ABSTRACT
This chapter presents thus look to promote conversations and fresh insights between scholars of Korea and Japan on the ways in which the relationship between the two is mirrored in popular consciousness and practice. It vividly brings to life a transnational imagined community and its multiple modes of belonging. The chapter underscores how conflict between Japan and Korea increasingly finds itself intertwining within global institutions: the nomination of Gunkanjima as a UNESCO World Heritage site by Japan in 2015 sharpened the focus on the island as a contested site of memory. “Japan–Korea Relations and Popular Culture Engagement”, shifts the focus to the role of audiences who, as consumers of nation-centred imageries of victimhood or as prosumers reinscribing the nation in their own discourse, interact with text. Finally, Ria Shibata’s contribution, “Japan’s Inherited Responsibility, Popular Narratives and Memory of the War”, also grapples with the question of what popular culture means for individuals and for society as a whole.
