ABSTRACT

To understand Japanese digital culture, the keitai (mobile phone) is pivotal. Since its uptake in the 1990s, it has assumed many iterations, including the mobile Internet i-mode, arguably the precursors to smartphones (sumaho). Through the smartphone, social media such as LINE have become pivotal. In particular, the role of mobile media as an integral part of Japanese digital culture took on new dimensions after the triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown) of March 2011 (known as 3/11). The events surrounding 3/11 represented a shift in many cultural, social and political attitudes which left a palpable change in the ways in which traditional and social media were used and perceived by the Japanese public. The disaster highlighted how important the relationship between the online and offline – a form of ambient intimate co-presence – had become in Japanese everyday life. This chapter seeks to put mobile media in context socially and culturally in a post-3/11 Japan.