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hello! this is my first post and a test post!

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Some Notes on Japanese Culture: Hidden and Hyped

Good Morning Blog (おはようございます)! As I was reading Yoshio Sugimoto’s The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, I became intrigued by the different complex layers of Japanese culture. Specifically, I wanted to dive in a bit more about the more “hidden” elements of Japanese culture and also look at how Japanese culture influences pop culture in America.  In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, Yoshio Sugimoto goes over in what exactly defines Japanese culture. As someone that lives outside of Japan, it was interesting to see that the author made a point that Japanese culture isn’t as homogenous as originally thought by foreigners. Like many places around the globe, Japan has multiple dialects and inhabits different ethnic groups, such as the Ainu people, which are completely different from the Yamato minzoku/Wajin people. The difference between these “hidden” aspects of Japanese culture and the ones that we (foreigners) typically see as Japanese culture i...
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Moment-to-Moment With Tobio's Death

Good Evening Blog,  Before taking this class, I’ve never really gotten the chance to critically think and analyze comics and manga before. When I've read comics and manga in the past, I really just paid attention to the story and the pretty art. But, after reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I’ve come to realize that like all other art forms, there are deeper reasons why a comic artist chooses to draw in a certain style and how they choose to present their ideas.  This is especially true in Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy. The way that Osamu has chosen to use specific techniques in his panel-to-panel has helped to bring out crucial points in his manga. In McCloud’s book, he names 6 different types of paneling that are used in comics and manga: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. I feel that one of the best scenes in Astro Boy is Tobio’s death. Not because Tobio died, but because the way that ...
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Squash! Identity in Swallowtail Butterfly

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