UC Santa Cruz

This dissertation examines the relationship of monsters to ideas of the nation and local difference; it tracks media transformations to uncover how monsters provided the model for character culture, mascot-making, and regional identities within Japan today. Through a series of case studies of Japanese monster towns, this project challenges the often-assumed homogeneity of the nation. Monsters embody a multiplicity of meanings in Japan that are deployed to make sense of regional differences. These meanings include geographical and climatic elements, dialects and customs, village lifeways, and local products. Moreover, monsters have been mobilized as sources of Japaneseness that have been used to define the nation against others. In recent years, monsters have become the mascots of regional tourism that revive local economies and rural communities. Japanese monsters mediate local and national identities, and, for a growing urban populace, they provide a means for re-connecting with the native place never visited. The crux of the argument is that Japanese character culture is monster culture – that the popular culture of the present is the result of an interweaving of folklore and monstrous texts beginning in the Tokugawa period.