This talk considers videogames in their context as narrative form, taking the Japanese Role-Playing Game or “JRPG” as its case study. The JRPG has much in common with the shishōsetsu, the ‘I-novel’ that dominated Japanese literature for most of the twentieth century. Rachael Hutchinson, author of Japanese Culture Through Videogames, analyzes aspects of the I-novel and the JRPG to show points of similarity, with a particular focus on textual elements that involve the reader/player in a deep relationship of intense identification with the main character. Notably, the player-character cannot progress mentally or emotionally in the narrative without coming into contact with others. It is this obligation of social interaction which provides much of the tension of the I-novel, as well as the mechanic of gameplay progress in the JRPG. Without social contact, no progress can be made for the individual.
The I-novel and the JRPG are very much products of their time, expressions of anxiety in a rapidly changing world. Although the ‘absent parent’ cliché is used in service to the RPG genre, providing effective justifications for many narrative structures, linguistic social immersion, and character-building, Hutchinson argues it is also a reflection of social breakdown in late twentieth-century Japan.
Rachael Hutchinson is an Elias Ahuja Professor of Japanese and Game Studies at the University of Delaware, where she teaches courses on Japanese language, culture, and translation. Her research focuses on identity and representation in Japanese fiction, film, manga and videogames. Books include Nagai Kafū’s Occidentalism: Defining the Japanese Self (2011), Japanese Culture Through Videogames (2019) and the edited works Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan (2013), Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: A Critical Approach (with Mark Williams, 2007), The Rioutledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature (with Leith Morton, 2016) and Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation and Liminality in the JRPG (with Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon, 2022). Most recently she edited The Handbook of Japanese Games and Gameplay, forthcoming from Amsterdam University Press.
This talk is co-sponsored by the IHGC's Games Lab and UVA's East Asia Center.