Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317467205
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture by : Timothy J. Craig

Download or read book Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture written by Timothy J. Craig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating illustrated look at various forms of Japanese popular culture: pop song, jazz, enka (a popular ballad genre of music), karaoke, comics, animated cartoons, video games, television dramas, films and "idols" -- teenage singers and actors. As pop culture not only entertains but is also a reflection of society, the book is also about Japan itself -- its similarities and differences with the rest of the world, and how Japan is changing. The book features 32 pages of manga plus 50 additional photos, illustrations, and shorter comic samples.

Pure Invention

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 1984826719
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Pure Invention by : Matt Alt

Download or read book Pure Invention written by Matt Alt and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured—and transformed—the world’s imagination. “A masterful book driven by deep research, new insights, and powerful storytelling.”—W. David Marx, author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives. In the 1970s and ’80s, Japan seemed to exist in some near future, gliding on the superior technology of Sony and Toyota. Then a catastrophic 1990 stock-market crash ushered in the “lost decades” of deep recession and social dysfunction. The end of the boom should have plunged Japan into irrelevance, but that’s precisely when its cultural clout soared—when, once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us. Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and multimedia empires like Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed them—connecting as well as isolating us in new ways, opening vistas of imagination and pathways to revolution. Through the stories of an indelible group of artists, geniuses, and oddballs, Pure Invention reveals how Japan’s pop-media complex remade global culture.

Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317467213
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture by : Timothy J. Craig

Download or read book Japan Pop: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture written by Timothy J. Craig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating illustrated look at various forms of Japanese popular culture: pop song, jazz, enka (a popular ballad genre of music), karaoke, comics, animated cartoons, video games, television dramas, films and "idols" -- teenage singers and actors. As pop culture not only entertains but is also a reflection of society, the book is also about Japan itself -- its similarities and differences with the rest of the world, and how Japan is changing. The book features 32 pages of manga plus 50 additional photos, illustrations, and shorter comic samples.

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie

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Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674971698
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis Tokyo Boogie-Woogie by : Hiromu Nagahara

Download or read book Tokyo Boogie-Woogie written by Hiromu Nagahara and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-10 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging in the 1920s, the Japanese pop scene gained a devoted following, and the soundscape of the next four decades became the audible symbol of changing times. In the first English-language history of this Japanese industry, Hiromu Nagahara connects the rise of mass entertainment with Japan’s transformation into a postwar middle-class society.

Japan Edge

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Author :
Publisher : Viz Media
ISBN 13 : 9781569313459
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (134 download)

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Book Synopsis Japan Edge by : Annette Roman

Download or read book Japan Edge written by Annette Roman and published by Viz Media. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively, idiosyncratic survey of Japanese film, music, animation, and comics showcases the experiences of five avid American fans: journalist Carl Gustav Horn, who writes about anime; critic and musician Mason Jones, who releases Japanese alternative music on his Charnel Music record label; Patrick Macias, a writer on Asian film for the San Francisco Bay Guardian; Matt Thorn, a translator and expert on shojo (girls') manga;

Japan Pop-Up Book

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9784805316498
Total Pages : 12 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

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Book Synopsis Japan Pop-Up Book by : Sam Ita

Download or read book Japan Pop-Up Book written by Sam Ita and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take an exciting manga pop-up journey across Japan with Chico and Neko the Cat! Pick up where Tokyo Pop-Up Book left off, as Chico and his mischievous cat Neko visit Japan's most famous landmarks. The chase is on as naughty Neko slips away yet again--this time becoming a stowaway on a Japanese bullet train! Using his phone to track his runaway cat, Chico follows Neko to some of Japan's most iconic places: Mt. Fuji and the Big Buddha at Kamakura Serene Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion Himeji Castle, an ancient Samurai fortress with its formidable stone ramparts A sushi train restaurant, where an endless parade of fish is truly a cat's dream! The Children's Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, where Chico pauses to reflect The famous "floating" Torii gate at Itsukushima "Cat Island" (Tashirojima), where Neko finds a few new friends and the adventure comes to a happy conclusion! Educational and entertaining in equal measure, this exciting manga pop-up book will be treasured by readers of all ages.

Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.

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Author :
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 140398476X
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (39 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. by : Roland Kelts

Download or read book Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. written by Roland Kelts and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-11-13 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the American experience with the Japanese pop culture craze, including anime from Hayao Miyazaki's epics to the burgeoning world of hentai, or violent pornographic anime to Haruki Murakami's fiction.

Japanese Popular Music

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134179510
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (341 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Popular Music by : Carolyn S. Stevens

Download or read book Japanese Popular Music written by Carolyn S. Stevens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese popular culture has been steadily increasing in visibility both in Asia and beyond in recent years. This book examines Japanese popular music, exploring its historical development, technology, business and production aspects, audiences, and language and culture. Based both on extensive textual and aural analysis, and on anthropological fieldwork, it provides a wealth of detail, finding differences as well as similarities between the Japanese and Western pop music scenes. Carolyn Stevens shows how Japanese popular music has responded over time to Japan's relationship to the West in the post-war era, gradually growing in independence from the political and cultural hegemonic presence of America. Similarly, the volume explores the ways in which the Japanese artist has grown in independence vis-à-vis his/her role in the production process, and examines in detail the increasingly important role of the jimusho, or the entertainment management agency, where many individual artists and music industry professionals make decisions about how the product is delivered to the public. It also discusses the connections to Japanese television, film, print and internet, thereby providing through pop music a key to understanding much of Japanese popular culture more widely.

Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

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Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231158742
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon by : Michael K. Bourdaghs

Download or read book Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon written by Michael K. Bourdaghs and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning of the American Occupation in 1945 to the post-bubble period of the early 1990s, popular music provided Japanese listeners with a much-needed release, channeling their desires, fears, and frustrations into a pleasurable and fluid art. Pop music allowed Japanese artists and audiences to assume various identities, reflecting the country's uncomfortable position under American hegemony and its uncertainty within ever-shifting geopolitical realities. In the first English-language study of this phenomenon, Michael K. Bourdaghs considers genres as diverse as boogie-woogie, rockabilly, enka, 1960s rock and roll, 1970s new music, folk, and techno-pop. Reading these forms and their cultural import through music, literary, and cultural theory, he introduces readers to the sensual moods and meanings of modern Japan. As he unpacks the complexities of popular music production and consumption, Bourdaghs interprets Japan as it worked through (or tried to forget) its imperial past. These efforts grew even murkier as Japanese pop migrated to the nation's former colonies. In postwar Japan, pop music both accelerated and protested the commodification of everyday life, challenged and reproduced gender hierarchies, and insisted on the uniqueness of a national culture, even as it participated in an increasingly integrated global marketplace. Each chapter in Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon examines a single genre through a particular theoretical lens: the relation of music to liberation; the influence of cultural mapping on musical appreciation; the role of translation in transmitting musical genres around the globe; the place of noise in music and its relation to historical change; the tenuous connection between ideologies of authenticity and imitation; the link between commercial success and artistic integrity; and the function of melodrama. Bourdaghs concludes with a look at recent Japanese pop music culture.

Japanamerica

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Author :
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9781403974754
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanamerica by : Roland Kelts

Download or read book Japanamerica written by Roland Kelts and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Japanese pop culture such as anime and manga (Japanese animation and comic books) is Asia's equivalent of the Harry Potter phenomenon--an overseas export that has taken America by storm. While Hollywood struggles to fill seats, Japanese anime releases are increasingly outpacing American movies in number and, more importantly, in the devotion they inspire in their fans. But just as Harry Potter is both "universal" and very English, anime is also deeply Japanese, making its popularity in the United States totally unexpected. Japanamerica is the first book that directly addresses the American experience with the Japanese pop phenomenon, covering everything from Hayao Miyazaki's epics, the burgeoning world of hentai, or violent pornographic anime, and Puffy Amiyumi, whose exploits are broadcast daily on the Cartoon Network, to literary novelist Haruki Murakami, and more. With insights from the artists, critics, readers and fans from both nations, this book is as literate as it is hip, highlighting the shared conflicts as American and Japanese pop cultures dramatically collide in the here and now.For more information visit http://www.japanamericabook.com/

Recentering Globalization

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822384086
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Recentering Globalization by : Koichi Iwabuchi

Download or read book Recentering Globalization written by Koichi Iwabuchi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization is usually thought of as the worldwide spread of Western—particularly American—popular culture. Yet if one nation stands out in the dissemination of pop culture in East and Southeast Asia, it is Japan. Pokémon, anime, pop music, television dramas such as Tokyo Love Story and Long Vacation—the export of Japanese media and culture is big business. In Recentering Globalization, Koichi Iwabuchi explores how Japanese popular culture circulates in Asia. He situates the rise of Japan’s cultural power in light of decentering globalization processes and demonstrates how Japan’s extensive cultural interactions with the other parts of Asia complicate its sense of being "in but above" or "similar but superior to" the region. Iwabuchi has conducted extensive interviews with producers, promoters, and consumers of popular culture in Japan and East Asia. Drawing upon this research, he analyzes Japan’s "localizing" strategy of repackaging Western pop culture for Asian consumption and the ways Japanese popular culture arouses regional cultural resonances. He considers how transnational cultural flows are experienced differently in various geographic areas by looking at bilateral cultural flows in East Asia. He shows how Japanese popular music and television dramas are promoted and understood in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and how "Asian" popular culture (especially Hong Kong’s) is received in Japan. Rich in empirical detail and theoretical insight, Recentering Globalization is a significant contribution to thinking about cultural globalization and transnationalism, particularly in the context of East Asian cultural studies.

Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317649540
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan by : Jennifer Milioto Matsue

Download or read book Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan written by Jennifer Milioto Matsue and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focus: Music in Contemporary Japan explores a diversity of musics performed in Japan today, ranging from folk song to classical music, the songs of geisha to the screaming of underground rock, with a specific look at the increasingly popular world of taiko (ensemble drumming). Discussion of contemporary musical practice is situated within broader frames of musical and sociopolitical history, processes of globalization and cosmopolitanism, and the continued search for Japanese identity through artistic expression. It explores how the Japanese have long negotiated cultural identity through musical practice in three parts: Part I, "Japanese Music and Culture," provides an overview of the key characteristics of Japanese culture that inform musical performance, such as the attitude towards the natural environment, changes in ruling powers, dominant religious forms, and historical processes of cultural exchange. Part II, "Sounding Japan," describes the elements that distinguish traditional Japanese music and then explores how music has changed in the modern era under the influence of Western music and ideology. Part III, "Focusing In: Identity, Meaning and Japanese Drumming in Kyoto," is based on fieldwork with musicians and explores the position of Japanese drumming within Kyoto. It focuses on four case studies that paint a vivid picture of each respective site, the music that is practiced, and the pedagogy and creative processes of each group. The downloadable resources include examples of Japanese music that illustrate specific elements and key genres introduced in the text. A companion website includes additional audio-visual sources discussed in detail in the text. Jennifer Milioto Matsue is an Associate Professor at Union College and specializes in modern Japanese music and culture.

Hip-Hop Japan

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822388162
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Hip-Hop Japan by : Ian Condry

Download or read book Hip-Hop Japan written by Ian Condry and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively ethnography Ian Condry interprets Japan’s vibrant hip-hop scene, explaining how a music and culture that originated halfway around the world is appropriated and remade in Tokyo clubs and recording studios. Illuminating different aspects of Japanese hip-hop, Condry chronicles how self-described “yellow B-Boys” express their devotion to “black culture,” how they combine the figure of the samurai with American rapping techniques and gangsta imagery, and how underground artists compete with pop icons to define “real” Japanese hip-hop. He discusses how rappers manipulate the Japanese language to achieve rhyme and rhythmic flow and how Japan’s female rappers struggle to find a place in a male-dominated genre. Condry pays particular attention to the messages of emcees, considering how their raps take on subjects including Japan’s education system, its sex industry, teenage bullying victims turned schoolyard murderers, and even America’s handling of the war on terror. Condry attended more than 120 hip-hop performances in clubs in and around Tokyo, sat in on dozens of studio recording sessions, and interviewed rappers, music company executives, music store owners, and journalists. Situating the voices of Japanese artists in the specific nightclubs where hip-hop is performed—what musicians and fans call the genba (actual site) of the scene—he draws attention to the collaborative, improvisatory character of cultural globalization. He contends that it was the pull of grassroots connections and individual performers rather than the push of big media corporations that initially energized and popularized hip-hop in Japan. Zeebra, DJ Krush, Crazy-A, Rhymester, and a host of other artists created Japanese rap, one performance at a time.

Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780924304620
Total Pages : 85 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization by : William M. Tsutsui

Download or read book Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization written by William M. Tsutsui and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization is the only concise overview of Japan's phenomenal impact on world pop culture available in English. Surveying Japanese forms from anime (animation) and manga (comic books) to monster movies and Hello Kitty products, this volume is an accessible introduction to Japan's pop creativity and its appeal worldwide. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with more than 20 photographs, Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization combines a historical approach to the evolution and diffusion of Japanese pop with interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, literary studies, political science, and the visual arts. Includes a useful glossary of terms and a bibliography of recommended readings.

Full Metal Apache

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822388014
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Full Metal Apache by : Takayuki Tatsumi

Download or read book Full Metal Apache written by Takayuki Tatsumi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takayuki Tatsumi is one of Japan’s leading cultural critics, renowned for his work on American literature and culture. With his encyclopedic knowledge and fan’s love of both Japanese and American art and literature, he is perhaps uniquely well situated to offer this study of the dynamic crosscurrents between the avant-gardes and pop cultures of Japan and the United States. In Full Metal Apache, Tatsumi looks at the work of artists from both sides of the Pacific: fiction writers and poets, folklorists and filmmakers, anime artists, playwrights, musicians, manga creators, and performance artists. Tatsumi shows how, over the past twenty years or so, writers and artists have openly and exuberantly appropriated materials drawn from East and West, from sources both high and low, challenging and unraveling the stereotypical images Japan and America have of one another. Full Metal Apache introduces English-language readers to a vast array of Japanese writers and performers and considers their work in relation to the output of William Gibson, Thomas Pynchon, H. G. Wells, Jack London, J. G. Ballard, and other Westerners. Tatsumi moves from the poetics of metafiction to the complex career of Madame Butterfly stories and from the role of the Anglo-American Lafcadio Hearn in promoting Japanese folklore within Japan during the nineteenth century to the Japanese monster Godzilla as an embodiment of both Japanese and Western ideas about the Other. Along the way, Tatsumi develops original arguments about the self-fashioning of “Japanoids” in the globalist age, the philosophy of “creative masochism” inherent within postwar Japanese culture, and the psychology of “Mikadophilia” indispensable for the construction of a cyborg identity. Tatsumi’s exploration of the interplay between Japanese and American cultural productions is as electric, ebullient, and provocative as the texts and performances he analyzes.

Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781937220051
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground by : Ian F. Martin

Download or read book Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground written by Ian F. Martin and published by . This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sugar rush of Tokyo's idol subculture to the discordant polyrhythms of its experimental punk and indie scenes, this book by Japan Times music columnist Ian F. Martin offers a witty and tender look at the wide spectrum of issues that shape Japanese music today. With unique theories about the evolution of J-pop as well as its history, infrastructure and (sub)cultures, Martin deconstructs an industry that operates very differently from counterparts overseas. Based partly on interviews with influential artists, label owners and event organisers, Martin's book combines personal anecdotes with cultural criticism and music history. An accessible and humorous account emerges of why some creative acts manage to overcome institutional pressures, without quitting their bands. Ian Martin's writing about Japanese music has appeared in The Japan Times, CNN Travel and The Guardian among other places. Martin is based in Tokyo, where he also runs Call And Response Records.

Pure Invention

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Author :
Publisher : Constable
ISBN 13 : 9781472131867
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (318 download)

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Book Synopsis Pure Invention by : Matt Alt

Download or read book Pure Invention written by Matt Alt and published by Constable. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Walkman. Karaoke. Pikachu. Pac-Man. Akira. Emoji. We've all fallen in love with one or another of Japan's pop-culture creations, from the techy to the wild to the super-kawaii. But as Japanese media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation of Tokyo's pop-fantasy complex, we don't know the half of it. Japan's toys, gadgets, and fantasy worlds didn't merely entertain. They profoundly transformed the way we live. In the 1970s and '80s, Japan seemed to exist in some near future, soaring on the superior technology of Sony and Toyota while the West struggled to catch up. Then a catastrophic 1990 stock-market crash ushered in the "lost decades" of deep recession and social dysfunction. The end of the boom times should have plunged Japan into irrelevance, but that's precisely when its cultural clout soared-when, once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us. Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and entertainment empires like Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products made Japan the forge of the world's fantasies, and gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed them-connecting as well as isolating us in new ways, opening vistas of imagination and pathways to revolution. Through the stories of an indelible group of artists, geniuses, and oddballs, Pure Invention reveals how Japanese ingenuity remade global culture and may have created modern life as we know it. It's Japan's world; we're just gaming, texting, singing, and dreaming in it.