When does science reaches to the pop cultural research? : the examples of problematic concerning manga and anime in the Polish academia

Bibliogr. s. 17-19

In the contemporary world, with the help of science, people try to describe all the specific fields of everyday life, which includes quite new phenomena, as well as those formerly treated without serious scientific approach. Sometimes such new problems require creating new methodology, a new set of terminology and techniques, and the process of building the base of professional journals and books. The way of including such new issues into the sphere of science progresses with the increasing importance of these matters in the lifestyle of numerous people and in the terms of global economy. On the other side of those changes we can find the people interested in some specific fields, who decide to develop and deepen their knowledge and understanding of their hobbies, quite often in the academic field as well. The young researchers try to connect both - the perspectives of being a fan and the opportunity to seriously investigate the topic and publish in science press or books. Such generation, called aca-fandom, appeared also in Poland in the field of Japanese popular culture - represented mainly by Japanese comic-boks and animation: manga and anime. Slow but consistent growth of the number of researchers, academic publications, also those for general public, and the increasing consciousness of the importance of popular culture, show the general change in approach of the cultural studies in Poland. That growth does not occur without problems: the students of Japanese philology on Polish universities quite recently had to face some persecutions connected with their interest in manga and anime; those studies also do not offer any courses dedicated to Japanese pop-culture. On the other side, growing number of cultural studies on various universities provides the courses and the possibilities to write a thesis about such issues. The society of fans and the academic environment are connected in many ways: mutual cooperation, inspirations, and resources for both. Also cultural and social researchers and opportunities to develop their favorite field of knowledge connected to the hobby should be mentioned. The rapid change of placing popular culture, and especially Japanese popular culture, on the map of important problems of the post-modern world is represented also by the fact that Japan acknowledged manga and anime as a significant export product, and some Japanese universities opened manga studies for future manga creators, critics and analysts.