Representation or misrepresentation?: British media and Japanese popular culture

For thirty years products of Japanese popular culture, including comics and animated films, have been very popular in the West. This essay examines the British social representations of the Japanese and Japanese cultural products and contrasts them with the Japanese context in which they have been produced along with the Japanese representations within them. The British representations are shown to be based on a view of the Japanese as the cultural ‘other’ and Japanese cultural products as both different and at times transgressive. This contrasts with the Japanese representations within their media output that deal with issues of youth and gender within their society. Thus, the British interpretation provides an explanation for the social representation of the Japanese as a cultural ‘other’ and for the limited range of Japanese popular culture, such as anime, shown on mainstream British television.