Abstract for the proposed panel: Scholars of postwar Japanese culture increasingly emphasize the historical memory of the atomic bomb, the subsequent experience of demilitarization, the strong American presence, and even intervention in Japan as elements of a framework to explain the current development of “cute” aesthetics in Japanese manga and animation. This panel explores the more complicated picture of Japanese people’s self-images as “victims” and their historical memories of the Second World War by inviting scholarly efforts to situate recent development of Japanese contemporary art and culture in diverse historical and social frameworks. Important topics include: The role of otaku culture in Japanese art, especially in relation to highly sexualized images of pubescent boys and girls as well as uncritical technophilia; Japanese people’s efforts to come to terms with their own economic and cultural powers during the postwar years; finally the relationship between Japanese and American culture and history as viewed in the recent development of the Japanese avant-garde and Japanese manga and animation. The panel welcomes the papers from art history, literary studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, and history for better understandings of distinctively Japanese experience and its subsequent impact on the development of Japanese art and culture during the postwar years.