Staged Creativity and Co-creation of Meanings: The Commodification of Spaces for Cosplay in Japanese Cosplay Culture

Abstract

Cosplay is a fan culture that involves dressing up as and performing fictional characters from popular media texts. Since the late 2000s, commercial enterprises in Japan have been creating and exploring new places for cosplay, such as rental studios and real-life locations, and marketing them to cosplayers for profit-seeking purposes. Based on fieldwork at cosplay events and rental studios, as well as interviews with staff, cosplayers, and chiefs of companies, I explore and discuss various ways in which spaces for cosplay are commodified in Japan. I argue that part of cosplayers’ creative spatial experience within rental studios and locations is predicted and staged by place providers. Still, cultural meanings are co-created by both cosplayers’ creative agency and place providers’ attempts to control cosplayers’ consumer behaviours. This co-creation is the result of the power dynamics between cosplayer users and place providers, along with the employment of cosplayers’ subcultural and online social capital by place providers. This study contributes to the understanding of how cultural meanings are co-created between cultural organisations and their users. It also broadens critical discussions on the collaboration between corporations and prosumers.