Japanese Modernity and Media Studies of Screens

Abstract

This article aims to construct a new perspective for analyzing the recent omnipresence of screens, the diversity of images, and their impact on our daily lives. Because of the diversification of digitalized images today, research based on film and television studies is unable to grasp the fluid relationships among screen images, spaces, and the bodies of their audience, and important task for recent scholarship is to determine how to include these screen images in media and cultural studies. In response to this issue, this article seeks to reconstruct the concept of screen practice, guided by the perspectives of Jonathan Crary and Friedrich Kittler on media and practices; Koji Taki and Ai Maeda's historical research on Japanese modernity; and Erkki Huhtamo and Yussi Parikka's media archaeological perspectives for screen and visual culture. Although the notion of screen practice was originally proposed in the field of film history, it should be expanded for broader screen cultures as the sites at which scientific discourses and technologies act on the bodies of viewers. Taking the experiences of Japanese modernity as its subject, this is a critical issue, because at these sites we can find traces of dynamic negotiations between the circulation of science and media derived from Western modernity, and existing physical and cultural vernacular practices. Moreover, going back to the screen cultures at the end of the 19th century will make clear how the process of our contemporary media environment was formed.