Ben Whaley
Ben Whaley is Associate Professor of Japanese in the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary. His research engages discourses of ethno-racial identity and national trauma in contemporary Japanese popular culture, with a focus on manga (print comics) and video games.
He is the author of Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (2023), which examines the ways in which Japanese video games engage with social anxieties and traumatic events while prompting players’ emotional engagement, self-reflection, and development of real-world skills. This book is Volume 100 in the Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies by the University of Michigan Press.
His current research explores Jewish identities and narratives of the Holocaust in postwar shōjo manga. This project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Japan Foundation. Other research interests include the oeuvre of Japan’s “God of Manga” Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), and modern Japanese literature of trauma by minority writers.
In 2019, Ben received the Outstanding New Teacher award from the Faculty of Arts. He has also been nominated for the University of Calgary Teaching Award and the Students’ Union Teaching Excellence Award. Current courses taught at UCalgary include Japanese popular culture, manga and anime, Japanese video games, Japanese cinema, and modern Japanese literature.
Ben holds a B.A. in Japanese from Stanford University (2007; Departmental Honors and Distinction), and an M.A. (2012) and Ph.D. (2016) in Asian Studies from The University of British Columbia. His most recent essay appears in The Journal of Japanese Studies (50.1, 2024). He welcomes contact from scholars and students with overlapping research interests.
[*If you would like a copy of a published article or book chapter and do not have institutional access, please email me directly as I am happy to share.]
-------------------
研究紹介:ベン・ウェーリーはカナダのカルガリー大学人文学部言語・言語学・文学・文化学科准教授。専門分野は近現代日本文学と文化、特にマンガとビデオゲーム研究です。最初の本『ゲーム的世界へ 日本のビデオゲームに見る新しいプレイルール』は2023年5月にミシガン大学出版社から発刊されました。本書は、トラウマと社会的問題における日本ビデオゲームの新しいプレイルール、特にプレイヤーや社会への影響を評価し、日本文化研究やメディア分析の視点から日本ビデオゲームの新しい概念モデルを提示する。博士論文(ブリティッシュ・コロンビア大学アジア研究学科2016年)のテーマは社会的問題やトラウマを扱う日本テレビゲーム。修士論文(同上2012年)は手塚治虫のマンガにおける人種問題や少数派による差別に関するの表象を中心としました。大学の卒論(スタンフォード大学アジア言語学科2007年)の内容は宝塚歌劇団のミュージカル歌劇におけるアメリカのノスタルジアの構造です。現在の研究プロジェクトは戦後少女マンガにおけるユダヤ人表象です。このプロジェクトは国際交流基金兼カナダの人文科学研究会議の奨学金で賄われています。もし共通の関心があるなら自由にご連絡下さい。日本語でも大丈夫です。
Supervisors: Sharalyn Orbaugh (M.A. / Ph.D.) and Jim Reichert (Honors B.A.)
He is the author of Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games (2023), which examines the ways in which Japanese video games engage with social anxieties and traumatic events while prompting players’ emotional engagement, self-reflection, and development of real-world skills. This book is Volume 100 in the Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies by the University of Michigan Press.
His current research explores Jewish identities and narratives of the Holocaust in postwar shōjo manga. This project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Japan Foundation. Other research interests include the oeuvre of Japan’s “God of Manga” Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), and modern Japanese literature of trauma by minority writers.
In 2019, Ben received the Outstanding New Teacher award from the Faculty of Arts. He has also been nominated for the University of Calgary Teaching Award and the Students’ Union Teaching Excellence Award. Current courses taught at UCalgary include Japanese popular culture, manga and anime, Japanese video games, Japanese cinema, and modern Japanese literature.
Ben holds a B.A. in Japanese from Stanford University (2007; Departmental Honors and Distinction), and an M.A. (2012) and Ph.D. (2016) in Asian Studies from The University of British Columbia. His most recent essay appears in The Journal of Japanese Studies (50.1, 2024). He welcomes contact from scholars and students with overlapping research interests.
[*If you would like a copy of a published article or book chapter and do not have institutional access, please email me directly as I am happy to share.]
-------------------
研究紹介:ベン・ウェーリーはカナダのカルガリー大学人文学部言語・言語学・文学・文化学科准教授。専門分野は近現代日本文学と文化、特にマンガとビデオゲーム研究です。最初の本『ゲーム的世界へ 日本のビデオゲームに見る新しいプレイルール』は2023年5月にミシガン大学出版社から発刊されました。本書は、トラウマと社会的問題における日本ビデオゲームの新しいプレイルール、特にプレイヤーや社会への影響を評価し、日本文化研究やメディア分析の視点から日本ビデオゲームの新しい概念モデルを提示する。博士論文(ブリティッシュ・コロンビア大学アジア研究学科2016年)のテーマは社会的問題やトラウマを扱う日本テレビゲーム。修士論文(同上2012年)は手塚治虫のマンガにおける人種問題や少数派による差別に関するの表象を中心としました。大学の卒論(スタンフォード大学アジア言語学科2007年)の内容は宝塚歌劇団のミュージカル歌劇におけるアメリカのノスタルジアの構造です。現在の研究プロジェクトは戦後少女マンガにおけるユダヤ人表象です。このプロジェクトは国際交流基金兼カナダの人文科学研究会議の奨学金で賄われています。もし共通の関心があるなら自由にご連絡下さい。日本語でも大丈夫です。
Supervisors: Sharalyn Orbaugh (M.A. / Ph.D.) and Jim Reichert (Honors B.A.)
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[*Fully accessible ebook available online through University of Michigan Press]
https://www.press.umich.edu/11946212
[*Full article available online through the University of Washington and Project MUSE]
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/44/article/918582
[*Full eBook available online through Routledge - Taylor & Francis]
https://www.routledge.com/Introducing-Japanese-Popular-Culture/Freedman/p/book/9781032298092
[*Full eBook available online through Bloomsbury Academic]
https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/teaching-games-and-game-studies-in-the-literature-classroom-9781350269750/
[*Full eBook available online through Rowman & Littlefield]
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793643551/Japanese-Role-Playing-Games-Genre-Representation-and-Liminality-in-the-JRPG
I read Gringo as Tezuka’s own rebuttal against the forces of Japanese cultural nationalism (nihonjinron). My analysis centers on the destabilization of Japanese identity as it moves through different national and cultural spaces, typified by the main story arc of transplanting a sumo wrestler turned salaryman, his French-Canadian wife, and their biracial daughter, to South America. Tezuka’s series highlights a new, internationalized vision for the Japanese nuclear family that is quickly called into question when the characters sojourn in Tokyo Village (Tōkyō-mura), an anachronistic diaspora community in Brazil that values Japanese ethno-racial purity. Japanese culture, cuisine, and national sport are therefore recast to expose ongoing tensions between contemporary Japanese society and the imperialist and nationalist values that defined the country four decades earlier. It is by parodying these stereotypical images of ‘Japaneseness’ that Tezuka’s Gringo becomes as useful a critique of Japan’s bubble economy as it is of today’s political climate.
[*Full eBook available online through Routledge]
https://www.routledge.com/The-Representation-of-Japanese-Politics-in-Manga-The-Visual-Literacy-Of/Rosenbaum/p/book/9780367439965
[*Full article available online through Duke University Press]
https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article-abstract/28/4/729/167018/When-Anne-Frank-Met-Astro-BoyDrawing-the-Holocaust?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[*Full article available online through Cambridge Core]
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/virtual-earthquakes-and-realworld-survival-in-japans-disaster-report-video-game/E1E6D7B06EC2C94726FCC2B6F56EFB80
[*Full article available online through SAGE Journals]
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1555412015606533
[**See the linked video essay on YouTube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73QpvnqtxU
[*Full article available in print or online through PRISM: University of Calgary’s Digital Repository]
http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111897
This doctoral dissertation examines three Japanese video games, each of which critically engages with a different social issue or national trauma important to Japan. I argue that video games are important not only as cultural phenomena, but because, as media, they can and do bring about profound positive emotional and behavioral changes in our lives. This project builds on current research in Japanese studies and game studies by elucidating how narrative and gameplay mechanics communicate practical knowledge to potential victims, and how playing a game might instill both an understanding of one’s own life and empathy for the lives of others. Each chapter contains an analysis of a socially relevant video game and a corresponding discussion of the specific hallmarks of Japanese game design that promote players’ empathetic engagement.
Chapter one analyzes natural disaster trauma in the PlayStation survival game Disaster Report (Irem, 2002, 2003 North America). I discuss how the game teaches real-world survival skills to players, and how it uses “limited engagement,” or a form of enforced vulnerability, to simulate what it would be like to survive an earthquake. Chapter two examines anxiety over Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population as represented in the puzzle game Catherine (Atlus, 2011). I introduce the concept of self-reflexivity or “distanced engagement” to contend that players critically reflect on their own lives through the act of answering in-game opinion polls about marriage and childbirth. Finally, chapter three investigates the working through of post-traumatic stress and wartime atrocities in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Kojima Productions, 2015). I illustrate how the game deploys ludic strategies of “external engagement” to encourage a merging of the player’s lived experience with the actions of the in-game protagonist. The result is that players feel more direct involvement in the game content. In sum, these affective tools simulate and allow players to “experience” different social situations to which they are unaccustomed, prompt them to critically reflect on their lives and values along the way, and, just maybe, help them transport what they have learned outside the confines of the game in order to enrich their everyday lives.
Chapter one analyzes Ode to Kirihito (1970–71, 2006 English), and introduces Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to show the ways in which Tezuka bestializes his ethnically Japanese protagonists and turns them into a distinct class of subaltern. Chapter two examines intersections between race and war narratives using Adolf (1983–85, 1995–96 English), Tezuka’s WWII epic about the Jewish Holocaust. The concept of hybridity is utilized and the case is made that Tezuka ultimately denies his racially mixed characters the benefits of their Japanese identity. Chapter three investigates the manifestation of Japanese masculinity in Gringo (1987–89), one of Tezuka’s final works. In this chapter, Japanese identity, masculinity, and sexual ability are linked to the national sport of sumo wrestling. A discussion of diasporic communities is included in order to discuss how the Japanese race is conceptualized as it moves through different geographical and cultural spaces.
[*See the linked alumni spotlight interview from Stanford]
https://ealc.stanford.edu/interview-ben-whaley
This talk introduces four contemporary Japanese video games in terms of how they simulate some of Japan’s biggest social and personal issues: natural disasters (Disaster Report), a declining birthrate and aging population (Catherine), nuclear proliferation (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain), and youth social withdrawal (The World Ends with You). Come along with us and investigate what some of the positive benefits are of working through a site of trauma from within a video game. See how might games teach us about Japanese culture and society through interactive frameworks different from literature and film.
*Link to full lecture on YouTube below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKf32U6S5o&t=2752s
TWEWY also features gameplay mechanisms that work as a potential intervention against social withdrawal. The game uses the Wi-Fi roaming capabilities of the portable system to reward players with in-game items if they happen to walk by another player. The game also tracks the amount of time it is physically turned off and assigns experience points for each minute players spend in the “real-world.” In these ways, I argue that TWETY encourages a form of “connective engagement” that seeks to bring together players in new forms of socio-topographical play. By relying on gameic interactions over face-to-face encounters, TWEWY is a potentially useful tool for hikikomori who play games at home or use them as a means to communicate with the “outside” world.
[*Available online through the University of Washington Press]
https://depts.washington.edu/jjs/contents/volume-49-number-2/
[*Available online through Taylor & Francis]
https://criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2019/12/3/201924-ben-whaley-what-i-write-about-when-i-write-about-gaming#_ednref1=
[*Available online through TI Blogs]
http://studentassessment.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2018/08/10/creative-project-jpns-323/
[*Fully accessible ebook available online through University of Michigan Press]
https://www.press.umich.edu/11946212
[*Full article available online through the University of Washington and Project MUSE]
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/44/article/918582
[*Full eBook available online through Routledge - Taylor & Francis]
https://www.routledge.com/Introducing-Japanese-Popular-Culture/Freedman/p/book/9781032298092
[*Full eBook available online through Bloomsbury Academic]
https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/teaching-games-and-game-studies-in-the-literature-classroom-9781350269750/
[*Full eBook available online through Rowman & Littlefield]
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793643551/Japanese-Role-Playing-Games-Genre-Representation-and-Liminality-in-the-JRPG
I read Gringo as Tezuka’s own rebuttal against the forces of Japanese cultural nationalism (nihonjinron). My analysis centers on the destabilization of Japanese identity as it moves through different national and cultural spaces, typified by the main story arc of transplanting a sumo wrestler turned salaryman, his French-Canadian wife, and their biracial daughter, to South America. Tezuka’s series highlights a new, internationalized vision for the Japanese nuclear family that is quickly called into question when the characters sojourn in Tokyo Village (Tōkyō-mura), an anachronistic diaspora community in Brazil that values Japanese ethno-racial purity. Japanese culture, cuisine, and national sport are therefore recast to expose ongoing tensions between contemporary Japanese society and the imperialist and nationalist values that defined the country four decades earlier. It is by parodying these stereotypical images of ‘Japaneseness’ that Tezuka’s Gringo becomes as useful a critique of Japan’s bubble economy as it is of today’s political climate.
[*Full eBook available online through Routledge]
https://www.routledge.com/The-Representation-of-Japanese-Politics-in-Manga-The-Visual-Literacy-Of/Rosenbaum/p/book/9780367439965
[*Full article available online through Duke University Press]
https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article-abstract/28/4/729/167018/When-Anne-Frank-Met-Astro-BoyDrawing-the-Holocaust?redirectedFrom=fulltext
[*Full article available online through Cambridge Core]
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/virtual-earthquakes-and-realworld-survival-in-japans-disaster-report-video-game/E1E6D7B06EC2C94726FCC2B6F56EFB80
[*Full article available online through SAGE Journals]
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1555412015606533
[**See the linked video essay on YouTube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73QpvnqtxU
[*Full article available in print or online through PRISM: University of Calgary’s Digital Repository]
http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111897
This doctoral dissertation examines three Japanese video games, each of which critically engages with a different social issue or national trauma important to Japan. I argue that video games are important not only as cultural phenomena, but because, as media, they can and do bring about profound positive emotional and behavioral changes in our lives. This project builds on current research in Japanese studies and game studies by elucidating how narrative and gameplay mechanics communicate practical knowledge to potential victims, and how playing a game might instill both an understanding of one’s own life and empathy for the lives of others. Each chapter contains an analysis of a socially relevant video game and a corresponding discussion of the specific hallmarks of Japanese game design that promote players’ empathetic engagement.
Chapter one analyzes natural disaster trauma in the PlayStation survival game Disaster Report (Irem, 2002, 2003 North America). I discuss how the game teaches real-world survival skills to players, and how it uses “limited engagement,” or a form of enforced vulnerability, to simulate what it would be like to survive an earthquake. Chapter two examines anxiety over Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population as represented in the puzzle game Catherine (Atlus, 2011). I introduce the concept of self-reflexivity or “distanced engagement” to contend that players critically reflect on their own lives through the act of answering in-game opinion polls about marriage and childbirth. Finally, chapter three investigates the working through of post-traumatic stress and wartime atrocities in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Kojima Productions, 2015). I illustrate how the game deploys ludic strategies of “external engagement” to encourage a merging of the player’s lived experience with the actions of the in-game protagonist. The result is that players feel more direct involvement in the game content. In sum, these affective tools simulate and allow players to “experience” different social situations to which they are unaccustomed, prompt them to critically reflect on their lives and values along the way, and, just maybe, help them transport what they have learned outside the confines of the game in order to enrich their everyday lives.
Chapter one analyzes Ode to Kirihito (1970–71, 2006 English), and introduces Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to show the ways in which Tezuka bestializes his ethnically Japanese protagonists and turns them into a distinct class of subaltern. Chapter two examines intersections between race and war narratives using Adolf (1983–85, 1995–96 English), Tezuka’s WWII epic about the Jewish Holocaust. The concept of hybridity is utilized and the case is made that Tezuka ultimately denies his racially mixed characters the benefits of their Japanese identity. Chapter three investigates the manifestation of Japanese masculinity in Gringo (1987–89), one of Tezuka’s final works. In this chapter, Japanese identity, masculinity, and sexual ability are linked to the national sport of sumo wrestling. A discussion of diasporic communities is included in order to discuss how the Japanese race is conceptualized as it moves through different geographical and cultural spaces.
[*See the linked alumni spotlight interview from Stanford]
https://ealc.stanford.edu/interview-ben-whaley
This talk introduces four contemporary Japanese video games in terms of how they simulate some of Japan’s biggest social and personal issues: natural disasters (Disaster Report), a declining birthrate and aging population (Catherine), nuclear proliferation (Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain), and youth social withdrawal (The World Ends with You). Come along with us and investigate what some of the positive benefits are of working through a site of trauma from within a video game. See how might games teach us about Japanese culture and society through interactive frameworks different from literature and film.
*Link to full lecture on YouTube below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKf32U6S5o&t=2752s
TWEWY also features gameplay mechanisms that work as a potential intervention against social withdrawal. The game uses the Wi-Fi roaming capabilities of the portable system to reward players with in-game items if they happen to walk by another player. The game also tracks the amount of time it is physically turned off and assigns experience points for each minute players spend in the “real-world.” In these ways, I argue that TWETY encourages a form of “connective engagement” that seeks to bring together players in new forms of socio-topographical play. By relying on gameic interactions over face-to-face encounters, TWEWY is a potentially useful tool for hikikomori who play games at home or use them as a means to communicate with the “outside” world.
[*Available online through the University of Washington Press]
https://depts.washington.edu/jjs/contents/volume-49-number-2/
[*Available online through Taylor & Francis]
https://criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2019/12/3/201924-ben-whaley-what-i-write-about-when-i-write-about-gaming#_ednref1=
[*Available online through TI Blogs]
http://studentassessment.ucalgaryblogs.ca/2018/08/10/creative-project-jpns-323/
[*Available online through the University of Washington Press]
http://depts.washington.edu/jjs/contents/volume-44-number-1/
[*Available online through the CAJLE]
http://www.cajle.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/NL52.pdf