The panel description:
This　proposed research project is to contribute to understanding of the cultural discourse and national identity reconstruction in postwar Japan by focusing on the virtual and historical narratives generated around the Battleship Yamato—the ultimate symbol of Imperial Japan. This research project is innovative because it takes an interdisciplinary approach by combining gender studies, media studies, political science and tourism studies, in order to examine multiple aspects of narrative formation in films, anime, manga, and video games as well as the mnemonic implications of memorial sites such as museums, shrines and possible tourist attractions dedicated to the Yamato. This is also unique because no comprehensive study of the Yamato-dedicated popular culture and memorial sites. The research will explore the socio-political mechanisms of identity construction of postwar Japan, examine the non-presence of women and femininity or the “marginalized gender” in the construction of war scenarios, especially with regards to their absence in the process of rebuilding and recovery of the nation, and finally to examine the politics of memory as it is constructed and experienced in virtual new media narratives which encode the abstract principles, nationalism, world federalism.
**********

If you would like to join our panel, please contact Kaori Yoshida along with your abstract (max. 250 words): kyoshida@apu.ac.jp