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Chair: Yulia Mikhailova, Hiroshima City University Organizer: Lee Makela, Cleveland State University 1) Yulia Mikhailova, Hiroshima City University. "Intellectuals, Cartoons and Traditions in Meiji Japan" 2) Karen Nakamura, Macalester College. "Asexuality and Polygenderism: Shôjo Shônen Manga at the fin de siècle" 3) Lee Makela, Cleveland State University. "From Metropolis to Metropolis: Initiating a Search for the Soul in the Machine in Japanese and Western Film" 4) Deborah Shamoon, University of California, Berkeley. "Situating the Shôjo in Shôjo Manga"

by David Leheny "Since the Meiji Restoration, successive Japanese governments have stressed the nation's need to act like a "real" (that is, a Western) advanced industrial power. As part of their express desire to catch up, generations of policymakers have examined the ways Americans and Europeans relax or have fun, then tried to persuade Japanese citizens to behave in similar fashion-while subtly redefining these recreational choices as distinctively "Japanese." In tracing the development of leisure politics and the role of the state in cultural change, the author focuses on the importance of international norms and perceptions of Japanese national identity. Leheny regards globalization as a "failure of imagination" on the part of policymakers. When they absorb lessons from Western nations, they aim for a future that has already been revealed elsewhere rather than envision a locally distinctive lifestyle for citizens."