Papers by Rachael Hutchinson
Handbook of Japanese Games and Gameplay, 2025
When we think of games in Japan, or games from Japan, what do we think of? Maybe the latest block... more When we think of games in Japan, or games from Japan, what do we think of? Maybe the latest blockbuster Nintendo videogame, or the bright lights of the "game center" or arcade. Perhaps we picture older people playing board games like go or shōgi, or workers relaxing afer a hard day with a game of pachinko. While it would be impossible to cover every type of game and its gameplay in one book, this volume attempts to show the rich variety of games in Japan, placing them in the context of industry, development processes, and the broader media ecology. We trace Japanese games through history, including card games, board games, pachinko and digital games, as well as how games are connected to toys and animation, and how analog and mechanical games connect to the virtual world. Readers will fnd in-depth analysis of specifc game titles and series, and descriptions of how different audiences have interpreted them around the globe. We will follow players from the living room to the arcade, into online spaces, escape rooms and themed cafés to see where gameplay happens. Entering the offices of some of the world's leading videogame development corporations, readers will follow the production process from initial design and development decisions through localization, adaptation to diferent hardware systems, marketing and distribution. Comparing the Japanese game industry to its overseas counterparts, we examine its labor practices and legal obstacles to innovations in areas like esports. Niche markets and indie games are also considered, as vital spaces for expression outside the mainstream. Overall, the Handbook of Japanese Games and Gameplay offers the reader an exciting glimpse into Japanese games from a wide variety of perspectives.
Monstrosity in Games and Play, 2025
This chapter examines how the Japanese game industry has leveraged monsters (yōkai) to promote sa... more This chapter examines how the Japanese game industry has leveraged monsters (yōkai) to promote sales, belying deeper cultural meanings of colonialism and modernization. I compare monster classif ications in Pokémon (Game Freak, 1995-ongoing), Monster Hunter (Capcom, 2004-ongoing), and Yo-kai Watch (Level 5, 2013-ongoing) with Japanese role-playing games like Final Fantasy (Square, 1987-ongoing). Monsters provide a resource-gathering, skill-increasing gameplay loop, with inventories evoking Enlightenment rationalism. Digital games are placed in the context of analogue antecedents and historical works that, by cataloguing, impose knowledge and rationality over the supernatural world and "civilization and enlightenment" (bunmei-kaika) over regional and Indigenous populations and their beliefs. This reading provides a new understanding of the containment of monstrosity in games as closely tied to Japan's colonialism.
Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us, 2024
Games from Japan carry a double colonial legacy – that of the oppressor in the Asia-Pacific, and ... more Games from Japan carry a double colonial legacy – that of the oppressor in the Asia-Pacific, and that of the oppressed, under Western imperialism in Asia and the Allied Occupation after World War II. Game studies scholars tend to treat region-specific games from a formalist or material perspective, focusing on in-game mechanics or global exports rather than historical perspectives. Meanwhile, postcolonial scholars tend to use British and French imperialism as their yardstick, analyzing Japanese colonialism in Asia through a singular lens of one-sided oppression. Both approaches indicate a Eurocentric blind spot in the scholarly literature, eliding the doubled realities of Japanese history. Following critiques of postcolonial theory by Monika Albrecht and Dwayne Donald, I argue that the Japanese colonial case demands a more relational way of thinking, proposing that Japanese videogames offer decolonial moments that read against problematic postcolonial understandings. After outlining Japan’s historical experience as colonizer and colonized, I compare early and later readings of the Street Fighter (1987-) series to show the benefit of multi-directional analysis. I then explore the double coloniality of Japan through the SoulCalibur (1995-) fighting game series before turning to longer narrative games in the Final Fantasy (1987-) and Metal Gear (1987-) series to see how colonial complexities can function in role-playing and action genres. Taking Japan’s doubled coloniality into account, certain themes, motifs and imagery in the games come into focus as key points of negotiation with the past. Colonial legacies coalesce in the visual and narrative representations of player-characters and non-player-characters (NPCs) alike, illuminating their diegetic motivation as well as the extra-diegetic reasoning for their character design, racialized in specific ways and pointing to specific ideologies of identity, belonging and ownership of place. Performing this kind of close reading, colonial power dynamics emerge not only between Japan and Asia or Japan and the West, but also between Japan and its own Indigenous populations.
Game Studies, 2021
This essay examines the charge of colonial rhetoric in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (N... more This essay examines the charge of colonial rhetoric in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017), taking into account the Japanese origin of the game and what “colonialism” means in the Japanese context. I investigate the game’s ideology in terms of how it is conveyed to players, not only on the representational plane of narrative, theme and character design, but also in the manipulation of the implied player in the context of an open-world environment. I test the hypothesis that the ideology of the game is clearest in its architecture -- the structure of rules and script that serves as a shell to player-driven exploration -- and is accessible through observant play. “Observant play” is defined as paying close attention to direct instructions, limiting possibilities of action in the open world, and negotiating meaning-making according the player’s own values, prior knowledge and experience. As such, the observant player is defined as a specific subset of the implied player. The essay incorporates an experimental playthrough to perform a close reading of in-game instructions and their significance. While environmental cues and narrative development are seen to complement one another, the balance between observing external, scripted instructions and following one’s own interests and predilections of play is seen to reach a tipping point, leading to an individual, specific interpretation of the game’s rhetoric. From my own observations, I argue that the designers encourage non-violent action and an anti-colonialist worldview. In the open world, “observant play” becomes as much a self-directed interpretive practice as an exercise in following instructions.
The Representation of Japanese Politics in Manga: The Visual Literacy Of Statecraft, 2020
Kantai Collection is a media-mix phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm since the online videog... more Kantai Collection is a media-mix phenomenon that has taken Japan by storm since the online videogame was released by DMM.com in 2013. Encompassing manga, anime, game spin-offs, figurines and a wide array of related merchandise, Kantai Collection attracts a broad consumer audience. In Kantai Collection, warships are anthropomorphized as highly sexualized young women. The Kantai Collection megatext is highly political in terms of theme, representation of women, and enactment of war memories. This paper examines the manga, anime and game as part of a popular politicization of WWII by Japanese artists, also seen in blockbuster revisionist films from Japan. Kantai Collection depends on a masculinist construction of history in which the woman’s body is put to ideological use, deeply indebted to prewar kokutai philosophies. The hyper-sexualization of women in Kantai Collection contributes to the exoticization of war as distant and unreal, in a context of controversial war memories in Japan vis-à-vis the Asian mainland.
MANGA!: Visual Pop-Culture in ARTS Education , 2020
Exploring Japanese media with students, I use manga in
my culture classes to show how manga, anim... more Exploring Japanese media with students, I use manga in
my culture classes to show how manga, anime and
videogames are deeply interconnected in the context of
Japanese visual culture. This essay uses Naruto as a case
study to show the remarkable consistency of Kishimoto
Masashi’s visual style across all three media. Kishimoto’s
work is able to move fluidly across media thanks to the
fidelity of all texts to the original vision, in terms of
characterization, narrative, worldview and consumer
appeal. The essay first describes Naruto’s popularity and
legacy, before considering factors which contributed
most to its success, namely its visual consistency, and its
positioning of the consumer vis-à-vis the text. I argue that
the reader/viewer/player is able to situate themselves
within the text, with varying degrees of agency depending
on the medium. I examine specific ways in which readercharacter
identification is established in the manga, and
how this carries through into the anime and videogames,
particularly the manipulation of emotional affect
regarding Naruto’s own story. I then consider how
videogames stand apart as an interactive medium, with
differing degrees of linearity and authorship, as well as
player-character identification and disjunction, based on
player choice. The essay concludes by examining
Naruto’s simplicity of design, and how ‘mass-produced’
and ‘simple’ need not be seen as negative terms,
indicating the accessible and relatable nature of the
Naruto fictional universe.
Japanese Studies, 2019
This essay examines how photography and news footage of the Hiroshima bomb have been used as a ba... more This essay examines how photography and news footage of the Hiroshima bomb have been used as a backdrop for the action genre in Japanese film and videogames. The case studies are Fukasaku Kinji’s film Battles without Honor or Humanity (1973), and Kojima Hideo’s videogame Metal Gear Solid (1998). Fukasaku’s opening sequence employs photographic stills of the mushroom cloud, burnt-out ruins, and the black market to set the violence of yakuza gangs against the political-military violence of the United States. A generation later, Kojima's game used photographic stills of the atomic bombing in a strikingly similar way, including footage of nuclear waste facilities and weapons manufacturing. Both texts position Japan as a victim, with Hiroshima symbolizing America’s abuse of technology and power. Although both texts belong to the action genre, there is a major difference in the subjectivity of the main characters, stemming from the different narrative trajectories of each text and the media specificity of cinema and games. Agency in Kojima's text allows the player to negotiate and reshape the historical memory of Hiroshima in their own experience, performing the anti-nuclear critique through in-game actions. Combining meaningful play with digital history, videogames are highly effective vehicles for political and social critique.
This paper looks beyond the ‘media mix’ to explore some different ways of thinking about ‘transme... more This paper looks beyond the ‘media mix’ to explore some different ways of thinking about ‘transmedia’ in Japanese videogames. I examine several games and genres as artworks that pass through and across different mediums – of space, art, hardware and authorial roles – to tell their stories. Apart from the grand narrative arcs of the JRPG, I consider the shooter and fighting genre as well as action-adventure to show storytelling in different media forms, since story and characterization occur at different points of the gameplay process in different narrative modes.
Japanese games tell stories about universal human concerns, but also address anxieties situated in a particular time and space. I will examine Japanese anxieties over bioethics in the mid-1990s as a case study of transmedia storytelling in Japanese games – one vision refracted through many different artistic forms. My overall argument is that the chaotic and disjointed nature of Japan’s historical consciousness in the twentieth century demands a refracted vision, which videogames are perhaps best suited to provide.
'Introducing Japanese Popular Culture,' ed. Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade, New York and London: Routledge., 2018
The videogame is now one of the major narrative forms through which social and political issues a... more The videogame is now one of the major narrative forms through which social and political issues are critiqued and problematized by Japanese artists. Like film, literature, pop music, and other contemporary narrative forms, videogames also express ideas of national identity as well as social and political critique, such as resistance to nuclear power. While this issue has been studied in terms of Japanese literature, film and fine arts, I hope to demonstrate that videogames also contribute. This chapter examines the issue of nuclear power in one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time, Square’s Final Fantasy series (Finaru fantajii, first released in 1987). This series of role-playing games is vast in theme and scope, with each discrete title examining different ideas of life, death, and a world in danger. Final Fantasy games have been analyzed in terms of commentary on organized religion, the retelling of national memory, environmentalism and the Gaia theory. Throughout the series, the fear of nuclear war and ambivalence toward nuclear power appears in different allegorical forms. The ethics and safety of using nuclear power as an energy source comes under intense scrutiny in Final Fantasy VII, released as the flagship title for the original PlayStation console in 1997. The anti-nuclear message is conveyed through scripted dialogue, visual cues, cinematic sequences and overarching narrative themes.
Gaming Representation: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Video Games, ed. Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea Russworm. Bloomington: Indiana University Press., 2017
This paper argues that in order to analyze game narratives effectively, we must play the 'whole t... more This paper argues that in order to analyze game narratives effectively, we must play the 'whole text'. The case study is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which garnered much critical acclaim as well as critique about its representation of race. The essay shows that particular depictions of race in the game are necessary to the narrative and gameplay progression, and argues that overall, Rockstar Games provides a serious meditation on race relations in California of the 1990s. In contrast, the racial depiction of Wu Zi Mu is complicated by his disability, and echoes Orientalist rhetoric in the construction of both China and blindness.
Hutchinson examines the Japanese fighting game genre, specifically the SoulCalibur series, within... more Hutchinson examines the Japanese fighting game genre, specifically the SoulCalibur series, within the historical context of colonial East Asia. Taking a qualitatitive approach to game content and culture, she examines the politics of games as media artifacts which can perpetuate ideology, particularly through racial stereotype. Hutchinson compares the racial and ethnic representations of the ‘Other’ in SoulCalibur to racial attitudes prevalent in the Meiji period, at the height of Japanese colonial expansion into Korea, Taiwan, Okinawa and Micronesia. Drawing on work by Edward Said and Homi Bhabha on Orientalism, colonial discourse and stereotype construction, Hutchinson argues that the representation of national identity, particularly in the stereotypical ways demanded by the fighting game genre, has potent implications in contemporary East Asia.
This paper examines four of Nagai Kafu's works, each featuring a strong female character, to anal... more This paper examines four of Nagai Kafu's works, each featuring a strong female character, to analyze how the author's perspective on women in society developed over time. The first two stories examined are 'The Inebriated Beauty' and 'The Snake Charmer', from his time abroad in America and France. In these stories, gender is mediated by race, but the male narrator is exposed as being deeply embedded in the Meiji discourse on women. The next two stories examined are 'May Darkness' (from 'Night Tales of Shinbashi') and 'During the Rains', both of which are set in Japan. Here, the women are not marginalized due to their race but by their very position as women in Japanese society. Kafu examines their roles as sex workers in the capitalist economy, subjecting men and male discourse to critical scrutiny. As a writer who built his oeuvre on constructions of the 'Other', here we see Kafu as keenly aware of the processes of Othering at work in his own society.
Abstract: This article examines Kitano Takeshi’s film Kikujiro (Kikujiro no Natsu, 1999) from two... more Abstract: This article examines Kitano Takeshi’s film Kikujiro (Kikujiro no Natsu, 1999) from two directions: first, as an as an experiment in moving versus still photography, and second, as an exploration of time, memory and Japanese identity. I argue that it is in Kitano’s cinematic use of elements from the kabuki
drama that the two aspects come together. Kitano plays upon the conventions of both kabuki and film media to highlight the significance of the ‘still shot’ as it functions in human memory. By presenting moments of the story in the format of a child’s photograph album, Kitano is able to explore ideas of ‘adult’ and
‘child’ as equally arbitrary constructions. Throughout Kikujiro, Kitano draws on a rich tradition of film, drama and television convention in order to explore the idea of where identity comes from does it come from the past, the present, or
do we make it up ourselves? Kitano places emphasis on the still mie pose to heighten emotion and draw attention to the present moment. By contrasting this method against that of photography, Kitano juxtaposes past and present modes
of expression, enabling him to interrogate notions of time and the supposed timelessness of art. Finally, Kitano’s critical use of the past locates identity not in some distant, unobtainable myth of the nation, but in the lived experience of each individual as a human being.
This essay examines the effect of gender stereotypes on American undergraduate players of Japanes... more This essay examines the effect of gender stereotypes on American undergraduate players of Japanese fighting games such as Soul Calibur, Tekken and Virtua Fighter. Player reactions to representations of gender are examined to discover whether stereotypes have any effect on processes of player-character identification and immersion in the game. Gender stereotypes did have some negative effects on both identification and immersion, with players expressing objections to the hyper-sexualized and unrealistic bodies of characters. Where female players were concerned with the representation of women in patriarchal society, male players were more concerned with body image. However, when asked to identify game elements that enhanced or detracted from identification, the mechanics of the fighting game as a genre were seen as much more important than the appearance of characters.
Games and Culture
This article analyzes the quick-response binary combat game genre, suggesting that so-called "fin... more This article analyzes the quick-response binary combat game genre, suggesting that so-called "finger-twitch" games, often maligned by academics, are both complex and significant for cultural studies. While the game structure of binary combat is most often seen in terms of simple entertainment, lacking narrative power and encouraging an apathetic and passive attitude to violence, the author argues that games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Soul Calibur are complex in terms of their construction of stereotyped identity and in the binary structure of combative play. Further, the significance of the genre lies in the performative aspects of gameplay, which problematize accepted models of identification and immersion. Once the player is introduced into the superficial binary structure of combat, then that player's choice and agency become the primary factors in gameplay, ultimately creating space for the inversion of stereotype, the subversion of gender roles and the possible transcendence of the binary system.
Manga and the Representation of Japanese History, ed. Roman Rosenbaum, 2012
Between ‘Cool’ and 3.11: Implications for Teaching Japan Today, 2013
In this paper I discuss how I use the classic videogame Final Fantasy X in my courses on Japanese... more In this paper I discuss how I use the classic videogame Final Fantasy X in my courses on Japanese visual culture and Japanese videogames to teach about nuclear discourse in Japan. I describe and analyze two key scenes, Operation Mi'ihen and the Moonflow Crossing, which illustrate Japanese cultural attitudes towards technology and power.
Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: a critical approach, ed. Rachael Hutchinson and Mark Williams, 2007
This essay analyzes three of Nagai Kafu's short stories from 'Tales of America', published in 190... more This essay analyzes three of Nagai Kafu's short stories from 'Tales of America', published in 1908. I examine Kafu's view of the American Other through the techniques of direct contrast, inversion, and external observation, uncovering the power dynamics operating between men and women in the New Continent. The three stories analyzed are 'January First', 'Long Hair' and 'In the Forest'.
Remapping World Cinema: identity, culture and politics in film, edited by Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, 2006
World Cinema's 'Dialogues' with Hollywood, ed. Paul Cooke, 2007
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Papers by Rachael Hutchinson
my culture classes to show how manga, anime and
videogames are deeply interconnected in the context of
Japanese visual culture. This essay uses Naruto as a case
study to show the remarkable consistency of Kishimoto
Masashi’s visual style across all three media. Kishimoto’s
work is able to move fluidly across media thanks to the
fidelity of all texts to the original vision, in terms of
characterization, narrative, worldview and consumer
appeal. The essay first describes Naruto’s popularity and
legacy, before considering factors which contributed
most to its success, namely its visual consistency, and its
positioning of the consumer vis-à-vis the text. I argue that
the reader/viewer/player is able to situate themselves
within the text, with varying degrees of agency depending
on the medium. I examine specific ways in which readercharacter
identification is established in the manga, and
how this carries through into the anime and videogames,
particularly the manipulation of emotional affect
regarding Naruto’s own story. I then consider how
videogames stand apart as an interactive medium, with
differing degrees of linearity and authorship, as well as
player-character identification and disjunction, based on
player choice. The essay concludes by examining
Naruto’s simplicity of design, and how ‘mass-produced’
and ‘simple’ need not be seen as negative terms,
indicating the accessible and relatable nature of the
Naruto fictional universe.
Japanese games tell stories about universal human concerns, but also address anxieties situated in a particular time and space. I will examine Japanese anxieties over bioethics in the mid-1990s as a case study of transmedia storytelling in Japanese games – one vision refracted through many different artistic forms. My overall argument is that the chaotic and disjointed nature of Japan’s historical consciousness in the twentieth century demands a refracted vision, which videogames are perhaps best suited to provide.
drama that the two aspects come together. Kitano plays upon the conventions of both kabuki and film media to highlight the significance of the ‘still shot’ as it functions in human memory. By presenting moments of the story in the format of a child’s photograph album, Kitano is able to explore ideas of ‘adult’ and
‘child’ as equally arbitrary constructions. Throughout Kikujiro, Kitano draws on a rich tradition of film, drama and television convention in order to explore the idea of where identity comes from does it come from the past, the present, or
do we make it up ourselves? Kitano places emphasis on the still mie pose to heighten emotion and draw attention to the present moment. By contrasting this method against that of photography, Kitano juxtaposes past and present modes
of expression, enabling him to interrogate notions of time and the supposed timelessness of art. Finally, Kitano’s critical use of the past locates identity not in some distant, unobtainable myth of the nation, but in the lived experience of each individual as a human being.