Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments· 205 Much of the initial form of this book was written at Brown University, where I can safely say that I had an extraordinary graduate experience. I thank my advisors, Mary Ann Doane and Philip Rosen, for their warm welcome and firm intellectual guidance as well as the other faculty of Modern Culture and Media, including Rey Chow, Wendy Chun, and Lynne Joyrich, for an education parallel to none. My colleagues and friends were equally inspiring, and I would also like to thank them for their intellectual stimulation, moral support, and humor. Michael Siegel, Braxton Soderman, Roxanne Carter, David Bering-Porter, Julie Levin Russo, Tess Takahashi, Pooja Rangan, and Josh Guilford are all irreplaceable , as are Daniel Ho and Lee Wen Soo and also Franz D. Hofer, to whom I owe gratitude for his constant patronage. Jason Beveridge and Jacob Weiss reminded me of a world of thought and levity outside of academia. Many thanks go to Ueno Toshiya for offering me an institutional home at Wakō University during my stay in Japan and for keeping me thinking. I would also like to express my gratitude to institutions that permitted the research on which this book is based: Dentsū’s Advertising Museum Tokyo Library, the Japan Toy Culture Foundation, the NHK Museum of Broadcasting Library, and the National Diet Library. Thanks also go to Tezuka Production for kindly granting the rights to use particular images. I also acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and of the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture, which allowed me to conduct my initial research, undertake further research as a postdoctoral fellow, and build this book into its final form. 206 · Acknowledgments My colleagues at Concordia University have made my academic home an exciting place to be, and I want to thank Haidee Wasson and Charles Ackland, in particular, for their support of this project, their guidance, and their feedback on my work. Many thanks also go to Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Livia Monnet, Catherine Russell, Martin Lefebvre, Rosanna Maule, Peter Rist, Shira Avni, Alanna Thain, Will Straw, Erik Bordeleau, Victor Fan, Masha Salazkina, and Luca Caminati for their collegiality and friendship and for making Montreal’s intellectual milieu a highly invigorating one. Equally deserving of thanks are Tom Looser, Anne McKnight, Christophe Thouny, Shinji Ôyama, and Akira Mizuta Lippit, who have provided guidance and encouragement along the way. A delayed encounter with Alexander Zahlten during the late phase of editing this book proved fortuitous. Alex’s generosity and fine-tuned comments were of immense help in the last edit of this manuscript. The keen eyes of my research assistant and editor Alexander Sandy Carson deserve mention here as well. While not habitually done, I would also like to acknowledge the work of several individuals whom I have never met and yet whose research on children’s material culture of the 1950s and 1960s was incredibly useful in providing me with a picture of that era and its material objects. Whether driven by nostalgia, fascination, or interest, the decidedly para-academic yet rigorous work of Tsunashima Ritomo, Kushima Tsutomu, and Machida Shinobu was fundamental to the earlier section of this book. My sincere thanks go to Jason Weidemann, my editor at University of Minnesota Press, for his strong support of this book from the outset and throughout the publication process. It has been a pleasure working with him as well as with Danielle Kasprzak at the press. I also wish to thank my readers, who provided the feedback, criticism, and encouragement needed to see this book to completion. A million heartfelt thanks—though never enough—to my wonderful parents, who valued education, encouraged me to read voraciously, and set me on the course of study that resulted in this book. With them I also thank my loving grandparents, my amazing mother-in-law, and my always-supportive sister. An equally formative influence on my intellectual development and on the publication of this book was Thomas Lamarre. It is rare to find a person so generous and so stimulating all at once. A true mentor, Tom has remained a steady and encouraging Acknowledgments · 207 presence throughout my academic life, and I offer him my deepest thanks. Finally, I would like to thank my partner and intellectual ally, Yuriko Furuhata. Her support and enthusiasm, along with her pointed criticism, have pushed me...