Post-cold-war japanese animation

The five directors of animation works included in this volume – Kon Satoshi, Hosoda Mamoru, Miyazaki Goro, Yonebayashi Hiromasa, Shinkai Makoto – belong to the so-called shinjinrui ("new human breed") generation, the commonly accepted Japanese correspondence to the Western X generation. Born into relative affluence and unfamiliar with the hardships their parents (the baby-boomers) had experienced, they came of age mostly after the end of the Cold War, and can be divided roughly into two groups: those born during the sixties – the former three – who take over fragments of the unbridled enthusiasm of the predecessors, lacking, though, their critical spirit as well as the acuity of social observation; and those born during the seventies – the latter two – who openly embody Simon Sinek's (himself born during that decade) characterization of a "hard-working and overlooked" micro-generation.

Therefore, they are more prone to look for innovative pathways to overcoming the "Japaneseness" of cultural products and to reinvigorating the socio-political paradigm of complacency, compounded by a gradually generalized indifference, loneliness and absence of moral orientation.

Alte titluri pentru Maria Grăjdian (autor):

Cyberspaces of Loneliness (2023)

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Takahata Isao (2023)

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