Rachael Hutchinson, Elias Ahuja Professor of Japanese and Game Studies, is building bridges between two academic disciplines with a new project, “Translating Japanese Videogame Theory.” Hutchinson received a College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Fellowship to support the project for 2023–2025. The Japanese Videogame Theory Reader will be published as a collection of essays on video games and game studies by Japanese scholars, translated into English for the first time. 

Academics researching Japanese games are severely limited by their lack of Japanese language ability, yet little Japanese scholarship is available in translation. English-language scholarship on Japanese games relies on a handful of theorists whose work is translated, limiting the scope of scholarly inquiry. Hutchinson and her colleagues aim to introduce readers to topics like arcade and LAN culture in Japan, nativist definitions of “leisure” and “play,” platform studies from the Japanese perspective (for example, the Nintendo versus Atari rivalry) and comparisons of Western and Japanese role-playing game genres. The pieces selected for translation include those which had a strong impact the collaborators’ scholarship as well as essays and book chapters considered influential by leaders in the field in Japan, including Katō Hiroyasu, Matsunaga Shinji, Uemura Masayuki, Nakagawa Daichi and Kayama Rika.

Hutchinson was joined on the project by co-editors Mimi Okabe (assistant professor of Japanese at Baruch College, New York), Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon (professeur adjoint, Études des Cultures Numériques, Université de l'Ontario Français), and Frank Mondelli (assistant professor of Japanese Studies, University of Delaware). The editorial team gave a series of conference panels during the grant period to disseminate the rationale for the project and gain feedback from a variety of academic audiences. Roundtable panels were held at the Replaying Japan conference in Rochester, New York, the DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Association for Asian Studies annual conference in Seattle.

In November 2024, Mimi Okabe visited UD to attend the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies conference, in a panel organized by Hutchinson on Japanese games. Hutchinson and Okabe were joined by recent GAME graduate Alex Irwin, who presented on social constructs in Japanese role-playing games. Okabe attended Hutchinson’s Japanese literature class to discuss her work as a translator and interpreter as well as her book Manga, Murder and Mystery: The Boy Detectives of Japan’s Lost Generation (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Okabe answered questions as part of a mini-panel with Keita Moore, assistant professor of Japanese studies at Ohio State University, who is part of the translation team for the group’s edited volume. Moore is an experienced localizer for videogames, having worked at Square Enix for many years. He told the class about his experiences working on Final Fantasy XIV, a blockbuster online role-playing game that many of the students had played themselves. Issues of formality and gender made the translation work complex, with many different options to express similar ideas. Students were excited to meet these scholars who work in a field related to their coursework, and they had many questions for the visitors.

The Japanese Videogame Theory Reader promises to be an important source book for the growing field of Japanese game studies. It is hoped that the broader discipline of game studies will be enriched by expanded accessibility to Japanese scholarship, along with Hutchinson’s edited volume, The Handbook of Japanese Games and Gameplay (Japan Documents Press/Amsterdam University Press, 2025), including many chapters by Japanese academics and scholars who live and work in Japan.