Managing the unmanageable: Emotional labour and creative hierarchy in the Japanese animation industry

Abstract

Over the last decade, ethnographic studies of the creative industries have emerged as a thriving area of interdisciplinary research. Yet studies dealing with the micro-processes of relations between management and creativity are still relatively rare. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in the Japanese animation industry, this article offers a detailed analysis of workplace relations between entry-level manager, or ‘production operators’, and two classes of key creative workers, animators and directors, at the shop-floor level. Elaborating analytical concepts of emotional labour and creative hierarchy, it shows how directors’ and animators’ capacity to create and manipulate animation drawings routinely subordinate the production operators in the workplace hierarchy. It argues that the structure of domination in commercial cultural production between management and creativity is more multi-dimensional and contingent than a one-sided subordination of artists by managers.