|
FEATURED BOOK
 Clements,
Jonathan and Motoko Tamamuro (2003). The Dorama Encyclopedia:
A Guide to Japanese TV Drama Since 1953. Berkeley: Stone
Bridge Press.
When
I heard that Jonathan Clements was writing a book about live-action
Japanese television shows, I was intrigued. His previous effort,
The Anime Encyclopedia, co-written with Helen McCarthy,
contained the right mix of invaluable information and delightfully
snarky commentary and I found myself consulting it constantly
consulting it while researching my own book. Simply put, it
is the most comprehensive book on Japanese animation currently
available in English. The Dorama Encyclopedia, written
this time with co-author Motoko Tamamuro, follows in a similar
vein. Branching out from anime, Clements and Tamamuro compiled
a fantastic tome about Japanese television programs from the
medium’s inception to the present day.
Before
I get too far into the review, I feel I must deal with the nagging
question of what the book has to do with anime and/or manga.
One of the functions of The Dorama Encyclopedia as
helping fans and consumers of anime/manga to break away from
such narrow thinking and be able to perceive their favorite
shows and comics as part of a larger and interrelated media
environment. While it is generally common knowledge within the
fan community that successful manga are often made into anime,
there is not as much of an awareness of the manga that become
live-action programs. Clements began his task of highlighting
this intermediality in a column for the anime magazine Newtype
USA in which he examines the crossovers between manga and
live-action television. In fact, a handful of the entries in
the book were originally published in Newtype. There are entries
in the book for the live-action incarnations of You’re
Under Arrest, GTO, and Steel Angel Kurumi,
just to name a few.
After
a quick sketch of the history of television in Japan from the
early prewar experiments to today’s international co-productions,
the book jumps into the heart of the matter with alphabetical
listings of a slew of TV shows, from Abaranger to Zone
Fighter. Actually, these two titles highlight an aspect
of The Dorama Encyclopedia that may be accidentally
glossed over by its title. The word “drama,” when
used to refer to television shows, usually connotes sober (and
occasionally melodramatic) adult fare. The entries in the book,
though, are not limited by genre and include comedies, science
fiction, and children’s’ shows.
All
the information in the book would be of little use without a
way to find it. Luckily there is a phenomenal index detailing
the people and shows in the book, even if they’re just
mentioned in passing or as a basis for comparison. (For example,
there are five references to Evangelion.) I find the
single combined index to be much easier to use than the duel
name/title indices of The Anime Encyclopedia. As an
added bonus, The Dorama Encyclopedia includes a list
of English-language shows (and their Japanese titles) that have
been broadcast in Japan.
I
must confess that I do not know very much about live-action
Japanese television programs, so I cannot evaluate the individual
entries in the way I could for The Anime Encyclopedia.
However, they are all very well written and informative. It’s
a mark of good writing that I find this book useful not only
as a reference but also as recreational reading. I often find
myself picking up the book and flipping to random pages just
to see if I can discover anything new about Japanese television.
My
biggest complaint (which is a very minor one) is an issue of
formatting. Too many entries begin with just a few lines on
one page to be continued when the page is flipped. I’m
sure that the layout of The Dorama Encyclopedia was
not an easy task, but eliminating these fragments would have
made the book a bit easier to navigate. However, this is more
than offset by the valuable text and Steve Kyte’s evocative
illustrations.
For
students of Japanese popular culture, this book fills a critical
gap in English-language material. If you have any interest in
the wider cultural context in which anime and manga exist, The
Dorama Encyclopedia is an essential purchase.
|
