Acknowledgments

This book grew from a long-term fascination with the molding of subjectivity through media. For this I credit growing up in California, with its stubborn belief in the power of self-reinvention through lifestyle engineering, and time spent getting lost in Tokyo, with its endless maze of carefully curated spaces. I admire the pragmatism of both places’ willingness to experiment with new forms of living, at the same time as I remain haunted by so much of what these surface designs strive to cover over. I first thank my parents, Deborah and Gregory Roquet, not only for their steady support but also for modeling an open-minded skepticism that has continued to help guide me across these uneven landscapes.

The aesthetic ideas here emerged from a long time spent immersed in mediated moods of many kinds. KSPC radio at Pomona College gave me a chance to explore new ambient and experimental music on the air. Kyoko Kurita helped me explore the interface between sound and Japanese literature early on. A year of postgraduate “acoustic ecology” research traveling through the South Pacific and Southeast Asia on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship provided an extended opportunity to study the relationship between soundscapes and urbanization. I am grateful to the late Katherine Hagedorn for her enthusiastic support for this project.

At the University of California, Berkeley, this book would never have grown as it did without Alan Tansman’s encouragement, sincerity, and intellectual generosity. Miryam Sas provided crucial feedback on early versions of the manuscript, and the first inklings of some central ideas here came together in her Japanese Aesthetic Theory seminars. Dan O’Neill’s close reading of urban space in modern Japanese literature proved an early impetus as well. Lalitha Gopalan strengthened my dedication to experimental film and video, while Andrew Jones demonstrated why sound studies and Asian studies resonate better together. UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center and Arts Research Center provided opportunities to work across disciplines and engage with a lively community of lateral thinkers. The Center for Japanese Studies provided further support for research trips to Japan early in the project.

A Fulbright IIE Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship made possible the first of what became three years of research activities in Tokyo, ably administered by Toyama Keiko at the Akasaka-mitsuke office. Uno Kuniichi graciously hosted me at Rikkyō University and helped push my thinking in unexpected and always rewarding directions. Hasegawa Hitomi of the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art generously ushered me into the Japanese video art community.

Subsequent years at Stanford University as an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the humanities provided an ideal environment to complete the book while pondering both the future of the aesthetic disciplines and the strangeness of Silicon Valley. Thanks go to J. P. Daughton, R. Lanier Anderson, James Reichert, and the other Mellons for their support and guidance.

The final state of the book owes a great deal to the incisive feedback of two anonymous readers for the University of Minnesota Press, Danielle Kasprzak’s editorial guidance, and anonymous reviews from the Journal of Popular Music Studies and the Journal of Japanese Studies on earlier versions of chapters 2 and 6. A wide range of artists and musicians contributed to this research through interviews, providing study copies of works or helping point me toward materials I was unaware of. I am grateful to Ise Shōko, Hatakeyama Chihei, Tetsu Inoue, Kano Shiho, Goshima Kazuhiro, Satō Minoru, Kurokawa Ryōichi, Idemitsu Mako, and Taki Kentarō. Thanks also go to Ochiai Nozomi of Mainichi Video-Audio Systems and Nakaue Atsushi of Dentsū Music and Entertainment for their research assistance.

The ideas here developed on a more day-to-day level through conversation and coffee with fellow travelers, including Marië Abe, Sean Callaghan, Michael Craig, David Humphrey, Kim Icreverzi, Miki Kaneda, Nick Kaufman, Yumi Kim, Namiko Kunimoto, Andrew Leong, Diane Lewis, Daryl Maude, Xiao Liu, Patrick Luhan, Patrick Noonan, Mark Roberts, Maria Römer, Jordan Smith, Joanna Sturiano, Robert Szeliga, Max Ward, Jeremy Yellen, Ken Yoshida, and Alex Zahlten. Special thanks go to Momoko Shimizu for refusing to tolerate academic blather and kijō no kūron (armchair theorizing).

Finally, I am grateful to all those taking the initiative to create more thoughtful, enlivening, and inclusive atmospheres, whatever the context. Often, all it takes is a willingness to experiment a bit with the BGM.