ABSTRACT
Working on this book has been a continually exciting and absorbing process. As editors of this first study of the Internet in Japan in English, we have been delighted, impressed and challenged by the scope and depth of the work presented here. We have also become conscious of the vast and constantly shifting terrain which still awaits the researcher. Whereas studies of the Internet in western societies now form a well-established genre of scholarly inquiry, English-language work on the Internet in Japan has until now been hard to locate. This first effort to provide an overview of aspects of the use of the Internet in Japan also addresses the problem raised by Baym: “One of the most troubling shortcomings of the many analyses of online community to date has been their reliance on personal anecdote and hypothetical theorizing in place of close study.”1 All our contributors not only offer analyses based on close readings of actual sites and interactions that provide insight into what is actually happening in the communities under study, but also engage with the wider theoretical issues underpinning the developing field of Web Studies.
