Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon 0822332507, 0822332876, 2003013450

Table of contents :
Contents
I. CONTEXTS AND ISSUES
1. Joseph Tobin, Introduction
2. David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green, Structure, Agency, andPedagogy in Children’s Media Culture
3. Anne Allison, Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product
II. GLOBAL CIRCULATION
4. Koichi Iwabuchi, How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?
5. Hirofumi Katsuno and Jeffrey Maret, Localizing the Pokémontv Series for the American Market
6. Christine R. Yano, Panic Attacks: Anti-Pokémon Voices in Global Markets
III. PLACES AND PRACTICES
7. Julian Sefton-Green, Initiation Rites: A Small Boy in a Poké-World
8. Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch, Pokémon in Israel
9. Gilles Brougère, How Much Is a Pokémon Worth? Pokémon in France
IV. POKÉMON GOES TO SCHOOL
10. Helen Bromley, Localizing Pokémon through Narrative Play
11. Rebekah Willett, The Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans
12. Samuel Tobin, Masculinity, Maturity, and the End of Pokémon
13. Joseph Tobin, Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

THE RISE AND FALL OF POKÉMON J O S E P H TO B I N , E D I TO R

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS DURHAM AND LONDON 2004

∫ 2004 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $ Designed by Rebecca Giménez Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Typeset in Adobe Minion by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

I. CONTEXTS AND ISSUES

1. Joseph Tobin, Introduction, 3 2. David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green, Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture, 12 3. Anne Allison, Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product, 34 II. GLOBAL CIRCULATION

4. Koichi Iwabuchi, How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?, 53 5. Hirofumi Katsuno and Je√rey Maret, Localizing the Pokémon tv Series for the American Market, 80 6. Christine R. Yano, Panic Attacks: Anti-Pokémon Voices in Global Markets, 108 III. PLACES AND PRACTICES

7. Julian Sefton-Green, Initiation Rites: A Small Boy in a Poké-World, 141 8. Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch, Pokémon in Israel, 165 9. Gilles Brougère, How Much Is a Pokémon Worth? Pokémon in France, 187 IV. POKÉMON GOES TO SCHOOL

10. Helen Bromley, Localizing Pokémon through Narrative Play, 211 11. Rebekah Willett, The Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans, 226 12. Samuel Tobin, Masculinity, Maturity, and the End of Pokémon, 241 13. Joseph Tobin, Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire, 257 Contributors, 293 Index, 295

I CONTEXTS AND ISSUES

1 Introduction Joseph Tobin

In the last years of the last millennium a new consumer phenomenon developed in Japan and swept across the globe. Pokémon, which began life as a piece of software to be played on Nintendo’s Game Boy (a hand-held computer for playing video games), quickly diversified into a comic book, a television show, a movie, trading cards, stickers, small toys, and ancillary products such as backpacks and T-shirts. Entering into production and licensing agreements with Japanese companies—Game Freak, Creatures, Shogakukan, and tv Tokyo, among others—and with companies abroad, including their wholly owned subsidiary Nintendo of America, Wizards of the Coast (now a division of Hasbro), 4Kids Entertainment, and the Warner Brothers Network, Nintendo created a set of interrelated products that dominated children’s consumption from approximately 1996 to 2001. Pokémon is the most successful computer game ever made, the top globally selling trading-card game of all time, one of the most successful children’s television programs ever broadcast, the topgrossing movie ever released in Japan, and among the five top earners in the history of films worldwide. At Pokémon’s height of popularity, Nintendo executives were optimistic that they had a product, like Barbie and Legos, that would sell forever, and that, like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, would become enduring icons worldwide. But by the end of 2000, Pokémon fever had subsided in Japan and the United States, even as the products were still being launched in such countries as Brazil, Italy, and Israel. By the end of 2001, Pokémon’s control of shelf space and consumer consciousness, already in steep decline in Japan and the United States, was beginning to fade globally. As the Pokémon craze comes to an end we are left with the task of analyzing its significance and understanding the dynamics of its rise and, just as interesting,

its fall. To analyze these phenomena, I hosted a Pokémon conference in Honolulu, in November 2000. Presenters came from Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, from the fields of anthropology, communication, sociology, and media studies. The papers presented at the conference serve as the cornerstone for this book, which tells the story of Pikachu’s global adventure and discusses what the Pokémon phenomenon can teach us about children’s engagement with the new media, Japan’s rise as a culture- and software-exporting nation, and the globalization of children’s popular culture.

NINTENTIONALITY

I can introduce the central theme of the book by presenting two Pokémon-like versions of the rise and fall of Pokémon. Version One A group of men sit around a table at their corporate headquarters on the outskirts of Kyoto plotting to capture the hearts and minds (not to mention the money) of the children of the world. Other companies have managed in the past to cast a spell of consumer desire over such market segments as American girls five to nine or Japanese boys eight to twelve; but the Nintendo plan is far more ambitious and nefarious: they aim to brainwash children everywhere, young and old, boys and girls, and to implant in them a desire for an endless stream of interconnected products including video games, videos, trading cards, and ancillary merchandise. To serve this evil purpose, the Nintendo masters enlist Tajiri Satoshi, a brilliant, reclusive young game designer, to author a new video game. Tajiri and his team at Game Freak in Tokyo come up with the idea of a mythical world in which young ‘‘trainers’’ capture and train over 150 imaginary wild creatures. The genius of this plan is that just as the youthful trainers in this mythical world collect ‘‘pocket monsters,’’ seeking to ‘‘catch ’em all,’’ so will the gullible and vulnerable children of the world be hoodwinked into spending the majority of their waking hours and a good portion of their parents’ money on purchasing all available Pokémon merchandise. The plan works just as the Nintendo brain trust hoped. Pokémon spreads quickly through Japan, first as a hand-held video game cartridge, then as a comic book, which provides character development and back story for the 4

Joseph Tobin

Pocket Monsters, the trainers, and their adversaries. The Pokémon masterminds next introduce the television show, a show that not only entrances its viewers, but one afternoon in 1997 gives over seven hundred of their young Japanese fans seizures. The next step is expansion to the U.S. market. The directors of Nintendo in Kyoto direct their minions at Nintendo of America to flood the United States with Pokémon Game Boy cartridges, television show episodes, trading cards, and ancillary merchandise. Nintendo and their partners release the first Pokémon movie in Japan and then, six months later, in the United States. Pokémon trading cards soon become children’s most sought-after possessions. The media begin carrying stories of Pokémon-crazed kids cheating, stealing, and fighting over Pokémon cards. The scarcity of the most desirable ‘‘hologram’’ cards produces an overheated Pokémon commodity market, in which cards purchased in stores in packets of eleven for four dollars get resold for as much as a hundred dollars apiece. The story of Pokémon’s conquest of Japan and of North America is repeated across Europe, Latin America, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the Philippines. As the millennium draws to a close, the Pokémon directors open a Pokécenter in Tokyo and plan stores for other major metropolitan areas. All Nippon Airways introduces a fleet of Poké-planes (747s painted with drawings of Pikachu and friends). Disneyland-like Pokémon theme parks are planned. New episodes of the tv series, each introducing a new pocket monster, are broadcast on Saturday mornings, first in Japan, and soon after in Hong Kong, the United States, and Europe. Nintendo creates a master plan for the systematic release of Pokémon products in a widening arc of world markets. A third movie is released. New series of the Game Boy game are in production and planning. The release of each new character compels children to return to the stores to buy new cards and games. Nintendo has created the perfect children’s commodity— one with perfect synergy between its interconnecting domains (hardware, software, toys, tv, movies, cards) and one whose purchase can never be completed. It is in fact impossible to catch, or buy, them all. By the end of 2001 Pokémon has become one of the top-selling toys and games of all time and Nintendo one of the world’s richest and most profitable corporations. The profits accumulating in their war chest from Pokémon sales position the Nintendo Corporation to transcend the world of toys and games and become a major global player in the production of the next generation of Introduction

5

interactive computers. Nintendo’s state-of-the-art gaming computers, which run one of the most demanding of consumer applications, are poised to compete with desktops, cell phones, and notepad computers as the crossover platforms of the new millennium. Nintendo announces that its next systems will be driven by ibm processors. Today, toys and games; tomorrow? Version Two The kids of the world are bored. Power Rangers was a fun for a while, but the show has grown predictable and tiresome. Legos look great in the picture on the box, but halfway through a project they start to feel more like work than play. The Super Mario Brothers aren’t as much fun as they used to be. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter are awesome, but these violent video games invite too much parental interference. Kids are demanding something new, and companies are eager to provide it. But for toy makers and children’s television producers, the stakes are high. For each success in this unpredictable business, there are dozens of failures. Kids are a hard group of consumers to read and to please. Toy makers, desperate to be the purveyors of the next big thing, rush new products into the marketplace, but kids, a tough, savvy, cynical audience, audition and reject product after product. Despite focus group research, multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, and elaborate marketing tie-ins, nine out of ten toys and video games are rejected by the kid marketplace, ending up remaindered in discount bins in o√-price outlets, and many of the adults who invented, championed, and marketed them find themselves looking for new jobs. Meanwhile, Nintendo, desperate to retain market share in the wildly competitive computer game industry, gives a hefty retainer to Tajiri Satoshi and his production house, Game Freak, to make a new game for them. Tajiri, who worked on Nintendo’s hugely successful Zelda computer game, is able to convince Nintendo to give him latitude to create an original game based on his childhood love of nature and his hobby of collecting insects and staging beetle battles. Nintendo takes a chance, paying out a substantial advance in the hopes Tajiri can come up with a product that will extend the life of the aging, underpowered Game Boy system. In 1996, Tajiri delivers Pokémon. Japanese kids take an immediate liking to the challenge of capturing, train-

6

Joseph Tobin

ing, and fighting Pocket Monsters. Three million units are sold in the first three months of release. Kubo Masahiko, of Shogakukan, the publisher of Koro Koro comics, noticing that his readers have taken a real liking to this new video game, makes a deal with Nintendo for the comic-book rights to Pokémon. To Nintendo’s surprise and delight, the comic-book stories are so popular with readers that they reignite sales of the Pokémon cartridges. Instead of sales of the cartridges petering out after three months, as do sales of most video games, they take o√, with another three million sold in the second quarter. Nintendo rushes Blue and Yellow versions of Pokémon to market, to join the Red version. The popularity of the Pokémon cartridges leads to huge sales of the new color version of the Game Boy. Koro Koro comics have added needed plot and character development to the Pokémon world. Kubo and tv Tokyo enter into an agreement with Nintendo to produce a tv show. The show is a smash hit among Japanese kids, which again rekindles sales of the Game Boy cartridges. The tv show goes strong until the thirty-eighth episode, when a sequence of flashes on screen leads to over seven hundred Japanese children experiencing seizures. The government orders the show pulled from the air. On hiatus and needing to keep their employees busy, the Pokémon tv production team puts their illustrators and writers to work on a feature film. Poketto Monsut¯a proves to be a huge hit in Japan, rekindling sales of Game Boy cartridges, making Pokémon the most successful computer game of all time. Nintendo (Japan) develops an American marketing strategy with Nintendo of America (their wholly owned subsidiary, which has its own management and marketing strategies), 4Kids Entertainment, the Warner Brothers Network, and Wizards of the Coast (the manufacturers of Magic: The Gathering and other trading card games). Masakazu Kubo of Shogakukan, Tsunekazu Ishihara of Creatures, Inc., and Takashi Kawaguchi, of Nintendo (Japan), work with Gail Tilden of Nintendo of America and Norman Grossfeld of 4Kids Entertainment to figure out what aspects of Pokémon need to be changed for the products to appeal to American children. They hit on the right formula, and the success Pokémon enjoyed in Japan is repeated in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world. But then, as fast and inexplicably as the Pokémon phenomenon took o√, it slows down. By the middle of 2000, Pokémon’s Japanese and American consumers are bored, restless, looking for something new. Pokémon’s ‘‘cool’’ factor

Introduction

7

suddenly has evaporated. Executives at Nintendo are planning Poké-lands, preparing to release new movies, and issuing optimistic press releases. But the kids of the world have moved on. These two scenarios, though exaggerated, present the two sides of the central debate about not just Pokémon, but more generally about children’s engagement with popular culture (Kinder 1999). In the first scenario, Nintendo is an Althusserian apparatus, sinister, powerful, and systematic in achieving its seduction and interpellation of its child consumers, who are seen as lacking agency and the capacity to resist commercial appeals and industry-launched fads. In the second scenario, Nintendo’s success with Pokémon is the result less of corporate power and the orderly following of a scripted marketing plan than of a combination of individual creativity (by Tajiri, Kubo, Tilden, Grossfeld, and others), good fortune, and the ability of children to locate and collaboratively construct a product that suits them. In this second scenario it is the children who, so to speak, hold the cards. In the first scenario, Pokémon succeeds not because it has any inherent value as a product, but because of the marketing muscle put behind it and the company’s power to manipulate children’s desires and forms of play. In the second scenario, Pokémon could not have become successful if Nintendo were not sensitive and responsive to children’s desires and if the products they developed lacked quality. Which of these scenarios we find more convincing is largely, I suspect, a question of our theoretical orientation. The first scenario is consistent with the theories of the Frankfurt school and of neo-Marxist paradigms that view consumers in general and children in particular as dupes, easily manipulated by capitalist corporations into false desires and mindless purchasing. The second scenario is reflective of the much more upbeat American school of cultural studies that emphasizes the pleasure, agency, and resistance of consumers (even when they are children). This tendency to lead with theory is a weakness of the study of children and popular culture. Much of the scholarship in this field is done by scholars who are guided more by their a priori theoretical stances than by empirical data. Too much of the writing on children and popular culture by both neo-Marxists (e.g., Giroux 1999) and those of the American school (e.g., Fiske 1989) is done by professors sitting in their o≈ces excoriating or praising children’s toys and texts without directly studying children, doing careful industry analyses, or 8

Joseph Tobin

systematically investigating the historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts of the product’s production. The argument of this book is that the question of which of the above scenarios is more correct is firstly an empirical and only secondly a theoretical question. Interviews and observational studies of Pokémon-playing children can help us determine whether they can be more accurately described as dupes or savants, passive consumers or active coconstructors of the Pokémon world. Analyses that contextualize the Pokémon phenomenon within the history of computer games, animation, character merchandising, and cuteness both in Japan and globally can help us determine the degree to which Nintendo is reflecting as opposed to shaping trends in childhood consumption. Analyses of the pathways and processes of Pokémon’s distribution and dissemination abroad can help us decide if Nintendo can be more accurately described as one of the world’s most powerful and savvy global players or a Japanese company struggling to compete with the West in the global tra≈c in popular culture. Textual analyses of the Pokémon computer game, television program, and trading cards can help us determine if Pokémon has succeeded because of the intrinsic qualities of its products or despite the products being mind-numbing, insipid, and morally and aesthetically bankrupt. A systematic analysis of the history of Pokémon’s product rollouts, both domestically and overseas, can tell us to what degree Nintendo developed and followed a plan and to what degree they benefited from unforeseen, fortuitous events, and have themselves been taken by surprise, first by the rapidity and size of their success, and then by their products’ sudden loss of coolness among the kid cognoscenti. Another weakness of scholarship on children and popular culture is the tendency to think and argue in stark, binary terms (as I do in the scenarios above). In chapter 2, David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green suggest that to understand Pokémon and other children’s popular cultural products we need to get beyond the structure/agency binary, a binary in which researchers focus, on the one hand, on the power of media, toy, and advertising companies to structure children’s consumption and play or, on the other hand, on the agency of child consumers. The essays in this book, individually and collectively, strive to stake out a middle ground, seeing the relationship between Nintendo and its consumers as both a battle and a collaboration. Collectively, the research presented in this book suggests that neither of the scenarios presented at the beginning of this chapter is quite right, and that the Introduction

9

truth is somewhere in the middle. Nintendo planned the development and launch of Pokémon very carefully, and they made many wise, strategic decisions about how to capture the children’s market. But this is not to say that Nintendo anticipated Pokémon’s incredible success, that they followed a scripted plan, or that they did not make marketing mistakes along the way. When they started out, Tajiri and his employers at Nintendo seem to have had no plan or aspiration for Pokémon beyond developing another successful Game Boy cartridge. The comic book, the television show, and the trading cards were not part of Pokémon’s original marketing strategy. It is only in such third-wave markets as Italy and Israel that the rollouts of the various products were fully coordinated and integrated. As Buckingham and Sefton-Green suggest, the greatest strength of Pokémon is that it is a multidimensional, interrelated set of products and activities, but the multidimensionality was emergent, rather than planned. Nintendo owns and sells marketing rights to Pokémon, and they’ve made quite a bit of money doing so, but they made some mistakes, including underestimating the value of the rights to the tv show and to the trading cards. As a result, during the height of the Pokémon craze much of the money was made by companies other than Nintendo. A third weakness in the study of children and popular culture (and, more generally, in the study of media and marketing) is the problem of post hoc analysis. Because by the time we begin our analysis we already know that Pokémon became a highly successful product, there is a tendency to see everything Nintendo did with Pokémon as purposeful and e√ective. Clearly, much of Pokémon’s success resulted from Nintendo’s decisions and strategies. But how do we know which of these decisions and strategies were crucial? At the height of Pokémon’s popularity Nintendo’s brain trust looked like geniuses who had a perfect feel for their customers’ pulse. Now that the craze has abated and Nintendo is struggling to keep their franchise afloat, the folks behind Pokémon seem no more prescient than their competitors. Pokémon’s declining popularity shows the fragility of a corporation’s control over its customers. Children (like adults) are vulnerable to media manipulation and to clever marketing plans. But for each carefully orchestrated product launch that succeeds, many others fail. Children may be prone to consumer crazes, but they choose which crazes, and they decide when a craze is over. This book is divided into four parts. Part I, ‘‘Contexts and Issues,’’ comprises this introduction; a chapter by David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green 10

Joseph Tobin

that places the Pokémon phenomenon in the context of the central debates about children and the new media; and a chapter by Anne Allison on the historical and cultural context in Japan that produced Pokémon. Part II, ‘‘Global Circulation,’’ begins with Koichi Iwabuchi’s discussion of how Pokémon was rid of some of its ‘‘cultural odor’’ as part of its ‘‘glocalization’’ for markets in Asia and the West. Iwabuchi’s chapter is followed by Hirofumi Katsuno and Je√rey Maret’s analysis of how the Pokémon tv show was translated into English and in other ways modified by its American localizers. Part II closes with Christine Yano’s chapter on Pokémon moral panics, in which she contrasts the lack of concern about any negative e√ects of Pokémon in Japan with the aggressive anti-Pokémon discourse waged on Web sites and in the popular media in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Part III, ‘‘Places and Practices,’’ has chapters by Julian Sefton-Green on a young English boy’s play with the Pokémon Game Boy game; by Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch on the reception of the tv show in Israel; and by Gilles Brougère on the use and meanings of the trading cards in France. Part IV, ‘‘Pokémon Goes to School,’’ presents case studies by Helen Bromley, Rebekah Willett, and Samuel Tobin, of children’s engagement with Pokémon in classrooms and playgrounds in the United Kingdom and the United States. The book concludes with my attempt to tie all of the preceding chapters together as I reflect on Pokémon’s rise and fall and on what Pikachu’s global adventure has to teach us about the workings of globally circulating children’s popular culture.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This book began as a conference in November 2000, sponsored by The University of Hawai‘i Japan Studies Endowment (funded by a grant from the Japanese government), the Globalization Research Center, and the East-West Center. WORKS CITED

Fiske, John. 1989. Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Giroux, Henry. 1999. The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. Kinder, Marsha. 1999. Kids’ Media Culture. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Introduction

11

2 Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green

Despite the seemingly endless outpouring of adult concern and bewilderment that surrounds Pokémon, it is actually di≈cult to find a single term to describe it. In popular debates, Pokémon is most frequently referred to as a ‘‘craze,’’ which of course implies that those who pursue it are in some sense mentally deranged, if only temporarily. Another rather more neutral term that comes readily to hand here is ‘‘phenomenon.’’ According to the dictionary definition, a phenomenon is something ‘‘remarkable’’ or ‘‘unusual’’; interestingly, it can also mean ‘‘the appearance which anything makes to our consciousness, as distinguished from what it is in itself ’’ (Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary, 1978 edition). So what is Pokémon ‘‘in itself ’’? In academic terminology, it is clearly not just a ‘‘text,’’ or even a collection of texts, such as a tv serial, a card game, toys, magazines, or a computer game. It is not merely a set of objects that can be isolated for critical analysis, in the characteristic mode of academic media studies. It might more appropriately be described, in anthropological terms, as a ‘‘cultural practice.’’ Pokémon is something you do, not just something you read or watch or ‘‘consume.’’ Yet while that ‘‘doing’’ clearly requires active participation on the part of the ‘‘doers,’’ the terms on which it is performed are predominantly dictated by forces or structures beyond their control. The practice of collecting the cards, or playing the computer game, is to a large extent determined by the work of their designers—and, indeed, by the operations of the market, which made these commodities available in particular ways in the first place. The rules that govern these particular cultural practices are therefore not, by and large, open to negotiation or change. In classic sociological theory, this relationship between the activity of the

consumer (here, children) and of the producer (here, Nintendo) would be described in terms of structure and agency. This issue has been particularly prominent in debates in media and cultural studies over the past ten or twenty years, not least in the seemingly interminable debates about the ‘‘power’’ of media audiences. Our intention in this chapter is to use Pokémon as a case study of this relationship, particularly as it applies to a broader analysis of children’s media culture. In common with others, we want to suggest that the frequent opposition between structure and agency is mistaken; and we want to propose a rather di√erent formulation of the relationship, based around the notion of pedagogy. Drawing on theories of pedagogy, we suggest, might o√er a more productive, and less abstract, way of understanding what is taking place in these interactions among producers, texts, and audiences. Like the other contributors to this book, we also want to consider what might be ‘‘remarkable’’ or ‘‘unusual’’ about Pokémon, as distinct from what is merely banal and familiar. In some respects, Pokémon has much in common with earlier textually based ‘‘phenomena’’ in children’s media culture—with Power Rangers or Ninja Turtles, or, indeed, with Disney; although in other respects, it can be seen as merely another instance in a historical sequence of children’s ‘‘crazes’’ or ‘‘fads,’’ along with Rubik’s cubes, Tamagotchis, pogs, and Beanie Babies. As we shall argue, the global success of Pokémon is partly a result of its ability to ‘‘speak’’ to shared aspects of childhood experience, and of the ease with which it can be integrated within the routines of children’s everyday lives. Yet there are also aspects of Pokémon that are decidedly new, and that might provide important indications about future directions in media culture—not just for children, but also for adults.

CASHING IN

A Nintendo press release issued in September 1999, one year after the launch of the first Pokémon computer games in the United States, gives some indication of the scale of its success.∞ In its first year, the Pokémon franchise generated $5 billion, almost as much as the whole U.S. games industry in 1998. Pokémon was the top-selling Game Boy game and the top-selling trading-card game; and the tv cartoon was the top-rated show on the Warner Brothers network and in syndication. The soundtrack album 2.B.A. Master and the O≈cial Pokémon Handbook were both top-ten sellers in their respective charts; Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

13

and Pokémon magazines and sticker albums were also beginning to appear in stores. In the United States, over one hundred licensed companies were making Pokémon merchandise, while in Japan over one thousand di√erent products were available. Six months on, following the launch of the first Pokémon movie (which took $25 million in its first two days in the United States) and of a range of new games (both for the Game Boy and the N64 console), Nintendo was claiming that global revenues would rise above $7 million in the year 2000.≤ In mid-2000, Pokémon Web sites, both o≈cial and uno≈cial, routinely topped the list of those receiving the most ‘‘hits’’; while more than fifteen million Pokémonrelated computer games had been sold in the United States alone. In July 1999, Nintendo launched the nineteen-city ‘‘training tour’’ of the Pokémon League at malls across America, while shops overflowed with Pokémon-branded soft toys, clothes, posters, food and drink, bed linen, wallpaper, mouse pads, key rings, and a myriad of other merchandise. As Joseph Tobin’s introduction makes clear, this exponential pattern of growth leveled o√ in 2000, slowed substantially in 2001, and was replaced by declining sales in 2002. The extraordinary success of Pokémon needs to be understood, first, in relation to Nintendo’s overall profile and commercial strategy. In developing the Pokémon game, Nintendo played to its strengths and took advantage of its competitors’ weaknesses. Yet while Nintendo is now among Japan’s most profitable corporations, it could be argued that the company would have struggled to survive without Pokémon. Nintendo has always been a comparatively insular company, at least in comparison with its competitors. Although it achieved some success in the late 1950s with the Japanese franchise for Walt Disney trading cards, it has generally been wary of cooperating with outsiders. Its approach to computer games has involved strong vertical integration of hardware and software. It favors exclusive contracts with game developers, and its cartridge-based platform is also exclusive and expensive to produce. In terms of content, the company has a generally ‘‘family-friendly’’ policy, with strict constraints on violence. In these respects, it is strikingly di√erent from its major rival Sony, a relatively late entrant to the games market, whose PlayStation is currently the leading domestic console. Sony has been much less intent on achieving vertical integration. It works with a wider range of game developers on nonexclusive contracts, and its cds are both cheaper to produce (because they are easier to code) and to manufacture than Nintendo’s cartridges (Screen14

David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green

digest and elspa 2000:126). Furthermore, Sony has aggressively targeted the young adult market: the PlayStation is the ‘‘must have’’ console for sixteen- to twenty-five-year-old males, and this induces an aspirational factor in younger teenagers also. In this context, the development of the Pokémon game represents a particularly valuable strategy for Nintendo. First, it allowed Nintendo to revive its hand-held Game Boy platform, which by 1998 was almost being written o√ by those within the industry. This was a sector of the market in which Nintendo had been uncontested since the e√ective demise of Sega’s Game Gear. Secondly, Pokémon is specifically targeted at younger children, who were largely excluded by Sony’s marketing appeals. Nintendo targets a sector of the market where there is less competition, yet one whose purchasing power has significantly grown over the past decade (Del Vecchio 1997). The Pokémon game was designed to exploit the strengths of the platform in a way that goes against dominant trends within the industry. Far from aspiring to ever greater threedimensional filmic realism, in the manner of contemporary console games, Pokémon is a two-dimensional puzzle game. Although it creates a complete fictional world in the manner of role-playing games aimed at older players (such as the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy series), it e√ectively leaves children to imagine much of that world themselves.

CATCHING ’EM ALL

More broadly, one can see how the Pokémon phenomenon was designed to maximize its appeal across di√erent market sectors. The child market is notoriously di≈cult to reach, partly because of its fragmentation in terms of age and gender. As they get older, children repeatedly (and often fiercely) reject their former enthusiasms: di√erences of as little as a couple of years carry enormous significance. Meanwhile, the large majority of boys are extremely resistant to anything ‘‘girly’’; and while girls may be more likely to share in boys’ pleasures, they have markedly less enthusiasm for traditionally ‘‘boyish’’ occupations such as playing computer games (Cassell and Jenkins 1998:10–14). In economic terms, this makes the market extremely volatile, and the more manufacturers seek to cater for distinctions within that market, the less profitable it becomes. By contrast, in the case of Pokémon, di√erent aspects of the phenomenon Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

15

o√er di√erent kinds of appeal at di√erent levels of complexity for di√erent age groups. Albeit at the risk of being reductive, it would be possible to track the ways in which particular Pokémon products were created to fit in with the toys or media genres most characteristic of particular (overlapping) age groups: soft toys for the under-fives, tv cartoons for the four- to nine-year-olds, trading cards for the six- to ten-year-olds, computer games for the seven- to twelveyear-olds, and so on. Interestingly, these overlaps and the connections that cut across the range of products available allow for a kind of ‘‘regression,’’ by which it becomes almost permissible, for instance, for a seven-year-old to possess a Pokémon soft toy, or a twelve-year-old to watch a tv cartoon. In principle, this also permits a kind of progression within Pokémon, as children move on from one aspect to the next as they get older; and in this respect, it could be seen to make for a longevity that is typically lacking from most such phenomena. Similarly, Pokémon is designed to appeal across gender di√erences, or at least to o√er pleasures for both genders that are more than tokenistic. In the blue-and-pink world of young children’s culture, this is highly unusual. While the ‘‘hero’’ of the game and the cartoon (Ash Ketchum) is male, he is distinctly preadolescent and asexual (in contrast, it must be said, to one of his fellow seekers, Brock: cf. Katsuno and Maret, this volume). More to the point, the themes of the cartoon and the activities entailed in the game incorporate stereotypically feminine as well as stereotypically masculine values. Thus, as other contributors to this volume note, the narrative is about collecting and competing; but it is also about nurturing and cooperating. Pokémon also seems to have been designed to maximize its appeal across cultural di√erences. Again, there is a risk of essentialism here, but it is hard to deny that its key themes—the need for nurturing or the competitive search for mastery—reflect aspects of childhood that are e√ectively universal (see, for example, Bettelheim 1975). In other respects, however, these appeals appear to combine themes that are at least culturally inflected in particular ways. The ‘‘cuteness’’ (kawaisa) that is so apparent with Pikachu is characteristic of Japanese popular culture more broadly, for example in the Hello Kitty phenomenon; and, as Anne Allison (this volume) argues, it also relates to the miniaturization that has been seen both as a characteristically Japanese aesthetic and as a key feature in Japan’s success in home electronics. Meanwhile, the drive to collect reflected in the game’s mantra ‘‘Gotta catch ’em all’’ could be interpreted

16

David Buckingham and Julian Sefton-Green

not just as a form of anal compulsion but also perhaps as a symptom of the capitalist drive toward possessive accumulation. In these respects, the success of Pokémon can be seen as a manifestation of globalization, or, more accurately, of what has been termed ‘‘glocalization’’ (global localization). While drawing on Japanese mythology, Nintendo clearly set out to devise a product that could be exported and adapted to local needs and traditions. Thus, for instance, some of the Pokémon characters were given English-sounding names even in the original Japanese version of the game. Meanwhile, the tv cartoon, which is re-edited by a U.S.-based company for release in the United States and other Western countries, seems to combine elements of the Japanese manga (comic book) style with aspects of the ‘‘limited animation’’ of U.S. superhero cartoons of the 1980s. Significantly, the facial features of the characters are also ethnically quite ambiguous.

SUCCESS STORIES

Described in this way, Pokémon appears to be distinctly ‘‘calculated,’’ both in terms of its relation to Nintendo’s broader commercial strategy and in terms of its inclusive appeal to the child market. On this account, the corporation is seen to engage in a deliberate—even cynical—form of manipulation. The assumption here is that success is almost guaranteed, and that the children who are the consumers are easy targets for commercial exploitation. Advocates of this view might well go further, arguing that a phenomenon such as Pokémon creates ‘‘false needs,’’ which it then promises to satisfy through consumption; and that, in the process, it prevents other forms of children’s culture, forms that might be more ‘‘dangerous’’ or ‘‘oppositional,’’ from ever existing (see Kline 1993). From this perspective, the success of Pokémon could be interpreted as evidence of the overpowering control of global, corporate capital, or, in more theoretical terms, of the victory of structure over agency. By contrast, many popular accounts of the phenomenon have tended to espouse a kind of ‘‘auteur theory.’’ In these accounts,≥ much is made of the personal vision of Pokémon’s creator, Tajiri Satoshi. We are told that Tajiri collected beetles as a child, just as Pokémon players now collect the Pocket Monsters in forests, caves, and rivers. Tajiri is identified as an otaku—a member of the tribe of young Japanese men who cut themselves o√ from society and

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immerse themselves in the virtual worlds of computer games or comic books (Tobin 1998:108–111). In this narrative, Pokémon is represented as a surprise success for Nintendo, something that just ‘‘took o√ ’’ unpredictably because of the enthusiasm of the child audience. Tajiri, we are told, even believed that the game he had spent six years developing would be rejected by the company that had commissioned it. This account thus emphasizes the agency both of the individual heroic creator and of the children who recognize and identify with his personal vision, despite—or even in opposition to—the structuring influence of corporate capital. Clearly, there are several problems with both these accounts. While one appears to overemphasize the power of the individual—both the creator and the consumer—the other overemphasizes the power of economic and textual structures. In the case of children’s culture, the accounts take on a particular inflection, informed, on the one hand, by notions of children’s innate spontaneity and, on the other, by assumptions about their vulnerability to manipulation (Buckingham 2000:21–60). The obvious temptation is simply to put these accounts together, to recognize them as two sides of the same coin. Theoretically, the problem then becomes a matter of ‘‘balancing out’’ structure and agency, allocating some of the power to the industry and the text, and reserving the rest of it for the audience. We will return to this issue below; but at this stage, it is worth noting one of the di≈culties that neither account really addresses. As we have suggested, there were several ways in which Pokémon seems to have been designed to ensure a degree of longevity; and yet it is at last moving toward its demise. By early 2001, children had begun to abandon Pokémon, just as they abandoned Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles and countless other ‘‘passing fads.’’ While a specialist collectors’ market among adults will probably continue for many years, piles of discarded Pokémon merchandise have already found their way to landfill sites around the globe. Of course, this is partly because children ‘‘grew out of it’’; and new generations want to ‘‘discover’’ cultural practices that they can claim as their own and that will serve to distinguish them from the generations that have preceded them. Yet this is more than just an inevitable consequence of the passing of time. Academic studies of popular culture have signally failed to account for the life cycle of such phenomena, for how what was once popular becomes unpopular, and why (Fleming 1996:7–35). To sum up, one can identify elements of the ‘‘political economy’’ of Poké18

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mon that are distinctly familiar, although others seem rather more unusual. Cross-media merchandising or ‘‘integrated marketing’’ of this kind has been characteristic of children’s media culture for many years (Kinder 1991; Seiter 1993). While it is typically dated back to the emergence of toy-related tv cartoons in the 1980s—the so-called ‘‘thirty-minute commercials’’—it can in fact be traced back to the early days of Disney (Gomery 1994:71–86). In terms of the audience, this approach o√ers a kind of economy of scale: the more there is, the more unavoidable it becomes, and so the more one seems obliged or compelled to pursue it. Like earlier phenomena of this kind, Pokémon also places a premium on collecting, both of the di√erent species within the texts (the game, the tv cartoon) and of the physical commodities (the cards and the merchandise). Here again, the potential for generating profit is maximized: rather than collecting just one superhero doll, or even a team of four, you need to lay out much more money to complete the set. However, what is increasingly becoming harder to identify here is the ‘‘source text’’: we cannot make sense of phenomena such as Pokémon in terms of an original text and a collection of ‘‘spino√s’’ that subsequently exploit its success. The computer game undoubtedly arrived first, but it seems that (as with other such phenomena) Pokémon was planned as a cross-media enterprise from a very early stage. Certainly, there were millions of children who might be counted as Pokémon ‘‘fans’’ who never played the computer games and never will. The second area of novelty here centers on the notion of ‘‘activity.’’ As we indicate in the following sections, there are several key characteristics and themes that cut across the range of Pokémon texts; but activity—or agency—is an indispensable part of the process, rather than something that is exercised post hoc. Here again, the di√erence between Pokémon and earlier phenomena may be a matter of scale or degree, rather than of kind. Nevertheless, we would argue that Pokémon positively requires and depends upon ‘‘activity’’ to an extent that many other forms of media consumption do not; and in this respect, it casts an interesting light on the familiar debate about structure and agency.

TEXTUAL PLEASURES

The central narrative of the Pokémon game and of the cartoon is essentially that of the hero’s quest. Ten-year-old Ash, our hero, leaves home in search of the Pokémon that will bring him adult mastery. Sent on his quest by wise Professor Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

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Oak, he is assisted by various helpers and donors, and travels through uncharted lands encountering a series of obstacles and enemies. Needless to say, the resolution of his quest is endlessly deferred in the tv cartoon, but in the game, Ash (or the player) eventually arrives at a showdown with competing Pokémon trainers, success at this stage being completion of the game. From a structuralist perspective, this is all extremely familiar. Like many Westerns, for example, Pokémon can be made to fit very easily into Vladimir Propp’s template for the folktale (Propp 1962). As we have implied, there is also a developmental dimension here: when Ash tells his mother that he is leaving home, she replies, ‘‘Right. All boys leave home some day.’’ While the masculine nature of his quest is not strongly accentuated, successful completion of the quest is nevertheless implicitly the point at which Ash will become a man. In the cartoons and the movies, Ash repeatedly learns from his experiences, and from the advice of his elders and betters: in order to succeed, he must overcome his impulsive and emotional side and learn self-control. In this respect, the narrative can be seen as a kind of bildungsroman; it also has much in common with the Samurai quest story popularized in a whole series of martial arts movies, and, as in these movies, Ash’s quest carries a significant mystical or ‘‘psychic’’ dimension (cf. Rushko√ 1996). These narrative tropes and themes are also characteristic of the role-playing games and fantasy literature favored by boys slightly older than the average Pokémon fan; and in this sense, Pokémon itself can be seen as a form of ‘‘training’’ in the cultural forms of male adolescence (see Sefton-Green, this volume). However, emphasizing narrative in this context may lead us to neglect the significant spatial dimension of the texts, particularly in the computer game. As Henry Jenkins (1998) has argued, games can be seen as virtual ‘‘play spaces’’ that compensate for the growing lack of such spaces in the real world, as children (and especially boys) have been increasingly confined to the home. According to Jenkins, the games (and the peer group culture that surrounds them) o√er the same pleasures that used to be a√orded to earlier generations of boys in outdoor play: the exploration and mastery of space, goal-driven activity, selfcontrol rather than parental control, and male bonding. Pokémon provides a very extensive space of this kind, a self-contained universe with its own unique geography and cosmology that can only be mastered through active exploration. Here again, there are clear similarities with the fictional worlds of adolescents’ fantasy literature, with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, for example, or the 20

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world of the Dragonlance series; and indeed with the more participatory universe of Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games. Despite the challenges it holds, however, this is ultimately a safe world, as compared (for example) with the dystopian universes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman. The ‘‘baddies’’ in the tv cartoon, Team Rocket, are extraordinarily camp and ine√ectual, although the evil mutant Mewtwo, whose drive for domination of the universe creates the narrative of the first movie, is admittedly rather more threatening. Nevertheless, the world of the Pokémon game and the tv cartoon is one that children largely control and in which threatening adults are e√ectively absent. If the textual pleasures we have identified are perhaps stereotypically masculine, there are stereotypically feminine pleasures too. As we have noted, Ash and his friends (and by extension, the players of the game) have to nurture and ‘‘train’’ the Pokémon they capture in order to succeed. In this sense, they occupy decidedly ‘‘adult,’’ even ‘‘maternal’’ roles: they have autonomy and authority, as well as a burden of responsibility for those who have less power than themselves. In these respects, Pokémon has much in common with young girls’ ‘‘collectable’’ toys such as Polly Pockets, Sylvanian Families, and (particularly) Beanie Babies. Meanwhile, the central focus on Ash’s quest should not lead us to ignore the secondary character of Misty, who is a significant figure for girl consumers. Unlike the other female trainers, she is neither brutally ‘‘butch’’ nor dizzily feminine, and seems carefully constructed to appeal to preadolescent girls.

CREATING ACTIVITY

While these structural and thematic analyses must clearly account for some of the pleasures of Pokémon texts, they say very little about how those texts are designed to be used. How does Pokémon invite, indeed require, activity on the part of the user? There are several key aspects that can be identified here. On one level, Pokémon is centrally about acquiring knowledge. Like Tajiri collecting his insects, the successful Pokémon player needs to master a detailed taxonomy of the various species and their unique characteristics and powers. Pokémon belong to di√erent categories (water, fire, psychic, etc.), whose different strengths and weaknesses must be assessed when they come to compete. The knowledge that is at stake here is that of quasi-scientific classification, along Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

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the lines of Linnean taxonomy. The posters that display all the 151 Pokémon resemble nothing so much as a periodic table. It is di≈cult to overestimate the amount and complexity of the knowledge that is required here. The guidebooks and Web sites that support Pokémon players are immensely detailed and quite incomprehensible to outsiders. In terms of audiences, this in itself has several functions. For the individual, it makes for a considerable degree of longevity: to commit to Pokémon is to commit to a long-term engagement, which poses some significant challenges in terms of finding, processing, remembering, and applying information. In interpersonal terms, this level of complexity also provides Pokémon enthusiasts with a great deal to talk about. Like many parents, we were astonished by our children’s ability to sustain extended conversations with their friends about Pokémon; and of course it was not coincidental that these conversations remained largely impenetrable to us. The status and relevance of this knowledge is discussed by other contributors to this volume. Here again, there is a certain degree of novelty: other forms of children’s culture prior to Pokémon undoubtedly encouraged this kind of trade in informal knowledge, but not to the same extent, and certainly not on the same global scale. A significant aspect of this knowledge, and indeed of Pokémon in general, is its portability, the ease with which it crosses media and social contexts. Children can watch the television cartoon, for example, as a way of gathering knowledge that they can later utilize in playing the computer game or in trading cards, and vice versa. To become a Pokémon master, it is necessary to ‘‘catch’’ all its various manifestations. Another aspect of this portability is to do with the di√erent social contexts in which Pokémon can be used. Children can experience Pokémon alone (for example, while watching the tv cartoon) or in the company of others (for example, while trading cards or swapping via the Game Boy cable); they can experience it at home, in the street or playground, or while playing the Game Boy in the back of the car; and they can experience it intensively for long stretches of time, or more casually, in those in-between moments when there is nothing else to do. The diversity of media and activities enables it to fit in isomorphically with many of the spaces and routines of children’s everyday lives. While some of these uses may reflect the social isolation of the otaku, the large majority involve social interaction. As we shall argue in more detail below, at its height of popularity, Pokémon facilitated interaction in a wide range of

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children’s social spaces, providing a ticket of entry to play, a pretext for negotiating friendships, as well as a vehicle for competition and conflict. Our central point here, then, is that the texts of Pokémon were not designed merely to be ‘‘consumed’’ in the passive sense of the word. On the contrary, they were designed to generate activity and social interaction. Indeed, they positively depend upon it. This is the case not only in children’s immediate encounters with the text(s), but also in what happens beyond. The computer games were obviously designed to be ‘‘interactive,’’ in the sense that if you are to succeed you have to make choices and predictions, remember key information, plan ahead, and so on. However, this kind of active engagement is also required by the phenomenon as a whole: in order to be part of the Pokémon culture, and to learn what you need to know, you have to actively seek out new information and new products and, crucially, engage with others in doing so. There is a level of cognitive activity required here, but also a level of social or interpersonal activity without which the phenomenon could not exist. In some respects, of course, this is an obvious point. The existence of active audiences is scarcely a major new discovery (see Ang 1996). As the other contributors to this book amply demonstrate, audiences are indeed active, in diverse and occasionally surprising ways. However, our emphasis here is rather di√erent. We take it for granted that audiences are active (although we would agree that there is room for a much more rigorous discussion about what that actually means). The key point for us is that the texts of Pokémon—or the Pokémon ‘‘phenomenon’’—positively require activity. Activity of various kinds is not just essential for the production of meaning and pleasure; it is also the primary mechanism through which the phenomenon is sustained, and through which commercial profit is generated. This introduces a rather di√erent perspective into the broader debate about structure and agency in media and cultural studies. As we have implied, debates about media and their audiences are often implicitly perceived as a zero sum equation. Despite all the talk of complexity and contradiction, we often seem to be faced with either/or choices: either the media are powerful, or audiences are. More significantly, such debates often seem to presume that structure and agency are fundamentally opposed. Asserting the power of agency necessarily means denying the power of structures. Proclaiming that audiences are active necessarily means assuming that the media are powerless to influence them;

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and asserting the power of the media necessarily seems to involve a view of audiences as passive dupes of ideology. This is, we would argue, a fundamentally fallacious opposition. Within mainstream sociology, Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration (e.g., Giddens 1984) is often cited here. At least in principle, Giddens’s theory provides a way of moving beyond this dichotomy between structure and agency. In essence, Giddens suggests that structure and agency are interrelated and mutually interdependent: agency necessarily works through structure, and structure necessarily works through agency. Where Giddens’s work is somewhat lacking, however, is in its empirical specification of how these processes occur. In the sections that follow, we want to suggest that the notion of pedagogy, and, indeed, particular theorizations of pedagogy, might o√er some potential in this respect, at least in relation to understanding children’s culture.

BUT IS IT GOOD FOR CHILDREN?

In relation to children, these debates about structure and agency tend to take on a particular form. Indeed, it could be argued that they are simply a way of carrying on the old debate about media e√ects under a di√erent rubric. The central question that researchers in this field ceaselessly pose is whether the media are ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’ for children. Here again, the question invariably seems to be framed as an either/or choice; and in utterly totalizing terms, as though there were no problems at all in making meaningful generalizations about ‘‘children’’ and ‘‘media’’ (Buckingham 2000). Furthermore, it is a question that is in itself ineradicably tainted with paternalism. It is up to us, as adults, to make this judgment; and when we have made it, we will be able to act accordingly, most likely by attempting to ban whatever it is we deem to be harmful. On both sides, these arguments tend to reflect assumptions about childhood that are rarely made explicit, let alone questioned. Let us identify some of the problems here by taking a few examples of the kinds of arguments that might reasonably be mounted. First, a couple of positive arguments. As we have implied, a positive case could be made for Pokémon on broadly intellectual grounds. At least for children at a certain age—and probably for many adults too!—the computer game in particular is quite challenging. In learning to play the game, children have to develop a specialist vocabulary, remember key information, and pay close at24

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tention to detail. They have to balance several variables at one time, predict likely outcomes, and plan their future strategy. Winning the game requires an ability to assess the relative strengths of your own Pokémon against those of your opponent and to deploy these carefully through a sequence of moves or di√erent types of attack. In these respects, there are significant similarities between Pokémon and brain-teasing games such as chess, although of course the latter are much more readily approved of by the academic establishment. Whether one sees this as ‘‘good for children’’ depends on one’s underlying assumptions. As with broader arguments about the cognitive or psychological benefits of computer games (e.g., Greenfield 1984), there is a tendency here to view the brain as a kind of muscle that can be built up by means of a good workout. In other words, there is an assumption that the mental skills developed in the context of playing the game, which are principally those of logical thinking, will somehow automatically transfer to other contexts. As in the case of chess, we would suggest that this is at least a problematic assumption. As we have implied, Pokémon e√ectively requires children to play at being learners; and it is therefore inevitable that they will learn something from engaging with it. Yet the fact that Pokémon is intellectually challenging (at least for some) does not necessarily make it educationally worthwhile: however we judge it, educational value is not the same thing as intellectual di≈culty. On the other hand, there is a danger here of equating education with learning, as though the only learning that counts is learning that takes place (or at least can be legitimated or accredited) within a particular institutional setting. A second positive argument here focuses on the social benefits of playing Pokémon. As we have implied, the appeals of Pokémon cross significant boundaries of age, gender, and culture; and, for those who have access to the Internet, they also transcend the limitations of geography. To a greater extent than many similar phenomena, Pokémon can be said to have created, or at least to have facilitated, a common culture among children. In the process, it can also be seen to develop their social and communicative competencies—skills in negotiation, self-confidence, and even tolerance for others. In terms more familiar within media and cultural studies, it could be argued that Pokémon fosters the development of new ‘‘interpretive communities’’ (Fish 1980) that in turn allow for more fluid or negotiable identities among their members. There are many instances of this in our colleagues’ research with children (see Bromley, this volume) and in our own experience. Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

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Yet this argument also reflects a degree of optimism and a somewhat normative view of children’s social development. The notion of ‘‘interpretive community’’ may be taken to imply a cozy friendliness, which is characteristic of very few of the real-life communities we have ever encountered. In the case of Pokémon, much of the negotiation that accompanies the trading of cards or game characters is, at least in our experience, characterized by competition and conflict. Far from being overcome, di√erences of power may be simply writ large here, as older children deceive or bully younger ones on the basis of their superior knowledge. Again, there is a sense in which adults may be imposing norms on children, about sharing and respecting others, for example, to which they do not necessarily adhere themselves. Let us now consider a couple of negative arguments. The first concerns the commercial dimension of Pokémon, and in particular the trading of cards. Familiar arguments that children are being economically exploited assume a particular force when one takes account of the large amounts of cash that changed hands in the attempt to accumulate rare cards, and the large amount that was lost when the bottom fell out of the market. Rarity in this case is of course a phenomenon that is artificially created by the trading-card companies. Around the world, ‘‘rare’’ cards (particularly those with shiny ‘‘holofoils’’) can only be found in expensive ‘‘booster packs,’’ and the rarest cards are very infrequently included. According to some critics, what is taking place here is e√ectively a form of gambling, as children invest in more and more booster packs in the hope of finding their sought-after card. More enterprising or wealthy children resort to buying such cards—in some cases for as much as $200 each—from specialist shops, mail order, and online companies. This is, on one level, a very clear example of audience activity; yet on another level, terms like ‘‘manipulation’’ and ‘‘extortion’’ do not seem at all inappropriate. For some parents, this too could be interpreted as a positive experience, from which children are learning fundamental lessons about economic life. While some might express horror at their children being transformed into budding stockbrokers, others argue that they are acquiring bargaining skills and an understanding of how our market-based society functions. Again, underlying these debates, as with broader concerns about the ‘‘commercialization’’ of children’s culture (Buckingham 2000), are normative assumptions about the appropriate place of childhood. To what extent is it either possible or desirable to

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keep children segregated from the marketplace? And in doing so, are we not underestimating their critical abilities, or at least depriving them of the opportunity to develop a more critical perspective on consumer culture? A second negative argument here is to do with aesthetic value. The focus of criticism here tends to be on the Pokémon movies and the tv cartoon, which in the United Kingdom were frequently described as trashy and worthless, particularly on the grounds of their lack of visual sophistication. For example, the liberal British newspaper the Guardian probably gave voice to many parents’ responses when it described Pokémon: The First Movie in its listings as a ‘‘contemptuously cheap animated cash-in on the monster kids’ craze.’’ Here again, this argument ties in with broader concerns about the dominance of commercial forces in children’s culture, although in this case, they come partly from Japanese multinationals rather than from Hollywood. The problems here have been well rehearsed in media and cultural studies, yet they remain unresolved. As has been argued elsewhere (Katz 1997; Davies, Buckingham, and Kelley 2000), there are significant problems in adults’ making judgments of taste about media aimed at children. Interestingly, Pokémon: The First Movie incorporates strongly moralistic messages, which may well be intended to reassure parents otherwise concerned about its poor quality and its level of violence. Whether or not children themselves perceive such messages, or take much notice of them if they do, is of course another matter (see Hodge and Tripp 1986). Su≈ce it to say, however, that the di≈culties entailed in making such judgments of aesthetic value cannot easily be sidestepped by appeals to relativism. Two final points should be noted here. First, in outlining and debating these arguments, we have inevitably had to make distinctions both between di√erent aspects of the Pokémon phenomenon (the games, the cards, the cartoons) and between children themselves (for example, in terms of age). Generalizations about ‘‘children’’ and ‘‘media’’ are unwarranted here, even generalizations of the kind that imply that activity is necessarily in itself a good thing. Second, we have also drawn attention to some of the problems entailed for adults in making judgments on behalf of children. We would not deny that such judgments must at some point be made. However, there are significant questions about how and by whom they should be made, which in turn raise significant questions about children’s rights in relation to media (see Buckingham 2000, especially 191–207).

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POPULAR PEDAGOGIES?

All the above arguments are, to a greater or lesser extent, arguments about pedagogy. That is, they are concerned with what and how children might have learned from the texts of Pokémon, or from their participation in the broader phenomenon. By learning, we obviously mean more than just a cognitive or mental process: learning from (and in) popular culture is also a matter of learning how to behave, what to want and to feel, and how to respond. In other words, the debate about pedagogy is essentially a debate about the production of subjectivities or forms of consciousness. Clearly, di√erent pedagogic theories o√er a di√erent take on the relationships between structure and agency in this respect. On one side of the argument are essentially psychological theories, of the kind that are often invoked in discussions of computer games, which tend to regard knowledge and skills in a relatively decontextualized manner (e.g., Greenfield 1984). On the other are social theorists such as Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) or Bernstein (1990), who argue that education only really takes place through induction into o≈cial educational knowledge. Such theorists decisively reject the notion of knowledge or skills as having some transcendental value, in favor of an analysis that many have regarded as structurally determinist. Between these two extremes are theories that variously purport (or are claimed) to o√er a social theory of learning. A Vygotskyan theory, for example, would have much to say about the context-dependent, implicitly social, ‘‘scaffolded’’ nature of learning within Pokémon (Vygotsky 1962). Meanwhile, theories of situated learning (e.g., Lave and Wenger 1991) would provide an analysis of the nature of the phenomenon in terms of ‘‘apprenticeship’’ and induction into ‘‘communities of practice,’’ which might seem to o√er a more dynamic theorization of the relationships between structure and agency (see particularly Wenger 1998). In respect of the debate about Pokémon, there is clearly an implicit concern about the relations between child students and adult teachers; and indeed there is an explicit power struggle here between two competing types of teachers: the producers of Pokémon and the parents who seek to mediate their children’s relationship with it (and who are ultimately paying for it). As we have suggested, there are normative assumptions running throughout these debates. Broadly speaking, we are happy with Pokémon if it teaches children to be competent social beings and if it enables them to develop cognitive skills, and 28

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we are unhappy if it teaches them to be greedy and acquisitive and if it cheapens their appreciation of art. On the one hand, we appear to espouse what might be termed a pedagogy of empowerment, which is concerned to develop children’s competence and autonomy; on the other, we implicitly adopt a protectionist pedagogy, which seeks to segregate children from influences that are seen to have the power to harm them. In relation to media, these arguments cut both ways. As we have implied, Pokémon could itself be regarded as a form of training, a means of inducting children into the habits and competencies that are required by our commercially based media culture (Kline 1993). Of course, it is a partial training, which (for example) applies more e√ectively to boys than to girls. Our use of the word ‘‘training’’ is also deliberate, in that it seems to suggest an unconscious, imitative, and thoughtless process of induction. Yet even within these limitations, it can be seen either positively or negatively, either as a means of developing in children the ‘‘multiliteracies’’ that are now essential for democratic participation (Cope and Kalantzis 2000) or, alternatively, as a means of producing good (that is, docile and obedient) consumers. There are two fundamental problems with these pedagogic emphases. First, there are some questionable assumptions here about the status of childhood. From the pedagogic perspective, childhood often seems to be perceived as merely a state of transition, a stage you pass through on your journey to somewhere else. This assumption is implicit, albeit in di√erent ways, both in developmental psychology and in theories of socialization (James and Prout 1990). Children are always to be judged in terms of what they will become; and the pedagogic interventions adults make must therefore be accounted for in terms of the adult subjects they will ultimately produce. Thus, we judge whether Pokémon is good or bad for children in terms of whether it will eventually turn them into good or bad people. This perspective implicitly assumes that children are relatively fragile or impressionable, and that any such interventions will have lasting e√ects; it also entails the view that development will somehow stop at the point when children finally achieve adult status. The second issue here concerns education, which, as we have argued, should be distinguished from learning. There is frequently an assumption in such debates that we can easily agree upon what counts as education; and, more fundamentally, that if the activities children are engaged in are not su≈ciently educational, then they are simply a waste of time. In many developed countries, Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy

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there is now a growing view of education as the work of childhood (Ennew 1994) and as something that should not be allowed to stop once children walk out of the classroom door. On one level, we would reject the puritanism that seems to inform such arguments: children have as much right to leisure as adults, and they should not always be required to remain on task. Yet we would also challenge this view on the grounds that it seems to entail a particularly narrow conception of learning. As we have argued, many aspects of Pokémon could be described as educational, in that they involve teaching and learning. While some of this teaching is carried out by Pokémon texts, much of it is also carried out by children teaching one another; and indeed, a great deal of the learning that takes place happens without any overt instruction at all. As with the fan cultures of adults (cf. Jenkins 1992), Pokémon could also be said to create or to facilitate ‘‘learning communities.’’ Of course, for some critics, the learning that is at stake here is educationally worthless: children, it is argued, are simply developing an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia. Yet particularly in the light of contemporary social changes, learning must now be seen as more than simply a matter of the recall of information. In participating in the culture of Pokémon, children are learning how to learn, which may in itself be much more significant than what they actually learn. The same argument, after all, is frequently made about the relevance of the formal curriculum in terms of its symbolic power rather than the value of its pure content (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990). These issues have particular implications for those who seek to intervene in children’s relationships with media, whether as parents or as teachers. We recognize that such interventions are frequently perceived by children as merely patronizing, and hence are often ignored or rejected. Adults need to find ways of commenting upon children’s media culture, both privately and in the public sphere, without resorting to the puritanical or paternalistic tone we have identified, a tone whose inadvertent e√ect is often to reinforce the appeals of the media industries that it seeks to condemn. In the United Kingdom, there is a striking contrast between the high levels of activity that characterize the Pokémon phenomenon and the passivity that increasingly su√uses our children’s schooling. There is a vast gulf between the energy of children’s playground engagements with Pokémon and the often deadening influence of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies now compulsorily imposed upon primary schools. We understand why many schools seek to exclude Pokémon by ban30

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ning children from bringing their cards to school. Ultimately, however, such strategies are bound to increase its forbidden appeal, and they prevent schools from building upon the enthusiasms children possess. As Helen Bromley suggests (this volume), teachers could learn a great deal from the ways in which children use and engage with such phenomena, and this could in turn give them some more relevant and stimulating things to teach. We began this chapter by posing two questions. In what sense is the Pokémon phenomenon distinctively di√erent or new, compared with the forms of children’s media culture that have preceded it? And to what extent does the ongoing theoretical debate about structure and agency, and the notion of pedagogy that we have sought to insert within it, help us to understand it? In some respects, the key issue that holds these questions together is that of activity. As we have argued, the success of Pokémon is partly a matter of degree rather than one of kind: it represents, perhaps, merely another stage in the positioning of children’s culture in the forefront of developments in global capitalism. However, the centrality of activity in this case, the fact that Pokémon both invites and positively requires activity on the part of audiences, does seem to us to represent at least a new emphasis in children’s culture. However, we have also cautioned against the view that activity can necessarily be equated with independence or autonomy or power, or, indeed, that it should automatically be invested with political significance. A theory of pedagogy is ultimately a theory of activity, or at least of process. It requires an attention to the dynamic relationships between teaching and learning, or between texts and their reading and use, that does not simply invest power in one at the expense of the other. Pedagogy focuses attention, not just on the learning that arises as a result of transmission, induction, or training, but also on the learning learners might do by themselves and in their own right. Clearly, pedagogy does not represent a magic tool with which to bridge a theoretical gap; but it does at least o√er a new way of conceiving of questions of media power that might enable us to move beyond some of the sterile dichotomies on which those debates have increasingly foundered. NOTES

Our U.K. research was supported by a small grant from the Japan Foundation. We would particularly like to thank our fellow researchers, Helen Bromley and Rebekah Willett, for their input,

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and our colleagues on the global Pokémon project. A version of this essay titled ‘‘Gotta Catch ’em All : Structure, Agency and Pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture’’ was published in Media, Culture and Society 25, no. 3 (May 2003). 1. ‘‘Pokémon Phenomenon Reaches $5 Billion and Continues to Grow.’’ Nintendo press release. http://www.nintendo.com/corp/press/091599.html (4 September 1999). 2. ‘‘Pokémon Named ‘The Big Cheese’.’’ Nintendo press release. http://www.nintendo.com/corp/ press/040300.html (3 April 2000). 3. Evident, for example, in Time’s cover story ‘‘Pokemania,’’ 22 November 1999.

WORKS CITED

Ang, Ien. 1996. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. London: Routledge. Bernstein, Basil. 1990. Class, Codes and Control, vol. 4: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge. Bettelheim, Bruno. 1975. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. London: Thames and Hudson. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1990. Reproduction in Society, Society and Culture. 2d ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity. Buckingham, David. 2000. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity. Cassell, Justine, and Henry Jenkins, eds. 1998. From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. 2000. Multiliteracies. London: Falmer. Davies, Hannah, David Buckingham, and Peter Kelley. 2000. ‘‘In the Worst Possible Taste: Children, Television and Cultural Value.’’ European Journal of Cultural Studies 3, no. 1: 5–25. Del Vecchio, Gene. 1997. Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer’s Guide to a Kid’s Heart. Gretna, La.: Pelican. Ennew, Judith. 1994. ‘‘Time for Children or Time for Adults.’’ In Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Politics, edited by Jens Qvortrup, Marjatta Bardy, Giovanni Sgritta, and Helmut Wintersberger. Aldershot, U.K.: Avebury Press. Fish, Stanley. 1980. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Fleming, Dan. 1996. Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity. Gomery, Douglas. 1994. ‘‘Disney’s Business History: A Reinterpretation.’’ In Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, edited by Eric Smoodin. London: Routledge. Greenfield, Patricia. 1984. Mind and Media: The E√ects of Television, Computers and Video Games. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hodge, Bob, and David Tripp. 1986. Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.

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James, Alison, and Alan Prout, eds. 1990. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. Brighton, U.K.: Falmer Press. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. ———. 1998. ‘‘Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces.’’ In From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, 262–97. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Katz, Jon. 1997. Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits and Blockheads like William Bennett. New York: Random House. Kinder, Marsha. 1991. Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kline, Stephen. 1993. Out of the Garden: Toys and Children’s Culture in the Age of tv Marketing. London: Verso Press. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Propp, Vladimir. 1962. A Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rushko√, Douglas. 1996. Playing the Future: How Kids Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos. New York: Harper Collins. Screendigest and ELSPA. 2000. Interactive Leisure Software: Market Assessment and Forecasts, 1999– 2000. London: Screendigest and ELSPA. Seiter, Ellen. 1993. Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Smoodin, Eric., ed. 1994. Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. London: Routledge. Tobin, Joseph. 1998. ‘‘An American Otaku (or, A Boy’s Virtual Life on the Net).’’ In Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, edited by Julian Sefton-Green, 106–27. London: University College of London Press. Vygotsky, Lev. 1962. Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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3 Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product Anne Allison

What about Pokémon has made it such a global sensation? And how has Japan achieved this success in what is one of the toughest corners of the world market, long dominated by the United States? The field of children’s entertainment is as lucrative as it is fickle. To do well here, particularly when the arena is global, requires massive capital and a creative formula with appeal that can travel. Until recently, only the cultural industries of Hollywood have produced mass fantasies for children with worldwide cachet. They did this, in part, by using hightech media production and the prestige of American culture, with its tropes of ingenuity, individualism, and wealth. But Japan’s newfound influence in this domain of global children’s (mass/popular) culture signals a change. Pikachu is Japan’s long awaited answer to Mickey Mouse. Pokémon’s success follows on the heels of previous waves of successful Japanese products that, starting in the late 1980s, have impacted childhood consumption around the world. These include technological goods (Sony’s Walkman, transformer toys, Tamagotchi, video games, and game systems), stories (television shows such as The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the cartoon Sailor Moon), and characters (Pokémon and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty). It is premature to call Japan the new superpower in the global culture of children. At the very least, however, the global success of Pokémon and other Japanese child products signifies a shift in the entertainment marketplace until recently monopolized by the United States. Drawing on fieldwork I did on the production, marketing, and consumption of Pokémon both in Japan and the United States, in this chapter I trace how what is distinct about this playscape is encapsulated in a notion Japanese call kawaisa (cuteness). Variable in meaning, kawaisa involves emotional attachments to imaginary creations/creatures with resonances to childhood and

also Japanese traditional culture. The way in which kawaisa gets packaged, however, is in a hyperconsumerist form that is technologically advanced and nomadically portable. All of this is at work in the millennial play products Japan is selling—and using to sell itself—in the popular marketplace of global kid culture.

CUTENESS AS NATIONAL EXPORT AND CULTURAL CAPITAL

Ishihara Tsunekazu, one of Pokémon’s producers (president and ceo of Creatures, Inc.), characterizes Pokémon as a product that is endlessly expandable and easy to connect to other media. The product lends itself to being played in a variety of di√erent ways and by di√erent demographics of players (by both girls and boys, and by children ranging in age from four to fourteen). Pokémon is often described as being less a single product than a world or universe. Thus, while it may be rooted in one medium (in Japan, this is often said to be the video game), the aura of Pokémon extends outward, encompassing the player in a world that is both imaginary (with imaginary places, creatures, and adventures) and real (involving the player in exchanges, purchases, and peer relations). It is this larger world that the Japanese journal Gendai, in an article on the ‘‘unprecedented social phenomenon’’ of Pokémon (Yamato 1998), recognizes as key. The Gendai article suggests that Pokémon’s popularity stems from its character merchandising and its aura of ‘‘cuteness,’’ which appeals across gender and age. As evidence, the article cites a young female o≈ce worker (O.L.) who buys Pokémon figures because they’re cute and inexpensive; young mothers who play Pokémon with their children after school; a housewife whose entire family likes Pokémon, with each member having his or her own favorite; and young women in their teens and twenties who consume cuteness in everything from Kitti-chan to, now, Pokémon. The play world is built on three pillars—the electronic game, the movie and tv series, and the card game— which sport a host of elements with diverse appeal to a diversity of audiences. Overarching this is a ‘‘harmony’’ among the components that Kubo attributes to the characters and a quality he refers to as ‘‘cuteness.’’ Speaking specifically of Pokémon and its success on the export market, Kubo (2000) adds that cuteness gives Japan ‘‘cultural power’’ and is something Japanese are ‘‘polishing’’ overseas. Cuteness, as the Japanese cultural critic Okada Tsuneo states (quoted in Japan’s Millennial Product

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Yamato 1988:247), has universal appeal. As evidenced by the revenues it has generated (over $8 billion in 2001), Japan’s business of cuteness is booming around the world. The children’s entertainment business, in fact, is one of the few that has not only survived, but grown in Japan in the period of recessionary economics following the country’s economic bubble. For this reason, Okada concludes that cuteness may be Japan’s key to acquiring foreign capital in the twenty-first century (quoted in Yamato 1998:247). Others suggest that Japan’s future in influencing, even leading, global culture, will come through three industries—video games, anime (animation), and manga (comic books). The market for these three industries has surpassed that of the car industry in the last ten years, leading some economists to hope this will pull Japan’s economy out of the red. As one economist notes, what Japan has instead of the Silicon Valley is the ‘‘anime komikku game valley,’’ which will be the root of the new twenty-first century’s culture and recreation industry (quoted in Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1999:3). What makes Japan newly successful in its marketing of games, comics, and cartoons is not simply technological or business prowess but what some call the ‘‘expressive strength’’ (hy¯ogenryoku) of Japanese creators. According to some, the stories, images, and ideas generated by these products constitute an emerging ‘‘international common culture’’ (Nihon Keizai Shinbun 1999:3) in which Japan’s contribution is both significant and historically unprecedented. This signifies a shift away from the reputation Japan has held for three decades as a global power based almost exclusively on its economic prowess. Known as a producer of high-quality consumer technology (automobiles, vcrs, televisions), Japan’s cachet in the cultural sphere of ‘‘soft’’ technology—music, televisual dramas, pop idols—has been far more limited. As the designer of the Sony Walkman has lamented, while Japanese technology circulates widely around the world, few people (outside of Japan) have been similarly impressed or moved by its culture (Kuroki Yasuo 1995:14). But with hits such as Pokémon, Japan is becoming recognized not only for its high-tech consumer goods but also for what might be called postmodern play aesthetics. For these reasons, Pokémon’s success as it travels so popularly and profitably around the world has been watched with great interest back home. Particularly impressed with the reception it has garnered in the United States, the Japanese press has called Pokémon a ‘‘sekai teki kyarakuta’’ (global character); a sign, as Dime magazine put it, that America is ‘‘boiling over’’ (wakikaeru) with Japa36

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nese goods (1999:11); and, as many magazines and newspapers report, Pokémon’s success is a symbol of Japan’s cultural power (bunka pawa-), which, at long last, is getting recognized and spread around the world. In this discourse, an association is made between Japan’s influence in global culture and the circulation of its (entertainment or recreational) goods overseas. Products (sh¯ohin) are the currency by which Japanese culture enters the United States, a reporter wrote in the Asahi Shinbun (Kond¯o 1999:4). He added that it gave him great pride to see American children buy Pikachu and Pokémon in their local supermarkets. Similarly, when Pokémon: The First Movie opened in the United States in November 1999, much attention was given to the fact that it played on over three thousand screens (in contrast to two thousand in Japan) and was the week’s top-ranked movie, grossing close to the first-week sales for Star Wars, Episode I (and surpassing those of The Lion King.) A reporter in the Mainichi Shinbun commented that should the success of Japanese animation and children’s entertainment continue in the United States, Japan would easily overtake Disney—and this in a country where Disney is synonymous with the country itself (Hamano 1999:4). Many of the North American producers and localizers of Pokémon I interviewed concurred with the Japanese assessment that Pokémon’s strength comes from its flexibility, multidimensionality, and cuteness. A game designer for Wizards of the Coast (the distributors of the Pokémon cards in the United States, now a subsidiary of Hasbro), told me that the fact that Pokémon is game-based makes it more interactive than a mere cartoon or film. The latter is the purview of Disney, whose products do not become engrained into a child’s ‘‘lifestyle’’ to the degree Pokémon does. He believed that Japan’s strengths in the field of children’s play rest in interactivity as generated by game-based play complexes. Many of my interviewees noted that Disney is behind in developing game technology and that its strengths—mirroring those of Hollywood—are in the screen-based media of film and television. Japan is ahead in new-age play technologies. It is not only that the imaginary characters of Pokémon are cute in a way that di√ers from Disney, but that cuteness here invites a di√erent type of interaction. Bringing these characters out of the screen, so to speak, triggers the fantasy of enveloping them into everyday life. These are Pocket Monsters, after all. And, to ‘‘pocket’’ a monster means to carry (in a Game Boy, deck of cards, or plastic ball containing a Pocket Monster) a portable fantasy wherever one goes. Japan’s Millennial Product

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POSTWAR PROSPERITY: ¯ CONSUMPTION, CUTENESS, AND THE SHOJO

In the eyes of Japanese, what is cute? According to three high school girls I interviewed in Tokyo (in spring 2000) on this subject, kawaii (cute) is associated with the qualities of amae—sweet, dependent—and yasashii—gentle. While kawaii is linked to girls and girlishness, it is not exclusively feminine. A male’s personality can be called kawaii, for example, and so can a boy’s face, though this could also mean it is girlish. Toys for kids are seen as kawaii, and my interviewees said they sometimes buy such children’s goods precisely for this reason. All three girls also admitted that they themselves would like to be called kawaii and that this, along with yasashii, is how they would want a partner or boyfriend to see them. Cuteness, for these girls, is something one both consumes and also cultivates as part of the self. Yasashii, referring to the gentle aspect of cuteness, is precisely the word the Japanese producers I spoke with used to describe the marketing of Pokémon in Japan. Gentleness was not its original sensibility, however, when it began as a role-playing/action game targeted primarily to boys aged eight to fourteen. Once its marketers sensed that this Game Boy game could be turned into a fullblown fad, however, gentleness was added to popularize Pokémon with a wider audience. Expanding the game first into a comic-book series and then into collector’s cards, a television cartoon, movies, and toy merchandise, their strategy was to select a character that could serve as an icon for the entire phenomenon. Hoping to draw in younger children, girls, and even mothers, what was chosen was not a human character (such as Ash, who aims to be the ‘‘world’s greatest Pokémon trainer’’), but a Pokémon with whom fans would not so much identify as develop feelings of attachment, nurturance, and intimacy. This was Pikachu. Merely one of 151 monsters in the Game Boy game, Pikachu became the central focus in the cartoon iteration and subsequent fad. Much like Japan itself as it strives to become the new ‘‘superpower’’ of global kids’ properties, Pikachu is not only cute, but also fiercely tough. It rides atop Ash’s shoulders like a dependent child, but is a formidable warrior under this gentle façade. When Pokémon entered the U.S. market, it was made more dynamic and bold, and its cuteness slightly muted. Brighter colors were used in the advertising, and Ash replaced Pikachu as the central character, under the assumption that American kids need a heroic character with whom to identify. The movies 38

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were subtly altered, to relieve what was assessed by the U.S. localizers to be ambiguity of both plot and morality in the Japanese original. Norman Grossfeld, the director of the English-language version of Mewtwo Strikes Back, told me that he altered the storyline to make the cloned Pokémon, Mewtwo, more clearly evil and the battle Ash waged against it more definitively ‘‘good.’’ As Grossfeld explained, the convention in U.S. children’s media is to feature clearcut heroes with a moral dynamics that sharply di√erentiates good from evil. By contrast, ambiguity, in the sense of a murkiness that blurs borders (good/ bad, real/fantasy, animal/human), is a central part of cuteness as generated by the cute business in Japan. This cuteness and ambiguity get muted a bit by its U.S. importers. But even in its exported version, Pokémon retains a gentleness, cuteness, and ambiguity that is characteristic of Japanese children’s media culture. The ‘‘cute’’ business started in the 1970s in Japan. The toy business began much earlier, of course, and immediately after the Second World War, became a major source of economic growth both for the high number of workers it employed and for its success on the export market, particularly the United States (Dents¯u 1999:74–75). By the 1960s, the domestic market for toys had grown and was shaped, in large part, by the new business in character merchandising. This involved the marketing of goods and toys based on characters who, in the 1950s and 1960s, were mainly television characters and, by the 1970s, increasingly came from manga. In the 1970s Sanrio began its Hello Kitty line, which stimulated a rise in miniaturized, cute consumer products referred to as ‘‘fancy goods.’’ At the same time, a national fixation developed around the cuddliness of ‘‘real’’ animals; two pandas received as gifts from China (Ranran and Kankan) became national mascots, and a fad for koalas followed shortly thereafter. In the 1980s, commercial businesses started adopting cute characters in promotional advertising. All Nippon Airways, for example, turned around a lagging ski campaign by employing the character Snoopy, and Japan Airlines followed suit by using Popeye to target young women for tour packages. By the late 1980s banks had adopted the practice of utilizing characters as a type of company logo (Dents¯u 1999:75–77); by the 1990s, personalizing cell phones with character straps (for adult men, the favorite is Doraemon, the blue robotic cat of the long-running anime and manga series) was a common practice. Character branding has become trendy, even fetishistic, in Japan today. In part, according to a book on the character business put out by the Japanese Japan’s Millennial Product

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advertising agency Dents¯u (1999), this is because cute characters are appropriated as symbols for identity—personal, corporate, group, or national. The ‘‘essence’’ of character merchandising, Dents¯u states, is that it ‘‘glues society at its roots’’ (95). A character accompanies the development of a group and becomes part of, and a symbol for, that identity. Characters, it continues, are a ‘‘device for self-realization’’ ( jikojitsugen) (95). Certainly, the images of cute characters are omnipresent in the landscape of urban, millennial Japan. Iconized onto commercial goods, they appear on T-shirts, book bags, lunch boxes, pencils, hair ribbons, hand towels, rice bowls, bath soap, cooking pans, calendars, and erasers. Characters also embellish posters for public events or neighborhood fairs, show up on government notices or service announcements, and are stamped onto computers, copy machines, and even bulldozers. How does cuteness get produced in and through such character goods as Pokémon? As the Japanese high school girls I interviewed on the subject defined it, kawaii connotes sweetness, dependence, and gentleness—qualities they associated with comfort and warmth, and also with something loosely connected to their childhoods. Scholars who have written about the rise and fetishization of cute goods in the 1970s and 1980s in Japan (Treat 1996; Kinsella 1995; ¯ Otsuka 1999) link it to growing consumerism and the increasing role, real and imaginary, played in it by girls (sh¯ojo) as they pursue desires of self-pleasure by consuming clothes, accessories, music, and digital games. Consumptive pleasures are counterposed to the rigors demanded elsewhere in Japanese life, in the contexts of school, work, and parenting. These pressures exist for males as well as for females, and both genders consume, of course. But due, in part, to the fact that school and work identify males more than females and girls have not yet assumed the duties of motherhood, the figure of the young girl epitomizes the figure least constrained by social expectations. Starting in the 1970s, more goods were produced precisely with the sh¯ojo in mind, which increasingly entailed cuteness. Cuteness became not only a commodity but also equated with consumption itself—the pursuit of something that dislodges the heaviness and constraints of (productive) life. In consuming, and more specifically in consuming cuteness, one expresses the yearning to be comforted and soothed: a yearning that many researchers and designers of play in Japan trace to a nostalgia for experiences in a child’s past. Cuteness, in this sense, is childish, and its appeal has increasingly spread to all elements of the

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Japanese population—men as well as women, boys as well as girls—so that, in Japan today, it is no longer confined to the sh¯ojo alone.

CUTE RELATIONALITY: VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION AND IMAGINARY COMPANIONSHIP

In designing the Pokémon Game Boy game, Tajiri Satoshi had two motivations. One was to create a challenging yet playable game that would pique children’s imaginations. The other was to give children a means of relieving the stresses of growing up in a postindustrial society. Born in 1962, Tajiri shares the opinion of many in his generation that life for children today is hard. In this ‘‘academic record society,’’ the pressure to study, compete, and perform starts early. Space and time for play has diminished. And in an environment where everyone moves fast to accomplish more and more every day, the human relationships once so prized have begun to erode. Increasingly, people spend more time alone, forming intimacies less with one another than with the goods they consume and the technologies they rely upon (cell phone, Walkman, Palm Pilot, Game Boy). Children are particularly susceptible to atomism, or what some have called ‘‘solitarism.’’ One study reports that most Japanese ten- to fourteen-year-olds eat dinner alone, 44 percent attend cram school, and the average time to return home at night is eight. For such mobile kids, companionship often comes in the form of ‘‘shadow families’’: attachments made to imaginary characters, prosthetic technologies, or virtual worlds (Hakuh¯od¯o 1997). In Tajiri’s mind, millennial Japan is at risk of losing its humanity. Nostalgic for a world not yet dominated by industrial capitalism, he strove to recreate something of traditional times in the imaginary playworld of Pokémon. To tickle memories of the past, Tajiri drew on his childhood experiences in a town where nature had not yet been completely overtaken by industrialization. As a boy, his favorite pastime had been insect and crayfish collecting, an activity involving interactions both with nature (exploration, adventure, observation, gathering) and society (in exchanges and information sharing with other children). At once fun and instructive, this was the form of play that Tajiri wanted to introduce to present-day children who live in urban, overprotective settings where they are deprived of contact with nature and social interaction with

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peers. The format he chose was virtual: digitally constructed worlds, activities, and monsters. A game junkie (otaku) himself from the age of twelve, when a video arcade featuring Space Invaders came to his town, Tajiri became as hooked on these virtual worlds as he had once been on nature. Here, he rediscovered the type of adventure, exploration, and competition he’d found collecting insects as a younger child. Yet, unlike the latter, which opens children up to the world of nature and society outside of themselves, games are often self-absorbing. Since the late 1980s, the trend in game design has been toward greater complexity that pulls players into solitary engagements with their virtual game worlds. Disturbed by this current tendency toward atomism, both in gaming and in society at large, Tajiri aimed to design his game to promote social interaction. He accomplished this by making the game challenging but doable even by children as young as four (unlike many games on the market today that are targeted to far older children, even adults). Given the surfeit of detail involved in playing Pokémon, youngsters are also encouraged to gather and exchange information, making the game world something like a language that promotes communication. Ts¯ushin (communication) is, in fact, the keyword used by Tajiri and Nintendo’s marketers in the promotion of Pokémon. To acquire all 151 Pokémon on one’s Game Boy, one needs to make exchanges with other children. Fighting matches is the standard mode of acquisition (and the staple of virtually all action games), but by adding exchanges, Tajiri aimed to promote social interactions among children. Interactiveness was built into Pokémon in yet a third way, which relates more directly to the topic of cuteness. This was giving youngsters what a number of child specialists I spoke to called a ‘‘space of their own’’: a play environment that is imaginary but also emotionally real, and that cushions kids from the world of school, home, and daily pressures. Pocket Monsters are the embodiment of this imaginary space. They come as digitalized icons in Game Boys that children carry with them wherever they go. Both literally and figuratively, these are pocket fantasies. And, as such, they straddle the border between phantasm and everyday life. Imaginary play friends are a staple of childhood, of course. Across cultures and time, children take things from their environment—sticks, wooden blocks, dolls—and invest them with personalities, stories, and life. Children develop attachments to these objects that help them navigate and survive the bumpy road of growing up. Functioning as personal resource, companion, possession, 42

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and fantasy, imaginary creations provide an avenue for both engaging with and escaping from the real world. This type of interactivity is what Tajiri had in mind by building ‘‘communication’’ into the game design of Pokémon. His goal was to create imaginary life forms that children could interact with (as pals, tools, pets, weapons) in various ways. What is appealing about these fantasy creatures is not merely how they look or act but what they evoke. When I asked children to define what a Pokémon was, they almost always did so in terms that emphasized the relationships they had with them. For example, a ten-year-old boy in Tokyo whom I interviewed told me that Pokémon are ‘‘imaginary partners, creatures that can be your loyal pet if you control them. They’re companions until the end, sort of like animals that are real except mutated.’’ To a sevenyear-old girl in the United States, they’re ‘‘like creatures that are made up. The creators got ideas from nature, but they turned nature around. People care a lot for their Pokémon, but they also use them to fight other Pokémon.’’ People in Japan speak about cuteness the same way. What is mentioned continually in discussing cute characters is not merely their physical attributes (big head, small body, huge eyes, tiny nose), but also, and more importantly, the relationships people form with them. This is true, for example, of how Yukio Fujimi (1998), a long-time fan of Doraemon and now an adult in his thirties, describes his deep attachment to this character, a fixture of pop culture —with comic books, a television cartoon, movies, tie-in merchandise—since the 1970s. A blue robotic cat that lives with the sweetly inept Nobita, Doraemon is constantly retrieving futuristic devices (‘‘tools’’) from his magical pouch to assist the ten-year-old boy in his various dilemmas. Inhabiting an imaginary space that mediates between fantasy and reality, Doraemon is what Fujimi, drawing on the work of the object relations theorist D. W. Winnicott, calls a ‘‘transitional object.’’ Moving between the outside world and the inner self, this character/space is ‘‘part of me,’’ the author states (20). What is cute here is not only the figure he cuts (blue color, pouch-lined tummy, oversized head, cuddly paws), but also the relationship Doraemon establishes with an imaginary world. Devices such as the ‘‘dokodemo doa’’ (door that opens into anywhere) are a reminder, for this adult fan, of something beyond the reality of his o≈ce, cramped housing, and daily commutes. This is what Fujimi carries with him from his childhood fascination with Doraemon: a mechanism for interacting with the world through the imagination. And for him, this is soothing in an age marked by heightened alienation, atomism, and flux (20). Japan’s Millennial Product

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According to Sengoku Tamotsu, a specialist in children’s culture, children’s trends are di√erent in Japan and the United States. Popular characters in the States are typically strong, active, and sharply drawn: they are typically heroes with whom children positively identify (and here he includes not only Superman but also Mickey Mouse). By contrast, Japanese favorites tend to be like Tarepanda, a slow, lumbering panda with droopy eyes. According to Sengoku, this latter trend in cute characters started in the 1970s when economic conditions began to improve in Japan. At this time, the character of animated characters shifted from the hard work and ambitiousness of Tetsuwan Atomu (Tezuka Osamu’s comic and cartoon character of the 1950s, who was a boy-robot with atomic powers, a humane heart, and an industrious mindset) to softer, ‘‘escapist’’ models that dominate today, such as Mi√y and Pokémon. Such characters are not so much inspiring as reassuring to children. Doraemon is a personal protector: a fantastical figure who is more an object of love than identification. Something that simultaneously is and is not the self is also how the director of Japan’s most recent Godzilla movie, Gojira 2000 Mireniamu (Godzilla 2000 Millennium) describes the relationship Japanese audiences have with this monster (T¯oh¯o Eiga 2000). In the United States remake by TriStar Pictures in 1999, Godzilla is a rationally e≈cient killing machine that, depicted as a pure and evil ‘‘other,’’ generates sentiments only of repulsion. This version was found to be so alien to Japanese that they created yet another iteration of their own: one where Gojira is once again the more ambiguous character audiences find sympathetic, yet fearsome. Japanese dream of repelling this monster, but also becoming him. Gojira movies express both dreams and nightmares, and both these images ‘‘exist inside us.’’ In Japan as well as the United States I was told that the construction of fantasy in children’s entertainment di√ers between the two countries. In the States, the trend is for greater realism and clear-cut borders (for example, in plots that emphasize battles between good and evil). In Japan, by contrast, the preference is for greater phantasm and ambiguity: characters and stories that would be unimaginable in real life. This preference carries over to other objects of play. Describing the di√erence in doll fashions, Kobayashi Reiji (1998) writes that Japan and the United States are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Reality is important in the States, whereas in Japan, if a doll looks too real, children get uneasy. Contrasting the two doll cultures of Barbie and Licca-chan (until recently, Japan’s leading doll), she argues that while Barbie dolls are ‘‘real 44

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life,’’ Licca dolls are ‘‘cute.’’ Again, cuteness carries with it the feelings of comfort and reassurance. Increasingly, this production of cuteness in Japan is moving into the new, technologized terrain of children’s playscapes: from dolls, stu√ed animals, and cartoon characters to the digitalized screens of Game Boys, cell phones, and Palm Pilots. One common toy trend in the 1990s has been ‘‘growing’’ imaginary, digital characters that become cute pets or close companions. With Casio’s petto wa-rudo (pet world), for example, cute pets appear on the screen and grow if walked and shampooed by the child, tasks performed by manipulating controls on the screen (Morishita 1999:32). Similarly, with the kid hit Tamagotchi, players hatch an egg on the screen and cultivate a virtual pet, an amalgam of nature and artifice. What kind of pet develops and how long it lives depends on the caretaking (serving food, cleaning up poop, disciplining and entertaining) a player gives it. Cuteness here involves not only interaction with a virtual creature, but also its creation and maintenance. Children must perform labor to ensure the viability of their cute pets. As long as they do this, however, they carry with them a portable companion with whom they can interact wherever they go: pocket intimacy.

MONSTERS AND CAPITALISM

In writing about his personal attachment to Doraemon, Fujimi (1998) is dismayed by certain conditions in millennial Japan. With modernity has come a society where material things are valued more than interpersonal relations and everything is seen in coldly rational terms. Nostalgic for cultural traditions, he speaks of premodern Japan as a time when otherworldly spirits—ghosts, monsters, demons, fairies—constituted an important feature of everyday life. Interactions with these liminal beings—positioned neither inside nor outside phenomenal reality—were a meaningful, often playful, part of the social landscape. Such an ambiguous life form no longer has the currency it once did in a society that has become so rationalized and commodified as postindustrial Japan (Fujimi 1998:20). Yet, mirroring Tajiri’s hope of recovering a tradition of insect collecting through the collecting of digitalized pocket monsters, Fujimi sees vestiges of traditional spirits in the modern-day cuteness of mass produced characters like Doraemon. For both these men, contemporary life has lost something in the way of humanity. And both see relief for this loss in play they associate with not only their own childhoods but also the childhood of Japan. Japan’s Millennial Product

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‘‘Healing’’ is a word commonly used in Japan these days to laud the social and psychological merits of cute character goods and of interactive products such as Pokémon that are seen as having the power to relieve loneliness and reduce stress. It is also common to see Japanese sensibilities or traditions in these postmodern stress relievers. The anthropologist Nakazawa Shin’ichi (personal interview, Tokyo, March 2000) suggests that a game world such as Pokémon allows players a conduit into what he calls (after Lévi-Strauss) the ‘‘primitive unconscious,’’ into interaction with things, thoughts, beings, and spaces that hover between the ‘‘real world’’ and beyond. Just as the wild imaginations of children get tamed when they become adults, society’s imagination has been tamed by the process of industrialization. Yet even in its postmodernity, according to Nakazawa, Japan has managed to hold onto the ‘‘primitive unconscious’’ in its play industry, whose products capture childrens’ (and adults’) imaginations. They also yield enormous profits—a paradox that, in his opinion, encapsulates the direction in which capitalism is headed today (personal interview, Tokyo, March 2000). Certainly, the sales generated by Japan’s entertainment industry in the domestic and global marketplace are a bright spot in an economy debilitated by recession. And the capital generated, as mentioned already, is not only real but also symbolic. The cachet of Japanese culture has risen along with the circulation of made-in-Japan consumer/play goods around the world. In this sense as well, cute play goods are healing Japan. Increasingly, play(ful) technology coming from Japan is identified as something distinctly Japanese. This identification is made not only by culturalists like Nakazawa (who takes nationalist pride in the cultural traditions and capitalism he associates with products like Pokémon), but by non-Japanese commentators as well. For example, in Wired magazine, an article on DoCoMo (Japan’s wireless internet service) reports that Japan is ‘‘putting its stamp on the times’’ by leading the world in consumer electronics (Rose 2001:129). It notes how Japanese technology is not only flexible and convenient but also cozy and fun. In the case of DoCoMo, a cell phone is also a hand-held computer and a wireless e-mail receiver: multiple functions in one sleek device. It is also possible to adorn one’s screensaver with Hello Kitty. This serves as a stress reliever, the article adds. ‘‘Gazing at Hello Kitty on their handsets, they’ll relax for a moment as they coo, ‘Oh, I’m healed’ ’’ (129). High-tech ‘‘healing’’ via a new-age link-up to the primitive unconscious is a commodity Japan now exports to the rest of the world. This healing, however, comes embedded in consumer fetishism of epic pro46

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portions. In the millennial marketplace of cuteness, images such as those of Pikachu and Doraemon appear everywhere, on anything, in never ending editions. As the Japanese toy company Bandai articulates this principle (Bandai 1997), a child’s happiness can be maximized by spreading her favorite character on everything from pajamas, backpacks, and lunch boxes to breakfast cereal, bath bubbles, and galoshes. Corporate profits are maximized as well, of course, when children’s play pals are not just dolls and action figures, but images that cover their clothing, food, bath toys, backpacks, bedding, and wallpaper. The parameters of play and fantasy change in the process. No longer confined to particular objects (e.g., a lunch box), spaces (e.g., the playground), or times (e.g., recess), ‘‘play’’ becomes insinuated into far more domains of everyday life. The border between play and nonplay, commodity and not, increasingly blurs. In its Pokémon campaign, for example, a Japanese airline (All Nippon Airways) has painted the exterior of some of its aircraft with huge (flying) Pokémon. Passengers riding on these planes have a voyage that is thoroughly thematic: everything is encased in Pokémania, from headrests, the attendants’ uniforms, and food containers to in-flight entertainment and take-home goody bags. A plane ride is transformed into a flying theme park, and a jet becomes an imaginary monster that both is, and promotes, a popular child fad. The fact that ‘‘getting’’ is the very logic of the Pokémon game is a sign of the progression of the entwinement of play in commodity acquisitiveness. ‘‘Gotta catch ’em all’’ is the slogan by which Pokémon is marketed. This refers, literally, to the game’s object of catching all the Pocket Monsters within the game. Metaphorically, however, catching stands for the player’s relationship to this entire play world, which is situated within the world of consumerism, which Pokémon itself mimics in play(ing) capitalism. Access to this world comes through the medium of Pokémon consumer goods. And to keep access (and interest) alive, ever more goods cry out to be bought. While cuteness may bring postmodern relief, it comes at the expense of a cascading commoditization. Pokémon, while pocket fantasies and portable pals, are at the same time a paradigmatic currency of and for millennial capitalism. With play products such as Pokémon, Japan’s cultural industries have touched a pulse in the imaginations and lives of millennial children in this era of cybertechnology and postindustrial socialization. They have done this by blending flexibility and fantasy into technology that is conveniently portable, virtuality that is intimately cute, and a commodity form that is polymorJapan’s Millennial Product

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phously perverse. And, as its stock in the marketplace of children’s entertainment rises (slowly) around the world, Japan is moving itself closer to the center of global culture. One consequence of this is the decentering of cultural (entertainment) trends once hegemonized by Euroamerica (and particularly the United States). The implications of this, I suggest, are profound. WORKS CITED

Asahi Shinbun. 1995. ‘‘Amerika Shiy¯o ni Henshin’’ (Transformations to Suit American Specifications). Asahi Shinbun, 14 July, 1. Bandai. 1997. Bandai: Today and Tomorrow. Corporate statement. Tokyo: Bandai Company. Dents¯u (Dents¯u Kyarakuta—Bizinesu Kenkyukai). 1999 (1994). Kyarakuta- Bizinesu (Character Business). Tokyo: Dents¯u. Dime Magazine. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Gezzu o Getto Seyo!’’ (Let’s Get the Pokémon Gaze!) Dime (2 September): 11. Fujimi, Yukio. 1998. ‘‘Doraemon wa Dareka?’’ (Who Is Doraemon?). Hato (January): 18–20. Hakuh¯od¯o. 1997. Hakuh¯od¯o Seikatasu S¯og¯o Kenky¯ujo (Special Report on Youth by Hakuh¯od¯o Institute of Learning and Living). Tokyo: Hakuh¯od¯o. Hamano, Yasuki. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Haken no Imi’’ (The Meaning of Pokémon’s Supremacy). Mainichi Shinbun, 29 November, 4. Kinsella, Sharon. 1995. ‘‘Cuties in Japan.’’ In Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, edited by Lise Skov and Brian Moeran, 220–54. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press. Kobayashi, Reiji. 1998. Omocha Sangyo Daihitto no Himitsu (The Secrets of the Big Hits of the Toy Industry). Tokyo: Eru Shuppansha. Kond¯o, Yasutar¯o. 1999. ‘‘Bei no Pokemon Gensho’’ (The American Pokémon Phenomenon). Asahi Shinbun, 29 November, 4. Kubo, Masakazu. 2000. ‘‘Why Pokémon Was Successful in America.’’ Japan Echo (April): 59–62. Kuroki, Yasuo. 1995. ‘‘Nihon no Monotsukuri wa Sekai ni Eiky¯o o Ataetiru ka?’’ (Is Japan’s Style of Making Things Influencing the World?). In Sekai Sh¯ohin no Tsukurikata: Nihon Media ga Sekai o Seishita Hi (The Making of Global Commodities: The Day Japanese Media Conquered the World), edited by Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu, 10–16. Tokyo: Parco Shuppan. Morishita, Misako. 1999. Omocha Kakumei (Revolution in Toys). Toyko: Iwanami Shuten. Nakazawa, Shin’ichi. 1998. Poketto no Naka no Yasei (Wildness in the Pocket). Tokyo: Iwanami Shuten. Nihon Keizai Shinbun. 1999. ‘‘Nihon Anime Kaigai ni Eiky¯oryoku’’ (The Influence of Japanese Animation Overseas). Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 1 December, 3. Nikkei Entertainment. 1998. ‘‘Shin hitto no Shingenchi Pokekuro Sedai’’ (The Pokémon Generation from the Earthquake of the New Hit). Nikkei Entertainment (January): 48–50. ¯ Otsuka, Eiji. 1991. Sh¯ojo Minzokugaku (Sh¯ojo Ethnology). Tokyo: K¯obunsha. Rose, Frank. 2001. ‘‘Pocket Monster: How DoCoMo’s Wireless Internet Service Went from Fad to Phenom—and Turned Japan into the First Post-pc Nation.’’ Wired (September): 126–35. 48

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T¯oh¯o Eiga. 2000. Gojira 2000 Mireniamu (Godzilla 2000 Millennium). Publicity sheet. Distributed at the showing of the film in Japan. Treat, John Whittier. 1996. ‘‘Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: The Sh¯ojo in Japanese Popular Culture.’’ In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by John Treat, 275–308. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Yamato, Michikazu. 1998. ‘‘K¯uzen no Shakai Gensh¯o ‘‘Pokemon’’ Ch¯o hitto no Nazo’’ (The Riddle of the Super Hit Pokémon That Is the Unprecedented Social Phenomenon). Gendai (January): 242–49.

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II GLOBAL CIRCULATION

4 How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon? Koichi Iwabuchi

JAPAN AS A GLOBAL CULTURAL POWER

Since the late 1980s Japanese cultural industries and cultural forms have played a growing role in the transnational flow of media and popular culture. Sony’s purchase of Columbia in 1989 and Matsushita’s purchase of mca (Universal) in 1990 were key events, as they marked the entrance of Japanese hardware conglomerates into the production and distribution of software. These acquisitions were greeted with disdain by many Americans who believed that technologically obsessed hardware manufacturers would stifle the creativity needed for software development. Matsushita eventually retreated from Hollywood. But after a rocky start, Sony’s Columbia TriStar film division has been earning phenomenal box-o≈ce sales. We seem to have reached the end of the era in which ‘‘the media are American’’ (Tunstall 1977; 1995). Japanese consumer technologies have become so sophisticated that we can talk about a ‘‘techno culture’’ in which ‘‘cultural information and the technical artifact seem to merge’’ (Wark 1991:45). More significantly, Japan is not only increasing its capital and market share in the audiovisual global markets but also its cultural presence on the global scene through the export of anime (animation) and computer games to both Western and non-Western countries. These Japanese products, which embody a new aesthetic emanating in large part from Japanese cultural inventiveness, capture the new popular imagination. In the ¯ wake of Otomo Katsuhiro’s animated film Akira (1988), which became a cult hit internationally, the quality and allure of ‘‘Japanimation’’ has been increasingly acknowledged. In November 1995 the animated film The Ghost in the Shell was shown simultaneously in Japan, America, and Britain. Its video sales, according

to Billboard (24 August 1996), made it to number 1 on the video charts in the United States. Three Japanese companies, Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, dominate the computer game market, though Microsoft has now joined the competition. Super Mario Brothers and Sonic, the Hedgehog, exemplify the popularity of Japanese game software. According to a survey, by the mid-1990s, Mario had become a better-known character among American children than Mickey Mouse (Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu 1995:41–42). And then came Pikachu. As these developments of the 1990s suggest, Japanese export strategy has gradually shifted from an emphasis on the sophistication of its technologies to the appeal of its animated and digitalized products. This shift was described in Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu’s 1995 book, Sekai Sh¯ohin No Tsukurikata: Nihon Media ga Sekai o Seishita Hi (The Making of Global Commodities: The Day Japanese Media Conquered the World): ‘‘It is a historical rule that an economically powerful nation produces in its heyday a global popular culture whose influence matches its economic power. Such was the case with the British Empire, imperial France, Weimar Germany and the United States of the 1950s and 1960s. What, then, has Japan of the 1980s produced for the world? Has Japan produced anything that is consumed globally and influences the lifestyle of world consumers?’’ (6). This kind of discourse emerged in Japan in the early 1990s. For example, in 1992, a popular monthly magazine, Denim (September 1992:143), had a feature article on made-in-Japan global commodities that began: ‘‘Who said that Japan only imports superior foreign culture and commodities and has nothing originally Japanese that has a universal appeal? Now Japanese customs, products and systems are conquering the world!’’ In this article, global Japanese exports included food, fashion, service industries, animation, and computer games (see also Noda 1990). Ry¯uk¯o Ts¯ushin, a monthly magazine on cultural trends in Japan, defines the term ‘‘global commodities’’ (sekai sh¯ohin) as things of universal or transcultural appeal that bear the creative imprint of the originality of a producing nation. The term seems to have been coined in 1988 in order to describe the phenomenal global popularity of the Walkman (Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu 1995:6–8). There has been a proliferation of Japanese global commodities since then. Made-inJapan global commodities discussed in the Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu book include not only Japanese hardware commodities such as the Walkman, instant

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cameras, and vcrs, but also such ‘‘soft’’ cultural products as anime, computer games, and even the Japanese system of producing pop idols (a know-how exported predominantly to Asia). Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu’s book featured an interview with Kuroki Yasuo, the designer of the Walkman, who lamented Japan’s inability to produce the software that people consume with the Walkman and called for a shift in Japanese cultural exports from hard to soft products. He saw in the success of the new generation of animation and computer games a hopeful sign that Japan was on the verge of evolving from a hardware superpower to a software superpower (Kuroki 1995:14). The most important factor in the 1990s stimulating Japan to examine the Japanese animation and computer game industries was the recession. After the collapse of the so-called bubble economic expansion in the late 1980s, the Japanese economy su√ered a long slump. The global popularity of Japanimation and computer games contrasted brightly with the dark prospect for Japan’s economic future. Throughout the 1990s countless articles appeared in popular Japanese magazines, academic journals, and daily newspapers on the global popularity of Japanese anime and computer games. Even the conservative biweekly magazine Sapio (5 February 1997; 11 June 1997) declared that animation and computer games had become two objects of pride that Japan could show to the world (see also Hamano 1999). With Japan poised to emerge as a major global exporter of cultural products, Japan’s global cultural influence may soon match its economic influence. But what will Japan do with this power? Will Japan’s cultural power mirror American cultural hegemony of the last half of the last century, or be something very di√erent? In this chapter, I address this question by looking closely at the global success of Pokémon. I will first trace out the historical development of Japanese global exports of audiovisual products that can be described as ‘‘culturally odorless.’’ Critiquing arguments in which the global spread of Japanese characters and anime is interpreted in terms of a conventional ‘‘Americanization’’ thesis, I will discuss some marketing trends in global media business that the Pokémonization of the world illustrates. I will suggest that the global success of Pokémon testifies to the acceleration of transnational corporate partnerships in deploying localization strategies, particularly between Japanese and American media industries, so as to maximize the penetration into as many urban areas in the world as possible.

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CULTURALLY ODORLESS COMMODITIES

As Japan has become the second biggest economic power in the world, its cultural influence has been discussed mostly in terms of the export of a Japanese approach to management styles, industrial relations, and organizational culture (e.g., Oliver and Wilkinson 1992; Elger and Smith 1994). The ‘‘Japanization’’ of industrial relations and organizational culture has been put forward as a post-Fordist industrial model, with ‘‘Toyotism,’’ for example, being seen as a more flexible production system than Fordism (Dohse et al. 1985; Lash and Urry 1994; Waters 1995:82–85). Japanese management models aside, Japanese cultural power has not been widely discussed outside Japan. I suggest that this lack of attention to Japan’s expanding global cultural power reflects a discrepancy between actual cultural influence and perceived cultural presence. The cultural impact of a commodity is not always credited to the cultural innovations of the exporting nation. For example, for many years Japan has been the world’s dominant exporter of audiovisual commodities, including televisions, vcrs, camcorders, computer game consoles, karaoke machines, stereo systems, and cd players. Through these commodities, Japanese consumer technology has had an impact on everyday life around the world that arguably is more profound than that of Hollywood films. Japan’s vcrs and the Walkman have played a major role in promoting what Raymond Williams calls ‘‘mobile privatization’’ (1990:26). The new consumer technologies provide people with both mobility in their media consumption activities and the ability to consume cultural products in their domestic, private spaces.∞ To borrow Jody Berland’s (1992) term, these commodities can also be defined as ‘‘cultural technologies’’ that mediate among texts, spaces, and audiences. Despite the profound influence of Japanese consumer technologies on the cultural activities of everyday life, they have tended not to be talked about in terms of a characteristically Japanese cultural presence. Colin Hoskins and Rolf Mirus argue that, in contrast with the American dominance of world film markets, Japan’s success derives from its exporting of ‘‘culturally neutral’’ commodities whose country of origin has nothing to do with ‘‘the way [that they work] and the satisfaction [that a consumer] obtains from usage’’ (1988:503). Hoskins and Mirus contrast the ease of export of culturally neutral commodities with the much greater di≈culty of exporting products that are cultur56

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ally embedded. Examples of Japanese products that are not culturally neutral would include Japanese films, tv programs, and music. Although a few Japanese films and literary works have found a following, the outflow of Japanese popular cultural products to the West has been disproportionately small. Although Hoskins and Mirus’s argument is West-centric, as it neglects the spread of Japanese tv dramas and pop music in East and Southeast Asia (see Iwabuchi 2001; 2002), I find their discussion stimulating in considering the spread of Japanese animation and computer games in the world. Yet it seems to me that the term ‘‘culturally neutral’’ is somewhat misleading. The influence of cultural products on everyday life cannot be culturally neutral. Products inevitably carry the cultural imprint of their producing country, even if not recognized as such. I would characterize the audiovisual products that Japan has long exported globally as the ‘‘culturally odorless’’ three Cs: consumer technologies (such as vcrs, karaoke, and the Walkman); comics and cartoons; and computer/video games. I use the term ‘‘cultural odor’’ to refer to the way in which cultural features of a country of origin and images or ideas, often stereotypical, of its way of life are associated with a particular product in the consumption process. Products can carry various kinds of cultural association with their country of invention. Much has been written about how images of the foreign other are often connected with exoticism, as is the case with Western images of the samurai or the geisha girl. But I am interested in the moment when the image of the lifestyle of the country of origin adds to the appeal of a product, the moment when ‘‘cultural odor’’ becomes ‘‘cultural fragrance.’’ Fragrance, a socially and culturally acceptable smell, does not derive primarily from the inherent quality of a product; it has more to do with the image of the country of origin. For example, some of the influence of McDonald’s throughout the world can be credited to the corporation’s success in the bureaucratization and standardization of food, principles that have extended to other everyday life activities, such as education and shopping (Ritzer 1993). However, no less important to McDonald’s’ international success is its association in locales around the world with the attraction of ‘‘the American way of life’’ (Frith 1981:46). As Mike Featherstone argues: It is a product from a superior global center, which has long represented itself as the center. For those on the periphery it o√ers the possibility of the psychological benefits of identifying with the powerful. Along with the MarlHow ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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boro Man, Coca-Cola, Hollywood, Sesame Street, rock music and American football insignia, McDonald’s is one of a series of icons of the American way of life. They have become associated with transposable themes, which are central to consumer culture, such as youth, fitness, beauty, luxury, romance, and freedom. (1995:8) In contrast, the dominant image of ‘‘Japan,’’ one that is constructed by a Western Orientalist discourse and reinforced by a self-orientalizing discourse in Japan, is of a traditional and particularistic culture that recently has added hightech sophistication (Iwabuchi 1994). While problematizing these stereotypical images of Japan, Paul du Gay et al. (1997) suggest that to international consumers the ‘‘Japaneseness’’ of Sony’s Walkman lies in its miniaturization, technical sophistication, and high quality. I would argue that the use of the Walkman abroad does not evoke images of a Japanese lifestyle, even if consumers know it is made in Japan and even if they associate ‘‘Japaneseness’’ with technological sophistication. Unlike Hollywood movies, McDonald’s hamburgers, and other American commodities, as Featherstone points out, ‘‘Japanese consumer goods do not seek to sell on the back of a Japanese way of life’’ (1995:9) and, as C. J. W.-L. Wee (1997) suggests, they lack any influential ‘‘idea of Japan.’’ The cultural odor of a product is closely associated with racial and bodily images of the country of origin. The three Cs I mentioned above are cultural artifacts in which bodily, racial, and ethnic characteristic have been erased or softened. This is particularly evident in Japanese animation where the characters, for the most part, do not look ‘‘Japanese.’’ Such non-Japaneseness is referred to in Japan as mukokuseki, which literally means something or someone lacking any nationality, but which is also used to refer to the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics and contexts from a cultural product. Internationally acclaimed Japanese animation director Oshii Mamoru suggests that Japanese animators and cartoonists unconsciously choose not to draw realistic Japanese characters when they wish to draw attractive characters (Oshii et al. 1996). His characters tend to be modeled on Caucasian types. Consumers of Japanese animation and games may be aware of the Japanese origin of these commodities, but they perceive little ‘‘Japanese bodily odor.’’

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JAPAN IS A COOL COUNTRY!?

The propensity of Japanese animators to make their products appear nonJapanese is evidence that a Western-dominated cultural hierarchy continues to govern transnational cultural flows. But there’s more to this story. Beginning in the late 1980s, Japan’s hitherto odorless cultural presence in the world has become more recognizably ‘‘Japanese’’ as computer games and animation from Japan have grabbed large shares of overseas markets. Japan’s success in exporting cultural products that are unmistakably perceived as ‘‘Japanese’’ has evoked a sense of both yearning and threat overseas, including fear of cultural invasion, as demonstrated by the negative reaction in the United States to the buyouts of Hollywood studios by Sony and Matsushita. These acquisitions led to claims that the Japanese are ‘‘buying into America’s soul’’ (Morley and Robins 1995:150). Another kind of threat posed by the export to the West of a distinctively Japanese technoculture is what Morley and Robins (1995) call ‘‘techno-Orientalism.’’ A negative image circulates in the West of Japan as a land of otaku who avoid physical and personal contact and are ‘‘lost to everyday life’’ because of their immersion in computer reality (Morley and Robins 1995:169). Japan is depicted as a dehumanized society that epitomizes ‘‘the alienated and dystopian image of capitalist progress’’ (Morley and Robins 1995:170). The fear in the West is of contamination and contagion: importing Japanese anime and computer games will turn Western youth into otaku. While feared and envied in the West, Japan’s success in exporting cultural products led to the emergence in the 1990s of a chauvinistic, self-praising discourse in Japan. Flush with nationalistic pride, Japanese social commentators suddenly found a specifically Japanese ‘‘fragrance’’ in these previously culturally odorless products.≤ The most eloquent spokesperson for Japanese animations and computer games is Okada Toshio, a well-known manga (comics) and animation critic, who writes and speaks extensively on otaku culture and the global popularity of anime (e.g., Okada 1995; 1996; 1997). In contrast to the negative connotations given to the term otaku in the Japanese media and in Western techno-Orientalist discourse, Okada gives the term a positive valence, arguing that Japanese manga, anime, and computer games combined to give birth to Japan’s unique otaku culture that he proudly proclaims is sweeping the world. Okada (1996; 1997) argues that because the West dominates the established cultural forms such as film, music, fashion, and painting, no matter how How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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hard the Japanese work to imitate or Japanize Western cultural forms, Japan is doomed to a peripheral role. While acknowledging America’s historical influence on the origins of manga and anime, Okada boasts that Japan’s homegrown otaku culture will make Japan a cultural Mecca (Okada 1997:6–8). Okada’s most important evidence for the value of otaku culture is that it has passionate fans in the West. The Japanese media love stories about the West’s growing passion for Japanese technoculture. Images of Westerners dressed and made up as well-known anime characters are presented in popular Japanese magazines as evidence of the ‘‘Japanization’’ of the West.≥ Okada (1996:52–56) argues that in the West the term otaku connotes something stunning and attractive, so much so that anime and manga produce in Westerners a sense of yearning for ‘‘Japan.’’ Okada describes in a jingoistic tone American anime fans who dream of coming to Japan, visiting the settings of their favorite anime, and wishing that they had been born in Japan or that they could become Japanese (e.g., Okada 1995).∂ Comparing this Western passion for Japanese anime to an earlier Japanese yearning for American popular culture and for ‘‘America,’’ the nation of freedom, science, and democracy, Okada (1995:43) proudly argues that to otaku in the West, Japan ‘‘looks like a more cool country’’ than the United States. These chauvinistic views of Japan’s popular cultural exports are not shared ¯ by all Japanese media critics and academics (e.g., Otsuka 1993; Ueno 1996b; M¯ori 1996). Some caution against celebrating the dominance of ‘‘Japaneseness’’ in the field of animation because the number of Western fans of manga and anime is actually rather tiny.∑ A more significant problem with Okada’s claim to Japanese animation superiority is that this claim depends, ironically, on the approving gaze of the West. Anime and manga are more popular in Asian countries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan than they are in the West (see Ono 1998), but to Japanese cultural chauvinists success in Asian markets does not count for much. In this sense, Japanese technocultural nationalism colludes with Western techno-Orientalism. The Japanese hyperreal culture based on anime, manga, and computer games has replaced such Western Orientalist icons as the geisha and the samurai in the exoticization of Japan (Ueno 1996a; M¯ori 1996). The global success of Pokémon, however, is unprecedented. With a popularity in the American market unmatched by any other Japanese animated or computer game character, Pokémon has led Japanese scholars and social com60

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mentators to find in the product’s global appeal evidence of Japan’s emerging symbolic power and even ‘‘coolness.’’ For example, Kamo Yoshinori (2000), a U.S.-based sociologist, observes that American children who love Pokémon believe that Japan is a very cool nation that produces wonderful characters, imaginary worlds, and commodities. He sees in Pokémon’s success a very hopeful sign that American audiences are becoming more open to Japanese cultural values and that they are changing their image of Japan from a land that is strange and workaholic to someplace that is humane and cool. Sakurai Tetsuo (2001) also reads the success of Pokémon as a sign of hopefulness in what was otherwise a decade in Japan dominated by negative occurrences. According to Sakurai, in just a couple of years Pokémon has done more for Japan’s image than was accomplished up till now by Japanese literature and films or by the Japanese government’s public relations initiatives abroad. Sakurai, too, describes Pokémon’s global appeal in terms of it being ‘‘cool.’’ Nevertheless, there is an inherent di≈culty in ascribing a distinctive ‘‘Japaneseness’’ to Pokémon and then rationalizing this ‘‘Japaneseness’’ with the contradictory processes of transnational cultural consumption. This is not to say that Pokémon and other anime do not embody some cultural characteristics that originate in Japanese culture. I would agree with Newitz that some of the pleasure Western fans find in Japanese animation is inescapably ‘‘dependent upon Japanese culture itself ’’ (1995:12; see also Kamo 2000). But such celebratory views of the West’s embrace of Japanese coolness ignore an inherent ambivalence and contradiction. As I suggested earlier, the recent international success of Japanese popular culture still at once expresses the universal appeal of Japanese cultural products and the disappearance of any perceptible ‘‘Japa¯ neseness.’’ Cultural critic Otsuka Eiji (1993), warning against feeling too euphoric about the global popularity of Japanese animation, argues that it is the ‘‘odorless,’’ mukokuseki nature (that is, the racially, ethnically and culturally unembeddedness) of Japanese animation that is responsible for its popularity worldwide. Likewise, Ueno (1996b:186) argues that the ‘‘Japaneseness’’ of Japanimation lies, ironically, in its presentation of a mukokuseki visual culture. If the Japaneseness of Japanese animation is derived, consciously or unconsciously, from its erasure of physical signs of Japaneseness from the visual imagery, is not the Japan that Western audiences are at long last coming to appreciate and even yearn for a de-ethnicized and cultureless, virtual version of Japan? How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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It is one thing to observe that Pokémon texts are influencing children’s play and behavior in many parts of the world and that these children perceive Japan as a cool nation because it creates cool cultural products such as Pokémon. However, it is quite another to say that this cultural influence and this perception of coolness is closely associated with a tangible, realistic appreciation of Japanese lifestyles or ideas. The yearning for another culture that is evoked through the consumption of cultural commodities is inevitably illusory, as this yearning lacks concern for and understanding of the complexity of processes by which popular cultural artifacts are produced. This point is even more highlighted by the mukokuseki nature of Japanese animation and computer games.To interpret the global success of Pokémon and other Japanese cultural products as the mirror image of the global process of Americanization is thus fallacious because it disregards the mukokuseki character of Japanese cultural exports and it fails to appreciate the precarious nature of transnational cultural consumption (see, e.g., Appadurai 1996 and Howes 1996).∏

THE POKÉMON SUPERSYSTEM

In contrast to the euphoric arguments cited above, some critics argue that Pokémon’s influence on the global cultural scene is in fact quite trivial when compared to such Western popular cultural products as the Beatles or rap music. These critics find Pokémon’s message too superficial to count as a meaningful cultural export (e.g., Newsweek Japan, 8 December 1999:50–51). However, this kind of comparison is also fruitless and even fallacious as it implies that American/Western popular culture continues to present the rest of the world with influential messages, ideas, and lifestyles that have the power to impact world politics and to launch social movements, just as it used to do. A more productive way of making sense of the symbolic power of Japanese animation and computer games is to look at the issue of transnational cultural hegemony and power in a di√erent light, rather than from a conventional Americanization perspective. The age of Americanization, in which crosscultural consumption was predominantly discussed in terms of the influence of a single dominant country, is, if not over, at least coming to an end (cf. Tomlinson 1991). I would suggest that we use the rise of Japanese cultural exports as an opportunity to reconsider the meaning of transnational cultural power. The international popularity of Japanese anime and computer games as exemplified 62

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in the Pokémon craze provides us with some clues we can use to discern emerging trends in the global circulation of characters, culture, and products. Pokémon’s global success is indeed unprecedented. However, it would be misleading to think that the factors that contributed to this success are unique to Pokémon. I would suggest instead that Pokémon is the product that to date has most e≈ciently capitalized on emerging marketing trends. Animation and computer game characters are playing an increasingly significant role in the multimedia business. Computer game characters are intertextual, and can be used in a variety of media such as movies, tv series, comics, toys and associated merchandise. Marsha Kinder (1991) describes the multiple possibilities of transmedia intertextuality as representing a ‘‘supersystem of entertainment’’ that has come to be a dominant force in the global entertainment business. In Japan, media industry leaders decided that computer games and animation would be the main features of such a supersystem. Together with the global success of Japanese computer game software such as Super Mario Brothers, the realization, since the recent recession, of declining strength in the Japanese manufacturing-oriented economy has convinced many Japanese companies to invest in the development of animated and digitalized multimedia products. This shift is reflected in Sony’s 1996 new corporate image slogan, ‘‘Digital Dream Kids’’ (see, e.g., Dime, 7 February 1991; Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 25 February 1996; Nikkei Trendy, December 1998:48–51).π Pokémon exemplifies how the supersystem works. Pokémon was first created as Game Boy software. It then almost simultaneously appeared as a serial comic in Koro Koro, a monthly comic magazine targeted to boys, as a part of an overall marketing strategy. The positive reception of the computer game and the comics led to the creation of and further interlinking with trading cards, a tv series, films, and, eventually, various merchandise featuring popular Pokémon characters. Within this multiple product, multimedia business, Pokémon constantly reinvented itself. For example, for the creation of the comics and the tv cartoon, Pippi and Pikachu were chosen as the main Pokémon characters, respectively. Neither Pippi nor Pikachu was a main character in the original Game Boy software. Pippi (in English, Clefairy) was selected as the main Pokémon character to make the comic book series more ‘‘engaging.’’ However, in order to attract younger and female viewers as well as their mothers, Pikachu replaced Pippi as the central character when the Pokémon tv series was introduced in 1997. The pink Pippi was replaced by the yellow, cuddlier Pikachu, How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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whom the producers believed would seem like a more familiar and intimate pet to child viewers. There were other reasons as well for the producers’ choice of yellow. Because yellow is one of the three basic colors, it is easy for children to recognize Pikachu even from a distance. Furthermore, the only competing yellow character is Winnie the Pooh (Kubo 2000a; 2000b). As we can see in the case of the emergence of Pikachu as the key character, the development of the Pokémon supersystem was achieved through trial and error in the Japanese market. But once the components of the supersystem were put together in Japan, they could be used systematically to introduce Pokémon in global markets. The overseas promotion of Pokémon was forged from the outset by a subtly packaged amalgamation of cartoons, comics, trading cards, feature films, character merchandise, and Game Boy games.

AMERICANIZATION OF JAPANIZATION

It is important to locate the global popularity of Pokémon, and of Japanese animation and computer games in general, within a wider picture of the increasing interconnectedness of transnational media industries and markets, an interconnectedness that in turn reflects larger processes of globalization. The accelerating rate of transmission of cultural forms from the dominant countries to the rest of the world via communication technologies and transportation systems has brought about the shrinking of the distance between one place and another that Harvey (1989) refers to as a ‘‘time-space compression.’’ As mergers and collaborative agreements between transnational corporations of di√erent countries of origin intensify, markets around the world become increasingly integrated and interrelated. This, together with advances in communication technologies, leads to an increasing simultaneity in the cultural flow of information, images, and commodities emanating from a handful of powerful nations, including Japan, to urban spaces across the globe. The speed and quantity of the global distribution of cultural commodities has been rapidly accelerating. The popularity and quick decline in many parts of the world simultaneously of globally circulating cultural products such as the Spice Girls and Tamagotchi (a digital pet) testifies to this trend. Finding a local partner is particularly important for non-Western corporations seeking to peddle their cultural products in Western markets. Morley and Robins (1995:13) identify three activities of global media corporations: produc64

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ing cultural products; distributing these products; and owning the hardware that delivers these products. Morley and Robins suggest that the penetration of multiple markets by transnational cultural industries requires the combination of at least two of the above three activities, particularly production and distribution, both of which currently are dominated by American industries. The significance of Japanese inroads into Hollywood has to be considered in this broader perspective of media globalization. The rise of Japanese media industries therefore constitutes a new phase of global cultural flow dominated by a small number of transnational corporations (Aksoy and Robins 1992). These moves testify to the growing significance of global media mergers that aim to o√er a ‘‘total cultural package’’ of various media products under a single media conglomerate (Schiller 1991). It was not to dominate American minds that Sony and Matsushita bought into Hollywood studios and Japanese trading companies such as Sumitomo and Itochu invested in American media giants (e.g., Sumitomo-tci; Itochu-Time Warner). It makes much more sense to understand these investments as a logical extension of the global centralization of product distribution. The purpose was to construct a total entertainment conglomerate through the acquisition of control over both audiovisual hardware and software. It was based upon the sober economic judgment that ‘‘it is cultural distribution, not cultural production, that is the key locus of power and profit’’ (Garnham 1990:161–62). These incursions can be seen as confirming the preeminence of the United States as the center for software development and distribution and therefore of Japan’s second-rate status in these fields. Viewed from this perspective we can see that the purpose of these Japanese takeovers was not to kill or capture the American soul but, on the contrary, to capitalize on and extend Hollywood’s global reach. Japanese ingenuity in hardware production and American genius in software go hand in hand because (Japanese) consumer technologies work as platforms for (American) entertainment products (Berland 1992:46). Japanese companies that acquire controlling interest in American media production companies strengthen American cultural hegemony by investing in the production of Hollywood films and by facilitating their distribution all over the globe. Japanese cultural industries and Japanese media products cannot compete globally without Western partners. The serious weakness of Japanese cultural industries, despite mature production capabilities and techniques, is the lack of international distribution channels. It is therefore actually Western How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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(mostly American) global distribution power that is making Japanese animation a growing part of global popular culture. The process can be called an ‘‘Americanization of Japanization,’’ in contrast to the Japanese buyouts of Hollywood studios, which could be called a ‘‘Japanization of Americanization.’’ For example, it was the investment and the distribution channels of a BritishAmerican company, Manga Entertainment, established in 1991 as part of the Polygram conglomerate, that made The Ghost in the Shell a hit in Western countries. Similarly, in 1995, Disney decided to globally distribute Miyazaki Hayao’s animated films. Japanese animation’s inroads into the global market is an example of the ever growing global articulation of markets and media industries. The Japanese animation industry is becoming a global player only by partnering with Western media industries.∫

IS POKÉMON GLOBALLY LOCALIZED OR AMERICANIZED?

Likewise, the global success of Pokémon has been heavily dependent on partnerships with American corporations. The global distribution of Pokémon: The First Movie was handled by Warner Brothers, one of the major Hollywood studios, which also broadcasts the half-hour cartoons on its own tv channel, Kids wb. However, American involvement in Pokémon is not just limited to distribution; it includes as well involvement in production, in the form of alterations in the substance of Pokémon (as discussed in this volume by Katsuno and Maret). Nintendo of America (noa) has been responsible for international marketing of Pokémon, except in Asia. It could be argued that this is not an American intervention, because noa is a Japanese company. However, noa does not automatically import what Nintendo in Kyoto wants to export. Most of the sta√ of noa are local (Americans), and noa makes its own decisions in selecting commodities for the American and other international markets. While it eventually spent a huge amount of money (allegedly more than $50 million) marketing Pokémon in North America, noa at first believed that the Pokémon game would not be attractive to American children. noa’s initial concerns about Pokémon’s appeal actually facilitated the creation of a global Pokémon supersystem. noa concluded that to successfully promote Pokémon it would be necessary to introduce the Pokémon Game Boy cartridges at the same time as the television show, comics, trading cards, films, and character merchandise. In other words, the creation of a coordinated Pokémon super66

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system was noa’s minimum condition for marketing Pokémon in North America (Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000:409). No less significant is how Pokémon, as a part of a global promotion strategy, was localized or Americanized ‘‘to hide its ‘Japaneseness’ ’’ (Time, 22 November 1999:68–69). This was not just an American decision. Pokémon’s Japanese producers were perhaps even more determined than their counterparts at noa to localize Pokémon for various markets. Japan’s self-localizing propensity in the overseas markets extends far beyond Pokémon. Even if Japanese animators do not consciously draw mukokuseki characters in order to appeal to international consumers, they always have the global market in the back if not the front of their minds and they are well aware that the non-Japaneseness of their animated characters works to their advantage in the export market. Since Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy in the early sixties, anime has been consumed overseas. Fifty-six percent of films exported from Japan in 1980–1981 and 58 percent in 1992–1993 were animated (Kawatake and Hara 1994). While other film genres are mostly exported in the original Japanese language (with subtitles added), 99 percent of animated exports are dubbed into English and other foreign languages, which greatly facilitates sales abroad (Stronach 1989:144). Similarly, the producers and creators of game software intentionally make the characters of computer games look non-Japanese because they are clearly conscious that their market is global (Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu 1995). Mario, the principal character of the popular computer game Super Mario Brothers, for example, does not invoke an image of Japan. Both his name and appearance are stereotypically Italian. Sony is the leading example of a Japanese company that from the outset has aspired to be a global company. The name of the company and of its products, such as the Walkman, are in English, ‘‘the world language.’’ What characterizes Sony (and Japanese manufacturers in general), is a marketing strategy that is sensitive to local market di√erences. This global marketing strategy is another of Japan’s significant contributions to the world of commodities. It is best expressed by what Sony calls ‘‘global localization’’ or ‘‘glocalization.’’ In order to succeed simultaneously in di√erent local markets, global companies try to ‘‘transcend vestigial national di√erences and to create standardized global markets, whilst remaining sensitive to the peculiarities of local markets and differentiated consumer segments’’ (Aksoy and Robins 1992:18; see also du Gay et al. 1997). This strategy is not an exclusively Japanese practice. The term ‘‘glocalHow ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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ization’’ has become a buzzword of global marketing. Its entry in The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, however, acknowledges the term’s origination in Japan: ‘‘modeled on Japanese dochakuka (deriving from dochaku ‘living on one’s own land’), originally the agricultural principle of adapting one’s farming technique to local conditions, but also adopted in Japanese business for global localization, a global outlook adapted to local conditions’’ (quoted in Robertson 1995:28). We should not regard the act of dochakuka (indigenization) as a unique cultural essence of Japan (see Iwabuchi 1998). Cultural borrowing, appropriation, hybridization, and indigenization have long been common practices in the global cultural flow. But this is not to say that the Japanese version of glocalization has no unique features. It is useful to analyze how Japanese companies imagine Japan’s position in the global cultural flow when they develop strategies of glocalization. Behind such developments we can discern the e√orts of Japanese companies to suppress Japanese ‘‘odor’’ in order to market their products overseas. Although the Pokémon animation series and its Game Boy game were not created primarily for the global market, their domestic success quickly convinced producers of Pokémon’s potential to succeed overseas. Kubo Masakazu explains that he and the other producers of the television series believed that Pokémon would be relatively easy to localize for a global market because ‘‘the setting of the adventure explored by Satoshi and Pikachu looks mukokuseki and religion-free. It appeared easy to produce international versions by erasing Japanese language signs as much as possible’’ (2000b:345). Kubo contrasts Pokémon with other Japanese animated television programs such as Doraemon, which has been popular only in Asian regions due to its ‘‘Japanese’’ landscape and the presence of tatami mats and other Japanese housing features. Kubo boasts of the quality of the producers’ e√orts to localize Pokémon outside Japan. As an example, he cites the importance of their having renamed most of the characters to make their natures easily understood outside Japan. The Pokémon computer game software has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The tv show and movies have been even more widely translated, including versions in Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Hebrew, and Greek. Kubo admits that it was Gail Tilden of Nintendo of America (whom Kubo

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refers to as ‘‘the Dragon Mother of Nintendo’’) who best understood the need to be aggressive in localizing Pokémon, to the degree of modifying the content. The translation of Japanese cartoons and feature films generally is under the control of Americans. The American film producers, under the leadership of Norman Grossfeld of 4Kids Entertainment, made significant changes to the tv series and the films. For example, a relatively ambiguous portrait of good and evil was changed into that of clear black-and-white confrontation between characters. As Katsuno and Maret explain in more detail in chapter 5, some scenes and even a few whole episodes were cut and the background music was changed to suit what the localizers believed to be the taste of American children and their parents.Ω Kubo (2000a; 2000b), who at first objected to the extent of the proposed changes, admits that the aggressive localization contributed to the huge success of Pokémon in the United States, and, in turn, in the world, in contrast to the more modest success abroad of animated tv shows and movies from Japan such as Sailor Moon and Mononokehime (Princess Mononoke), which kept their scenes and music intact. Attributing Sailor Moon’s failure to find a large international audience to its lack of localization, Kubo (2000a) cites a research report that suggests that Sailor Moon’s setting in what appears to be Japanese everyday life deterred American girls from identifying with the story. The refusal of the Japanese producers of Mononokehime to make the film more viewer-friendly by deleting violent scenes and substantially shortening the more-than-three-hour-long film drastically reduced the number of theaters that would show the film in the United States. Thanks to its extensive ‘‘Americanization,’’ Pokémon: The First Movie experienced no such problems and was shown in three thousand theaters under the distribution network of Warner Brothers. It is the remade-in-the-U.S. version of Pokémon that has been exported to many parts of the world. noa wanted to market Pokémon in the United States and internationally as a global rather than as a Japanese product, as Gail Tilden explains: ‘‘We try hard to keep American children from thinking of Pokémon as being from Japan. This requires localization, not to hide the fact that Pokémon is made in Japan, but to convey the impression that these are global characters. Therefore, we do not want to make Pokémon American, either. We want Pokémon to become global characters that children all over the world will find familiar’’ (quoted in Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000:421–22). Given the fact that

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these globally circulating Pokémon are the American versions rather than the Japanese originals, Nintendo of America’s marketing of Pokémon as global characters is a prime example of the Americanization of Japanization.

JAPANESE/ASIAN CUTENESS VERSUS AMERICAN/GLOBAL COOLNESS?

As we have seen, there are two slightly di√erent versions of Pokémon, one Japanese, and the other Americanized Japanese. Although very similar, these two versions aim to appeal in subtly di√erent ways. The American and European recognition of the ‘‘coolness’’ of Japanese technocultural products strokes Japan’s national pride. But the overwhelming cuteness of the Pokémon characters made the sta√ at Nintendo of America have doubts about the appeal of Pokémon to American children when they were first approached about marketing Pokémon in the United States and abroad. They interpreted Pokémon’s cuteness as a lack of coolness; and ‘‘coolness’’ is the buzzword American marketers use to describe the attractiveness of highly consumable cultural products. The sta√ at noa even tried (but in the end failed) to get the Japanese producers to agree to redraw the Pokémon characters to make them cooler, according to a supposed American standard (Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000:407–8). In contrast, the key to the di√usion of Japanese popular culture in Asian markets is seen to be based more on their cuteness than their coolness, as exemplified by the comment made by Dick Lee, a prominent Singaporean pop singer, that ‘‘Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are not cute. . . . Pokémon is cute’’ (Newsweek, 8 November 1999:42). ‘‘Cute’’ is the term most often used to describe the growing appeal of Japanese fashion, pop idols, and animated characters in Asian regions. ‘‘Cute’’ characters from Japan such as Hello Kitty, Chibimaruko, and Doraemon are much more popular in East and Southeast Asian countries than they are in the United States and Europe, whereas ‘‘cool’’ American cartoons such as The Simpsons and South Park, which are popular in North America and Europe, are not very popular in East Asia. It is interesting in this regard that noa distributes Pokémon everywhere in the world except Asia, where Pokémon’s dissemination is handled by such Japanese companies as Shogakukan, Nintendo, and JR Kikaku. As Anne Allison discusses in chapter 3, there is something distinctive about the cuteness of made-in-Japan characters. Masubuchi (1994), listing the criteria 70

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needed to make characters cute, suggests they must be small. He says that smallness can have a psychological or emotional element, but it is basically about physical smallness; babyish, naive, and innocent; young; dependent; round and soft-edged; and brightly colored. As a final factor he points out that animals are cuter than humans. These attributes are characteristic not just of cute Japanese characters but of Western characters as well, such as Mickey Mouse and Snoopy. But Saito (2000) argues that there is a basic di√erence between Japanese and Disney characters. Saito suggests that Disney characters function metaphorically, as fictional equivalents to human beings. Their quasi humanness, according to Saito, limits their cuteness. In contrast, Japanese characters, such as Hello Kitty, appeal metonymically. Metaphor depends on shared abstract characteristics, while metonymy is based on contiguity. According to Saito, this explains why Disney characters can function in narratives without humans, while Japanese characters such as Pikachu and Doraemon serve humans in their narratives, or why, like Hello Kitty, they exist outside of narrative. Arguments like Saito’s divide the world of cultural commodities into two (or more) spheres: one of ‘‘Asian’’/cute culture, the other of ‘‘Western’’/cool culture. However, such binary divisions of cultures and civilizations can be essentializing (cf. Huntington 1993). Making a clear distinction between cute and cool cultural spheres is a di≈cult task and a risky business, not least because both coolness and cuteness have a wide range of meanings and associations, some of which overlap. The global acceptance of Pokémon characters demonstrates that Japanese cuteness can sell outside of Asia, which in some cases might be perceived as ‘‘cool’’ by American children. Here it needs to be noted that the meanings of cuteness and coolness are fixed not at the sites of production of texts and characters, but at the sites of their consumption. Mickey Mouse, who was more rodent-like when he was introduced in a cartoon in 1928, was quasi-humanized soon after by shortening his nose, re-proportioning his body, and giving him shoes and white gloves. His character was adventurous, reckless, and spunky, embodying the American frontier spirit. But these characteristics of Mickey are not well known in Japan, where Mickey is encountered much more often as an icon or a figure at a theme park, who functions metonymically, than as a character in a narrative, who functions metaphorically. Kubo (2000a) argues that in order to increase sales of their videos, Disney animated films would need to be localized for Japanese tastes. How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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But Disney characters are already localized in Japan, at the level of consumption. Mickey’s attractiveness for Japanese children lies less in his naughtiness than in his cuteness, as the former has been, as it were, tamed in the Japanese context. Similar processes of locally contextualized consumption can be seen in the salience of cuteness and coolness in Pokémon in the United States compared with Japan. Kubo (2000a:82) provides a very telling statistic: the best selling Pokémon commodities in Japan feature ‘‘cute’’ Pikachu, while in the United States T-shirts and backpacks with a picture of ‘‘cool’’ Ash (Satoshi in the Japanese version) are the top sellers. The usage and meaning of cuteness and coolness also vary according to age and gender, which complicates the picture of distinct Asian and Western cultural spheres. As other chapters in this book demonstrate, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, France, and Israel (and presumably in other countries), girls and younger children seem to focus more on Pokémon’s cuteness and boys and older children on its coolness. These observations remind us that the terms ‘‘cute’’ and ‘‘cool,’’ which frequently are deployed to express Pokémon’s appeal, must be analyzed cautiously, with consideration given to the diversity of children’s consumption activities, according to sociodemographic (particularly gender) as well as cultural di√erence. Instead of attempting to di√erentiate them in a dichotomous way, it is more productive to explore continuities between Japanese and American/Disney characters. Japanese ‘‘cutification’’ can be seen as an extension of ‘‘Disneyization.’’ Yoshimi (1997) argues that the abundance of Japanese characters in Asian markets testifies to the expansion of Japanese cutification, which he relates to the taming of nature. Disney has long done this taming in its movies, for example by depicting characters mastering the dark, mysterious, evil forest. Encountering and controlling nature is a key theme in Pokémon, where a central motif is taming wild pets by reducing them to compact, mobile, controllable, and exchangeable objects. Pokémon characters are both friends and commodities that are trained and owned by human beings. By adding consumerist ideologies, Pokémon escalates the process of cutification of children’s imaginary lives that Disney initially exploited. In this sense, cutification is not original or unique to Japanese animated characters, but instead reflects a Japanese sophistication based on globally di√used American popular cultural formats. 72

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this essay, I have used the case of the globalization of Pokémon to suggest the di≈culty of pinpointing the distinctiveness of Japanese cultural power. The discourse on globalization has tended to emphasize processes of homogenization, either in the form of a nightmare of the global engulfing and erasing local di√erence (Ferguson 1992) or of a utopian view of the world as a sort of McLuhanesque global village of bonding, togetherness, and immediacy. However, globalization processes are much more contradictory, multidirectional, and uneven. Transnational cultural power gets dispersed when it encounters localizing processes, and the symbolic center no longer seems to belong to a particular nation or region. It is in this context that the rise of Japanese popular culture in the world markets has become conspicuous. Images and commodities tend to lose their cultural odor as their original meanings and purposes are recreated by processes of local appropriation and negotiation. The specificities or ‘‘authenticity’’ of local cultures, as Miller argues concerning the ways in which people in Trinidad make sense of American media texts in their sociocultural contexts, are to be found ‘‘a posteriori not a priori, according to local consequences not local origins’’ (Miller 1992:181). Through local practices of appropriating and hybridizing images and commodities of ‘‘foreign’’ origin, even the central icons of American culture are conceived of as ‘‘ours’’ in many places.∞≠ McDonald’s is now so much a part of their world that to Japanese or Taiwanese young consumers it no longer represents an American way of life. At the same time, such a posteriori meaning construction is never free from the command of transnational media industries. Pokémon culture originating in Japan is hybridized and appropriated by young consumers around the world, and their perception of the Pokémon characters as ‘‘ours’’ is deeply implicated in, though not completely controlled by, global localization strategies developed by transnational media industries. Media globalization promotes what Tomlinson (1997:140–43) describes as ‘‘the de-centering of capitalism from the West’’ through increasing integration, networking, and cooperation among worldwide transnational cultural industries, including non-Western ones. For transnational corporations simultaneously to enter global, regional, national, and local markets, it is imperative that they establish business tie-ins with other corporations and adopt separate marketing strategies suitable for each level. How ‘‘Japanese’’ Is Pokémon?

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It is under these conditions that a variety of images and commodities, most of which still originate in the West, though non-Western countries such as Japan are increasingly contributing their share, circulate in urban spaces over the globe. Here, it needs to be stressed that global cultural power has dispersed, but global asymmetry has been more intensified. While Pokémon might be perceived as ‘‘ours’’ in many parts of the world, there are still many people living in poverty who cannot a√ord to consume Pokémon and for whom Pokémon therefore might carry the despairing sense of belonging to others. As commodities and images are dominated by a small number of wealthy countries including Japan, many parts of the world are still excluded from enjoying the fruits of participation in global cultural consumption. The consumerist ideologies embedded in Pokémon’s focus on exchange value and the commodification of animals cannot be reduced to a cultural divide between ‘‘Asia’’ and the ‘‘West’’ or between ‘‘Japanese cuteness’’ and ‘‘American coolness.’’ Instead, the consumerist ideology in Pokémon that is readily understood and embraced in countries such as the United States and Japan highlights the widening material divide that globalized capitalism violently promotes. Even if the origins of cultural products become increasingly insignificant and di≈cult to trace, the ‘‘Japaneseness’’ of Pokémon still does matter with regard to Japan’s collusive role in generating cultural asymmetry on a global scale. NOTES

1. See Mitsui and Hosokawa (1998) for the global appropriation of karaoke; see Chambers (1990), Chow (1993), Hosokawa (1989) for social meanings of Walkman usage. 2. A Japanese scholar of media art and aesthetics, Takemura Mitsuhiro (1996) coined the term ‘‘digital Japanesque’’ to propose a drastic restructuring of Japanese cultural and aesthetic capital in order to create a new Japanese national identity in the age of digitalized globalization. As the development of entertainment businesses is the key to Japan’s survival as a global power, Takemura (1996:197–98) argued, it is no longer enough for Japan to produce faceless commodities in order to produce global commodities: ‘‘Unless Japanese products embody a clearly articulated Japanese identity and sensitivity, they will not reach a global standard.’’ Japan, according to Takemura (1996:210–25), must search for its ‘‘cultural gene’’ and make it ubiquitous through global digitalized commodities. This, in his view, would rescue traditional Japanese aesthetics from its status as a cheap copy of the Western Japanesque. 3. E.g., Sh¯ukan Shinch¯o, 24 July 1996; Sh¯ukan Bunshun, 5 September 1996; Asahi Shinbun, 23 October 1997; Newsweek Japan, 30 July 1997; Okada 1996:52–56; Sh¯ukan Yomiuri, 2 June 1996, 30–31. 74

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4. In a love-story animation, Kimagure Orenjir¯odo, for example, the hero and heroine never confess their love for each other and their relationship is full of misunderstanding to the end. This might look ridiculous to many people in the United States where everyone is supposed to express everything they think and feel. However, as Okada reports, some American fans told him that they want to experience that kind of love a√air. These Americans long for Japanese ways of interpersonal communication (Sh¯ukan Yomiuri, 2 June 1996, 30–31). 5. See, e.g., Nikkei Entertainment (May 1997), 48; Newsweek Japan, 30 July 1997; Ono 1998). 6. A contradictory facet embedded with transnational cultural flows can be seen in the perception of temporal distance in the American consumption of Japanese animation. In relation to the Japanese romantic comedy animation Kimagure Orenjir¯odo (mentioned above), the American researcher Newitz (1995) also observed the American fans’ fascination with the Japanese mode of romance represented ‘‘a form of heterosexual masculinity which is not rooted in sexual prowess, but romantic feelings’’ (Newitz 1995:6). Nevertheless, Newitz’s analysis shows that this ardent American consumption is articulated in the form of a nostalgia for ‘‘gender roles Americans associate with the 1950s and 60s’’ (1995:13). It could be argued that this nostalgic longing displays an American denial of acknowledging their inhabiting the same temporality as Japan (see Fabian 1983). Japan is marked by a temporal lag and consumed in terms of a sense of loss, hence supporting America’s dominant position. 7. The Japanese government has been blamed domestically for its failure to promote the most lucrative cultural software industry in the digitalized world (see, e.g., Dime, 3 June 1997; Takemura 1996:72–105). Oshii Mamoru, the director of The Ghost in the Shell, lamented the lack of governmental support for development of the animation industry in Japan, and predicted the decay of the industry in the near future (Nikkei Entertainment [May 1997]). Responding to criticism, the Agency for Cultural A√airs belatedly decided to support multimedia software content in 1997 and held a Media Arts Festival in Tokyo in February 1998. Its purpose was to encourage the domestic production of animation, comics, computer graphics, and computer game software. The Agency for Cultural A√airs also decided to set about eradicating piracy of Japanese software in Asia (Asahi Shinbun, 22 January 1998). Animation and digitalized software thus have become an o≈cially recognized part of Japanese cultural production, but this has not yet led to substantial encouragement of, and investment in, these ‘‘soft’’ industries in Japan (see Ch¯uo¯ K¯oron [May 2000]). 8. In this regard, Japanese animation is often compared by the Japanese media to ukiyoe—the premodern Japanese color prints depicting ordinary people’s everyday life, whose beauty and values were appreciated as Japanesque by the West and which had a significant impact on Western artists. It is often suggested that animation faces the same dilemma as ukiyoe, many of which have been taken out of Japan and exhibited in Western art galleries from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The West (America) may again appropriate an important Japanese cultural product which Japan fails to recognize has great cultural and economic value (see, e.g., Dime, 6 October 1994; Bart, 22 January 1996; Nikkei Trendy [October 1996]). Precisely because anime has come to be universally consumed, it is destined to be copied, studied, and indigenized outside Japan. Hollywood is trying to develop a new global genre by making use of Japanese animation. American film producers and directors are recruiting Japanese animators to develop American animation and computer graphics

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(Aera, 29 July 1996; Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 5 January 1997 and 9 June 1997). Also, the South Korean government has decided to support the promotion of the local animation industry for the sake of the future development of the national economy. A Korean conglomerate has entered the animation business by investing in domestic as well as Japanese animation industries (Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 3 September 1996; Aera, 29 July 1996). 9. It should be noted that producers’ and localizers’ supposedly expert knowledge of which products can succeed in which markets often turns out to be wrong. For example, as Kubo explains (2000b:347–48), Takeshi, an adolescent Pokémon trainer, was dropped for a while from the Japanese version of the television series because his slim eyes were thought to be unacceptable to American children. But Takeshi (Brock in the English language version) was brought back later as he proved to be a popular character in the United States (Katsuno and Maret discuss Takeshi/Brock in chapter 5). 10. See García Canclini (1995) and Pieterse (1995) for their useful discussions of hybridization and the global spread of capitalist modernity.

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Ferguson, Marjorie. 1992. ‘‘The Mythology about Globalization.’’ European Journal of Communication 7: 69–93. Frith, Simon. 1982. Sound E√ects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock ’n’ Roll. New York: Pantheon. García Canclini, Néstor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Translated by Christopher L. Chiappari and Sylvia L. Lopez. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Garnham, Nicholas. 1990. Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. London: Sage. Hamano Yasuki. 1999. ‘‘Nihon anim¯eshon k¯okokuron’’ (A Plea on Behalf of Japanese Animation). Ch¯uo¯ K¯oron (April), 138–53. Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hatakeyama Kenji and Kubo Masakazu. 2000 Pokemon Story. Tokyo: Nikkei BP. Hoskins, Colin, and Rolf Mirus. 1988. ‘‘Reasons for the U.S. Dominance of the International Trade in Television Programs.’’ Media, Culture and Society 10: 499–515. Hosokawa Shuhei. 1989. ‘‘The Walkman E√ect.’’ In Popular Music, vol. 4: Performances and Audiences, edited by Richard Middleton and David Horn, 165–80. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Howes, David, ed. 1996. Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities. London: Routledge. Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. ‘‘The Clash of Civilizations.’’ Foreign A√airs 72, no. 3: 22–49. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 1994. ‘‘Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other.’’ Continuum 8, no. 2: 49–82. ———. 1998. ‘‘Pure Impurity: Japan’s Genius for Hybridism.’’ Communal Plural: Journal of Transnational and Crosscultural Studies 6, no. 1: 71–86. ———. 2001. ‘‘Becoming Culturally Proximate: A/Scent of Japanese Idol Dramas in Taiwan.’’ In Asian Media Productions, edited by Brian Moeran, 55–74. London: Curzon. ———. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Kamo Yoshinori. 2000. ‘‘Pokemon ga yushutsu shita ‘k¯uru’ na nihon to nihonjin’’(Pokémon is dissemintating ‘‘cool’’ images of Japan and the Japanese). Asahi Shinbun, 20 January (evening edition). Kawatake Kazuo and Hara Yumiko. 1994. ‘‘Nihon o ch¯ushin to suru terebi bangumi no ry¯uts¯u j¯oky¯o’’ (The International Flow of tv Programs from and into Japan). H¯os¯o Kenky¯u to Ch¯osa (November), 2–17. Kinder, Marsha. 1991. Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kubo Masakazu. 2000a. ‘‘Pokemon wa naze beikoku de seik¯o shitaka’’ (Why Pokémon Succeeded in the US). Ronza (February), 78–86. ———. 2000b. ‘‘Sekai wo haikaisuru wasei monsut¯a Pikach¯u’’ (Pikachu Wandering over the World). Bungei Shunj¯u special issue: D¯oduru? D¯onaru? Watasitachi no 21 seiki: 340–49. Kuroki Yasuo. 1995. ‘‘Nihon no monozukuri wa sekai ni eiky¯o wo ataete iruka?’’ (Has the Japanese

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Way of Producing Commodities Influenced the World?). In Sekai Sh¯ohin no Tsukurikata, edited by Akurosu Hensh¯ushitsu, 10–17. Tokyo: Parco Shuppan. Lash, Scott, and John Urry. 1994. Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage. Masubuchi S¯oichi. 1994. Kawaii Sh¯ok¯ogun (Kawaii). Tokyo: Nihon H¯os¯o Shuppan Ky¯okai. Miller, Daniel. 1992. ‘‘The Young and Restless in Trinidad: A Case of the Local and Global in Mass Consumption.’’ In Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, edited by Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch, 163–82. London: Routledge. Mitsui Toru and Hosokawa Shuhei, eds. 1998. Karaoke around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing. London: Routledge. M¯ori Yoshitaka. 1996. ‘‘Japanim¯eshon to Japanaiz¯eshon’’ (Japanimation and Japanization). Yuriika (August), 150–57. Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. 1995. Spaces of Identities: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge. Newitz, Annalee. 1995. ‘‘Magical Girls and Atomic Bomb Sperm: Japanese Animation in America.’’ Film Quarterly 49, no. 1: 2–15. Noda Masaaki. 1990. ‘‘M¯o hitotsu no Nihonbunka ga sekai wo kaeru’’ (Japanese Consumer Culture Changes the World). Voice (July), 56–57. Okada Toshio. 1995. ‘‘Anime bunka wa ch¯o kakkoi’’ (Animation Culture Is Super Cool). Aera 2 (October), 43–44. ¯ Shuppan. ———. 1996. Otakugaku Ny¯umon (Introduction to Otakuology). Tokyo: Ota ———. 1997. T¯odai Otakugaku K¯oza (A Chair of Otakuology at University of Tokyo). Tokyo: K¯odansha. Oliver, Nick, and Barry Wilkinson. 1992. The Japanization of British Industry: New Developments in the 1990s. Oxford: Blackwell. Ono K¯osei. 1998. ‘‘Nihon manga no shint¯o ga umidasu sekai’’ (Cultural Influence of Japanese Comics in the World). In Nihon manga ga sekai de sugoi!, edited by I. Ogawa, 76–91. Tokyo: Tachibana Shuppan. Oshii Mamoru, It¯o Kazunori, and Ueno Toshiya. 1996. ‘‘Eiga to wa jitsu wa anim¯eshon datta’’ (Film Production Is Actually Based on Animation Production). Yuriika (August), 50–81. ¯ Otsuka Eiji. 1993. ‘‘Komikku sekai sehai’’ (Japanese Comics Conquering the World). Sapio (8 July), 10–11. Oxford Dictionary of New Words. 1991. Compiled by S. Tulloch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 1995. ‘‘Globalization as Hybridization.’’ In Global Modernities, edited by Mike Featherstone et al., 45–68. London: Sage. Ritzer, George. 1993. The McDonaldization of Society. London: Sage. Robertson, Roland. 1995. ‘‘Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity.’’ In Global Modernities, edited by Mike Featherstone et al., 25–44. London: Sage. Saito Tamaki. 2000. ‘‘Pikach¯u aruiwa kyaraka sareta seishinbunsekiteki kitai’’ (Pikachu or Characterized Psychoanalytic Matrix). K¯okoku 340 (March/April): 18–22. Sakurai Tetsuo. 2000. ‘‘Sokudo nonakano bunka’’ (Culture in the Speed). Daik¯okai 35: 52–59.

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Schiller, Herbert. 1991. ‘‘Not Yet the Post-imperialist Era.’’ Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8: 13–28. Straubhaar, Joseph. 1991. ‘‘Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity.’’ Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8, no. 1: 39–59. Stronach, Bruce. 1989. ‘‘Japanese Television.’’ In Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Richard Powers and Hidetoshi Kato, 127–65. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Takemura, Mitsuhiro. 1996. Dejitaru Japanesuku (Digital Japanesque). Tokyo: ntt Shuppan. Tomlinson, John. 1991. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter Publishers. ———. 1997. ‘‘Cultural Globalization and Cultural Imperialism.’’ In International Communication and Globalization: A Critical Introduction, edited by Ali Mohammadi, 170–90. London: Sage. Tunstall, Jeremy. 1977. The Media Are American: Anglo-American Media in the World. London: Constable. ———. 1995. ‘‘Are the Media Still American?’’ Media Studies Journal (fall): 7–16. Ueno Toshiya. 1996a. ‘‘Ragutaimu: diasupora to ‘roji’ ’’ (Lag-time: Diasporas and Alleys). Gendai Shis¯o 24, no. 3: 238–59. ¯ ———. 1996b. ‘‘Japanoido Otoman’’ (Japanoid Automan). Yuriika (August), 178–97. Wark, Mackenzie. 1991. ‘‘From Fordism to Sonyism: Perverse Reading of the New World Order.’’ New Formations 15: 43–54. ———. 1994. ‘‘The Video Game as an Emergent Media Form.’’ Media Information Australia 71: 21–30. Waters, Malcolm. 1995. Globalization. London: Routledge. Wee, C. J. W.-L. 1997. ‘‘Buying Japan: Singapore, Japan, and an ‘‘East Asian’’ Modernity.’’ Journal of Pacific Asia 4: 21–46. Williams, Raymond. 1990. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Routledge. Yoshimi Shunya. 1997. ‘‘Amerikanaiz¯eshon to bunka no seijigaku’’ (Americanization and Cultural Politics). In Gendaishakai no Shakaigaku (Sociology of Contemporary Society), edited by S. Inoue et al., 157–231. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

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5 Localizing the Pokémon tv Series for the American Market Hirofumi Katsuno and Je√rey Maret

THE LOST EPISODES

Unlike in Japan, where Pokémon began as a piece of software for the Game Boy, Pokémon was marketed first in the United States as a television show. Nintendo of America and Warner Brothers joined forces to introduce Pokémon to American viewers with a massive ad campaign for the television program. Within a few months millions of American youths were eagerly awaiting the next installment of the Pokémon narrative. The television series prepared the market for the computer game cartridges, trading cards, and branded merchandise that would soon follow. By the spring of 1999 rumors of lost episodes were circulating on the Web: Lost? Could Pokémon episodes have actually been lost in transit to the United States? Had original Japanese tapes somehow been damaged or destroyed? Or were episodes suppressed to appease puritanical or politically correct forces in the United States? Is it true that James of Team Rocket grows breasts in one of these lost segments? Or that Ash and Misty have a romance? Does anyone have a bootlegged copy of the Japanese originals? Or is all of this talk about ‘‘lost episodes’’ just a hoax dreamed up at Warner Brothers to further promote the series? Rumors flew, feeding speculation among avid Pokéfans. This was not the first time that the Pokémon series had generated debate. Long before Pokémon was repackaged for export, the animated series found itself at the center of controversy in Japan. On the afternoon of 16 December 1997, episode 38, ‘‘Denn¯o Senshi Porigon’’ (Electric Soldier Polygon), was broadcast on a national television network in Japan. In the climactic scene Pikachu moves to protect Satoshi (who was renamed Ash in the English ver-

sion) from an incoming missile by preemptively destroying the projectile with a powerful electric jolt. The ensuing explosion was represented on screen by a series of rapidly alternating flashes of blue and red light. This strobe-light blast seems to have induced epileptic seizures in hundreds of young viewers, who, within an hour of the broadcast, turned up in emergency rooms throughout the Japanese archipelago. Once the connection was made between the seizures and the broadcast, the series was temporarily pulled from the air, and the producers o√ered apologies to a startled Japanese public. Ironically, rather than detracting from Pokémon’s popularity, this misadventure seemed to contribute to a growing interest in the fledgling series. Although the scene in ‘‘Denn¯o Senshi Porigon’’ that caused the photooptic seizures could have been easily modified, in an act of contrition, the producers decided to ban the episode entirely—this episode was never rebroadcast in Japan or elsewhere and has not been released on vhs or dvd. Once back on the air, the Pokémon series quickly regained and increased its popularity in Japan. By early 1998, 4Kids Entertainment was contracted by Nintendo of America to translate and adapt the popular series for an English-speaking audience. In the process of translating and localizing the Pokémon tv series for broadcast, three episodes (episode 18, ‘‘Ao Puruko no K¯ujitsu’’; episode 35, ‘‘Mini Ryu no Densetsu’’; and episode 38, ‘‘Denn¯o Senshi Porigon’’) were left out. When die-hard Pokéfans outside Japan discovered that portions of the original narrative were being withheld, they flocked to online chatrooms dedicated to the series, where they complained bitterly about censorship and debated various forms of protest. This fan revolt culminated in ‘‘The Lost Episodes Campaign,’’ which inundated 4Kids and the Kids wb with e-mails, faxes, and phone calls. The producers eventually agreed to broadcast one of the three suppressed episodes, ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu’’ (Holiday in Blue Pulco), which was aired in a few markets. The English-language version of this episode remains di≈cult to obtain, as it was never released on videotape or dvd. Fans in the United States who got hold of videotapes of the Japanese version of the series eventually figured out that in addition to these three lost episodes, portions of many other episodes had been cut or modified. The Pokémon tv series shown in the United States (and everywhere else in the world, outside of Asia) is not the same series that aired in Japan.

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LOCALIZING POKÉMON FOR NORTH AMERICA

‘‘Localization’’ refers to the process of adapting a global product for a specific market. Translation is a major component of this process in the case of a written product, such as a book or magazine, or of a media product such as a movie or television series, where there is a script that must be translated from one language to another. The Pokémon animated series is an audiovisual text consisting of verbal signs transmitted acoustically (dialogue), nonverbal signs transmitted acoustically (background music and sound e√ects), linguistic signs transmitted visually (credits, letters, signage, etc.), and nonverbal signs transmitted visually (facial expressions, etc.) (Delabastita 1990:101–2). Because the term ‘‘translation’’ usually refers only to words, to describe what was done with the Pokémon television series as it moved from Japan to the United States, we use the term ‘‘localization,’’ to indicate the process of modifying all four of these sign systems. In this essay we will attempt to make the usually hidden process of localization visible by analyzing lost and altered episodes of Pokémon. The focus of our chapter is on how the Pokémon series was altered as the text moved from the Japanese anime (animation) genre into the American cartoon space. However, we should note that there were also many aspects of the animated series that remained relatively unchanged. There were numerous elements of the Pokémon narrative that the localizers concluded required minimal translation for the American market. With the global circulation of pop culture and media products, Japan and the United States have come to share many televisual and discursive codes. The process of translating Pokémon for an American audience was influenced not only by sociolinguistic and cultural di√erences between Japan and the United States, but also by political, economic, and historical discourses that circulate within and between Japan and the West. These shared discourses sometimes serve to reinforce racist paradigms that continue to flow within and between Japan and Euro-America. Most scholarship on the globalization of television has examined what happens when American television programs such as Dallas (Ang 1985; Liebes and Katz 1989), The Cosby Show (Jhally and Lewis 1992), or Disney cartoons (Dorfman and Mattelart 1991) travel abroad. The phenomenal popularity of Pokémon provides us with an opportunity to examine issues of globalization and localization from a di√erent point of view, outside of the usual concerns about Americanization. 82

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We limited our analysis to about fifty of the early episodes. In order to detect di√erences between the two series, we set up vcrs and monitors side by side and simultaneously played the Japanese and English versions of an episode. If, on first viewing, we found significant di√erences in the script, the music, or the animation, we watched the episode multiple times. All of the scenes that are discussed in this essay were transcribed into both Japanese and English and viewed in slow motion. Two of the three ‘‘lost episodes’’ were only viewed in Japanese, as there are no English versions.

THE HOLLYWOOD CARTOON SPACE AND THE JAPANESE ANIME TRADITION

The localization process was structured and informed by the contrasting genres of Japanese anime and American cartoons. The localization of the Pokémon tv series necessitated its migration from the genre of Japanese anime into the more narrow American cartoon space. As the result of this migration some elements of the Japanese series were modified or eliminated, and new points of reference, new associations, and sometimes entirely new meanings were imposed on the text. While Japanese anime was originally influenced by Disney and other American animation houses, the contemporary Japanese genre is geared to a broader audience and addresses a more diverse set of themes than its American counterpart. The aesthetic style tends to be more stark and the story lines are often considerably more complex than is typical of Disney animation (see Ledoux et al. 1997; Napier 2001). The genre of Japanese anime includes stories of love, romance, sexuality (including a good deal of sexual fantasy and pornography), historical drama, satire, science fiction, and action-adventure. Some anime even deal with such complex themes as bioethics, nuclear proliferation, and the environmental degradation of the planet. In anime, good and evil are rarely presented in black and white, and heroes often question their motives and values. In contrast to American cartoons, which typically have a narrative structure that reaches a conclusion by the end of the episode, Japanese television anime usually develop a story line that builds in complexity throughout the life of the series. Comics and animation typically have a much broader audience in Japan than is common in the United States (although recent productions by Pixar appear to be

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broadening the U.S. audience). In Japan, parents and children often follow the same animated series. Because music is often thought to transcend the sociolinguistic barriers that are inherent in written and spoken words, one might expect that Pokémon’s musical score and soundtrack would require little alteration. Yet we were surprised to find that the U.S. localizing team significantly altered the Japanese soundtrack. Japanese anime shares many acoustic traditions with dramatic live-action movies. Background music and sound e√ects are integrated with intervals of silence to build dramatic tension. The original Japanese Pokémon series has a dramatic orchestral score that tends to heighten the intensity and seriousness of the story; U.S. cartoons tend to draw on the silent film tradition, which employs music primarily to clarify the action on the screen. For example, in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, violins are used to indicate sadness, and trombones to signal festivity, laughter, or parody. The American adaptation of Pokémon uses music not, as in the Japanese version, to increase dramatic tension, but, in the American cartoon tradition, to cue viewers to the tone of the action on screen. The U.S. soundtrack has a much more pop quality than the Japanese original. Much of the orchestrated music in the original was replaced by a synthesized version of the Japanese score. Intervals of silence were also significantly shortened or eliminated. Di√erences between the (American) cartoon and (Japanese) anime genres had an impact on the transformation of Satoshi into Ash. While Satoshi is the protagonist of the Japanese original, he is not depicted as the sole hero. In the anime tradition, protagonists are not always heroic and villains are rarely purely evil. In some episodes of the Japanese Pokémon series, viewers are invited to sympathize with the plight of Satoshi’s nemesis, Team Rocket. The Japanese narrative focuses less on heroism and more on the complex relationships that develop among characters. The good guy/bad guy dichotomy is more clearly defined in the U.S. version of the series in which Ash is clearly marked as the hero. Ash’s heroism is accentuated by contrast with the self-serving antics of Team Rocket and the narcissism of Ash’s rival, Gary. In the process of localization, the Japanese script was altered consistently in ways that make these characters seem more obnoxious and disagreeable. In the Japanese series the narration at the close of each episode usually focuses on the relationship between Satoshi and Pikachu and their ongoing adventure, in contrast to the narration at the end of the American version, which tends to emphasize Ash’s heroism 84

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and courage. In these ways, the American localizers attempted to negotiate the gap that separates the cartoon and anime traditions.

DE-EXOTICIZING AND SELF-EXOTICIZING JAPAN

In translation studies, there is a long-standing argument between source text– centered and reader-centered approaches (Hatim and Mason 1990; Hermans 1985). The former approach attempts to remain as faithful as possible to the original text. Elements of the source text that are exotic as seen from the point of view of the target language or culture are retained in translation, where they stand out as odd or foreign. The reader must stretch to make sense of these unfamiliar elements. A reader-centered translation, on the other hand, attempts to fully assimilate the source text into the linguistic values and cultural context of the target audience. Here it is the source text, not the reader, that is stretched. This approach tends to produce a smooth, natural-sounding text, but the literal and allegorical meanings of the original are inevitably altered. Steven Mailloux conceptualizes translation as a process that points simultaneously in two directions. Translation is oriented both ‘‘toward a text to be interpreted’’ and toward ‘‘an audience in need of interpretation’’ (Mailloux 1990:121). Translation can lean in either direction, favoring either textual fidelity or audience familiarity. The successful localization of children’s television programs, video games, and toys nearly always follows the reader/audience/consumer-centered approach, and Pokémon is no exception. The team at 4Kids Entertainment sought to adapt the Japanese narrative so that it would be accessible and appealing to American children and unobjectionable to their parents. The localizers also were concerned with how the television narrative would articulate with and support an array of related products including video games, trading cards, toys, books, clothing, and backpacks. Kubo Masakazu, the executive producer of the Japanese Pokémon series, suggests that changes were made so that foreign viewers could experience a more intimate and immediate engagement with the text. ‘‘Things like Japanese writing appearing in the background on signboards or uniquely Japanese family settings are a distraction for American kids, preventing them from really becoming absorbed in the fictional world of the series’’ (Kubo 2000:60). The localizers at 4Kids Entertainment attempted to de-exoticize or deLocalizing Pokémon

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Japanize the Pokémon series for the U.S. audience. Many features of the original that mark it as a distinctly Japanese space were muted, softened, removed, or obscured. This process entailed much more than simply translating the script into natural English. The most obvious and consistent change made to the animation was the removal of Japanese signage and lettering. Overt visual references to Japanese culture, daily life, and diet were often eliminated or deemphasized in the editing process. There are many examples of such changes. For example, in episode 5, ‘‘Nibi Jimu no Tatakai’’ (‘‘Battle at Nibi Gym,’’ renamed ‘‘Showdown in Pewter City’’) after losing a Poké-battle at the Nibi Gym, Satoshi brings his injured and exhausted Pikachu to a Pokémon Center for rejuvenation. At this center Nurse Joy draws Satoshi’s attention to a poster advertising the upcoming ‘‘Regional Pokémon League Championships.’’ The original poster employs a combination of Japanese phonetic script (kana) and ideographs (kanji ). This poster is shown from several di√erent angles in the Japanese version of the episode. Rather than redrawing numerous frames, the American localizers substituted a single closeup of an English-language version of the poster. In a subsequent scene Kasumi and Satoshi are having lunch at a family restaurant. When Satoshi rejects Kasumi’s o√er of assistance in an upcoming Poké-battle, they quarrel. Kasumi storms out of the restaurant, leaving Satoshi to pay for the meal. In the English-language version of this scene, the restaurant bill, which appears on the screen only for about a second, is altered, but not completely redrawn. The Japanese word for bill (okaikei ) printed in kanji is erased from the top of the invoice, and the words ‘‘resutoran nibi’’ (Nibi Restaurant), printed in katakana lettering at the bottom of the invoice, are overwritten with the English words ‘‘Thank you.’’ The yen mark (¥) is also replaced with a dollar sign ($), but oddly the total (1150) is left unaltered. Thus what was about a ten-dollar lunch in the Japanese original is inadvertently transformed into an implausibly expensive meal in the U.S. adaptation. In the final scene of ‘‘Nibi Jimu no Tatakai,’’ Takeshi (Brock) meets his long absent father, Muno (Flint), who left town many years ago in a failed attempt to become a Pokémon trainer. After his father’s departure, Takeshi had to act as a substitute parent for his ten younger siblings, preventing him from pursuing his own goal of competing in the Pokémon League. In the climactic scene of this episode, Muno reveals his true identity to his son, and o√ers to look after the children so Takeshi can go o√ to become a Pokémon master. Eager to begin 86

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his journey, Takeshi rapidly fires o√ instructions to his father about how to take care of his younger siblings. The ensuing dialogue reveals some of the di≈culties confronting the localizers: Japanese Version (our translation) takeshi: Jir¯o likes aka-miso, Sabur¯o always takes shiro-miso, but Imoko will only eat azu-miso. And Gor¯o insists on sumashi-jiru. English Version (released by 4Kids) brock: Suzy always rips her dresses so you better learn how to sew, and Timmy only eats cold spaghetti for breakfast. Tommy likes cornflakes for dinner. It is immediately apparent that the English version is not a literal translation of the Japanese script. Aka-miso, shiro-miso, azu-miso, and sumashi-jiru are all varieties of Japanese soup. If this dialogue were translated literally, many nonJapanese viewers would fail to realize that Brock is talking about his siblings’ food preferences. In contrast, ‘‘cold spaghetti for breakfast’’ and ‘‘cornflakes for dinner’’ are immediately accessible to the American audience. These foods also serve to communicate the chaotic, yet obliging and nurturant nature of Brock’s parenting. Parenting and the meaning of family are themes that are revisited in a later episode, which was released in the United States as ‘‘The Kangaskhan Kid.’’ In this episode a child who was raised in the wild by Pokémon refuses to leave his jungle home and return to his biological family. Rather than be permanently separated from their son, his parents decide to join their son in the jungle. As the episode draws to a close Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi discuss how things are going to work out for the jungle boy and his parents. The English and Japanese versions of their conversation reflect di√ering assumptions about the meaning and composition of a family. Japanese Version (our translation) satoshi: Do you think the Tarzan threesome will be able to act like a real family? takeshi: Don’t worry about that! After all, they truly are parent and child. kasumi: Yet they spent five years apart. Localizing Pokémon

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satoshi: That’s right. [Tar¯o] spent all that time living among the Kangaskhan Pokémon. It’s not going to be so easy. pikachu: ¯ Pi-ka-ch¯u. English Version (released by 4Kids) ash: Do you think Tommy and his parents really can be a family? brock: Ash, they love each other. They’ll be just fine. misty: It might be tough though. After all, they were apart for five years. ash: And it is going to be hard for them even to communicate. pikachu: Pi-ka-chu. In the English script ‘‘love’’ is the determining factor of a ‘‘real family,’’ but in the Japanese original their shared blood is cited as the reason not to worry. This is an example of the U.S. localizers’ being less concerned with fidelity to the original script than to the sociocultural context of the target market. Because of the prevalence of divorce, remarriage, and blended familes, family in the contemporary United States cannot be defined strictly by bloodlines. In anime, characters are often drawn in a mukokuseki (no-nationality) style that is intended to be racially ambiguous (Iwabuchi 1998, and this volume). The creators of Pokémon claim that they did not have the global market in mind when they developed the look and feel of the Pokémon series (Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000). Still, the animated human characters in Pokémon are drawn in the mukokuseki tradition of Japanese anime. The central characters have wavy multicolored hair, light skin, and large round eyes. (Takeshi is the exception with his thinly drawn eyes and slightly darker skin tone.) The racial ambiguity of central characters in the Pokémon narrative may have facilitated the program’s popularity in non-Asian markets. However, there are some supporting characters in Pokémon who are clearly Japanese, including ‘‘Samurai-Boy’’ and ‘‘Aya-Ninja-Warrior.’’ Because these characters are based on stereotypical Japanese characters familiar in the West, they do not present a major obstacle to non-Japanese viewers. In the Pokémon tv show, minor characters that are associated with premodern Japan generally are depicted as exotic, oddball rivals to Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi. The samurai, the ninja, and other traditional characters are marked as belonging to a traditional Japan that is almost as exotic to contemporary Japanese viewers as it is to an American audience. These characters out of premodern Japanese life 88

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are presented as caricatures. For example, Samurai-Boy announces himself to a startled Satoshi by declaring, ‘‘I am Samurai!’’ These examples illustrate some of the complexity in the flow of cultural stereotypes between Japan and the United States. There is no longer a solid line separating the Japanese and American cultural spheres. The global flow of popular culture and media contributes to an expanding complex of shared texts and references. This cultural hybridity can, however, complicate the localization process. The America that finds expression in the original Pokémon tv series has been thoroughly domesticated for Japanese consumption and is no more authentic than the stereotypic image of ‘‘Samurai-Boy.’’ When images, themes, and characters indexed as ‘‘Western’’ in the original Pokémon series are presented to audiences in the United States and Europe, a certain disjunction or dissonance is often produced.

MUTING VIOLENCE

As the Pokémon series was localized for the U.S. market, scenes containing the threat of violence were often altered or eliminated. Violence on children’s television programming has long been a source of controversy and even panic in the United States (see, for example, Fowles 1999). Many of the shows that have come under frequent scrutiny are Japanese productions, such as Power Rangers and Dragon Ball Z. This history no doubt contributed to the manner in which the Pokémon series was edited for the U.S. market. As Christine Yano points out in her chapter in this volume, in Japan the potential negative e√ects of popular media on the moral or psychological development of the nation’s youth have not emerged as a serious issue of public debate. (There has, however, been some concern that the rising popularity of computer games means that Japanese children are spending too much time indoors.) Anime often include adult themes. The plot lines tend to be complex and distinctions between good and evil are often blurred. Virtually any story that might appear in film can also have an incarnation in anime. Thus the anime genre is much broader than that of U.S. cartoons and includes stories that depict conflict, violence, and sexuality. Although Pokémon was aimed at a young audience, it emerged from the anime tradition, so some episodes were bound to include themes not usually found in American cartoons. Localizing Pokémon

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‘‘Mini Ryu no Densetsu’’ (The Legend of Duratini) is one of the episodes that U.S. localizers found problematic and ultimately decided not to release in the North American market. In this episode Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi enter an area called the Safari Zone, where Pokémon can be legally captured only if one uses specially authorized Pokéballs. In order to obtain these special Pokéballs all visitors must register with the park ranger, an older gun-toting, cowboy-like figure named Kaiz¯a, who has a short temper. While explaining the strict rules of the Safari Zone he trains his pistol on Ash’s forehead and warns, ‘‘R¯uru o mamoran toki wa washi no sand¯aboruto ga hi o fuku zo’’ (If you can’t follow these park rules, I’m gonna have to let loose with this here thunderbolt!). Later in the episode Kaiz¯a actually fires his gun at Team Rocket, although they are not seriously hurt. It is clear why this episode was suppressed from the U.S. market. The threat of gun violence, particularly at U.S. schools, makes this parody of a swashbuckling, trigger-happy cowboy problematic. In 1998, the year that the Pokémon series was introduced in the United States, there were four high-profile shootings at U.S. schools in which nine children lost their lives. The massacre at Columbine High School occurred the following spring, just as the Pokémon craze was really gaining speed. In the United States, frequent news accounts of shootings—especially among children at school—make the threat of random gun violence seem all too real. In Japan, where gun laws are very strict and there is relatively little gun violence, the prospect of someone actually threatening a child at gunpoint seems quite remote. To the Japanese audience, Kaiz¯a’s outfit, pistol, and holster all suggest the stereotypic image of a gunslinger in the Wild West. Even the name Kaiz¯a (Kaiser) marks this character as foreign and places him outside of the everyday concerns and routines of Japanese life. While the iconic image of a gunslinger is almost as ubiquitous in Japan as it is in America, the connotations that are associated with the gun-toting cowboy are quite di√erent. In Japan the image of a gunslinger is closely associated with a stereotypic view of a wild and dangerous American West. This icon, which is clearly marked as non-Japanese, plays a role in the Japanese domestic discourse about the hazards inherent in foreign places in contrast to the safety of Japan. This construction works by opposing the stability, predictability, and safety of a supposedly ethnically homogeneous Japan against the dangers of ethnically heterogeneous societies, such as the United States. Higher crime rates and much higher incidents of gun 90

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violence in United States are often cited as evidence of the dangers inherent in heterogeneous societies. The ubiquitous use of the iconic gunslinger in Japanese media serves in part to project real and imagined threats onto a foreign other.

MUTING ROMANCE AND ERASING SEXUALITY

In the opening episode of the Pokémon narrative (‘‘Pikach¯u, kimi ni kimeta!’’), Satoshi starts o√ badly with his future sidekicks, Pikachu and Kasumi. Pikachu, not at all happy about suddenly becoming someone’s Pocket Monster, stubbornly resists his new owner. While Satoshi and Pikachu are arguing their way through the Veridian Forest, they spot an oni-suzume (literally ‘‘devil-sparrow,’’ renamed ‘‘spearow’’ in the English series). Satoshi, using one of his Pokéballs to try to capture this Pocket Monster, manages to enrage the entire flock. The devil-sparrows mount a counterattack, and Satoshi and Pikachu are forced to flee. They manage to escape from the oni-suzume by diving into a lake, but Pikachu is injured in the process. Kasumi, who is fishing on the lake’s shore, plucks our two heroes from the water. The Japanese and English versions of the subsequent scene di√er. A small segment of footage, lasting just a few seconds, was removed from the English version. This seemingly minor alteration substantially changes the tone of this initial meeting between Satoshi and Kasumi. In the original episode when Kasumi realizes Pikachu has been hurt, she gives Satoshi a quick slap across the face as she rebukes him with, ‘‘D¯oshite konna me ni awaseta no yo!’’ (‘‘Why have you put it [your Pikachu] in such peril!’’). Satoshi drops his head as he replies, ‘‘Ore no sei da yo na’’ (‘‘It was my fault’’). Kasumi’s slap and Satoshi’s acceptance of responsibility for Pikachu’s injuries are eliminated from the U.S. version. It is possible that the American localizers deemed this slap too violent for U.S. children’s television. But this explanation is not adequate, as there are many more violent scenes that were not altered in the U.S. release. Rather, it seems that the erasure of the slap was intended to deemphasize the flirtatiousness in the relationship between Kasumi (Misty) and Satoshi (Ash). In classic Hollywood films, when a woman slaps a man, particularly at their initial meeting, this rebu√ often foreshadows a future romantic involvement that typically comes to fruition by the end of the picture (see, e.g., Gone with the Wind, The Localizing Pokémon

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Foreign Correspondent, Some Like It Hot, Indiana Jones). The flirtatious slap has largely disappeared from contemporary Hollywood productions, but this trope was picked up in Japan and is still frequently used in Japanese television dramas. It may be that the U.S. production team felt that the slap was too out of date for the American audience, or they may have wished to avoid the tricky gender politics that are implicit in a slap. The flirtatious slap—common on Japanese television but rarely observed in actual social interactions in Japan—attests to the fact that cinematic codes are frequently borrowed across cultural borders. Even after a cinematic trope has fallen from favor in Hollywood, it may continue circulating and even thrive in other corners of the globe. The lost slap in the opening episode of the Pokémon narrative hints at a possible romantic edge in the relationship between Kasumi and Satoshi that is muted, but not eliminated, in the U.S. adaptation. Sexuality also comes into play in episode 18, ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu’’ (Holiday in Blue Pulco), which was the first episode to be eliminated from the North American adaptation of the Pokémon series. In ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu,’’ Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi stumble into a beach resort town, Ao Puruko (a pun on Acapulco). The episode takes a somewhat surprising turn when the tomboyish Kasumi decides to explore her feminine side. In the opening scene, clad only in a skimpy bikini, Kasumi parades herself before the wide-eyed boys, Satoshi and Takeshi. Holding her hands above her head Kasumi struts onto the beach and announces, ‘‘Nagisa no aidoru, otenba ningy¯o! Kasumi-sama t¯oj¯o’’ (‘‘Behold a beach idol, a tomboy doll! Miss Kasumi is on stage’’). When Satoshi blurts out that he had completely forgotten Kasumi was a girl, she sends him flying into the sea with a jab to his jaw. In the next scene Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi accidentally ram a borrowed yacht into the beach pier. The owner of the yacht runs an oceanfront restaurant that is in financial trouble. In lieu of paying for the damages to the boat, the three protagonists agree to work at this restaurant. The elderly, lecherous restaurateur is transfixed by the scantily clad twelve-year-old Kasumi. While staring at her prepubescent breasts, the ojisan (a derogative term for any male past ¯ hachinen goga tanoshimi ja’’ (‘‘Whoa, [I] his prime) murmurs to himself, ‘‘O, can hardly wait to see [this girl] in about eight years time!’’) Once the three begin working at the restaurant, business picks up, but Team Rocket interferes, diverting customers to another establishment. At this point,

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¯ Professor Okido (Professor Oak in the U.S. series) arrives and suggests that they try raising money by having Kasumi enter a beauty contest on the beach. The competition proves to be fierce. One of the particularly curvaceous contestants turns out to be Kojir¯o (James) of Team Rocket, who is cross-dressing in order to compete. Clad in an over-inflated bodysuit, he easily upstages Kasumi. In fact the spectators go wild when Kojir¯o cradles his/her enormous breasts as he/she taunts Kasumi with, ‘‘J¯unen hayai no yo’’ (‘‘You’re ten years too young’’). The distraught Kasumi retreats to a corner of the stage, crying tears of rage, humiliation, and envy. The focus on Kasumi’s emerging sexual identity and the commodification of her femininity in a beauty contest apparently was deemed too controversial by the U.S. localizers. Eventually Nintendo of America, yielding to pressure from the Lost Episodes Campaign, agreed to a special broadcast of an edited version, which was retitled ‘‘Beauty and the Beach.’’ Prior to the broadcast, Fox Television advertised this installment as the ‘‘legendary lost episode,’’ and Nintendo of America belatedly acknowledged the episode’s existence, although the title was not included on the o≈cial Web site (http://www.pokemon.com). In contemporary American social discourse it is o√ensive to have a twelveyear-old girl (even if she is a cartoon character) compete in a bathing suit contest and then be ridiculed for the size of her prepubescent breasts. This is especially true in the aftermath of the unsolved murder of the aspiring child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey, who was killed in December 1996. The media frenzy following her death, which in the tabloid press has continued for years after the event, focused unprecedented attention on how very young girls are sexualized in Little Miss beauty pageants. Japan has its own version of the Little Miss beauty contest; however, these bish¯ojo (beautiful girl) contests di√er from their American counterpart. These contests, which valorize an infantilized version of sexuality, have developed alongside the phenomenon of the popularity of teenage aidoru kashu (idol singers), who have occupied center stage in contemporary Japanese television culture since the 1980s (cf. Aoyagi 1999). In the cases of both aidoru kashu and bish¯ojo contests, the feminine ideal is an overly sweet, nostalgically innocent sexuality embedded in kawaii bunka—the culture of cuteness (see Allison, this volume). In order to participate in national competition, girls must be between the ages of twelve and eighteen, with winners tending to fall toward the younger

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side of the equation. In the Pokémon narrative Kasumi is twelve years old, so in the Japanese context it is not at all odd that she might want to compete in this sort of beauty pageant. In contemporary Japan there are many popular sh¯ojo manga (comic books for girls) and sh¯ojo magazines in which young females are depicted in the ubiquitous motif of ‘‘cute-sexy.’’ For the male gaze, there are also many hentai (pornographic) anime and manga, which feature images of sexualized sh¯ojo, whose innocent expressions and wide eyes contrast sharply with their incredibly short skirts and prominent breasts. (Nurse Joy and O≈cer Betty in the Pokémon television series are sanitized versions of these highly sexualized figures.) Some commentators have argued that sh¯ojo is such a complex, overdetermined category that it virtually defies translation (Napier 1998:94). It is hardly surprising then that in ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu,’’ the tomboyish Kasumi is somewhat confused about her status as a sh¯ojo. The sh¯ojo ideal itself is deeply conflicted. Cross-dressing is another trope in episode 18 that contributed to the potential for controversy in the United States. Kasumi is upstaged by the bikini-clad Kojir¯o, who is sporting two enormous, inflatable breasts that put Kasumi’s prepubescent figure to shame. While many American children would probably find this scenario very funny, some parents would surely object to the use of a cross-gendered performance in a children’s cartoon. In Japan, cross-dressing and gender bending is common in popular culture and in traditional theater and dance (see Ivy 1995; Robertson 1998; Yano 2002). Kabuki, takarazuka, and taish¯u engeki are theatrical genres that frequently make use of various types of gender bending. The popularity of these carnivaleque cross-gendered performances in Japan may actually attest to the degree to which gender roles are rigidly fixed in everyday social discourse. In any case, Japanese popular culture is certainly rich in cross-gendered performances, which are not perceived to be a dangerous influence on the nation’s youth. In fact, beauty contests that feature cross-dressing are familiar events at Japanese school festivals.

THE MATERNAL BREAST

In ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu,’’ Kasumi experiences both excitement and anxiety over her emerging sexuality. This tension is focused on Kasumi’s prepubescent breasts, which she (and a dirty old man) wishes were more fully developed. In 94

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episode 33, Kasumi’s breasts again emerge as the site of longing, only this time the desire is for nurturance, rather than sex. While episode 34, ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ (episode 33 in the U.S. series), contains scenes that were problematic for the U.S. localizers, the segment was not suppressed in North America; instead, the controversial scenes were reedited. The story line of ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ (‘‘Gar¯ura’s Lullaby’’) is complex. The episode opens with Satoshi, Takeshi, Kasumi, and Pikachu entering the Safari Zone, a jungle reserve for wild Pokémon, protected by Ranger Jenny. Eventually, Team Rocket appear, and illegally capture a herd of gar¯ura (kangashkan, in the English version) Pokémon in a huge net. Just then a small jungle boy swings out of the trees and cuts the herd free with his boomerang. This jungle boy disappears back into the forest as the herd of enraged gar¯ura, which are a sort of cross between a hippopatamus and a kangaroo, literally knocks Team Rocket over the horizon. As the herd disperses, a helicopter descends from the clouds and lands. A tall woman and her short, rather oddlooking husband emerge from the helicopter and explain that they are looking for their son, Tar¯o. Five years ago the father accidentally dropped his infant son from their helicopter into the dense jungle. They have been searching for Tar¯o ever since. Ranger Jenny informs them that the jungle boy, who is known as Tomo, first appeared in the Safari Zone five years ago. The wild gar¯ura raised Tomo, who now avoids all contact with humans. The remainder of the story revolves around Ranger Jenny trying to prevent Team Rocket from poaching any of the gar¯ura and this couple trying to reestablish contact with their lost son. Satoshi and the gang try to help with both projects. This episode explores the meaning of family by probing the anxiety that children and parents experience on being separated. As the titles suggest, the focus of the dramatic tension in the Japanese and English versions is quite distinct. Rather than translate the episode title directly as ‘‘Gar¯ura’s Lullabye,’’ a new title, ‘‘The Kangaskhan Kid,’’ was chosen for the U.S. market. This title is a pun on The Karate Kid and Genghis Khan. The English title also places the narrative focus clearly on the adventures of the kid, who is renamed Tommy and cast in a role reminiscent of Tarzan or the Jungle Boy. The original title ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ (Gar¯ura’s Lullabye) focuses our attention on the sentimental ties that bind infants and caregivers. The jungle boy spent his toddler years in the wild being cared for by his surrogate Pokémon mother. Tar¯o’s adoptive mother would coax him to sleep with a lullabye Localizing Pokémon

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that was very similar to the song that his biological mother used to hum to him before they were separated. The lullabye’s melody symbolizes, and brings into focus, Tar¯o’s conflicted loyalties. This dramatic tension is less clear in the English version as the soundtrack has been altered. The focal point of the original Japanese episode is on the bonds that link, or should link, mother and child. This becomes clear in a scene in which Tar¯o is drawn to neither his real nor his surrogate mothers, but to Kasumi. When Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi encounter Tar¯o in the jungle, the wild child immediately shows an interest in Kasumi. Tar¯o, who has seen no humans for the past five years, stares directly at Kasumi’s breasts. Kasumi says ‘‘Nani-yo?’’ (‘‘What’s up with you?’’) The camera, following Tar¯o’s eyes, zooms in on Kasumi’s breasts, which are concealed only by her short midri√ top. Tar¯o responds by asking ‘‘Oppai nonde ii ka?’’ (‘‘Can I suckle at your breast?’’). Kasumi, who has turned bright red, hits Tar¯o over the head, as she yells, ‘‘D¯oshite s¯o naru no?’’ (‘‘Why would you say such a thing?’’). At this point Tar¯o’s real mother and father appear on the scene. His mother beckons to him saying, ‘‘Tar¯o, papa to mama to issho ni karimash¯o’’ (‘‘Tar¯o, come home with Daddy and Mommy’’). The Jungle Boy does a double-take, looking first at Kasumi, then at his mother, and then back to Kasumi. Ignoring his mother’s call, he once again asks Kasumi, ‘‘Oppai nonde ii ka?’’ This time, it is Tar¯o’s mother who turns crimson. This scene was significantly altered for the American market. The close-up of Kasumi’s breast was removed and instead of asking to nurse, Tommy says to Misty, ‘‘You people or Pokémon?’’ This is an odd question, but one that is conceivable, considering that Tommy has not interacted with humans for many years. When Tommy’s parents appear, rather than repeating his request to suckle at Misty’s breast, Tommy says to Misty, ‘‘They Pokémon or peoples?’’ Tommy’s odd question could be read as hinting at the anxiety that is often expressed about this generation of children not being able to clearly distinguish between the real world and media fantasy. In any case, the rewritten dialogue serves to deflect the viewer’s attention away from Misty’s breasts. Yet Misty’s overreaction to Tommy’s innocent question (remember she hits him over the head) and the blushing on the faces of Misty and Tommy’s mother may strike the careful viewer as somewhat strange. When a film’s dialogue is altered, but the visual footage remains more or less intact, there is a danger that a gap may open up between the words and the images. What do the changes to this episode reveal about the larger social context in 96

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the United States and Japan? While U.S. pop culture certainly does not shy away from the display and commoditization of sexuality, female breasts and sexual innuendo are topics that are usually considered taboo on children’s television. In Japan there is much less moralizing and panic about sexuality and the body, and the children’s television genre is not neatly isolated from other types of programming. The original version of episode 34 includes talk about and a close-up of Kasumi’s breasts. Yet in the Japanese context this segment does not seem to be sexually charged. In Japan, the female breast can represent both sexuality and nurturance. In ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta,’’ the focus is clearly on nursing babies and mothering. The hypersexualization of the breast in the United States tends to erase the fact that breasts are also (or rather, primarily) for suckling babies. When Tommy’s eyes zoom in on Kasumi’s breast, his longing is not for sexual contact, but for mother’s milk. As Anne Allison (1993) argues, when the female anatomy is depicted in Japanese animation it is not necessarily sexualized. The dramatic tension in the original jungle scene is not about sexual desire, but about the bonds that link mother and child. When Tommy chooses Kasumi’s breasts over those of his biological mother, he is rejecting his mother’s maternal claims on his a√ections.

INTERTEXTUAL ASSOCIATIONS AND THE CROSS-CULTURAL CIRCULATION OF MEDIA TEXTS

Every new text makes reference to, and builds on, previous texts. This embeddedness of one text within another is sometimes referered to as intertextuality, to draw attention to the common themes and tropes that reoccur within and across genres. ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ (The Kengaskhan Kid) is an interesting episode in terms of the richness of its intertextual references. Some of these references are available to viewers outside of Japan, but many are specific to the Japanese popular-cultural space. The Tarzan story, which is familiar in Japan, is directly mentioned in the original episode, although the explicit reference was deleted from the English translation of the script. Most Japanese viewers will also recognize the visual and audio clues that link Tar¯o’s parents to the main characters of another classic anime series, Tensai Bakabon (The Genius Idiot). Akatsuka Fujio created Tensai Bakabon in 1967. Akatsuka, whose work is famous for its puns, slapstick humor, and social satire, cites Charlie Chaplin, Localizing Pokémon

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the Three Stooges, and Jerry Lewis as sources of comic inspiration. The father character in Tensai Bakabon is modeled on Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. ‘‘Bakabon’’ is a pun on ‘‘bagabondo,’’ the Japanese transliteration of ‘‘vagabond.’’ It was Chaplin, of course, who transformed the vagabond into a comic icon in his series of silent films that date from 1912. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the technology of the silent picture provided a new medium for popular culture. The Little Tramp character was one of the very first icons of this emerging global popular culture, and when Akatsuka created Tensai Bakabon a half-century later, the character continued to be extremely popular. Almost three decades later, Tensai Bakabon was in turn parodied in this episode of Pokémon. Such intertextual referentiality o√ers the pleasure of recognition to viewers who can trace the textual allusions. ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ is clearly a spoof on Tensai Bakabon. At one point the jungle boy’s father tries to get the wild child’s attention by baring his chest and proclaiming, ‘‘Tar¯o, remember your father.’’ Of course, Tar¯o is attracted to the breasts of a female (Kasumi), not to his father’s. And it was Tar¯o’s father who dropped him out of the helicopter, which led to his growing up in the jungle. Such incomprehensible and irresponsible behavior is typical of the father in ‘‘The Genius Idiot.’’ In the original Tensai Bakabon series the father wraps up each topsy-turvy episode with the phrase ‘‘Kore de ii no da’’ (‘‘This will do just fine!’’). In ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta,’’ Tar¯o’s father ends the episode with virtually the same phrase, ‘‘Kore de ii no desu.’’ About two years after ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ was released in Japan, the Chaplin-inspired parody traveled back to the West as ‘‘The Kengaskhan Kid.’’ This just begins to hint at the complex processes of citation that are at play in the global flows of media texts and cultural icons. Characters and motifs are quoted, borrowed, parodied, recast, and reinterpreted to such an extent that the original source often becomes opaque. As Julia Kristeva argues in her essay introducing the concept of intertexuality, ‘‘Every text is constructed as a mosaic of citations, every text is an absorption and transformation of other texts’’ (Kristeva 1969:146). This is perhaps especially true of popular texts, which are often intended to be consumed and discarded, for they function as ephemeral agents in the social circulation of meaning and pleasure (Fiske 1989:123). Few U.S. viewers could have been aware of the intertextual linkages between ‘‘The Kengaskhan Kid’’ and the Japanese anime series Tensai Bakabon, yet echoes of Chaplin’s comic sense can be recognized in the episode. Interestingly, 98

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the father character, who looks a bit like the Little Tramp, is one of the few characters in the American version of the series who speaks in a British accent (though Chaplin, who was English, was, of course, famous for his roles in silent films). The Bakabon/Little Tramp character is familiar in both Japan and the West. But Pokémon’s American localizers frequently had to cope with references that could only have meaning for those familiar with the Japanese mediascape. In these cases, the localizers had to either ignore the reference or find a substitute. For example, in episode 29 (28 in the U.S. series) Satoshi and Pikachu encounter a Pokémon called Sawamur¯a, who specializes in a kick attack, and another Pokémon with a powerful punch, named Ebiwar¯a. The names of these Pokémon are both puns on well-known Japanese kickboxers from the 1970s, Sawamura Tadashi and Ebihara Hiroyuki. In order to preserve the spirit of the pun, the localizers renamed the two Pokémon ‘‘Hitmonlee’’ (a reference to Bruce Lee) and ‘‘Hitmonchan’’ (for Jackie Chan). This testifies to the localizers’ keen sense of nuance. Few Japanese or American children are likely to catch the connection between these Pokémon and Japanese kickboxers and earlier-generation film stars from Hong Kong. Yet the producers still inserted such references, perhaps for the benefit of older viewers, including the children’s parents. The skillful use of obscure intertextual associations and double meanings in a children’s media text can draw a more diverse audience into the narrative and encourage dialogue between children and their caregivers, which in turn may make it less likely that parents will take an oppositional position toward further consumption. Intertextual associations are embedded within and extend out beyond the borders of a text. The authors or producers of a text can never be entirely sure whether a particular reference will be recognized by a specific audience. A text will also elicit associations that the authors did not consciously intend. Intertextuality, existing in the space between inscription and reception, requires a collaborative act of meaning making between text and reader. With the global flow of texts, images, commodities, and information, intertextual associations are no longer confined within a particular sociolinguistic or cultural system. As popular texts circulate and are articulated with one another in novel ways, the potential for varied intertextual linkages is complicated by space (geographic and cultural distance) and time (as texts do not reach all audiences simultaneously). Localizing Pokémon

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SHARED IMPERIALIST DISCOURSE

In the above mentioned examples and in many other Pokémon episodes, scenes containing violence and/or sexuality often occur in settings marked as wild, alien, or third world. Satoshi encounters the short-tempered, trigger-happy park ranger Kaiz¯a in the Safari Zone. The beauty contest is held in the tropical Ao Puruko (Blue Pulco). Kasumi is wandering in the depths of the jungle when she meets Tar¯o, the wild child, whose infantile desires are immediately directed toward her breasts. The U.S. localizers removed some of the violence and sexuality from these episodes, yet the impression of a wild, primitive, or alien third world space still lingers. In the English version of ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu,’’ the name of the town where the beauty contest is held is changed to Porta Vista, but the name and setting still convey the impression of a Latin American resort. ‘‘Gar¯ura no Komori Uta’’ makes intertextual references to the Tarzan story and other wildchild narratives. In the U.S. adaptation, Tarzan is not mentioned by name, but in the original Japanese script Tar¯o says directly, ‘‘I—Tarzan. My mommy— Kangaskhan.’’ In both the Japanese and English versions of this episode, the jungle boy communicates in a sort of caveman-speak. Like the original Tarzan, Tar¯o is positioned midway between animal and human, between the primitive and the civilized. A special Christmas episode, ‘‘R¯ujura no kurisumasu’’ (R¯ujura’s Christmas, retitled ‘‘Holiday Hi-Jynx’’ for American viewers), draws more explicitly on colonialist discourse and racist paradigms that circulate in Japan and the United States. The episode opens with Satoshi, Takeshi, and Kasumi walking along a beach where they discover R¯ujura, ‘‘the human shaped Pokémon.’’ R¯ujura is a very odd-looking Pocket Monster. She is heavy set, with large breasts, and a pitch-black face that has an emotionless, almost zombie-like expression. R¯ujura wears a skirt and has large round pupil-less eyes, very long white-blond hair, and oversized pink lips. The name R¯ujura was derived from ‘‘rouge’’ (r¯uju in Japanese), which is also the color of her enormous lips. R¯ujura cannot speak, but she possesses ‘‘psychic power’’ and is able to communicate with Satoshi and the gang through a ‘‘mind link.’’ It turns out that R¯ujura is one of Santa’s helpers. When they discovered R¯ujura, she was standing idly on the beach holding a red boot. Apparently, while she was polishing Santa’s boots, the ice at the North Pole suddenly broke and she was set adrift. 100

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Eventually R¯ujura was marooned on a tropical beach very far from her polar home. Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi decide to help R¯ujura get back to the North Pole. Musashi and Kojir¯o (Team Rocket) mistakenly believe that R¯ujura is Santa Claus. They plan to capture R¯ujura and steal all of this year’s Christmas presents. When Satoshi and company arrive at the pole they are trapped by Team Rocket. The whole group proceeds to Santa’s workshop, where they discover dozens of R¯ujuras working for the real Santa. Musashi and Kojir¯o tie up Santa Claus and put all of the Christmas presents in their submarine. Just as they are about to steal away, Santa has his R¯ujuras use their psychic power to create a ‘‘psy-wave’’ that destroys Team Rocket’s submarine (after all the presents have been safely extracted, of course). The R¯ujura are a crude caricature of dark-skinned, primitive natives. In this holiday episode, the loyal native helpers use their physical labor and their black magic for the benefit of a white-skinned Santa Claus. Other pocket monsters may battle for their trainers, but rarely are they put to work on a production line. R¯ujura’s psychic powers hint at voodoo rituals and black magic. The English name for this Pokémon, Jynx, is an obvious reference to the word ‘‘jinx.’’ Jynx’s wild white-blond hair mimics a hairstyle that is often associated with witch doctors. In the Japanese original her special attack is called ‘‘akuma no kisu’’ (devil kiss). This attack is renamed ‘‘the lovely kiss’’ in the American release. The human-shaped Pokémon is the only Pocket Monster with a kiss attack. The kiss puts the recipient to sleep and renders them unable to resist, warning perhaps of the dangers that await those who engage in cross-racial sexual contact and evoking an old colonialist discourse that links primitiveness and wanton sexuality. This special holiday episode, moreover, unintentionally alludes to some of the most brutal chapters of colonial history. R¯ujura is discovered on an isolated beach and returned home to her white master’s workshop. Although these R¯ujuras work at the North Pole, their tropical attire suggests that they have been taken away from their natal homes. In ‘‘R¯ujura no kurisumasu,’’ the identical, zombie-like R¯ujuras all go busily about their task of creating surplus goods for others’ consumption and enjoyment. As an institution, slavery attempts to deny the individuality and autonomy of a particular worker by representing all slaves as part of one indistinguishable horde. While it is unlikely that the creators of the Pokémon series purposely set out Localizing Pokémon

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to allegorize slavery, stereotypic images of Africans are quite common in Japanese media and advertisement (Creighton 1997; Russell 1996). R¯ujura has a number of features that are reminiscent of the controversial Dakko-chan doll, the Japanese version of Little Black Sambo (Chibikuro Sanbo). These characters are based on a crude caricature of peoples of African descent, with their wide eyes, large lips, and jet-black faces, usually sporting comic expressions. In Japanese history derogatory references to dark-skinned peoples from Africa and East India began appearing as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In feudal Japan, dark-skinned foreigners were often depicted as subhuman. Japanese equated the relationship between dark-skinned slaves and their white masters with that between domestic outcastes (eta/hinin) and themselves (Russell 1996:20). Western racist discourses were articulated with Japan’s own indigenous racist paradigms, which were reinforced by the traditional color symbolism in Japan. This discourse of symbolic colors hinges upon a purity/impurity dichotomy, with white as a positive aesthetic valuation in contrast to black. Japan’s increased interaction with the West after the Meiji Restoration accentuated the derogatory posture toward dark-skinned people in Japan. The American discourse on race, communicated to Japan through American popular culture and more directly by the racism toward African American servicemen visible to the Japanese during the occupation period, has had a strong influence on representations of blacks in Japanese popular media. Even seemingly harmless representations of Africa in Japan tend to reflect the bias of Western colonialism. For example, in some of the animated work by Tezuka Osamu (‘‘Japan’s Walt Disney’’), Africa and its inhabitants are depicted along lines that mirror earlier Western representations of the ‘‘dark’’ continent. The Tarzan films are a well-known example of this imaginary landscape (Russell 1996:25). Few Japanese have had much face-to-face interaction with people of African descent. Japanese continue to encounter the black other primarily through the stereotypical imagery that is widely available in popular films and texts (Creighton 1997:222). Consequently, these images have come to prevail as the dominant codes in Japanese popular culture. There is often little awareness in Japan of the inherent racism in many of these stereotypes. As John Russell argues, what Japan borrowed from the West was not only stereotypic images of blacks, but also the racist paradigms that ‘‘debase, dehumanize, eroticize, and peripheralize 102

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the Black Other, who at once serves as a symbolic counterpoint to modernity, rationalism, and civility’’ (Russell 1996:37). These colonialist paradigms underlie the imagery that was invoked to create the R¯ujura character in Pokémon, a character that in turn was exported back to the West when the episode was localized for Western and overseas markets. The fact that this episode was released in the West with very few changes poses a conundrum for those of us trying to understand processes of localization. Was this a mere oversight? Why was so little thought given to the reception that Jynx might meet from African Americans? In fact, some African American viewers were angered by the racist discourse that is clearly present in the character (see Yano, this volume). Jynx’s appearance in the Euro-American version of the Pokémon series testifies to the resilience of racist discourses that continue to circulate under global capitalism.

CONCLUSION

The American localization of Pokémon was both facilitated and complicated by the cultural hybridity inherent in the mediascapes of our increasingly interconnected world. The Japanese and American cultural spaces are no longer entirely distinct or autonomous. A media product such as Pokémon has been able to achieve massive popularity in Japan, America, and other markets in part due to the artful localizing e√orts of its American localizers and in part because these markets are already articulated at various levels. ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the West’’ do not encounter each other as isolated units that are mutually incomprehensible. No matter how imperfect, there is a long running, ongoing dialogue between these cultural spheres. Viewers in Japan, the United States, and the rest of the world increasingly share aesthetic traditions, cinematic codes, frames of reference, and intertextual associations. While localizers attempt to remake a text or commodity for a specific audience, some readers/consumers are able to partially circumvent or subvert this e√ort by interacting directly with the original text. As the Lost Episodes Campaign demonstrates, fans can circulate information about a commodity with little concern for national borders, cultural boundaries, or niche markets. Before the Pokémon series was broadcast outside of Japan, fans were sending the tapes abroad, and English episode guides were appearing on the Web. Fan sites provided unauthorized translations of narration, songs, and dialogue. Other Localizing Pokémon

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sites featured pirated video clips from the original series, including clips from the episodes that would never be broadcast in the United States. The U.S. localizers attempted to limit the release of Pokémon episodes, but fan Web sites provided an avenue for grassroots advocacy that eventually influenced the o≈cial release. The authors, producers, marketers, and localizers of the Pokémon series had power, but not exclusive control over the global circulation of the product. Many Pokémon fan Web sites provide translations of scripts that are quite literal or source text–centered. The authors of these sites assume an actively engaged reader, who has (or will acquire) a good deal of specialized knowledge about Pokémon and Japan. In contrast, the o≈cial translation of the series rendered by 4Kids Entertainment is very viewer-friendly. The o≈cial localizers altered the original series in order to provide easy access to the text for an imagined Euro-American audience who did not need to be familiar with Japan or the anime genre. Many scholars of translation theory and cultural studies have been quite critical of this sort of reader-centric translation. Lawrence Venuti (1995), for instance, criticizes such translations as ethnocentric and even racist. He argues that translators must try to combat the anglophone cultural hegemony in global publishing by producing translations that follow the ‘‘logic of foreignization,’’ and are thereby faithful to the source text. Venuti’s point is that the translation and reception of cultural products reflect and reinforce unequal power relations between the source and target cultures. Yet we wonder if source text–centered translation necessarily provides a clear solution to this dilemma. The Pokémon series underwent a relatively aggressive anglophone-centric process of localization, yet even in this translation the series retains a certain Japanese aesthetic and cultural odor. Perhaps this is partly because, no matter how aggressive the translation, Pokémon is embedded in the anime genre, which resists easy translation into the constraints of the American cartoon. The series unfolds in a fantasy space that presents a Japanese vision of cultural hybridity between the East and the West. This makes it very di≈cult to sort out the Japanese and Western perspectives in the series. Is the ‘‘Samurai-Boy’’ to be read as American-inspired bastardization of the samurai persona or as an ironic self-exoticization of a Japanese cultural icon? Questions of power in an East-West culture war are not clear cut. In the field of animation, Japan has emerged as a core country whose influence is beginning to impact the look and content of Hollywood releases. In such 104

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films as The Matrix, for example, thematic and aesthetic choices were certainly influenced by Japanese animation and video games. The competitive nature of the relationship between Hollywood and the Japanese animation industry is highlighted in an episode from the Pokémon tv series originally entitled ‘‘Ny¯asu no a-i-u-e-o,’’ which was released in the United States as ‘‘Go West Young Meowth.’’ In the episode, Satoshi, Kasumi, Takeshi, Pikachu, and Hanako (Satoshi’s mother) are invited to the premiere of a Pokémon movie in ‘‘Horiwuddo’’ (Hollywood). However, upon arriving in the United States they discover that the real Horiwuddo looks very di√erent from their glamorous expectations. In fact, Horiwuddo has virtually become a ghost town. Japanese Version (our translation) kasumi: Is this really the Hollywood that we have so admired? This cannot be! takeshi: Well, actually this may be the reality. satoshi: How could that be? takeshi: Making movies costs an awful lot of money. The recent economic downturn has made it di≈cult to continue making films. In fact, this year only one movie was able to enter the Binnu Film Festival. director: Yes, and this is the film that I’ve thrown my whole life into and risked everything on—The Pokémon Movie! As this is the only film playing at the Binnu Film Festival, it is sure to take the prize! English Version (released by 4Kids) misty: Is this where the premiere is? I don’t believe it. What a dump. brock: They usually go to one of those big beautiful theaters downtown for the premieres of all the new blockbusters. misty: This block looks pretty busted to me. brock: Now let’s see, according to this map the theater should be right around here. ash: Hmm. This must be the place. director: That’s right, film fans. This is the place where motion picture history is about to be made. Get ready for the gala world premiere of Cleavon Schpielbunk’s Pokémon in Love. Does the Japanese narrative refer to the past or future? Is it pointing to the period when Hollywood was going through a rough time, due to economic Localizing Pokémon

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stagnation and the rise of television culture, or to a future, when Hollywood will be in decline due to the rise of Japanese animation and computer graphics? As we now know, the first Pokémon movie was a megahit in both the U.S. and global markets. In fact, Pokémon took over the Hollywood landmark Mann’s Chinese theater for its premiere. The recent global success of Japanese animation poses a potential challenge to Hollywood’s global domination of the entertainment industry. And yet even here America maintains its core status as the primary localizer and global distributor of ‘‘foreign’’ films and multimedia products. We might say that rather than declining, as suggested in the Pokémon episode, the Hollywoodification of entertainment media has entered a new stage, a phase characterized not only by production but also by the localization and global marketing of cultural goods whose origin lies well beyond the borders of Hollywood. WORKS CITED

Allison, Anne. 1993. A Male Gaze in Japanese Children’s Cartoons, or, Are Naked Female Bodies Always Sexual? Durham, N.C.: Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University. Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Routledge. Aoyagi, Hiroshi. 1999. ‘‘Islands of Eight Million Smiles: Pop-idol Performance and the Field of Symbolic Production.’’ Ph.D. diss. University of British Columbia. Creighton, Millie. 1998. ‘‘Soto Others and Uchi Others: Imaging Racial Diversity, Imagining Homogeneous Japan.’’ In Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, edited by Michael Weiner, 211–38. London: Routledge. Delabastita, Dirk. 1990. ‘‘Translation and the Mass Media.’’ In Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 97–109. London: Pinter Publishers. Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. 1991. How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. Translated by David Kunzle. New York: International General. Fiske, John. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Fowles, Jib. 1999. The Case for Television Violence. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. Hatim, Basil, and Ian Mason. 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman. Hermans, Theo. 1985. ‘‘Translation Studies and a New Paradigm.’’ In The Manipulation of Literature, edited by Theo Hermans, 7–15. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 1998. ‘‘Marketing ‘Japan’: Japanese Cultural Presence under a Global Gaze.’’ Japanese Studies (Japanese Studies Association of Australia) 18, no. 2: 165–80.

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Jhally, Sut, and Justin Lewis, eds. 1992. Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1969. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Translated by A. Jardine, T. A. Gora, and L. S. Roudiez. Edited by L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Kubo Masakazu. 2000. ‘‘Why Pokémon Was Successful in America.’’ Japan Echo 27, no. 2 (April): 59–62. Translated and abridged from ‘‘Pokemon wa naze beikoku de seik¯o shita ka,’’ Ronza (February 2000): 78–86. Ledoux, Trish, Doug Ranney, and Fred Patten, eds. 1997. The Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Film Directory and Resource Guide. Issaquah, Wash.: Tiger Mountain Press. Liebes, Tamar, and Elihu Katz. 1989. The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. New York: Oxford University Press. Mailloux, Steven. 1990. ‘‘Interpretation.’’ In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by F. L. T. McLaughlin, 121–34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Napier, Susan. 1998. ‘‘Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the Young Female in Japanese Popular Culture.’’ In The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by Dolores P. Martinez, 91–109. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001. Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Robertson, Jennifer Ellen. 1998. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Russell, John. 1996. ‘‘Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture.’’ In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by John Whittier Treat, 17–40. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge. Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpretation as Interaction. London: Longman. Yano, Christine. 2002. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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6 Panic Attacks: Anti-Pokémon Voices in Global Markets Christine R. Yano

Using a Web browser such as Google and typing in ‘‘anti Pokémon’’ nets some 65,000 English-language citations (as of 5 May 2003). Most of these sites carry highly critical anti-Pokémon articles from the United States and Canada, but they also report a groundswell of critique from more distant parts of the world: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, New Zealand, and others. Moral panic pervades much of this critique. Pokémon is variously seen as the devil, evil incarnate, a manipulator of vulnerable minds, and/or an instigator of violence and crime. Schools ban it, religious organizations prohibit it, parents gnash their teeth over it. If one goes through the same search process using a Japanese Web browser (Google and Yahoo), aside from articles on the epileptic seizure incident of December 1997, known in Japan as the ‘‘Pokémon Shock Incident,’’ one finds only a single dissenting voice.∞ Even taking into account the possibilities of lower percentage and numbers of users in Japan as opposed to, for example, the United States, as well as the di√ering ways in which the Web may be used in both countries, the overwhelming disparity in numbers suggests a radically di√erent approach to children’s culture and consumerism. This chapter examines the tide of criticism that quickly surrounded the Pokémon phenomenon globally—that is, seemingly everywhere but Japan— analyzing the nature of the critique, as well as what these voices advocate by implication.≤ As Mary Douglas suggests, examining public discourse on public risk becomes a self-reflexive ‘‘lens for sharpening the focus on the social organization itself ’’ (1986:92). The social organizations I address in this essay are multiple—that is, the various global publics of Pokémon. My contention is that the critiques surrounding Pokémon reveal far more about how these publics are conceptualized through their policing or nonpolicing than about Pokémon

itself. My aim, therefore, is to address the various Pokémon lenses through which a sense of risk develops; in Kenneth Thompson’s words, ‘‘mapping the discourses which the mass media use to construct a view of the events which gives rise to a sense of increasing risk and possibly moral panics’’ (1998:74). I ask, who and what do these critiques police and to what purpose? The sources that I survey here range from the print literature of magazines and newspapers to the electronic texts of individual and organization Web sites. These date from the beginning of Pokémon’s leap to the American market in September 1998 to the summer of 2001, when I conducted my Web-based survey. What is important for our purposes here is that these critiques form what the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Mugging Group (1976:77) has called a mediabased ‘‘signification spiral,’’ an escalating discourse of danger, risk, and ultimately, panic. The pioneering work of Stanley Cohen (1972), writing about the sense of moral panic in media coverage of youth disturbances in 1960s Britain, looms large here. Through his analysis, Cohen developed a processual model of deviancy amplification leading to a sense of panic as follows: (1) initial problem; (2) initial solution; (3) societal reaction; (4) operation of control culture, in particular with the creation of stereotypes; (5) increased deviance and polarization; and (6) confirmation of stereotypes. Within the context of Pokémon critiques, most of the accounts I analyze run the gamut of this cycle, from early media reports (societal reaction) to later ones (confirmation of stereotypes). According to Thompson, ‘‘Events are more likely to be perceived as fundamental threats and to give rise to moral panics if the society, or some important part of it, is in crisis or experiencing disturbing changes giving rise to stress’’ (1998:8). One of the goals of this essay, then, is to identify the nature of the crisis by which many global societies perceive themselves, and the ways critique of Pokémon becomes a deflected means by which that sense of crisis finds expression. It’s not so much that Pokémon acts as a scapegoat for society’s ills, but that the critical discourse surrounding Pokémon globally becomes a means by which di√erent societies may discuss themselves as at risk, as vulnerable to threats both externally and internally. Talk of Pokémon points directly to the vulnerabilities of global consumerist citizenship. While the bulk of this essay focuses on international, non-Asian critique, I begin with Japan, Pokémon’s country of origin. The nearly silent acceptance of the marketing of Pokémon in Japan provides stunning contrast to the Anti-Pokémon Voices

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vociferous, multipronged anti-Pokémon critique in Euro-America, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. I ask, therefore, how childhood, consumerism, and even religion may be construed di√erently in Japan (and perhaps other parts of consumerist Asia), such that critique of this nature is nearly absent. In this way, critique and noncritique become important comparative elements in an examination of global children’s culture such as Pokémon.

POKÉMON IN JAPAN: MUTED CRITIQUE

Pokémon was launched in Japan, a nation that o√ers its domestic manufacturers a consumerist environment with few hindrances. It remains for further research to determine whether this unchecked consumerism (capitalism) may be considered Japanese or part of a more generally Asian approach to markets, goods, and individual lives.≥ According to John Clammer, ‘‘What distinguishes contemporary Japan is . . . the fact that it is an intensely capitalist society: one saturated with consumption as the primary way of life. . . . Japan is arguably the most developed . . . [society of consumption] anywhere in the world’’ (2000:210–11).∂ Consumption in Japan is not perfunctory or despairing, but celebratory and exuberant, even well into the 1990s and 2000s after the bursting of the economic bubble. As Joseph Tobin points out, consumption is intertwined to such a degree with highly regarded social practices of exchange that it justifies one-hundred-dollar melons, not so much as fetish commodities, but as tokens redeemed in a vibrant social network (1992:21). One must consume in order to fulfill one’s obligations as a societal person, both as giver and receiver of goods. Consumption, then, becomes the lubricant of social life, rather than its nemesis. Locating consumption in social obligation, however, misses the fact that it is also a source of pleasure; in Japanese terms, a form of asobi (play). The homo ludens of which Johan Huizinga writes (1950) finds a fitting home in Japan, where to be human is to play—including activities such as drinking, singing, and shopping. Another reason for the exuberant consumerism found in Japan, at least in its twentieth- and twenty-first-century forms, lies in its linkage with modernity. Yoshimi Shun’ya (2000) discusses the impact of the long-standing intertwined concepts of ‘‘America,’’ modernity, and consumption on Japanese private lives from the 1920s on. One buys one’s way to modernity, picking and choosing

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among a plethora of goods, while embracing consumption as the given modus operandus. Consumption, in fact, became a governmental program in the 1920s under a program of seikatsu kaizen (daily life reform) by which ‘‘cultural living’’ was to be achieved through stocking one’s home with the physical accoutrements of modern, rational life (Harootunian 2000:15). The notion that one could improve oneself—from individual to family to region to nation— through consumption gave sanction to buying goods. To buy was to be a good, moral, modern citizen. Then, as now, the adversarial separation of producer from consumer interests, which is taken as an assumption of the Frankfurt-school type of critique, finds little resonance in Japan. Instead, more often, the two interests are taken as one, dovetailing in fads, ‘‘booms,’’ and consumer frenzy. In the aftermath of a spate of violent crimes involving children in Japan in the late 1980s and 1990s, Japanese children’s lives have come under increasing scrutiny by media, educators, and the general public. The most frequent targets of blame have been the educational system, which has accordingly been subject to numerous reforms; the family (most frequently the mother, but also sometimes the father), as being negligent, overindulgent, and/or otherwise dysfunctional; and bullying by other children. Movies and tv have been scrutinized, but less so than in the United States, where violence in children’s media is heavily criticized. According to Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro (1996), media criticism in general in Japan tends to come from within the industry, whose interest lies in promoting and supporting its continued success, rather than taking any kind of oppositional stance. The very notion of childhood also contributes to the muting or lack of critique against Pokémon in Japan. As social scientists have long pointed out, in Japan there is less separation of childhood practices from adult ones than in Euro-America. For example, Chen Shing-Jen compares the Euro-American emphasis on the contrast between children and adults with the Japanese emphasis on the continuity between the two (1996:125). In Japan, adults and children share foods, baths, beds, and media. What is considered acceptable adult practice—such as buying, spending, or trading—is not necessarily considered unsuitable for children. In contrast with the consumerist critique of the global anti-Pokémon literature, one finds much greater acceptance of the processes of capitalism firmly ensconced within a child’s world. Indeed, according to Millie Creighton, far from shielding children from consumerism, marketers

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and many parents in Japan actively work to socialize a child for consummate consumership with infant, toddler, childhood, and teen buying clubs at department stores (1994:39). Unlike the critical chorus of voices in Euro-America, then, which decry not only consumerism, but in particular hyperconsuming children, both market organizations and many individuals welcome consumerism as a fact of life, for children as well as adults. Another factor in Pokémon’s uncritical acceptance in Japan is its foundation in kawaii (cute) culture (Allison, this volume), for which there has been a seemingly insatiable public demand in Japan since the late 1960s and 1970s. As Mark Schilling writes, ‘‘Japan . . . is the Country of Cute’’ (1997:221). In 1992, the youth-oriented young women’s magazine crea dubbed kawaii ‘‘the most widely used, widely loved, habitual word in modern living Japanese’’ (crea, November 1992, 58, quoted in Kinsella 1995:220–21). Yoshimi analyzes the kawaii phenomenon in Japan as a ‘‘cutification’’ of the external world, in e√ect shutting ‘‘out problematic reality from one’s perception’’ (2000:217). Furthermore, with the successful exportation of goods from companies that specialize in cute products, such as Sanrio, Japan takes its place globally as a purveyor of cute. Given this domestic high regard and its importance in global markets, cuteness in Japan occupies a nearly unassailable position.∑ One of the most vociferous critiques against Pokémon in other parts of the world has been organized religion, specifically Christianity and Islam. In Japan, however, Buddhism and Shinto tend to take a far less moralizing stance. Religion in Japan tends to be more pragmatic than didactic, with a keen eye to the worldly benefits that accrue religious practices. In fact, as Ian Reader and George Tanabe point out, materialism and spirituality are often common bedfellows in what they dub ‘‘material spirituality,’’ which may also include a dose of morality for good measure. For example, a talisman sold at a Zen training center meant to increase one’s wealth includes an explanatory card under the heading ‘‘the way to accumulate money,’’ with instructives on leading an ethical life (Reader and Tanabe 1998:119). The primary use of the talisman is practical, while the addendum to it gives moral instruction. This and other customs in Japan suggest a position by which religion acts as an enabler, facilitating the smooth flow of daily life, more than a monitor strictly censoring and directing its activities. The confluence of consumerism, media, children, cuteness, and religion

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paves the way for unbridled Pokémon fever in Japan, virtually unfettered by critique. It is not as if Japanese consumers are duped any more or less than consumers elsewhere; in fact, just the opposite may be true. Rather, oppositional, moralizing critique is not part of public life.

POKÉMON AS A MONSTROUS OBSESSION

In contrast to Pokémon’s uncontroversial reception in Japan stands the harsh critique Pokémon has received globally, a critique that depicts Pokémon as a mysterious, sinister force taking over children. Pokémon is nothing short of ‘‘Pokémania,’’ a phenomenon that graced the cover of Time magazine and garnered fourteen pages of print (Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:80–93) as well as the attention of USA Weekend (2000:10–11). The Time magazine article begins, ‘‘Monsters make for disquieting playmates. No matter how toylike and frivolous they may appear, monsters are unnatural and, in the end, deal in unresolved fear. But monsters also have a way with children. Consider the suspicious charms of the Pokémon creatures’’ (quoted in Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:81). The article reports that the Pokémon world is not only populated by monsters, albeit pocket-sized, but is itself a fad of frighteningly monstrous proportions. Pokémon is a ‘‘monster out of control’’ (Jones 1999:5), an addiction, and an obsession. One mother in New Zealand compares Pokémon to drugs: ‘‘You give them their first hit and they want more’’ (quoted in Jones 1999:5). Another article bemoans, ‘‘When usually well-behaved children start compromising what they know to be right and wrong, start behaving in horrible ways—arguing and fighting—then you know you’re dealing with an obsession’’ (Lancashire n.d.). It is this obsessive quality of children’s relationship with Pokémon that has adults worried. Asks one critic: Could it [Pokémon] be a gateway to more dangerous obsessions? David Walsh, a child psychologist and founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, thinks it’s possible. ‘‘The technology behind most video games,’’ he explains, ‘‘is based on a psychological principle called ‘operant conditioning’—essentially stimulus-response-reward. Research has shown that operant conditioning is a powerful shaper and influencer of behavior,’’ says Walsh. ‘‘The obsession [with Pokémon] is not about violence; it’s about how engrossing the game becomes.’’ (Quoted in Orecklin 1999:42) Anti-Pokémon Voices

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This suggests that Pokémon establishes a pattern of absorption whose technological enhancement (like video games) makes individuals less able to resist. The Pokémon pattern of absorption can subsequently lead, like a stepping stone, to other more dangerous obsessions. Pokémon’s sweep across entire continents startled and stymied critics for its speed, size, and thoroughness, engulfing children of both genders and a range of ages. Pokémon is a fad of proportions heretofore unseen. Toy-industry analyst Sean McGowan says, ‘‘In the history of the toy industry, there has never been a hit so global, so multimedia, so rapid, so long-lasting as Pokémon’’ (quoted in Newsweek 1999:72). Rachel Mealey, an Australian media critic, calls Pokémon ‘‘the latest global craze to follow the Power Rangers, Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the Pokémon craze is on another scale altogether. . . . The key to the big bucks is [that] the Pokémon concept spans continents, age groups, gender and media’’ (Mealey 1999). Even merchants are startled: The latest fad is a bit incredible, even to those in the trading card business. . . . ‘‘I’ve been in business 7 1⁄2 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,’’ says Mark Welch, owner of the Comic Cubicle in Williamsburg [Virginia]. Fifty people call him every day asking about Pokémon cards. A shipment of several hundred cards disappears in minutes. ‘‘I’ve got five distributors, and I’ve said, ‘Send me all the Pokémon you have.’ It’s not enough.’’ (Quoted in Straszheim 1999) Critics emphasize Pokémon’s mysterious, special appeal for children—an appeal not always understood by adults. ‘‘The Pokémon craze can seem impenetrable to those—adults, for instance—who are not conversant with its intricate fantasy world. Even those who are promoting the phenomenon, and reaping the astonishing rewards, are a little stunned by how deftly it has attached itself to the hearts of millions of American children, especially boys aged 5 to 12’’ (Lyman 1999). What is important to note is the alarmist imagery of this critique: the parasitic Pokémon attaching itself leech-like to the vulnerable hearts of children. One principal of an elementary school talks as if Pokémon were some kind of exotic ritual: ‘‘Many kids don’t actually play with the cards anyway—they just line them up and stare. They just kind of sit there and look at them, and talk about their various characteristics’’ (quoted in Straszheim

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1999). Such obsessive, ritualized behavior—at least from an adult’s perspective —warrants concern, alarm, and ultimately panic.

POKÉMON AS GLOBAL CONSUMERISM

The Pokémon panic is built on a moral order fearful of capitalism in both its productive and consumptive dimensions. Many critics, from school principals to child psychologists and parents, adopt a Frankfurt-school approach, alleging that consumers are helpless dupes of a cunning, manipulative culture industry (cf. Horkheimer and Adorno 1993). In this view, the cards are all stacked in favor of the industry, which outmaneuvers consumers because of its size, scope, power, resources, imagination, speed, technology, and multiplicity of weapons. One critic writes: The Pokémon mania supports a financial conglomerate that knows how to feed the frenzy. The television series is free, but it drives the multi-billion dollar business. It also inspires the obsessive new games that disrupt schools and families by giving the children –a seductive vision: to become Pokémon masters –a tempting promise: supernatural power –a new objective: keep collecting Pokémon –an urgent command: ‘‘gotta catch them all.’’ (Kjos n.d.) This critique bestows little agency to the consumer; instead all power is given to the Pokémon producer, who ‘‘inspires’’ and ‘‘disrupts.’’ The indignation of anti-Pokémon critics arises in particular because consumers are primarily children, described in this and other critiques as particularly passive victims, defenseless against multibillion-dollar conglomerates. The 1 November 1999 cover of The New Yorker, for example, depicts a grinning Pikachu hauling away, two-fisted, a garbage bag overflowing with dollar bills, as pint-sized Halloween trick-or-treaters with near-empty sacks stare in bewilderment. Pokémon/Pikachu, in other words, runs laughing all the way to the bank, leaving stupefied children in its wake. One parent complains, ‘‘Now, I know many may feel my feelings are going overboard, thinking this is no di√erent than the marble or hockey card craze. But the designers of these [Pokémon]

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cards are smart. They’ve made these things to be super-dooper ‘addictive,’ more so than the other crazes. They have intentionally designed this craze to last longer . . . in e√ect making more money’’ (Canadian Parents Message Board 1999). Another mother writes to an advice column: ‘‘Dear Vicki: How do other parents feel about this [Pokémon] craze? Signed—Poke-Mama.’’ Vickie responds, ‘‘Dear Poke-mama: . . . Don’t fall for it, girlfriend! We moms have to join forces against such blatant kiddie rip-o√s. . . . By the way, did you know that Pokémon is short for Pocket Monsters? Cute, but I can’t help thinking it really stands for all discretionary Pocket Money’’ (Lovine 1999:E-1). Other critics echo parents’ concerns: ‘‘It is precisely this commerce-driven aspect of Pokémon that may be the most troubling. As kiddie crazes have become bigger and bigger business delivered in ever more sophisticated packages, the message remains loud and clear: consume. ‘Even the Pokémon slogan ‘‘Gotta catch ’em all,’’ . . . is devoted to getting kids to consume more and more. You need money to keep up,’ . . . [a child] therapist says’’ (Maurstad 1999). Parents are sometimes joined by (older) children in their attacks on Pokémon. One eighth-grade ex-Pokémon consumer who calls himself Evexand, the creator of his own anti-Pokémon Web site (http://members.xoom.com/xoom/ pukemon/index.htm), explains, ‘‘At first, I sort of liked Pokémon but then I thought about it and decided to create the [anti-Pokémon Web] page. . . . I consider Pokémon to be some sort of scam to take all your money, with all their marketing stu√ ’’ (quoted in Lyman 1999). In fact, ‘‘Evexand’’ joins one of the most vociferous batches of voices decrying Pokémon—other children, typically male and at the older edge of fandom (see Samuel Tobin, this volume). Titles of anti-Pokémon Web sites created by older children include Anti Pokémon Land; Death to Pikachu Website; Pokémon Is for Faggots!; Pokémon Sucks; Pokémon Slashers; The Pokémon Deathtrap [picture of Pikachu with an overlay of a target, as through a gun’s sights]; and Fans League against Pokémon—Nuke the Bastards. One site depicts ‘‘Andy,’’ a bespectacled boy approximately ten years old, in T-shirt and shorts, smiling, and slaying Pikachu, dressed as a devil with horns and triton. The text reads, ‘‘This is our founder, Andy. Andy takes the responsibility of hurting and killing Pokémon very personally’’ (http://poke sniper.tripod.com/ourfounder.html). These (older) children take a vested interest in distancing themselves from other (younger) consumers of Pokémon, even as they themselves acknowledge their own previous fandom. Girls become critics, too: ‘‘Tara Knoll, 11, of South Riding, who is described . . . as a former 116

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‘Pokémon freak’ says she has seen the financial light. She refuses to use her babysitting money on ‘a piece of cardboard with an animal on it’ ’’ (Shapira 2000:C1). Whether they see it as a ‘‘scam’’ or ‘‘rip-o√,’’ both old and young individual critics take a populist adversarial stance against big business. The problem with Pokémon, according to its critics, is not only that it pits child consumers against adult producers, but also children against other children, as they buy, barter, trade, and sometimes steal cards: [The] financial dimension is what school administrators and psychologists say distinguishes the Pokémon craze from earlier kid frenzies over marbles, yo-yos or even Beanie Babies. ‘‘The thing with the Pokémon cards is that kids are really aware of their value,’’ said Robert Butterworth, a Los Angelesbased child psychologist whose son was until recently a devoted ‘‘pack rat,’’ as Pokémon card aficionados are called. Recess at his son’s school ‘‘turned into a little flea market. . . . They had their calculators out. It really became a buy-and-sell bazaar.’’ (Quoted in Healy 1999:A-27) According to Butterworth, children are to be shielded from such adult concerns and activities as monetary value, profit, and collecting. Calculators are meant for esoteric practice in classrooms, not exoteric practices of the playgroundturned-marketplace. Another critic writes, ‘‘The ease with which they [Pokémon fans] slip into cunning and thuggery can stun a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer. Grownups aren’t ready for their little innocents to be so precociously cutthroat’’ (Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:83). Children, according to these critics, should occupy a preserve of innocence untainted by capitalism. Yet, what di√erentiates Pokémon entrepreneurialism from that of sidewalk lemonade stands? Why is one considered alarming, and the other charming? It’s not moneymaking per se, but the scope of it, as well as its tie to large corporations and to popular culture. There is also the element of pitting children against children, the more knowledgeable against the less so, older against younger. Children engaging in the business of buying and selling causes concern not only for the precocity of the activity but also for its duplicity. Pokémon raises concern primarily because it is more successful at what it does than previous fads. One newspaper article suggests that children are more defenseless than ever before because the culture industries have gotten better at what they do, infiltrating children’s minds to uncover what will sell, thus changing the nature of childhood. Ruth Zanker, a researcher in children’s media and Anti-Pokémon Voices

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academic coordinator of the New Zealand Broadcasting School, argues: ‘‘A lot of people haven’t caught up with the change in the drivers of childhood culture. . . . Marketers are [increasingly] having conversations with children to find out what presses their buttons. . . . The best research on children’s culture at the moment isn’t being done in the universities, it’s being done by places like Nickelodeon, Disney, Hasbro and Coca-Cola’’ (quoted in Philp 1999:28). Pokémon raises the specter of a capitalist dream and a cultural critics’ nightmare: the consummate consumer child, born and bred to buy: ‘‘Pokémon. The word alone will send better-trained parents scrambling for their wallets. . . . Few parents think about the implications of shelling out, but Pokémon actually helps instill in kids an early and lasting love of brands, the consequences of which can span a lifetime. . . . By adulthood, we’re left to cope with the consequences: drained bank accounts, materialism, superficiality, dangerous spending habits that keep us in debt no matter how aΔuent we become’’ (Ferguson 1999). In other words, Pokémon leapfrogs children into adult patterns of consumption. A related problem with consumption is the class issue. Because Pokémon is acquired through purchases (and trades), the playground can quickly be divided into a hierarchy of the haves and the have-nots (Deacon and McClelland 1999:74). As one elementary school principal put it, ‘‘Because there’s money involved, it’s more than just a distraction. It’s a way of pointing out who has and who doesn’t’’ (quoted in Straszheim 1999). Many critics assert that parents (adults) need to guide children through the seductive maze of consumption. One critic writes: ‘‘Parents must be especially savvy because someone has to be able to distinguish the point where fun turns into fanaticism’’ (Ferguson 1999). ‘‘ ‘Parents . . . need to help their kids make wise choices in an era when fads climax and fade within a year’s time,’ said Karen McNulty, editor of Zillions, a consumer magazine for children. ‘They need to help their children put this all in perspective, to tell them they don’t have to collect things the marketers are trying to get them to collect’ ’’ (quoted in Stockwell 1999:H-5). Adults, then, are positioned as protectors of children against the wiles of capitalism, even if they themselves may follow similar patterns of consumption and connoisseurship. The anticapitalist critique comes from outside Euro-America as well: ‘‘ ‘It causes consumption mania,’ said [chair of the High Board of Radio and Television in Turkey, Nuri] Kaylis, explaining why they issued a ban on Pokémon. ‘This is not only a cartoon. The children want T-shirts and all sorts of toys. The Pokémon 118

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cards they play with are like gambling. When you look at all this together, we decided this is not good for the children’s psychological and physical health’ ’’ (quoted in Moore 2000:A-40). While a television ban takes place at the national level in Turkey on the basis of ‘‘consumption mania,’’ similar bans at the individual school level have been instituted across the United States and parts of Europe. But is Pokémon’s marketing and consumption so di√erent from molding another kind of expert consumer—the collector or the connoisseur? Is the primary critique of the process of collecting or on what is being collected? Is this a di√erence between high and low culture (as that di√erence seems to persist, at least in critique by popular media)? What makes Pokémon di√erent from stamps, coins, butterflies, or even wines? One of the main problems is that adults see little or no intrinsic or extrinsic value in the product. Critics argue that Pokémon does not lead to a better understanding of geography, science, nature, or the world in general; instead, Pokémon presents only a world unto itself, a world valued very little by parents worried about the educational value of their children’s playthings. One might contrast children’s consumption, which apparently needs some kind of external justification, with adult consumption, which needs little such pretext. Pokémon carries little (adult) cultural capital. Anticonsumerist critiques of Pokémon show an ambivalence toward the process of acquiring and collecting, specifically for children: some claim that any kind of acquisition fueled by ‘‘the urge to buy’’ is suspect (Ferguson 1999); others claim that buying specific goods such as Pokémon is worthless. Another problem is that unlike stamps or coins, which may be chanced upon as found objects, there is little hunting or discovery involved in the Pokémon acquisition process. There is nothing that connects Pokémon to past experiences, people, or places, as stamps or coins might. One only needs money and, if one is eager to obtain particular trading cards, luck. Pokémon, therefore, becomes a form of gambling, an illicit activity restricted by laws in most EuroAmerican countries. In fall 1999, a number of lawsuits were filed against Nintendo of America on the grounds that Pokémon trading cards constitute a form of gambling (Halbfinger 1999). In this view, Pokémon is not child’s play. Some anti-Pokémon critics take an antiglobalization stance as well. One article highly critical of Pokémon is entitled ‘‘Gotta Catch ’Em All! While Parents Looked the Other Way, Pokémon Took Over the World’’ (Philp 1999:26). Another article, from New Zealand, suggests that anti-Pokémon sentiment is particularly American: ‘‘Those who condemn Pokémon for promoting guile Anti-Pokémon Voices

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and avarice seem to forget another game, called Monopoly, which didn’t su√er much bad press till McDonald’s got involved. . . . The backlash [against Pokémon], which seems largely confined to the United States, may be no more than the sound of the world’s leading cultural imperialist gagging on a taste of its own medicine’’ (Dominion 1999). From the Middle East comes a multipronged critique: ‘‘Dr. Sari Nasir, a sociology professor at the University of Jordan told The Star: ‘They [Pokémon] are targeted at exploiting kids and using them as a means of consumption. . . . . This issue needs deep and detailed studying along with consistent research because it’s a cultural invasion sweeping our society, but principally because it is linked to exploiting our children’ ’’ (quoted in Sadiq 2001). The article goes on to raise criticism at the individual parental level. One mother complains that Pokémon poses a threat to her child’s Islamic heritage. ‘‘ ‘I can’t imagine how my little son who is only in his first year at school can learn by heart the names of 150 Pokémon toys and characters, and finds di≈culty in rehearsing poetry or two to three verses from the Koran,’ [housewife] Um Osamah said in despair’’ (quoted in Sadiq 2001). According to this critique, Pokémon poses a threat at a cultural level by way of its consumerist obsessiveness.

POKÉMON AS SITE OF DANGER

Critics unfailingly position Pokémon as a site of multiple dangers. For example, the title of a Time article reads: ‘‘Beware of the Pokémania’’ (Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:80). There is physical danger. Several articles mention the infamous Japanese epileptic seizures of 1997. Other articles mention the recall of Pokémon balls by Burger King in December 1999, when at least two young children su√ocated or choked to death. In Turkey, children were reported in two separate incidents to have su√ered injury emulating the feats of Pokémon characters by leaping o√ balconies in apartment buildings, prompting a ban on the television show in December 2000. The physical danger extends to the adult world, too. In Virginia in February 2001, police confiscated pcp-laced Ecstasy pills stamped with the Pikachu character (msnbc 2001a). These media reports contribute to the notion that Pokémon is dangerous by participating in the ‘‘signification spiral.’’ Other critics suggest that Pokémon encourages criminal activity, primarily associated with the trading cards: 120

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‘‘They [Pokémon cards] seem to be the latest craze, and the children are beginning to become obsessed by them,’’ said Gerald Finelli, the principal at Colonial School. Finelli has banned trading between pupils ‘‘because some of our younger kids were getting suckered out of their more valuable cards.’’ . . . Kevin Wolski, a second-grader . . . , doesn’t bring his cards to school anymore because ‘‘the teachers don’t like it and the principal said he’d better not catch us trading.’’ ‘‘Besides,’’ he said, wide-eyed, ‘‘somebody was stealing them!’’ (Fitzgerald 1999:A-21) By the fall of 1999, reports of Pokémon-related crime and violence had proliferated, resulting in schools banning Pokémon cards on the grounds that they incited fights, especially around trading. School bus drivers complained that students were jumping in and out of their seats in their excitement to trade with friends (abc News 1999). But, according to Pokémon’s critics, that’s the least of it. In Tucson, Arizona, an eleven-year-old boy was arrested and charged with armed robbery after allegedly threatening another boy with a knife over Pokémon. In Sarasota, Florida, an eleven-year-old boy agreed to be burned on the arm with a cigarette by a thirty-three-year-old man in exchange for a Pokémon card (Venezia 1999). In Laval, Quebec, a twelve-year-old boy stabbed a fourteen-year-old boy who was trying to recover his younger brother’s stolen box of cards. ‘‘ ‘As far as I know, it’s the first time such a violent event has happened in our school,’ said Saint-Gerard [Elementary School] principal François Ducharme. ‘It’s completely senseless’ ’’ (Deacon and McClelland 1999:74). November 1999 seemed to be a peak month for Pokémon-related crime and violence. Newspapers across the United States reported the arrest of two Los Angeles area boys, ages twelve and thirteen, who allegedly stole over 170 Pokémon cards from their classmates’ backpacks as part of a Pokémon theft ring (see, e.g., Corwin 1999:B-1). In Cleveland, multiple misdeeds occurred when a sixth-grade boy was seriously injured, running headlong into a car while fleeing from a group of students from whom he allegedly had stolen Pokémon cards. According to newspaper accounts, ‘‘instead of helping the fallen child, kids helped themselves to the cards. ‘They were out there picking up the Pokémon cards, while he was lying there knocked out,’ says [school crossing guard Cathy] Mahon’’ (News 5 1999). On New York’s Long Island, a nine-year-old boy stabbed an older classmate in a dispute over Pokémon trading cards (ChuaEoan and Larimer 1999:82). In that same month in Florida, a thirteen-year-old Anti-Pokémon Voices

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was charged with burglarizing a neighbor’s home and stealing over 400 Pokémon cards, a firefighter was accused of shooting at a neighbor in a fight over their children’s cards, and a seventh-grader got expelled for attacking a teacher who took away his cards (Brassfield 1999). Newspaper accounts of these and other Pokémon-related violent acts suggest heated battles—child against child, child against adult, adult against adult—stemming from the trading cards. The crimes include forgery and counterfeiting by both children and adults. In Vancouver, Canada, one student was found to be selling counterfeit cards reproduced on a color photocopier to younger students (Deacon and McClelland 1999:74). In the United States, a six-year-old boy produced and attempted to trade counterfeit cards by downloading images from a Pokémon Web site (Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:82). Other adult counterfeiters operate on a larger scale: As the Pokémon craze continues to soar in popularity, a downside is emerging: counterfeiting. Today, two men are scheduled to appear in Canandaigua City Court after being arrested last week on charges of trying to peddle bogus Pokémon trading cards and other counterfeit merchandise. Earlier this month, more than 10,000 counterfeit products—8,000 of them Pokémon-related—were seized during 29 raids of New York City retailers. ‘‘It’s estimated that more than $17 million worth of counterfeit Pokémon products have been seized nationwide in the past six months,’’ said Beth Llewelyn, public relations manager with Nintendo of America, Inc., maker of the Pokémon video games on which the trading cards are based. (Bracely 1999) Pokémon has even been implicated in sexual crimes. For example, the following item from the Detroit police blotter indicates that the lure of candy of previous generations has transformed into the snare of Pokémon cards: ‘‘Detroit police are investigating a 12-year-old boy who’s accused of molesting two younger boys. The six- and seven-year-old boys, who are brothers, told police that they were at the 12-year-old’s home on Saturday, playing with Pokémon cards. Both of the younger boys told police investigators that the 12-year-old touched them in an inappropriate way’’ (msnbc 2001b). Educators have been particularly aggressive critics. One school principal says, ‘‘When children bring the Pokémon cards into the lunchroom, they often

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spend time looking at the cards instead of eating lunch’’ (quoted in Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:82–83). Another teacher complains, ‘‘ ‘We just sent a letter home today saying Pokémon cards are no longer allowed on campus,’ said Paula Williams, a second-grade teacher in Danville, California. ‘The kids know they’re supposed to be put away when they come in from recess, but they’re often in the middle of a trade, so they don’t come in on time. . . . It drives a teacher crazy’ ’’ (Kjos n.d.). Even when children do sit in classrooms, their minds are on Pokémon. The voices of alarm and frustration from principals and teachers join in chorus: ‘‘ ‘Oh God, oh god. It’s like a pest,’ Marcia Austin, an assistant principal at Parrott Middle School, said’’ (Polkonline, 11 November 1999). ‘‘One Brookfield [Wisconsin] elementary school principal says that the situation is so bad that he fears academic ‘achievement is beginning to suffer.’ . . . [Principal Kirk] Ju√er said that he felt students’ ‘total infatuation’ might keep them from concentrating on schoolwork’’ (Johnson 1999:1). With lunches untouched and children calculating their next trade, Pokémon can be seen as a threat to health and education. Indeed, when the Pokémon movie was released in November 1999, it unleashed a flurry of school absences, prompting o≈cials to announce a ‘‘Pokémon flu’’ (Advertising Age 1999:28). It can also be seen as a threat to households. ‘‘Family, relationships, and responsibilities diminish in the wake of the social and media pressures to master the powers unleashed by the [Pokémon] massive global entertainment industry’’ (Kjos n.d.). Parents and caregivers call out for help on the Canadian Parents Message Board, dedicated on 13 October 1999 to the subject of Pokémon. For example, one babysitter writes: ‘‘I am at the end of my rope with Pokéman [sic] [I] have a two year old that is nuts over it. I am a babysitter for these kids they have driven me to the end of my rope. The two year old cries for Pokéman. Tonite he wouldn’t eat supper because the older ones were playing with Pokéman.’’ What is striking about this story is the youth of the Pokémon fan, a mere toddler. Psychological danger lurks, as well: ‘‘[Child psychiatrist John] Lochridge worries that Pokémon’s creators and marketers deliberately set out to create a fantasy world so compelling that children would quickly become obsessed. ‘What seems to be happening is that the kids are brainwashed,’ he said. ‘They cannot think about anything else, they cannot do their school work. They talk all day long about (Pokémon). . . . And so I think it has kind of taken over their

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minds, in a sense’ ’’ (quoted in Lockridge 1999). The metaphors used to describe the Pokémon phenomenon contrast the powerlessness of its ‘‘victims’’ (e.g., brainwashing) with the domination of its producers. Many parents agree. One mother writes in desperation: My youngest son and daughter are into Pokémon in a big way. It’s driving me nuts. My eldest son, eleven in grade six, is taking it in stride. But my daughter who is eight and in grade three is a di√erent story. Her whole life has been Pokémon this past month or so, despite my e√orts to control it. She eats and breaths [sic] Pokémon from the moment she gets up in the morning till she closes her eyes at night! If she’s not looking at her cards, she’s drawing pictures of them or trying to watch them on tv, or rent the Pokémon video game. During school noon hours and recess all they do is trade, trade, trade. Its [sic] an obsession I think. Another writes on-line: ‘‘I feel I’ve lost the girl she use [sic] to be. When she comes home from school, instead of telling me about her day in class, her teacher and friends, she gives me the latest Pokémon update . . . who’s got what, etc.’’ (Canadian Parents Message Board 1999). This mother, like other critics, paints Pokémon as an obsession that has taken over children’s lives and consumed their thoughts. Pokémon fans are depicted here as children lost to their parents, threatening family values. Most of these dangers point not as much to the content of Pokémon as to the processes of children’s involvement. Some critics, however, point out dangers of content. One female African American critic objects to the racism of the character Jynx, described as overtly constructed from an African American stereotype (see Katsuno and Maret, this volume): I saw a character on the Pokémon tv cartoon that not only stripped the phenomenon of its innocence but stopped me cold. The character Jynx, Pokémon No. 124, has decidedly human features: jet black skin, huge pink lips, gaping eyes, a straight blonde mane and a full figure, complete with cleavage and wiggly hips. Put another way, Jynx resembles an overweight drag queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo, a racist stereotype from a children’s book long ago purged from libraries. . . . Jynx clearly denigrates African-Americans, particularly black women. . . . Even Jynx’s name—a variation on the term ‘jinx,’ which means a bearer of bad luck—has negative 124

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connotations. In addition, the name Jynx suggests a link with witch doctors and voodoo, practices rooted in African religion but often ridiculed by Western culture. (Weatherford 2000:62) Given Japanese awareness of other earlier politicocultural ga√es, such as the popularity of the ‘‘Dakko-chan’’ doll, a plastic figure built upon a racialized African American stereotype (Russell 1996:24), it seems surprising that the creators of Pokémon would allow such an amnesiac slip, especially in its exported products. Weatherford goes on to ask whether or not Jynx will sound a death knell upon Pokémon’s popularity in the African American community. There is even, apparently, danger to computers. In August 2000, a Pikachu computer virus appeared, threatening systems globally: Children everywhere beware—Pikachu is not as cuddly as he seems. The Japanese Pokémon cartoon character has mutated on the Web into a nasty little computer-bug, spreading himself via e-mails like the devastating ‘‘Love Bug’’ did. Virus experts said Thursday the cute yellow rabbit-like creature, a darling of the Pokémon video-game family, had popped up in the United States wrecking pcs that it gets into by wiping out their system files. . . . ‘‘We haven’t seen viruses or worms targeted at children before,’’ said Eric Chien, chief researcher at anti-virus company Symantec’s European laboratory in the Netherlands. ‘‘This is the first one.’’ ‘‘Since it comes as a little Pokémon animation, 10-year-olds are likely to be more interested in double-clicking on it. . . . This worm appears as an e-mail with the title ‘Pikachu Pokémon’ and the English message ‘Pikachu is your friend.’ ’’ (msnbc 2000) Like other alarms raised by Pokémon, this computer virus raises public ire in particular because it threatens the general public specifically by way of those considered most vulnerable—through children.

CRITIQUES FROM ORGANIZED RELIGION

Nowhere is the moral panic voiced louder than from religious communities. This comes in spite of o≈cial approval of Pokémon from no less than the Vatican, as well as the Church of England. In April 2000, Sat2000, the satellite television station run by the Vatican, announced that the Italian Bishops’ Conference concluded that Pokémon was ‘‘morally improving’’ and ‘‘full of invenAnti-Pokémon Voices

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tive imagination,’’ constituting ‘‘a true papal blessing for the latest craze’’ (Owen 2000). A few months later, in June 2000, the Church of England, too, gave its blessing with a Christian interpretation of the Pokémon movie: [Anne] Richards, theology secretary of the church’s Board of Mission, has come to see the . . . movie as a tale of Christian sacrifice and redemption. In the tale of the wicked Mewtwo, who seeks to capture all human beings and to clone Pokémons and set them to fight each other, Richards detects a ‘‘parable about the pointlessness of force and the importance of the love relationship.’’ When Ash is killed trying to stop a fight involving Mewtwo, ‘‘Mewtwo is completely changed by Ash’s sacrifice,’’ Richards says. ‘‘He is redeemed. . . . My own children found obvious Christian parallels with all this. They were impressed by the death and resurrection sequence and the fact that at the heart of it all was love.’’ (U.S. Catholic 2001:5) Other Christian groups’ views on Pokémon, however, are far less charitable. Pouncing on content issues, conservative Christians attack Pokémon as a link to occult practices, and to evil itself. The headline of the 11 February 2000 issue of the tabloid New Zealand Truth and tv Extra declares in bold letters: ‘‘kids’ toy is evil,’’ juxtaposed with a picture of Pikachu. The article reads in part: Captain Thomas Felton, of the Anglican Church Army, says the subliminal messages found in the Japanese cartoons, movies, books and video games is tantamount to ‘‘training children in the occult.’’ ‘‘By watching programmes like this on tv, children are being trained in the occult and other anti-social behaviour. . . . We need to ask ourselves where do we want our children to learn their values and morals from?’’ He says Pokémon . . . promotes nonChristian concepts such as ghosts, psychics and hypnosis. He says it could lead to more dangerous ideas. (Quoted in Gray 2000:4) According to another religious critic, Pokémon incorporates the following antiChristian elements: (1) violence as a source of power; (2) evolution; (3) New Age concepts, such as reincarnation and psychic power; and (4) occultism (Deem n.d.). Critics cite Satanic elements in Pokémon, such as ‘‘inflicting pain through slashing, psychic power, fits of rage, and ‘draining the life force’ out of an opponent’’ (Jackson 2000). In these and other religious critiques, Pokémon is nothing short of an epic struggle with the devil for the souls of children and adults. One minister writes, 126

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I believe there is a battle going on for the minds of our children and grandchildren. In fact, Satan and his diabolical hordes want to corrupt the minds of children and adults as well! One of the problems is that Satan is getting the upper hand because Christians are oblivious to the tactics the adversary is using to pollute the minds of men, women, boys and girls. . . . So, how can we detect these deceptive methods and evil doctrines? How can we protect our children and ourselves? The Bible says, ‘‘Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.’’ . . . Therefore, we must measure Pokémon paraphernalia by the principles of the Bible to determine if it is acceptable. (Brown n.d.) Pokémon, therefore, is guilty until proven innocent. Christian critics also interpret Pokémon as a site of noxious New Age concepts: Besides the Eastern religious overtones, New Age concepts abound in the Pokémon cards. Each Pokémon is a certain ‘‘type,’’ which describes their ‘‘energy.’’ . . . Many of the 150 Pokémons use violence to conquer other Pokémons. . . . Other Pokémons ‘‘evolve’’ through the use of ‘‘stones’’ which are items used to summon powers. . . . Training cards also include those that use ‘‘potion’’ and ‘‘super potion’’ to magically heal your damaged Pokémon figures. Many Pokémon evolve ‘‘naturalistically’’ to become other Pokémons. . . . In essence, the game is teaching a kind of reincarnation. (Deem n.d.) One Christian critic o√ers a means to diagnose a child’s Pokémon addiction and demonic influence by watching for symptoms, which include ‘‘hostility, anger or rage when asked to leave the game,’’ ‘‘sullenness and lack of interest in others,’’ and an ‘‘unhealthy interest in all occult matters’’ (Gray 2000:4). According to another critic, continued participation in Pokémon may lead to psychological addiction, with the game becoming an idol; further malevolent role-playing games; and demonic oppression (Deem n.d.). These dangers help define a Christian ideal: no idolatry or demonism. In February 2000, the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Mexico denounced Pokémon for leading children to violence and sexual perversion: ‘‘ ‘Pokémon is not as innocent as some believe,’ the Mexico City Archdiocese said in its weekly publication Desde La Fe, distributed Monday. ‘Behind the huge merchandising phenomenon one finds, as in many Japanese cartoons, a combination of eleAnti-Pokémon Voices

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ments that incite violence and sexual perversion among children,’ the publication said. ‘This is the tip of an iceberg that could have dramatic consequences’ ’’ (abcnews.com 2000). Over a year later in March 2001, the Mexican church maintained its adversarial stance against Pokémon, as in the following newsclipping: ‘‘Children in Pachuca, Mexico gave Pokémon cards and dolls to their parish priest; he feared characters like Pikachu could lead to devil worship or provoke violence in young collectors’’ (Time 2001:22). Christian critics have no shortage of remedies to ‘‘ward o√ ’’ or ‘‘cure’’ the Pokémon aΔiction. One critic recommends knowledge, prayer, and diversionary activities to keep children from Pokémon: ‘‘If your child has accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I recommend that he be given the facts about Pokémon and what the Bible says about participating in sorcery. A child who is encouraged to pray about his involvement in Pokémon and follows the Holy Spirit will voluntarily give up participation with Pokémon-associated activities. . . . If your child is highly involved with or addicted to Pokémon, I would provide extra support for them and encourage and provide opportunities for them to engage in other, less threatening hobbies/activities’’ (Deem n.d.). A mother recounts a success story in resisting the temptations of Pokémon: ‘‘It seemed to us that these cards had some sort of power,’’ . . . [recounts Seattle mother] DiAnna Brannan. . . . [One] nine-year-[old]-boy had stolen money from his mother’s purse ($7.00) to buy more [Pokémon] cards. When questioned, he confessed and said he had heard the devil urging him to do it. The family quickly gathered in prayer, then saw God’s answer. Both the boy and his little sister burned their cards, warned their friends, and discovered the joy and freedom that only comes from following their Shepherd. (Kjos n.d.) According to this and other religious narratives, Pokémon and goodness cannot coexist. Trading cards, therefore, must be destroyed. One minister says, ‘‘I suggest the best place for Pokémon paraphernalia is in the trash can!’’ (Brown n.d.). Another critic advocates prayer: ‘‘After hearing God’s warning and praying for His wisdom, nine-year-old Alan Brannan decided to throw away all his Pokémon cards. ‘My friend[’s son] did the same,’ said his mother. Her twelveyear-old son had been having nightmares. But after a discussion with his parents about the game and its symbols, he was convinced to burn his cards and return his Gameboy game. That night [he] slept well for the first time in a 128

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month’’ (Kjos n.d.). In these narratives, Pokémon is no less than a demonic element that must be exorcised. The religious o√ense against Pokémon is not solely a Christian one. Interestingly, there are common objections against Pokémon raised by both Christianity and Islam. In March 2001, the Supreme Council for Research in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa (religious verdict) recommending banning Pokémon on the grounds that it encourages gambling, implicates evolutionism within its story line, encourages denouncing of religion, and utilizes the international Zionist symbol, the Star of David (Rubinstein 2001). Three out of four of these allegations are shared by Christian critiques. In reaction to this fatwa, other Islamic countries such as Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia have been considering following suit and joining the ban (Ananova 2001). Prior to this, in December 1999, Jews in the United States objected to the use of a swastika-like imprint in some Pokémon cards, resulting in Nintendo of America abandoning the symbol (Honolulu Advertiser 1999:A11).∏

POKÉMON AS JAPAN

The great majority of articles on Pokémon acknowledge Japan as its site of origin. Many of these mention the infamous seizure-inducing episode in the Japanese television show. One article, for example, uses these seizures to suggest malevolent motives of its Japanese producers and American distributors: You remember Pokémon, or Pocket Monsters, the phenomenally popular Japanese animation series yanked from the air in December after it gave at least 700 people in that country tv-induced seizures? On Thursday, the series goes back on the air in Japan. And, come Sept. 7 [1998], just when American children are putting down their Game Boys to head back to the classroom, the show will flash on to American television, appearing five days a week in about 90 percent of the country, its distributors hope. (Bloch 1998) The author goes on to paint a mysteriously malevolent picture of Pokémon and, by association, Japan, linking violence, technology, media, subcultures, and illness: ‘‘Do parents need to be concerned about Pokémon? Does the visceral Japanese animation called anime, which has found quite a following in American subculture, prompt violence in viewers? And has television and film ever made anyone physically sick before? Join us for a look at art-induced Anti-Pokémon Voices

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epilepsy, flickering light and Japanese animation–and how Pokémon became the flash point for all three topics’’ (Bloch 1998). One article describes Tajiri, the creator of Pokémon, as a particularly Japanese type of social misfit—an otaku (fanatic connoisseur, typically of manga [comic books] and anime [cartoons]; a ‘‘nerd’’). Note the portrait depicting Tajiri as a misfit—bodily, behaviorally, socially: ‘‘Now 34, Tajiri is an unimposing man, his face composed of sharp angles. His hands and lips tremble as he talks in a soft, shy voice. His eyes are bloodshot: dark circles ripple beneath them. He often works for 24 hours straight, then sleeps for 12. Tajiri is the kind of person the Japanese call otaku, those who shut themselves in with video games or comic books or some other kind of ultraspecialization, away from the rest of society’’ (Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:84). The article goes on to discuss some characteristics of the otaku, a list destined to scare anxious parents who will recognize that some of these phrases could be used to describe their own Pokémon-obsessed children. ‘‘ ‘They know the di√erence between the real and virtual worlds, but they would rather be in a virtual world,’ says Etienne Barral, a French journalist who spent years studying otaku. ‘They are always accumulating things. The more they have, the better they feel. Thus the first and central rule of Pokémon: accumulate’ ’’ (quoted in Chua-Eoan and Larimer 1999:84). The implication in this article is that Pokémon, a product of an otaku misfit, embeds within it the core practices of otakuism: antisocial behavior centering upon consumption. Pokémon, therefore, may lead children into an otaku world, one considered strange even in Japan. Many of the more extreme Orientalist, anti-Japanese writings on Pokémon come from right-wing Christian publications. Japan in these views is a pagan country, mired in occultism, mysticism, and martial arts: ‘‘Pokémon . . . was first created in Japan in 1995, where it was highly influenced by Japanese mysticism. Much of its character seems to come from Shinto (the traditional religion of Japan), Buddhism, Hinduism, other religions, and New Age philosophies. The game reflects Japan’s warrior past in its violence, with the object being to conquer other Pokémons through physical force or sorcery’’ (Deem n.d.). This article bundles other non-Christian religions with violence, sorcery, and newage philosophies. Another Christian critic writes: ‘‘I pointed out earlier that Pokémon originated in Japan. What I did not draw to your attention was that a Pokémon Master is a spin o√ of a martial arts master in Japan. Pokémon Masters are the leaders of fighting schools or battling gangs that solve their 130

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problems by beating their opponents. And how do they do this? Their little booklet says, ‘Some attacks cause the Defending Pokémon to be Asleep, Confused, Paralyzed, or Poisoned’ ’’ (Brown n.d.). In other words, not only does Pokémon glorify violence but, rather than fight in a straightforward manner, it utilizes underhanded tricks of battle. According to these critics, these aspects reflect directly upon its country of origin, Japan. Paganism and demonic possession run rife through Pokémon and Japan, according to many right-wing Christian critics. Therefore parents should be alert to this Japanese invasion sneaking in under the cloak of multiculturalism: ‘‘Strange as it may sound to American ears, demonic possession is no longer confined to distant lands [such as Japan]. . . . Children everywhere [in America] are learning the pagan formulas for invoking . . . spirits through multicultural education, popular books, movies, and television. It’s not surprising that deadly explosions of untamed violence suddenly erupt from ‘normal’ teens across our land’’ (Kjos n.d.). These ‘‘Japanese’’ elements—mysticism, occultism, martial arts, demonic possession, even multiculturalism—make Pokémon a formidable competitor in the global marketplace. According to its critics, Japanese marketers scheme to create the consumer frenzy that has made such an impact. One critic writes, ‘‘No wonder children caught up in the Pokémon craze beg for more games and gadgets. The Japanese makers count on it’’ (Kjos n.d.). Pokémon, then, becomes a kind of witchcraft, captivating its followers with irresistible tactics. Some of the criticism expresses competition between the United States and Japan: ‘‘In the modern commerce of a vinylized culture, it’s hard to know for certain whether we tell the Japanese what to do or they tell us. Lately the dialogue has collapsed giddily into a driving, sonic beat and the war whoops of mutant, cartoon samurai. It snuggles up to us with names like Pikachu’’ (Stuever 2000:C1). Other criticism devolves into an antiglobalization, or what one article calls ‘‘globophobia,’’ stance, as in the following: ‘‘Are Americans worried about Japanese cultural imperialism? . . . One hears about ‘American cultural imperialism’ in connection with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, etc. Isn’t America’s current fascination with Pokémon similar?’’ (Dew 2000:51). Another critic writes provocatively: ‘‘It is an irony worth pondering that, a couple of weeks before the World Trade Organisation meets in Seattle, the entire child population of America is enslaved by a Japanese fad’’ (Economist 1999:36). The Anti-Pokémon Voices

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globalization critique coupled with an anti-Japanese stance proves a menacing yellow peril.

CONCLUSION

Let us return to the question that introduced this essay: who and what do these anti-Pokémon critiques police and to what purpose? The critiques fall into predictable slots, decrying Pokémon on grounds of violence, moral degeneracy, and ultraconsumerism. Some of the Euro-American critiques are laden with covert racist messages, depicting Japan and Japanese as variously monstrous, mystical, and unscrupulous, and Pokémon as a consumer-based version of the yellow peril. Other critiques take an antiglobalization stance, embedding Pokémon within global children’s consumer megacultures. Pokémon in this view becomes a Disney-type peril. The voices come from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. On the left, critics attack Pokémon for its excessive consumerism, preying upon young children with multiple marketing strategies epitomized by the slogan, ‘‘Gotta catch [acquire] ’em all!’’ On the right, Christian religious groups attack Pokémon as a promoter of dangerous occultism, evolution, reincarnation, and idolatry. Islamic groups, too, attack Pokémon for its encouragement of gambling, espousal of evolutionism, and use of a hexagon star (interpreted as the international Zionist symbol). But whither Japan in all this? In contrast to the moral panics generated by its product Pokémon globally, Japan focuses on generating the next children’s fad. The consumerism of which Pokémon is (or was) a part is caught up not in risk, but in glory, celebrating the triumph of overseas sales. If Pokémon succeeds beyond Japan’s shores as well as within it, then it becomes proof of Japan’s global ascendancy. That ascendancy becomes proof of the product’s worth. Why question success? Within this cycle, the role of critic is not to question the processes and products of consumption, only to question how that process may be improved. The critic thus becomes an industry handmaiden, rather than its adversary. Indeed, moral panics do arise in Japan, but these tend to center upon institutions such as education and the family. Consumerism and the capitalism of which it is a part remain largely unassailed. The notion of moral panic that encapsulates so much of the criticism outside Japan, by contrast, has profound implications for understanding contem132

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porary global children’s culture and its relationship to its various adult worlds. What these critiques express is Euro-American and other ambivalences toward global (late) capitalism—here fanatic consumerism—even as we adults live, create, and sometimes glorify a world of consumption. Pokémon is nothing more than capitalism running at its smoothest; Pokémania, therefore, is but the success of the capitalist enterprise. The di√erence, of course, is that the buyers in the enterprise are children (or their parents). The panic attacks surrounding Pokémon express the embedding of children as ourselves unchecked. An attack on their consumer desires takes a stab at policing our own. More importantly, anti-Pokémon attacks e√ectively separate them (children) from us (adults), in much the same way that older children’s anti-Pokémon Web sites distance exfans from fans. Children thus become us, as well as not-us. The di√erence between a Pokémon collector and a stamp or wine collector is not necessarily that great. The processes of accumulation—researching facts and values, searching out rare items, purchasing, celebrating the purchase within a knowledgeable circle that a≈rms its value, stockpiling a collection—are shared. To a certain extent, adult criticism of Pokémon collectors lies in what they do, which is considered unchildlike rampant consumerism. Beyond that, however, the critique lies in the objects of their desire. Pokémon, in other words, is so obviously a fad whose peak will pass (as it already has), that its collecting is considered worthless. The act of collecting legitimates itself only as long as what is being collected retains its value. Pokémon, always and already a passing fad, even if of enormous global proportions, encapsulates its own demise and therefore the worthiness (or worthlessness) of its collections and collectors. Monsters—even capitalist-derived ones—must be situated within specific times and places. In other words, ‘‘fantasies are never ideologically ‘innocent’ ’’ (Jackson 1981, quoted in Napier 1996:1). Monsters locate a site of ambivalence: fascination with the dystopic beast; triumph at its utopic demise. They bring to imagination simultaneously chaos and control. The Pokémon monster depicted in these various critiques outside Japan is many-headed: capitalism run amok, the struggle to retain the agency of the individual, intense wrangling to maintain what is considered a preserve of childhood. Critiques of Pokémon only thinly veil our fear of insatiable consumer desire, a fear not shared universally, but which surfaces in various global manifestations. Most of all, it is a fear whose expressions are imbued with a moralizing tone, even a panicked one, suggesting both the limitations and the seductions of global capitalism. Anti-Pokémon Voices

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NOTES

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Brandon Ledward in gathering Web-based Pokémon critiques in English, and Hirofumi Katsuno for his Japanese Web search. 1. The one dissenting voice in Japan found through a Web search provides only a very weak critique, gently suggesting that Pokémon may be misinforming children with incorrect scientific concepts (http://www.asahi.com/paper/edu/news/20000510b.html; accessed 24 May 2001). 2. The Web searches were conducted only in English and Japanese, not in other Asian languages. Therefore, I cannot speak to the presence or absence of critique in other Asian countries. 3. Chua Beng-Huat distinguishes between consumerism in other parts of Asia with that in Japan because of the historical lag of the former compared to the latter, suggesting that the ‘‘roots of the culture of consumerism remained relatively shallow in the region [i.e., Asia], unlike the situation in the developed West or Japan’’ (2000:8). According to Chua, consumerism in Asia has not gone completely without critique or comment. Among the issues relevant to attitudes toward consumerism in Asia are the following: (1) state emphasis on the acquisition of goods as an indicator of improvement in standard of living; (2) class divisions; and (3) generational conflict between those who grew up in an era of scarcity and those living in an era of surplus (8–16). 4. Van Wolferen’s well-known critique of this intense capitalism suggests that Japanese consumerism is no accident; instead, it is the result of deliberate, calculated collusion between government and business (1989:5–8). 5. The concept is not totally unassailable, as the social category of burikko (fake child; woman who acts fawningly like a child, especially to curry favor from men) attests. However, there is far greater acceptance and higher regard given cuteness and cute things by a wider range of ages than one might expect in the United States, for example. Kinsella pinpoints the 1970s, a period of aΔuence (in particular, with the rise of the young adult female consumer) and cultural nationalism in Japan, as the time during which cuteness rose in cultural importance (1995:222). 6. The mark is a manji, a symbol that predated the Nazi swastika by centuries. In Japan it is a completely benign symbol, which can represent a Buddhist temple as well as signify good fortune. But complaints by the Anti-Defamation League in the United States was cause enough for Nintendo of America to halt its use.

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Douglas, Mary. 1986. Risk. London: Routledge. Economist. 1999. ‘‘Pokemania vs. Globophobia.’’ Economist (20 November): 36. Ferguson, Kirby. 1999. ‘‘Ban Pokemon: Read This before You Cave In.’’ http://www.islandedition .com/issues/10–1999ban pokemon.htm [accessed 8 May 2001]. Fitzgerald, Jim. 1999. ‘‘Kids Told to Pocket Their Pokemons.’’ Los Angeles Times, 30 May, A-21. Gray, Madison. 2000. ‘‘Pokemons Put Kids in Danger.’’ New Zealand Truth and tv Extra (11 February): cover, 4. Halbfinger, David. 1999. ‘‘Suit Claims Pokemon Is Lottery, Not Just a Fad.’’ New York Times on the Web (24 September). http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/092499ny-li-pokemon.html [accessed 26 June 2001]. Harootunian, Harry. 2000. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Healy, Melissa. 1999. ‘‘Backlash Builds as Schoolyards Evolve into Pokemon Trading Pits.’’ Los Angeles Times, 16 October, A-27. Honolulu Advertiser. 1999. ‘‘Nintendo Abandons Pokemon Swastika-like Card.’’ Honolulu Advertiser, 3 December, A11. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 1993. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. New York: Continuum. Originally published as Dialektik der Aufklarung (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1969). Huizinga, Johan. 1950. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Jackson, John. 2000. Buying and Selling the Souls of Our Children: A Closer Look at Pokemon. Streams Publication. Adapted on-line at http://landru.myhome.net/cmjhburl/jacksonpoke mon.html [accessed 31 May 2001]. Jackson, Rosemary. 1981. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen and Co. Johnson, Mike. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Prove Powerless against Principals: Disruptions Prompt Some Schools to Ban Popular Trading Cards.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 15 September, 1. Jones, Malcolm. 1999. ‘‘Pokemania!’’ New Zealand Herald, 11–12 December, J-5. Kinsella, Sharon. 1995. ‘‘Cuties in Japan.’’ In Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, edited by Lise Skov and Brian Moeran, 220–54. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kjos, Berit. N.d. ‘‘How Pokemon and Magic Cards A√ect the Minds and Values of Children (The Dangers of Role-Playing Games).’’ Logos Resource Pages. http://logosresourcepages.org/ pokemon-.htm [accessed 31 May 2001]. Lancashire, Steve. N.d. ‘‘Would You Ban Pokemon? Yes.’’ http://www.dfee.gov.uk/teacher/data/ pokemon 10.htm [accessed 8 May 2001]. Lockridge, Rick. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Mania Sweeps United States.’’ CNN.com (14 October). http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9910/4C/t t/pokemon.tt/ [accessed 8 May 2001]. Lovine, Vicki. 1999. ‘‘Girlfriends’ Guide to Family: Of Monstrous Trends and Trading Cards That Consume Our Kids.’’ Los Angeles Times, 8 August, E-1. Lyman, Rick. 1999. ‘‘The Pokemon Craze: A Little Luck, a Lot of Marketing.’’ New York Times on the Web (13 November). http://www.nytimes.com/yr/my/day/news/arts/pokemon.html [accessed 26 June 2001].

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Maurstad, Tom. 1999. ‘‘Today’s Pokemon Craze Goes Where No Smurf Has Ventured Before.’’ Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, 9 November, K3723. Mealey, Rachel. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Craze Blamed for Schoolyard Bad Behavior.’’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation (22 November). http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s67800.htm [accessed 11 May 2001]. Moore, Molly. 2000. ‘‘Turkish Broadcast Board Finds Pokemon Unfit for Children; with Cartoon Blamed for Injuries, tv Network Shutdown Is Ordered.’’ Washington Post, 12 December, A-40. MSNBC. 2000. ‘‘Pikachu Virus Spreading Slowly.’’ MSNBC (24 August). http://www.msnbc.com/ news/450391.asp [accessed 15 May 2001]. ———. 2001a. ‘‘Pokemon Stamp Found on pcp-laced Ecstasy Pills.’’ MSNBC (22 February). http://www.msnbc.com/local/rtroa/m16350.asp [accessed 15 May 2001]. ———. 2001b. ‘‘12-year-old Accused of Molesting Younger Boys.’’ MSNBC (March 21). http://www.ms nbc.com/local/wdiv/a340327.asp [accessed 15 May 2001]. Napier, Susan. 1996. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature. London: Routledge. ———. 2001. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. New York: Palgrave. News5. 1999. ‘‘Boy Hit by Car Because of . . . Pokemon?’’ News5 (Cleveland) (16 November). http://www.newsnet5.com/news/stories/news-19991116–232845.html [accessed 11 May 2001]. Newsweek. 1999. ‘‘Is Pokemon Evil?’’ Newsweek (15 November): 72. Orecklin, Michele. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon: The Cutest Obsession.’’ Time (May 10): 42. Owen, Richard. 2000. ‘‘Vatican Catches Pokemon Fever.’’ Sunday Times (London), 20 April. http://www.sunday-tim/2000/4/20/timfgneur03001.html [accessed 31 May 2001]. Philp, Matt. 1999. ‘‘Gotta Catch ’Em All! While Parents Looked the Other Way, Pokemon Took Over the World.’’ Listener (Auckland, New Zealand) (December 18): 26–28. Polkonline. 1999. ‘‘Hernando Schools Ban Pokemon Trading Cards, Calling Them Too Disruptive.’’ http://www.polkonline.com/stories/111199/sta polemon ban.shtml [accessed 8 May 2001] Reader, Ian, and George Tanabe Jr. 1998. Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Rubinstein, Danny. 2001. [Untitled article]. Ha’aretz (Israel Online) (16 April). http://www .haaretz.co.il. Russell, John. 1996. ‘‘Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture.’’ In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by J. W. Treat, 17–40. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Sadiq, Ilham. 2001. ‘‘Window on Jordan: Pokemon Mania or Cultural Invasion!’’ The Star (Jordan), 25 February). http://star.arabia.com/article/0,5596,56 556,00.html [accessed 11 May 2001]. Schilling, Mark. 1997. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. Tokyo: Weatherhill. Shapira, Ian. 2000. ‘‘From Pokemon to Poky Few? Faster Than You Can Say ‘Harry Potter,’ a Craze Cools O√.’’ Washington Post, 31 July, C-1. Stockwell, Jamie. 1999. ‘‘Taming the Pokemon Craze: The Animated Creatures Are All the Rage, but Parents Should Set Limits.’’ Washington Post, 29 August, H-5. Straszheim, Deborah. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Prohibition.’’ Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), 19 October [accessed 11 May 2001]

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Stuever, Hank. 2000. ‘‘What Would Godzilla Say?: At the Japanese Animation Festival, a Brave New World of Hot Pink and Cool Kids.’’ The Washington Post (14 February), C:1.0E02E3D08B cd550A. Thompson, Kenneth. 1998. Moral Panics. London: Routledge. Time. 2001. ‘‘Here and There.’’ Time (5 March): 22. Tobin, Joseph. 1992. Re-made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. New Haven: Yale University Press. USA Weekend. 2000. ‘‘Pokemania!’’ USA Weekend (7–9 July): cover, and 10–11. U.S. Catholic. 2001. ‘‘Catholic Tastes.’’ U.S. Catholic 66, no. 3 (March): 5. Van Wolferen, Karel. 1989. The Enigma of Japanese Power. New York: Random House. Venezia, Todd. 1999. ‘‘Pokemon Craze Sweeping Kids into Courts.’’ APBnews.com (17 November). http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/1999/1o/17/pokemon1117 01.html [accessed 11 May 2001]. Weatherford, Carole. 2000. ‘‘Pokemon Phenom Harbors Racist Image: Jynx Character Is a Stereotype Comparable to Little Black Sambo.’’ Advertising Age 71 (28 February): 62. Yoshimi Shun’ya. 2000. ‘‘Consuming ‘America’: From Symbol to System.’’ In Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities, edited by Chua Beng-Huat, 202–24. London: Routledge. Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro. 1996. ‘‘Image, Information, Commodity: A Few Speculations on Japanese Televisual Culture.’’ In In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture, edited by Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder, 123–37. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

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III PLACES AND PRACTICES

7 Initiation Rites: A Small Boy in a Poké-World Julian Sefton-Green

MIRROR WORLD

Schools around the world do not take kindly to Pokémon. At its peak of popularity, it was frequently cited as a flash point for playground fights and arguments. Children’s obsessive involvement in its arcane mysteries seem to teachers to be a pointless waste of time. Many schools have actually banned Pokémon—though whether that means proscribing the use of Pokémon objects or the attempted erasure of Pokémon from the imagination is never clear— citing all sorts of reasons: it destroys natural spontaneous play, it is driven by commercial imperatives, and it is compulsive, obsessive, and addictive. However, formal education is only one site of learning, and there are a number of reasons why Pokémon might be considered educational. This is the starting point of my investigation. First of all, the Pokémon story (tv, film, comics, and books) places a high premium on what we might call the knowledge industry. It places the representation of learning and studying at the heart of its narrative drive—to become a Pokémon master. Professors are key characters, and acquiring and manipulating knowledge occupies a significant amount of story time. The general pedagogic address of the tv series with its ‘‘Who’s that Pokémon?’’ question hooking views around advertising breaks, and its homiletic approach, lecturing about caring for and looking after Pokémon, all contribute to what I would call the phenomenon’s educational environment. Many Pokémon artifacts and narratives are highly concerned with the representation of learning, and their subject is often the acquisition of knowledge. However, encouraging children to play with learning as part of their leisure culture may or may not be educational, and

this is my broad research question. In particular I want to reflect on how informal learning, that is, both di√erent ways or styles of learning and di√erent kinds of knowledge bases, may or may not intersect with the dominant kinds of learning found in most Western educational systems. Of course, even describing learning is a complex epistemological challenge. There are a number of ways in which Pokémon itself can best be viewed as the representation of knowledge about a natural world with its laws, physics, cosmology, and biology. At times, watching children find out about evolution, geography, astronomy, history, and physiology seems to be like looking in a faintly distorting mirror. The real world, with its vast bodies of reputable science, is there all right, but the facts are di√erent. As is well known, the visionary creator of the Pokémon universe, Tajiri Satoshi, derived his inspiration from collecting insects, and the mythology of Pokémon, with its collector’s table showing di√erent evolutionary stages of the creatures, seems modeled on the Linnean system of classification. The Pokémon world is, in theory, totally knowable, in the best tradition of positivist science—indeed the central narrative of the tv series as well as the game and the cards is mastery—and again, as a number of feminist scholars have suggested, the gendered nature of this term also reflects a strongly masculine tradition in the history of science (e.g., Walkerdine 1988). For Ash and the children playing the game, achieving their goal of becoming a Pokémon master seems to involve learning everything there is to know about Pokémon. I am suggesting, in e√ect, that Pokémon shadows the forms and status of scientific knowledge in the real world, and therefore playing the game, even enjoying participating in the culture is, to some extent, a question of learning, of becoming proficient, and of using knowledge to succeed. One of the issues here in conceptualizing Pokémon as an educational project is that it begs a number of further questions as to what we might mean by the use of terms like ‘‘learning’’ or, indeed, ‘‘knowledge.’’ Learning is a particularly problematic concept. It needs to be distinguished from an attention to teaching (either formally or informally). It is notoriously di≈cult to trace the actual process of learning and profoundly challenging to prove a chain of events demonstrating a causal relationship between what the learner does (socially or cognitively) and the learning taking place. Furthermore, learning specific practices is often characterized by the learner’s use of a series of preconditional concepts—learning to learn, learning language, and so on—which makes it very

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di≈cult to distill the learning of discrete ideas or skills. For example, I would want to make the case that Pokémon requires children to learn a variety of ‘‘skills’’—however inadequate that word may be—and that these relate both to proficiency in the media and to children’s culture in general. Classic educational theory is split between viewing learning either as a psychological or a social practice, although recent debate has attempted to synthesize explanation of individual cognitive activities with an understanding of how these are mediated by external social structures (cf. Lave and Wenger 1991; Bruner 1996). All in all, at this stage of the discussion I want to make the point that in describing Pokémon in educational terms I am also making the case that we need to investigate some very basic concepts at the same time. Indeed, I want to argue that Pokémon gives an insight into some of the characteristically modern processes of learning children are now experiencing in conjunction, and at times at odds, with formal schooling. The concept of knowledge also needs challenging. On one level it is important not to confuse a notion of information with knowledge—the latter perhaps implying a qualitatively di√erent organization of raw data than the former. Knowledge is already mediated by a level of conceptual understanding. However, like learning, this is not a simple argument. Knowledge can refer to skills, as in the idea of knowing how to do something; or it can be imagined as a form of ‘‘capital,’’ as in the concept of the knowledge industries (Seely Brown and Duguid 2000; oecd 2001). Again, at this stage of the argument I want to suggest that we need to use the term in a tentative fashion, as its role in our understanding of Pokémon also challenges how we conventionally use the term in discussion of children’s learning in school. Additionally, in this context I want to invoke the fashionable concept of the information society, or the knowledgebased economy. The terms allegedly refer to a fundamental shift in the economic structures of contemporary societies, moving away from a reliance on manufacturing industries toward an economy based on the manipulation and control of knowledge (or information) (Castells 2000). I think that Pokémon shares some of the assumptions behind this reconceptualization of economic value and that any discussion of the phenomenon’s educational character needs to address its role in preparing children for participation in the knowledge economy, however pretentious or far-fetched such ideas might appear at this stage of the debate.

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In summary, I wanted to investigate both what and how children might learn when playing Pokémon. The relationship between these two questions raises deeper conceptual questions about the nature of education. I’d suggest that Pokémon’s challenge to schools goes far beyond being a distraction and a cause of playground disputes.

THE SMALL BOY

The research subject for my investigation was my own son, Sam. This chapter, on one level, is the story of Sam, aged six and a half, at Christmas 1999. I do have a concern about my ability to be objective here, and at times I can’t tell whether I’m being over- or underself-critical. Sociological studies aren’t usually personal and the rationale for my approach here is based on two arguments. First, all studies of children’s culture pose a series of methodological challenges. It is very di≈cult to get an understanding of how children make sense to themselves of their toys and games. Studies that rely on observation or on discursive analyses are hampered by the researchers’ distance from their subject matter. For obvious reasons it is problematic to undertake long-term studies in children’s domestic environments. Second, I set out to study a neglected media form: computer games. There have been pitifully few studies of the pleasures or meanings players derive from their game playing. There are a number of reasons for this lack. Game playing can be a long drawn-out process; and although it can be social, game playing is often a profoundly lonely, individual activity. Watching a child interacting with a screen and a control pad can tell us next to nothing. In this essay I o√er an analysis of one small boy’s long-term involvement with a computer game. My account focuses mainly on how my son learned to understand and operate the game and will concentrate on the learning processes involved in this journey. This attention to the Pokémon computer game stands in contrast to the focus on the tv series and the trading cards in the other chapters of this book. I do not claim that what I describe here is universal. We know that the game is not as widespread in some countries as it is in others; Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch report that it is virtually nonexistent in Israel. The study here portrays a middle-class child’s engagement with the Game Boy, a medium that is very popular in many countries.

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A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A POKÉMON FAN

Sam first took an interest in Pokémon when he started watching the tv series, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sky 1 (a channel not universally accessible in the country). This began in the late summer of 1999 when Sam was six years and three months old. As a family we can’t quite recall what sparked this initial interest. Because I did not yet have a research interest in Pokémon, I was not yet keeping notes. We think his mother had been reading the advance publicity about Pokémon’s impact in Japan and the United States prior to its arrival in the United Kingdom. There had been press interest in the coming of the tv series, based on media stories of the phenomenon’s prior success in Japan and the United States, and this launched the series in our household with a certain amount of anticipation. Sam was a keen tv viewer and had good grasp of the schedule, regularly tuning in at set times to watch favorite cartoons. Very quickly it was evident that Sam took a keen interest in the Pokémon tv series. He clearly enjoyed its serial nature (it was transmitted every weekday morning and afternoon), and by September he was asking us to record episodes he might miss. On holiday in August 1999, when we were walking in Scotland, he pretended to play with a hand-held computer, which he called a Dexter, and from which he would pretend to read o√ facts about the surrounding wildlife. I later realized that he was imitating Ash’s use of his Pokédex. During the autumn and in the lead-up to Christmas that year, he become a serious and committed fan. Sam regularly rewatched episodes on video and acquired a cuddly Pikachu toy in October 1999. In the run-up to Christmas he asked for and was assured he would receive a console with either the Blue or Red version of the game. This anticipation seemed to have the e√ect of concentrating his energies on preparing for ownership. He got hold of a free ‘‘periodic table’’ poster from Toys ‘‘R’’ Us listing all the Pokémon and began testing us and himself to try to prove he knew all the Pokémon, their names, and their evolutionary history. (Given what the following year was to hold, this seems, retrospectively, a kind of preparatory activity—like being in training to run a marathon—but this may be an ex post facto explanation.) He saved up pocket money and purchased a set of battle figures that he played with by himself in quite extended sessions of imaginary play (up to twenty minutes). He purchased a set of stickers and put them onto the wall of his bedroom. On a visit to the newsagent in October he saw a Pokémon magazine, which, in the interest of research, I purchased. (I Initiation Rites

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readily concede that my growing interest in his involvement, as a result of having joined the research project, may have encouraged Sam. Not only was I more likely to buy some of the surrounding paraphernalia, but I was also very keen for him to engage in talk with me about Pokémon.) At this stage he did not read fluently to himself, but at a number of times during the day he would pore over the magazine, looking both at the ads for Pokémon merchandise and reading and rereading (sometimes with parental help) the stories or profiles of characters/creatures from the story. He regularly chose to read this magazine to himself in bed after a story, before lights out. One intriguing feature of this interest was how Sam’s enthusiasm was focused inward toward his family life and was restricted to a few media. His close friends (at this stage) were not particularly into Pokémon, but this did not impinge on his pleasure in the phenomenon. He reported how the school had asked children not to bring the trading cards to school, and when I took him to school in the mornings I observed other children playing Pokémon on the playground. However, he did not participate in these activities and was quite content to demonstrate interest within his domestic surroundings. I would speculate that he found his peers among the virtual fans found in the magazine, the kids who sent in drawings and letters. The trading cards were pretty popular in the United Kingdom by this stage, but he was genuinely uninterested in media other than the computer game and the tv show. The Game Boy and Blue version of the game were purchased in time for Christmas, and these purchases were accompanied by an encyclopedic strategy guide to the game. The purchase of these products signaled a furious month of activity when the console seemed to be inseparable from his side. Before the arrival of the console, Sam would traditionally get up by himself and go downstairs to watch tv, but this was replaced by a request each morning to play the game. We monitored the periods he spent on the machine (trying to restrict them, for health reasons, to fifty-minute sessions). All through the Christmas holiday and then during most of the month of January, all Sam’s spare time was spent on the game. He started the game on Christmas Day and clearly had to learn how to work the system at the same time as the intricacies of the game itself. He abandoned his first attempt at the game, having got into a series of cul-de-sacs, but began his second attempt a few days after. Despite (or because of ) errors, he refused to give up this second attempt until he had succeeded. His approach

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was not the most e≈cient way to complete the game. The machine logs time spent on the game, and this attempt took him 98 hours 56 minutes, finishing the game at the end of January. Sam was fairly indi√erent to the tv program at this stage, watching episodes only intermittently. The series by then was repeating itself, and Sam already had an encyclopedic knowledge of plot lines in each episode. He read the guidebook literally to pieces and devoured a couple of other strategy/support magazines and publications. Sessions alternated with intense periods of study, poring over the magazines, rehearsing plots, and remembering cues. He learned all the maps within the Poké-world and the locations of secret keys and potions. Obsessive discussion about how to get his Pokémon to grow levels (evolve) and to have enough strength and/or hit points to defeat the enemy he knew he was going to face began to drive us a little bit crazy at home—there are limits to researching your own family. Toward the end of the game he did get very frustrated with his inability to defeat the Elite 4 (the penultimate challenge) and eventually he sought help. About seventy-five hours into the game, on a visit to the home of family friends who had older children (and Game Boys), Sam asked for assistance. The older boys gave him some advice and also allowed him to hook his Game Boy to one of their machines to swap characters; taking pity on him, they gave him a welldeveloped Golduck (level 60). At that point, Sam essentially saw the game as a personal individual challenge, and because he was not part of a larger community of players, he seemed indi√erent to the social dimension provided by this aspect of the game. Crucially, from his perspective, when he was given the Golduck, he also learned a ‘‘cheat’’: ‘‘You go to Viridian City and talk to this person who tells you how to train Pokémon. Then you go to Cinnabar Island and swim along the right-hand edge. When you find a Missingo, it changes what’s top of your list [of objects carried with you] to more than a hundred; and if it’s rare candy [which enables Pokémon to evolve] you can grow your Pokémon.’’ Once he worked out how to take advantage of this cheat, it transformed his attitude to the game. In late January I got an emulator for my home computer and versions of the Blue, Red, and Yellow games. When he was finished on the Game Boy, he started on the emulator versions. It took 15 hours and 15 minutes to complete the Red version. This dramatic improvement in time shows how

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much unsuccessful (in completion terms) experimentation had taken place the first time around. My main discussion below concerns the details of his first attempt at playing the game. However, Sam’s interest in the phenomenon did not end in January. February and March were spent replaying the Game Boy and studying magazines. Sam eagerly anticipated the release of the first film (due for an Easter 2000 release in the United Kingdom) and purchased a few more battle figures, stickers, and what he called a Pokémon ‘‘Polly-Pocket,’’ a small-world toy, in addition to decorating his bedroom with Pokémon posters. We bought a few of the Scholastic novellas that he enjoyed. Indeed, the first book I ever observed Sam reading to himself was the book of the movie, which he read cover to cover on the Saturday in March (2000) when we bought it. He spent much of his time in this period drawing scenes from either the game, the tv series, or his own adventures and wrote out lists of Pokémon with their powers, and so on. I will talk later about the significance of this entry into formal literacy and its relationship to Pokémon. Later in March we went on a family holiday to the United States, and this triggered a series of developments. When we went away we realized that we would miss the launch of the movie in the United Kingdom, but coincidentally Sam watched it on the flight over to the States. Despite an enormous amount of anticipation, the actual movie itself elicited very little response. He turned down o√ers to rent the video later and was fairly uncommunicative about the film. I interpret this as an indication that, despite the hype, he found it to be a poor film, far less challenging or interesting than either the games or the cards, and so it was just dropped. As a number of cultural commentators have noted, the States o√ers a greater number of merchandising opportunities than the United Kingdom. In the interest of research we remorselessly visited Toys ‘‘R’’ Us on several occasions and visited a supervised trading cards game at one outlet in a Chicago suburb. We also visited a similar event held at a more specialist comics shop in the same city. Sam came home with a lot of goodies, including socks, bed linen, cuddly toys, battle figures, and a Pokédex. He had taken his Game Boy with him and still played the games, but much more perfunctorily. Having become familiar with cheats, he could quickly collect powerful Pokémon to ensure that he always beat adversaries and thereby easily completed the game, which seemed to undermine his pride in his own mastery and to lead to a reduction of pleasure in the game. But as the Game Boy receded in importance to Sam, 148

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something else took its place. Our holiday in the United States had the e√ect of initiating Sam into the Pokémon trading cards. In the States Sam got hold of a version of the game strategy guide for cards, that is, a magazine that listed facts about cards, including their rarity and commercial value. He had shown absolutely no interest in the cards prior to this period, even repeating in slightly appalled tones that other children had come to school with money to buy cards. Repeating his experience with the Game Boy, Sam ‘‘studied’’ this magazine relentlessly, memorizing facts about each card. He began a collection of the cards, and we entered another phase as he began to exert constant and ruthless pressure to buy more and more packs. As I will describe below, his strategy was interestingly unfocused: he was motivated and keen, to be sure, but he was never clear as to his aims in collecting the cards, beyond a dream of total control (i.e., having all of them). Indeed, he justified his decisions to swap cards according to changing criteria: rarity, value in the actual card game (which he expressed no interest in playing), and his interest in certain releases, such as the Rocket series. The second significant change in emphasis during this period was that when we returned home from our trip he began to swap cards with other children and in particular developed a weekend ritual of poring over his folder of cards with his best friend, James, conducting a series of swaps (often, as I have suggested, for very curious reasons—if indeed there were reasons at all). Family conversations were dominated by endless speculation about what might be in the next packet of cards, what he was going to swap with James, what his collection might be worth, what his best cards were, and so on. He regularly reread all the Scholastic novellas during this phase but showed little interest in the tv series. He took no interest in the Game Boy. This period lasted from April to July 2000. From July on, Sam’s interest really dwindled. He still looked at the Pokémon merchandise in the shops, still went through the motions with James, still occasionally picked up the Game Boy for a half an hour or so, but he left the magazines and the books alone. However, if other children showed an interest, he was more than happy to lecture them on relevant facts and figures. In September he took up watching the cartoon series again on tv as part of his morning routine, but my sense here was that the Pokémon typhoon had been and gone. As a family we have lived through the whirlwind. The question is, what did it leave behind, and how do we account for its progress, its little moves and sideways directions during its visitation? Initiation Rites

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A NOTE ON METHOD

As Henry Jenkins (1992:12–24) argues, studies of the mass audience frequently refer to fans as if all fans were homogenous. In other words, being a fan is presumed to iron out individual di√erences. This is a methodological danger of my account of Sam’s Pokémon year. First of all, it is di≈cult to know if his experience with Pokémon is typical of the experiences of other children. I am confident that the behaviors I have described here are not unique to Sam, but we do not know whether they are representative and, equally importantly, whether similar behaviors carry the same significance for all members of the audience. For example, I have depicted his ‘‘progress’’ through the various Pokémon media in a fairly linear fashion. Is this order typical; is his consumption of one form before moving onto another, representative? Having a father who was studying Pokémon certainly made Sam’s engagement with Pokémon atypical. I must consider in what ways my interest may have biased his involvement (see Kinder 1991 for a maternal reflection on this problem). The discussions I held with him, which from my point of view I used to make sense of his understanding of his game playing, may or may not have had a pedagogic e√ect. The fact that his father is a scholar may (or may not) have made Sam more determined to ‘‘study’’ Pokémon and to make heavy use of reference books than would most other children his age. It also should be said that Sam’s understanding of my interest in Pokémon required him to test me frequently about such topics as Pokémon evolutionary biology. More touchingly, he told me that he would share with me everything he knew about Pokémon in the hope that this would help me come first in the research. Perhaps he saw my academic endeavor as a sort of adult version of his and Ash’s quests to become Pokémon masters.

TEACHING AND LEARNING

In classic pedagogic theory, teaching and learning are like a pas de deux: as the teacher teaches, so the learner learns. However, as my brief account of Sam’s year of Pokémon suggests, Sam was less the classic pedagogic subject, being addressed by a teacher, than an autodidact, whose self-initiated learning was supported by a series of intense encounters with the various Pokémon media. This seems to be indicative of a characteristically contemporary, ‘‘di√erent’’ 150

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kind of learning, learning that is in tune with optimistic writings about how the new technologies are transforming children’s lives (e.g., Papert 1993). But I would also point to the residual presence of such ‘‘traditional’’ pedagogies as the time and energy Sam invested in rote learning and in testing and competition, and above all to the value he placed on the instrumental value of knowledge. The presence in Sam’s autodidactic encounters with Pokémon of such traditional pedagogical approaches brings into question some core assumptions of progressive educational thinking. My discussion of the learning processes evident in Sam’s experience of (mainly) the computer game is structured around three main themes: learning how to play the game, questions of play or a√ect, and computer games as a form. Learning How to Play When Sam first picked up his Game Boy he had no idea of how much he had to learn. He had no way of anticipating that he would be required to follow a series of discrete and ‘‘narrow’’ principles if he was to succeed in the game. His first, aborted approach to the game, beginning on Christmas Day, was what I would call ‘‘natural.’’ By this I mean that he appeared to see the game as an extension of the fictional narrative he had followed on tv. To the degree that he initially theorized the game as a computer game—this became a key issue later on—he believed that the best strategy was to proceed as if he were in the midst of the Pokémon world he knew from tv. For example, emulating Ash in the first episode of the tv series, Sam tried to find a Pikachu as quickly as possible to act as his top Pokémon, not realizing that this strategy would not work in the Red or Blue versions of the game. He did not yet grasp that the strategy magazine we had purchased contained a blueprint for successfully beating the game. When he found the game too di≈cult and asked for help, I suggested that he could look at the strategy guide. But it took several weeks before he could really work this out for himself. This was all the more frustrating because he enjoyed looking at the strategy guide but didn’t understand how it could ‘‘teach’’ him what he needed to know. For Sam, part of the challenge of the game was learning how to see it as a discrete rule-bound process in and of itself and not as a natural phenomenon that could be addressed following the logic of the tv series. It may seem inevitable that a child would approach the Pokémon game as an extension of the tv series, but I am actually a bit puzzled as to why he theorized it in this way, Initiation Rites

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given that the game looks and feels nothing like the tv series. Compared to the tv program, the game is to all intents and purposes very ‘‘old-fashioned.’’ It is isometric, two-dimensional, and entirely symbolic, with no attempt to replicate some of the visual sophistication and narrative complexities found in either the tv series or in many other computer games. However, with no experience of computer games, in any format, as a medium, Sam seemed to imagine that playing the game would be like going into the tv series, although whenever we discussed this it was unclear that he understood what he, as the player, was required to do, as opposed to what he, as a trainee Pokémon master, might be expected to accomplish. As a consequence, Sam’s first couple of weeks on the game were uncomfortable for us as a family. Although I had an idea of how to play a computer game, I was not familiar with the format, and at any rate he was loath to take advice from me and, as a researcher, I was ambivalent about being of too much assistance. These periods of relative ‘‘failure’’ need to be considered an important learning experience. It is also important to acknowledge that children who play computer games will have di√erent resources available to them in finding solutions. The availability of knowledgeable peers can be crucial to making it through a game. Sam’s experience also points to the need for periods of repetition and nonprogress, quite out of step with the expected patterns of development found in most manuals on how to teach at school (though not, it should be said, out of step with constructivist theories of language acquisition or of literacy; e.g., Kafai 1995). Once Sam realized the utility of the strategy guide, he became a compulsive reader. This experience provided him with a powerful demonstration of the practical value of print, and how reading words could be combined with other symbol decoding skills to beat the game. This supports the idea that participating in children’s culture requires a broad-based participation in a range of literacies that transcend a narrow reliance on decoding print. Mapping Space As noted above, playing the game for Sam was accompanied by a spate of drawing activities. The motivation behind some of his drawing seemed to be a√ective, a chance to replay and otherwise work through remembered and imagined Pokémon encounters. Others of Sam’s drawings were clearly cognitive, geographical activities. The Pokémon games take place in a fictional world

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whose settings are connected to each other by sea or land or bridges or tunnels, as in the real world. One of the distinctive features of computer games is the way they o√er players the opportunity to act within a virtual space that represents a larger, more complex physical environment than they could encounter in real life (Fuller and Jenkins 1995). Sam had to learn how to read the maps within the strategy guide and to orient himself within the virtual environment of the game. He had to figure out scale and distance as well as direction, skills that he found to be relatively intuitive when acquired in the context of mastering the game. His drawings from this period suggest how maps and schematic drawings in the game coupled with the experience of moving around in the virtual worlds enabled him to represent himself in space using these conventions. Reading Text Sam was learning to read at school during the period he was first engaging with Pokémon. His experience of the game was bound up with a key transitional moment in his literacy development: reading by yourself. There is no doubt that his whole attitude toward the challenge of reading was a√ected by playing the game at this point in his life. In his Pokémon activities he was motivated, focused, and confident about engaging in a task (that is, learning to read) that at school was posed as an abstract, artificial, ‘‘di≈cult’’ challenge. Unlike his school readers, the Pokémon games were not constructed by literacy experts who were careful to restrict vocabulary, introduce words in groups, or to avoid syntactical complexity. And unlike his school curriculum, Pokémon did not ask him to demonstrate his literacy abilities on worksheets or tests. In Sam’s encounter with the printed (and digitized) word in Pokémon, his comprehension of text was directed straight into action: he read instructions, gathered information, and acted. The game itself contains a large amount of text, which must be read carefully, and then there are the surrounding texts (magazines, books, guides, trading cards), all of which are substantially print-based. Unlike more sophisticated computer games, which immerse the player in a virtual world where action, character, and motivation can be intuited from visual cues, the Pokémon games are graphically rudimentary and highly text-based. Yet, within these games, the place of text is not privileged (as it is at school) as an end in itself. Like the ability to make sense of maps and icons, textual literacy within Pokémon is just one skill among others.

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Reading Icons The Pokémon games and strategy guides present a variety of symbol-based visual systems, including not only conventional text, but also icons, abbreviations, lists, maps, and diagrams. The game and guides takes a pluralistic attitude toward these multiple systems of representation. Unlike school, where boundaries are often artificially placed around literacy domains, a game culture such as Pokémon makes no such distinctions. Text, iconography, and pictures in Pokémon tend to work in a supplementary fashion, so one can read di≈cult material in one domain (i.e., text) by taking cues from the others (Meek 1991:115). Sam found the iconographic domain in Pokémon readily accessible; he rarely asked for help in interpreting icons and seemed to know their function straightaway. This, I suggest, is less a feature of icons’ innate communicability than it is of their prevalence in many forms of contemporary children’s culture with which Sam was already familiar. Number Relationships The Pokémon games deal with number quite explicitly, for example, in matching hit points (during battle) or carrying a finite amount of Pokémon with you at any one time or in terms of the codes for all of the hidden and technical machines. In addition there is the issue of evolutionary levels and additional powers with specific skills. Most of the work with number is thus relational (more or less than), but some of it requires elementary calculation (addition and subtraction). It demands an understanding of ratio, proportionality, and estimation. To some extent probability comes into the frame, and indeed game players older than Sam use their knowledge of the fact that all computer games are no more than algorithmic constructs to assess when and where Pokémon would appear, and whom they are likely to beat. In other words, playing the games utilizes a basic understanding of statistics. (In the later games, Gold and Silver, time and time-delimited functions—what can happen during night and day—also form part of the picture.) Area and distance are part of the game’s treatment of space. The relationship between formal mathematics and everyday treatment of number is as much an issue as is the relationship between everyday and formal print literacy (Baker 1996). Sam was learning mathematics just as he was learning to read, but here I want to note how the game requires a broad use of mathematical concepts in both grounded and abstract ways (Paulos 1988:70–97). 154

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Surrounding Talk One of the distinctive features of Pokémon as a social experience for children is its reliance on a specialist language. As a number of pundits have noted, when children gathered to talk about Pokémon, their discourse was so impenetrable (to adults) that they might as well be speaking a foreign language. Sam loved this facet of the phenomenon. Particularly during his trading card phase, he would spend hours with his friend, James, talking about Growlithes, Electrabuzz attacks, and colorless energy. In late 2000, meeting other children, he would quickly slip into Poké-speak. Like the jargon-laden speech of technical elites, Pokémon fostered a specialist discourse that works simultaneously to include the initiated and to exclude the rest of us (in this instance, adults). It is possible that participating in these jargon-filled discussions in fact helps children develop understanding of complex concepts. However, listening in on Sam’s Pokémon conversations I often had the sense that the talk seemed to function more as a membership badge than as a medium of exchanging information or ideas. When Sam first attempted to enter into Pokémon talk with older kids he found it di≈cult to track the flow of the conversation, so he would blurt out facts such as ‘‘Squirtle is a water Pokémon.’’ Later, when he did have the knowledge to genuinely converse, more often than not these conversations were treated as opportunities to display status and solidify group membership than to genuinely exchange information or learn. Although I also overheard occasions when Sam engaged in forms of Pokémon talk with peers that could be called truly communicative and even educational (the postChristmas visit to our friends’ home when Sam learned his first cheat code comes to mind), the purely phatic and social functions of Pokémon talk should not be underestimated. Study Aids Finally I want to note how Pokémon as a culture o√ers a series of texts that support the idea of learning how to learn; of finding solutions to practical problems, and of realizing how to address challenges. When I once asked Sam during a game, ‘‘Why don’t you speak to him?’’ (a trainer), Sam replied, ‘‘He doesn’t tell me anything I need to know.’’ Sam had learned from the game to distinguish useful from redundant knowledge. The strategy guides also performed an obvious metacognitive function, as they supplied information missing or hard to locate within the game. Even the tv series occasionally could Initiation Rites

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function as a cognitive aid. For example, when Sam was stuck on the Elite 4, he became quite frantic to catch the beginning of a rerun episode. Running in to turn on the tv he explained, ‘‘They have a secret why they are so good. . . . [The Elite 4] live with Pokémon in the wild. You have to care for them like Ash does Pikachu, that’s why they [the Elite 4] are so good.’’ He was desperate to rewatch these episodes, stating excitedly, ‘‘If I use this secret I’ll be as good.’’ If only. Having worked out how to play the game is not the same thing as playing it unproblematically. It seemed to me that after the struggles of the first week, Sam had learned how to play the game, and yet his progress throughout January was dogged by a recursiveness, slipping back from what we might see as a reflective or metacognitive understanding to ine√ectual experimentation. Throughout January Sam could discuss strategy as such, and talk about his goals and aims in the game, and yet it was clear to me that he was going down every dead end and proceeding by a process of elimination. Of course, this requires significant concentration and intellectual stamina, even if it seemed to be ine√ective or unproductive. Facing the Elite 4 at the end requires the player to prepare their best Pokémon to high levels. The strategy guide tells players what di≈culties they will face, making it relatively straightforward to work out what is needed to get through this last stage of the game. Yet, even at this point, after approximately seventy hours of playing, Sam found it di≈cult to conceptualize the need for strategy. He kept on wanting to plunge ahead without preparing properly, despite the fact that his reading of the manuals gave him very clear advice. I found this inconsistency frustrating (as I guess did Sam). He seemed to have learned how to approach the problems presented by the game, as, for example, when he worked out how to earn enough money to make the requisite purchases or exchanges. But when it came to beating the Elite 4, Sam just didn’t seem able to apply the same principles to work out that he needed a rounded team. My conclusion was that instead of mastering the logic behind the strategy skills the first couple of times he used them, Sam instead derived his strategies from empirical work. Sam did not extrapolate general principles from one local strategy to the next, even when the guidebook expressed it as such. There was the illusion of control and mastery over the game, but in reality for Sam at this stage finding his way forward was a question of going down every dead end. As he put it to me in the Unknown Dungeon: ‘‘Now I have a Mewtwo problem. First I had a Zapdos problem, then an Articuno problem, then an Elite 4 problem. Now I have a Mewtwo problem.’’ 156

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In each of these cases there was a similar sense of random strategies, leading to frustration. For all his progress through the levels of the game, it could equally be argued that Sam did not learn metastrategies that would allow him to overcome new challenges, although he did persevere and win in the end. Sometimes, especially in the heat of battle, clear thinking was clouded by emotion. Sam was so desperate to succeed and so emotionally involved that he was not able to be patient, and so hopeful that he had solved a problem with his first guess at a solution that he ignored its logical inconsistency. There is clearly a payo√ between motivation (which keeps the player on task) and invention (which requires some reflection). We could say that the main thing Sam learned was not a rational approach to problem solving but instead how to keep a cool head and to persevere. As a pedagogy then, playing games has strengths and limitations. Sam’s initial game playing clearly proceeded on a need-to-know basis, on finding specific solutions to specific problems. Playing the game required Sam to produce explanatory theories about the behavior of Pokémon. For example, in trying to explain why fire and water Pokémon are e√ective against ghost Pokémon and fighting ones are not, Sam suggested that it must be because fire and water are not solids, which, like a punch from a fighter, would go right through a ghost Pokémon. Playing the game necessitates a continuous process of theory generation, hypothesis, testing, and modification—even if, as I’ve just suggested, this isn’t developed and incorporated rationally within his burgeoning abilities. On another occasion he told he told me that he wouldn’t help Vaporeon in a battle because he wanted to keep a hyperpotion for use on Butterfree. I initially interpreted this answer positively, as evidence that the game was helping Sam to develop the ability to plan ahead and to prepare for unforeseen eventualities. However, when I pushed this issue, it turned out that Sam’s thinking was based entirely on the fact that he simply liked Butterfree more than he liked Vaporeon. I had confused strategy with an irrational or aesthetic impulse. The game allows children to play at being strategic, even if they do not fully comprehend what they are doing.

PLAYING GAMES

Sam was clearly invested emotionally in the imaginative world of Pokémon. The previous section explored Sam’s experience of learning how to play the game, emphasizing cognitive and rational processes. In this section I want to make Initiation Rites

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explicit the a√ective dimensions of his engagement with the game. The Game Boy must be played according to its rules, but Pokémon’s contextualization within other narratives and alongside other media made playing the game, for Sam, a more complex and multifaceted experience than it might first appear. When not trading cards or playing their Game Boys, Sam and his friends, Joe and James, would play at being Pokémon, this dramatic play inevitably segueing into rough-and-tumble play. The children mimicked the fighting characteristics of the creatures they selected and then structured their play around the constraints they had established for themselves, for example, attacking each other serially, and with limited kinds of (imaginary) weaponry, according to the rules of the story. Once, listening in on other children talking about the game, I heard an older boy scorning a younger one for not knowing that water would put out fire and that therefore Charmelion would be defeated by a water Pokémon. Here, knowledge was used as power. The topic of their conversation was new, but the pattern of interaction traditional. On many occasions, I observed Sam interacting with Pokémon just as he would with his other toys. For example, he sometimes made up rhymes around each creature’s name, as in ‘‘little Volly, little Bolly, little Pollyrath.’’ He played with the figures in the bath, dramatizing stories and bashing them together in mock fights. There is nothing exceptional about these uses of Pokémon. However, there were also a number of specifically Pokémon moments. In February of 2000, as Sam waited for a keyboard lesson along with a couple of slightly older boys, I heard them discussing which Pokémon they had each selected when they had begun playing the computer game on their Game Boys. Sam had chosen a Squirtle, while the others chose a Charmander and a Bulbasaur. They were all taken with the significance of this action: ‘‘Funny we all chose di√erent ones,’’ Sam exclaimed. Like Ash’s relationship with Pikachu, this action was invested with a mythical importance that could be shared with relative strangers. Another example of Sam’s emotional involvement in the game can be seen in the near tantrums he displayed when trying to catch Zapdos. ‘‘I’ll never catch him,’’ he would scream, near tears. It is hard to tell if this pain arose from his frustration with the game alone or also from a desire for a Zapdos that transcended its strategic value. Sam’s emotional investment in the game as an unfolding drama was demonstrated by the way he enacted his playing with shouted comments such as ‘‘Blastoise, you never let me down.’’ Sam also drew on dramatic structures from 158

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the tv program when playing the Game Boy, for example shouting out, ‘‘Wartortle, I choose you,’’ when beginning a battle. He both consciously and unconsciously demonstrated a slippage between his material and imaginary worlds with commentary such as ‘‘and the two Pokémon are trading blows’’ and ‘‘Diglit done good, I’m proud of it.’’ He sometimes directly addressed his Pokémon with statements such as ‘‘Don’t worry Omistar, I’ll use a max-potion on you to keep you strong,’’ which showed a dramatized sense of participation. In an utterly unself-conscious fashion he used the term ‘‘level’’ as a synonym for age, when talking about another child, whom he described as about to ‘‘reach level seven’’ (i.e., near his seventh birthday). Sam developed a self-reflexive sense of his relationship to Pokémon, encapsulated in his use of the discourse of fandom. He knew his behavior was extreme (at times it seemed to his family that it bordered on the pathological), but he validated his behavior by describing himself as a fan, often claiming he was Pokémon’s ‘‘biggest fan.’’ Although he frequently expressed a determination to beat the game, competitive feelings did not extend to other children until he got into the trading cards, in the spring of 2000. Prior to this phase, he seemed to be indi√erent to the Pokémon expertise of his peers. My hunch is that until Sam’s close friends took an interest in the cards that paralleled his own, he was content to construct himself as a fan participating in a virtual club made up of fellow game players, readers of the magazines, and viewers of the tv series.

GAME PLAY

This game was Sam’s first experience of a console and a computer game, and he had to learn a number of generic features at the same time as working his way through this specific text. He had to learn some very general features relating to computers and ict (information communication technologies) in general. For example, Sam learned that when he got into trouble in the midst of play he could turn o√ his Game Boy without saving, thereby reverting to an earlier saved version. This is an example of how playing on the Game Boy can provide opportunities to learn skills that are useful as well on a pc. As Sam moved between playing Pokémon on an emulator on our pc and on his hand-held Game Boy, he explored connections between the two kinds of machines. Sam wanted to know if we could print from the game when we ran it Initiation Rites

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on the pc and if we could move characters between our Red and Blue versions of the game, as he had been able to ‘‘download’’ a Golduck from his friends using the eBoy cable. The Game Boy presents some technical problems that to a limited extent replicate some of the storage problems associated with file management on a pc. But the parallels are weak, and it is hard to know how much of the skills that children acquire playing the Pokémon game transfer to other computer applications. The game’s authors included in the Pokémon story some contemporary images of cyberculture. For example, the Pokédex are like microcomputers, the Poké-centers like cyber cafes, and the idea of accessing your own database from a Poké-center and being able to store and organize data seems modeled on an image of the modern urban cybersociety. This reinforced some of the ways in which Pokémon encourages children to play at being actors in the information society. However, the story line’s emphasis on tangible, flesh-and-blood creatures, with an emphasis on caring for Pokémon, seems at odds with this hightech narrative thread. The Game Boy’s capacity to fight and trade Pokémon using the eBoy link cable functions as a sort of metaphor for working in a wired network society. The game provides its players with a first experience in manipulating information as a sort of commodity, but whether it inducts players into these cyberculture values and practices must remain open to question. The key feature drawing children’s attention to the game as a constructed technology are the ‘‘cheats.’’ The fact that Sam could turn to a reference book or Web site for clues on how to beat the game broke the frame of the game as an extension of the television program’s narrative world. Given that Sam’s early game play was characterized by an attempt to play the game as if he were in the Poké-world, it took some time for him to accept the idea of a cheat from a moral point of view and to comprehend it as a strategy to help him progress. The moment came for Sam when, as I described above, he almost despaired of defeating the Elite 4 and was saved by his friends providing him with a soupedup Golduck and an e√ective cheat. As the name suggests, a cheat could be considered immoral, in the sense of being against the spirit of the game. But Sam rationalized that ‘‘Louis [the boy who gave him the cheat] wants me to do my best.’’ Given that cheats are written into the game, and that they are not programming accidents, they function to break the spell of fantasy and to remind the player that the game, at heart, is a computer program. In this sense,

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cheats transgress the willing suspension of disbelief that Sam had worked hard to establish. There is an inherent tension between understanding the game as a logical system versus as an imaginative world. Like all computer games, Pokémon conceals the fact that it is a series of codes that produces a series of rules. For example, Sam explained to me that he had learned that ‘‘the old man can’t train up a Pokémon for you if it already has an hm, or if you’ve evolved it.’’ Sam learned to accept such rules as an arbitrary convention of the game, but this did not stop him from hypothesizing explanations that made more intuitive sense, such as ‘‘If a Pokémon is given to you by a trainer it will only take instruction from him.’’ Sam derived these rules either from his understanding of social behavior or from his expectation that characters in a game should behave in accordance with the genres in which they are embedded. The fact that the game did not always behave this way forced Sam to accept the arbitrary force of computer logic. Among the inconsistencies he learned to accept was his realization that while the player’s Pokémon grow with experience, his opponents’ Pokémon do not. However many times Sam failed to defeat the Elite 4, they never became more powerful as a result. The Pokémon game seems to have been designed to support players who have varying degrees of skill and knowledge. The game presents a series of detours, deferred climaxes, and alternative goals that can be accomplished (such as collecting badges), which works to mask the sense that the game is being played against the clock and to reduce frustration. This lack of pressure provided Sam with the emotional space he needed to persevere and to work out problems. Because players can wander around the Poké-world and still collect creatures and prizes, there is a sense of accomplishing even when not strictly on task. There is always an objective: if you are not a master, you can go round and collect Pokémon; if you can’t beat Elite 4, you can go and collect obscure creatures. Sam reported that on his second time through the games, it took him 9 hours and 20 minutes to get eight badges in the Red version but took him 11 hours and 12 minutes in the Yellow version to get only five badges. He reasoned that this was ‘‘because the trainers in the Yellow game have Pokémon at higher levels.’’ Finally, I want to note that the Pokémon game flew in the face of dominant patterns of game development in the computer-gaming industry, which for

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years has been engaged in the single-minded pursuit of greater cinematic realism. The new generation of game consoles, with their significantly enhanced computing power, represents fictional worlds in convincing detail. Pokémon on the Game Boy does not. And yet, as Sam’s experience demonstrates, it generates intense involvement. This involvement comes in part from the game’s location amid a network of other texts. The tv program, for example, provides fans with a sense of color and detail lacking in the computer game. Sam commented that ‘‘on tv you see into the world,’’ whereas ‘‘on the Game Boy you always see the screen.’’ However, it seems to be that for Sam the reverse was also true. The Game Boy experience o√ered depth and an immersive, imaginative experience that the tv show lacked for Sam. I would point out that the Game Boy versions of Pokémon were very successful in Japan before the tv program was launched. On the other hand, the success of the tv program seems to have stimulated sales of the cartridges.

CONCLUSION

In the beginning of this chapter I proposed a distinction between what and how children learn, a topic I want to return to in this conclusion. Pokémon is constructed pedagogically. Its story line is all about learning. The text addresses players as learners. Engaging with the Game Boy, the trading cards, and the reference books is an intense pedagogical experience that both requires and promotes various forms of literacy and numeracy. Pokémon plays with learning, and teaches learners how to play. I have argued that Sam’s story reveals a wide range of learning capacities. Rather than describing Sam’s engagement with Pokémon as play, I am more tempted to describe it as work, in that he clearly invested a huge amount of energy and e√ort in the process. Pokémon pushes at the boundaries between play and work in ways that many modern school systems are trying to emulate. If conservative educators realized how much the mastery-oriented testing regime they espouse is pursued willingly by children in this leisure time pursuit, I wonder if they would be so keen to ban Pokémon from school. Pokémon uses a greater variety of pedagogic techniques than schools. The marketplace is ahead of mass state education here. The game has respect for children: it poses demanding challenge, real problems, and solutions that bring immediate, authentic rewards. It makes no artificial distinction between lit162

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eracy and numeracy domains. It is pluralistic in its mixture of pedagogies, requiring rote learning and repetition as well as higher-order thinking. It teaches learners to submit to the discipline of failure as well as achievement and reward. Indeed, Pokémon provides an example of how progressive and traditional pedagogies can be combined. Pokémon’s emphasis on collecting, mastery, and competition seems to make it an especially motivating form of learning for boys. A key criterion for defining the educational value of any activity is the transferability of the skills learned. Intuitively, it seems to me that Pokémon had a significant impact on Sam’s entry into all sorts of literacies (and numeracies), but given the inherently social, intertextual nature of literacy it would be foolhardy to attempt to isolate Pokémon’s e√ects. In general we tend to conceptualize learning and specifically literacy acquisition in abstract terms, as a purely cognitive task. In a sense I have tried to show the reverse. I have showed how Sam’s engagement with the game was embedded with his interactions with other texts, experiences, and desires. I have identified the emotional and imaginative appeal Pokémon held for Sam for a period of his life and focused on the significance of randomness, repetition, trial and error, and frustration in his learning. These are not usually admired as e≈cient pedagogies, but they may be necessary to the learning process. The title of this piece, ‘‘initiation rites,’’ is intended both to suggest how this child was inducted into a form of children’s popular culture and also to suggest how learning itself necessarily requires a process of initiation. To become learned is not just to have added mental capabilities but also to have participated in the practices of the initiated and to have fully entered into a culture. If Sam was initiated, we must then ask what was he was initiated into? One answer would be into the practices of consumer capitalism and the canonical/ core texts of contemporary media culture. This raises the question of whether Pokémon is teaching children anything more than how to participate in more practices like Pokémon. In other words, is Pokémon at heart a curriculum in consumption that trains children for accumulation in later life? Or, as I argued in the sections above, does Pokémon teach children skills (including how to read various sign systems, including text or number) and attitudes (such as perseverance) that they are able to transfer to other life contexts? These questions are impossible for me to answer, in part because the assumptions behind each position are reified. But from Sam’s point of view, they Initiation Rites

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were not: Pokémon, school, and other learning experiences are not separate domains, each with its own value systems and knowledge base. Sam applied understanding in one arena to the other, having not at that point in his life learned to draw up walls between each zone. At this stage simply enjoying his growing mastery was its own reward. He did not need external validation beyond the success o√ered by the game itself. Pokémon presents children with a world of study and knowledge that is, in crucial ways, both like and unlike school. Of course there are important di√erences between these two systems; but educators have much to gain by acknowledging areas of overlap, similarity, and continuity. WORKS CITED

Baker, Dave. 1996. ‘‘Children’s Formal and Informal School Numeric Practices.’’ In Challenging Ways of Knowing in English, Maths and Science, edited by Dave Baker, John Clay, and Carol Fox, 80–88. Brighton, U.K.: Falmer Press. Bruner, Jerome. 1996. The Culture of Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Castells, Manuel. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Fuller, Mary, and Henry Jenkins. 1995. ‘‘Nintendo and New World Travel Writing.’’ In CyberSociety: Computer Mediated Communication and Community, edited by S. Jones, 57–72. London: Sage. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. Kafai, Yasmin. 1995. Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children’s Learning. Hillsdale, N.J.: Earlbaum. Kinder, Marsha. 1991. Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Meek, Margaret. 1991. On Being Literate. London: The Bradley Head. OECD. 2001. Cities and Regions in the New Learning Economy. Paris: OECD. Paulos, John. 1988. Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. London: Penguin. Papert, Seymour. 1993. The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York: Basic Books. Seely Brown, John, and Paul Duguid. 2000. The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Walkerdine, Valerie. 1988. The Mastery of Reason. London: Routledge.

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8 Pokémon in Israel Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch

Pokémania hit Israel in February 2000 with the initial broadcast of the television series on the local children’s cable channel, following an aggressive advertising campaign in the preceding months. Within days, the series reached a rating of 8 percent of all households and a market share of 31 percent. By July 2000, ratings were up to 21.4 percent with a share of 41 percent, about double that of any other children’s program.∞ At the peak of its popularity, morning and weekend broadcasts were added to the standard daily afternoon showings. While very little Pokémon merchandise was available before February, the market was flooded with expensive items thereafter, becoming the most popular icon of back-to-school sales by the end of the summer. For reasons that remain unclear, the Nintendo computer game was never introduced to the Israeli market. Soon after the series appeared on local television, newspaper coverage was already expressing concerns raised by many schools regarding disturbances to routines caused by Pokémon. As a girl told us, ‘‘Boys in my class talk about it all the time, even on [school] outings, everywhere.’’ Pokémon had undoubtedly become a part of the ‘‘must have’’ culture of children, like previous fads, but even more intense. The fate of most crazes in children’s culture is eventually to lose their appeal as they are, literally, ‘‘consumed,’’ and to fall into oblivion by the time the next big thing comes along (Bloch and Lemish 1999). Our interest in Pokémon is located within the framework of our understanding of the globalized nature of contemporary children’s culture (see Lemish et al. 1998; Lemish and Tidhar 2001). It is increasingly the case that children around the world share similar leisure activities and interests, as well as media preferences. Despite the introduction of new interactive technologies, television is still prevalent in children’s lives in terms of the routinized

nature of consumption and the amount of time devoted to it. Children live in a world of cultural hybridity, including the multiple cultures they experience within their own locales. Our thesis is thus that contemporary global consumption is less a matter of cultural opposition than a process of coexistence of di√erences (Lemish et al. 1998). What is of particular interest in a phenomenon such as Pokémon is the way in which children confer local meaning upon foreign content. This process of ‘‘glocalization’’ assumes that global products are consumed by locally contextualized audiences, who create their own meanings and subsequently process them to serve their own social and cultural needs (Robertson 1994). This is of special interest in Israel, where television was instituted to serve the role of national integration and to contribute to the enhancement of shared values and the development of a common cultural identity (Katz, Haas, and Gurevitch 1997). Dramatic changes in the television environment in Israel over the last decade, including the transition from a single public television channel to a multichannel environment (including commercial, cable, and satellite broadcasting), has made us consider the possibility that television in Israel, no longer a tool of cultural integration, may actually be contributing to cultural disintegration. Children’s products such as Pokémon, designed for the global market, are produced with a special e√ort to be as universal and culture-free as possible and to cater to the needs, abilities, and interests of young viewers worldwide. However, even products that aim to be culturally neutral need to be further localized by local audiences (see Lemish and Tidhar 2001; Cohen et al. 1996; Liebes and Katz 1993). Pokémon’s Japanese origin poses a challenge to its localization in Israel. Texts originating in the United States or the United Kingdom are easily integrated into Israeli society, which is strongly oriented toward the AngloSaxon culture and politics and especially to the English language (partially as a means of disassociating itself from the conflictual Middle-Eastern context). While the extent, nature, meaning, and consequences of this ‘‘Americanization’’ are greatly debated, it is no doubt at the core of cultural influences on Israeli society (see, for example, Arono√ 2000; Azaryahu 2000; Diamond 2000; Rebhun and Waxman 2000). However, engagement with much more remote and foreign cultures, such as that of Japan, has only recently become evident. We have previously discussed the process of acceptance of cultural products in Israel that come from across the Atlantic and that are known to have already 166

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been a success in the United States. We have labeled this process ‘‘the Megaphone E√ect’’ (Bloch and Lemish 1999:285; forthcoming). This hypothesis suggests a possible explanation for how cultural products that succeed in a large market such as the United States have added force when they reach a smaller, downstream market such as Israel. At the same time this hypothesis precludes the possibility that a single culture, American or otherwise, can impose itself on the rest of the world due to a series of counterforces including resistance, domestication, and multiculturalism. The purpose of our present study is to investigate the reception of the Pokémon phenomenon within the Israeli context and to examine the transnational transfer of meanings and values. Our interest is specifically, therefore, to analyze Israeli children’s localized perspectives, namely: How do they view the program? What meanings does the Pokémon world hold for them? How aware are they of cultural di√erences? Does the fact that Pokémon originated in Japan in any way change the ‘‘megaphone e√ect’’ associated with trendy products from the United States? How do Israeli children accommodate and appropriate di√erence as they interpret Pokémon?

THE STUDY

Our study combined various methods in an attempt to triangulate di√erent sources of information.≤ We conducted a survey among pupils at an elementary school comprised of middle-class Jewish children of both Ashkenazi (Western) as well as Mizrachi (Middle-Eastern and North African) origins, located in the urban center of the country, carried out within the first week of the broadcasts, in February 2000. Ninety-three completed questionnaires (out of 140) were collected from forty-seven boys and forty-six girls, aged six to fourteen. The questions pertained mainly to issues of initial recognition and exposure to the program as well as to awareness of the country of origin. A follow-up survey focusing on the main themes of the program in far greater detail was distributed in June 2000, yielding thirty-six usable questionnaires completed by nineteen boys and seventeen girls in the same school. In addition, we also tracked local media coverage of the phenomenon, visited toy stores in which we observed and talked with both customers and employees, and held informal discussions with parents and children. Finally, we conducted forty-six in-depth interviews with children who were solicited using a ‘‘snowball’’ strategy (we asked the children Pokémon in Israel

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we interviewed to nominate other potential interviewees). These interviews represent the central source of information on which this study is based. During the spring of 2000, thirty-two children were interviewed in ten single-sex focus groups of two to four participants each, totaling fourteen boys and eighteen girls, aged six to eleven. Based on our understanding of the Pokémon texts and on our preliminary findings from the questionnaires and informal interviews we conducted in February and March, our interview schedule was designed to investigate the themes of cuteness, good and evil, heroes and heroism, and fandom and identification. We also showed the focus groups two representative segments from two episodes of the Pokémon tv series in order to elicit active interpretation. In addition, fourteen children, seven boys and seven girls, aged four to thirteen, were interviewed individually. All interviewees were Jewish middle-class children. On the whole, interviewees were lively and cooperative, demonstrating great enthusiasm and interest both in the program itself as well as in the act of discussing it. Following grounded theory methodology, we did not posit any hypotheses to be confirmed or refuted in advance. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Each transcript was coded, assigning children’s comments to our emerging categories of analysis. The responses were then organized under the wider frames of meanings listed above.

LOCALIZED UNDERSTANDINGS OF POKÉMON

The majority of the children surveyed reported being aware of the program from the first day of its broadcast. Children were very explicit about the origin of the program being in East Asia, although many did not di√erentiate Japan from China—both, apparently, representing to them a similar cultural ‘‘otherness.’’ We found a comparable cultural organization of the world in our study of the Israeli reception of the World Wrestling Federation television programs, where the United States and England were perceived by many young children as being one and the same place (Lemish 1999:300). Many children, however, were very clear about naming Japan as Pokémon’s birthplace: ‘‘Almost all the dolls and all the strange creatures that are not like human beings are usually invented by the Japanese, and all the toys and all the robots,’’ explained a nine-year-old girl. The children reported that their initial awareness of the tv series came from many sources, including stories in magazines and newspapers and from tele168

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vision promotional advertisements. Many mentioned older siblings and friends as sources of knowledge about Pokémon, including some who had visited the United States during the previous summer vacation. Another central source of information was the Internet. As one ten-year-old boy concluded: ‘‘I know it from the Internet, and besides, who doesn’t know it?!’’

WHAT DOES POKÉMON MEAN?

The question we posed to the children about the possible messages conveyed in the series resulted regularly in the response of ‘‘There is no message’’ or, as one ten-year-old boy put it, ‘‘They didn’t want to teach anything, they just wanted it to be fun for children to watch.’’ Yet further prompting elicited a host of interpretations, suggesting once again that children are active interpreters and are engaged in a never ending process of construction of their personal and social identity (Buckingham 1993; 1996). Many of the children’s responses suggested that they saw the central meaning of Pokémon as revolving around relationships, including those between the trainers and their Pokémon; among Ash, Misty, and their immediate group of friends; and between the Ash team and other characters in the series (including their nemesis, Team Rocket). Further analysis revealed familiar gender di√erences: while girls tended to emphasize prosocial aspects of relationships, such as friendship, mutual respect, caregiving, and love, boys dwelled more on conflictual messages of hierarchy, control, and power. Thus, for example, while a nine-year-old girl suggested that the program’s message is that of ‘‘love toward the Pokémon, treating him nicely, taking care of him and appreciating everything he does,’’ a nine-year-old boy argued, by contrast, that ‘‘the Pokémon develops, but the most important thing about developing is that it will be possible to control him.’’ This di√erence is consistent with feminist perspectives on relational gender di√erences as originally introduced by Carol Gilligan (1982) and subsequently applied to theories of the psychological development of girls (Brown 1998). Four related themes emerged from the interviews: Friendship versus Individuality Children were specifically asked whether it was more important for Ash to be a good friend or a good fighter. This question was designed to investigate the central message of friendship that came up in respondents’ comments while at Pokémon in Israel

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the same time eliciting their feelings about competitiveness and the orientation toward achievement that is inherent in the series. The question therefore explores collective versus individualistic values. The importance of friendship was clearly prioritized by the children, across gender and age. Values such as love, devotion, self-sacrifice, assistance, comfort, and concern were singled out as being the most crucial ones in human relationships. ‘‘The most important thing is not to win and to earn medals and stu√; the most important thing is to be loyal, to appreciate the things your Pokémon wants, and to love him. . . . To win is not everything, the first thing is to be with friends,’’ explained a nineyear-old girl. ‘‘The most important thing is friendship, and after that the things that they can do together . . . for example, somebody wants to be Ash’s friend only because of the Pokémon he has. That is called taking advantage, and he himself is not a good friend, and this isn’t what you would call friendship,’’ declared a ten-year-old boy. Analysis of the transcripts suggested that most children understood that in the Pokémon series the values of personal achievement and of friendship are not in conflict but rather complement one another. As a ten-year-old boy explained: ‘‘Because when you are good friends . . . you are closer to each other, there is better cooperation, and after that you can fight better, because you understand each other.’’ A nine-year-old girl told us, ‘‘If you think, ‘I will win, I will win,’ and you don’t care about the Pokémon, they will not want to cooperate with you, and you won’t succeed.’’ The children see cooperative, egalitarian friendship as a characteristic of the good guys in the Pokémon tv series, in contrast to ‘‘bad guys’’ who are perceived to operate on an individual basis, as isolated and autocratic leaders (Swan 1998). This belief reinforces the idea that goodness is a characteristic of the majority, and badness a characteristic of those who are loners or outsiders. Togetherness was a central theme in children’s discussions: ‘‘They are friends who go everywhere together, play together, feed their Pokémon together, share their experiences with each other, they do everything together,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. The empowering nature of group identity was also evident in discussions of the emotional support to be enjoyed by being a member of a team. As a nine-year-old girl suggested: ‘‘If you lose, they comfort you. It’s not so bad, you’ll succeed next time. . . . If they [Misty and Brock] aren’t there . . . he [Ash] would be lonely wandering around by himself.’’ The value of group identity and unity, known as gibush or crystallization, has been shown to be a 170

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highly prized key symbol in Israeli culture, fostered and encouraged throughout the education system and later in the military service that is compulsory for both males and females (Katriel 1991). Prioritizing collectivism over individualism, a value often attributed to Japanese culture in contrast with America, seemed to resonate with Israeli children, who tend to integrate both points of view (Katz, Haas, and Gurevitz 1997). On one hand, children are raised to perceive of themselves as part of a collective society devoted to the goals of the society at large. This is achieved through a collective ethos based on the Zionist nation-building ideology and what remains a largely socialist political system, as well as by means of a variety of socializing agents emphasizing national consciousness and responsibility. Yet, on the other hand, Israeli society has been going through a transition of growing individualism and materialism typical of late modernity (Förnas and Bolin 1995), or what some refer to as ‘‘Americanization.’’ The shift from collective to individual goals has been uneasy (see, e.g., Bloch, forthcoming). An integrated view combining traditional collectivism with Western individualism was expressed in the children’s embrace of ‘‘togetherness’’ in the service of individual aspirations. A ten-year-old boy told us, ‘‘I would like to be a Pokémon master. . . . I will then have all the Pokémon, and I would feel that I have achieved something in life, [that I will have] accomplished something.’’ Being helpful to others was o√ered by our informants as being something good for both society and for the self. A nineyear-old boy, explaining why he would like to be Charmander (a favorite Pokémon), told us, ‘‘Because I would then feel good, that I am developing and helping somebody, and I would have a good feeling, because I have done something good today.’’ Child-Pokémon Relationships The child-Pokémon relationship was a central issue in children’s discussions of the program’s message. Children projected their perceptions of human relationships onto trainer-Pokémon dyads. Some children compared caring for a Pokémon to mothering, such as the nine-year-old boy who told us, ‘‘I’ll treat him as if I’m his mother. It’s important to give him food, and if he needs help, I’ll help him, so he won’t be upset. If he’s hurt, I’ll take care of him, bring him to the Pokémon center.’’ Others used the metaphor of the family, like the ten-yearold who said, ‘‘They treat them like friends, like buddies, like it’s a family.’’ Other children conceived of the relationship between trainers and their Pokémon in Israel

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Pokémon as being more akin to peers: ‘‘[Pikachu’s] a good friend of his, and Ash can’t manage without Pikachu,’’ an eight-year-old girl told us. Peer relationships were also expressed through expectations of mutual respect and equality. ‘‘The most important thing is the respect,’’ declared a nine-year-old girl. ‘‘Pokémon are not slaves of man,’’ said a seven-year-old boy. Emphasizing face-to-face interactions, girls talked more about nurturance, love, and physical expressions of a√ection, such as hugging and coddling Pokémon. Boys talked more about joint action and camaraderie and valued proximity but not necessarily direct physical or verbal expressions of closeness. Not surprisingly, another concern of the children we interviewed was the Pokémons’ independence from their Masters (trainers). Children’s struggles with the concept of independence were evident in arguments that occurred in the focus group discussions, arguments that often broke down along gender lines. Boys tended to insist that Pokémon could take care of themselves: ‘‘He [a Pokémon] has great powers, so can manage things,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. Girls, however, provided many reasons for Pokémon needing their Master: ‘‘If the Pokémon is sick, for example, there is nobody that can take him to the Pokémon center and take care of him, and he can’t go by himself. Or, for example, . . . sometimes in his area there is no food, and he can’t manage by himself,’’ explained a nine-year-old girl. It is possible to explain these di√erences through the gendered psychological and socialization processes by which boys learn to seek separation from the feminine mother and to demonstrate independence, while girls, having less need to distance themselves from their mothers and from femininity, learn to seek assistance from others and to maintain close ties with the family (Chodorow 1974). Violence Children’s attitudes toward the violence in Pokémon came up indirectly, mostly in their responses to our asking them about their parents’ attitudes toward the program. Clearly, children were aware of the commonly held criticism of the program as being violent. Many of the children we interviewed ascribed adult criticisms of the program to grown-ups’ closed-mindedness and ignorance of children’s popular culture: ‘‘They haven’t seen it all, they haven’t seen what the series says, because they haven’t seen all the episodes so they can’t know, and the children understand what it’s all about, and the parents don’t. The first time I saw it I thought it was just a cartoon, but the second and third time I under172

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stood,’’ explained an eleven-year-old girl. Similarly, a nine-year-old boy suggested: ‘‘Maybe they will think that it’s somewhat violent, all the battles. But if they watch the series they’ll understand that it’s trying to convey a message.’’ Troubled by the disparity between their viewing pleasures and their parents’ objections to the series, many children articulated an ‘‘if only they had seen it’’ approach. But very few children were actually willing to grant that the program is characterized by violence. Most of the interviewees presented elaborate explanations and justifications to deny the violent nature of the series. A common rhetorical tactic was to compare the Pokémon tv series to other, more realistic and gory television programs. This and similar strategies suggest that children have clear criteria for defining and evaluating media violence, as has been argued by other researchers (Buckingham 1996; Tobin 2000; van der Voort 1986). A nine-year-old girl identified rules of conduct for Pokémon battles: ‘‘In my opinion the battles are not at all violent. They even demonstrate friendship. No Pokémon would kill a Pokémon. He won’t even injure him severely. There is no such thing. A Pokémon that fights against somebody knows that ‘even if I win I’ll help him get up. I’ll help him recover, but I will never in my life hurt him.’ ’’ Others rationalized Pokémon’s aggressive behaviors by pointing out that they are wild creatures: ‘‘In my opinion Pokémon aren’t violent at all, because Pokémon are animals, and animals always fight in the wild. It’s natural for them to fight other animals,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. Other interpretations distinguished violence from fighting. An eleven-year-old boy presented fighting as a legitimate goal-oriented means to an end: ‘‘It’s not exactly violent. It shows friendship, and it also shows that they fight to achieve something. They don’t fight for the sake of violence.’’ Similarly, a nine-year-old girl explained: ‘‘The battles are not violence, they’re simply for showing who wins and who loses.’’ Clearly then, young viewers define and interpret violence in very di√erent ways than those suggested by adults, parents, and many researchers alike. This perspective has particular relevance when considering the political context in which Israeli children are raised today and the general atmosphere of existential threats stemming from regional violence. Militarism is salient in both the private and public realms of contemporary Israeli life. Hourly news broadcasts periodically present horrifying sights of victims of suicide bombings, lynching, executions, fire fights, and the like. Discussions surrounding these events convey anxiety and insecurity. Within the context of this reality, the television violence issue is greatly amplified and gains additional meanings and concern Pokémon in Israel

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in Israel. It is also interesting to interpret our respondents’ comments concerning Pokémon in the context of the Israeli discourse revolving around the multiple meanings of the concept of ‘‘peace.’’ This is a term whose significance has been renegotiated continuously since the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 (see Bloch 2000b). The peace discourse is present in songs, the visual arts, in nightly political debates on television, in newspaper headlines and articles, in election campaigns, on road banners, and on political bumper stickers (Bloch 2000a). The ever present bloodshed, coupled with continuous references to peace, presents a conflict that children are able to reconcile by redefining the significance of violence, when it serves what is defined as ‘‘a good cause.’’ This is expressed in Israel in seemingly conditional slogans such as ‘‘Peace, but not at any cost,’’ or conflicting expressions such as ‘‘soldiers of peace,’’ the need to ‘‘wage a battle for peace,’’ or even to ‘‘fight a war against violence.’’ It is not surprising, therefore, that for the Israeli children in this study, battles between Pokémon that adhere to certain rules and never end in bloody deaths were not perceived as violent. When, following the viewing of a segment from the tv series in which a witch suggests the killing of sea creatures for prize money, children were unanimously outraged. They provided an array of explanations for their reasoning, all of which expressed an appreciation for the ultimate value of life: ‘‘Why kill them? They’re creatures just like us. It’s like killing yourself, and then you can’t live,’’ argued a seven-year-old girl. ‘‘So what if they get money—life is more important than money,’’ said a nine-year-old boy. ‘‘ Pokémon are Pokémon. It’s a form of life! Think about it, if somebody would come and kill you because they were paid a million dollars. It’s the same thing,’’ explained an agitated tenyear-old boy. The children’s discussion of the episode demonstrated an internalization of the ultimate value of life as well as other prosocial values of experiencing empathy for others’ feelings and concern for their well-being. It is important to consider this in light of the fact that Israeli children are raised in a society where issues of life and death are part of the formal and informal school curriculum and of everyday life via national memorial days, class discussions of daily political events, and having relatives and neighbors who serve in the armed services. Clearly, the children in this study were interpreting the Pokémon text according to their values and cultural context.

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Heroism and Fandom The Pokémon tv series presents children with a variety of heroes for identification and fandom (Everett 1996; Lemish 1998a: 146–47). Four themes emerged around the discussion of heroes in the interviews: The Imperfect Hero. The flawed nature of the central characters is an attractive characteristic of the program (cf. Drucker and Cathcart 1994:266; Gumpert 1994:54). Most of the children we interviewed perceived Ash, the leading human character in the series, as the hero: he demonstrates responsibility, selfcontrol, courage, strength, and kindness. He works hard to achieve his goals and is loyal to his friends. On the other hand, he also was described as having many characteristics of the antihero: he is stubborn, competitive, arrogant, careless, and greedy, and he behaves impulsively. Similarly, Misty and Brock, the two other central figures of the series, also display negative as well as positive characteristics. For many of the children, the limitations of the central characters make them all the more heroic. Those characters who dare face stronger adversaries and fight against all odds are most admired. ‘‘I think Pikachu [is the bravest] because . . . Pikachu is so small; and they find a huge animal, and he doesn’t run away—first of all he tries,’’ said an eleven-year-old girl. Being relatively small and weak clearly strikes a chord among children, who are familiar with the situation of struggling against older and stronger children and adults. Moreover, it is also a very fundamental part of the Israeli ‘‘David and Goliath’’ ethos that is so prevalent in this country, where the situation is repeatedly portrayed as that of a small isolated culture striving for security in the midst of a hostile region. ‘‘The whole world is against us,’’ is a commonly accepted and taken for granted Israeli slogan. Many of the biblical and historic traditions, as well as the contemporary political perspectives on which children are raised and socialized through the educational system and the media, incorporate elements of this ethos. When we confronted children with a segment that featured Misty as a heroine (brave, rational, moral, taking upon herself the role of the leader), their interpretations divided along gender lines. This particular episode aside, Misty is generally perceived as being a nuisance—irritating, a complainer, snobbish, opinionated, stubborn, materialistic, and so on. When confronted with contra-

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dictory evidence in this episode, boys and girls di√ered greatly in their interpretations. Girls agreed unequivocally that Misty was brave and moral and that her actions saved the day: ‘‘I think Misty is the heroine, because she saved the people and did everything,’’ said a ten-year-old girl. The boys, on the other hand, bothered by the notion of Misty as a hero, found ways to rationalize their way out of it, as in the statement provided by a seven-year-old boy who told us, ‘‘I’ll say Misty was the heroine, but she was so ugly.’’ Other boys belittled her achievements by suggesting that there wasn’t really a hero in the particular episode, or they qualified their appreciation of Misty’s behavior by suggesting that this was an unusual situation. Good and Evil. Children’s understanding of ‘‘good and evil’’ characters in Pokémon sheds further light on their perceptions of heroism. Team Rocket, the ‘‘bad’’ characters in the series, are comic villains (see Dobrow and Gidney 1998:113). According to the children, they are an incompetent group of grotesque and irritating characters. Other characters, who are less comical and more intelligent, and who intend to harm the Pokémon and the good guys, are far more threatening. According to the children, only humans can be evil; Pokémon are good in nature, and only pursue a negative path if trained to do so by an evil Master. Evil is recognized by negative behavior (stealing, lying, cheating, foiling good intentions, not fulfilling promises, rudeness, unfairness, etc.). In accordance with much of the literature, the younger participants tended to describe evil externally (Cantor 1996:96; Collins 1983:137), as they cited facial expressions, ugliness, clothing, or the sound of a ‘‘roar’’; while older children based their judgments more on characters’ behaviors and internal motivations. The following exchange exemplifies this di√erence. To the interviewer’s question: ‘‘How does one know she is evil?’’ a seven-year-old girl answered: ‘‘Her voice was . . . and her face was kind of angry,’’ to which an eleven-year-old girl disagreed: ‘‘I don’t think you [need to] look at the face. They heard what she wanted to do, so they had to know that she was mean.’’ The absence of a clear good-versus-evil distinction in the Pokémon series (in contrast to most of the animation that is produced in the United States; see. e.g., Pecora 1992:65) is exemplified by the blurring of positive and negative personality characteristics in both heroes and villains. ‘‘You can’t say that James and

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Jesse are bad; they are kind of nice sometimes. The Team Rocket [members] . . . don’t always fight; they sometime also help,’’ explained a nine-year-old girl. Similarly, ‘‘Sometimes Ash goes crazy a bit. . . . If somebody irritates him . . . he wants to hit him, so Brock and Misty stop him,’’ described an eight-year-old girl. The mere fact that the characters fight among themselves did not serve to make them bad, as long as their fighting was goal-oriented and followed set rules (see Kremar and Valkenburg 1999:629–30). Narrative contextual information that explained the characters’ motivations facilitated the older children’s moral judgment, as did their understanding that both good and evil are relative terms, and that people, rather than being born good or evil, instead make moral choices: ‘‘If they [the good guys] want, they can choose not to go the bad way, not to take the easiest path. They don’t steal, trying to get things without e√ort; they choose to go the hard way, the one with all the obstacles,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. However, the Pokémon series also challenged Israeli children with unfamiliar representations of good and evil. This challenge arose mainly in relation to the moral ambiguity of the Pokémon narrative, as compared to the unambiguous depiction of good and evil typical of Hollywood cartoons. Israeli children seemed to resist engaging with this culturally di√erent portrayal of power relationships and morality, and insisted on continuing to see the world in terms of polarized good and evil. Once again, this begs the question of the influence of the geopolitical context in which Israeli children are raised on their understandings of media content. For many Israeli children the world is clearly divided between ‘‘us,’’ the ‘‘good guys,’’ and ‘‘them,’’ the ‘‘enemy,’’ or even the ‘‘evil ones,’’ precluding the possibility of comprehending the Israeli-Arab conflict from the other’s perspective. Cute Heroes. The Pokémon’s special brand of cuteness, as Anne Allison explains in chapter 3, is a feature that marks the figures as distinctively Japanese. Researchers have suggested that cuteness in Japan is a key feature of gender di√erentiation (Kinsella 1995) and is used to camouflage the interests of commercial and political power (McVeigh 1996). The way Israeli children perceive and understand this foreign feature of the series was therefore of great interest to us. Our interviewees’ descriptions of the ‘‘cute’’ characters are consistent with

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the sociobiological theories of Konrad Lorenz: cute characters (e.g., Pikachu) are rounded, have a disproportionately big head (i.e., babyish appearance), wide-open eyes with an innocent look, a tiny nose, small mouth, and a soft, furry pastel-colored body. Being cute was associated with being childish by many of the participants. ‘‘The fact that they turn stronger makes them less cute. Pikachu, for example, he doesn’t want to develop, because he wants to remain cute,’’ explained a ten-year-old girl. Indeed, as the Pokémon go through developmental stages, they gradually lose their cuteness and turn into threatening, scary creatures. Charmander, for example, grows into Charizard, a large dragon with smaller, meaner eyes, sharper nails, a firmer and fiercer body, and a fire-shooting mouth. Two ten-year-old girls discussed the interrelationship between childhood and cuteness, comparing the Pokémon to children, who sometimes refuse to grow up: interviewer: So in your opinion it is preferable to stay small? girl one: Yes, like children who sometimes do not want to grow up. interviewer: Do you want to grow up? both girls together: No, not really. interviewer: Why? girl two: I want to be small so I will be spoiled and I will be cute, because when you grow up, for example at the age of twenty, you are already not treated the same way, you aren’t hugged and kissed and spoiled and played with. interviewer: So the Pokémon are like children who don’t want to grow? both girls together: Yes. It is interesting to note that it was the girls who expressed an anxiety over growing up and losing their childishness and cuteness. Related to this is the connection made between cuteness and obedience. Before Charmander developed, explained one eight-year-old girl, ‘‘he was cuter, more attentive, more obedient.’’ A ten-year-old girl explained that in her opinion the Pokémon are cute because ‘‘they don’t say ‘no.’ ’’ Obedience by the Pokémon to their master is strongly emphasized in the series, and praised by many of the girls. It is also reinforced by the fact that the Pokémon have a very limited verbal ability resembling babies (i.e., uttering only single syllables) and are mute, for the most part. Their inability to fully express themselves frames

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the Pokémon as being needy, helpless, and dependent, thus giving their masters the upper hand in the relationship. Gendered di√erence in their evaluations of cuteness is thus representative of how boys and girls understand their respective positions in society. Girls are taught to be ‘‘cute but quiet,’’ to attract attention by being like Pokémon—needy, loveable, childish, and obedient. Indeed, most girls in the study wanted to be as cute as Pikachu so as to gain attention and love. As Samuel Tobin discusses in this volume, boys, especially older ones, on the other hand, prefer to disassociate themselves from anything cute. ‘‘I hate Pikachu,’’ stated a ten-year-old boy we interviewed. When we asked him why, he responded, ‘‘I don’t know, because everyone thinks that he’s kind of cute.’’ Clearly, the girls too are aware of this gendered di√erence, as the following exchange suggests: ‘‘In my opinion the boys don’t like Pikachu so much, because all the girls do like him,’’ explained a seven-year-old girl. To the interviewer’s question of ‘‘Why don’t the boys like Pikachu?’’ her seven-year-old friend answered: ‘‘Girls are more into cute than [they are into] strength.’’ However, many boys as well as girls appreciated the way the Pokémon combine strength and cuteness. This androgynous nature, combining masculine strength with feminine cuteness, makes the Pokémon tv series a textual site that provides a space for subverting stereotypical gender expectations. ‘‘If a Pokémon is cute but not strong he has less of a chance. . . . If he isn’t strong he can’t beat lots of opponents, but being cute will help him,’’ explained a nineyear-old girl. Cuteness was not always perceived by girls as a sign of naïveté and helplessness, but was also regarded as a manipulative tool allowing girls to realize their self-interests and desires by providing social camouflage, masking real intentions and abilities: ‘‘Sometimes, if for example you see a girl like Hannah, and she seems so cute and delicate, and suddenly you see that she has a black belt in Judo, that can confuse you. . . . It’s like Pikachu who is so small but has enormous powers,’’ explained an eleven-year-old girl. In addition, girls were also familiar with the fact that cuteness can elicit jealousy; as one ten yearold said: ‘‘The disadvantage is that somebody can become jealous and tells somebody else and [then] somebody else and then a whole group surrounds you that starts picking on you and saying that you are a nerd.’’ The polysemic nature of the Japanese culture of ‘‘cuteness’’ seems to have struck a chord with Israeli girls, who are struggling with the construction of

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their own gendered identity in a society that these days presents girls with mixed messages and confusing expectations as to what it means to be a female (Lemish 1998a:156–60). Identification and Fandom. Children express strong identification with many of the Pokémon characters, applying a variety of criteria for identification. As has been established in the literature, girls tend to choose characters of both genders, while boys remain loyal to male figures only (Ho√ner 1996:397). In response to our prompt ‘‘I am most similar to [blank] because,’’ younger children tended to focus on expressions of gender and physical similarity. For example, an eight-year-old girl replied, ‘‘Because I am a girl, and I also have long hair,’’ ‘‘Me and Mew [the cat] have a similar shape,’’ explained an eight-year-old boy. Others used the criteria of personality characteristics and behavioral similarity: ‘‘ ’Cause, ’cause . . . I am strong and he is strong, and, and, and, . . . for example, he has the same character as me,’’ stated another eight-year-old boy. ‘‘Like Mew, he expresses his feelings on the outside. When somebody annoys me, I say what I think and that’s it,’’ declared a ten-year-old girl. Others identified with Pokémon characters’ personality characteristics, such as being stubborn like Ash (a ten-year-old boy), or being irritable like Mewtwo (a ten-year-old girl), and argued that they behave like them in everyday situations: ‘‘I am like Charizard . . . because when Ash irritates him he pretends not to do anything, kind of being on strike. Sometimes me too, when I’m being irritated, I close the door, I don’t talk to anybody and I’m kind of on strike,’’ described a ten-yearold girl. Similarly, a ten-year-old boy described the behavioral similarity between himself and Charmander: ‘‘Because I am not afraid of anything, and I also hit when necessary and I protect myself.’’ It is interesting to note the gendered choice of behavioral identification here, the girl choosing a passively disobedient strategy, while the boy refers to an active mode of fighting back. The second type of identification was that of wishful identification. ‘‘I would like to be like’’ answers were of three types. First, children preferred to be like the winners, those gaining respect, money, and admirers. ‘‘I want to be Charmander. He was really the hero here . . . and I also like this Pokémon, he is pretty strong already at his first stage. And I think he was the hero here, and I want to be the hero,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. ‘‘I want to be Ash, so I can have many badges [earned in battles],’’ said a ten-year-old girl. Other children wanted to exemplify the combination of ‘‘cute and strong’’: ‘‘I would like to be 180

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three [characters], Caterpie, because his next stages are kind of strong and he is kind of cute. Charmander and Bulbasaur because they are strong and also cute,’’ explained a nine-year-old boy. Similarly, a ten-year-old girl said: ‘‘I would like to be Ash, because he has the Pokémon that are the very best and the cutest.’’ The central role of ‘‘cuteness’’ is not surprising, given our discussion above, and demonstrates the appropriation of Japanese values within the Israeli context. The prevalence of ‘‘strength,’’ however, is congruent with previous studies that have demonstrated that boys identify with strong characters, and that physical strength predicts a desire for social interaction (Ho√ner 1996:390). Our data, however, suggest that girls also wish to be strong, and that physical strength is not only sought after in friends but is also desired for one’s self. Additional support for these findings comes from a study on Israeli girls’ interest in the broadcast of wrestling programs and imitation of aggressive behavior (Lemish 1998b). We can attempt to explain these di√erences, too, by contextualizing them within the local Israeli scene that glorifies physical strength and militarization. This may have particular consequences for girls: in contrast to other Western societies, Israeli girls are expected to perform military service at the age of eighteen, and from a young age they internalize the notion that serving in the military, especially in combat units, is highly regarded and socially rewarded. Indeed, the more ambitious, strong-willed, and talented girls try to pursue more active roles in the military, attempting to prove that they are as capable as their male colleagues. Wishful identification was also characterized by a desire to demonstrate altruism. A nine-year-old-boy told us ‘‘[I would like to be] Charmander . . . because I would feel that I am developing and helping somebody and I would have a good feeling because I have done something good today.’’ Another boy said: ‘‘You feel that you are kind of helping somebody. So you kind of feel gratitude from God.’’ Others wanted to be on the other side of the helping relationship—to be cared for and loved: ‘‘[Pikachu], because Ash loves him very, very much. He is the Pokémon that he loves the most,’’ explained a girl. A pair of girls expressed wishful identification with the Pokémon’s early developmental stages, when they are cute and attract the most nurturing attention. Lastly, children wished they could be independent, like some of the characters: ‘‘I want to be Ash because he can go wherever he chooses, and he is on a journey, and I wish I was on a journey,’’ said an eleven-year-old boy who later elaborated on this theme: ‘‘Ash goes on the journey and he is by himself, and Pokémon in Israel

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there is no one that will tell him what to do, and it’s fun being alone, and going on a journey, and you go wherever you want to, without anybody telling you where to go.’’ This sort of wishful identification, not surprisingly, was expressed by older, male interviewees. The third type of identification, ‘‘I choose you,’’ was expressed in terms of fantasized social interaction with the series’ characters. Children wanted to be friends with characters that possessed the qualities of cuteness, strength, and loyalty, and who could be trusted to help out in case of need. They expressed their desire to be friends with characters that are known to be good and considerate friends, as a boy who chose Ash and Brock as his favorites explained: ‘‘They are nice and they know how to be good friends. They treat each other and their Pokémon nicely.’’ But they also wanted useful friends, those that could help out in times of need: ‘‘because he is loyal, and can help in times of trouble,’’ said a boy; ‘‘I’d like Squirtle because he is cute and kind and he listens to Ash and he can also make bubbles for me in the bathtub. And Pikachu I want as a friend because if I have an electric short he can help me,’’ explained a girl. Most of the children in our study did not identify with the goal of the human characters in the series to become a Pokémon Master. They stated various reasons for this lack of interest: they didn’t want the attention associated with it; they didn’t want to leave home; they thought the job was too di≈cult and annoying; they disliked the idea of controlling others and fighting all the time, and so on. This finding provides additional support for the active nature of children’s processing of television meanings. Despite the fact that a popular text’s message may be highlighted over and over again and presented very favorably, this does not necessarily mean that the message will be automatically and uncritically internalized even by the most avid viewers. Training to become a Master who controls others was too foreign and unattractive a concept to the young Israeli viewers, who are raised within a discourse of egalitarianism, which has its roots in the socialist-Zionist ethos of the establishment of the modern state.

CONCLUDING NOTES

Young Israeli viewers of the Pokémon tv series were active interpreters of the text. They brought to their viewing personal experience and knowledge, cultural context, and gendered identities, and integrated their understandings of 182

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the program within a generally prosocial perspective on human relationships and conflict resolution. As expected, both gender and age emerged as central variables influencing meaning making. Both are related to the diversity of needs and pleasures sought and gratified by popular media. The study of gender di√erences in Israeli children’s reactions to Pokémon reveals a complicated picture. This is consistent with a recent account of gender di√erences in the media environment of children in twelve European countries including Israel (Lemish, Liebes, and Seidmann 2001). According to this cross-cultural study, two processes seem to be at work at the same time: on one hand, it seems that boys and girls still di√er in their access to media, patterns of use, and content preferences, as well as in the social practices and meanings they attach to them. At the same time, however, television seems to be playing a role in blurring the di√erences in an asymmetrical way: girls are increasingly showing an interest in traditionally masculine genres, whereas boys continue to show little interest in feminine genres. It is di≈cult to determine whether this trend reflects a genuine shrinking of the gender gap. Several moral dilemmas seem to have dominated the interviews and focus groups, centering on four traditional dichotomies: good and evil, cuteness and strength, friendship and competition, and masculinity and femininity. For the children in this study, the Pokémon series proved to be a meaningful site for sorting through moral struggles with these dichotomies, and an opportunity to experiment with the meanings associated with their possible blurring. Children of all ages are able to extract moral significance from the program, in contrast with the ‘‘moral panics’’ associated with much of television viewing (Drotner 1992). An interesting question raised but not answered by our research is why some foreign elements of the program are adopted by young audiences (for example, the centrality of cuteness), others rejected (for example, the goal of becoming a Master), and still others given a local inflection (for example, fighting for peace). We suggest that children’s readings of Pokémon should be understood within the unique context of contemporary Israeli culture, where issues of war and security, masculinity and force, militarization of civil society, egalitarianism, and a sense of ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them’’ are central in children’s construction of life. In this sense, Pokémon, like other globally circulating cultural texts, is always read and interpreted contextually. It is through these children’s eyes that suppressed aspects of our value system become visible and the e√ectiveness of the work of socialization is most evident. Pokémon in Israel

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NOTES

1. These figures were given in a personal interview with an unnamed source at Tevel Cable Company, 25 August 2000. 2. The authors would like to express their deep gratitude to the following students who made significant contributions to this work in the form of data collection and analysis within the framework of an undergraduate research seminar: Ziv Burstein, Idit Gazit, Netaly Nachshoni, Shiri Reznik, and Michal Tirosh.

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9 How Much Is a Pokémon Worth? Pokémon in France Gilles Brougère

In the final scene of the second movie, Pokémon 2000, Jiraldan, an evil collector of Pokémon who has just been defeated by Ash and his human and Pokémon compatriots, crawls out of the smoldering wreckage of his ship holding all that remains of his once unparalleled Pokémon collection—his first Pokémon card. Sadly, but with a sense of determination, Jiraldan looks at the card and declares, ‘‘And where it all started, so will it all begin again.’’ By bringing a Pokémon consumer product (in this case, a trading card) into the midst of the Pokémon narrative, this scene uses a form of mise-en-abyme (mirroring e√ect) to reveal a truth of creation and also of consumption. I find Jiraldan’s statement compelling because I believe that the cards are at the center of the Pokémon phenomenon, not just because of their enormous popularity and visibility but also because of the criticism they have generated. The ultimate tribute to the centrality of the cards was Nintendo’s release in late 2000 of a new Game Boy game based on the cards, shifting the goal of the game from collecting Pokémon to collecting Pokémon cards. The true nature of a Pocket Monster was thereby revealed: it was only a card that we had mistaken for a monster. Another example, picked more or less at random from the social scene of the Pokémon phenomenon, of the importance of the cards: In London, at the Millennium Dome, a lackluster Pokémon event was failing to attract much attention or generate much excitement. Everything changed when an announcement was made that cards would be distributed. Suddenly, a crowd surged toward the center of the Dome, everyone lunging, pushing, and shoving to get their hand on some cards. Mothers in the crowd competed with children for the treasures. What may be the most surprising aspect of the Pokémon phenomenon and

what has generated the most criticism is the high value placed on cards, which, from a rational point of view, should be seen as valueless and which will no doubt lose most if not all of the value they enjoyed at their peak of popularity. What makes these cards valuable? Why do adults, too (like the mothers in the Millennium Dome) end up believing they are valuable? Many other scenes could be mentioned, such as mothers going from store to store to try to locate cards they promised they would get for their child, but often failing in their mission because the rapid growth in the popularity of Pokémon in France exceeded, for a time, what the French distributors anticipated. As a consequence, the cards quickly became the focus of adult criticism, both of the absurdity of creating value out of thin air and of the sense that game manufacturers were deceiving vulnerable young consumers and garnering excessive profits without o√ering real entertainment value in return. Without denying the commercialism of the Pokémon phenomenon or defending Pokémon’s producers and distributors, I would like to understand it from the point of view of the meanings and actions that children generate around these objects, keeping in mind that children are not isolated from the rest of society. Like other objects of entertainment, the meanings and uses of Pokémon cards result from the collective actions of producers, children, and adults (including relatives and teachers) with whom the children must negotiate access to these items. These various actors are interdependent and react to one another. None of them would be in a position unilaterally to impose meanings (either the manufacturer as an all-powerful manipulator or the child as an ultimate fabricator of meaning freed of all constraint), but instead each one contributes to a collective production of meaning in connection with the actions of the others, the outcomes not always being what anyone could have anticipated. The logic of symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1986) seems to me to be the most appropriate way to understand this phenomenon, as I reject approaches that are either structurally deterministic (e.g., explaining cultural phenomena entirely in terms of market forces) or that see individual consumers as free and isolated actors. Using the example of the Pokémon phenomenon in France and focusing on the role of the cards, I will analyze the social production of a system of meanings and uses involving these three major categories of actors—producers, children, and the parents, teachers, and other adults who care for them. Data were collected from April through October 2000 (observations, analysis of the objects, formal and informal interviews).∞ Clearly, the Pokémon phenomenon 188

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has unique features in each country, reflecting both local marketing strategies and the specific cultural context. But I believe that my analysis of this one national context reveals patterns of use and interpretations that apply beyond the case of France.

THE FRENCH SITUATION

Pokémon has been a big commercial success in France, as elsewhere. At the end of its first year in France (November 2000), over 2.5 million Pokémon game cartridges had been sold and the Pokémon license had generated over $300 million in revenue. Episodes of the tv series were broadcast three times a week on tf1 (one of the four major French broadcast channels) with a very high audience rating, as well as being broadcast daily on Fox Kids (a cable channel). With 500 million cards sold, record computer game sales, and more than two hundred licenses granted, it is easy to see that the Pokémon phenomenon was a great commercial success in France. But what most distinguishes the marketing of Pokémon in France from Pokémon’s history in Japan and the United States is its short and condensed life cycle. In Japan, the franchise was extended gradually over several years (the Game Boy game, followed by the comic strip, the cards, the television series, and then the figurines, toys, and film). In the United States, the various media were released soon after the release of the video game (the tv series immediately after the game, and the cards and toys one month later). As Pokémon spread across the globe, the product rollout schedule became increasingly abridged: five years in Japan, three in the United States, and less than two in Europe. The same life cycle reduction has occurred with the Pokémon trading cards. The ‘‘Neo’’ card series was released in early 2001 in France, or just over one year after Pokémon was introduced. The Neo series was released in the United States two years after Pokémon was first introduced. It took four years for Neo to be released in Japan. Moreover, some of the card series will never be released in France. It is becoming more and more di≈cult to stagger over time the release of products that have an international appeal. The media anticipate the release of Pokémon products, which leads consumers to focus their interests on new products they are aware have already been released abroad, thereby creating a craze: products are released very fast and in large quantities, quickly saturating the market. This is a consequence of globalization that limits the options of Pokémon in France

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local subsidiaries subjected to pressure from information they do not control through magazines and Internet sites, and shortens the life cycle in countries that receive the products later. Companies holding the rights can no longer plan product releases by relying on the fact that they alone control the information. Pokémon information flows globally via informal and o≈cial networks. We need to consider how children’s increased access to a variety of information (newspapers, television, the Internet) is impacting the conditions under which products are disseminated. This is an example of the complexity of interactions between manufacturers and child consumers. As a result of these factors, France experienced a ‘‘Pokémania’’ that lasted only about six months, from approximately February 2000, when the first movie was released, until the end of summer vacation in August. During this peak period of Pokémon interest in France, it was the cards and stickers sold at newsstands that were the objects of the greatest desire. Desperate mothers could be seen going from one newsstand to the next looking for cards they had promised their children as rewards for good grades. Salespeople were astonished at the briskness of the sales and at the prices at which these cards could be sold. It was the release of the film that brought the phenomenon to the attention of the general public, with many articles in the press. Although Pokémania did not enter the public consciousness until the movie was released in February, children’s interest had surged a month earlier, when the cartoon was moved from a cable station with a limited audience to the most-watched tv station in France. The introduction of the video game and of the cards in the autumn of 1999 had received little attention because the cartoon at that point was only available on the cable channel. The move to network television combined with strong sales of the Pokémon video game and cards during the Christmas season to launch the phenomenon. Although merchandising was important in the success of Pokémon, it was only one of the factors. Adult criticisms of Pokémon seem to have worked to increase children’s interest, by adding a feeling of demarcation from adult values, even though Pokémon’s story line is more prosocial than that of many other children’s cartoons. Besides critiques of the crass commercialism of the merchandising of the Pokémon trading cards, there were the predictable mainstream criticisms of the series for being violent and for having little educational value. Analysis of the series would have challenged these misinformed criticisms, but the role played by parents and educators in the phenomenon was to state preconceived opin190

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ions and to put forward interpretations that were opposed to those of children. In interviews we conducted with children, children were very clear about the fact that their parents’ and teachers’ hostile reactions to Pokémon were key elements in contributing to the definition of Pokémon as a children’s universe, a universe that enabled them to develop values that di√er from those of adults. Adult circumspection and even hostility made Pokémon more interesting and attractive to children and thereby contributed to Pokémon’s success. The school vacation schedule appears also to have been a factor in the phenomenon’s rise and fall. At the beginning of the two-month summer vacation, the phenomenon was at full steam, and during interviews we conducted at a recreational center in early July we found that enthusiasm remained strong. By September, when children returned to school, there appears to have been a strong decrease in interest. Christmas catalogs in December of 2000 again o√ered Pokémon products, but the second film, released during the Christmas vacation, was not nearly as successful as the first.

DISTANCING

One way to explain Pokémon’s rapid rise and fall in popularity among children in France is to think of it as an unusually intense version of a standard fad, which in France tends to be tied to the school schedule and to take place mostly between the end of the Christmas vacation (a time when tv viewing is at a peak and children receive many gifts, including video games) and the beginning of the summer vacation, when peers are around less and parents more, and new interests tend to emerge. By the time the new school year began in September 2000, Pokémon had clearly dropped in popularity, as children tried to trade away their Pokémon cards for Digimon cards or for more traditional child goods, such as marbles. On one hand, we can retrospectively explain Pokémon’s relatively short duration in France as the result of the intense competition among companies determined to take advantage of Pokémon’s popularity in the first eight months of 2000, competition that contributed to an overeagerness of merchandisers that worked to make the phenomenon more fragile by transforming it from a potentially enduring franchise into a temporary fad (see, e.g., Lipovetsky 1994). On the other hand, Pokémon’s fall in fortunes at the end of the summer of 2000 can be explained as the typical seasonal cycle of playgrounds, in which one activity routinely substitutes for another. This sugPokémon in France

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gests that if we are to understand the timing of a cultural phenomenon such as Pokémon we must attend simultaneously to the sense of trendiness and desire that is produced in consumers by the intense competition between companies struggling to capture the same market as well as to the way in which popular activities are collectively constructed by peer groups functioning independently from the market. The market continually strives to exploit the logic of spontaneous collective actions that is characteristic of peer groups on playgrounds, without necessarily fully understanding or mastering all of its characteristics. It is di≈cult to measure the phenomenon of consumers’ distancing themselves from a craze, a process that is in part a genuine loss of interest and in part a performance staged to show that one is in tune with the new tastes constructed by the peer group. Children we interviewed in the autumn of 2000 made such statements to us as ‘‘Pokémon is no longer for me, maybe for others’’ and ‘‘It’s good for nothing.’’ A child who informed us that he used to be a Pokémon player but that he had stopped, explained to us, ‘‘But since it’s stopped now, I’ve stopped talking about it. . . . At the beginning, I liked it, but now I’m beginning to make fun of it.’’ We should not necessarily take these statements literally. Although these children claim to have distanced themselves from the phenomenon, the passion and expertness of their talk about Pokémon suggest a continuing fascination and attachment. However, once the peer group ceases to endorse the activity and once the playground ceases to function as a dynamic trading place, a phenomenon such as Pokémon will be reduced to a personal interest pursued within the domestic environment. Nevertheless, even under such constraints, it can continue to survive in the form of purchases associated with the domestic domain, such as Christmas presents. Finally, it should be noted that as a once highly successful product reaches the end of its run, consumers tend to become critics, some even critically evaluating their own previous interest: ‘‘At first I loved it, but now it’s totally stupid.’’ If nothing else, such statements demonstrate that children are capable of repeating statements they have heard adults say.

CONSTRUCTING THE GROUP AND ITS REFERENCES

Pokémon’s success seems to rely heavily on a social logic of shared references within the peer group, references that are obligatory at an age where conformity to the group is a major element of social life. As a child told us, ‘‘Where did 192

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I learn all this? By watching tv, playing. Every kid knows this stu√.’’ The sharing of common knowledge is crucial to children’s peer groups. That is why the spoken word is so important. The complexity of the Pokémon universe makes for very rich conversations, full of opportunities to achieve social goals by sharing information with others and by showing o√ one’s knowledge. This knowledge is restricted to a large extent to the logic of naming, something we also have observed in relation to other children’s universes, such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Brougère 1999:79): by saying the names one demonstrates that one is in the know, which is why there is so much pleasure to be found in merely reciting the names of the characters. In the case of Pokémon, the list of characters is so long that a masterly recitation carries additional weight. Knowledge in this context refers to the ability to give the right name to a monster. This process is performed at the end of each episode of the tv series, in the ‘‘Poké-rap’’ where one-third of the monsters’ names are chanted as their images flash on the screen, one by one. Here we have a prime example of how the manipulation of symbolic referents functions as a core social activity. Before trading objects, children exchange names, which gives them the feeling that they are exchanging knowledge. Nintendo, aware of the importance of naming, translated the creatures’ names into terms that artfully reflect the language and culture of French children. This is an essential aspect of cultural and linguistic localization that is necessary if children are to relate intimately to a product. It should be noted that the structure of the Pokémon universe itself strongly reinforces children’s belief that names have great symbolic power. The various monsters each have a language of their own that consists entirely of pronouncing their own name, the name e√ectively reflecting their essence and, when said with various inflections, reflecting their thoughts and feelings. The characters’ names in French, as in Japanese and English and other languages, convey a core characteristic of each creature. Consequently, there was great convergence here between what the manufacturer was o√ering and children’s preferred practices, a convergence that suggests that the manufacturers and the children understood each other very well (at least for a while). This is why it is so hard to decide whether the child was being manipulated by Pokémon or whether Pokémon was being manipulated by the child. Pokémon’s producers clearly developed their products based on intimate knowledge of the play strategies and social life of children. Children thus influenced the producers, who in turn Pokémon in France

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influenced children. There is a co-construction of meaning here, where cooperation between producer and consumer lies in the background of a process based on a model similar to the one described by Becker (1982) for the creation of works of art. The production of social meanings in Pokémon is generated by the interplay of actions and interpretations of the various actors involved. In a sense we could say that the creation of the names for the monsters in Pokémon was a collaborative process, because the producers drew heavily on the culture produced by children. By appropriating children’s culture, the producers provide children with a product that children in turn can invest in, appropriate, and use to make their own meanings and to devise their own activities. A great strength of Pokémon is that it is an activity primarily not of individuals but of social groups and, moreover, one that reinforces the coherence of children as a peer group by allowing them to define themselves vis-à-vis their parents, teachers, and other adults. However, there is a contraction inherent in Pokémon’s appeal to children as a collective audience. The target audience is too wide: by appealing to very young children who are attracted to Pikachu and other cute characters, Pokémon was at risk of losing its appeal to older children. In our interviews, children often expressed a desire to distinguish their interest in Pokémon from the interests of others as, for example, in the statements of children who reject Pikachu as too childish, a rejection by girls of what boys like, and vice versa. Consequently, Pokémon’s ability to address a wide, diverse audience also was a factor in its sudden loss of popularity for children for whom Pokémon no longer supported a desirable identity as members of close-knit groups defined by age and gender. What seemed at first to be a single universe of fans turned out to be a sometimes acrimonious collection of highly di√erentiated subgroups, each with its own specific tastes and interests in Pokémon. Our interviews show that talking about what they like and don’t like in episodes is a way for children to make clear how they di√er from others. Thus, for example, an older child demonstrated his di√erence from younger ones by saying, ‘‘I believe it’s for small kids, the story is very basic.’’ Another fan told us that he likes it when ‘‘Damien is burned and electrocuted at the same time.’’ Some (mostly younger) children told us they like it when Pikachu talks, a perspective that led other (mostly older) children to sco√. The opportunity Pokémon provided for children to have a favorite monster allowed them to a≈rm their individuality while also demonstrating that their values conform to those of their age and gender group. The di√erentiation of meanings that 194

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children found in Pokémon demonstrates that being a fan is not a passive act of reception but instead a process of selecting from a range of interpretations to construct a peer group identity. Pokémon managed to have an appeal that was simultaneously very wide and very intense, attributes that rarely occur in combination within contemporary child culture. For a cultural product to work to galvanize the formation of a group, it must first generate collective practices. The spoken word, as discussed above, is the first and foremost of these practices, the one that makes the others possible. Child sociability is formed initially out of the circulation of spoken words that enable the construction of elements of a shared culture. Discussing and performing scenes from cartoons on the playground is a key way that children appropriate tv culture. This is a very common practice. During the height of the craze, when children came together, they talked about Pokémon, comparing their knowledge of the tv series and of the cards they owned, and mimicking Pokémon battles on the playground. Pokémon cards and, to a lesser extent, stickers, played an important role as a focus for collective practice. This repeated a successful marketing formula in France associated with trading cards distributed by Panini featuring soccer players, heroes of children’s tv shows, and pogs, but took it to a higher level. Pokémon as a social practice for most children was introduced by the tv series and reinforced by the trading cards. The cards solidified social relationships by providing a concrete basis for the shared interests of the peer group. By trading cards and playing the card game according to rules that I will mention later, children learned to fit into the culture of Pokémon. The tv series provided the central myth and the cards the central rituals of children’s Pokémon communities. In France, at the height of the craze, although watching the tv show was the most common Pokémon activity, it was card use that attracted the most attention and which caused the most conflicts with parents and especially with teachers. This in a sense was inevitable because card play typically is practiced in children’s public spaces and particularly on the playground, a site of negotiation between children’s and educational cultures. Schools in France eventually established some prohibitions on Pokémon card play at school. For teachers in France, the culture of Pokémon is by definition noneducational and can be nothing but a source of disturbance and distraction, not just in the classroom but on the playground as well. The presence of Pokémon in public spaces Pokémon in France

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constitutes a challenge to the authority of adults who are critical of the legitimacy of such practices.

OTHER PRACTICES

As Buckingham and Sefton-Green point out in chapter 2, Pokémon is unusual among children’s products in providing a diversity of possible practices. But these diverse practices are not equally popular or influential. In France, only the tv show and the trading cards seem to function as a peer group activity pursued in public space. The Pokémon Game Boy game, which of course was the origin of Pokémon, is played mostly by older boys and it is mostly an activity practiced alone at home and only rarely on the playground, when permitted. However, the group and individual practices at times overlap, as, for example, when the computer game is talked about among peers on the playground. It is possible for players to connect their Game Boys to trade Pokémon, but our interviews and observations suggest that these collaborative activities are relatively rare and when they occur it is at home, under parental supervision, rather than in the shared public space of school. But even for the majority of children who do not own one, the Pokémon computer games serve as a social referent. The Pokémon video games available for the Nintendo 64 console are not played by many children, but they are prestigious. For complex reasons including phone rates and the French investment in the Minitel (an interactive home-based information system), the Internet is much less important in France than it is in the United States. But though the scope of usage is low, there was, at the peak of the Pokémon phenomenon in France, a significant flurry of Internet activity. Many French-language Pokémon sites were created and visited early in 2000. But by the end of the year, Pokémon’s presence on the World Wide Web was in decline, with Pokémon sites dropping o√ the top-fifty list of the French version of Lycos.

USES OF THE CARD GAME

The Pokémon trading-card game was, after the tv series, the second most important Pokémon practice in France. There is a hierarchy of uses of Pokémon cards, beginning with an act of consumption, but then moving on to

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include accumulation (collecting), a mise-en-scène of the self (when one shows one’s collection to others), a form of exchange (trading duplicate cards), and a game. Along with talking about the tv series, the various uses of the cards play an important role in constructing the group, relying heavily on existing forms of social life, more than creating new ones (the exception being Pokémon card game tournaments, but these were not very common in France). Above all, the cards serve to relay knowledge of the Pokémon universe and heighten its presence. They facilitate children’s knowledge of the names and properties of the monsters. They function for children as an encyclopedia of the Pokémon universe that is pocket-sized and portable. The cards can be used not just for collecting, trading, and as a source of information, but also in games, played with or without stakes. The Pokémon card games we observed did not even come close to adhering to the rather complex rules suggested by the manufacturer, Wizards of the Coast. As a child told us, ‘‘I do not understand the rules, even though I’ve read them over and over.’’ Instead of playing the o≈cial version of the game, which is a simplified version of Magic: The Gathering, children much more often used the Pokémon cards to play games of their own devising. To a large extent, these are simple games, played like pogs or La Tapette with the goal of overturning an opponent’s card by ‘‘tapping’’ it; or like the marbles game La Lancette, where one wins by throwing the card the farthest; or like the traditional card game La Battaille (War), where the players randomly turn over cards from their decks and compare attack and life points to decide who wins. French children appropriated and localized Pokémon by ignoring the game’s o≈cial rules and instead integrated these new playthings into older practices associated with traditional games passed down by oral transmission and imitation on playgrounds. Here we see the most sophisticated and contemporary forms of marketing and consumption meeting traditional forms of children’s culture. When they first encounter Pokémon cards, children seize on their similarity to other games: ‘‘It looks like pogs’’; ‘‘It reminds me of Dragon Ball Z cards.’’ This familiarity may seem paradoxical when one considers the relative originality of the cards. But the children’s ability to assimilate a new product into familiar forms of play does not mean that children did not notice or take advantage of the new possibilities provided by Pokémon cards, including the potential to turn these cards into a new form of children’s cultural currency.

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THE QUESTION OF VALUE

The rapid rise and decline in the worth of Pokémon cards challenges us to reflect on the question of the source of value of children’s commodities. Who gave Pokémon cards their value? Did children contribute to the formation of this value, or were they victims of the manipulations of Pokémon’s adult producers? Some would suggest that the value of Pokémon cards was illusory and fleeting. But then this is true as well for many commodities consumed by adults, and also, sometimes, for such rational investments as stocks and real estate. Producers and retailers may have played at giving value to the cards, but this value could only be validated in the real world through real economic exchanges. Children have a lot to say about this issue of value. Their concern with the monetary value of their cards sometimes resulted in the game being banned by schools following complaints of theft and racketeering and of teachers confiscating and destroying cards. ‘‘A brilliant card was stolen from me called Leviator; it was worth 150 F [$20] in the shops, and I have another one that’s worth 500 F [$70]’’; ‘‘It’s terrible, teachers tear up cards when they’re worth hundred of francs.’’ Beyond theft, there is the risk of losing a card while playing: ‘‘They can get stolen or lost during battles with friends.’’ In this sense, the exchange value given to the cards works against the spirit of the game by introducing notions of value from the real world. This concern is the basis for one of the main critiques adults made of Pokémon. During the height of the craze in France Pokémon cards were bought and sold based on price lists of cards published on the Internet and in magazines. But our research in France suggests that children were only rarely involved in this system. The value of the cards to children was largely independent of actual monetary value and instead derived from the connection of the cards to Pokémon as a myth and as a game. Children are primarily not card investors but card collectors. A collection presupposes di√erentiation and scarcity, or else the value of the collection is quickly lost. The producers of the Pokémon cards created scarcity, both real and imagined, and this sense of scarcity was then reflected in children’s trading strategies that, for the most part, were based less on economic rationality then on their emotional connection to the cards. When a majority of children lost their attachment to the cards, the market quickly collapsed. Card owners then scrambled to locate the few children who were still interested in order to liquidate their inventory. Up to the point when 198

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the market collapsed, the focus of most card collectors was more on having a complete collection or on gaining social prestige by owning rare cards than on monetary value. This is not to suggest that children’s engagement with the Pokémon cards lacked a sense of value or strategy, but that their sense of the value of the cards is circumscribed within the game universe and their strategies for collecting and exchanging the cards are similar to those they use when trading items such as marbles within their peer groups. It is easy for adults to project onto children’s Pokémon play elements from the world of rational collecting, with its price lists and commercial exchanges. In fact, in the case of Pokémon card collecting, there was no clear separation between the more emotional and the more rational forms of exchange. Children can shift imperceptibly from collecting for pleasure to ‘‘commercial’’ collecting, and from being in the world of the game to being in reality, as one might shift from enjoying playing with Barbie dolls to being a Barbie collector. But the fact that one form can shift into the other should not lead us to interpret young children’s collecting of Barbies as being the same species of activity as speculating in antique Barbies, nor should we interpret the Pokémon card collecting of young children as being the same as the card speculation of adults. The presence of an overlap between one form of activity and the other does not eradicate di√erence. The logic of value that exists within the Pokémon game and that guided the trading practices of children was only loosely tied to the price lists published in magazines that aimed to give a sense of rationality to the market. If this rational, monetary aspect a√ected children, it was only indirectly. Although they liked to brag about the monetary value of their cards, the value the cards held for children seemed to be based far more on their use value in play and on the social value to be enjoyed in displaying and trading them. However, the construction of meanings and practices by children was not totally independent of the investment of other actors, such as the producers who organized a system of scarcity and of adults who were preoccupied with stories of the cards’ monetary value. These adult presences in Pokémon worked to give the cards greater value in children’s eyes, but they also created obstacles to play. For example, some parents, believing the stories they heard of the value of the cards, admonished their children from handling their cards too roughly and forbade them from trading with friends, as they fretted that their child would be either the victim or the perpetrator of an unfair economic exchange. Pokémon in France

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The problem of value is inescapable in the case of Pokémon cards because unlike most other objects of children’s play the cards are clearly marked with a hierarchy of value. Like ordinary playing cards, the cards have their numerical values (hit points, defense points) printed on them, but, unlike playing cards, they do not all have the same probability of occurring; ‘‘rare’’ cards are printed in smaller quantities than ‘‘common’’ cards, each packet of cards purchased is unique, and one player’s deck inevitably will be di√erent from the next.

THE LEGACY OF MAGIC

The Pokémon card game is sophisticated, too much so for the majority of children who collected the cards. The Pokémon card game was based on Magic: The Gathering, a game that has never reached the sales figures or received the media attention of Pokémon but which nevertheless has been a huge success in introducing a new genre of media product to a narrowly targeted segment of teenagers and young adults. The key innovation of Magic: The Gathering is that it is based on a nonstatic deck, which always needs rebuilding and which belongs, uniquely, to the player. In a sense, the game’s creators created a hybrid product that merged a tradition of (trump) card playing with a tradition of (sports) card collecting. The first phase of playing the game consists of building one’s deck by purchasing or trading for a series of cards. There are rules for building a deck, and players greatly improve their chances of winning by doing well at this phase. In the second phase of play, a player presents his or her opponent with his or her own deck of cards. Because new cards are continuously being introduced, opponents are unlikely to be familiar with all of each other’s cards. Each card therefore is not just an icon to be used in the game; it also contains a portion of the rules that applies to the parameters of its play, and thus its symbols and text must be read closely. Once the rules governing each card’s play are understood, the game proceeds much like any other card game, with players drawing cards from their decks and playing in turn. The cards in Magic: The Gathering represent aspects of a universe of heroic fantasy, borrowed from role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. The artistic design of the cards is an essential feature of their pleasure and value, although these aesthetic features hold no implications for the actual playing of the game. The producer, Wizards of the Coast, provides an evolving narrative story line that gives the game a loose framework and a context for each new 200

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series of cards that is released. More than just a card game to most of its devotees, Magic has an associated narrative that helps it resonate with the popular cultural interests of its audience. The game is innovative on several levels, including the way it requires mastery not just of card-playing strategy (as does a game like bridge) but also, like Dungeons and Dragons, of large amounts of data, as there are several thousand cards. Many Magic players find the Internet a valuable medium for accessing information. In addition to the fact that Magic players often make use of the Internet, there are more profound convergences between the new medium of computers and the traditional medium of cards. Magic cards specifically belong to the era of the computer and the Internet. The cards used in Magic, each of which contains unique information necessary to the playing of the game, operate in a manner not unlike hypermedia links in a computer, as cards refer to other cards, creating a network of virtual links. The cards belong to the computer age in another sense, as they are products that could not exist without the use of computers for design, manufacture, and distribution. Many of these features are present as well in Pokémon cards. The Pokémon Game Boy game and the videos, which preceded the development of the cards, share many features with Magic: The Gathering. We can explain the convergence as arising from the fact that both products draw on the same sources, particularly on role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Collecting gladiator-like monsters, each of whom has unique aggressive and defensive abilities that determine its chances of winning in battles, within a fantastic and yet very rational context was a key principle that the Pokémon Game Boy game and tv series shared with Magic before the advent of the Pokémon trading-card game. It is therefore not at all surprising that shortly after its release as a computer game and a tv series, Pokémon became a card game, too. Because Pokémon already shared an underlying logic with Magic, it was natural for Wizards of the Coast to enter into a licensing agreement to develop and distribute the Pokémon trading-card game. The relationship of the cards to the computer game became even more complicated late in the Pokémon phenomenon, when a new computer game, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, was released for play on the Game Boy, with the goal of collecting not Pokémon monsters but Pokémon cards. From the very start, Pokémon’s producers pushed the idea of an equivalency between the cards and the monsters and between the trainers in the tv series and children as card collectors. Because the Pokémon Pokémon in France

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are designed to function like playing cards, which their ‘‘Masters’’ deploy like cards in La Battaille, cards are an ideal way of representing Pokémon. Children, clearly, had no trouble making the connection between collecting cards and collecting Pocket Monsters. Thus the trading-card game presents us with a case not of the exploitation of derivative rights, but of the most faithful representation of the logic of the system itself. The Pokémon card game shares basic principles with the cartoon and the video game. Collecting is at the core of the Pokémon myth, as the young trainers in the tv series and the players of the computer game capture and then engage in battles with their Pokémon. As stated in the ‘‘Rules of the Game’’ manual that comes with the trading-card game: ‘‘In the Pokémon card game, one of your goals is to collect every card, just as you try to capture each Pokémon on the Game Boy. However, some Pokémon cards are harder to find than others.’’ The o≈cial version of the card game features simulated Pokémon battles. Buying cards and putting them together into a deck corresponds to capturing Pokémon. Playing the game against an opponent corresponds to the battles one sees between trainers in the tv series. The simulated battles in the card game, which are based on gaming principles derived from Magic: The Gathering, capture the feel of the battles in the tv series and the video game. At the same time, the Pokémon universe as reflected in the video game and tv series is constructed on the same principles as the card game. We have here a system of reciprocal analogy. The Pokémon cards, like the ‘‘actual’’ Pokémon in the tv series, have characteristic strengths and weaknesses that determine their best use during battles. There is a wealth of information useful to playing the game available on Internet sites and in gaming magazines. This process of information seeking is represented in the cartoon through the use of the Pokédex (a hand-held computer) by the trainers and by an omnipresent narrator (who emphasizes the importance of mastering and using knowledge). Such a mise-en-scène of the core principles of the card and computer games in the cartoon is a major innovation of Pokémon. The goal of the tv series is no longer primarily to stimulate consumer desire or to add value to toys, but to provide information directly useful to the practice of entertainment. I predict that this new function of the tv show as an instructional device for games and toys will be exploited by other products in the future. Collecting and trading the cards and playing the card game are more tan202

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gible ways of imitating the actions of the trainers in the tv series than is possible on the Game Boy. I would suggest that the success of the cards is primarily due to their ability to reproduce the elements of the tv series. Their mode of modeling is more functional than realistic, as the cards are not a realistic three-dimensional representation of the characters. The cards’ attractiveness to consumers can be attributed to a logic of symbolic entertainment, which consists in their functioning metaphorically to allow the child to take the place of Satoshi (Sasha in French, Ash in English), the hero trainer of the cartoon. In suggesting that children’s play with Pokémon cards is primarily imitative, I do not mean to suggest that in this play children are passive or unimaginative. As in any form of pretend play, the child must use energy and creativity to make his or her actions refer convincingly to the targeted referent. There is more active play involved in the manipulation of commercial items than one may a priori suppose. Imitative play allows children to imagine they are in the heroes’ shoes, living the adventure. We are dealing here with consumption, but consumption that children use to develop a form of play that exists only as long as the children continue to invest it with meaning. I wish to distance myself from perspectives that describe children as victims of marketing without paying attention to the active pleasure of their play. If we can look past the hyperconsumerism of the Pokémon trading cards, we discover activities of children who are not satisfied with consuming objects passively. I would also suggest that the success of the Pokémon cards demonstrates that a traditional medium, such as the Pokémon trading-card game, should not be assumed to be incompatible with new media, such as video games and the Internet. Instead, traditional media can be redefined in ways that allow them to support the logic of new media. Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon are simultaneously traditional media and card games of the Internet era. The new media, instead of replacing the old ones, may facilitate their transformation.

CROSS-PENETRATION

Pokémon is both typical and exemplary of contemporary toy marketing in the way it connects a computer game, a tv series, movies, and toys, resulting in synergy and cross-penetration of marketing and entertainment. Marketing, no longer external to toys, is now a basic constituent of the logic of entertainment Pokémon in France

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and of the symbolic and emotional values associated with toys. What is new with Pokémon is that the leading products are not toys, per se, but instead a video game and a card game. This demonstrates that the logic of crosspenetration is independent of the particular media involved, or rather that contemporary toys are designed to transcend their origin in any one media genre and to thrive in a variety of media forms. Pokémon, like Barbie, Magic: The Gathering, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, is not just a toy or a game but a universe that exists in a variety of media. Success requires the artful matching of product themes with media forms. Though tv plays a crucial role, some products, such as Magic and Barbie, thrive without having their own tv show. For each of these multimedia products, one media form is primary, the others derivative. In the case of Barbie, the doll is of course the primary form, and the accessories, the coloring and sticker books, and the computer software subsidiary. In Disney’s case, the films generally come first. Some media contribute to the construction of a product’s social and behavioral meanings; others only disseminate images that already exist. Pokémon is unusual and even revolutionary in that the card game, the video game, and the cartoon all contribute synergistically to the formation of the Pokémon universe. The mise-en-abyme (mirroring e√ect) of the cartoon is a key to Pokémon’s synergistic cross-penetration of media forms: The use of computer tools by the heroes, their obsession with collecting, and the centrality of knowledge all function to mirror activities children can do with the cards and the computer game. In Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo builds and plays with small toys (something he of course didn’t do in the Victor Hugo novel), thereby giving legitimacy to the toys spun o√ from the film (Brougère 1998). An important but often overlooked feature of contemporary cultural products aimed at children (Bruno 2000) is that they are more complex and artfully created than generally believed, as they self-referentially both model and mirror the relationships that children develop with the products. The Pokémon tv series is composed of a series of children’s play scenarios. It is interesting in this regard that Tajiri Satoshi, the creator, says that the germinal idea for Pokémon came from his favorite childhood form of play (collecting insects). The fact that the narrative structure of the tv series is composed of familiar childhood play scenarios makes it very easy for children to restage

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these scenarios with Pokémon cards and toys. I disagree with those critics of contemporary childhood culture who argue that when children play with items derived from a television series they are engaged in mindless, passive play. I would argue that the imitative play process is complex and presupposes the solving of various problems (Brougère 1999). But the case of Pokémon also gives us cause to acknowledge the reverse process. The narrative structure at the heart of Pokémon takes its inspiration from the play of the children, whether deliberately or based on the childhood memories of the creators. It is thus not surprising that children are attracted to elements in Pokémon to which they have contributed. In other words, children do not imitate the scripts of the tv series so much as the tv series reproduces the playful logic of children.

A COPRODUCTION OF MEANING BY CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Pokémon’s uses reveal tensions in the relationship between adults and children. Adults tend to take a protectionist line against retailers, entertainment that impedes learning, and seductive marketing; in contrast, children’s approach to Pokémon is one of appropriation, which falls in the gray area between conformity and nonconformity. Children strive to find a margin of always fragile autonomy in their Pokémon play by playing adults against one another, parents against teachers, and retailers against both. Rejection by adults is ever present in children’s minds, particularly opposition from teachers. Though parents are critical, they tend to eventually give in and sometimes even cooperate to satisfy children’s consumption desires. In the United States, as Cross (1997:229–30) suggests, the consumption of toys has become the focus for the expression of hedonistic values shared by parents and children. It should also be noted that children are fully aware of media coverage of the phenomenon. One of the children we interviewed spoke of Pokémania, referring to the consumer excesses as analyzed in newspapers and on tv. Mimicking the adult line, children cite examples of excesses, but, as Buckingham (2000:154) has noted, their concern is almost always for excessive consumption by other, usually younger children. Children are capable of adopting the critical line, especially when it can be employed to distance themselves from the phenomenon once the group decides that Pokémon is no longer a part of its shared culture. The peer group culture of older children who once shared a love of

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Pokémon can then reconstruct itself by relegating the phenomenon to younger children or to children of the opposite sex: ‘‘At first I liked it, but now I’ve started to make fun of it.’’ Support as well as criticism of Pokémon must be understood in the context of a network of exchanges, interactions among children and between children and adults. Adults as well as children can use criticism of a phenomenon such as Pokémon to solidify their status as adults, parents, or teachers. The meanings and uses of Pokémon are a collective production, with everyone contributing. The manufacturers’ products certainly play a crucial role, but they rely on adapting prior successes, and they are guided in part by their knowledge of children’s play and their anticipations (correct or erroneous) of the reactions of children to their products. Children play a role right from the start as their reactions to previous products inform new product development. Once the products are released, children take the lead in defining uses and meanings. Parents, by facilitating access to products, including, sometimes, products they criticize, play a crucial role. Educators also get involved through the rules they establish for the use of the product in public spaces such as playgrounds that are crucial to the communities of children. On those rare occasions when they let Pokémon into their classrooms, they may change its meanings in children’s eyes. We could say that children have the last word, as exemplified in the moment when they decide to abandon a product. But children do not produce meaning alone; instead, they interact with the meanings constructed by others. This is not true only for children but is more generally a feature of social action, which is a cycle in which no one is first, where one always acts in reaction to the actions of others, and where one speaks in reaction to what others have said. If this is the case for children, it is equally true for the producers, parents, and teachers. Due to its enormous success and the strong reactions it generates, Pokémon provides us with a magnifying glass for studying the contemporary culture of children, and the central role of play. Children’s interactions with Pokémon take place within several overlapping environments. There is a public space in which they develop their shared culture and form their peer groups, a space where they appropriate elements that come to them from di√erent sources; the home environment, where they encounter the discourse of their parents; the school environment, where they contend with the rules and opinions of teachers;

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the market environment, where Pokémon products are displayed and sold; and the media environment, which includes broadcasts of the tv show as well as advertising. Within this complex network of settings, protagonists, and antagonists, children produce their culture by constructing peer groups, defined by interests, age, and gender, to distinguish themselves from others who are younger or di√erent. Some of the uses and meanings they make out of Pokémon are linked to traditions of their local environment; others are influenced by the involvement of educators; the most visible forces guiding and to some extent constraining children’s engagement with Pokémon are those of marketing and the media, but these are reworked by children within the collective space that allows them to be transformed into meanings and actions adapted to the group. Because the social individual functions in a collective environment, interacting with varied sources, individuation occurs in the context of relationships to others (Mead 1967). Meaning making occurs through a process of coconstruction. Because Pokémon cards had such high visibility, by examining the uses and meanings contemporary children made of these cards, we can bring into clearer perspective processes that are present much less conspicuously in the social life of children. NOTES

1. The data were gathered for the most part by Juliette Gibert in the course of her research for her DESS (master’s degree) in game sciences, University of Paris-Nord. Children of various social backgrounds, age, gender, and cultural origins were questioned in group or individual interviews.

WORKS CITED

Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Blumer, Herbert. 1986. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brougère, Gilles. 1998. ‘‘Cinéma et jouet,’’ 0 de Conduit (Revue de l’Union Française du Film pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse), no. 32: 5–10. ———. 1999. ‘‘Sociabilité enfantine et culture ludique: Construire un jeu collectif avec une référence télévisée.’’ In Sociétés et cultures enfantines, edited by Djamila Saadi-Mokrane, 75–81. Lille: Université Lille III. Bruno, Pierre. 2000. Existe-t-il une culture adolescente? Paris: In Press Editions. Buckingham, David. 2000. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.

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Cross, Gary. 1997. Kids’ Stu√: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 1994. The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Mead, George Herbert. 1967. Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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IV POKÉMON GOES TO SCHOOL

10 Localizing Pokémon Through Narrative Play Helen Bromley

As a long-time classroom teacher of four- and five-year-olds, I have always considered myself ‘‘popular-culture friendly,’’ seeing popular culture as o√ering many children a way into becoming readers and producers of narrative. Over the years I have watched reception (kindergarten) children subvert Disney for their own sophisticated uses and I allowed the boys to play Power Rangers in the classroom, using their narrative play as a way into school-based literacy practices. In the spring of 2000, having learned a bit from my fifteen-year-old daughter and my four-year-old nephew, among others, about the popularity of Pokémon, I decided to work with a group of four- and five-year-old children in a reception class to investigate how they used Pokémon in their play and to observe the narratives that were constructed around it. I was fortunate to find a ‘‘Pokémon-friendly’’ classroom, in a school where the craze had not been banned. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that the oldest children in the school were seven years old, and were not yet at the stage where they would do absolutely anything to obtain a Pokémon card. My primary interest here is not in the question of whether Pokémon is good or bad for children, or on whether it should be allowed in school (I think it should) but in how Pokémon is used by children for their own ends. Armed with a selection of Pokémon figures, I arrived in the classroom for my first visit. The class teachers were aware of Pokémon. One had a teenage son who had a Game Boy, and others had overheard children talking about Pokémon or observed them playing Pokémon on the playground. In order to have meaningful conversations with children about their interests it is necessary to have an awareness of all that is going on in popular culture, but this can be

di≈cult for teachers. As Cathy Pompe (1996:97) writes: ‘‘How can you share children’s references and pleasures when you’re not up watching Sonic the Hedgehog at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, you don’t get the Nickelodeon Channel, have never had a go on a mega drive and don’t even want to? And how can you possibly structure classroom learning experiences around something that you know so little about?’’ Reassuringly, however, it is not necessary to fully participate in children’s culture in order to share in and to value it. My aim was not to create a Pokémon-centered curriculum for the school but rather to look at how young children engage with such a phenomenon. Six children were chosen to work with me initially, although the size of the group grew throughout the project. The children were invited to play with the Pokémon toys I brought in. The children were not directed in any way and were not given any particular instructions. I expected them to busy themselves making up a Pokémon story, which I would then ask them to illustrate. I was also hoping to encourage the children to draw maps of their play, as I felt that this would be a good way to look closely at their thinking and also help them to analyze their own narratives. What actually happened was very di√erent from what I had planned. The prime concern of many of the children was ‘‘possessing’’ one or more of the Pokémon toys I had brought to school, in ways that made the construction of a collaborative story almost impossible. The personalities of the individual children were rapidly revealed as they took hold of the Pokémon toys that they considered to be important. There was considerable conflict over who would hold Pikachu, the character who obviously had most status in the eyes of these children. I am embarrassed to report that the girls in the group went immediately for the pink characters, Jigglypu√ and Chancey. To a girl named Lucy, possession of the toys represented such a mark of social status that she placed her toys in a box and sat on them for most of the session. However, this strategy was ultimately ine√ective as it precluded her from participating in the collective play. As Allison James writes: Through their games children e√ect symbolic changes on the world around them which permit them to exercise a degree of autonomy and control in a seemingly capricious and adult centered social world (1993:173). . . . Those more skilled performers impose meaningful transformations on the environment which come to dominate a particular game or form of play. 212

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Others, less skilful or less knowledgeable may be unable to direct its course or change its form. They may find themselves with unwelcome play identities, on the losing side, or last in the line. (1993:176) This was precisely what happened with Pokémon play at the school where I did this study. The children I describe below were the ‘‘more skilled performers,’’ and the transformations that they e√ected turned out to be the most exciting and significant part of the study. Other children in the class used blocks and construction equipment to create a setting in which their Pokémon story could take place, but I was a bit dismayed to notice that part of the purpose of their building activity seemed to be to create places where they could hide the Pokémon toys where others could not find them. The choosing of the toys from the selection was accompanied by ritualistic cries of ‘‘Pidgeotto, I choose you!’’ and ‘‘Jigglypu√, I choose you!,’’ phrases taken directly from the cartoon. One child, Shahanaz, remained quite bemused by all of this. It was apparent that she was unaware of the relative status of these toys. Eventually, almost as a tokenistic gesture, she took hold of Meowth, discarded by all the other children, no doubt because in Pokémon narrative terms he is a ‘‘bad guy,’’ a Pokémon that works with Team Rocket, the force of evil in the stories. That Meowth had been discarded was also of concern to me, as I felt that his presence would give the story a much better chance of developing some depth and complexity. It later became apparent that Shahanaz, unaware of who Meowth was, regarded him merely as a cat. As she was not yet part of the world of Pokémon, the toy did not hold the same significance for her as it did for the other children. At the end of the session the children had built one of the most complicated and sophisticated block constructions that I have ever seen. This may have been for a variety of reasons, not all of them Pokémon-related. Even in this fairly progressive classroom, opportunity for sustained play was becoming increasingly rare, and the novelty of being able to use the blocks may have been at the heart of the children’s motivations. The children were also aware, in varying degrees, of how working with a visitor to the classroom gave their work high status. Even with all this taken into account, there is no doubt that the children were enthusiastic about being able to use Pokémon in their play. The toys bridged the divide that lies between children’s experiences outside school and those that are engineered for them on the inside. The children were able to be Pokémon Through Narrative Play

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experts with the Pokémon toys; the adults in the room were those who knew less. Having knowledge, being in possession of facts, and sharing this information was to become central to my and the children’s experience of Pokémon. When I have watched children create narratives with small toys, I have always been aware of how what they know a√ects the stories they create. Children draw on their knowledge to give their stories meaning, and as storytelling is essentially a ‘‘making sense’’ activity, their knowledge of the world somehow always finds its way into their stories. Story construction is also where their possession of the facts meets their imagination, and I suspect that this is true as well for adult authors. As Harold Rosen suggests, ‘‘(a) inside every nonnarrative kind of discourse there stalk the ghosts of narrative and (b) inside every narrative there stalk the ghosts of non-narrative discourse. There are always stories crying to be let out and meanings crying to be let in’’ (Rosen 1987:12). This seems to have particular significance with regard to the culture of Pokémon as there is so much to know, in a way that has not perhaps been required in any craze that has gone before. With Power Rangers, all you really needed to know was that there was a red one, a blue one, a pink one, and so on. This emphasis on information became strikingly apparent when I asked the children to draw their Pokémon pictures. Shahanaz simply drew a picture of a cat for me, and declared that she had finished. Other children drew me fairly detailed Pokémon pictures, and one boy, for whom the construction of the setting had obviously been of paramount importance, drew me a picture of the castle they had built. Jake was the most interesting. When asked to draw, his excitement was tangible, and he said excitedly, ‘‘I know so much about Pokémon, can I draw you everything that I know.’’ As it turned out, one piece of paper was not enough and he filled two pieces with his drawings. As he drew each one, he explained their attributes, behavior, the noises that they made, and the Pokémon that they would mutate into at a later stage. In each drawing he managed to extract the essential features and replicate them for others. Instead of the narrative drawings that I had expected, I had got some thoughtfully produced information texts. Jake’s enthusiasm and obvious expertise was met with interest by the regular classroom teachers, as was the quality of the work that he produced. He was not a child who held particularly high status within the class or whose abilities were seen as being up to the level of some of the other boys. This was to change significantly throughout the period of the research. 214

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My next visit to the class involved bringing in a Pokémon ‘‘story box.’’ A story box, essentially, is a shoe box that has been transformed on the inside to represent a small world of one sort or another. In this case, I had attempted to make the inside of the box look like the sort of place that a Pokémon might like to live, be it a land or water dweller. I had also constructed a burrow for Diglets (mole-like Pokémon). I made some Diglets and added other homemade Pokémon to the box, which also contained the small Pokémon toys that the children had so enjoyed previously. Through presenting the Pokémon to the children in this way I was hoping to encourage the as yet elusive production of narrative. As soon as the children opened the box, what was once again readily apparent was the need for them to share their knowledge about the attributes of the toys. The conversation, which consisted of labeling statements, categorizing the toys, making appropriate noises, and demonstrating knowledge, seemed to establish ground rules for the children’s subsequent play. Here is an extract from the conversation: stephen: I’ve got the striped one, Psyduck. robert: Swap it for a Bulbasaur. robert: Blastoid, Blastoid. jake: Have the water one, Psyduck. jake: Whoever has this one, has to have this one, because it involves into it. jake: I’ve got a Diglet. Diglet, Diglet, Diglet. Did you see the one where all the Pokémons go and get Diglets? robert: Yeah, I’ve seen all of them. hannah: Give them all to me, and I’ll share them out. stephen: Blastoid. It’s got these ones and they shoot water. Through sharing their knowledge of the toys, and deciding which one they will ‘‘be’’ in their imaginary game, the children are, as Anne Haas Dyson describes (1997), negotiating their shared world in which each player has a clear identity and a place amongst others. What seemed to be di√erent between the Pokémon games and any that I had seen before was the complex nature of these understandings. Yes, I have seen imaginary play where children know that one has to agree to be, say, the princess or the prince, and that someone may also need to agree to be a witch, and that there will be consequences to those choices. This seemed to be more than that. In agreeing to be a Diglet, or Bulbasaur, you need to know and share a di√erent type of information. Pokémon seems to epitoPokémon Through Narrative Play

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mize Harold Rosen’s principles. Within the narrative of Pokémon, the information o√ered about each character (which is itself fictional information) is central in driving the narrative forward. In this respect Jake was the most fascinating. He knew (almost) everything that there seemed to be to know about the toys in the box: he knew where they lived, what they would change into, and their special powers. He was transfixed by the Diglets, which bounced around the carpet as he chanted, ‘‘Diglet, Diglet, Diglet.’’ He then put three of them together: ‘‘These have changed into Dutrio, now they have. Three Diglets make a Dutrio.’’ Holding them together tightly he then bounced them around the place, saying, ‘‘Dutrio, Dutrio, Dutrio.’’ More than any other story making I have ever seen before, the actions of the characters in the story were governed by the knowledge that the children had about them. It is very specific, complex, almost scientific knowledge. There was no doubt that having some of this knowledge was a prerequisite for appropriate involvement in the play. What happened, then, to those who didn’t know? It appeared to me that instead of being excluded, they were believed to be in need of instruction, so that they, too, could become informed participants in the story. Unlike Lucy, who in e√ect excluded herself from entry into the game by sitting on her toys, Hannah was able to enter into the play by taking on the role of apprentice. Although she began this session merely as mediator, sharing out the toys, by the end of the session, with support from Jake and the other boys, she was involved in helping them construct a collaborative story. This aspect of the Pokémon phenomenon is also one that I cannot remember noticing in other crazes that have gone before. Often, if you didn’t know the characters, or you hadn’t seen the film, then you couldn’t play and you were explicitly excluded. In some previous research into children’s play related to Disney films (Bromley 1996:77), one child was heard to say ‘‘I own the video, so I’m in charge.’’ With Pokémon, it seems to be okay to teach one another and to admit ignorance, as reflected in the lyrics from the Pokémon anthem, ‘‘I’ll teach you and you’ll teach me.’’ The main giver of knowledge in these play situations was Jake, and it was through such experiences that his role in the game began to influence his view of himself and others’ views of him. Through the Pokémon activities it became generally understood that actually he knew rather a lot, and was able to use this knowledge in a way that was beneficial to other children. Eventually, he began to use his knowledge of Pokémon in traditional school-based literacy tasks. An eye 216

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chart he made to be used in the role play area (which at this time was a clinic) had Pikachu drawn at the bottom of it. In a shared writing activity, the class were asked to compose their own version of the game Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Jake’s contribution was ‘‘Pikachu, Pikachu, what do you see? I see Ash looking at me.’’ His knowledge of Pokémon allowed him to participate e√ectively in traditional school-based literacy practices. His self-esteem and self-image changed perceptibly as the period of the research progressed. The collaborative nature of both the research and the learning taking place within it continued as the project developed. On a subsequent visit Robert, Stephen and Jake asked if they might make their own Pokémon story box. The results were a complete revelation to me. Robert, in particular, had already begun to make Pokémon-related objects at home and bring them in as ‘‘presents.’’ My new most prized possession is a homemade Charmander, forked tongue and all. These gifts and, indeed, the children’s sharing of Pokémon information with me were in some ways signifiers of my acceptance into that culture, if not quite as an equal, then almost. In the making of their story boxes the boys again demonstrated the ways in which they were able to support and learn from one another. The Pokémon culture, so easy to deride as trivial or manipulative, was in fact providing common ground, a cultural space within which the children could work collaboratively and define themselves as a group of peers. Children who would not normally have worked or played together did so, and many new social groupings were formed during the period of the research, as the Pokémon culture helped break down previous social mores that had been accepted as the norm. In the classroom studied by Dyson similar behaviors occurred. She writes that ‘‘in orienting themselves to particular cultural material, children were at the same time, orienting themselves to each other; their ways of using . . . cultural heroes were associated with their membership in particular peer social groups, and those groups themselves were marked by the interplay of gender, race and class’’ (1997:177). The social groups within the classroom became more fluid than they had been previously. The beginning of the production of the story boxes opened up ways for more children to engage in the games that were being played within that classroom, appealing to an even greater variety of learning styles. The Pokémon story box activity and, indeed, to a large extent Pokémon itself, focuses on spatial relations and the visual brain. The children’s attention to detail was remarkable as they tried to replicate the feature of the Pokémon Pokémon Through Narrative Play

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world from materials (junk!) they found in the classroom and at home. This activity was providing the children with opportunities for ‘‘focusing joint attention, taking on numerous roles, bringing memory to external form and developing language. All of these skills are critical for academic achievement and underlie literacy and numeracy as traditionally conceived’’ (Heath 2000:123). At the same time as the boxes were being made, I introduced into the classroom some examples of commercially produced Pokémon ‘‘small world toys.’’ These consisted of two small boxes that contained a miniature environment and some tiny Pokémon toys. While these were extremely popular with the children (I think many of them saw me as a sort of popular-culture Father Christmas) they did not mean as much to the children as the boxes that they had created for themselves. Earlier in the year I conducted this study, I attended an exhibition of collage at the Tate Gallery Liverpool, with notations by Peter Blake. In this exhibition I saw what were, in essence, story boxes: shoe boxes containing collections of objects around which a narrative could readily be constructed. In his notes to accompany this exhibit, Blake wrote that perhaps the appeal of such boxes lay in ‘‘the creation of, and control over, a small world, in a world in which we otherwise have very little control.’’ It occurs to me that this may be yet another part of the Pokémon appeal, particularly in the computer game, where so much of the world is imaginatively supplied by the player. There is also talk in the Pokémon culture of becoming a Pokémon Master. Mastery is something that must seem desirable to many children, particularly in school where it seems to be solely and firmly in the hands of adults. Another exciting unexpected twist to the project occurred when children started making story boxes at home and bringing them into school. Lauren’s box stood out from all the rest in its innovative design and originality. Lauren had not only made a Pokémon world, with Pokémon characters; she had embedded the story text within the three-dimensional world of the box. It was as if she had combined print and visual genres to create something completely innovative. I had been investigating children’s use of small world play for five years and had never seen anything quite like her box. The combination of both visual and literate forms was quite original, and the two were hard to distinguish. The texts that we write are influenced by the texts that we have read. Had the fact that Pokémon is available in so many platforms influenced Lauren and inspired her to create a genre of her own? We should at least be asking questions about the types of texts that will be produced by today’s readers, when they are readers of 218

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the broadest range of texts available in the history of literacy. Shirley Brice Heath argues that ‘‘the line between words and images is getting harder to draw: the visual through color, line and form enable understanding of metaphor—our ability to map interactions, experiences and cognitive operations across concepts to form images’’ (2000:124). No one seeing Lauren’s box could argue e√ectively for the view of children as passive consumers of Pokémon culture. This media-based phenomenon provided Lauren with a platform from which to develop her own ways of interpreting and creating texts. As well as creating Pokémon worlds of their own, the children began to tell stories using both their own story boxes and those that I had made. This is Lauren’s story, told with the support of a box that I had made. The comments in italics are those of Jake, who was watching as she taped her story for me: Lauren’s Pokémon Story One day Pikachu is walking along and he saw Ash. ‘‘Hello, Ash!’’ (He can’t say that, he only says his name!) ‘‘Bye!’’ And then Pikachu saw Squirtle. ‘‘Hello, Squirtle.’’ ‘‘Bye!’’ (Squirtle doesn’t do that.) Then Jigglypu√ saw Pikachu. ‘‘Hiya, Jigglypu√.’’ ‘‘Bye!’’ And Pikachu tried to fly. Blastoise squirted Pikachu, but he couldn’t get Pikachu because he wasn’t fast enough. Jigglypu√ was running along and bumped into Pikachu. So Pikachu went home and had tea with his mum. (With Ash you mean.) Jigglypu√ saw Squirtle. Squirtle squirted Jigglypu√. (Why don’t you thunderbolt Clefairy?) When Squirtle saw Pikachu, Squirtle was playing with him. ‘‘Hello. Come and play.’’ So he went home and had some cup of tea. Then Jigglypu√ was walking along and was having a race. And Blastoise squirted Pikachu. So it was Pikachu’s birthday and he decided to have a party. He invited all his friends. Then Blastoise squirted Pikachu again and when they squirted, Blastoise came to play and Pikachu spitted at Blastoise. And Jigglypu√ and Squirtle came to knock on Pikachu’s house while Pikachu was playing hide ’n’ seek and then Jigglypu√ was walking along and bumped into Pikachu. Pikachu was singing and trying to make a band. ‘‘La la la.’’ (How about if Jigglypu√ sings?) And then Jigglypu√ came to Pikachu’s and Squirtle and Jigglypu√ and Pikachu made a band. It is interesting to analyze the way that the two children who were primarily involved in this story use their knowledge of the Pokémon culture. Jake, almost a slave to his knowledge and needing the facts to be right, does not want the Pokémon Through Narrative Play

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characteristics of the toys subverted, even for story purposes. In fact, his role by this time in the research is as custodian of Pokémon information and the classroom Pokémon expert. (Incidentally, he had also appointed himself as caretaker of my research materials, which were often left in the classroom, and which he then guarded until my next visit.) It is as if he is in charge, in control of the Pokémon knowledge in that particular community. While Lauren is happy for her characters to speak, Jake is aware that in the ‘‘real’’ Pokémon world, this would never happen. Speaking is the preserve of the human characters in the tv series. The Pocket Monsters merely repeat their names, albeit in a variety of forms. It is not just the question of speech that bothers Jake. When Lauren states that Pikachu goes home to his mum, su√ering from his bruising encounter with Jigglypu√, Jake retorts, ‘‘Ash, you mean.’’ As far as Jake is concerned, Pikachu doesn’t have parents. Lauren is quite happy to make her own additions to the Pokémon culture, so that she gets the story that she wants, and as we already know from her production of story boxes, she enjoys wielding control over fictional worlds. As his presence in this transcript makes clear, Jake also enjoys control, but for him it is the information that counts. Consider how he wants his awareness of the characteristics of the Pokémon to be included in the narrative: ‘‘Why don’t you thunderbolt Clefairy?’’ He also seems to be a bit annoyed by the overly cozy and domestic scene that Lauren is painting and would like more reference to the ‘‘true’’ Pokémon world. Toward the end of Lauren’s story (the part with the birthday party), it is interesting that Jake grows silent, perhaps because at last he is getting his wish. Blastoise squirts Pikachu, who then spits at him in retaliation. In the final part of the story both children’s narrative desires are fulfilled. Lauren gets her happy ending, toward which she has been working for the entire length of the story, and Jake gets his wish that ‘‘real’’ characteristics of the Pokémon should play an integral part in the narrative. Knowing that Jigglypu√, who in the ‘‘real’’ Pokemon world can sing his/her name, Jake nominates him/her as an ideal candidate for lead singer in Pikachu’s band. Lauren takes his suggestion, which leads to a satisfying ending for all concerned, as Jake has at last had one of his suggestions recognized, and the story reaches a satisfactory conclusion. There is no doubt that as the children are creating this narrative they are not only positioning the characters in the story, they are also positioning themselves outside it. In a way, this story represents a ‘‘Battle of the Pokémon 220

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Masters’’: Jake, who is master of the information culture, and Lauren, who through creating her own original story box became master of the narrative. In this transcript Jake plays the role of the spirit of nonnarrative crying to be let in . . . and eventually, he is. The story also encapsulates what Lev Vygotsky (1978:93) termed the paradox of play. Although the children in this excerpt (particularly Lauren) are free from constraint, this freedom has limits. By infiltrating her Pokémon story with structures taken from other genres, including the fairy tale, slapstick, and a cozy domestic scene, Lauren overcomes situational constraints. Ultimately, however, she submits to Jake’s demands for some recognition of the realities of the Pokémon world. Perhaps to call her actions ‘‘submission’’ is a bit unfair. A more optimistic view might be that she has instead negotiated a place within the narrative for Jake, allowing him to use his knowledge of Pokémon to combine with, rather than to displace, her knowledge of story. In taking this stance we are able to see the children as creators of new worlds. Jerome Bruner argues that ‘‘many worlds are possible . . . [and] that negotiation is the art of constructing new meanings’’ (1986:149). These children authored a text through their imaginary play. Dyson talks about writing being ‘‘play with given words’’ (1997:12). Does Pokémon play depend more on given words than do other forms of play? What exactly is the role of the given words here? For Jake, the given words that he used in this play, not just on this occasion but throughout the research project, were the words given to him by the Pokémon cartoons, but also from the information texts of his Pokémon magazines, which were read to him at home. To him, this knowledge was not something that could be ignored or subverted. Each Pokémon character carried with it a bundle of information, and being a ‘‘knower’’ of this information is what was important to Jake; in fact it governed his social status within the classroom. It is perhaps little wonder that he did not want the knowledge to be subverted, and that he wanted an awareness of the Pokémon attributes to be crucial to the narratives that children constructed in the classroom. Like the children in Dyson’s study, the narratives were not just being shaped by textual influences, but also by the need to belong to the society that was the classroom. It is here that I feel Pokémon di√ers from other crazes that have gone before. You don’t just watch Pokémon on tv, you do it. Although these children were not yet part of the card-playing game of older fanatics, they knew that Pokémon invites active participation. Pokémon Through Narrative Play

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In the story shown below, it is possible to see again the way in which both knowledge of the genre and the desire to subvert it can be explored within one narrative. Hannah’s Pokémon Story One day Ash and Pikachu bumped into Team Rocket and they fell on the floor and bumped their bottoms. They steal Pikachu, and Ash got four Pokéballs. And Ash said ‘‘Bulbasaur, I choose you.’’ ‘‘Charmander, I choose you.’’ ‘‘Squirtle, I choose you.’’ ‘‘Pidgeotto, I choose you.’’ Then Brock came to rescue Pikachu but he couldn’t. The little Diglets came, but they were bad Diglets. Pikachu thunderbolted them. Like Lauren, Elizabeth takes the Pokémon characters and phrases from the cartoon and uses them in her story, yet the ending is a result of her subverting our expectations. ‘‘But the Diglets were bad Diglets.’’ In making the Diglets bad she shows her control over the narrative form. As with Lauren, there are echoes of slapstick and pantomime (‘‘they fell on the floor and bumped their bottoms’’), demonstrating that she has the ability to make use of more than one story genre. Like Lauren, she had the ability to make a comic story, which within that particular class was valued very highly. Performing your story to others was an integral part of the process, and comic stories were valued very highly. The ‘‘I choose you’’ phrase is one of those most heard in playgrounds when Pokémon is being played, along with ‘‘gotta catch ’em all.’’ Like ‘‘To infinity and beyond’’ from the film Toy Story, ‘‘Cowabunga’’ in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and ‘‘May the force be with you’’ in Star Wars, these phrases act as passwords into a linguistic community, a club that ‘‘speaks that language.’’ In using these Pokémon tag lines, Elizabeth is not only demonstrating her own knowledge, but inviting the audience to recognize those phrases and in this way to be part of her narrative. She is making use of intertextual devices. Through using such devices, she positions her classmates as clever readers/ listeners who will understand such devices in her story. As Margaret Meek writes (1988:22), ‘‘Those who know how to recognize bits and pieces of other texts in what they read, find it is like the discovery of old friends in new places. They feel that they are sharing a secret with the writer. . . . They become ‘insiders’ in the network.’’ Within the world of these young children, the ‘‘network’’ being described was not just literary but also social. In this classroom, Pokémon crossed barriers of gender, social class, and race. Shahanaz, who at the 222

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beginning of the project knew next to nothing about Pokémon, was observed toward the end of the research sharing cards with the rest of the children. The stories outlined here represent just a small selection of those that were made over the period of the research (approximately four months). Each of these small narratives was part of a bigger picture of the development of relationships and of the use of play based on popular culture in the classroom. Within the constraints of one set of rules, namely those of school, the children negotiated their way to a degree of autonomy. Despite the rules, the children e√ected certain transformations. Lauren subverted the play materials presented to her (the shoe box with commercially produced toys), and she was able to produce a far more exciting and original version. Her transformation was, in fact, so e√ective that it was mimicked by other children. Jake transformed the view of what constituted worthwhile teaching and learning in the classroom. His own knowledge of the Pokémon craze far outweighed any school-based knowledge that he had previously demonstrated. As his own knowledge was legitimated within the curriculum, he became increasingly e√ective in the world of school. Perhaps his most significant contribution was that of arguing for the importance of knowledge and factual learning in a culture strongly biased toward that of narrative (Newkirk 1988:1–12). For these two children in particular, but also for others in the class, being agents of transformation was very significant. As Allison James writes: ‘‘Through their games children e√ect symbolic transformations on the world around them. . . . The more e√ective the transformation, the more social status the transformer accrues’’ (1993:173). This was particularly true for Jake. Toward the end of the research, I was sitting with a group of children who were writing a Pokémon information book, and who were uncertain of the aspects of one particular Pokémon. In order to solve the problem, one child turned to another and said, ‘‘Why not ask Jake? Jake knows everything.’’ Such a statement would not have been heard four months earlier. To paraphrase Allison James, Jake’s social status, the perception of him by those around him, his ‘‘personhood,’’ had changed almost out of recognition. In the culture of Pokémon, children are not only able to position themselves as learners, who acquire knowledge, but also as teachers, who support others. This has important implication for schools. In the current educational climate in Britain, children are o√ered teacher-led models for learning literacy and numeracy with little attempt to recognize learners’ interests. Children’s visual literacy is potentially at a higher level than it has ever been, yet the youngest Pokémon Through Narrative Play

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children have few opportunities to explore such worlds within the stark confines of their literacy lessons; even picture books are given scant mention. The kinds of knowledge displayed by the children in this study are not counted as worthwhile, yet for Jake, being allowed to use his knowledge, experience, and interests significantly changed others’ views and expectations of him. Although this research took place within the education system, there are issues here that transcend the classroom. Pokémon showed itself to be a text (or collection of texts) that, at least in this instance, functioned e√ectively as a common culture for children. Boys and girls played together, new social groupings were formed within the class, and children perceived as less able had this perception reversed. The common knowledge shared by the children acted as a catalyst not just for stories told through play, but most significantly for the creation of new three-dimensional genres of representation. A close examination of the Pokémon play of these children shows them to be adept localizers. Already ‘‘glocalized’’ by Nintendo’s producers and marketers in Japan and then localized for the U.S. market by employees of Nintendo of America and 4Kids Entertainment, these young British children gave this Japanese and American product a distinctly British flavor; note particularly in Lauren’s story the significance of ‘‘hide and seek,’’ the ‘‘birthday party,’’ and ‘‘a cup of tea.’’ While none of these cultural signifiers are exclusively British, together they present a clear picture of the particular world these young children inhabit. This process of second-order (or is it third-order?) localization can be seen most clearly in the narratives children developed where they combine the exotic, magical content of Pokémon with familiar and mundane aspects of their daily lives to create a new social space. WORKS CITED

Blake, Peter. 2000. Annotations to an Exhibition on Collage. Liverpool: Tate Gallery Liverpool. Bromley, Helen. 1996. ‘‘There’s No Such Thing as Never Land.’’ In Potent Fictions, Children’s Literacy and the Challenge of Popular Culture, edited by Mary Hilton, 71–91. London: Routledge. Bruner, Jerome. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Dyson, Anne Haas. 1997. Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Heath, Shirley Brice. 2000. ‘‘Seeing Our Way into Learning.’’ Cambridge Journal of Education 30, no.1: 121–32.

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James, Allison. 1993. Childhood Identities: Self and Social Relationships in the Experience of the Child. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Meek, Margaret. 1988. How Texts Teach What Readers Learn. Stroud, U.K.: Thimble Press. Newkirk, Thomas. 1988. More Than Stories: The Range of Children’s Writing. Portsmouth, U.K.: Heinemann. Pompe, Cathy. 1996. ‘‘But They’re Pink!’’—‘‘Who Cares!’’ In Potent Fictions, Children’s Literacy and the Challenge of Popular Culture, edited by Mary Hilton, 92–125. London: Routledge. Rosen, Harold. 1987. Stories and Meanings. She≈eld, U.K.: National Association for the Teaching of English. Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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11 The Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans Rebekah Willett

The child’s marks say, ‘‘I am.’’—Donald Graves Fans construct their cultural and social identity through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images.—Henry Jenkins

These two statements from contrasting paradigms, Graves in the field of education and Jenkins in media studies, lay out di√erent concepts of identity. Graves maintains that ‘‘children’s marks’’ (referring to children’s writing and drawing) are a reflection of their stable, unified, and rational selves (Graves 1983:3). Jenkins, in contrast, conceptualizes a more fluid self, one that is constructed through interactions with others and with surrounding discourses (Jenkins 1992:23). My approach to teaching language arts in a primary school has been heavily influenced by the ‘‘writing process’’ work of the Graves tradition. And yet, as a researcher in the field of cultural studies, when I step back from my day-to-day teaching duties and try to make sense of my students’ writing, I find myself drawn to Jenkins’s alternative position. In this chapter I will be using a cultural studies model to make sense of the ‘‘identity work’’ children do in their story writing. Specifically, I will be looking at stories written by children that involve Pokémon. In Graves’s terms, the children’s stories that I will be analyzing say, ‘‘I am a Pokémon fan.’’ This fan position is important to analyze because children use their positions as fans to establish their personal identities as well as to build social networks. Jenkins (1992:24) introduces the concept of fans as ‘‘textual poachers,’’ as readers who not only are active meaning-makers of media texts, but who appropriate and use the texts for their own interests. Jenkins describes

many instances of fans rewriting media texts to include their own experiences, extract additional meaning from existing texts, and establish social groups. The Pokémon stories I analyze accomplish each of these purposes. These stories establish the authors as Pokémon fans, which was a useful social position to occupy in our school at that time. Children who lacked Pokémon knowledge were at risk of being left out of many classroom conversations because, as one child told me, ‘‘everybody talks about it almost all the time.’’ The identity work that children perform through their Pokémon stories does more, however, than say ‘‘I am a Pokémon fan.’’ The stories also involve complex processes of negotiation between the various discursive practices present in the classroom. Students find Pokémon to be a very useful form of cultural capital they can draw on in their ongoing e√ort to meet the demands simultaneously of the o≈cial world of school and the uno≈cial world of their social lives. Looking closely at children’s Pokémon-based stories, we see them acting both as consumers and producers. I read in the children’s stories evidence of how they are both positioned by the discourses of the classroom and of Pokémon fan culture and also of how they are active and creative in selecting and shaping subject positions within the discursive fields of the classroom and of Pokémon.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

The stories I analyze here were written during classroom writing time at the school where I teach. Our school subscribes to the ‘‘writing workshop’’ approach developed by Donald Graves and his colleagues. In writing workshops teachers attempt to create an environment in which children experience writing ‘‘authentically,’’ as authors with purposes, choices, and a sense of ownership, who go through the same stages as ‘‘real authors.’’ These stages are brainstorming, drafting, revising, and, finally, publishing. In a writing workshop classroom the process of writing is very public and social as children conference with each other and eventually produce books for their classroom library. Part of developing a sense of ownership is for teachers to give up authority, so every step of the way the children are given choices—genres, topics, writing materials, seating arrangements, and published format are all negotiable. When teachers allow children freedom in their writing, the traditional school writing topics and styles are replaced by out-of-school interests and influences. Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans

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As Graves observes, ‘‘Children often turn to video stories, which prize highaction plots and in which characters play a minor role. . . . Many teachers don’t want children to write fiction because they fill their plots with violence or create insipid characters whose actions have little sense or plausibility’’ (1994:304). Graves’s argument here has several problematic assumptions. Classifying children’s Pokémon-based writing as ‘‘high-action’’ stories with ‘‘insipid characters’’ fails to capture the creativity of students’ processes of textual production around Pokémon texts. One of Graves’s problematic assumptions centers on the idea that story writing ideally is completely original. The implicit assumption here is that a production can exist that does not draw on previous structures, styles, and concepts. As Gemma Moss (1989:31–34) has argued in a critique of the unexamined assumptions of the writing process approach, teachers believe that if they can get children to turn inward and to draw on some untainted source, their writing will not be subject to the pitfalls of mediasaturated stories such as those Graves describes. But, as Moss says, there is no such source. ‘‘To ask children to write is always to ask them to write in a recognizable form. . . . Asking children to improve their style means ‘borrowing’ from other literary texts’’ (1989:34). The idea that a production can be completely original is also refuted by the Bakhtinian concepts of hybridity and intertextuality (Bakhtin 1981), which suggest that all writers and speakers necessarily borrow from the texts that surround them, combining and refashioning them to produce their own stories. In this study I also draw on Anne Haas Dyson’s Writing Superheroes (1997). By reading children’s stories against the grain, Dyson shows children to be ‘‘meaning negotiators’’ who manipulate language to satisfy conflicting demands. Like Dyson, I view children as active, empowered learners who rework rather than just copy characters and plots from television, movies, and computer games.

THE DATA

I collected the data for this essay from April to June 2000 at the school where I teach, a private ‘‘international school’’ located just outside London, England. The school draws on the international business community in the area. The population of the school consists of mainly two-parent families coming from middle-class backgrounds. The families are relatively transient, with many transfers occurring every two years, resulting in children having lived in several 228

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di√erent countries by the time they finish primary school. The majority of the population (65 percent of the primary school) are U.S. citizens, followed by Canadians, Scandinavians, British, Japanese, French, and Dutch. There are smaller numbers of Brazilians, Italians, Hungarians, and emigrés from the former Russian republics. The school runs a U.S.-style curriculum with the writing process featuring prominently in the language arts curriculum. I have chosen three stories to analyze, one written by a girl and two by boys, all aged eight to nine. All the stories were written in school during writing workshop. The children I will be discussing were chosen on the basis of their interest in Pokémon and their willingness to participate in interviews (i.e., returning permission slips, giving up one writing period, and attending several twenty-minute sessions before school). I collected sixteen stories, many of which were over ten pages long. I have selected shorter pieces for analysis in this chapter.

CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS

I will be using four categories to define the roles that children adopt while writing media-based texts: consumer, interpreter, producer, and good student. In the consumer role, children reproduce or copy elements from popular media, without reworking or personalizing the material. An example would be sections of stories written by the students in which the Team Rocket motto is recited verbatim. In contrast, in the producer role, children write sections of text that are only loosely based on popular media texts. In between those categories is the interpreter role, in which children rework familiar media styles and plots. Finally, when writing in the role of the good student, children include popular culture in their texts while following teacherly notions of good writing. These four categories emerged from my initial readings of the students’ texts. The categories also correspond to positions within debates about the passive or active nature of children in their engagement with media. Some theorists view media texts as sites where dominant ideologies create subject positions that readers are powerless to resist. Other theorists, conceptualizing neither the text nor the reader as all powerful, see readers as occupying di√ering subject positions, which influence the way they respond to the ideological messages of a text. Instead of subscribing to any one of these theoretical positions, my analysis Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans

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focuses on the ways in which children use popular cultural texts to construct social positions for themselves as students, boys, girls, friends, and peers.

SARAH—A GIRL IN POKÉWORLD

The first story I will analyze is written by Sarah (aged eight), a British pupil who has been at the school since the start of her school career. Sarah is the youngest in her class. She is easily upset and needs constant confirmation that she is doing things the right way. Although Sarah’s work is acceptable for her grade level, her academic performance is weak compared to her peers. Sarah is friendly with a large group of girls, but there is one girl in her class with whom she is particularly close and with whom she shares a common interest in Pokémon. ‘‘Lapras to the Rescue,’’ by Sarah One day Lapras was going for a swim in the water when suddenly out of the water came a little white thing. ‘‘Dewgong,’’ it said. Lapras followed Dewgong all the way to an underwater gym! Lapras went inside. Before she could go out, she was in a great ball. She had been captured. The next day Lapras woke up in the great ball and just like that, out she came! Someone was standing there. It was her new owner, Sarah Watson. There was another person there too. Lapras knew she had to battle the Pokémon that the person had! First, Dewgong had to fight a level 100 Charizard. Soon it was Lapras’s turn. The other person sent out a Vileplume on level 72. ‘‘Lapras solar beam,’’ shouted Sarah. Lapras did as she was told. Vileplume fainted! Lapras went back inside her great ball. The battle was finished! Sarah won! Soon Sarah went swimming. She threw all her Pokéballs in the water and out came Lapras, Dewgong, Seadra, Starmie, Tentacruel, and Gyarados. Lapras was scared when she saw the Gyarados, but soon they made friends. The next day Sarah caught a Squirtle. One day an Aerodactyl was flying about. It saw Dewgong and it picked him up. ‘‘Dewgong!’’ it shouted and Lapras distracted Aerodactyl who dropped Dewgong. Dewgong fell and landed on Lapras’s back. They became best friends and lived happily ever after. the end Sarah’s story contains elements from each of the analysis categories in almost equal proportions. As a consumer, Sarah lists Pokémon characters in her story and she includes specific Pokémon jargon, such as levels and named attacks. 230

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Sarah’s story is composed of basic Pokémon events: people capture Pocket Monsters in balls and then go to a gym to have a battle. Sarah displays some expertise in her focus on water Pokémon and her inclusion of a Level 100 Charizard. However, a true Pokémon fanatic would notice errors in Sarah’s story, such as the fact that Lapras is a poor match for Vileplume. Such small lapses aside, Sarah has positioned herself as being an expert not just on the Pokémon television show but also on the computer game. By referring to levels, which are not used in the tv show, Sarah places herself as an expert within her peer group; most of her classmates at school knew something about Pokémon, but not many of the children, and especially not many of the girls, were consumers of the Pokémon Game Boy game. Sarah has also interpreted aspects of Pokémon in her story to construct a desirable social position. Sarah names herself as the trainer in her story, as it is possible to do in the Game Boy game. As an interpreter of Pokémon, Sarah uses her story to place herself in an empowered position, not just as an author but also as a Pokémon trainer. In her story Sarah also subtly aligns herself with Misty, through her love of water Pokémon. This self-positioning as a powerful Pokémon trainer with links to Misty is a strategy that Sarah employs to raise her status in her school peer group. The producer elements of Sarah’s story can be seen in her textual poaching, as she makes use of Pokémon elements to create a plausible Pokémon text that expands the original story and characters. As a producer, Sarah subtly departs from the focus of the tv show and the computer game on the accomplishments of trainers, and concentrates instead on Pokémon feelings and relationships. Sarah tells the story of Lapras. Her narrator (who sounds a bit like the narrator in the cartoon) focuses on what Lapras is going through, rather than, as in the cartoon, on what the trainers are experiencing. It is significant that Sarah has made Lapras a female while leaving the other Pokémon of indeterminate sex. In writing about Lapras’s feelings and relationships, Sarah uses a female discourse to position Lapras in a female role. Lapras’s friendship with Dewgong comes to a climax when Lapras becomes a heroine and saves Dewgong from Aerodactyl. Sarah also has Lapras become friends with Gyarados, who at first had scared her. Sarah’s inclusion of feelings here and in the earlier section when Lapras is caught and then faces her first battle are producer elements that are not present in the Pokémon computer games and that occur only occasionally on the television show. Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans

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In addition to aligning Sarah’s story with a dominant feminine discourse, the inclusion of feelings also positions Sarah as a good student (including descriptions of feelings to add depth to characters is a specific guideline for story writing at school). Although her story is a bit simple compared to the writing of many of her peers, it does a good job of adhering to rules for writing. There is a basic narrative structure, with a beginning, middle, and end; there are three main characters who are reasonably well developed; there is a problem, solution, and a climax that ends with the final rescue that clinches their friendship ‘‘forever.’’ Sarah’s Lapras story positions her not just as a Pokémon fan but also as a good student and a good girl. Sarah’s choice of water Pokémon align her with Misty, a character who, unlike the more aggressive female trainers in the tv series, has not sacrificed her femininity to win battles. The emphasis in Sarah’s story on friendship and feelings simultaneously conforms to school rules for good fiction writing and to peer expectations for eight-year-old femininity, which dictate that girls should be concerned with relationships. However, Sarah is not merely reflecting normative gender. The mastery of Pokémon knowledge, and particularly of knowledge associated with the computer game, marks Sarah’s story as masculine. And Lapras and Sarah are not passive victims in the story—they enter into battles. When Dewgong is captured by the dragonlike Aerodactyl, Lapras emerges as the heroine. ‘‘They became best friends and lived happily ever after’’ at first strikes us as a trite fairy tale ending, but it carries the feminist message that there is no need for a dashing young prince (or powerful macho Pokémon) to come to the rescue when you have (girl) friends.

MIKE—THE FAILING BOY?

Mike (aged nine) also has been at the school since the start of his school career. His father is British, and his mother is from the United States. Mike is very popular with his peers and has a wide network of friends. In his end-of-year report Mike was described by his teacher as ‘‘a loyal and caring friend.’’ Academically Mike has been tested for learning di≈culties, and he receives learning support during the school day. Mike also has minor behavioral di≈culties. Finishing class work is a problem for Mike, and his teacher was surprised when I showed her how much he had written about Pokémon. Mike’s end-of-year report says, ‘‘[Mike] continues to enjoy Writer’s Workshop but he can lose 232

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focus and make slow progress. . . . He needs to realize that school is a place to work and not a place to play or daydream.’’ ‘‘The Electric Tale of Pikachu No. 5,’’ by Mike So our friends Ash, Brock, Misty, and Pikachu go on their journey to fight Koga in Fuchsia gym. Koga has psychic Pokémon such as Alakazam or Gengar or Hypno or Abra. Ash goes to the Pokémon center. While Ash heals his Pokémon Brock tries to get a battle with Joy. The Pokémon nears but failed as usual. Then Ash went on his way to get the Soul badge. On his way he meets Team Rocket. They said their motto and said, ‘‘We want your Pikachu.’’ ‘‘You will have to beat me first,’’ said Ash. ‘‘Go Ko≈ng, go Ekans,’’ said Team Rocket. Ash said, ‘‘Charmander, Flame thrower.’’ Team Rocket said, ‘‘Return Ko≈ng, return Ecans.’’ Meowth said, ‘‘Watch a real Pokémon.’’ Meowth used scratch. Ash said, ‘‘Charmander, fire spin.’’ Team Rocket ran and said, ‘‘We’ll get Pikachu next time.’’ Ash said, ‘‘Fine but I’ll win.’’ Then Ash and his friends went to the gym and Koga said, ‘‘I wan’ I wan’ a Pokémon battle.’’ Koga said, ‘‘Go Jynx.’’ Ash said, ‘‘Go Squirtle. Squirtle, water gun.’’ Koga said, ‘‘Jynx, Lovely kiss.’’ Ash said, ‘‘Squirtle, dodge it.’’ Ash said, ‘‘Throw pup now.’’ Koga said, ‘‘Jynx return.’’ ‘‘You win,’’ said Koga. ‘‘Here you go. Take this.’’ ‘‘The Soul badge. Wow!’’ said Ash. ‘‘Good bye,’’ said Koga. So Ash, Misty, Brock, and Pikachu go on their journey. the end Mike’s story o√ers an interesting contrast to Sarah’s, because although the length and complexity are similar, Mike’s story fits primarily into the consumer category. Mike’s story reads like a script for an episode of the Pokémon tv show. The opening phrase (‘‘So our friends Ash, Brock, Misty, and Pikachu go on their journey’’) mimics a narrative convention of the cartoon. Throughout his story Mike successfully imitates the language and structure of the tv show’s narration and dialogue. Like Sarah, Mike lists characters from Pokémon, but unlike Sarah, who in her story made herself the trainer, Mike uses the trainers from the Pokémon texts. Mike’s choice of Koga, his psychic squad, Fuchsia City, and the soul badge, which are all taken directly from one particular Game Boy level, also show his knowledge of Pokémon and his reluctance to deviate from Pokémon’s conventions. The events in Mike’s story echo familiar events in the cartoon: Ash takes his Pokémon to get healed; Brock (the womanizer) fails to win a battle against Joy; Team Rocket chants their motto and tries to capture Pikachu; Ash has a Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans

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battle and wins another badge. The dialogue during the battle scene, which is lifted directly from the cartoon, displays Mike’s in-depth knowledge of the Pokémon, their types of attacks, their strengths, their weaknesses, and even which trainer belongs with which Pokémon in which gym. By writing from this consumer perspective, Mike has created a story that is almost incomprehensible to an outsider but that is completely plausible to a Pokémon fan. As Julian Sefton-Green describes in his chapter in this volume, in an informationbased world, knowledge is the most valued social currency. Mike is able to use his knowledge of Pokémon in his story writing to give himself status among his peers. As an interpreter rather than just a consumer, Mike artfully employs specific Pokémon, trainers, events, and settings to position himself in a particular way within his peer culture. Mike’s choice of Koga as a protagonist gives prominence to psychic Pokémon in his story (Koga only trains psychic and poisonous Pokémon). By focusing on Pokémon that are psychic Mike associates himself with something that is very cool from a nine-year-old boy’s perspective. Mike’s interest in psychic elements is echoed in his male peer group’s interest in X-Files, Point Horror books, Bu√y, the Vampire Slayer, and anything supernatural. Mike’s story is a lengthy piece of work for a child who has learning di≈culties. Mike struggled with concentration during writing time, and he had di≈culty getting his thoughts on paper. We can see in Mike’s original unedited text his struggles with the mechanics of writing: ‘‘so awer freend’s Ash Brock Mistey and Picachu go on ther jurny to fight cowga in fuschsia gime he has sicic poke’mon.’’ Mike’s Pokémon story was successful not just because it allowed him to earn status among his peers, but also because the Pokémon cartoon on which he bases his story fits well with school expectations for story writing. Mike’s story, like episodes of the Pokémon cartoons, has a basic narrative structure with an introduction, several events in the middle, and a conclusion; the characters have goals, and Ash achieves his goal (getting the soul badge); there is a problem that gets resolved (Team Rocket’s attempt to capture Pikachu); and the characters are somewhat developed (Brock, the womanizing trainer, ‘‘fails as usual’’; Ash is the successful trainer who is in constant pursuit of badges; Team Rocket are the bumbling baddies, and Meowth the overconfident failure). Although the text is fairly simple, the events that transpire are carefully 234

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sequenced and causally related, with Ash healing his Pokémon, which allows them to battle Team Rocket, which is followed by the climactic fight with Koga, which leads to Ash securing a soul badge. The success of Mike’s story fitting into school rules for good writing is partly due to the fact that he has followed the narrative structure of the Pokémon television show. The half-hour cartoons have a narrative structure that is repeated every episode. The creators of the cartoon have done the di≈cult task for the children, turning a computer game, which is a spatial narrative, into a temporal narrative. The producers of the Pokémon tv show, conveniently for Mike and his classmates, included many aspects of good writing, as taught in writing workshop classrooms: there are characters with distinct traits, goals, problems, and feelings; the stories have a beginning, middle, and end; and they include moral lessons. By sca√olding his story on Pokémon, Mike has written a story that exceeds the quality of his usual written work. Although Mike has copied many elements directly from the cartoon show, his work is creative in turning a cartoon, which is visual and oral, into a written text. As a boy in a classroom, Mike faces some di√erent challenges from Sarah. In Failing Boys: Issues in Gender and Achievement, David Jackson describes the way academic achievement is feminized, resulting in ridicule for boys who are academic achievers. Jackson writes, ‘‘Some boys’ hardness and adequacy as ‘real lads’ is deliberately formed in relation to a sissified world of school work’’ (1998:89). The pressure to be cool is certainly present in my school, but with 98 percent of the high school graduates going on to higher education, it is far from acceptable to fail at academics. When he sits down to write, Mike is in a di≈cult position. As a teacher’s son in an academically oriented school, Mike cannot a√ord to get poor grades or to break school rules; but as a boy struggling to appear masculine and cool, nor can he a√ord to be seen as a hard worker or grade grubber. As a student with learning di≈culties, Mike also has to avoid being seen by his peers as a failure. Mike has had to find a way to get by academically while appearing not to be trying too hard. To earn the respect of his peers, Mike constantly tries to push the boundaries of the school rules and to avoid academic situations in which he is likely to fail or in which he can only succeed by working extremely hard. Mike’s Pokémon story reflects all of these positionalities. Mike has written a story that pleases the teacher due to the concentration and e√ort he showed and to the fact that the story conforms to writing workshop expectations for character development and plot. At the same Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans

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time, the story allows Mike to impress and entertain his peers with its Pokémon expertise, humor, and emphasis on fighting. There is a rule in Mike’s classroom that children are only allowed to write one Pokémon story. But because Mike was making progress as a writer, he was able to persuade his teacher to allow him to write a series of Pokémon stories. This allowed Mike to gain some status as a rule breaker, as someone who can challenge the authority of the teacher. Through his Pokémon story Mike has been able to artfully negotiate a successful social position in the class as a popular, not very high-achieving boy.

JAKE AND THE ROKEMON CLUB

Jake, who was in Mike’s class, was new to the school at the beginning of the school year, having moved here from Pennsylvania. Jake is an extremely verbal child, and his school records indicate that he was in the process of being tested for an accelerated program before he moved to England. Jake is described by his teacher as ‘‘a charming and humorous young man who is full of energy and confidence. . . . He is a real leader amongst his friends.’’ In his new school Jake quickly established a group of friends based, he claimed, on their common interest in Pokémon. Jake collected Pokémon cards, but Max, one of his close friends, was banned by his parents from purchasing the cards. The boys’ solution was to start a new series of pocket monsters called Rokemon. Jake, Max, and another close friend created over two hundred Rokemon cards during the last three months of the school year, as well as writing stories and drawing battle scenes for their new series of pocket monsters. Instead of analyzing Jake’s Rokemon story, I will describe Jake’s identity work as he engaged with Pokémon/Rokemon in his interactions with his group of friends and in his schoolwork. The series of Rokemon cards the group of boys created is a good example of how children can shift from the role of consumer to the role of producer. Pokémon lends itself to the creation of new creatures because there are endless possibilities for the introduction of new Pokémon. The Rokemon are similar to the new Pokémon that fans create and post on Web sites and submit to fanzines. The gendered element comes through clearly in these creations, with girls inventing cute, cuddly pocket monsters and boys creating muscle-bound characters, or characters who refer, in the manner of Garbage Pail Kids, to the toilet

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humor that is so popular in boys’ culture. Jake and his friends were textual poachers who took the Pokémon concept and became producers rather than just consumers. In creating Rokemon, they reinterpreted Pokémon, creating their own meanings, and repositioning the Pokémon texts for their own purposes. The Rokemon cards demonstrated the boys’ knowledge of Pokémon cards, with the inclusion of hit points as well as levels and types of attack. This demonstration of Pokémon knowledge positioned the boys as serious fans. However, as producers, Jake and his friends went a step further and used Rokemon to form an exclusive club that met before school to work on their cards. The cards demonstrated the masculine character of the group, positioning themselves firmly within the world of nine-year-old machismo by inventing characters who were various combinations of smelly, disgusting, muscular, fierce, and potentially violent. The cuteness of Pokémon was expunged from the Rokemon cards. As in Sarah’s story, the boys gendered their characters, in contrast to the genderlessness of most of the originals. Unlike the Rokemon cards, which were worked on during free time outside of the classroom, the boys’ Rokemon stories were written in class, where the authors had to negotiate di√erent discursive practices. I will not include an entire Rokemon story here but instead summarize how, as a high-achieving student who was a member of a close group of friends, Jake was impacted very di√erently than was Mike by the discursive practices and pressures of the classroom. In Jake’s story two boys go on a trip to some caves with their newest birthday presents—two Rokemon. Unlike Sarah’s and Mike’s Pokémon narratives, Jake’s story is more of an adventure story than a series of battles in quest for a badge, and the Rokemon are used more for problem solving on the adventure than for training purposes. By changing the narrative structure from the original’s quest-battle-badge sequence (as in Pokémon) to an adventure story where the heroes overcome a series of problems with a series of imaginative solutions, Jake’s story fits more comfortably within respected school writing genres. Furthermore, by moving away from the original Pokémon text, Jake wrote a story that teachers would classify as more ‘‘original and creative’’ than a story such as Mike’s, which would be classified more in the consumer category. For example, in this excerpt from his Rokemon story, we can see Jake using his imagination to create a new character, in contrast to Sarah and Mike simply copying characters from Pokémon:

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Defence Dude used circle-defence. Some red circles started to go around him, he was being protected. So Jojo used inflate. His stomach popped up like a giant balloon and hit Defence Dude but he was being protected by the circles. He did blizzard and a lot of snow went around Jojo freezing him into an ice cube. By functioning as a producer rather than just as a consumer of Pokémon, Jake gains the approval of his teacher. Teachers’ notions of both ‘‘good writing’’ and of ‘‘childhood’’ place great value on creativity. For example, Lucy Calkins opens her writing process book, Living between the Lines (1991), by tapping into teachers’ anxiety about children’s loss of creativity. Calkins contrasts her own remembered childhood as ‘‘a time of industriousness, of projects’’ with modern-day childhood, in which children ‘‘are sitting glassy-eyed in front of the vcr, the television, the Nintendo game’’ (1). Calkins also quotes the wellknown children’s author James Howe, who says, ‘‘my greatest fear for children today is they are losing the capacity to play’’ (1). This view of writing draws on problematic assumptions about writing, creativity, and childhood, but suffice it to say that Jake’s ‘‘creative’’ story earned him his teacher’s approval as a good writer. Jake’s position in his class in many ways is more secure than Mike’s due to Jake’s high academic ability and to his having a close-knit social group. Because Jake has a small but very secure social group, he can take the risk of being the intelligent pupil. Jake’s story neatly fits with the standards of writing for his age group while also allowing him to position himself within the social network of the class. Jake’s reputation with his parents, his teachers, and his classmates as a ‘‘good student’’ makes it di≈cult for him to earn the respect of his peers by, like Mike, resisting school rules. However, in his Rokemon story we see Jake successfully being the ‘‘good student’’ and at the same time appealing to the values of his peers. The story, with its obvious links to Pokémon, not only trades in the currency of boys’ culture, but also brings attention to the special status of Jake’s group of friends. The Rokemon figures and the main characters in the story (who happen to have the same names as Jake’s friends) are put on public display through the publication of Jake’s book, announcing to his peers his position as a good student who is also a Pokémon fan and a boy who has close friends. This is a significant accomplishment for Jake, who is able through Rokemon to become more socially successful while maintaining his academic status. By 238

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cleverly finding a way around his teacher’s rule that children were allowed to write only one Pokémon story, Jake was able to entertain and impress his classmates. Through the production of his Rokemon story Jake was able to follow the classroom rules, be a good writer, and at the same time increase his social capital in the class.

CONCLUSION

The ability of Sarah, Mike, and Jake to make such valuable use of Pokémon in their school writing as consumers, interpreters, producers, and rule-following students helps shed some light on the source of Pokémon’s phenomenal success. Pokémon has an appeal that cuts across age groups, genders, and cultures. A key to Pokémon’s success is that it can be ‘‘poached’’ by di√erent people for di√erent purposes. Pokémon provides children with various subject positions to perform and play with. Sarah’s Pokémon position is that of an expert among her female peer group as well as a good girl in school. As a Pokémon fan, she is able to construct a version of being a girl that maintains a balance between a traditionally feminine attention to cuteness and interpersonal relationships and a more contemporary femininity that values agency and courage. Mike’s and Jake’s fan positions are each firmly masculine, and yet very di√erent from each other. Mike’s position is that of the Pokémon expert with extensive knowledge that is highly valued within his peer culture. The Pokémon tv cartoon show provides Mike with a narrative structure that allows him to write stories that simultaneously meet the expectations of his teachers and of his peers. Jake, too, is a Pokémon expert. But in contrast to Mike, Jake positions himself as a writer who is a producer, and therefore someone who not just meets but exceeds his teacher’s expectations while still appearing cool to his peers. Pokémon thrives in children’s culture by providing this variety of subject positions for children to adopt as they perform and play with their identities in a variety of contexts in their daily lives. WORKS CITED

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. ‘‘Discourse in the Novel.’’ Translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Calkins, Lucy M. 1991. Living between the Lines. Oxford: Heinemann. Dyson, Anne Haas. 1997. Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Jackson, David. 1998. ‘‘Breaking out of the Binary Trap: Boys’ Underachievement, Schooling and Gender Relations.’’ In Failing Boys?: Issues in Gender and Achievement, edited by Debbie Epstein, Jannette Elwood, Valerie Hey, and Janet Maw, 77–95. Buckingham: Open University Press. Graves, Donald. 1983. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. Oxford: Heinemann. ———. 1994. A Fresh Look at Writing. Oxford: Heinemann. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. Moss, Gemma. 1989. Un/popular Fictions. London: Virago.

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12 Masculinity, Maturity, and the End of Pokémon Samuel Tobin

During the 1999–2000 school year, I was the computer education teacher at Pinelands Elementary School, a small school in central Massachusetts. In April of that year, as we began the last unit, I gave my students the opportunity to do a project on anything in which they were interested. bill: Can I do bmx? mr. tobin: Yes, I said it can be on anything. bill: All right! (Pleasurable noises from the boys in the class) john: How about wwf? mr. tobin: Yes, anything. boys: Yeah! (Pleasurable noises from the class) jimmy: How about Pokémon? boys and girls: (Groans and derision from the class) To understand this scene we need to look at Jimmy, Pokémon, Jimmy’s relationship to Pokémon, and the struggles with masculinity and maturity that are worked out with and through Pokémon. In so doing we will also come to understand something about how children, and boys in particular, grow out of their toys and hobbies, and about how children collectively lose interest in a fad such as Pokémon. Early in the phenomenon (in the United States, in the first half of 1999), Pokémon was an alternative route into masculinity for a cohort of boys aged ten to fourteen. Although not as cool as being an athlete, as fashionable as skateboarding or listening to popular music (Frith 1996), or as daring as delinquency (Willis 1981), the world of sci-fi, Dungeons and Dragons, and video games o√ers preadolescent boys an attainable, coherent, socially recognizable way to

be masculine. For the older boys in the school where I taught, an interest in Pokémon, which had been compatible with masculinity in the fall semester of the year, became increasingly problematic in the spring, when many of the boys began to display their masculinity by demonstrating that they had outgrown Pokémon. As the movie Toy Story dramatized, being outgrown is the inevitable fate of a beloved toy. For the rare, enduringly popular toy such as Barbie, which attains a sort of immortality, the loss of interest by older kids is balanced by the increasing interest of younger ones. Nintendo and the other companies involved in the marketing of Pokémon no doubt hoped that their product would become another Barbie. This was not to be. By the spring of 2000, as a teacher of upper elementary students, I could already see the beginning of the end of Pokémon, as the trend-setting older boys led a movement away from Pokémon, pulling less cool and younger kids along with them. Some of these cooler, older boys moved on to interests marked as more mature, interests such as pop music, dirt bikes, and violent video games, while others abandoned Pokémon for ‘‘the next big thing,’’ such as Digimon or Dragon Ball Z, leaving ‘‘losers’’ like Jimmy behind, pursuing his Pokémon interest by talking to the eight-year-olds at the bus stop.

POKÉMON AND THE PROBLEM OF PREADOLESCENT MASCULINITY

A problem that Pokémon presents for growing boys is the cuteness of the monsters and the mythos. ‘‘Cute’’ suggests not only ‘‘for children’’ but also ‘‘for girls/women.’’ Parents of young boys generally are happy to see their child playing with a cute toy or game, as the cuteness suggests innocence and safety from the threat of adult themes and adolescent culture. As a boy leaves middle childhood and approaches preadolescence, however, the cuteness of a toy like Pokémon ceases to be a positive selling point, not only for the boy but also for his parents and other adults concerned about his development. As a boy leaves early childhood and reaches school age, the cuteness of his toys first becomes a neutral value and then, by the time he reaches the age of seven or eight, a troubling transgression of norms of both maturity and gender. A prepubescent boy’s attraction to something cute is likely to be seen as a warning sign to heteronormative teachers, parents, and peers. To combat this specter of emasculating cuteness, preadolescent male Poké242

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fans who wish to avoid suspicion and derision must adopt strategies of compensation or accommodation. These strategies involve playing up one or more particularly masculine traits within the Pokémon system. Emphasizing stereotypically masculine dimensions of their Pokémon play allows these boys to ward o√ accusations of feminization and immaturity. These masculinizing strategies include (1) collecting, which shifts their activity from the realm of playing with toys to the time-honored male pursuits of owning and categorizing curios (Stewart 1993); (2) financial speculation (using the cards as capital or stock); and (3) mastery of knowledge and facts. Exchanging knowledge and facts as commodities is a more stereotypically masculine trait, as opposed to a stereotypically feminine, connected way of knowing (see Gilligan 1982; Belenky et al. 1987). There is an inconsistency in mainstream America’s reaction to children and their media use on the question of age appropriateness. Children who exhibit interest in themes and products intended for older people often are praised. Unless the subject matter is overtly sexual, ‘‘acting older than you are’’ is taken as a sign of mental and social precocity. The reverse behavior, acting younger than your years, is not regarded positively. Negative reactions to immature tastes can be attributed to adult anxiety about children failing at the project of growing up. The inconsistency of adult reactions is demonstrated by where we place blame in cases where children’s media tastes are seen as inappropriate for their age. Children who become interested at too young an age in sexual or violent media generally are seen as innocent victims, seduced by a Hollywood entertainment industry that is widely known, like the tobacco industry, to cynically target underage consumers. Conversely, children who favor media and toys usually associated with younger children are generally described not as being seduced or manipulated by the media, but as themselves at fault, as they are labeled slow, infantile, babyish, and immature. For boys in particular, growing up too slow is more problematic than growing up too fast. Children are expected to grow and mature continuously in their play and media habits. ‘‘Normal’’ boys advance through levels of sophistication and, by the time they are nine or ten, leave cuteness behind and turn to an interest in sex, violence, and coolness. Because growing up is conceived as a process of linear development, the young-leaning preadolescent boy who is still attracted to cuteness is marked as a failure and a threat. If you are not progressing, you are failing. But such a process of linear development is a fantasy. In reality, the maturation and masculinization of boys does not follow a linear path. Plotted against The End of Pokémon

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maturity, we can see that the road to masculinity is a curved and twisted path, full of deviations and inconsistencies. Loudness, for example, is associated with maleness, but also with childishness. Loudness therefore falls at opposite ends of the maturity and masculinity scales, as it simultaneously marks a boy as being both male and immature. Paradoxically, in many communities (including rural central Massachusetts) masculinity in adult men is linked to holding on to boyish interests in sports, trucks, and motorcycles. A young boy who is interested in such ‘‘mature’’ male activities as playing golf, watching football, and fooling around with motorcycles is seen as precocious and attractive. On the other hand, young men (like me) who prefer cartoons to sports are generally considered to be pathetic (I prefer to describe my interests as ‘‘kitschy’’). Considering my awareness of the complexity of the connections between masculinity and maturity and my personal history as a boy who loved action figures well into upper elementary school and who played Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer as a middle-schooler, and then Magic: The Gathering in high school, I was surprised that I had such a hard time making sense of Jimmy. Every time I thought I had him figured out, Jimmy would exhibit a behavior or attitude that broke the rules of my classificatory system, my teacher’s schema for categorizing and thus understanding the boys I taught. Jimmy’s failings at masculinity and maturity were not problematic for me personally. But because they were problems for Jimmy and his schoolmates, they became problems I had to address as their teacher. In her essay ‘‘Sexist and Heterosexist Responses to Gender Bending in an Elementary Classroom’’ (1996) Gail Boldt describes her losing battle as a teacher to help a genderbending boy in her third-grade class by convincing his classmates that there was nothing wrong with a boy enjoying the company of girls and liking activities (such as playing house) that girls like. I experienced a similar feeling of frustration as I struggled to think of ways I could help Jimmy. As Boldt describes, there is little a teacher can do to help a child whose behavior and interests fail to conform to those valued by his classmates and larger community.

VARIETIES OF POKÉMON PLAY

To make sense of Pokémon’s appeal to elementary school boys, we can divide them into three age categories. In the youngest group (four- to seven-year-olds) we find modes of Pokémon play that are common to other little boy adventure 244

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media. Pokémon was cute, colorful, and accessible to young children as a tv show, as an icon on T-shirts and backpacks, and as collectible cards, stickers, and toys. What was missing at this stage of Pokémon fandom was game play with trading cards and mastery of the video game. In my school, the boys in this youngest stage were primarily attracted to the Poké-monsters themselves, and only secondarily to the trainer, Ash Ketchum. These younger boys’ engagement with Pokémon involved lots of imagination and dramatic play. From these younger children I typically overheard such conversations as ‘‘I’ll be Squirtle and you be Blastoise!’’ and ‘‘I’m Ash! I have to catch you!’’ rather than ‘‘You can’t do that, your Charmander only has ten hit points left!’’ The children in this age group owned cards and sometimes the Game Boy game, but at this stage playing Pokémon did not mean playing the card or video game with any real understanding. In the second stage of Pokémon play (ages seven to nine) card and video game playing and serious card collecting became more important. The value of the cards was discussed both in terms of price and rarity as well as in the abilities of the monsters in the video and card games. What vanishes here is the playing of Pokémon as ‘‘Let’s pretend to be Pocket Monsters.’’ One aspect of ‘‘let’s pretend’’ did remain, however: ‘‘Let’s pretend to be Pokémon trainers.’’ Although I doubt most boys in this stage said this out loud in their play, they played at being Ash by controlling, training, and mastering (rather than being) the Pocket Monsters. Attraction to and identification with the monsters became less and less central. The cards took on paramount importance for most boys at this stage, although how the boys played with the cards varied. A few boys played the trading-card game by the o≈cial rules, while the majority, at least in my school, played with the cards by holding and looking at the cards, sorting them, and discussing them. As Christine Yano discusses in chapter 6, some adults, because of the gambling aspect of the game (an optional rule is that a card can be wagered in game play), saw playing with Pokémon cards as a problem. Most kids, as described by Gilles Brougère in chapter 9, finding the rules and structure of the Pokémon card game to be too complicated, played with Pokémon cards outside of the o≈cial rules and structure. This distinction is important because one way that boys demonstrate maturity and, to a lesser degree, masculinity, is by mastering the complicated rules of games well enough to play them ‘‘correctly.’’ In the last stage of Pokémon play (ages ten to thirteen), the focus shifted to The End of Pokémon

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game mastery. Collecting was still important, but the emphasis in collecting shifted from the cuteness or coolness of the characters on the card to the value of cards monetarily or as strategic weapons in the game playing. Boys who stayed interested in Pokémon through this stage may have soon after turned to playing more complicated or adult-coded card games, such as Magic: The Gathering. By the end of elementary school, boys who are experts on a younger children’s fad such as Pokémon will have exhausted the secrets and surprises of the system, and consequently begun to grow bored. Many decide to move to a new form of popular culture collecting and expertise that is marked as less childish and more socially acceptable for children their age, such as sci-fi or sports statistics. This is a point of reckoning for the collector/expert preadolescent.

THE GRADE-STATUS HIERARCHY AT PINELANDS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

To understand Jimmy as a fourth-grader it helps to look across the grades. At Pinelands, there are only three grades—third through fifth (eight- through eleven-year-olds). The fourth grade is a site for working out what it means to be a big kid. The fourth-grade experience at Pinelands centers on the process of defining oneself as not being a third-grader. Almost all of the fourth-graders who visited my computer classroom were very concerned with this, with not being associated with the ‘‘little kids.’’ But there was also a small but vocal minority who did not care much about or well understand this drive to be mature. This handful of less mature fourth-graders was unconcerned with being seen as grown-up. In the spring of 2000, a declining percentage of the fourth-graders at Pinelands were still Pokémon fans, and this group was composed almost entirely of the more immature students in the grade. In a place and time where Pokémon was generally popular (as, for instance, in the fourth-grade classrooms at Pinelands a year earlier), the immature Pokémon fans’ interest would have merged with those of the mainstream. But in a context where the number of children interested in Pokémon was low and rapidly shrinking, as it was in Pinelands in the upper elementary classrooms in the late spring of 2000, the remaining Pokémon fans appeared deviant. Some of the most visible of the fourth-grade Pokémon fans that spring at Pinelands were students who were perceived by their classmates as ‘‘losers’’ and ‘‘weirdos,’’ including some special education 246

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students. By April 2000, the bulk of the remaining avid Pokéfans in the fourth grade were either medicated, babyish, academically struggling, or a combination of some or all of the above labels. In the fourth grade that spring there was a range of Pokémon maturational stages. Some boys were still in the middle stage of Pokéfandom, playing the games with simplified rules and trading and talking about cards. Other boys were working on distancing themselves from Pokémon by switching their attention to Pokémon’s marketing rivals, Dragon Ball Z and Digimon. By the end of the school year, as even the third-graders were losing interest in Pokémon, Pokémon was left to the slower, less cool kids. By the last month of the school year it was mostly kids with clear developmental problems who were still fanatical about Pokémon. A subset of fourth-grade Pokéfans was the video game experts. These boys were aware of Pokémon’s failing coolness, but they stuck with it, forging a masculine identity out of their game-playing skills and knowledge. By identifying themselves as video game experts first and Pokémon fans second they dodged the ‘‘uncool’’ bullet as Pokémon’s reputation for coolness waned. Their ability to ‘‘hack’’ the game using cheat codes and game-cracking hardware was seen as masculine, so their continuing interest in Pokémon was considered by their teachers or classmates to be nerdy and insu≈ciently athletic, but not deficiently mature or deficiently male.

JIMMY

In this essay, to make sense of the dynamics of Pokémon at Pinelands Elementary School, I have divided my students into categories, both by grades and interests. This dividing process was also characteristic of my classroom teaching. Although I tried not to, I found myself classifying students in my head into subgroups and types in order to help me better understand and interact with them. Jimmy’s failure at masculinity was a problem for me not because I am homophobic or a fan of heteronormative lifestyles, but because he disrupted the classificatory schema I was relying on to make sense of my students. For a while I tried to think of Jimmy as a nerd. I had already categorized several boys as nerds: the boys who were skilled with computers, nonathletic, and not invested in exploring adolescent sexuality. These smart boys, whom, having been one myself, I understood very well, did not represent the threat to mainThe End of Pokémon

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stream masculinity categories that Jimmy did. I wanted to cast Jimmy as a nerd, but I couldn’t, because he was not particularly interested in or good at computers. I wanted him to fit the category of a brainy but immature student, but his academic skills were average at best. I wanted Jimmy to be a geek or gifted student because his lack of masculinity would then fit into a narrative with which I was comfortable and familiar. Expert/nerd kids often have a hard time in school (Katz 2000) but they do not violate the boundaries of masculinity. If anything, the normalcy of the mainstream boys is reinforced by the presence of functional alternatives, which gives the illusion of plurality. By failing to fit into any of these categories, Jimmy performed a vital role for his peers. By acting as a marker of the limits of fourth-grade boydom, others could point at him and say, ‘‘Well, I may be wimpy/fat/babyish, but Jimmy is more so.’’ From the margin, Jimmy thus filled a role within the schoolboy masculinity system. The di√erence between alternate and deviant is crucial here. The ‘‘nerd’’ boys were understood and accepted as an alternative masculine type by both their classmates and by me. Jimmy, in failing to perform the role of a familiar masculinity, fell outside of categorization. Jimmy wore glasses, lacked what passes for style in the fourth grade, was not athletic, and was overly invested in Pokémon. These characteristics normally shout nerd, fan, future Dungeons and Dragons player, or computer lab monitor. But Jimmy was not one of these familiar, alternative kids—he was deviant. By looking at how Jimmy played Pokémon we can see his deviance more clearly.

DEVIANT POKÉMON CONSUMPTION

Jimmy’s engagement with Pokémon constituted a deficiency of masculinity because he maintained a childish interest in a ‘‘little kid’’ pursuit for too long. His way of consuming Pokémon did not center on such masculine modes as information gathering, card collecting, fact stacking, competitive game playing, or computer code manipulation. Instead, his mode of Pokémon play was based on the enjoyment he found in simply looking at Pokémon text and images. Unlike Julian Sefton-Green’s son Sam, discussed in chapter 7, Jimmy wasn’t interested in learning ‘‘tricks’’ or ‘‘cheats’’ to better his game playing. In fact, Jimmy rarely played the Pokémon games (either the Game Boy or the card game versions) competitively or cooperatively. He did occasionally play the single-player version of the Game Boy game, but he preferred reading Pokémon 248

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stories, watching the television show, and in other ways passively consuming the figures and story line without manipulating them. The more interactive features that draw older children into Pokémon, including trading cards and playing the competitive game, were not particularly attractive to Jimmy. In the same straightforward way that he liked Donald Duck and Goofy as icons and characters, Jimmy liked Charmander and Squirtle. When Jimmy talked with me at several points in the year about Pokémon, he tended to o√er pat explanations. His explanations, which showed that he was not completely unaware of the inappropriateness of his style of Pokémon play, made his engagement with Pokémon understandable, but they lacked passion and conviction, as if he was being guarded, anticipating disapproval. mr. tobin: So why do you like Pokémon? jimmy: Because it’s fun. mr. tobin: How is it fun? jimmy: Watching the show is fun. mr. tobin: Anything else? jimmy: Yes, the games are good. You can play games. mr. tobin: The video game? The Game Boy, or the 64 one? jimmy: I don’t have the Nintendo 64 but I do have the Game Boy. mr. tobin: What about the cards? jimmy: The game is fun. You can become a Pokémaster. mr. tobin: The card game? jimmy: Yeah. mr. tobin: Do you play the card game a lot? jimmy: No, not really. I don’t play that much, but I have the cards. mr. tobin: What do you like about the cards then? jimmy: The drawings, the Pokémon. mr. tobin: To look at them? jimmy: Yeah, I guess. To look at them. Can we be sure that Jimmy’s description of his Pokémon use is accurate? Couldn’t it be the case that his engagement with Pokémon was more passionate, dynamic, and active than he reports or that he showed at school? How do we know that what was going on in Jimmy’s head wasn’t a rich and varied fantasy life that incorporates Pocket Monsters into what progressive teachers would see as active and meaningful play? This is possible, but I see no evidence to suggest The End of Pokémon

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that this was the case. In other chapters in this book, particularly in the chapters by Sefton-Green, Bromley, and Willett, we are o√ered portraits of children who engage with Pokémon in active, resistant, creative, and even educational ways. I find their descriptions convincing, and I am sure that there are many such active, resistant Pokémon users. But might there not also be children whose engagement with Pokémon lacks these traits valued by progressive educators and by the larger society? Jimmy’s Pokémon play strikes us as both immature and nonmasculine because it was so passive. Jimmy didn’t play Pokémon; Pokémon played Jimmy. He didn’t accumulate, compete, or actively interact with Pokémon; he read about them, looked at them, and received them. Most of the fourth- and fifthgrade Pokémon fans exploited a range of Pokémon’s possibilities as they engaged in challenging card play, knowledge gathering, and hacking of video games. On the other hand, Jimmy’s relationship to Pokémon is the one critics of popular culture decry: passive, one-way, and noncreative. We could argue that Jimmy’s Pokéfandom is exactly what Nintendo/ Hasbro/Kids wb Network needs and wants from its consumers. Unlike his classmates, Jimmy didn’t outgrow Pokémon; at the end of the year the Pocket Monsters were just as cute and inviting to Jimmy as they had been to him a year earlier, at the peak of Pokémon’s popularity. If more children consumed Pokémon in Jimmy’s fashion, the franchise could continue indefinitely. But unfortunately for the companies peddling Pokémon, most children are not like Jimmy, which explains why the Pokémon empire crumbled. Jimmy bucked the system that was pushing him toward maturity and masculinity. Jimmy seemed uninterested in the masculinity and maturity pursued so fervently by his peers who, early in the 1999–2000 school year, traded in Pokémon for Digimon, the World Wrestling Federation, dirt bikes, and skateboards. Nor did he try to associate with the proto–Dungeons and Dragons, video game–expert nerds in the class who were developing their masculinity through alternative channels. Jimmy was late in two senses: too old to be still attracted to cuteness and too late in the Pokémon phenomenon to still be so interested in a fading fad. If Jimmy had been shrewder, he could have masked his love of Pokémon’s cuteness in a fact-intensive, expert version of Pokémon fandom. If he could have pretended to like video games, he could have squeaked by as a wimpy, but regular, guy. But Jimmy didn’t or couldn’t do any of these things. In computer class he worked

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either alone or, once, with a girl named Kristen, who was in many ways his female equivalent. Perhaps hers was an easier role—she was less cool than the other girls in the class, but this did not make her significantly less feminine. Even if she had been less feminine, she most likely would not have su√ered much for it. The tomboy girls in the class who crossed the gender boundary in their play were for the most part supported in this move. The role of the tomboy is one with more social clout than that of the e√eminate boy. When a girl is a tomboy we often applaud. As Gail Boldt writes, ‘‘To be a girl called a boy often carries with it the promise of increased opportunities, but to be a boy associated with girls’ interests and desires is constructed as a move away from power and possibility’’ (1996:197). This, I think, is the really troubling thing about e√eminate boys to adults: not so much their latent homosexuality as their refusal to buy into a power structure that it would seem to their advantage to support. We could argue that the core of Jimmy’s problem is that he did not try hard enough to not be or appear not to be feminine. Jimmy was fortunate that because his classmates were some of the least cruel in the school, he su√ered relatively little open mocking. But on the few occasions I walked him and a group of other kids to their after-school pickup spot, he was not only mocked by other fourth-graders, but also by second-graders from the school next door. Why didn’t Jimmy do something to make himself less vulnerable? His social failure as a male is puzzling. As a teacher, I tried to support Jimmy in his interest and work. He did competent work in my computer class. His computer play was centered around girly and gender-inclusive content, but I don’t know that Jimmy was consciously a gender rebel. I think he just loved Pokémon and Disney in a way other boys his own age or even two years younger did not (or would not) admit.

REFLECTIONS ON JIMMY

It’s hard not to judge Jimmy by the standards of his peers; he strikes us as behind, slow, and babyish because we participate in the same narrative of normal development that leads his classmates to tease him. Jimmy struck his peers and also his teachers as too slow, too old for his interests, insu≈ciently mature, and inadequately masculine. As teachers, it pains us to see these kids

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failing socially and being teased. We worry about their future, but there is little if anything we can do. However, our concern for children who exist at the edges of acceptable and normal classroom life shouldn’t be only with their futures and with problems that they might have in adolescence or adulthood. In school, where so much emphasis is placed on the future and in having students prepared for the next unit and the next grade, it is understandable that we will worry about the futures of children who are outsiders. But our concern for their futures should not keep us from being also or primarily concerned with the quality of their lives in the present. I am less concerned with Jimmy’s future as a potentially e√eminate male or possibly homosexual adolescent and the homophobia he may face then, than I am with the problems he faced daily in my classroom as an overly earnest and late Pokémon fan. Throughout this essay I have described Jimmy in negative terms, as a ‘‘failure,’’ as a ‘‘deviant.’’ I use these terms to call attention to his location in the social structure of the school. In his breaking of norms and rules of acceptable behavior Jimmy failed at normalcy, a failure that subjected him to isolation and teasing from other children and to concern from adults. For those of us who are critical of our culture’s normalizing regimes of masculinity, heterosexuality, and maturity, Jimmy’s failure can be read as a sort of success. But I am acutely aware that my antinormative values did little if anything to ease Jimmy’s situation as a deviant child. This tension between questioning the repressive structures that police the boundaries of normal childhood and my desire to help Jimmy avoid su√ering pervades both this essay and my teaching experience.

REFLECTIONS ON THE END OF POKÉMON

The story of Jimmy’s engagement with Pokémon has something to teach us about the dynamics of the end of a popular culture fad. In February 2000, as the Pokémon conference that led up to the writing of this book was being planned, the Pokémon juggernaut in the United States seemed to be rolling along, and perhaps even still building up steam. The first movie, released in the United States in December 1999, was still in theaters. Burger King was in the midst of a Pokéball tie-in, and Toys ‘‘R’’ Us was organizing Saturday Pokémon gameplaying sessions. Nintendo executives from both Japan and the United States were speaking optimistically about the growth of their franchise, comparing it to Mickey Mouse and Barbie, suggesting the Pokémon phenomenon need not 252

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ever end. And yet, from my perspective as a teacher of upper elementary school students, I knew as early as the winter of 2000 that Pokémon was dead. What made me so prescient? Why did I see the end of Pokémon, at least in the United States, when others didn’t? I wish I could claim that this demonstrates that I am an extraordinarily savvy media critic with a finger on the pulse of popular cultural trends. There may be some truth to this, but in this case my insight came not from my knowledge of popular culture but from my location in an American elementary school as a teacher of nine-to-thirteen-year-olds. This location is key to understanding contemporary children’s consumption because it is elementary children who decide when a children’s fad is over. By February 2000, the kids had spoken—the cool boys had dropped Pokémon as quickly as they had embraced it a year earlier. The coolest, most mature kids had moved on, which meant that most of the other, less cool and younger kids would soon follow. Pokémon lasted several months longer in the lower elementary grades and it will, no doubt, go through a similar cycle in other countries. I would bet that the cool upper elementary school students in those communities, too, led the way in and will lead the way out of Pokémon. As someone who still hangs out on the periphery of male technopop culture, I know that there was a time very early on in the Pokémon phenomenon in the United States when it was briefly embraced by teenage boys who were anime/ Japanese popular culture fans. Pirated Pokémon videos were first carried in anime shops, alongside Macross, Evangeline, and Ranma. Japanese game cartridges were distributed in the underground market for those anime geeks who had Japanese Game Boys or adapters. But once Pokémon was translated into English and shown on Kids wb, and once the English version of the Yellow, Red, and Green Game Boy cartridges were being sold through mainstream outlets, adolescent anime fans quickly dropped Pokémon, as it suddenly became ‘‘a kid thing.’’ Pokémon’s embrace by young children confronted anime fans with the realization that they were invested not, as they would like to believe, in a sophisticated, foreign, and obscure work of animation that could only be appreciated by connoisseurs, but in a cartoon loved by millions of children worldwide. As the amount of work and skill it took to be a Pokémon anime and video game fan decreased, so, too, did its cultural capital and its maturity/masculinity rating. This suggests that toys and tv shows are not inherently appropriate for certain ages or genders but instead that these factors change with time. Early in a fad, when it is new and di≈cult to know about and to purchase, a cultural The End of Pokémon

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product such as Pokémon will have much more social prestige and will seem more mature and (in the case of boys’ toys) more masculine than it will later in the fad’s life cycle, when the same products will become uncool, much less masculine, and even babyish. As I write, Funny Bonz are cool. But they will be babyish, no doubt, by next year. There was a period early in the fad when neighborhood anime and trading-card stores carried both ‘‘real’’ (pirated) versions of the Pokémon tv series in Japanese and imported Japanese versions of the trading cards alongside the commercialized, simplified, Americanized versions, leading to some awkwardness in game stores where hardcore Magic: The Gathering players shared space reluctantly with little Pokéfans, and where hardcore anime experts, who could appreciate the Japanese anime traditions in Pokémon, struggled to distance themselves from what they saw as a vulgarization of Pokémon, as the ‘‘cute’’ aspect was emphasized to the exclusion of other features. These awkward early moments in Pokémon’s life in America foreshadowed how interest in Pokémon would pass from aficionados to ‘‘newbies,’’ from older children to younger ones, and from trendsetters to trend followers, until suddenly Pokémon would lack a critical mass of cool fans, and the phenomenon would be over. I am suggesting that a product line such as Pokémon comes to an end not primarily because it fails to innovate (although that no doubt happens with some products that are ‘‘closed’’ systems rather than ‘‘open’’ systems, like Pokémon), but rather because despite innovations and the release of new characters and new versions, the brand grows old and loses its cool. Nintendo has in fact done an admirable job of developing and releasing innovative Pokémon products. In the winter and spring of 2001, Nintendo released Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Stadium. Snap, in which players sneak up on Pokémon in the wild and take pictures of them, is innovative in importing the look, feel, and action (what programmers call ‘‘the engine’’) of such first-person shooting games as Doom and Goldeneye to younger children and girls, and also in allowing users to have their ‘‘snapshots’’ printed in special printing machines that were available (briefly) in Blockbuster stores and video arcades. Stadium imports the look and feel (and engine) of Mortal Kombat–like martial arts video games into the Pokémon world. Stadium is innovative not only in o√ering a ‘‘G’’-rated hand-to-hand fighting game to young children, but also in allowing players to ‘‘upload’’ the Pokémon they have captured and trained on their Game Boys into the N64 system. These innovations made Snap and Stadium successful com254

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puter game products. But their sales failed to match the earlier success of the Pokémon Game Boy games or to revive the rapidly falling fortunes of the Pokémon franchise. Innovative Pokémon products continued to be artfully introduced and marketed, but the brand is dead, nevertheless.

POKÉMON’S IDEAL FAN?

For Jimmy, however, Pokémon isn’t over. That Pokémon could be over, or that there is something to complete in Pokémon, may not even occur to him. To cultural critics and educators, Jimmy seems to be a dupe, the perfect mark for toy companies and advertisers. But I would suggest he is not the ideal customer. He does not take advantage of the whole range of the product. Liking it too much, he does not need to keep buying new things. Companies want (temporary) product loyalty, but they rely on planned obsolescence. They depend on customers getting tired of the old product and wanting the next one. It actually is not product or item loyalty consumer capitalism wants, it’s brand loyalty. Jimmy is loyal to Pokémon, but he is also content—too content. Brand loyalty dictates repeat purchasing, but Jimmy feels set with what he has. Would he like more Pokémon toys, cards, games? Sure. But Jimmy doesn’t have the ‘‘false need’’ that Pokémon and commodities like it are hypothesized to create in children. The ways in which Jimmy likes Pokémon (to look, to read, to touch the cards) don’t wear out, don’t get dated, making Jimmy’s consumption of Pokémon seem old-fashioned. Pokémon’s strength as a consumer product was that it lent itself to imaginative uses and rereadings. It is an interactive, ‘‘deep’’ system that encourages creativity and playfulness. Jimmy seems to ignore these positive, agentic, pleasure-producing aspects of Pokémon. He just likes to look, read, and touch, not to rework or play. In his earnest, passive, and nonmasculine Pokémon use, Jimmy is content and, therefore, I would suggest, radical. WORKS CITED

Belenky, Mary, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule. 1987. Women’s Ways of Knowing. New York: Basic Books. Boldt, Gail. 1996. ‘‘Sexist and Heterosexist Responses to Gender Bending in an Elementary Classroom.’’ Curriculum Inquiry 26:2. Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Di√erent Voice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Katz, Jon. 2000. Geeks. New York: Villard. Stewart, Susan. 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Willis, Paul. 1981. Learning to Labor. New York: Columbia University Press.

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13 Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire Joseph Tobin

When Koichi Iwabuchi, Chris Yano, and I first conceptualized this project over lunch in Honolulu in the autumn of 1999, we had in mind organizing a conference that would be followed quickly by the publication of an edited book. We planned to get the book out very quickly, like one of those unauthorized biographies of Princess Di that hit the streets while her body was barely cold. As we labored over drafts of our chapters, we were distressed by the realization that Pokémon’s popularity was winding down and that by the time our book came out the craze would be over. We now see that the urgency to publish while Pokémon was still hot was misconceived. It’s di≈cult to evaluate a craze while it is occurring. And the end of a craze is as important and interesting as is its rise or peak. A reviewer of this volume pointed to the similarity of Pokémon to the boom and crash of the Dutch tulip industry in the sixteenth century, a topic that continues to fascinate scholars. Presumably, it was di≈cult to make sense of that craze, too, during its peak. In this conclusion I will attempt to look across the chapters and point out major themes and tensions in Pokémon’s rise and fall, beginning with the point, perhaps too easily overlooked, that Pokémon is/was not just any globally circulating children’s product—it is a product from Japan, Japan’s most successful entry to date in the business of globally marketing a cultural product.

JAPAN’S MOUSE

Pokémon isn’t just any globally circulating childhood craze; it’s a globally circulating craze from Japan. This is a matter not just of profit to Nintendo, but also of national pride and even strategic economic importance to Japan. As

Anne Allison explains in her chapter in this volume, to the Japanese Pikachu is ‘‘our mouse,’’ Japan’s long awaited answer to Mickey. In order to appreciate the cultural and economic significance of Pokémon in contemporary Japan it is necessary to place the development and marketing of Pokémon in the context of Japanese history. In 1854, when Commodore Perry led his fleet into Tokyo Bay, Japan’s centuries-old strategy of barring Western people, ideas, and goods came to an end. In response to the threat of Western military power, Japan’s strategy changed to one of borrowing and domesticating foreign goods and concepts while retaining Japanese core values, as summed up by the mantra of that era: ‘‘Japanese spirit, Western learning.’’ During the years leading up to and including World War II, Japan switched course and pursued a belligerent approach in relating to the United States, Europe, and Asia. The postwar period was a second period of intense cultural borrowing, this time coupled with growing success in selling ‘‘Western goods’’ in North America and Europe. Japan began rebuilding its postwar economy by exporting simple, inexpensive goods; but by the 1970s Japan was enjoying success as a producer of such high-quality, hightech goods as watches, cameras, and cars. In the 1980s, having established dominance in the global market in home electronic goods, Japan seemed well positioned to reign for many years to come as one of the world’s most economically powerful nations. But while Americans fretted about how we would ever close the trade gap with Japan, many Japanese knew their success was fragile. Japan’s postwar formula for economic success, based on exporting consumer goods and computer hardware to the West, proved to be di≈cult to maintain because as the Japanese standard of living and salaries rose, Japan became vulnerable to being undercut by other countries. In the 1990s, the ‘‘New Economic Tigers’’—Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and, eventually, China—became Japan’s Japan, as their lower labor costs allowed them to challenge Japan’s dominance in many sectors of production. Anticipating this turn of events, by the early 1980s Japanese companies and government economic planners were already strategizing to shift the economy from heavy industry to high-tech and then from high-tech to information and cultural products. Most globally circulating media products are played on Japanese-made machines (stereo systems, tv sets, vcrs, cd and dvd players, karaoke machines, and computers), but the majority of the content is produced in Los Angeles and New York. Lacking software of their own, in the 1980s and early 1990s Sony and other Japanese hardware 258

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corporations invested in American movie studios, music labels, and publishing houses (du Gay et al. 1997). The challenge facing Japan in the mid-1990s was to shift from purchasing rights to Western cultural products to producing cultural export products of their own. Japan has a robust domestic culture industry, with billions of yen spent each year on domestically produced and consumed movies, pop music, television shows, and sports events. But converting this domestic market to an international one is a daunting task. Despite their success in selling hardware to the West, with the notable exceptions of computer game sales worldwide and pop music and television show rights in Taiwan and Hong Hong (Iwabuchi 1998), Japan has had little success and in fact has made few aggressive attempts to export cultural software. Japan’s net trade surplus masks the fact that Japan su√ers from a large deficit with Europe and North America in the exchange of cultural products. American and British films are among the top grossers in Japan, while Japanese films (with the recent exception of two animated movies by Hayao Miyazaki—Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away) play only in art houses in the United States. Jazz receives stronger support in Tokyo than in New York, and American and British pop music competes at the top of the Japanese charts, while Japanese pop music finds only a niche market outside of Asia. Japanese haute couture has made inroads in the global high fashion world, but sales of Isse Miyake and Hanae Mori are tiny compared to sales of Levi’s jeans and Calvin Klein underwear in Japan. Why this cultural trade imbalance? It is primarily an e√ect of the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the anglophone West. The cultural and economic power wielded globally over the past three centuries first by England and then by the United States has meant that the Japanese and the rest of the nonEnglish-speaking non-Western world have had to learn to consume foreign cultural products while Americans and Britons have not. Since the days of Perry’s arrival, the Japanese have understood that to relate to and compete with the United States and Europe, it is they who would have to adapt. The Japanese have been adapting Western cultural products long enough and well enough (Tobin 1993) that by the beginning of the new millennium there is no longer a clear, fixed boundary between Western and Japanese things or ideas. Japanese culture, no longer/never pure or unitary, is a hybrid construction that, like all cultures, is continuously reinventing itself (Iwabuchi 1998). Japanese products exported abroad, including Pokémon, are already a Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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mixture of indigenous and borrowed elements even before they are subjected to repackaging by their Japanese exporters and localization by their foreign importers. In chapter 5, Katsuno and Maret point out the irony in the fact that several of the Pokémon television episodes that have been considered inappropriate for release in the United States feature plot elements that are explicitly Euro-American in origin, elements including Misty, Team Rocket, and Ash’s mother entering a beauty contest in Acapulco; a six-gun-toting game warden who points his pistol at Ash; and a Tarzan-like feral child that Ash and Misty meet in the jungle. Although cultural trade between Japan and the West has been an unequal process, this is not to say that before the Pokémon invasion Japanese culture had not already entered Europe and North America. Japanese aesthetic traditions have had a subtle but profound influence on Western painting, theater, movies, fashion, architecture, and design. Zen has influenced Western spirituality. Judo and karate are the best known martial arts around the world. Sushi and soba now can be consumed in European and North American shopping malls. Japanese manga (comic books) and anime (feature-length cartoons) are consumed by aficionados overseas. Nevertheless, despite these successes, it was not until Pokémon that a Japanese cultural product broke through as a worldwide consumer craze. In addition to Western economic, political, and cultural hegemony, another factor contributing to Japan’s cultural trade deficit with the West is Japanese ambivalence about the exportability of their culture. Many Japanese believe that their culture is too idiosyncratic to be appreciated abroad, and they are not so sure that they like the idea of the rest of the world consuming their culture and sharing their tastes. The Japanese have a term for this ambivalence: nihonjinron, or theories of Japanese uniqueness. When I first lived in Japan in the 1960s, Japanese acquaintances would routinely ask me, ‘‘Can you eat sushi?’’ At first I wasn’t sure what this question meant. I eventually figured out the meaning behind the question was a combination of fear that Westerners would find their culture bizarre or distasteful, combined with an ethnocentric pride that their culture is too special and refined to be appreciated by anyone but themselves. I do not believe that Japanese culture is inherently more idiosyncratic and therefore less globalizable than Euro-American culture. But the Japanese belief in their cultural uniqueness, coupled with their ambivalence about being

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consumed by foreigners, can lead to a certain awkwardness and hesitancy in marketing their culture to outsiders. The cultural hegemony of the English-speaking West, together with the Japanese belief in the uniqueness and inaccessibility of their culture, combined to produce a late-twentieth-century dynamic in which Japan, although a major global player in the export of hardware, was only a minor force in the export of cultural products. This began to change as Pokémon, Kurosawa, Godzilla, Hello Kitty, Power Rangers, and sumo found niche markets overseas, but it was little Pikachu who took the world by storm. This global success, however, came at a price: Pokémon’s producers decided that if Pokémon were to make it globally, it would have to reduce what Koichi Iwabuchi calls its ‘‘cultural odor.’’

GLOCALIZATION

A common assumption of the global popular culture industry is that for a Japanese cultural product to find a mass market abroad, it must not seem to be too Japanese. De-Japanization can be accomplished during the act of creation, by designing a cultural text to be universal in its themes and lacking specifically Japanese images and references, and/or after the fact, by erasing explicitly Japanese content and references. These processes are more easily done with some kinds of cultural products than with others. Japan’s most successful cultural exports to date have been computer games. The global computer game market originated with Japanesedesigned games including Duck Hunt, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Brothers. These games were relatively easy to export as they had no explicitly Japanese cultural content. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were the first globally distributed computer games that were explicitly Japanese/ Asian, with lead characters including sumo wrestlers, ninjas, karate specialists, and kung fu masters. The relative unimportance of language in computer games makes them inherently easier to adapt for foreign markets than are songs, television shows, movies, or cartoons. Another factor facilitating their exportability is that in computer games, as in cartoons, the settings can be entirely mythical and the protagonists of no particular race or ethnicity. Pokémon comes out of this Japanese computer game and anime tradition in which locations are not quite

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any place we know and the characters not quite of any recognizable race or ethnicity. Thus a child in Sydney or Paris could watch a Pokémon episode or play the Game Boy game without knowing that the product originated in Japan. But this is not to say that there is nothing characteristically Japanese about Pokémon. The Pokémon computer game, television show, and movies have many distinctively Japanese elements and concerns. Pokémon’s creator, Tajiri Satoshi, has stated in interviews that his dream was to create a computer game that would allow contemporary Japanese children to reconnect with nature through learning to identify and care for insect-like creatures, as he did as a boy who gathered beetles in the woods, an activity that is increasingly di≈cult to pursue in an urbanized Japan. Other readily identifiable Japanese plot elements include the sensei-deishi (master-disciple) relationship between Satoshi (Ash) and Professor Okido (Professor Oak) and Satoshi’s quest, in the Japanese martial arts tradition, to climb the Pokémon trainer ranks until he reaches the level of Pokémon Master. Elements in Pokémon that are more subtly Japanese include the themes of miniaturization (Lee 1982; du Gay et al 1997); encapsulation (once captured, Pokémon are trained to live in ‘‘Pokéballs’’); metamorphosis (in the ‘‘changerobot,’’ ‘‘power-up’’ tradition of Voltron, the Transformers, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers); and heroes having ‘‘special’’ attacking moves (in the tradition of both anime and computer fighting games). Another anime and manga trope that appears in Pokémon is the presence of sexualized girls and curvaceous, mini-skirted young women. Although cuteness is a common feature of Western as well as Japanese cartooning, Pokémon is kawaii (cute) in a particularly Japanese way, as discussed in the chapter by Allison. The aesthetic style of the Pokémon television show and movies is representative of the Japanese manga and anime tradition that features a clean, flat drawing style, a lack of fluid motion (in marked contrast to the greater three-dimensionality and realistic motion of characters in Disney and Warner Brothers cartooning) and such movie-like e√ects as overhead, tracking, and point-of-view shots and the inclusion of special-e√ect shots, such as split screen and the interpolation of negative images. The major human characters in Pokémon are mukokuseki (nationalityless), neither clearly Japanese nor not Japanese, but minor characters include such unambiguously Japanese figures as ninjas and samurai. Satoshi/Ash and his friends move through a fictional world that includes such culturally generic 262

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locations as Pallet Town and Pewter City, but, as Katsuno and Maret describe, they occasionally enter restaurants with signs and curtains printed in kanji and, once inside, they eat rice with chopsticks and slurp noodles. The artful manipulation of the Japaneseness of Pokémon in both its domestic and export versions has been crucial to its success. Iwabuchi introduces us to the terms ‘‘global localization,’’ ‘‘glocalization,’’ and ‘‘glocal,’’ coined, some say, by Sony to refer to the need for a product, if it is to succeed globally, to be modified in order to be sold in foreign markets. The process that allowed Pokémon to be so successful in overseas markets began not with glocalization but with another factor discussed by Iwabuchi, ‘‘de-odorization,’’ which involves developing cultural products designed from the start to be scrubbed of any obvious Japanese ‘‘cultural odor.’’ How systematic and planned was the deodorization of Pokémon? Tajiri and Kubo deny consciously reducing the Japaneseness of their original products (the computer game and television series, respectively). But Iwabuchi’s conceptualizing of deodorization does not require conscious intent. My hunch is that the deodorization of Pokémon at the time of its creation was less a conscious global marketing strategy than it was the result of its creators working within already deodorized genres. Japanese computer games and anime are made up of such deodorized tropes as cultureless landscapes, nationalityless characters, and hybrid intertextual references. Unless the mise-en-scène is explicitly Japanese (as, for example, in a domestic comedy such as Crayon Shinchan), Japanese anime illustrators create mukokuseki characters because that is how they and their readers expect characters in anime to look. I suspect this is what happened with the creation of Satoshi (Ash), Kasumi (Misty), Nurse Joi (Joy), Professor Okido (Oak) and the other only vaguely or not at all Japaneselooking human characters in Pokémon. If the conscious intent of the Pokémon developers from the onset had been to develop a cultureless, globally marketable product, more care would have been taken from the start to avoid the inclusion of kanji, Japanese foods, and plots with specifically Japanese intertextual references, such as when Tensai Bakabon, a character borrowed from a popular manga (but with roots in Chaplin’s ‘‘Little Tramp’’) turns up in the ‘‘feral child’’ episode. The presence of such Japanese elements in the original Pokémon game and in the first series of the television program created the need for extensive and, no doubt, in some cases expensive localization. When Tajiri and Kubo began their work on Pokémon, they had no reason to Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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expect that their products would make it big domestically, much less overseas. But by 1999, with Pokémon fever already sweeping the United States, Kubo was fully aware of the need to limit the Japanese odor of Pokémon in order to facilitate localization for the American and other markets. Kubo explains that unlike the original Pokémon television series, considerable care was taken in the production of the Pokémon movies to reduce the Japanese odor: Another Japanese anime tv and movie series called Sailor Moon was popular a few years ago. When the movies went on the silver screen in the United States, very little was altered visually. The outcome was a moderate hit, but the series never got to be like the big craze it was in Japan. Our research on this case suggests that things like Japanese writing showing up on signboards in the background and uniquely Japanese family settings distract American kids, preventing them from really becoming absorbed in the movie’s fictional world. With these examples in mind, from the start we had our hearts set on thoroughly localizing Pokémon: The First Movie, though we may not have been completely successful in doing so. (Kubo 2000:2) As it happens, they were not. Work remained for the North American localizers. Localizers are key workers in the contemporary culture industry. Japanese computer game makers are among those companies that hire employees in overseas markets to localize their products, for example, by renaming characters and reducing the intensity of the color of the blood in shooting games. The localizing of Pokémon for the North American market was a collaborative Japanese-American e√ort. Kubo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of Creatures, Inc., took the lead on the Japanese side, while the key American localizers were Gail Tilden of Nintendo of America, and Al Kahn (the creator of the Cabbage Patch Kids) and Norman Grossfeld of 4Kids Entertainment/Leisure Concepts. In his accounts of his interactions with his American localizers, Kubo comes across as a somewhat anguished figure, torn, like a novelist whose work is being translated, between the desires to reach a wider audience and to protect the integrity of his original creation, between trusting his American collaborators and fearing they will rob his text of its passion and subtlety: Once we actually started looking at the requests of Warner Brothers, however, it often gave us headaches. Especially regarding the music, we even 264

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checked with them a number of times whether that was really what they wanted. . . . As opposed to the Japanese version, which uses a lot of stirring orchestral music, the U.S. version mainly uses dance and rap music, and there were many scenes where we thought, ‘‘Are they seriously going to play such driving music here?’’ Some sad scenes would be accompanied by very upbeat sounds, for instance. But when you listen carefully, you find that the lyrics actually match the scene. Considering that the soundtrack has already sold over a million copies on compact disc, I guess that what they did was right for the United States. They replaced the orchestral music with the kind of songs that American teenagers prefer, and they were right on the mark. The people at Warner also gave us some hassle over the script. According to them, the Japanese original does not distinguish clearly enough between the good guys and the bad. Such a movie would not be successful in a multiethnic country like the United States, they insisted, because the viewers would not know who to identify with and who to cheer on. In other words, the heroes and villains needed to be identified clearly. They accomplished this by revising the various characters’ lines. (2000:3) Here, and in interviews, we can sense Kubo’s frustration with the American localization of Pokémon. Kubo is quoted as saying ‘‘I was confused by the music because, to me, it did not fit at all but I finally agreed to it out of respect for their (U.S.) culture’’ (Takahashi 2000). Elsewhere he reveals that he and his collaborators in Japan refer to Gail Tilden of Nintendo of America as ‘‘the Dragon Lady’’ or ‘‘Dragon Mother.’’ Kubo and the other producers of the original movie seem pained to have had their creation dumbed-down for the American context, not only by having the music made more juvenile and less sophisticated, but also by making the plot less complex and morally ambiguous. On the other hand, huge profits do a lot to salve hurt egos and reduce concerns over artistic integrity. Whatever the backstage struggles between creators and localizers, the translated versions of Pokémon are of high quality, and this quality contributed significantly to Pokémon’s being the most successfully exported Japanese cultural product. A prime example of the quality of Pokémon’s localization can be seen in the care and creativity that went into the renaming of the Pocket Monsters in English and other languages. Following the lead of the Japanese original, the localizers devised names that make it easy for children not only to Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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memorize the Pokémon but to understand the relationship of Pokémon both to their evolved higher forms and to their family groups (e.g., water, fire, air). The names are rich in both cute puns and in a pseudo-Linnean attention to family and genus. For example, the little lizard with fire on its tail in English is Charmander, his more evolved version Charmeleon, and his most evolved version Charizard. Similarly clever names were devised for Pokémon’s French, Italian, and German versions. The ‘‘grass’’ type Pokémon originally named Fushigisou—a combination of the Japanese words fushigi (strange) and sou (plant)—was renamed Ivysaur in English, Herbizarre in French, and Bisaknosp in German. The trading cards, television series, movies, and Game Boy cartridges were translated into other languages, but without translating the names of the Pokémon. Spanish and Italian versions of the cards were produced, with descriptions of their special attacks fully translated, but the names of the Pokémon are those from the English version, making it di≈cult for children to appreciate the puns and taxonomic relationships. What these linguistic examples reveal is that the glocalization of Pokémon is an incomplete and unequal phenomenon. Children in many parts of the world had access to Pokémon, but not equal access. If you speak Japanese, English, German, or French, and live in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, or France, you had access to the full range of fully translated and localized Pokémon products. Most of the products were available in Italian-, Spanish-, and Portuguese-speaking countries, but the translations were not as thoroughly localized. In the case of a smaller market country such as Israel, the television show was translated into Hebrew, but the only cards available were in English. In smaller market countries, there was a sense of loss among fans not just about not getting fully translated versions of the full range of products, but also about being behind. Dafna Lemish and Linda-Renée Bloch point out that Pokémon’s product release cycle was compressed in Israel, with the tv show, cards, and movies introduced over the course of several months rather than, as in Japan and the United States, several years. This was necessary because by the time Pokémon was o≈cially introduced to Israel, over one hundred tv episodes, two movies, and five versions of the Pokémon Game Boy game had already been produced and released in Japan and the United States; English-language versions of these

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products had already entered Israel through various means; and children were keenly aware of what they were missing and what they should be o√ered. This dynamic between consumers and producers is very di√erent in a cultural commodity’s country of origin, where fans feel a sense of excitement about being the first to engage with a new product and enjoy the power of getting to help decide if this product should and will succeed in the marketplace, in contrast to the situation in ‘‘downstream’’ countries such as Israel, Holland, Mexico, and the Philippines, where all but the youngest consumers are aware that they are late. This sense of being late and behind comes across in statements posted to Pokémon bulletin boards on the Web. For example, in August 2000, a thirteenyear-old boy from Manila wrote: ‘‘Well, I’m from the Philippines, an Asian country. I guess most tv networks here play anime series that have already been shown to other countries. It’s a bit annoying to know that other people have already finished the series when we here just halfway through. Well that’s how things work around here!!!’’ That same summer a Dutch fan wrote, ‘‘In Holland the first movie is just out for one month so nope, I haven’t seen the new movie yet. . . . Tell me, is Brock in the movie?’’ Pokémon was much less available in poorer countries than richer ones. In countries where Nintendo has no o≈ces, third parties imported Pokémon products on their own, but without a mass marketing campaign and diverse distribution networks, Pokémon’s market penetration was limited. Pokémon’s presence was also limited in countries that are antagonistic to the spread of American (and Japanese) popular culture. As Christine Yano discusses in this volume, clerics in Qatar and Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa (holy edict) against Pokémon in April 2001, citing the presence of Shinto, Christian, and Zionist symbols and themes. Sheik Yousef al-Qaradawi of The Research and Fatwa Administration of Dubai is quoted in an Associated Press story (5 April 2001) as saying that Pokémon is ‘‘dangerous to a child’s mentality and behaviour, involves gambling, promotes Zionism and Darwin’s theory of evolution.’’ The schedule that determines when and where the Pokémon train stops is set for the most part not in Kyoto or Tokyo but at Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Pikachu’s global adventure carried him not from Japan to the world, but from Japan to the United States, where he was given a makeover before sending him on to the rest of the world. It is Nintendo of America, Hasbro, 4Kids Entertainment, and Warner Brothers, and

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not their Japanese counterparts, that hold the rights for selling Pokémon products in most markets. The versions of the Pokémon cards, television shows, and movies distributed everywhere but Asia are translations of the American rather than Japanese versions. The fact that Pokémon reached most of the world via the United States means that the global Pokémon empire is not quite the challenge to American pop-culture global hegemony that it first seems to be. Pikachu, at least for a moment, may have kicked Mickey’s butt, but American corporations including Hasbro and Warner Brothers earned a large share of the profits. Lacking the know-how and global distribution systems for cultural products, Nintendo, Shogakukan, tv Tokyo, Creatures, Inc., and the other Japanese corporations involved in the development of Pokémon had little choice but to turn to the United States to gain worldwide distribution. The experience, profits, and confidence that Japanese producers are garnering with Pokémon may allow them to develop their own distribution networks in the future. But for now, as both the world’s largest market for and exporter of children’s culture, the United States is an economic and cultural force more prudently worked with than against. Asian markets are the one significant exception to Pokémon’s reaching foreign countries via the United States. Nintendo and the other Japanese Pokémon-producing corporations export their products directly to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and other Asian nations. It is the Japanese rather than the American versions of the Pokémon cards, tv series, and movies that have been marketed in Asia. With China a sleeping giant when it comes to importing children’s culture, the Asian market is still relatively small, but Japan’s ability to market its cultural creations in Asia has the potential to become a significant economic factor in a Japanese economic recovery. Iwabuchi (1998) points out that the cultural products Japan exports to Asia are not traditional Japanese products but instead Japanese remakes of Western cultural products. With memories of Japanese military aggression still fresh, many Asian countries have an antipathy to anything marked as traditional Japanese culture, but these same countries are increasingly open to importing Japan’s expertise as a localizer and disseminator of Western popular culture. Iwabuchi points out that the Japanese versions of American and British pop music and television dramas recently have become more popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong than their Western equivalents.

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UNOFFICIAL/GRASSROOTS LOCALIZERS

The glocalization processes I’ve discussed so far are all corporate-planned and -directed. But these o≈cial routes of Pokémon’s global dissemination are only part of the story of its success. The first versions of Pokémon to make it to the United States came not via Gail Tilden’s and Norman Grossfeld’s carefully designed localization e√orts, but instead via uno≈cial consumption networks. Back in 1997, before Nintendo of Japan directed Nintendo of America to launch a localization campaign for Pokémon and before 4Kids Entertainment began work on translating the tv series into English, Pokémon was already being consumed outside Japan. By the autumn of 1997, just months after the television series was first aired in Japan, pirated versions were being sold and otherwise exchanged hand to hand, by mail, and over the Internet by anime otaku (Japanese animation fans) in various locations outside Japan. By the autumn of 1998, as the tv series was first being broadcast in English in the United States, the Japanese versions of Pokémon videos and trading cards were already on shelves in anime, role-playing, and Japanese import stores around the world, and pirated copies of the tv programs, dubbed into Mandarin and Cantonese, were available in small shops in Chinatowns worldwide. By the winter of 1999, when Pokémon fever began to sweep through elementary schools across the United States, there was already a vanguard of kids in the schools knowledgeable about the computer game, cards, and tv series. In most American communities there is a small group of geeky young people who are experts on Japanese popular culture. Many, but by no means all, of these young people are Asian Americans and most, but not all, are males. These otaku, through friendship networks, school-based gaming clubs, informal as well as structured gatherings at role-playing game stores, Web sites and listservs, and magazines such as Giant Robot, are a repository of cutting-edge knowledge of popular cultural trends in Japan. I can illustrate the importance of informal dissemination networks through vignettes of three early moments in Pikachu’s global adventure: (1) It is January of 1999, and Kenji Takata, a seven-year-old boy who had moved to Honolulu from Tokyo with his parents six months earlier, is suddenly a source of valuable cultural information in his second-grade

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classroom. American children bringing the Game Boys they received for Christmas to school eagerly seek Kenji’s advice on how to beat Pokémon Red. He is glad to oblige. (2) I visit an anime/manga store in Honolulu in October 1999, just as the Pokémon craze is taking o√ in the United States. When I ask Spencer, the manager, if he has any Pokémon tapes, he points me to the anime section, but not before giving me a quick lecture that goes something like: ‘‘We have some tapes from the first television series, in Japanese. Right over there, between Macross and Ranma. Are you looking for yourself or for your kids? You know, Pokémon isn’t a children’s thing. It’s anime. A lot of my customers have known about Pokémon since it was first released in Japan, way before all the hype and before the little kids got into it.’’ (3) In the winter of 2000, Sue Chinn, a University of Chicago undergraduate in my course on ‘‘Children and Popular Culture,’’ explains to me that what she knows about Pokémon came mostly through her twelve-yearold brother, Tom. Two years earlier, their cousins in Hong Kong sent Tom a vcd (video-cd) that contained pirated copies of episodes of several anime, including Pokémon. On a visit to Hong Kong the next summer Tom’s cousins took him to software and electronic shops in the Mongkok district, where he purchased ‘‘non-taxed’’ (illegally imported and/or copied) Pokémon cards, videos (some in Japanese, some dubbed into Chinese), and merchandise (mostly unlicensed from Taiwan). Back home in Chicago, Tom spends his weekends hanging out with his friends at Cards and Comixs, a comic book/role-playing games store in a neighborhood on the city’s Southwest side. Although perceived as nerds at school, their knowledge of Pokémon and other Japanese anime and role-playing games and their access to pirated Japanese cultural products give them celebrity status at their local gaming store and in their otaku community. Young people like Kenji, Spencer, and Tom are key facilitators of Pikachu’s global adventure. Although Nintendo complains about unauthorized copying of tapes, illegal importation of games and cards, and posting of Web sites that use Pokémon graphics without permission, I would argue that these informal and in some cases illegal routes of introducing Pokémon and other Japanese cultural products abroad did more to facilitate than to interfere with Nintendo’s global marketing mission. 270

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SECONDARY LOCALIZATION

Whether purchased through grassroots or o≈cial distribution networks, Pokémon’s consumers did not necessarily use Pokémon in ways intended by its producers. Consumers share power with producers in the localization of a globally circulating product such as Pokémon. One form of this localization is the way regional customs influence local forms of Pokémon play. The Pokémon trading cards have been sold in many markets, but they are played di√erently in di√erent countries. In Japan, where the trading cards are less important than the computer games, anime, and Pokémon paraphernalia, the trading cards are primarily personal collectibles. The cards have been a much bigger deal in the United States, where, at the peak of Pokémon’s popularity, they were traded like baseball cards and bought and sold like stocks or commodities futures. In chapter 9 Gilles Brougère explains that in France, where there is a long tradition of playing-card games, the Pokémon trading cards were adapted by children for playing versions of such traditional French card games as La Battaille and La Tapette. Worldwide, the least common use of the trading cards seems to be as part of the o≈cial role-playing card game for which they were designed by Wizards of the Coast as a simplified version of Magic: The Gathering, a fantasy card game that is very popular with adolescents and young adults. Lemish and Bloch describe how Israeli children read fighting, cooperation, and other key thematic elements of the Pokémon tv series alongside their daily experience of militarism and violence. On a more micro level, we can see di√erences in how local communities within one country or even one city localized Pokémon to suit their local economic and social conditions. Thus, for example, in Chicago (where I was living in the spring of 2001 while doing research on Pokémon), I observed working-class children on the city’s Southwest side organizing their Pokémon play around exchanging cards that they bought a pack at a time. In an impoverished neighborhood on the South Side, African American children who couldn’t a√ord Game Boys, and who had no stores in their neighborhood selling Pokémon cards, focused on the tv show and on inexpensive stickers and Burger King giveaways. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb, in those optimistic days before the stock market collapsed, children whose parents worked in the city bought and sold rare ‘‘shinnies’’ (holographic Pokémon cards) at a card and comics shop, whose owner told me: ‘‘This Pokémon thing has been great Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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for business. The coolest thing about it is that on Saturdays kids are coming in with their dads and getting into it together. A lot of the dads in this community work downtown at the Board of Trade or places like that and now they can come in and help their kids buy and trade Pokémon cards just like they buy and trade stocks and commodities. For fun, I set up a sort of Pokémon arbitrage site here in the store, with a chart listing the various cards and their buy and sell prices from di√erent magazines, and fluctuations and projections.’’ The picture of young children learning to be little Ivan Boeskys by trading in Charmander futures is not exactly an endorsement of Pokémon as a wholesome childhood activity. But it does show how Pokémon is amenable to multiple uses and finetuned localization. Early childhood educators, cultural critics, and parents tend to be critical of highly commercialized toys that constrain children’s play and to prefer toys such as Legos, and simple dolls that lend themselves to multiple scripts and that can be engaged with in a variety of ways. Pokémon seems to many adults to be the antithesis of such goals as it is highly commercialized and elaborately scripted, with tight links between the computer game, the trading cards, the toys, and the Saturday morning tv show. What we seem to have here is the children’s lobby’s nightmare come to life: a toy, a game, and a tv show that embodies the commodification and degradation of children’s lives in the aftermath of Reagan’s deregulation of children’s television. Despite what they print in their mission statements on their corporate Web sites, Nintendo, Hasbro, 4Kids Entertainment, and the other companies marketing Pokémon clearly are in business to make money, rather than to educate or otherwise improve children. It is equally clear that these companies have put a lot of thought and e√ort into constructing products that children will use in anticipated ways. But the presence of these corporate motives and strategies does not necessarily mean that these mass-produced, globally circulated, aggressively marketed products lack educational value or that in practice they constrain children’s play, diminish their imaginations, or erase the power of the local. Many of the essays in this collection describe children in a variety of settings engaging with Pokémon in ways that are active, creative, and even educational. This research tends to support Kubo’s claim that a key to Pokémon’s success is that it lent itself to multiple forms of play by children of di√erent ages, genders, and social locations. As Ellen Seiter argues persuasively in Sold Separately (1993:193–95, 213–19), what could it be other than our 272

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middle-class biases that make us so sure that glitzy, mass-marketed plastic toys sold at Toys ‘‘R’’ Us get played with less creatively and imaginatively than handmade, Waldorf School–approved wooden toys imported from Sweden and sold in stores with names like Edutoys or The Exploratorium? Looking over the shoulders of children engaging with Pokémon, we find a range of play practices, from ones orchestrated and anticipated by the producers, to unanticipated uses created by Pokémon’s consumers but presumably welcomed by the producers, and finally to resistant Pokémon practices that the producers endeavor to stamp out. Uses Anticipated and Orchestrated by the Producers In chapter 7, Julian Sefton-Green charts his six-year-old son Sam’s epic (one hundred hours!) struggle to ‘‘beat’’ the Pokémon game on his Game Boy. The fact that Sam was engaged with Pokémon in precisely the way the game’s producers hoped and anticipated children would be does not mean that Sam’s Pokémon play was uncreative or unsatisfying. Another example of a Pokémon practice orchestrated by the producers are the trading-card ‘‘game days’’ Wizards of the Coast ran in the United States during the height of the craze in the winter and spring of 2000. Wizards hired teenage Magic experts to run Pokémon trading-card instructional activities and tournaments on Saturday afternoons in Toys ‘‘R’’ Us stores and card shops across the country. At these sessions, more experienced trading-card players could earn Pokémon rankings points by tutoring ‘‘newbies,’’ who needed help figuring out how to ‘‘build a deck’’ and to sort through the complicated rules of play of the o≈cial version of the card game. Wizards’ original goal in acquiring the rights to develop and market Pokémon cards was to expand their customer base by having a product to o√er to younger children whom they hoped would grow up to be Magic: The Gathering players. Soon after introducing their new product Wizards realized that, in addition to recruiting customers of the future for their franchise product, they could make a lot of money selling Pokémon cards to children who had little or no interest in playing the trading-card game. Even at Pokémon game days, not all that much game playing occurred. On my visits to Pokémon game days I observed a range of Pokémon activities. A few of these activities were unsavory, such as when aggressive fathers pulled out rolls of cash to purchase rare cards (ostensibly for their children), or older children seduced younger ones into bad Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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trades. However, in my experience, exploitative activities were rare. A more common activity was children of various ages sitting around tables checking out one another’s cards and engaging in trades that were marked by their attention to fairness. In trades between children of similar age and Pokémon experience, the trading partners took pains to assure themselves and each other that the trade was fair: ‘‘Charmander is a circle [not rare] and Growlithe is a diamond [semirare] and Growlithe has more hit points, but Charmander has scratch and ember attacks and he can evolve into Charmeleon, who is really good.’’ When an older, more experienced card collector was trading with a younger one, typically one or more experienced traders would look on and, occasionally, intervene. The trading-card game days were orchestrated by the producers and run by their agents, but that did not prevent the children attending from being active and creative. Some of the intended uses created by Pokémon’s producers have been largely ignored by children. As discussed above, few children actually play the tradingcard game as a strategy game. Another example is that children tend to ignore the fact that each card carries the name of its illustrator. Like Magic cards, the illustrations on Pokémon trading cards are reproductions of paintings, in a variety of styles, by five di√erent illustrators. The illustrators’ names can be found in a very small font on the bottom left corner of the card (in contrast to the greater prominence of the illustrators’ names on Magic cards). Unlike Magic fans, who pay attention to the illustrators and consider the cards works of art, very few of the Pokémon card collectors I interviewed were aware that the illustrator’s name appears on the card. On the other hand, taking a cue from the painterly quality of the cards, many children took a stab at drawing their own versions of Pokémon—children’s Web sites often included drawings of their favorite Pokémon, generally in styles more like the muted colors and painting-like composition of the cards than the bolder colors and flatter look of the tv series. Uses Not Orchestrated or Anticipated by the Producers, but Presumably Welcome At the peak of the craze, there were thousands of uno≈cial Pokémon Web sites. Some were commercial, as, for example, sites that sold rare Pokémon cards and collectibles. Some were ‘‘webzines,’’ supported by advertising revenues, featuring reviews of new products, episode guides, and game-playing 274

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advice. Others were noncommercial fan sites featuring personal artwork, descriptions of players’ best decks, and ‘‘cheat’’ codes for getting through the game. For example, on a site (no longer online) titled ‘‘Michael’s Fun Stu√ ’’ (http://www.mariconda.com/Michael/) we find such useful hints as: ‘‘getting to sabrina Enter, take the teleport by the man standing there. Then take the one to your left. Take the teleport below you. Then take the one at your left Then once more take the one at your left and there is the lovely Sabrina.’’ Although the Pokémon producers made nothing directly o√ these unauthorized sites, and although Nintendo (like Disney) routinely issues stern warnings and threatens legal action against the unauthorized use of their copyrighted images (which is a common practice on fan sites and homepages) they are presumably glad to have the free publicity and the encouragement and advice to beginners that these sites provide. Unauthorized, Resistant Uses As Christine Yano discusses in this volume, the most flamboyantly unauthorized and therefore presumably resistant Pokémon uses are the ‘‘I hate Pokémon’’ sites that are common on the Web. Anti-Pokémon sites begin with statements such as ‘‘For everyone who hates those cute, so called Pokémon then this is where you want to be!’’ and o√er such jokes as ‘‘I love Pokémon. They taste like chicken.’’ These sites contain sarcastic pictures, essays, and, sometimes, poetry, as in these postings from The Pokémon Hate Center (http://www.angel fire.com/bc/pokemonhate): We’ll cut up Pikachu and see what’s inside It’s gonna be bloody so bring out the Tide Lemon fresh cleaner will wash o√ your shirt Then take the limp body and stu√ it with dirt Hold it up for the world to see And watch all the sadists chuckle with glee. This is my recipe for Pikachu’s death Next time we’ll make Charmander a mess! (By Dylan). And: That show is really boring In 5 minutes I am snoring Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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We should stab in the back The guy who thought that Pikachu was so cute and sweet, But now smells worse than my feet. So we should hurt and maim and beat The Japanese tv elite Who let that show go on the air For with them we do not care. (By Matthew Lamantia) The motives behind these e√orts are transparent—older children striving to distance themselves from younger children and from their own younger selves by showing o√ their sophistication and cynicism. The irony of their e√orts is clear to adults: if these children were truly too mature for Pokémon, they would not be investing so much energy in Pokémon-bashing. Although seemingly resistant, these ‘‘I hate Pokémon’’ sites are unlikely to make the folks at Nintendo unhappy, for they are tributes to Pokémon’s centrality in children’s culture. The final chapters of this book demonstrate the di≈culty of distinguishing resistant from obliging uses of Pokémon. Helen Bromley tells the story of how, as a visiting teacher, she facilitated a group of five-year-olds’ Pokémon play. At first she invited the children in her class to use store-bought Pokémon terrains and figures as props for their imaginary play and literacy activities. Eventually, the children began to make their own Pokémon ‘‘story boxes,’’ dioramas that contained their hand-made Pokémon worlds and Pokémon. These story boxes could be seen as a symptom of Nintendo’s success in penetrating the classroom and commodifying the curriculum. But, as Bromley points out, in constructing their own Pokémon characters and terrain out of paper and clay, the children can also be seen as appropriating Pokémon and transforming and transcending the commodity. Rebekah Willett describes how the children in her second-grade class brought Pokémon characters into their writing assignments. Based on her close readings of her students’ Pokémon stories, Willett suggests that within a single activity children can be simultaneously consumers and producers, interpellated subjects and textual poachers, rule breakers and rule followers. Samuel Tobin tells a Bartleby-like story of Jimmy, a nine-year-old boy who prefers not to engage with Pokémon in the ways his peers and teachers wish he would. Unlike his classmates and the children described in the chapters by Sefton-Green, 276

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Bromley, and Willett, Jimmy does not master Pokémon facts, ‘‘beat’’ the game, design his own Web site, make up his own characters, construct dioramas, attempt to ‘‘catch ’em all,’’ or in any other way function as a textual poacher, localizer, or appropriater of popular culture. Instead, Jimmy just likes to look at his favorite Pokémon. As his classmates move on to new, more mature interests such as motorbikes and pop music and cooler consumer trends, such as Digimon, Jimmy prefers to stick with Pokémon. In presenting a portrait of a deviant, failing consumer, Tobin’s essay works to expose the social constructedness of what constitutes a ‘‘normal,’’ ‘‘healthy’’ childhood engagement with consumer culture. The passivity of Jimmy’s Pokémon play transgressed the norms of his social world, making him the object of teasing by his peers and concern by his teachers. Jimmy strikes us at first glance as capitalism’s perfect subject and Nintendo’s perfect customer. But Tobin points out that in contrast to his classmates’ relentless desire to move on to the next fad and to have the newest cool toy, Jimmy’s lack of consumer restlessness and the continual satisfaction he finds in his small collection of Pokémon figures can also be read as a kind of resistance, both to his community’s norms of masculinity and maturity and also to the desire of Nintendo to sell him more and more of their merchandise.

THE OTAKU AND THE SNACKER

The case of Jimmy’s engagement with Pokémon raises some profound questions about who, exactly, is the ideal consumer constructed and required by twenty-first-century global capitalism. Japanese slang o√ers some useful terms for describing two types of late capitalist consumers. Otaku is a term of derision used to describe adolescents and young adults, almost all of whom are males, who are obsessed with an aspect of popular culture that they access at home, through their computers, rather than through face-to-face human interaction (Tobin 1999). The stereotype of the otaku is of a pasty, too fat or too skinny, haphazardly attired, junk-food-eating young man who rarely leaves his room, has poor social skills, and a sex life that is virtual, at best. The term otaku is close to the contemporary meaning of the English terms ‘‘geek’’ and ‘‘nerd,’’ except that whereas geeks and nerds are primarily interested in technology, otaku are more interested in an aspect of popular culture they track using technology. Otaku generally refer to themselves not simply as otaku but as anime-otaku, Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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Star Wars–otaku, or Pokémon-otaku, the word preceding the hyphen identifying the object of their obsession. In contrast to the otaku, who consumes one cultural product loyally and obsessively, there are young people in Japan whose consumption is described as tsumamigui, a word that literally means snacking (tsumami means to take a pinch of something, gui to eat), but that also carries the metaphorical meaning of being lazy, impulsive, unfocused, and undiscriminating. For snacking to rise (or sink) to the level of tsumamigui, it must be in some way transgressive, as in ruining your appetite by eating crackers before sitting down to a meal with your family, or sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight snack. Related terms heard in contemporary Japan are ki ga oi, said of someone with too many interests or whose energies are spread in too many directions, and tachiyomi, which literally means reading while standing but which carries the implication that the reader prefers to flip through a book in a bookstore reading randomly, without buying it, rather than purchasing it and reading it from cover to cover. Metaphorically, the term is used to refer to people who prefer browsing, grazing, and sampling to a sincere, linear engagement with life. The social theorist Asada Akira (1988) sees in the practice of tachiyomi a metaphor for postmodern consumption. Equivalent terms in contemporary English would include ‘‘grazing’’ (which refers either to a yuppie custom in which diners move from restaurant to restaurant eating one dish per stop or to a health-conscious custom of eating small portions throughout the day rather than ‘‘gorging’’ on full meals) and ‘‘sampling,’’ which refers to how hip-hop artists and other musicians compose a song out of fragments lifted from others’ recordings. The concepts of the otaku and the snacker can be applied to the Pokémon phenomenon in several useful ways. One is to suggest that the otaku and the snacker represent the ideal consuming subjects constructed by late capitalism. Adults who are anxious about Pokémon see Nintendo as turning children into consumers who are obsessive and addicted (that is, into otaku), or restless, easily bored, and never quite satisfied (that is, into snackers). We worry about children’s consumption both when they strike us as being, like otaku, too cathected to their toys (‘‘For the past three days all you’ve done is play with those cards—you haven’t even been outside’’), and also when they seem, like snackers, to be too easily bored and insu≈ciently cathected (‘‘I just bought you that toy and you hardly play with it and now you are asking for another one’’). Adult concern about Pokémon-otaku can be seen in stories that circulate in the 278

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popular press of children who care far too much about their Pokémon (as, for example, to the point that they would steal or cheat to get more) and/or who know far too many Pokémon facts (e.g., they don’t know the di√erence between a fish and a mammal, but they can readily sort 150 Pokémon into water, earth, wind, and rock types). The concern about children as Pokémon-snackers can be seen in adult complaints that their children’s desire for Pokémon is ruining their appetite for more wholesome childhood activities, such as playing outside or engaging in imaginary play. Pokémon’s advertising jingle ‘‘Gotta catch ’em all’’ is reminiscent of such well-known snack-food jingles as ‘‘You can’t eat just one’’ of Lay’s Potato Chips and ‘‘Yamerarenai’’ (‘‘I can’t stop’’) of Kappa Ebisen (a shrimp-flavored cracker sold in Japan). One could argue that some children in their engagement with Pokémon are otaku and that others are snackers. Or we could conceive of the otaku and the snacker not as two separate types but as two sides of the same consumer. An intense, obsessive interest that turns rapidly into boredom is symptomatic of consumption in the age of late capitalism (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972:139; Jameson 1984). Contemporary consumers, alienated from authentic desire, purchase commodities that they think they want but that inevitably fail to give them any lasting satisfaction, which drives them back to buy again. This cycle of desire and despair can be understood as the engine that drives contemporary capitalism. The otaku and the snacker also can be seen as collaborators, both of whom are necessary for a consumer craze to take o√. Pokémon’s global success required otaku as well as snackers, connected in a complex, informal system of nodes and links. At the height of the craze the majority of Pokémon consumers were snackers—they wanted Pokémon because everyone else wanted Pokémon. Because children who didn’t know much about Pokémon and didn’t have Pokémon cards were at risk of being seen as social misfits, the path of least resistance was to consume Pokémon even if they did not find the toys and games particularly appealing. However, crazes like Pokémon require more than just a mass of easily satisfied trend followers. For a phenomenon to become a craze there must first be a vanguard of otaku, of loyal, knowledgeable consumers, like Tom, the Chinese-American boy in Chicago who has special access to Japanese popular culture through his cousins in Hong Kong, and like Spencer, who manages the anime shop in Honolulu. Otaku help snackers consume, just as computer nerds help the rest of us get and stay online. Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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Otaku tend to be ambivalent about snackers. On one hand, otaku, who are used to being treated as social outcasts, may find some satisfaction when the snackers suddenly come to share their interest and they, at least for a moment, are valued for their knowledge. And otaku may be gratified by the thought that the worthiness of their object of a√ection is at last being acknowledged, if only for a moment, by the public at large. But these pleasures otaku may experience at the height of a craze are countered by the irritation they feel with snackers, who are too casual, fickle, and wrong-headed in their desires to make good allies. Pokémon-otaku were irritated by what they saw as the tv show’s pandering to attract a younger, more female audience by emphasizing such cute characters as Pikachu, Clefairy, and Jigglypu√. The realization that they share an obsession with younger children is annoying to otaku. Many Magic players were insulted by Wizards of the Coast’s plan to market the Pokémon tradingcard game as a sort of Magic Lite, and scornful of the young children who collected the cards while having no idea of how to actually play the game. As gratifying as it can be for the otaku to be temporarily at the heart of a cultural craze, they are well aware that the fickle snackers will soon move on to new interests, trashing their old interest as they go. In the three essays in this book by classroom teachers, we are introduced to examples of how Pokémon-otaku, Pokémon-snackers, and Pokémon-newbies interacted at the height of the craze. In Helen Bromley’s classroom, Jake, a fiveyear-old boy who everyone agreed knew all there was to know about Pokémon, supported the dramatic play and joint story telling of his classmates, including those who knew little or nothing about Pokémon. Rebekah Willett tells the story of how a nine-year-old Pokémon expert in her classroom invented a set of ‘‘Rokemon’’ in order to allow a friend whose parents did not allow him to have Pokémon cards to participate. Samuel Tobin presents an analysis of an elementary school at the beginning of the end of the Pokémon craze as a complex social system composed of high-status snackers, who had already moved on from Pokémon; middle-status otaku, who earned some respect from their classmates for the depth of their knowledge; and low-status children, such as Jimmy, who had the loyalty of an otaku without an otaku’s passion or knowledge. What type of consumer, then, is most needed by global capitalism? The otaku, who cares passionately about the products he purchases, seems at first glance to be the ideal customer. But global capitalism thrives on less passionate, more restless consumers. Otaku are too loyal and too satisfied to suit the pace of 280

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contemporary capitalist corporations that depend on consumer restlessness, boredom, and disappointment. Liking and often even knowing products better than their producers do, otaku complain bitterly when their favorite products are changed or, worse, terminated by companies eager to replace a flagging older product with a new one. The end of a craze highlights a core irony of global capitalism: a company such as Nintendo will milk a successful venture like Pokémon as long as possible, but the toy and game industry, like the fashion industry, depends on customers frequently changing their tastes and desires. The dilemma facing executives at Nintendo, tv Tokyo, Warner Brothers, and Hasbro is that although they have new products ready to be rolled out, as their customers tire of Pokémon there is no guarantee that what they will turn to next will be one of their products. In fact, it seems to be the case that the majority of Pokémon’s fans moved on to Digimon, which was developed by a Nintendo competitor, Bandai, and was broadcast in Japan on Toei tv (rather than, like Pokémon, on tv Tokyo) and in North America on Fox (rather than, like Pokémon, on Kids wb). More recently, children have left Digimon for Yu-Gi-Oh, which, although available for play on the Nintendo Game Boy, was not developed by Nintendo and is a big seller as Konami software for Sony’s PlayStation. When children choose to drop Pokémon and move on to Digimon, they are escaping from Nintendo’s grasp, but not from the grasp of global capitalism. It is hard to know if the patterns of Pokémon’s consumption by otaku and snackers is characteristic of late capitalism and postmodernity or if a similar dynamic was present, say, in the high capitalism of Marx’s era or even in feudal exchange. The otaku and the snacker are what the Japanese call shinjinrui—new species of human beings. But perhaps it is only the names that are new. I hear in the concepts of the otaku and the snacker echoes of the Greek poet Archilochus’s hedgehog and fox: the hedgehog was a proto-otaku, in that he knew everything about one great thing, while the fox, who knew a little about many things, was a proto-snacker.

POKÉMON’S PLEASURES AND MEANINGS

The pleasures to be found in Pokémon vary from country to country, from rich neighborhoods to poor ones, from otaku to snackers, from young children to adolescents, from girls to boys, and from the beginning to the end of the craze. Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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Drawing on a concept of Michel de Certeau (1984), who makes a distinction between the strategies of the powerful (colonizing governments, invading armies, bosses, producers) and the tactics of the weak (colonial subjects, resistance fighters, employees, consumers), we can see children as tacticians who use the means at hand to extract pleasure where and when they can find it. If all that is available to them is stickers, they will create pleasurable forms of Pokémon play around stickers. Children wealthy enough to have their own Game Boys will spend many hours engaged in solitary Game Boy play, which, as Julian Sefton-Green demonstrates, has its own pleasures to o√er. It is possible that the kids who have only the tv show and stickers get as much pleasure from Pokémon as the kids with Game Boys and albums full of cards. We can also look at the pleasures of Pokémon developmentally. As Samuel Tobin points out, very young children play Pokémon by being Pokémon: ‘‘I’ll be Charizard. You be Squirtle.’’ The pleasures here are the pleasures of projective identification. Children who are a bit older also engage in dramatic play, but they tend to imagine themselves as trainers rather than as Pokémon: ‘‘I’m Misty and you’re Ash.’’ This developmental sequence may not be universal— Kubo (2000:61) has observed that American children are more attracted to Ash and the other trainers, while Japanese children focus more on the Pocket Monsters themselves. As children get older, they tend to find pleasure less in dramatic play and identification with the characters than in collecting the cards and mastering such arcane information as the point values and market prices of the cards and cheat codes for beating the game. There also seems to be a developmental sequence to the pleasures children find in the Pokémon trading cards. When asked to identify their best card, the youngest children tend to select the one with whom they most readily identify (little girls, for example, choose Jigglypu√ and little boys, Squirtle or Charmander). Children a little older identify the best cards as those of the characters that have the most social status: ‘‘Charizard is the best card because he’s the coolest.’’ Social status is gradually replaced by notions of scarcity and monetary value: ‘‘This one is my best because it’s the hardest to get. I could sell it for more than fifty dollars.’’ A smaller group of older children who master the complex rules of the trading-card game identify their best cards as those that have the most strategic value. Another important pleasure of Pokémon is that at its peak it provided children with a common culture and a lingua franca. One of the downsides of 282

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being a child is that you get dragged along to functions where you don’t know anybody. During the height of the Pokémon craze, children meeting for the first time had a reliable opening line: ‘‘Who’s your favorite Pokémon?’’ Young children, who tend to have relatively little control over what they wear, could perform their gendered identities and show their coolness by donning Pokémon T-shirts, caps, and backpacks. The world of Pokémon was diverse enough to o√er children a variety of stylistic options: little boys in the United States tended to go for Ash caps and brightly colored Pikachu gear. Older boys tended to favor black Pokémon T-shirts, caps, and backpacks, sporting scenes of tough or scary Pokémon, such as Charizard, Mewtwo, and Gengar engaged in battle. Girls tended to go for pink-hued Pokémon gear picturing the cutest (smallest and most infantile) of the Pokémon, characters such as Togepi, Exeggcute, Wigglytu√, Purin, and Ponyta. Older girls, and even some college students, adorned their backpacks with tiny Pikachu and Clefairy icons. One of the keys to Pokémon’s success was that it allowed children to tap into a variety of themes, including competition, fighting, cooperation, friendship, nurturance, and even sexuality. These themes were available to young boys and girls. But the engagement of older children with Pokémon tended to divide along gender lines. For preadolescent boys, Pokémon o√ered a PG-rated version of the Dungeons and Dragons/Mortal Kombat world of adolescent masculinity. For girls, Pokémon’s most salient attraction was cuteness. In chapter 3, Anne Allison o√ers a genealogy of the development of girl’s popular culture and cuteness in Japan. Allison explains that cuteness, a powerful theme in contemporary Japanese character merchandising, developed out of the sh¯ojo (girls) culture of the 1970s. Eager to acknowledge and celebrate Japan’s newfound prosperity after the hardships of the war and occupation eras, Japanese society in the 1970s embraced the tastes of adolescent girls for ‘‘fancy’’ goods and a carefree lifestyle that seemed to value cuteness above all other virtues. The producers of anime and manga developed cute characters such as Doraemon and Hello Kitty, characters who both reflected and appealed to sh¯ojo culture. Sony and other corporations brought technological sophistication to the culture of cuteness in their development of products that are perky, portable, personal, and miniaturized. In the 1990s, Nintendo was the leader in companies that combined cute hardware with cute software. Pokémon, to date, is the most globally successful of Japan’s cute products. Allison points out that cuteness is something Japanese girls and young Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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women want both to have and to be. There seems to be a metonymic logic at work: if you like cute things, you must be cute yourself. Pokémon are cute, so it’s cute to like Pokémon. Lemish and Bloch find a similar dynamic at work in Israeli girls’ attraction to Pokémon. The girls they interviewed both like and identify with the cuteness of the Pocket Monsters. As feminists, Lemish and Bloch are disappointed to find girls so eager to identify with creatures that are cute, cuddly, and lovable, but they are somewhat encouraged that Pokémon’s version of cuteness is polysemic, presenting characters that are vulnerable, adorable, and obedient but at the same time fearless, strong, and aggressive. The chapters by Allison and by Lemish and Bloch suggest that Pokémon’s cuteness functions for girls as a sort of rehearsal for femininity and sexuality. For a children’s product, there is a lot of sexuality in Pokémon (although not necessarily more than there is in Barbie or in Warner Brothers cartoons that feature the amorous Pepe Le Peu or Bugs Bunny in drag). Kubo (2000:60) has been quoted as saying that they made the Pocket Monsters genderless in order to appeal to the pregendered concerns of young children. But while it is true that Pikachu and his/her fellow Pokémon are not clearly gender-identified, the human characters in Pokémon are highly gendered and even sexualized. For example, Web-surfing for Pokémon information, I came across a bulletin board discussion of the question ‘‘Who’s the hottest Poké-babe?’’ The votes seemed to be more or less evenly split between Nurse Joy, Jesse (of Team Rocket), and Misty. I suspect that these votes were being cast not (just) by dirty old men lurking on a children’s site, but also by boys who found the sexuality of Pokémon stimulating without being threatening. Other threads on this bulletin board discuss ‘‘Is Brock a babe-hound?’’ and ‘‘Do you think Ash and Misty will get married?’’ There is no shortage of mini-skirted characters, flirtatious posturing, and heteronormative plot devices in the Pokémon television program. Sexuality is a feature not just of Pokémon, but more generally of anime and manga. There is much less concern in Japan than in the West about the presence of sexual themes in media texts enjoyed by children. As Katsuno and Maret discuss in their chapter, the sexuality of the tv series presented problems for Pokémon’s American translators. For example, in an episode titled ‘‘Ao Puruko no Ky¯ujitsu’’ (Holiday in Blue Pulco), Misty, Ash’s mother, Jesse and James (in a big-breasted bodysuit) compete in a beauty pageant. At one point in the contest James turns to Misty, hands cupping his perfect (fake) breasts and taunts her, saying, ‘‘You can’t compete with these, little girl!’’ ‘‘Ao Puruko no 284

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Ky¯ujitsu’’ was one of the three ‘‘missing episodes’’ not translated or broadcast in the West until recently, when a bowdlerized version was telecast. As Kubo and the other producers have argued, part of Pokémon’s success can be attributed to its ability to address children of a wide age range and of both genders. While young children focus on the relationships of the Pocket Monsters to one another and to their masters, older children and perhaps girls in particular attend as well to the romantic elements of the tv series. As Katsuno and Maret point out, the romantic story line begins in the first episode, when Ash and Misty, in Hollywood parlance, ‘‘meet cute,’’ Misty berating Ash for what she misperceives as his mistreatment of Pikachu. In the tradition of Hollywood romantic comedies and tv dramas such as Moonlighting, Misty and Ash squabble throughout the series, but it is always clear to the audience (if not necessarily to the protagonists) that they have feelings for each other. Romance and sexuality are also periodically brought into the story through the character of Brock, a ‘‘babe-hound’’ who appears to be several years older than the prepubescent Misty and Ash. A key characteristic of children’s popular culture is ‘‘aspirational viewing,’’ which means that children are attracted to characters who are several years older than they are and who are engaged with issues these children are not yet dealing with in real life. To borrow a phrase from Henry Jenkins (1992), who in turn borrowed it from Michel de Certeau (1984:165–76), we can describe some fans of Pokémon as ‘‘textual poachers.’’ Textual poachers, not content to consume their favorite products passively, seize on plot elements and add their own back story and story extensions. Romantic Pokémon fans are kindred souls to X-Files ‘‘shippers’’ (short for ‘‘relationshippers’’) who lobbied the series writers to give less attention to the alien conspiracy plot and more attention to developing Mulder and Scully’s erotic/romantic relationship. The most dramatic form of textual poaching is ‘‘slash’’ fiction, as in the Kirk/Spock (pronounced ‘‘Kirk slash Spock’’) erotic tales written by female Star Trek fans and analyzed by Jenkins (1992:185–222). In search of information on the Web about Pokémon’s ‘‘missing episodes,’’ I happened on ‘‘Lost Episodes,’’ (http://thelostepisodes .homestead.com/index2.html), which turned out to be a Misty/Ash ‘‘slash’’ site, as we can see in this example: misty: Ash, listen, I’m sorry about last night. . . . I should’ve been more considerate to you and thought about what you said before I did anything. Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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(Misty puts her hand on his lightly. Ash doesn’t look at the hand, but he sighs.) ash: It hurt, Misty. You wanna know why I’m so sad? (Misty is silent, still looking at him.) ash: You made me feel like you . . . like you think that . . . misty: (slowly) . . . think. . . what? ash: (pauses, quietly) That we weren’t going anywhere. (Misty thinks about that for a moment, then smiles.) misty: Ash . . . I don’t think that! I think we’re doing fine . . . but I wasn’t thinking THAT far ahead. . . . (Misty suddenly realizes what else she hadn’t told Ash, and looks down slightly.) ash: (confused) Misty? misty: (thinking) If I tell him . . . he’ll hate me and him forever . . . but if I don’t, I’ll be miserable until the day I do tell him. But . . . (looks back up at him) he doesn’t need to be unhappy now . . . we should just enjoy the vacation while it lasts. (smiles, out-loud) No, it’s nothing. ash: Oh. . . . You sure? (Misty nods. She then lightly kisses Ash on the lips, and then breaks away. Ash smiles at her, and the two return to their normal sitting positions. Brock and Pikachu come back out of the bathroom, just as the waitress comes by with the drinks.) We can only hope that the drinks are nonalcoholic.

POKÉMON EPISTEMOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY

Many schools have banned Pokémon. As Christine Yano explains in her chapter in this book, educators justified the ban by citing incidents of children stealing one another’s cards and teachers’ complaints that children became so distracted by their Pokémon play at lunch and recess that they couldn’t settle down to their lessons. Pokémon aside, teachers tend to be antagonistic to the idea of children bringing their interest in popular culture to school. But should they be? What do children learn from Pokémon? Julian Sefton-Green describes how his son Sam’s passion for Pokémon drove him to improve his reading and arithmetic skills in order to play his Game Boy more e√ectively. Beating Pokémon on the Game Boy requires more than just reading and counting. Sefton-Green points out that the game presents children 286

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with highly stylized three-dimensional worlds that challenge them to think abstractly about space and to learn to read maps, charts, and other schematic drawings. Children playing Pokémon on their Game Boys also learn problemsolving skills—when stuck, a player can turn not only to maps, but also to the ‘‘Pokédex,’’ a sort of computerized field guide and reference book. Pokémon also teaches biology, but a faux biology. Children learn that Pokémon can evolve from lower to higher forms, but this evolution takes place not over millennia, through genetic mutation and natural selection, but instead over a period of hours or days, through the hard work of a trainer. Children learn to categorize their Pokémon according to taxonomic classifications that are Linnean in spirit, but not in fact. Some water Pokémon are fishlike, but others are akin to aquatic mammals, amphibians, and dragons. Pokémon’s proponents might argue that it is more important that children learn biological principles than biological facts, and that the principles children learn in their engagement with Pokémon will transfer to the real science they learn at school. Critics might counter that there is no evidence for this transferability of Pokémon knowledge to other domains. Sefton-Green suggests that at heart Pokémon is a game about knowledge mastery and that this mastery has both cognitive and a√ective dimensions. To Sam, the Pokémon on his Game Boy was both a curriculum to master and virtual pets to love. As Sam worked at mastering the cognitive abilities needed to navigate the world of Pokémon, he was simultaneously mastering how to function socially as a boy. Pokémon may also help children develop the attitudes and skills needed to succeed in the ‘‘information/knowledge’’ society of the new millennium. The Pokémon world is rich pedagogically as well as epistemologically. Unlike in school, where learning is planned and orchestrated by a teacher, who follows a set curriculum, learning in the Pokémon world is more spontaneous and varied. Sam’s self-directed Pokémon learning was a complex combination of progressive and traditional pedagogical approaches: he grazed reference books for cheat codes and hooked his Game Boy to a friend’s to download information that would allow him to ‘‘beat’’ the game, but he also spent a lot of time engaged in old-fashioned rote memorization. Some of what children learn about Pokémon they learn on their own, through trial and error and by reading instructions. But much of their Pokémon learning is social. Pikachu’s global adventure is facilitated by the workings Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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of an informal system of knowledge dissemination built on otaku and snackers who meet face to face on school playgrounds and in gaming stores, as well as virtually in a variety of online venues. In this fluid, loosely structured learning community, everyone, potentially, is a teacher as well as a learner. Learners in this world tend to be far more motivated than they typically are in school, which leads to impressive rates of mastering huge amounts of information and the rapid acquisition of a variety of social and cognitive skills.

GENDER

As Ellen Seiter describes in Sold Separately (1993:74–87), the consumption of children’s popular culture is highly gendered. Children entering Toys ‘‘R’’ Us have no trouble finding the toys meant for them because one side of the store is a sea of pink and lavender, the other awash in black, silver, and red. Pokémon is one of those rare products (like wading pools and badminton sets) that doesn’t easily fit on either side of the store. At its peak of popularity in the United States, Pokémon had its own section at Toys ‘‘R’’ Us, near the ungendered front of the store, where hundreds of Pokémon products were available to be purchased by both boys and girls. As discussed earlier, one of the keys to Pokémon’s success was the decision early on by Kubo and the other producers of the tv series to expand Pokémon’s demographic reach by featuring Pikachu and other cute characters. This strategy worked spectacularly well to add younger children and girls to a customer base of computer-game playing older boys. But this is not to say that the Pokémon world is gender-blind or that gender does not play a significant role in Pokémon’s consumption. Each chapter in this book has a gendered story to tell. For example, Allison presents a genealogy of kawaisa (cuteness) in Japan that she uses to give indirect credit for Pokémon’s development to the sh¯ojo (young-girl) culture that developed in the postwar period and to help explain some of Pokémon’s characteristically Japanese appeal. Lemish and Bloch analyze Israeli children’s focus group discussions of episodes from the Pokémon tv series to show how even in a society that has historically emphasized gender equality, girls are most attentive to the themes of nurturance, a≈liation, and cuteness; and boys to competition, mastery, and aggression. Brougère describes how the uses and meanings children make out of Pokémon in France di√er for boys and girls, in part 288

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reflecting French traditions of card playing and card collecting, which have traditionally been more masculine than feminine activities. Sefton-Green, Willett, and Bromley present case studies of boys who use Pokémon very e√ectively in their struggles to feel and appear appropriately masculine. These authors point out that in addition to the themes of fighting and competition, it is the opportunities presented for knowledge mastery and collecting that make Pokémon an especially attractive activity for boys to use to explore a range of versions of masculinity. Samuel Tobin describes the flip side of this dynamic as he tells the story of a boy whose Pokémon play is perceived by nearly everyone around him to be insu≈ciently masculine. Willett and Bromley, studying girls as well as boys in their classrooms, tell the stories of girls who found ways to claim expertise and to repurpose Pokémon play in classroom contexts where boys’ interests threatened to dominate. Katsuno and Maret provide striking examples of how the treatment of gender and sexuality in the Japanese tv series turned out to be the most culturally incompatible and thus the most daunting content confronting Pokémon’s American localizers. Looking across these chapters, a complicated picture of gender in Pokémon emerges, a picture with historical as well as cultural dimensions. In the postwar period, elements of Japanese girls’ culture were appropriated by Japanese producers to produce toys, games, and cartoons that appealed more to boys than to girls. Pokémon began life in this way, as a boys’ video game. But in an ingenious move to capture the girls’ market, the producers of the Pokémon television show gave prominence to cute creatures, added female trainers, and gave more emphasis to Pokémon’s female themes. As Pokémon traveled around the world, its gendered address attracted female as well as male consumers in each country, with slight but not insignificant national and regional variations in patterns of boys’ and girls’ Pokémon play. The richness and diversity of Pokémon’s themes combined with the multiple forms of activity it fosters to make Pokémon far more successful than any of its competitors in attracting female as well as male consumers.

PIKACHU’S GOLDEN YEARS

For all its inherent virtues as a multidimensional, polysemic product and all of its marketing muscle, Pokémon’s decline was rapid. By the summer of 2001, Pokémon’s shelf space in Japanese and U.S. toy stores was but a fraction of what Rise and Fall of the Pokémon Empire

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it enjoyed in the fall of 1999. The third Pokémon movie opened and closed with none of the press coverage and much less box o≈ce than the original. Perhaps the most telling sign of Pokémon’s declining fortunes is that, as reported in the essay in this volume by Samuel Tobin, by the spring of 2001, on playgrounds and classrooms across Japan and the United States, Pokémon had lost its cool. And yet, throughout 2001 and on into 2002, press releases on the Nintendo corporate Web site continued to proclaim that Pokémon was thriving. How can we explain this apparent disjuncture between children’s declarations that Pokémon was dead and the producer’s claims that it was still going strong? Some of Nintendo’s optimism can be chalked up to corporate hype and to executives whistling in the wind to try to convince themselves and others (including not just customers but also toy store owners, movie theaters, and tv schedulers) that there was still a lot of money to be made on Pokémon. Another way to explain the disparity is to see it as a matter of relativity. Sales of Pokémon products and viewership of the tv series and movies could drop significantly from fall 1999 levels and still leave Pokémon as a top-selling children’s product. In 2001, Pokémon Stadium was not nearly as big as Pokémon Yellow was in 1999, but it was still among the three top-selling computer games in the world. In other words, Pokémon at its peak was so successful that it could drop twothirds and still be one of the world’s most profitable children’s products. We should remember that Nintendo’s game characters have a very long life (or in the language of computer games, many lives). After all, the Mario Brothers are still around, as is Donkey Kong. Pikachu himself/herself seems to have reached a level of fame and a√ection that will allow him/her to live on for many years to come, if nothing else than as an item of nostalgia. However, as we attempt to make sense of Pokémon’s residual economic viability, it is important to remember that the Pokémon enterprise is a loose configuration of companies with di√erent financial stakes and fortunes. Pokémon living on as a Nintendo computer game does not necessarily mean that it will live on much longer as a Saturday morning tv show, nor that there will be more successful movies, nor that sales of Pokémon merchandise will not continue to drop o√ each year. To make sense of Pokémon’s rise and fall we need to think about it spatially as well as temporally, space and time considered not separately, but together, in a sort of Einsteinian notion of relativity, a space-time continuum. Pokémon is much older in Japan than in the United States, older in the United States than in Europe, and older in Europe than in Israel, Brazil, and the Philippines. Perhaps 290

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what’s needed is to view Pikachu’s global adventure, as Einstein taught us to view light, as both particle and wave, matter and energy; that is, both as physical commodities that get shipped to specific sites around the globe and also as a wave of interest and awareness that began in Japan, washed over Hong Kong, Asia, and the United States, and even now, as I write, no doubt is just reaching some economically and culturally (if not geographically) remote outpost of global consumption. Time is relative: when it’s midnight in New York, it’s noon in Tokyo. But time is also absolute: the New York stock market opens at the same moment around the globe. Thus in one sense, whenever Pokémon reaches a new market, it is new for the children who are encountering it for the first time. But because the world is globally culturally connected, even before the o≈cial wave of Pokémon merchandise, movies, and tv episodes arrive, foretellings will have already come via the Internet and world travelers who bring news and sometimes products with them, making consumers in places like the Philippines and Holland painfully aware that they are latecomers to the craze. As Brougère and Lemish and Bloch point out, the almost instantaneous pace of the global circulation of information leads to a time compression of product rollouts and life cycles in places like France and Israel, where consumers already know a lot about a new cultural product before its o≈cial release. Knowing they are behind, these consumers feel the need to catch up, a feeling of urgency shared by producers who release products rapidly in these downstream markets to make money before their consumers’ appetites abate. Somewhere in the world, for some very young and sheltered children, Pokémon is totally new and fresh and Pikachu is young again, waiting to meet Ash. But in the rest of the world, Pikachu is well into his golden years. This is a core reality of globalization: the world is getting smaller, but all points are not equally close in time or space. The travel time of information often precedes the travel time of goods, and some destinations are much further away than others, not so much because of their geographic location as their location in global capitalism. WORKS CITED

Asada Akira. 1988. ‘‘Infantile Capitalism and Japan’s Postmodernism: A Fairy Tale.’’ South Atlantic Quarterly 87, no. 3: 629–34. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage.

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Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. 1972 [1944]. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum Publishing Company. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 1998. ‘‘Pure Impurity: Japan’s Genius for Hybridism.’’ Communal Plural: Journal of Transnational and Crosscultural Studies 6, no. 1: 71–86. Jameson, Fredric. 1984. ‘‘Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.’’ New Left Review 146 (July–August): 59–92. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London: Routledge. Kubo, Masakazu. 2000. ‘‘Why Pokémon Was Successful in America.’’ Japan Echo 27, no. 2 (April): 59–62. Lee, O.-Y. 1982. The Compact Culture: The Japanese Tradition of ‘‘Smaller Is Better.’’ Tokyo: Kodansha International. Seiter, Ellen. 1993. Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Takahashi Motomi. 2000. ‘‘The Americanization of Pokemon.’’ Daily Yomiuri On-Line. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/45th’15.htm. Tobin, Joseph. 1993. Remade in Japan. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ———. 1999. ‘‘An American Otaku: Adolescence, Alienation, and Media Learning outside of School.’’ In Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, edited by Julian Sefton-Green, 106–27. London: Taylor and Francis.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Anne Allison, an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, works on Japanese mass culture, globalization, sexuality, and children’s entertainment. She is the author of Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Linda-Renée Bloch has been teaching at Tel Aviv University for the past several years, researching intercultural communication and the roles of language and culture in society. Helen Bromley is an education consultant, currently carrying out research into the links among play, learning, and popular culture at the Institute of Education in London. Gilles Brougère is professor and director of the Institute of the Sciences of Play at the University of Paris. An expert on children’s toys and games, Brougère is the author of ‘‘Dépendance et Autonomie: Représentations et Place de l’Enfant dans les Sociétés Contemporaines,’’ ‘‘Jeu et Objectifs Pédagogiques,’’ and Jeu et Education. David Buckingham is a professor at the Institute of Education, London University, where he directs the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. His books include After the Death of Childhood: Growing up in the Age of Electronic Media. Koichi Iwabuchi is an assistant professor of media and cultural studies at International Christian University, Tokyo, and the author of Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism.

Hirofumi Katsuno is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i, researching media heroes and consumer culture in contemporary Japan. Dafna Lemish is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University, Israel, specializing in children and the media and gender representations. Je√rey Maret is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i. In 2002–2003 he was awarded a Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for research on special needs children in Japan. Julian Sefton-Green is the head of media arts and education at wac Performing Arts and Media College, where he directs a range of digital media activities for young people and coordinates training and research for media artists and teachers. Among his books is Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multi-Media. Joseph Tobin, the Nadine Mathis Basha Professor of Early Childhood Education at Arizona State University, is the author of books including Remade in Japan, Preschool in Three Cultures, and Good Guys Don’t Wear Hats: Children’s Talk about Media. Samuel Tobin is a graduate student in the Media Studies Program at the New School in New York City. Rebekah Willett works part-time as a primary school teacher and is also a research o≈cer at the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, University of London. Christine R. Yano, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i, has recently published her book Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song.

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INDEX

Americanization, of Israeli society, 171 Anime: Akira, 53; vs. American ‘‘limited animation’’ style, 17; ‘‘anime Komikku game valley,’’ 36; distributed in Hong Kong, 270; as export goods, 53; fans, 253–54; The Ghost in the Shell, 53–54, 66, 75 n.7; role of shops in distribution of, 269; Sailor Moon, 69; sexuality in, 284–85; Japaneseness of, 61; tropes and themes in, 82–84, 89, 262. See also Manga; Mukokuseki; Otaku Ash/Satoshi: as changed for U.S. version, 38, 84–85; as narrative protagonist, 19–20, 169; popularity in Japan and the U.S., 72; preadolescent sexuality of, 16, 91–92, 285–86 Asia, Japanese export of cultural goods to, 268. See also China; Hong Kong Asian Americans, as popularizers of anime and manga, 269–70 Aspirational viewing of children, 283 Audiences, as active, 21–22. See also Structure vs. agency Audio-visual goods. See Electronic goods Banning of Pokémon: Christian critiques, 125– 28, 131; confiscating of cards, 198; fatwa, 129, 267; from schools, 195 Barbie, 44, 242 Boys, 241–57 passim; alternative masculinities,

247–48; and coolness, 235–37; and cuteness, 179–81; failing, 235, 252; masculine features of Pokémon, 169, 172, 242, 283; Pokémon as training in masculinity, 20 Branding. See Character merchandising Brock/Takeshi: and his family, 86–87; sexuality of, 16; as non-mukokuseki character, 76 n.9, 88 Capitalism. See Commodities; Consumerism; Globalization Cards (Pokémon): 187–207 passim; banning at schools, 195; children as collectors, 198; collecting at di√erent ages, 245–46; collecting as gambling, 26; collecting as a masculine activity, 243; as commodities, 198–200; computer game version, 201; critiques of consumption, 133; game days at Toys ‘‘R’’ Us, 273–74; Magic: the Gathering’s influence on, 200–203; soccer, 195; uses, 196–97; uses in various countries, 271–72. See also Commodities; Magic: the Gathering Character merchandising: and identity in Japan, 39–40; and product loyalty, 255; ubiquity of, 255 Cheats (game playing shortcuts and secrets): defined, 147; on websites, 275; as window on a game’s constructedness, 160–61

Childhood, 24–25; bullying, 26; commodification of, 26; and consumerism, 277; developmental pathways in, 243–44, 283 China, as emerging market for popular culture, 268 Chinatowns, role in dissemination of Japanese cultural goods, 269 Collecting. See Cards (Pokémon) Commodities, trading cards as, 198–200. See also Consumerism Computer games. See Game Boy; Video games Consumerism: in Asia, 134 n.3; brand vs. product loyalty, 254–55; cards as commodities, 198–200, 271–72; and childhood innocence, 117; of children, 115; of children in Japan, 111– 12; children’s training in, 118; as gendered, 272, 288; under global capitalism, 280–82; and late capitalism, 279; otaku vs. snackers, 277–87; Pokémon as epitome of, 133; transcending, 276 Crazes, 12–13; Cabbage Patch Kids, 114; and consumer tastes, 281; di≈culty of studying, 257; in France, 190; otaku’s role in, 279; ‘‘Pokémania,’’ 113–17; projection onto younger children, 205–6; over the school year, 191 Creatures, Inc., 3, 35, 268. See also Tajiri Satoshi Cuteness (kawaisa), 34–52 passim; characteristics of, 71; and child development, 177–78; vs. coolness, 70; critique of as burriko, 134; ‘‘cutification’’ as retreat from the real world, 112; as a feminine and young taste, 242; Japanese version of, 72, 262; Konrad Lorenz’s theory of, 178; as problematic for boys, 242–43; and sexuality, 93; and the sh¯ojo, 283–84. See also Sh¯ojo

19; Hunchback of Notre Dame, 204; Japanese competition with, 37, 54; Mickey Mouse, 3, 71–72; Pokémon as Japan’s answer to Mickey Mouse, 34 Dochakuka (indigenization), 68 Doraemon: as cute product, 70; as fetish, 39; and Godzilla, 44; lack of international success of, 68; as liminal figure, 45; and sh¯ojo culture, 283; as transitional object, 43 Dungeons and Dragons, 21, 201, 241 Education. See Pedagogy Electronic goods: miniaturization of, 58; ‘‘mobile privatization,’’ 56; Walkman, 56–58 Fads. See Crazes Fatwa. See Religion 4Kids Entertainment, 3, 7, 69, 85, 264, 267–69

Game Boy, 3; emulator for the pc, 159; exchanging Pokémon on, 42; in France, 196; Israeli unavailability of, 165; one boy’s attempt to beat, 146–48; pedagogical value of, 286–87; vs. PlayStation, 14–15; Pokémon games extending the life of, 6–7, 15; as visually primitive, 152–53, 161–62 Game Freak, 3, 4, 6. See also Tajiri Satoshi Games: role playing, 15; Yu-Gi-Oh, 281. See also Dungeons and Dragons; Magic: The Gathering Gender. See Boys; Girls Ghost in the Shell. See Anime Girls: childishness and cuteness, 178–79; and computer games, 15; as consumers, 288–89; cuteness as rehearsal for sexuality, 284; and doll play with Barbie and Licca-chan, 44–45; female themes in Pokémon, 16, 21, 37, 169, de Certeau, Michel: on strategies vs. tactics, 282; 172, 175, 212, 232; sh¯ojo culture in Japan, 37, on textual poachers, 285 283, 288–89; tomboys, 251. See also Cuteness Digimon, as Pokémon competitor, 242, 247, 281 Globalization, 53–74 passim; Anglophone culDisney: characters’ metaphoric function as hutural dominance, 166, 259; asynchronies of, mans, 71; and cross-media merchandising, 267, 291; anti-globalization critiques of Poké-

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mon, 119–20; and capitalism, 74; condensed product roll-out cycle in France, 189; and ‘‘global commodities’’ (sekai sh¯ohin), 54–55; of Japanese products, 131–32; and localization, 73; ‘‘megaphone e√ect’’ in smaller markets, 166–67; Pokémon as ‘‘global character’’ (sekai teki kyarakuta), 36; and product release cycles, 189–90; time-space compression of, 64; U.S. role in distribution of Japanese products, 268. See also Glocalization Glocalization: defined, 17, 66–68, 263; in Israel, 166. See also Localization Godzilla, 44 Grossfeld, Norman, 7–8, 39, 69, 264, 269. See also 4Kids Entertainment; Localization

tiliteracies, 29; reading icons, 154; visual, 223; writing process approach, 226–27. See also Narrative; Pedagogy Little Tramp. See Tensai Bakabon Localization, 80–106 passim, 193; American localizers of Pokémon, 264; by anime otaku, 270; by Asian Americans, 270; by children, 224, 269; defined, 82. See also 4Kids Entertainment; Glocalization; Grossfeld, Norman; Kubo Masakazu; Tilden, Gail Lost episodes: campaign to release, 80–81; sexuality in, 91–97, 284–85; violence in, 89–90

Kawaisa. See Cuteness Knowledge, 234; cards as repositories of, 197, 201–3; information vs. narrative, 143, 220– 23; mastery of information as masculine trait, 21, 243; metacognition, 155–57; naming, 193, 265–66; taxonomic, 21–22, 142, 266 Koro Koro comics, 7, 63 Kubo Masakazu, 7, 8, 85, 263, 265, 272. See also Koro Koro comics; Localization

Magic: the Gathering: complexity of, 197, 254, 271; as entry into Pokémon, 273–74, 280; fans’ critiques of Pokémon, 254, 280; influence on Pokémon, 200–204. See also Cards (Pokémon) Manga, importance of industry, 36 Marketing: in anime and gaming shops, 269; in Asia, 260; of children’s products, 19; distribution vs. production, 65; Hong Kong’s role in, 270; local firms with global products, 65–66; in U.K. vs. U.S., 148 Masculinity. See Boys McDonald’s, 57–58 Mickey Mouse. See Disney Miniaturization, 16, 58, 262 Misty/Kasumi: as girls’ favorite, 21; as heroine, 175–76; relationship with Ash, 91–92; personality of, 175–76, 232; sexuality of, 97–98, 285–86 Moral panics, 108–9, 132–33, 183 Movies (Pokémon): financial success of, 7, 14, 37; international distribution of, 66, 69; moralistic messages in, 27; satire on Hollywood, 105–6 Mukokuseki (nationalitylessness), 58, 61–62, 88, 262–64. See also Odorless products

Literacy, 211–40 passim; learning to read through Pokémon, 148, 153–54, 286–87; mul-

Names (of Pokémon): in France, 193; localizing of, 265–66; symbolic power of, 193

Hasbro, 267–68 Hello Kitty, 34–35, 39, 46, 70, 283; metonymic function of, 71. See also Cuteness Hong Kong: as consumer of Japanese products, 268; and pirating of Japanese products, 270. See also Asia Imperialism. See Globalization; Racism Internet, and Pokémon trading cards, 201–3. See also Video games Intertextuality: as a challenge to translation, 97, 99; Bakhtin’s concept of, 228 Ishihara Tsunekaza, 35

Index

297

Narrative, in children’s Pokémon play, 214, 220– 21 Nature, 41; Tajiri Satoshi as insect collector, 17, 41, 142, 204–5, 262 Nintendo Corporation (of Japan), 3–7, 10; corporate strategies of, 14 Nintendo of America, 5, 66–67, 264–69 Numeracy, 154 Nurturance, 171–72 Odorless products, 55–58, 61–62, 67–68, 261. See also Mukokuseki Otaku: critiques of, 130; as consumers, 277–80; defined, 17–18; defined positively, 59–60; as disseminators, 269; feelings about casual fans, 280; Tajiri Satoshi as, 42, 130 Pedagogy, 12–30 passim; and children’s play, 28–31, 141–43; in Pokémon, 162–63, 286–88. See also Knowledge Pikachu: development as central character, 38; Israeli children’s view of, 175; vs. Pippi as central character, 63–64; popularity in Japan and the U.S., 72 Play: of card game, 196–97; class di√erences in, 272–73; dramatic, 158–59, 195, 245, 282–83; freedom and constraint in, 221; imitative, 203; learning rules of games, 151–52; pleasures of computer game playing, 144; stages of, 244–46. See also Cards (Pokémon); Game Boy; Video games Racism: of Jynx/R¯ujura character, 100–103, 124–25; Pokémon as ‘‘yellow peril,’’ 131– 32 Religion: and consumerism in Japan, 112; Christian critiques of Japanese paganism, 130–31; idolatry, 127; Islamic concerns about Pokémon, 120, 129, 267; Pokémon as occult practice, 126–27; Vatican and Church of England endorsements of Pokémon, 125–26; voodoo, 125 298

Index

Sailor Moon. See Anime Satoshi. See Ash Schools: banning of Pokémon in, 141, 198; e√ect on learning, 123; French teachers’ antagonism to Pokémon, 195–96; openness to popular culture, 211–13; on the playground, 117; vacation schedule and toy crazes, 191. See also Pedagogy Science in Pokémon, 21–22, 142, 157, 287. See also Knowledge: taxonomic Seizures caused by Pokémon episodes, 80–81, 108, 129–30 Sexuality in Pokémon, 284–85; in lost episodes, 92–97; of Misty and Ash, 91–92, 285–86. See also Cuteness; Sh¯ojo Shogakukan, 268 Sh¯ojo, 38, 40–41, 93–94, 283–84, 288 Sony, 14; ‘‘glocalization,’’ 82; PlayStation, 14–15, 281; Walkman, 41, 55–56, 58 Spatial relations in Pokémon, 20, 152–54, 217–18 Structure vs. agency: in media consumption, 12–33 passim; power of children vs. of producers, 193–94, 198, 203, 205–6, 229; in rise and fall of Pokémon, 8–10, 229; texts and readers, 229–30 Tajiri Satoshi, 4, 6, 17, 41, 130, 142, 204–5, 262– 63 Tamagotchi, 13, 34, 45 Tensai Bakabon, 97–99 Textual poachers, 231, 285. See also de Certeau, Michel Tilden, Gail, 7, 8, 68–69, 264–65, 269. See also Localization Time-space compression. See Globalization Toys ‘‘R’’ Us, 148, 273, 288 Translation, 82, 85, 265–66. See also Localization Turkey, Pokémon in, 120 tv Tokyo, 268 Video games: Doom, 254–55; experts, 247; and

gender, 15; as Japanese export goods, 36, 53; and learning, 25; Mortal Kombat, 254–55. See also Game Boy; Sony: PlayStation Violence: adult vs. child concerns, 172–73, 190– 91; in Israeli context, 174–77; in North American versions of Pokémon, 89–91

Walkman. See Sony Warner Brothers, 3, 7, 66, 267–68, 281 Wizards of the Coast, 3, 7, 197, 202, 271, 273, 280. See also Cards (Pokémon); Magic: the Gathering

Index

299

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pikachu’s global adventure : the rise and fall of Pokémon / edited by Joseph Tobin. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-8223-3250-7 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 0-8223-3287-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Pokémon (Game) 2. Pokémon (Fictitious characters) 3. Pokémon (Television program) 4. Popular culture. I. Tobin, Joseph Jay. gv1469.35.p63p54 2004

794.8—dc21

2003013450