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    Marketing the panpan in Japanese popular culture : youth, sexuality, and power

    González-López, Irene (2018) Marketing the panpan in Japanese popular culture : youth, sexuality, and power. U.S.-Japan Women's Journal 54 , pp. 29-51. ISSN 1059-9770.

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    Abstract

    This article examines the figure of the panpan, or streetwalker, as a compelling example of a young working female population, concomitant to the radical transformation of sexual mores, familial relations, and consumption in Japan during the Allied Occupation. It compares the heterogeneous lived experiences of panpan with their representations in cinema, as well as in literature, pulp publications known as kasutori, and women's journals to explore how this problematic social figure was transformed into a marketable icon of popular culture. I agrue that the trope of panpan became an ambivalent signifier of youth, nation, and female sexuality that appealed to different audiences and was used by different groups to advance their own political agendas. The potential eroticism and political criticism of so-called "panpan films" lay primarily in the audiences' ability to decode metaphors, absences, and intertextual references.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): 'panpan films', intertextuality, youth, female sexuality, kasutori
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Irene Gonzalez Lopez
    Date Deposited: 29 Sep 2021 09:24
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:51
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/46120

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