ABSTRACT
The inseparable linkage between a communal public imagination that is shaped by the popular culture it produces is well known. For instance, when Fritz Lang's expressionistic film Metropolis was released in 1927, its futuristic machines and robotic figures were connected with the angst of the proletariat in the popular imagination. Arguably, the existence and depiction of the precariat is one of the mainstays of graphic art in general, since the medium was traditionally referred to as a kind of plebeian art in opposition to what was perceived as high-culture fine art. In this sense manga manifested a counter-cultural discourse that pitted the middle and lower classes and their self-directed representation against the hegemony of upper-class representation. The graphic representation of the social withdrawal phenomenon hikikomori in Welcome to the Nihon hoso kyokai (NHK) depicts the burlesque sense of precarity in contemporary Japanese youth culture.
