only 1.4 percent.
TheWil.wn QuarterlyIAutumn 1985
46
Why is the Soviet system, with so many problems, as stable as it is? Princeton University's Stephen F. Cohen argues that the Kremlin has provided most Soviet citizens with security, na- tional pride, and modest "improvements in each succeeding generation's way of life." Other Sovietologists contend that, thanks to the regime's success in repressing dissent, blocking foreign influence, and curbing travel abroad, most Soviet citi- zens...
ot;The main task of the Five Year Plan," proclaims this 1971 poster, "is to ensure a significant rise in the material and cultural standard of living. . . ." Since the mid-1970s, the Soviet GNP-which grew at an average annual rate of nearly five percent from 1960 to 1975-has stagnated, rising in 1980 by only 1.4 percent.
TheWil.wn QuarterlyIAutumn 1985
46
Why is the Soviet system, with so many problems, as stable as it is? Princeton University's Stephen F. Cohen argues that the...
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Every Sunday, leather-clad teen-agers spill out of Harajuku Station and head to- ward Yoyogi Park, there to dance until dark. The passion for such distractions has its critics: A recent government white paper asserted that today's Japanese youth are "devoid of perseverance, dependent upon others, and self-centered."
The Wilson QuarterlyISummer 1985
46
Japan's New
Popular Culture
On any given day, Americans encounter something from Japan. To Detroit's dismay, roughly 1....
ry Sunday, leather-clad teen-agers spill out of Harajuku Station and head to- ward Yoyogi Park, there to dance until dark. The passion for such distractions has its critics: A recent government white paper asserted that today's Japanese youth are "devoid of perseverance, dependent upon others, and self-centered."
The Wilson QuarterlyISummer 1985
46
Japan's New
Popular Culture
On any given day, Americans encounter something from Japan. To Detroit's dismay, roughly 1.9million U.S. c...
by Frederik L. Schodt
In his travel book The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), Paul The- roux recalls his encounter with a comic book left behind by a young woman seated next to him on a train in northern Japan: "The comic strips showed decapitations, cannibalism, people bris- tling with mws like Saint Sebastian .. . and, in general, may- hem. ...I dropped the comic. The girl returned to her seat and, so help me God, serenely returned to this distressing [magazine]."
Japanese manga, or c...
The average American knows two kinds of Japanese movies, if he knows any at all. In the first, grunting samurai slash at each other with swords. In the second, a prehistoric monster stomps through downtown Tokyo like King Kong, derailing trains, swatting down aircraft, and smashing buildings.
Today, such scenes seldom appear on the Japanese screen. Like the Western in the United States, samurai and monster films moved to TV (see box, pp. 72-73). Indeed, in Japan as in the United States, the advent...
Despite the proliferation of Japanese television, video games, and video cassette recorders, most Western works on Japanese culture still sketch a society of dedicated aesthetes, vari- ously arranging flowers, sipping green tea, plucking the three-stringed samisen. A few books indicate, how- ever, that popular pastimes are more contemporary and less refined.
Kuwabara Takeo, a scholar of French literature, analyzes his coun- try's cultural shifts during the last 150 years in Japan and Western...