Welcome to the third

Mutual Images international workshop!

We are delighted to welcome you to Kobe University for the 2015 edition of the Mutual Images international workshop. It would not have been possible if it had not been for the help and involvement of many amazing people whom we would like to thank here. Our belated thanks go to Prof. Yui Kiyomitsu and to Kobe University, Graduate School of Humanities, for hosting this 3rd edition of the Mutual Images international workshop. We would also like to thank the staff of Kobe University, General Affairs Office, for their precious assistance in the organization. We personally thank Dr Marco Pellitteri, who organized this event with so much passion and commitment. His energy and good humor enable us to meet on this occasion. In fact, this edition of the workshop is also framed as a fundamental activity of the research project Dr Pellitteri is currently conducting (September 2014 – September 2016) at Kobe University as a Foreign Research Fellow under the aegis of JSPS and with fundings from the KAKENHI program. Our gratitude also goes to the Kyoto International Manga Museum for welcoming us during the second day of this workshop, and especially to Prof. Jaqueline Berndt for, once again, giving us this opportunity and supporting our project. We are happy to have with us this year Prof. Shiraishi Saya S., who was kind enough to find time to participate in this workshop. Thank you. We thank the three intern students from the Institut Marc Perrot (France): Laurent, Rémi and Charlton, for their hard work. Thanks to the participants for answering our call and sharing with us their research. Our final thanks go to You, for being here today and making this workshop a platform for academic discussion.

We wish you a pleasant and knowledgeable week-end!

Aurore Yamagata-Montoya, President of Mutual Images

Maxime Danesin, Vice-President of Mutual Images

Marco Pellitteri, Vice-President of Mutual Images

Introduction

Why Mutual Images?

The Mutual Images international workshop was created in 2013. It saw its first

edition held in June 2013 at Kōnan University (Kobe, Japan) and its founders have

later created a Cultural association, to organize the workshop’s yearly editions,

further activities and an academic journal. The second edition was hosted in May

2014 at Tours University (Tours, France).

The philosophy from which the Mutual Images workshop series was born is

that of exploring the reciprocal influences between Japan and Europe, with an

emphasis on the visual cultures. The scope and aims of the symposiums and the

journal are to explore, describe and as much as possible explain the several

aspects and features of worlds that not only look at each other directly but also

watch their own image reflected on the eyes of the other.

The past workshops

The 2013 edition of the workshop began to approach the large family of topics

that can be contained in the fascinating key word “mutual images” itself.

Titled “Exporting Young Japan: between Text and Image,” it allowed us to

explore some of the relevant areas of this never ending dialogue between

Japanese and European cultures. It focused on some of the ways in which

different sectors of Japanese contemporary culture travel out of Japan and are

perceived, marketed, interpreted, and practiced abroad: manga, animation,

novels, subcultural trends, official representations of the national culture.

The general topic of the 2014 edition was “Portraits of Japan: Myths and

Realities of Japan in Art” and the main accents were on film studies, literary

criticism, historical analysis of the popular press and of the cultural policies of

Japanese national institutions.

Program

For the third Mutual Images workshop, we seek to explore the dynamic relations between

Japan and Europe through contemporary popular cultures. Over these past decades, Japanese

pop cultures (manga, anime on television and at theatres, video games, toys, gadgets, cosplay,

fan-fiction, light novels, dramas and other forms of current entertainment) have been an

important vector of Japanese culture on Europe. In the three sessions of this workshop, we

shall interrogate the commercial, media-related and cultural aspects of the development of

Japanese popular cultures in Europe today. We shall particularly consider the influence of

Japanese popular cultures on European societies and mentalities, within a wide range of

cultural, social or economic aspects; e.g. from artistic media, such as literary productions, to

eating habits.

12 June 9:00 – 18:00

Salute Yui Kiyomitsu, Kobe University

Introduction Marco Pellitteri, Kobe University

Session 1

9:30 – 13:00

Europe: just a market place or a true commercial partner for Japanese pop cultures?

Chair Aurore Montoya

Discussant Yui Kiyomitsu

Japanese pop cultures have reached many foreign markets and have been welcomed by

European consumers as well. In this first section of the workshop we aim to interrogate the

interactions that may have arisen and still arise from this continuing and ever-changing

encounter. What are the contexts in which Japanese pop cultures were and are successfully (or

unsuccessfully) imported? What social, economical, sociological, cultural aspects have

contributed to its expansion? We encourage papers based on frameworks coming from all

disciplines of Humanities and Social sciences.

Staging Ephemerality: From strategic emotions to emotional strategies in Takarazuka Revue’s

tour in Berlin (2000)

Maria Grajdian (Romania), Nagasaki University, Japan

(Japanese?) Cartoons and Manga movies: The hard rise of Anime in UK market and society

Manuel Hernández-Pérez (Spain) and Kevin Corstorphine (United Kingdom), University of Hull,

England

Brokers of ‘Japaneseness’: Bringing table-top J-RPGs to the ‘West’

Björn-Ole Kamm (Germany), Kyoto University, Japan

Lunch in the Takikawa Canteen (13:00 – 14:00)

Session 2

14:00 – 18:00

Japan in European media and public opinion before and after the boom of ‘J-cultures’

Chair Maxime Danesin

Discussant Maria Grajdian

Media in European nations show different conceptions and adopt several different rhetorical

narratives on Japan. These varying notions are certainly due to the history of the diplomatic

relations with Japan, the national cultural tradition, the critic literature along the centuries.

However, in the last thirty years a further shift might have been at play, due to the success of

‘J-cultures’ (especially manga, animation, toys), a phenomenon at work since the late 1970s.

An example (but not the only possible) of this process is the effect of anime series on the ways

of television consumption and the relevance of manga series in the local publishing markets,

which may have had an impact in the definitions of Japan in the mainstream media and in the

ways Japan has been told to the public. Therefore in this section we aim to interrogate the

ways J-cultures have played and are currently playing a role in reshaping the attitudes adopted

in the media discourse on Japan.

Images of Japan among readers and non-readers of manga in Germany

Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff, Institute for Research in Children’s Literature, Goethe University,

Frankfurt/Main, Germany

The French VHS market of anime (1980-2000)

Bounthavy Suvilay, independent scholar and journalist, France

Dragon Ball in Spain compared to the current delocalized models of consumption. How Dragon

Ball spread from a regional-based complex system to a nationwide social phenomenon

José Andrés Santiago Iglesias, Vigo University, Spain

Understanding the specificities of fan subcultural markets through the frameworks of ethnic

migrant markets and creative cultural industries approaches: The case of the anime/manga

fan culture and market in Hungary

Zoltan Kacsuk (Hungary), Kyoto Seika University, Japan

13 June 9:00 – 21:00

With the kind participation of Shiraishi Saya S.

(Tokyo University, Okazaki Women’s University)

Session 3

9:00 – 13:00

Japan, outpost of the 21st century’s culture?

Chair Marco Pellitteri

Discussant Jaqueline Berndt

In the third part of this workshop we seek to explore the role of Japanese pop cultures in the

making of the 21st century’s culture. Over the past decades, globalization and the

intensification of transcultural exchanges have spread the seeds of future opportunities. Those

seeds are now blooming, challenging our own very conceptions, as we can see with so many

‘mutual images’ between cultures. There is a wide range of elements at stake, be it the literary

creation and reception, the education of our new generations, or common politics. By

considering the Japanese pop cultures phenomenon in Europe today, we aim to reflect,

through a wide range of topics, upon to which extent it holds future opportunities. Can it

participate in the making of new mutual images between Japan and Europe? Would it be able

to influence the education of our future generations, their politics and their social lives? Can it

be seen as an outpost of the 21st century’s culture, or just as an ephemeral transition?

The contemporary phenomenon of manga scanlation

Matteo Fabbretti (Italy), Cardiff University, Wales

Beyond time & culture: the revitalization of the Norse Literature and History in a 21stcentury

Japanese manga. A study of Yukimura Makoto’s Vinland Saga.

Maxime Danesin, University François Rabelais (Tours), France

Imaginary identifications: European pop culture through the Japanese looking-glass

Domenica Gisella Calabrò and Fabio Domenico Palumbo, University of Messina, Italy

� Final discussion

� Closing remarks

13 :00 – 21 :00

� Lunch in Kobe

� Transfer to Kyoto: visit of the International Manga Museum

� Informal dinner in Kyoto

� Transfer back to Kobe (for those who are accommodated in Kobe)

Special thanks to Jaqueline Berndt for the visit to the Kyoto International Manga Museum!

Abstracts

Staging Ephemerality

From strategic emotions to emotional strategies in Takarazuka Revue’s tour in Berlin (2000)

Maria Grajdian, Nagasaki University

Founded in 1913 by Kobayashi Ichizô, one of the most significant entrepreneurs in prewar Japan,

Takarazuka Revue proved itself along its centennial existence both a faithful mirror of and an influential

model for the Japanese society. Simultaneously conservative in its gender representation and

progressive in its performance practice, a contradictory symbol of the Japanese modernity and Japan’s

leading figure in entertainment industry, emerged from the syncretic, cross-gender tradition of the

centuries-old classical Japanese stage arts and challenging that very tradition through the creative

employment of Western music and dramatic plots, Takarazuka Revue reconstructs in a specific way

asymmetric interactions between identity and alterity, model and copy, history and geography,

obtrusively displayed in sparkling tunes, fairy-tale-like sceneries and gorgeous costumes. Drawing on

archive research of the German and Japanese press-review and on interviews with the Japanese and

German organizers/promoters of the event as well as with Japanese and Western fans (who have

partially attended the performances at Sportpalast in Berlin, 2000), this presentation’s goal is to

analyse Takarazuka Revue’s position as a cultural institution within the process of representing

Japanese late modernity, possibly carrying deep-going and wide-reaching messages of a new identity

paradigm based of ‘love’, in its body as a local mass medium. Thus, the transition from ethics to

aesthetics and from imagination to ideology in Takarazuka Revue’s marketing of historic-geographical

spaces on the European stage reflects its metamorphose from an insignificant socio-cultural medium

to a powerful political-economic message in postwar Japan as well as Japan’s emerging awareness

from being an “outsider” to the Western world to gradually becoming an “insider” of the Asian

community.

(Japanese?) Cartoons and Manga Movies

The hard rise of Anime in UK market and society

Manuel Hernández-Pérez and Kevin Corstorphine, University of Hull

This paper has as main objective to explore, adopting a historical and critical perspective, the

release of film and anime TV in UK. This would be a first step towards the studio of the peculiar

implementation of manganime Culture in Britain.

Compared with other European countries, UK has shown to be slower and even reluctant in

importing Japanese television products. Thus, while major markets of anime such as France, Italy or

Spain expanded considerably during 1975-1995 period, in a recurrent synergy of television markets,

and technological publishing, the implantation of the principal channel (televised anime) in UK has

been irregular and unstable. Even today, the catalogue of broadcasting anime is limited to some high

success movies, late night television on thematic channels and quite recently, video-on-demand

services (Netflix). The offer cannot be compare in importance and diversity to other European

countries. This fact, far from being anecdotal, has had an impact on the subsequent implantation of

media Japanese cultures such as manga, anime, video games and cosplay.

What can be the reason of this irregular development of Japanese visual culture in United Kingdom?

Characteristic having the television market and / or the UK audience? Main hypothesis in relation to

Thus, compared to other Western markets (including the US) which saw the opportunity to

purchase economic products for children's television audiences in the late 70s and early 80s, the British

“telly” already offered a broad catalog (Roobarb, Super Ted, Danger Mouse, etc. ..). The only exception

to this children's ‘made in Britain’ programming was the co-production model. This caused a leak of

few products that were not even considered as “Japanese” (Seven Cities of Gold, Godzilla) but mere

‘cartoons’. This competition with the British children production as well as the wide catalogue of other

forms of British Popular Culture would explain why the film, domestic video and later adults

programming would be the marginal routes of entry for manganime.

Brokers of “Japaneseness”: Bringing table-top J-RPGs to the “West”

Björn-Ole Kamm, Kyoto University

Japanese-language table-top role-playing games (TRPG) stayed mostly under the radar of (Western)

gamers and scholars until 2008, when Maid RPG (Kamiya, Cluney) was released as the first English

translation of such a game. TRPGs made by Japanese game designers had been overshadowed by their

digital cousins, computer RPGs such as Final Fantasy, and Japan imagined as a digital game heaven.

Instead of engaging a computer interface, players come together and narrate a shared adventure or

story via character avatars and with the help of dice and often complex rules. The game world and the

plot of their play exist mostly in their imagination, supported in some cases by elaborate character

sheets, drawings, maps, and figurines.

Maid RPG had been an amateur-made game and remained a PDF-only in release in its English

version. The first major translation was Tenra Bansho Zero (Inoue, Kitkowski) in 2014, chosen for its

“Japaneseness,” that is, a plethora of elements, such as samurai, Shinto priests, and creatures from

Japanese folklore set in a sengoku (Warring States) inspired world. However, it was not faithfully

translated: “unfaithful” is not meant in any morally negative sense but refers to the many adjustments

necessary to “sell” Tenra to an audience that was perceived as different from the “original” Japanese

one and that (in part) perceives itself as different from it. Such adjustments included not only notes

and explanations of “Japan” but also self-censorship vis-à-vis “Western” values. This paper traces how

“cultural brokerage” does not simply translate between cultures but necessarily also produces them

as a reality. It makes “the West” — by stripping away elements, adding information — and similarly

also “Japan.” The paper shows that the “Japaneseness” of Tenra was its selling point but had to be

made first through telling the audience what “authentic” Japan looks like.

Images of Japan among readers and non-readers of manga in Germany

Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität – Institut für Jugendbuchforschung

In the context of the surveys of the European Research Network (see Bouissou – Pellitteri – Dolle-

Weinkauff, “Manga in Europe,” in T. Johnson-Woods, ed., Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, New York: Continuum, 2011, 253-66) it was, among other things, tried to determine if a

connection between the reading of manga and the development of certain ideas about Japan, the

Japanese and the Japanese society and culture can be observed. Several hundreds of manga readers

between 18 and 35 responded to two online surveys in the years 2006/07 and 2011, almost the same

number of non-readers responded to the second survey.

As the analysis showed, there is, overall, a clear tendency to a stable image of Japan, to positive

judgements of Japan and the characteristics attributed to this country. However, those seem to feed

from very different ideals, socio-cultural contexts and expectations. While the attitudes of the readers

do not show significant changes between 2006/07 and 2011, non-readers in 2011 partly evaluated

their judgements differently from those of the readers. What is obviously expressed by the non-

readers is a significantly more distinct syndrome of foreignness towards the Japanese culture and the

evident influence of the catastrophe in Fukushima. The talk tries to explain these different findings,

define the scope of them and formulate questions and desiderata for future research. In the course of

these issues can be considered to be of sociological character, but are reflected in the idiosyncrasies

of British television culture and production system.

that, detailed findings, as for example the perception of Japanese mentality, will be discussed on

the one hand, on the other hand, the detailed findings will experimentally be summarised into

different types of images of Japan.

The French VHS market of anime (1980-2000)

Bounthavy Suvilay, independent journalist

The VHS market of anime in France is marked by two periods. In the early 1980s, the film producer

Jacques Canestrier has acquired the distribution rights of several series that were broadcasted on

television. His other licenses are sold in the form of cassettes. These anime are treated as by-products

intended for a child audience, which is perceived as uncritical. Other publishers are also getting on the

market and since the legal deposit of VHS is not compulsory before 1985, the disclaimer is not always

present on the tapes. The series are never fully distributed and the illustrations on cover are redrawn.

Japanese rights holders didn’t really know how well their licenses have been marketed overseas.

In the early 1990s, these publishers disappeared and anime are very present on French television,

but their bad reputation led broadcasters to remove them progressively, which pushes fans to

professionalize and market themselves the series with a greater respect for the original works. In 1994

the publisher Kazé Animation is founded by former fans with their personal funds and the Japanese

company Ucore. Subtitling of most VHS of the time is made by Odaje, fans association known through

conventions. While major publishers remain chilly, other entrepreneurs seize the opportunity and

engage in the market of anime VHS. While about fifty cassettes came out in indifference during the

previous decade, in 1995 everything is accelerating and multiple publishers are established to meet

the demands of a public who grew up with anime on television. Even the big publishers are getting

involved and Japanese rights holders are more aware of the French audience. But it leads to a rapid

saturation of the market. Again, publishers disappear and those that remain are getting into the DVD

market.

Dragon Ball in Spain compared to the current delocalized models of consumption:

How Dragon Ball spread from a regional-based complex system to a nationwide social

phenomenon

José Andrés Santiago Iglesias, Vigo University

Manganime’s market development in Spain in the late seventies and eighties –and its boom in the

early nineties– mimics other major European markets such as Italy and France, since most of the

mainstream anime series broadcasted in Spain were originally imported from Italian’s

Fininvest/Mediaset and French licensing companies.

On February 1990 Dragon Ball aired in Spain (25th anniversary). However, it was not a nationwide

immediate phenomenon. The “when,” “where” and “how” are different from any other broadly

popular anime/manga series in Spain, as well as any other major European market, due to the

specificity of the Spanish “Autonomous Communities” cultural, political and administrative division.

Dragon Ball first showed up in regional television –TVG, TV3 and ETB (Galicia, Catalonia and Basque

Country)– with just a few days in-between, dubbed not in Spanish but in the respective co-official

languages (Galician, Catalonian, Basque), and grew as an independent social phenomenon within this

regions before it spread nationwide years later.

With Dragon Ball, anime as a cultural platform in Spain influenced a lot of people by pushing the

fandom boundaries into a broader social spectrum, turned anime and manga into mainstream

mediums and – while initially both publishers and merchandising companies failed to anticipate such

a significant social reaction– settled the foundations of the Spanish manga/anime industry. If

compared with the current market consumption and broadcast mechanics, it’s a worthy case-study

regarding how consumers engage with manganime and the obvious differences within both models.

While back then generalist channels aimed to a broader viewer’s scope, nowadays specific otaku-

oriented multichannels focus on proactive manganime hardcore fans. The phenomenon of Dragon Ball in Spain responds hereby to an interesting sociological model – dendritic and with interconnected

elements – since it is neither reductionist nor holistic, but rather a complex system.

Understanding the specificities of fan subcultural markets through the frameworks of ethnic

migrant markets and creative cultural industries approaches:

The case of the anime-manga fan culture and market in Hungary

Zoltan Kacsuk, Kyoto Seika University

Broadcast television and anime have been at the forefront of reaching the wider mainstream

audience with anime-manga culture in European countries for several decades now. Manga publishing

has been slower to follow, but since the two-thousands has also established itself across Europe. A

vibrant and visible fan culture has also grown up around anime and manga, both a result of the influx

of these cultural products and at the same time acting as a catalyst for sustained interest in these

forms. In Hungary, similar to a number of other countries, manga publishing and the anime-manga fan

culture and market have been driven by subcultural producers, actors coming from within the culture

or related fandoms and subcultures. Such fan subcultural markets have a number of peculiarities

regarding their mode of operation, which I would like to argue can be better understood by looking at

the characteristics of ethnic migrant markets on the one hand, and creative cultural industries on the

other hand. The specialist tastes and demands of subcultures and fan cultures and the emphasis on

giving back to the community resembles immigrant ethnic markets and communities. The defining

constraints and motivations for participating in fan subcultural markets, however, are very different

from those which characterize immigrant ethnic markets, and are rather in line with the motivation

structure underlying decisions to work in the creative cultural industries. Understanding the logic and

working mechanisms of fan subcultural markets, and the motivation of subcultural producers involved

in them helps us better grasp the complex ways in which the mediation, localization and domestication

of foreign cultural products such as anime and manga takes place and is negotiated within the

transnational fandoms and national markets they engender.

The Contemporary Phenomenon of Manga Scanlation

Matteo Fabbretti, Cardiff University

The spread of Japanese manga from its country of origin to the rest of the world in the past three

decades has gathered considerable academic attention. Considerably less attention however has been

paid to the more recent phenomenon of scanlation, which sees a transcultural network of fans

operating online dedicated to translating, adapting and distributing manga into other languages.

This presentation deals with the phenomenon of manga scanlation, mainly into English but with

references to other languages as well. Scanlation will be framed within the context of global translation

flows and the spread of otaku culture outside Japan. This presentation straddles between two related

fields of translation research: on the one hand, the translation of visual narratives, what in English is

commonly known as “Comics in Translation;” and on the other hand, the study of emergent

communities of non-professional, non-academically trained translators.

The argument that will be put forward is that while the most obvious outcome of the network of

scanlation are translated manga texts, these are by no means the only product, as scanlation as an

informal learning environment is also engaged in the establishment of a body of behaviours,

knowledge, norms and views that are desirable to fans. Taken together, these may be said to constitute

a model of reality which takes as a source Japan or, more precisely, manga culture. Therefore,

scanlation may be said to represent the translation not just of texts, but of three related aspects of

Japanese manga culture: first, a repertoires of drawing styles and narratives targeting specific age and

gender demographics; second, a culture of participation; and third, a representation of Japanese

fandom as relevant to the sensibilities of scanlators.

The Middle Ages in Europe through the prism of contemporary Japanese literature:

A study of Vinland Saga (Yukimura Makoto), L'Éclipse (Hirano Keiichirō) and Spice and Wolf (Hasekura Isuna)

Maxime Danesin, University of Tours

Since the past few decades, the Middle Ages in Europe have started to become a recurrent motif in

Japan. Either depicted in historical works, appearing in a roundabout way, or even implied through

archetypal backgrounds and characters in Medieval Fantasy, it has become a source of inspiration for

Japanese authors and scenarists, even taking a firm root in the Games industry (DragonQuest and the

Final Fantasy series acting as their paragon). Regarding the field of Literature, in a large sense,

countless manga are based upon its atmosphere (Berserk, Akagami no Shirayukihime...), as well as

several light novels (Slayers, The Record of Lodoss War...) and traditional literary works (among them,

the Akutagawa' Prize's winner in 1998, L'Éclipse by Hirano Keiichirō). Besides offering the elation of

exotic stories and re-enchanting our world, this foreign exploration of the Middle Ages creates a new

approach of its realities and myths, sometimes reorganizating them to the point of syncretism with

Japanese values. Thus, from folktales to civilisations features, those transcultural medieval elements

affect the perception of Europe in contemporary Japan.

In this paper, in order to highlight the interaction between this part of the european culture and

Japanese literature, I study three paragons of literary works representing the Middle Ages in Europe:

the historical manga Vinland Saga (Yukimura Makoto), set during the Vikings Era and using the literary

features of the Icelandic sagas, the light novel Spice and Wolf (Hasekura Isuna), a unique tale depicting

the medieval merchant world, and the novel L'Éclipse by Hirano Keiichirō, portraying a young

Dominican in the 15th century thrown into the world of alchemy and metaphysic. I argue that they are

not only transcultural works, but that they also offer new perspectives on understanding how

European realities and myths are being adapted in Japan.

Imaginary identifications: European pop culture through the Japanese looking-glass

Gisella Domenica Calabrò and Fabio Domenico Palumbo, University of Messina

Searching for a pop identity, Europe has mirrored itself in the Japanese imaginary. The reflection

has provided Europe with a pop self-presentation, whose characteristics include both recognition and

alienation. The element of familiarity rests on Japanese pop culture being itself influenced by Western

culture, whereas alienation is to be ascribed to the estrangement towards contexts and narratives,

which are distant from the experiences of ordinary Europeans.

This paper then aims to trace historically the exchange between Japanese culture and European

culture in the period between modernity and postmodernity, highlighting the specificity of the

Japanese route against the historical-cultural Western scenario. Our argument, corroborated by a

relevant philosophical tradition, is that Japan has skipped modernity. This is quintessential to

understand the affinity between the postmodern condition and the Japanese pop culture. Such affinity

becomes evident in the contemporary invasion of Japanese pop icons, particularly the visual ones, into

the European/Western cultural market.

The exportation of Nipponese products to Europe has its own dynamics, which we will attempt to

illustrate, analyzing its phases in a chronological path. We contend that the most recent trajectory

suggests the saturation of the European imaginary by the Japanese one and the risk of an ephemeral

assimilation of Japanese pop. At the broad level, this phenomenon is observed within the frame of the

history of ideas, considering the circulation of the aesthetics and of the imaginaries between Europe and

Japan. More specifically, this conceptual frame is contextualized in the Italian scenario, delineating the

practices of cultural consumption of more than two generations of Italians strongly influenced by the

Japanese pop imaginary (specifically, we emphasize the case of the largest web-based Italian community

dedicated to Japanese pop culture). Together with France, we argue that Italy has played a central role

in the dynamics of European cultural assimilation of Japanese pop elements.

The contributors

Gisella Domenica Calabrò

Domenica Gisella Calabrò holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Messina. Her

thesis investigated the Maori relationship with rugby. During her fieldwork in New Zealand, she was

hosted by the School of Maori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests are

now expanding to include Japanese contexts, focusing on Ainu issues and Japanese pop culture.

Kevin Corstorsphine

Dr Kevin Corstorphine is lecturer in English at the University of Hull. His main research interests are in

the literary Gothic, the reception of science in literature, ecology, and theories of spatiality. He has

published chapters and articles on Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch and Stephen King. He

is currently working on the spaces and places of Gothic fiction and the popular imagination, and is

writing a book on haunted houses in fiction and culture. As well as manga and anime, he has a keen

interest in Japanese videogames and gaming culture.

Maxime Danesin

He is a Modern Literature Ph.D. Student at François Rabelais University, Tours (France), and the Vice-

president of Mutual Images in charge of events. His field of research is the Intertextuality and

Transculture in Contemporary Literature, focusing on cultural transfer between Japan and Europe,

especially in light novel and manga. His doctoral thesis is titled “European Motifs in Contemporary

Japanese Literature.”

Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff

Senior researcher, director of the comics collection of the Institute for Children’s Literature Research

at Goethe-University, Frankfurt.Ph.D.in German Literature, Goethe-University, Frankfurt 1983,

specialist of illustrated books, picture books, broadsheet, comics and manga. Since 1999 he is a co-

editor of the Yearbook of Children’s and youth literature research (published in German language).

Since 2006 cooperation with Jean-Marie Bouissou (France) and Marco Pellitteri (Italy) under the

umbrella of the international “Manga Research Network.” Since 1984 he has published around 50

papers dealing with comics. His principal work is the book Comics. History of a popular genre in West Germany since 1945 published (in German) in 1990.

Matteo Fabbretti

Matteo Fabbretti graduated with a BA in Japanese and Spanish before undergoing an MA and later a

Ph.D. in Translation Studies, all at Cardiff University. His major research interests are in the area of

translation as a social practice. He is particularly interested in Japanese visual narrative (manga) and

its related culture, and the role that virtual communities of amateur translators play in the globalization of Japanese (visual) culture. The title of his doctoral dissertation is A Study of Contemporary Manga Scanlation into English.

Maria Grajdian

Maria Grajdian is Associate Professor of Media Studies/Cultural Anthropology/Anthropology of Media

at Nagasaki University, School of Global Humanities and Social Sciences. She holds a Ph.D. in

ethnomusicology from University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover, Germany. Her research

focuses on Japanese contemporary culture (Takarazuka Revue, anime, popular music, Murakami

Haruki), the history of knowledge (encyclopedias) and the dynamics of identity in late modernity.

Recent publications include a number of research articles in academic journals as well as books on

contemporary Japanese culture such as Flüssige Identität: Die postmoderne Liebe, die Takarazuka Revue und die Suche nach einer neuen Aufklärung (Liquid Identity: The postmodern love, Takarazuka

Revue and the quest for a new identity, 2009) and Takahata Isao (in German, 2010).

Manuel Hernández-Pérez

Manuel Hernández-Pérez completed all postdoctoral lecturing qualifications for Information

Management at the same University with the presentation of his Doctoral Thesis titled Cross-Media Narrative in the Context of the Japanese Entertainment Industry. Manga, Anime and Video Games. He

has been visitor researcher in the Université Libre de Bruxelles and The University of Edinburgh where

he has conducted research about Narrative, Psychology and Media reception. In his professional

career, he has worked with many agents in the media sphere such as Institutions, TV channels and

producer houses. He has been Lecturer in the Catholic University of Valencia ‘San Vicente Mártir’

(Valencia, Spain) where he has taught seminaries about the relationships between Psychology and

Media Production. Since October 2013 he works in the University of Hull (Scarborough, UK) as a

Lecturer in Digital Design.

Zoltan Kacsuk

Ph.D. student at Kyoto Seika University, his research interests are subcultures, fan cultures, otaku,

comics, manga, imagination. The title of his thesis is From geek to otaku culture and back again: The role of subcultural clusters in the international dissemination of anime-manga culture as seen through Hungarian producers.

Björn-Ole Kamm

Björn-Ole Kamm is Senior Lecturer at Kyoto University. His research on the boys’ love genre was

published as Nutzen und Gratifikation bei Boys’ Love Manga (2010), and in Transformative Works and Cultures (2013). Currently, his work focuses on dynamics of networked communities and the agency

of cultural brokers within the transcultural sphere of role-playing games.

Fabio Domenico Palumbo

Fabio D. Palumbo was born in Reggio Calabria (Italy) in 1975. After achieving a Master’s degree in

Philosophy at University of Messina in 2000, he was granted Bachelor’s degree in Psychology at

University of Padua in 2011. Currently attending Ph.D. school at University of Messina. His current

research interests include postmodernism, psychoanalysis and Japanese pop culture.

José Andrés Santiago Iglesias

Visual artist and postdoctoral researcher at the Fine Arts Faculty (Universidade de Vigo), focused on

manga studies in Spain, and currently working as invited researcher at Kyoto Seika University. Member

of the “dx5 - digital & graphic_art_research” group – specialized in expanded field contemporary

graphic art – and founding member of the ACDCómic (Spanish Association of Critics and Researches of

Comics) since its inception in 2012.

Bounthavy Suvilay

Bounthavy Suvilay is a French independent journalist. She has worked for AnimeLand, magazine

specialized on manga and anime and supervised several special editions before becoming editor in

chief of IG magazine, bimonthly publication on video games. She has supervised several books

including RPG, le jeu de rôle : du papier au pixel. She has also written articles in academic revues as

“Jules Verne au pays du manga” (Belphégor), “Dragon Ball, du Roi des singes au super-guerrier” (Mythe et bande dessinée), “La représentation du corps féminin dans le manga et le dessin animé japonais :

robots, cyborgs, intelligences artificielles” (Les Représentations du corps dans les œuvres fantastiques et de science-fiction).

All the papers presented in this 3rd Mutual Images workshop will be subsequently published in the 2nd

issue of the Journal Mutual Images. Mutual Images is a peer-reviewed open-access journal.

If you wish to submit an article or review, or to be in involved in the editorial team, please contact us:

mutualimages@gmail.com

For more information, visit

www.mutualimages.org

In the front cover:

Tetsuwan Atom © Tezuka Production