Japanese Seasonal Play: A Prehistory of Pokémon GO

The popularity of Pokémon GO has been credited to its branding by the Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company Nintendo, the technological innovations of the game’s developer Niantic, and the historical traditions of European avant-garde locative play. The author, instead, offers a different explanation that involves a radical new take on Pokémon GO, pointing to its ancestry in the seasonal play of Japan. Based on his fieldwork during residencies at Studio Kura in Itoshima, Japan, and through Asialink at Tokyo Art and Space, he explores the Japanese roots of the game in insect collecting, shrine pilgrimage, leisure tourism, and stamp rallies as modes of play. He relocates the genealogy of Pokémon GO and invokes the largely untold history of Japanese seasonal play, both of which hold significant implications for the ways we consider and conceptualize pervasive and location-based games globally.