This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of <i>ero-guro-nansensu</i> (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. Miriam Silverberg uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media...
