Introduction

This chapter considers how and why ‘Japan’ comes to matter in the circulation of games in a globalised world. This may seem counterintuitive. As media scholar Mia Consalvo argues, computer/console games appear to be a ‘global’ and ‘hybrid culture’ (Consalvo, 2006: 117). However, Consalvo also highlights the substantial influence of Japanese hardware companies such as Nintendo and Sony and of Japanese franchises such as Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy on the global gaming industry and culture. That is, Japan is already part of a global and hybrid gaming industry and culture; content produced in Japan is not typically labelled as ‘foreign’ or ‘Japanese’, which is remarkable in comparison to, for example, manga (comics from Japan) and anime (cartoons from Japan). Furthermore, Consalvo (2006: 120) draws attention to the fact that localisation and a softening of what is perceived as ‘too foreign’ aids in the circulation of content produced in Japan (see also Allison, 2006). All of this is to suggest that perhaps ‘Japan’ does not matter as an organising category in the mainstream global gaming market, even though companies headquartered in Japan have helped shape that market and still deeply impact it.

This de-emphasising of Japan is not, however, common in discussions of adult computer games. On the contrary, many insist that these games, which range from simulated conversation to explicit sex with manga/anime-style characters, are somehow distinctively ‘Japanese’. In her monograph on games and globalisation, Consalvo herself almost appears to agree, but then suggests that the putative ‘Japaneseness’ of these games might be better understood in terms of ‘the contexts of their production’ (Consalvo, 2016: 74). One must thus consider the confluence of computer games, adult content, and the growing desire for cartoon characters in manga/anime subculture in Japan since the 1980s (Galbraith, 2019). If manga, anime, and computer/console games are often mass media or culture, then they are also part of popular culture as what theorist Stuart Hall calls a ‘terrain of […] struggle’ (Hall, 1998: 452). This struggle is an ongoing process wherein certain forms come to prominence and are promoted while others are policed and pushed aside. This process can lead to the formation of a ‘national-popular culture’, which should not be taken for granted, but rather seen ‘as a battlefield’ (Hall, 1998: 451).