Edited by Stephan Köhn and Martina Schönbein
This series, founded in 2005, investigates various aspects of Japanese culture from the early modern era to phenomena of present times. This limitation has been made deliberately because of the fundamental change of political, economical and socio-cultural conditions beginning towards the end of the 16th century in Japan. This has to be called a paradigm shift, marking not only the beginning of Japanese popular and media culture but being also significantly responsible for almost all cultural manifestations and achievements of Japanese present times. In terms of critical cultural studies, the series assumes a broadly defined concept of “culture” as “text”, comprising areas of high, popular, and subcultures as well as regional and everyday cultures, thus dealing with very different types of “text” such as literature, theater, pop music, manga, anime, TV drama, film, or computer games.