@article{Kamm_2017, title={Brokers of “Japaneseness”: Bringing table-top J-RPGs to the “West”}, url={https://mutualimages-journal.org/index.php/mi/article/view/Vol2-3}, DOI={10.32926/2017.2.KAM.broke}, abstractNote={<p style="text-align: justify;">Japanese-language table-top role-playing games (TRPG) stayed mostly under the radar of gamers and scholars in Europe and the US until 2008, when a first English translation of such a game was released. TRPGs made by Japanese game designers had been overshadowed by their digital cousins, computer RPGs such as<em> Final Fantasy</em>, and Japan has subsequently been imagined as a digital game heaven. Instead of engaging a computer interface, however, TRPG players come together and narrate a shared adventure or story. Using character avatars and following often complex rules, their game world and the plot line of their play exist mostly in their imagination.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">One of the first English translations of a commercial Japanese game was <em>Tenra Bansh? Zero </em>(Inoue, Kitkowski) in 2014, chosen for its “Japaneseness,” that is, a plethora of elements, such as samurai, Shint? priests, and creatures from Japanese folklore. Using <em>Tenra</em>’s English translation as a key example, this paper traces how “cultural brokerage” in the case of this game does not simply translate between cultures (e.g., a supposed to be authentic Japanese one and a vaguely “Western” one) but necessarily assembles and constitutes them as single coherent wholes. By tracking the translation process, this paper seeks to show that the “Japaneseness” of <em>Tenra </em>was its selling point but also nothing it simply carried with it: The “Japaneseness” of this game needed to be created first by telling a putative audience what “authentic” Japan looks like.</p>}, number={2}, journal={Mutual Images Journal}, author={Kamm, Björn-Ole}, year={2017}, month={Mar.}, pages={44–81} }