Pure Invention

May 1, 2020
A nerd- and generalist-friendly look at how Japan shaped the post-World War II world, from toys to Trump. Alt, a longtime "localizer" of Japanese culture for English-language audiences, considers Japan's pop-culture influence through two lenses. The first is product-based: He delivers deep, engaging histories of totems such as toy jeeps, which sparked an industry that helped the nation pull out of its postwar economic doldrums; manga and anime, which reflected the growing cultural ferment, especially among youth protesters; karaoke machines and Hello Kitty gear, which made sweetness profitable; and the Sony Walkman, a symbol of the nation's knack for innovation and 1980s economic might. Alt has a collector-geek's enthusiasm for all of these, but he also thoughtfully considers the social trends that produced them. (Hello Kitty, for instance, embodies "kawaii," an unreconstructed adorableness that echoed the boom years and also inspired the likes of "Super Mario Brothers" and Haruki Murakami novels. Alt's second lens has more of a social element: Exploring the country's "lost decades" after the '80s, he looks at how schoolgirl culture, certain anime films, video games, Pokemon, and the internet responded to the pall that had fallen upon an aging and economically strained society. Alt is particularly sharp in his writing about "otaku," a subculture of hardcore anime fans who feel deeply disassociated from mainstream society, establishing a disenchanted mood that persisted even as the country's fortunes improved. That attitude coalesced around the website 2channel, which in turn inspired 4chan, Grand Central Station for alt-right memes and Trumpy trends. It seems a bit of a stretch to reduce American habitu�s of dank online forums to a politically influential expression of otaku, but Alt does persuasively show how Japan's economic fortunes influenced America's, and his book neatly summarizes how the future "will be made everywhere else, with values borrowed from Japan." A non-native's savvy study of Japan's wide influence in ways both subtle and profound.

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Starred review from June 1, 2020
How does one distill Japan's cultural influence on the world? Author and translator Alt's research stretches back to feudal Japan as he details the prominence of games, figures, and toys in everyday life, from childhood to maturity. Alt quickly brings his brilliant cultural survey forward to the post-Hiroshima and -Nagasaki era, when the country's much-beloved toy industry surged back with the appearance of a small replicate Jeep made by toy maker Matsuzo Kosuge. Rather than attempt to cover every aspect of Japanese cultural production during this time, Alt nimbly selects five products?the toy car, anime, karaoke, kawaii culture typified by Sanrio's Hello Kitty, and the Sony Walkman?which he treats as cherished characters in Japan's modern history. Alt tells the story of each; in the case of Hello Kitty products, he follows the path from creative concept to global phenomenon. The product narratives evolve, as Japan's economy declines in the 1990s, to the incorporating of gaming culture with anime and kawaii and on to the preponderance of the internet to underscore each product's mass appeal. Now that Japan's influence on the world is almost taken for granted, Alt's careful history is a reminder of the country's spirited creativity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)