Game Studies Meets Japanese Studies. Ten Years of Research

During the last ten years, there has been an increasing interest within Game Studies towards video games produced in Japan, deployed as culturally ‘Japanese’ and circulated as such. This has produced an encounter, with subsequent intersection, between Game Studies and Japanese Studies, which has led to newly emerging commonalities, gulfs, and frictions. What emerges are explorations into what the study of Japanese video games/video games from Japan might entail, the emergence of ‘Japan’ as a distinct context of video game production, consumption, and circulation, and !nally how frameworks emerging out of Japanese Studies can contribute to Game Studies and vice-versa. This paper showcases a few of these developments, provide a !rst, tentative e"orts at mapping their developments, along with possible research directions, challenges, and potentialities.