The Effect Of Pokemon On Childrens Culture

The impact on children’s culture of anime, manga, video games and trading cards of Pokémon

Japan’s popular culture industry is very vigorous in recent years. The popular culture consists of anime, manga, video games and trading cards. These media have a great impact on children’s culture in Japan and also other countries. Pokémon is a very successful case. Pokémon first appeared in the game of the Nintendo’s Game Boy, and then quickly diversified into manga, anime, movies, trading cards and toys in those years, and Pokémon phenomenon is appeared in Japan in 1996. These products revolved mainly around children and youths and had impacts on them. This essay will examine the impact of Japanese popular media culture on children’s culture using Pokémon as an example. The impacts which will discuss in this essay are effects on children’s literacy, the social effects, effects of addiction and violence. I will use two case studies to argue some effects on children’s literacy. Data have been collected from two articles. The author of the articles was a primary school teacher and she collected data from the classes she was teaching. Besides children’s literacy, there are many impacts in other aspects. Furthermore, negative impacts are much more than positive impacts. This will be discussed at the end of the essay, also the future of children’s culture under the influence of Japanese popular culture.

The anime Pokémon is diversified from its video game. This anime talks about Satoshi, a 10 years old boy, and his friends travels the world catching Pokémon and battling Pokémon trainers. This is the primary source of the essay.

Allison, A. 2004. ‘Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product’. In: Tobin, J. Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Durham: Duke University Press: 34-52

Anne Allison is a Professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. Her current research is on the recent popularization of Japanese children’s goods on the global marketplace and how its trends in cuteness, character merchandise, and high-tech play pals are remaking Japan’s place in today’s world of millennial capitalism. In Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product, she finds that Pokémon is a successful case of children’s entertainment product with media mixes. Its success follows the previous waves of successful Japanese products which started in the late 1980s, and have impacted childhood consumption around the world. These products impacted children’s lifestyle in new interactive ways. Pokémon is game-based makes it more interactive than a mere anime or movie. This article provides information that supports my arguments, children buy lots of Pokémon-related products other than video games or comics, and Pokémon create or facilitate a common culture among children.

Arthur, L. 2001. ‘Popular Culture and Early Literacy Learning’, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2(3): 295-308

Dr Leonie Arthur is a senior lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Western Sydney. She has taught in long day care, preschool and school and is an active member of a number of peak early childhood organizations, including Early Childhood Australia. She currently works with undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Western Sydney in areas of early childhood curriculum and literacy. This article reports on research findings which indicate that while children’s home and community literacy experiences and texts are increasingly digital and connected to popular media culture experiences and texts in educational settings are predominantly book-based and generally exclude popular media culture. In practice, children’s literacy is affect by television, videos, computers, comics, trading cards and magazines rather than children’s books. It also examines the role of popular media culture in children’s lives. This article provides support for my arguments which related to children’s literacy and violence: media restricts children’s creativity and promotes violence.

Buckingham, D. and Green, J.S. 2003. ‘Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture’. Culture and Society 25(3): 379-399

David Buckingham is the Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London University. His research is on children’s and young people’s interactions with television and electronic media. Julian Sefton-Green is the Head of Media Arts at WAC Performing Arts and Media College, an informal learning centre in North London, England. He has researched and written widely on many aspects of media education and new technologies. The authors point out that Pokémon as a phenomenon is a controlled and calculated commercial strategy aimed manipulatively at the children’s market. They examine some positive and negative effects of the Pokémon phenomenon on children. Pokémon engages children visually through television, video games and as consumers through the range of products available. This article provides information that support my argument, Pokémon create common culture among children, makes children spend lots of money to collect valuable trading cards and children bully others to grab their cards.

Ito, M. 2006. ‘Japanese Media Mixes and Amateur Cultural Exchange’. In: Buckingham, D. and Willett, R. Digital Generation: Children, Young People, and New Media. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 49-66

Mizuko Ito is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who is an Associate Researcher at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Her main professional interest is the use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities. She sees “the move toward new media as an interaction between long-standing and emergent media forms, rather than a shift from old analog to new digital media;” while most of the essay explores the “low-tech media of trading cards and comic books,” The article is about young people’s relationship to media. Ito argues that “these analog media forms are being newly infected through digitally enabled sociality”. She also examines the trading cards activities. This article supports my argument that children play trading cards class whenever they have time and a people as their competitor.

Marsh. J. 2009. ‘Writing and Popular Culture’. In: Beard, R. and Myhill, D. and Riley, J. and Nystrand, M. The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development. London: SAGE Publication Ltd: 313-324

Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education and Head of the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the role and nature of popular culture in young children’s literacy development. She has conducted research projects that have explored children´s access to new technologies and their emergent digital literacy skills, knowledge and understanding. This chapter examines the potential role that popular culture can play in writing curriculum in schools. She examines how popular culture affects children and young people’s written texts in classrooms. She considers the adaptation of out-of-school popular cultural writing practices for educational purposes, and explores the way in which these practices are challenging the boundaries of writing as it is instantiated in the curriculum. This article provides information that support my argument, popular culture restricts children’s creativity/

McDonnell, K. 2000. Kid Culture: children and adults and popular culture. Annandale: Pluto Press.

Kathleen McDonnell makes her living writing in a variety of genres, from playwriting to junior fiction to social criticism. Besides her many books, she writes articles and opinion pieces for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Chatelaine, Maclean”s, and Utne Reader, and also contributes to CBC Radio and Canada AM. Her plays have been produced throughout Canada. She explained that the reason she writes about children: “I find that children’s stories are usually the best medium to express what I want to say; and about because I have a burning interest in kids and their culture, how they think and feel about the world they’re growing up in”. The book explores children and popular culture and help adults better understand the role of popular cultures plays in children’s lives. Kathleen McDonnell offers a balanced and engaging perspective on the power and influence of children’s culture. This book supports my argument that trading cards encourage gambling addiction.

McGray, D. 2002. ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’. Foreign Policy. June/July 2002: 44-54

Douglas McGray writes about social and political issues, science, and culture for the New Yorker, This American Life, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, and Time. He is a contributing writer of Foreign Policy magazine. He spent the spring of 2001 in Japan as a media fellow of the Japan Society. In Japan’s Gross National Cool, McGray argues Japan’s street culture, from fashion to art to music, has become ever more vibrant and is having an unprecedented influence on the rest of the world. He analyzes “what made Japan a superpower more than just a wealthy country”. He examines the globalization of Japanese culture. This article provides information of how Japanese popular culture affects other countries.

Squire, K. 2003. ‘Video games in education’. International Journal of Intelligent Simulations and Gaming (2) 1.

Dr. Kurt D. Squire is an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Games, Learning & Society Initiative, and best known for his research into game design for education. The article examines the history of games in educational research, and argues that the cognitive potential of games have been largely ignored by educators. Contemporary developments in gaming, particularly interactive stories, digital authoring tools, and collaborative worlds, suggest powerful new opportunities for educational media. Squire analyzes educational games refers to some checklists ad frameworks. He promotes case studies and design experiments as a research method that doesn’t study isolated variables. He states that there are four concerns of video games, which are encouraging violent or aggressive behavior, employing destructive gender stereotyping, promoting unhealthy attitudes and stifling creative play. This article provides information that support my argument, popular culture restrict children’s creativity and children imitate violence in media.

Willett, R. 2004. ‘The Multiple Identities of Pokémon Fans’. In: Tobin, J. Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Durham: Duke University Press: 226-240.

Dr Rebekah Willett is a lecturer in Education on the MA in Media, Culture and Communication and the MA in ICT at the Institute of Education. She is a member of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. She has conducted research on children’s media cultures, focusing on issues of gender, literacy and learning. Willett discusses the multiple identities of Pokémon fans. She uses a cultural studies model to make sense of the “identity work” children do in their story writing. She finds that Pokémon thrives in children’s culture by providing a variety of subject positions for children to adopt as they perform and shift their identities in a variety of context in their daily lives. This article supports my argument, children use too much dialogue and insufficient amount of description when writing story because of popular culture, and children isolate others who do not familiar with Pokémon.

Willett, R. 2005. ‘”Baddies” in the classroom: Media education and narrative writing’. Literacy 39, 3: 142-148.

Dr Rebekah Willett is a lecturer in Education on the MA in Media, Culture and Communication and the MA in ICT at the Institute of Education. She is a member of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. She has conducted research on children’s media cultures, focusing on issues of gender, literacy and learning. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on children’s media-based story writing. The study examines how children write their own stories under the effects of media, that is, how they consume media and how they produce new media texts. Willett finds that children’s media-based stories make explicit some of implicit knowledge of new media forms. “Baddies” in the classroom: Media education and narrative writing provides information that support my argument, children write too much dialogue and insufficient amount of description, story with unpronounceable names and incomprehensible plots, also unnecessary violence.