THE EMERGENCE OF THE ANIME MEDIA MIX: CHARACTER COMMUNICATION AND SERIAL CONSUMPTION BY MARC AARON STEINBERG B.A., MCGILL UNIVERSITY, 1999 M.A., MCGILL UNIVERSITY, 2002 A.M., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2006 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN CULTURE AND MEDIA AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2009 © Copyright 2009 by Marc Aaron Steinberg This dissertation by Marc Aaron Steinberg is accepted in its present form by the Department of Modern Culture and Media as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date___________________ _________________________________ Mary Ann Doane, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date___________________ _________________________________ Philip Rosen, Reader Date___________________ _________________________________ Thomas Lamarre, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date___________________ _________________________________ Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School ! """! VITA Marc Aaron Steinberg was born on July 27, 1977 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He attended McGill University where he received his B.A. in East Asian Studies in 1999, and his M.A. in East Asian Studies in 2002. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in Modern Culture and Media in 2009. He has published articles on the subjects of contemporary art, architecture and Japanese animation! "$! !"#"$%&'(%! )*+,"'+-*./)*/0*'(#1+2$+34+*"#5/6-&#*"4%!6"3"*/7-#&,!&$'!8%(-#59/:&4'&#(/;/<-$+('5=/ ! "#! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project reached completion thanks to the help, support, advice and contributions of family, friends and professors. I would like to extend particular thanks to Mary Ann Doane and Philip Rosen for their warm welcome to Brown, their intellectual guidance, encouragement and support over the years of graduate school, and their faith in this project. They made life in graduate school at Brown University a constant stimulation, and, along with their fellow faculty in the Department of Modern Culture and Media, fostered an environment of learning, both disciplined and otherwise, encouraging risk- taking and rigor. I don’t think graduate education can get much better than this. In this regard I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students in MCM for their constant intellectual stimulation, moral support, and humor – that element that brings lightness into our serious work. Michael Siegel, Braxton Soderman, Roxi Carter, David Bering- Porter, and my evil twin, Julie Levin Russo are all irreplaceable. As is Franz D. Hofer, to whom I also owe gratitude for his constant “patronage.” Thanks to Ueno Toshiya for giving me an institutional home at Wakô University during my stay in Japan, and for keeping me thinking. I would also like to express my gratitude to institutions that permitted my research in Japan: Dentsû Museum Library, the Japan Toy Culture Foundation, the NHK Museum of Broadcasting Library, and the National Diet Library, as well as to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which generously supported my research in Japan. It would have been impossible to get to where I am now without the constant support of my family, who taught me the value of learning early on in life and supported my decision to pursue graduate studies. A person who has been equally instrumental in allowing me to reach this point has been Thomas Lamarre whom I had the fortune of having as my undergraduate advisor, my M.A. advisor, and as my reader on my Ph.D. committee. In addition to performing these roles with dedication and generosity of time, he has been unstinting in both his encouragement, and his intellectual guidance. I count myself extremely fortunate to have had him as a mentor throughout all these years. Last but never to be least my deepest appreciation goes to my partner in crime, Yuriko Furuhata. Her bottomless curiosity and pointed criticism kept me on my toes, and her thoughtfulness, her companionship and her joyful laugh reminded me always of life outside the computer screen. ! "! TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES..........................................................................................................viii INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: LIMITING MOVEMENT, INVENTING ANIME..............................12 Two Streams of Animation........................................................................21 The Emergence of Anime-ic Movement....................................................29 The Anime Shock.......................................................................................35 Media Contexts: Postwar Kamishibai and the Sliding Image...................46 Kamishibai, the Sliding Image and Anime.................................................53 Media Contexts: The Manga Image and the Interval................................59 Limiting Movement, Inventing Anime.......................................................69 CHAPTER TWO: CANDIES, PREMIUMS AND CHARACTER MERCHANDISING: THE MEIJI-ATOMU CAMPAIGN......................................................................75 PART ONE: The Gravitational Pull of the Character...............................85 A History of Omake-Product Relations.....................................................92 The Atomization of Meiji........................................................................101 From the Body of the Star to the Body of the Character.........................108 PART TWO: The Material Dispersion of the Character Image………..115 Stickery Logic..........................................................................................117 Character Merchandising, Reconsidered.................................................125 Character Technology and Synergy.........................................................130 CHAPTER THREE: MEDIA MIXES, MEDIA TRANSFORMATIONS.....................137 Shifting Temporalities of Consumption and the Circulation of the Character Image...........................................................................142 Kadokawa Shoten and the Media Mix.....................................................148 The Culturalization of the Commodity and the Shift to Post- Fordism........................................................................................159 Dissolution of the Work as Unified Totality............................................167 Segmentation and Flow: Television, Fragmentation and the Media Mix...............................................................................................171 Environmentalization of the Media.........................................................179 The Postwar Emergence of Marketing and the Society of Mass Consumption................................................................................191 Marketing Discourse and the Media Mix................................................194 ! 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Media Transformations, Social Transformations....................................199 Conclusion: Kadokawa Reconsidered.....................................................200 CHAPTER FOUR: MATERIALITY, COMMUNICATION AND THE MASS MEDIA TOY…………………………………………………………………………….204 Note on the Character Business………………………………………...210 The First Era of Character Circulation………………………………….212 The Second Era of Character Media……………………………..…......218 The Third Era of Character Merchandising………..……………….......224 Toys, Open and Closed…………………………………….…………...231 Materializing the Image: The Atomu Toy……………………………...237 Communication, Materiality, Difference……………………………….246 The Media-Commodity and the Nature of the Medium………………..259 CHAPTER FIVE: CHARACTER, WORLD, CONSUMPTION………………..…….264 Character Law………………………………….…….…………………267 Virtual Objects………………………………….…….………………...277 The Communication of Incompossibles………………………….…….279 Incompossible Worlds………………………………...………………..286 Limiting the Virtual Object………………………...…….…………….290 Character Versus Brand: A Note…………………...…………………..298 Capitalism and the Creation of Worlds…………………………………300 Narrative Consumption…………………………………………………304 Character, World-View, Worlds……………………………...…..….....311 Participation and the Utopian Impulse Underlying Character Consumption…………………………..………………………..318 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………...……………………….…………………………327 FIGURES...…….………………………………….……………………………………347 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Still from “Episode 11: The Time Machine Episode,” Tetsuwan Atomu television animation series……………………………………………………………...347 Figure 2.2: Still from “Episode 11: The Time Machine Episode,” Tetsuwan Atomu television animation series……………………………………………………………...347 Figure 2.3: Still from “Episode 11: The Time Machine Episode,” Tetsuwan Atomu television animation series……………………………………………………………...348 Figure 2.4: Meiji, Morinaga and Hershey rectangular chocolate bars………………….348 Figure 2.5: 1961 Marble Chocolate cylinder…………………………………………...349 Figure 2.6: examples of various types of media ads, from television commercial stills (#2, 3+8), to POP displays (#7), to newspaper (#5+#6), magazine (#11) and billboard (#1) ads, to the radio song (#9) ……………………………………………………………...350 Figure 2.7: Morinaga Parade Chocolate Box, circa 1962, with the omake cap………...351 Figure 2.8: Parade Chocolate omake premiums; two series of the same sample caps photographed from different angles. …………………………………………………...351 Figure 2.9: Examples of build-it-yourself paper furoku included in the magazine Shônen