Abstract
Among the possible innovative ways to publish research data and materials—alongside the more established formats of the research paper, the academic article, and the critical review—we inaugurate here the format of the “Research Files”, batches of qualitative data which have been assessed as useful materials for other scholars. A certain amount of data which academics collect often remains underused. But such data, if contextualised within one’s own past research activity, can be kept “alive” and perhaps be reborn and virtuously transmitted to other researchers who may want to make some use of them, citing the original source and therefore generating a proficuous circle of knowledge. We decided to distribute a few of these materials over different issues of Mutual Images, grouping them by type. In this first instalment (presenting some early interviews from one of my own past projects), we are also suggesting a way to interpret the notion of “research files” for other scholars who in the future may want to experiment with it. The format of presentation we have thought of as appropriate—or, at least, admissible and functional—is that of recounting the general features of the original research project within which the data here published were produced, so to favour the circulation of ideas.
Highlights
In this second instalment of my own Research Files, I share with Mutual Images’ readers three among the several interviews I conducted with Japanese and European scholars and critics specialised in Japanese animation and Japan’s history and culture.[2]
As explained in the Introduction of the first instalment of the Research Files,[3] the goal of these interviews took shape from the purpose of the research within which the conversations were to be conducted: complementarily to my interviews with Japanese animators and artists, the conversations with the scholars focus on relevant themes of auteur animation and commercial anime in the 1970s-2000s
Has the popularity of Japanese animation and comics played a positive or negative role in the popularity of Japan and the Japanese in Italy? In the beginning of the broadcasting of Japanese anime on Italian tv stations, the image of Japan was worsened among adults: in particular, among the parents of the young spectators
Summary
ISSUE 1 – Between Texts and Images: Mutual Images of Japan and Europe ISSUE 2 – Japanese Pop Cultures in Europe Today: Economic Challenges, Mediated Notions, Future Opportunities ISSUE 3 – Visuality and Fictionality of Japan and Europe in a Cross-Cultural Framework ISSUE 4 – Japan and Asia: Representations of Selfness and Otherness ISSUE 5 – Politics, arts and pop culture of Japan in local and global contexts ISSUE 6 – Mediatised Images of Japan in Europe: Through the Media Kaleidoscope ISSUE 7 – Layers of aesthetics and ethics in Japanese pop culture. Mutual Images is registered under the ISSN 2496-1868. As an Open Access Journal, Mutual Images provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
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