The Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood
In the 94th Stockholm Seminar on Japan, Patrick W. Galbraith presented his new book: The Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood. This book examines how manga/anime-style characters trigger affect in interactions and relations with their creators and users, who draw and negotiate lines between fiction and reality.
Based on ongoing fieldwork in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo – specifically a subproject (2014-2015) on producers, players and critics of bishōjo games, which focus on interactions with manga/anime-style characters ranging from casual conversation to explicit and sometimes extreme sex – this book demonstrates how an emergent ethics of affect not only discourages harm, but also supports life in contemporary Japan.
Patrick W. Galbraith is an Associate Professor in the School of International Communication at Senshū University in Tokyo. His recent publications include Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan (Duke University Press, 2019), AKB48 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) and Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga (Amsterdam University Press, 2020).
Moderator: Dr. Patrik Ström, Director, European Institute of Japanese Studies, Stockholm School of Economics
Discussant: Dr. Jaqueline Berndt, Professor, Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University
The Japan seminar series is jointly organized by the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics, the Asia Programme at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University and the Swedish Defence University. It features monthly seminars on Japanese economy, politics and society.