding anime at the expense of anime itself, against the background of its (colonial) power over intellectuals and primary sources in Japan/ese. Reviewing the major ‘canonical’ Anglophone texts in the field from the viewpoint of Orientalism, this paper highlights that the issue of Orientalism remains an ‘elephant in the room’, that is, the issue is still persistently at work in the field, even as the field itself disavows it as a critical, or even relevant, issue for Anglophone anime studies. Reflecting ethno-autobiographically on the author’s own complexly liminal experience of navigating his academic career through Anglophone and Japanophone academia, the paper further reveals how this Orientalist ‘style of thought’ subtly executes its disciplinary power over academics as they try to secure their intellectual as well as professional positions in the field of Anglophone anime studies, and, in doing so, how the field normalises the style’s position of authority by appointing it, arbitrarily, as a ‘sophisticated’ approach towards anime.