Reconsidering East Asian connectivity and the usefulness of media and cultural studies

Over the last ten years or so, what has motivated my academic enthusiasm has been critical engagement with the politics of everyday life through the analysis of media and popular culture. In particular, I have been interested in how to get over the exclusive demarcation of national and cultural boundaries and how to make them more inclusive and dialogic. I have examined these issues especially in the Japanese context and with an attention to media culture connections in East Asia, mostly by looking at people s meaning construction processes in a wider sociohistorical context. I have been convinced that I was making sense of the complexity of the ways in which power operates in everyday life through media culture, and this critical study is an effective tool to negotiate and contest existing power relations. However, over the last several years, the optimistic conviction I held in the 1990s has become less certain.