Becoming-Minor through Shinsengumi: A Sociology of Popular Culture As a Culture of the People

This study scrutinises the rise of a people’s culture into a popularly mediated culture to reconsider the state of popular cultures in contemporary societies. For this purpose, it focuses on Shinsengumi, a group of young men in history who are feverously romanticised in contemporary Japan. Initially, Shinsengumi were marginalised from mainstream history as violent insurgents, but they were quickly reincarnated in popular culture to be gradually transformed into a popular cultural symbol through the masses’ relentless fantasising. As a culture borne by the masses, Shinsengumi provides a window onto popular culture in its broader sense as ‘the cultural habits of a particular group of people’ and thereby, a key to explicating the transitions and dynamics surrounding contemporary cultures and society. With this proposition, this study begins with an overview of previous scholarship on popular culture to demonstrate the need to explore popularly produced cultures. This is followed by an analysis of Shinsengumi narratives, the various intervals of communications undertaken to describe and/or explain the symbol since its debut in culture in early Meiji. The analysis exposes ontological shifts surrounding the concept of orthodoxy and technological advancements in a mature consumer society have diversified popular culture into different streams. Alongside this transition, Shinsengumi evolved into a Deleuze-Guattarian becoming-minor symbol which can be accessed and appropriated by anyone who seeks to transmit their personal romanticisations about the group. In practice, social interactions at the 2012 Hino Shinsengumi Festival reveal Shinsengumi’s symbolic capacity enables the symbol’s narrators to carve their own terrains by transcending conventional social and physical boundaries as they come together and across their differences through the symbol. This finding demonstrates popularly created cultures in post-capitalist societies such as Shinsengumi could operate as a disenfranchising medium for nondenumerable individuals to claim their territories, albeit temporary, through creative actions.