Mapping the Sociology of the Arts in Contemporary Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID22360217
AuthorsJohn Clammer (0000-0003-3222-9582, O. P. Jindal Global University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume35
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJapanese Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2769-1365 • E-ISSN: 2769-1357
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ijjs.70009
OpenAlexW7156622341
LanguageEN
References cited12

Despite the volume of scholarly work devoted to Japan, the sociology of art remains a neglected field. While art history flourishes and the study of popular culture is endemic, the sociological study of contemporary visual and performing arts lags behind. A survey of recent handbooks of contemporary Japanese culture shows clearly that with the exception of the popular and over researched forms of manga , anime , and film, little attention has been paid to the substantial volume of artistic production that forms an important part of the culture, and which in many ways shape Japanese identity. This essay is an attempt to provide a guide to remedying this deficiency by providing a “map” of the main sociological issues in the study of contemporary Japanese visual and performance arts and to identify the key questions for a more developed sociological study of art forms, practices, audiences, and institutions, and the relationships of these to Japanese social structure, cultural history, and the embeddedness of the arts in an advanced capitalist economy and national polity concerned with projecting itself through “Soft Power” and the role of the arts and culture as vehicles for international communication

Contemporary art · Cultural economics · Embeddedness · Polity · Sociological imagination · Sociological research · Sociology of culture · The arts · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Japanese History and Culture · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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