Ryotaro Mihara - Appointed in AY2020

My current research theme is the overseas expansion of Japanese anime, which I explore using the methods of cultural anthropological fieldwork (ethnography). The formative experience that set me on my path as a researcher was watching Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" on a Betamax videotape as a child in the 1980s, while living in Los Angeles as the son of an expatriate. I was so moved I couldn't sleep at night, but at the time, hardly any Americans knew of Hayao Miyazaki, so I was completely unable to share my excitement with my classmates at my local school. About 20 years later, when I returned to the United States as a graduate student, everyone knew of Miyazaki (and Ghibli). When a classmate from Colombia in South America found out I was Japanese, he immediately started talking passionately about "Grave of the Fireflies," and I had a gut feeling that "something was happening." For over a decade since then, I have been following the overseas expansion of anime.

Since this is a research theme with (relatively) few predecessors, I always feel the excitement of pioneering a new field. You could even call it an entrepreneurial kind of excitement. As part of my fieldwork, I frequently visit the sites, both in Japan and abroad, where anime works are actually being distributed overseas. My research style involves observing the work of producers and directors and sometimes even participating. I believe the real thrill of my research lies in being able to share this "on-the-ground" feeling with practitioners and compare our respective perspectives on the overseas expansion of anime. It constantly makes me think about how I can give back to the field through my research, and I can feel my own "theories" being refined through fieldwork.

Cultural anthropology teaches us that "we can learn a great deal about culture and society in general even from seemingly trivial, everyday, individual things." Even something belonging to a niche hobby like anime, when explored deeply, reveals broader and larger contexts: anime as a work of art, anime as a medium, anime as a product of labor, anime as a copyrighted work, anime as a policy object, and anime within the contexts of "the West" and "Asia." Through your studies at the university, I hope you will acquire the intellectual antenna to not overlook these seemingly "trivial things" and the intellectual capacity to develop your thoughts from there into a broader context.

(Interview conducted in December 2020)