Designing the Global Body: Japan's Postwar Modernity in Death Stranding
-
Published:April 2024
Yasheng She, 2024. "Designing the Global Body: Japan's Postwar Modernity in Death Stranding", Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us, Christopher B. Patterson, Tara Fickle
Download citation file:
Chapter 5 expands on the dissonance between Asian labors and Asian bodies through a close reading of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding (2019), a game produced by Japanese developers but with a mostly white cast and set in a fictional United States. This close reading sheds light on the game’s racial double speaks where those who are familiar with the context can easily spot the hidden Japanese discourse and find some level of catharsis, while others can enjoy the game for its more universal and hopeful message about finding comfort in unity when facing future precarity. The chapter also argues that this practice of embodying and conveying Asian discourse stunts the progress of direct representations.