License to Play

There is something a bit sinister about this book. Despite its title and subject matter, the cover depicts characters who look concerned, to say the least, and the main figure in the centre of it carries a radio-like machine sporting a Japanese imperial flag, which—if I am not imagining it—is reflected in her (or possibly his) eyes. Three apparently unconnected human beings occupy the space of a wide urban street crossing, while above them on a bridge lurk three unpleasant looking monsters. The theme may or may not be ‘play’—it is hard to judge, but the picture is actually the work of a Japanese ‘pop artist’, so I suppose at least it represents a contemporary artistic image. Then there is the content of the book. The author is clearly well versed in many aspects of Japanese life and history, and she presents an almost overwhelming array of theory on the subject of play, but there is somehow very little of the playful in the narrative. She does emphasise that her initial focus is on a period of instability, anxiety and depression in Japan’s social fabric, but this is ‘quite surprisingly’ a time when ‘the playful hedonism in Japan’s urban public culture reached new heights’ (p. xiii). In this post-bubble period, play is supposed to have spread into ‘the more conservative life spheres of work, school and home’ (ibid), but hardly any evidence is presented of people having fun. Instead much of the meat of the matter is in examining the proposal by Johan Huizinga—one of the most famous scholars of the subject—that play has a ‘significant function’ (ibid).

Aesthetics · Art · Hedonism · Literature · Narrative · Period (music) · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Theme (computing) · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology