Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World - Couverture souple

Alt, Matt

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 147213186X ISBN 13 : 9781472131867

Editeur : Constable, 2020

Synopsis

The history of Japan's unprecedented takeover of the global imaginary, as told through the eight packaged fantasies that charmed and changed the world most thoroughly from Hello Kitty and the Karaoke machine to the novels of Haruki Murakami.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Matthew Alt is a writer, translator and reporter. He is the author of several illustrated books about Japan. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Wired, Slate, the Independent and the Japan Times. He is the co-host of the TV show Japanology Plus on NHK World. He lives in Japan.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured - and transformed - the world's imagination, from karaoke and the Walkman to anime and emoji.

During the 'economic miracle' of 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 what the Japanese call their 'lost decades'. The end of the boom times should have plunged Japan into irrelevance. But in Pure Invention, Matt Alt argues that's precisely when things got interesting - when once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us.

Japan made itself rich after the Second World War by selling the world what it needed, in the form of better cars, appliances, and microprocessors. But it conquered hearts through wildly creative pop culture that responded to modern life in new ways. As social compacts and safety nets evaporated, in rushed a revolution of geeky gadgets, gizmos, and flights of fancy. Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and illustrated entertainment empires like Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. They transformed Japan into the world's forge of fantasies, and they transformed us as we consumed them: karaoke making everyone a star, emoji rewriting the rules of human communication, virtual game-worlds offering escapes from reality and new perspectives on it.

By turns a nostalgia trip and a secret history, Pure Invention is the story of an indelible group of Japanese craftsmen, artists, businesspeople, geniuses, and oddballs. It is also an unsung chapter of globalization, in which Japanese dreams formed a new blueprint for global pop culture - and may have created the modern world as we know it.

Matthew Alt is a Tokyo-based writer, translator, and reporter. He is a contributor to The New Yorker, CNN, Wired, Slate, The Independent, Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, and many other publications, and is the co-author of six illustrated books about Japan.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Constable
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 147213186X
• ISBN 13: 9781472131867
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 368
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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