A Coming of Age in the Anthropological Study of Anime? - Introductory Thoughts - Envisioning the Business Anthropology of Japanese Animation

Aug 21, 2026

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The article critiques Anglophone anthropological scholarship on Japanese animation for treating anime’s businesspeople as analytically invisible. It argues that studies often frame producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs through a celebratory solidarity between creators and fans meant to resist Euro–American entertainment capitalism. Drawing on Spivak’s “strategic essentialism,” it proposes escaping this analytical impasse by developing an ethnographic business anthropology of anime, supported by an initial merchandising-startup fieldwork.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Ethnographic vignette and the “people in suits”

Research problem and counter-argument

A Coming of Age in the Anthropological Study of Anime? Introductory Thoughts Envisioning the Business Anthropology of Japanese Animation Ryotaro Mihara Abstract This article highlights how Anglophone anthropological studies of Japanese animation (anime) have overlooked its businesspeople (such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs) by formulaically advocating anime creators and fans as crusaders subverting the global dominance of Euro–American global entertainment capitalism. Contextualising such orientation as an example of what Gayatri Spivak calls “strategic essentialism”, the article further explores how to break out of this essentialist impasse of analysis in the anthropological approach to anime. The article suggests that a potential exit might exist through envisioning the business anthropology of anime, i. e. by casting an ethnographic focus on anime’s businesspeople as the legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiries into anime. The author further explores the preliminary theoretical implications of this analytical turn through his own business ethnography of an international start-up venture of anime merchandising. Page 1 of 23 | JBA 9(1): 88-110 Spring 2020 | | --- | | © The Author(s) 2020 ISSN 2245-4217 | | DOI: 10.22439/jba.v9i1.59 63 | Mihara / A Coming of Age in the Anthropological Study of Anime? Key words animation, anime, strategic essentialism, creative industries, brokerage Introduction Suppose that you are undertaking a fieldwork of Japanese animation (anime) in Tokyo. As part of it, you participate in a fan meeting held by anime creators. During this meeting, the creators talk about their experience participating in a certain anime project, and complain about how their creative ideas were constrained by the “people in suits”representing the entertainment companies that were also participating in the project. The audience (the fans) respond to these accounts in full sympathy by laughing at the creators’ jokes caricaturing the behaviour of such “suit” people. During the Q&A session, one audience member asks the creators how they will meet the “needs” of anime fans in overseas countries. One creator becomes grouchy all of a sudden and spits out that anime creators should just care about what they want to make. The audience give this comment a rousing cheer and boo the questioner. Oneof the audience members sitting next to you shouts at that questioner to“get out of here!” The meeting ends with a sense of coherence between the creators and the audience. How would you contextualise the above scene if you are writing an ethnographic account on anime? What I try to highlight through this article, in terms of this vignette,1 is that there has been a strong formulaic tendency in Anglophone anthropological literature on anime to depict this scene as a moment of solidarity between anime creators and fans inan attempt to subvert global entertainment capitalism, ignoring (and sometimes even antagonising) anime’s businesspeople – the “people in suits”, such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs. Following this trend, you might also be delighted to note that the person sitting next to you booed the questioner. You might even make fun of the“people in suits” with the majority of the participants, and proudly write in your ethnography that you not only “observed” the scene but also“participated” in it (a practice that is assumed to make for “good”ethnography) . I intend to counter-argue in this article that such acontextualisation has begun to advocate too much for anime creators and fans, routinely celebrating their mode of solidarity by overemphasising how important it is to the world. Against this formulation, and in terms of the above vignette, I would also propose in this article that what we might have to do is think of the people who did not participate in the meeting – anime’s businesspeople. We may want to approach the host of the meeting

FAQs

What does the article say Anglophone anime anthropology has overlooked?

It highlights that businesspeople in the anime industry—such as producers, investors, merchandisers, and entrepreneurs—have been overlooked in favor of creator-and-fan solidarity narratives.

How does the article use Spivak’s concept to frame the issue?

It contextualizes the scholarly orientation as an example of “strategic essentialism,” suggesting that this leads to an essentialist impasse in analyzing anime.

What alternative approach does the article propose?

It proposes envisioning the business anthropology of anime by directing ethnographic attention to anime businesspeople as legitimate interlocutors for anthropological inquiry.

Aug 21, 2026

Upload by Finn