Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World Hardcover – June 23, 2020

Japan has contributed significantly to Western nerd culture, and while many nerds and otaku to this day continue to see the country as a sort of full scale Anime Amusement Park that just happens to be a nation, we (by which I mean, most westerners-- specifically white westerners) don't really take into account the broader historical contexts that framed such innovations, or what they meant for the country that invented them in the first place. And sometimes that can lead to a lack of sufficient appreciation or offensiveness.PURE INVENTION takes a number of Japanese inventions that ended up migrating over to the U.S., and in this collection of essays, Alt provides that framework. It starts with WWII, when artisans repurposed their shops and factories to contribute to the war effort, and how exporting toys and the like revitalized their sunken economy, and ends with the 2000s and the early days of the internet, when a site of message boards for lonely guys on the internet called 2chan ended up providing the source code for a popular site everyone knows the name of now: 8chan.The essays are varying degrees of good, although I'll admit I skimmed most of the Walkman chapter because I found it way too technical and boring. I loved the essay on Hello Kitty and the burgeoning kawaii culture among girls with shoujo manga (shout-out to Poe Clan) and pretty stationery and trendy schoolgirls, although the chapter on schoolgirls themselves ended up feeling redundant as a result because it was basically just a remix of the Hello Kitty chapter. I thought it was really interesting to blend Pokemon and kaiju into a single chapter that basically ended up being about the marketability of monsters, and the section about Tamagotchis gave me serious nostalgia vibes (and helped me find this amazing essay, the TAMAGOTCHI DIARY).There are two anime chapters, old and new. The old chapter talks about Astro/Atom Boy and some of the early dubbings that were renamed in the U.S. (like Speed Racers). It also talks about the pulp anime movement (gekiga) and how that tied into Japanese counterculture/protest culture at the time. The more recent anime chapter is about things like AKIRA, Hayao Miyazaki, and Gundam (of course), which provides a neat segue for the otaku chapter, and how it went from being an incredibly unfavorable term to something that was pretty much heartily embraced and reclaimed by nerds and geeks alike.The strongest chapter by far is the 2chan/8chan chapter and I think you could honestly make a whole book about that on its own. This chapter is also probably going to be the hardest to read for a lot of people because it highlights some of the big controversies that came from that site, you know the ones. I don't want to say too much about this chapter because I found it so upsetting, but it was also really fascinating and this was the chapter I ended up speeding through the fastest.Overall, I really, really enjoyed this book. The cover was super cheesy and I'm always a little worried when someone who isn't part of a culture writes a book about a culture, but this author had fantastic credentials (and he's a localizer, which are the people who translate and also adjust references to Japanese products that are being marketed to the U.S.; side note: for many years, I thought doughnuts in Japan were triangular because Pokemon localizers didn't seem to think that kids would be able to understand what onigiri were, so in the original American TV show, they were called "doughnuts"). It's clear Matt Alt has a real passion for Japan and also for geek culture and that is reflected in the writing and his thoroughness in interviewing key planners and providing a substantive bibliography.On a more personal note, one of my big dreams as a teen nerd was to go to Japan (although I'll admit, I was guilty of thinking it was going to be Anime Amusement Park in my youth). In my twenties, I was finally able to go and I'm glad I went as an adult and not a kid because I'm not sure I could have contained my enthusiasm and approached Japan with the respect it-- and all countries you, as a foreigner travel to-- deserves. It has a very old history, filled with both good and bad things, and even though Alt has mostly showcased the good, some of the items in this book are tarnished by tragedy. Rarely do you see a pop-culture book written with this sort of gravitas, and even though I was expecting a fun, personal romp through some of the author's favorite hobbies, like my sober trip to the country taken in my twenties, my reading of this book ended up feeling so much richer because of that solemnity.4 out of 5 stars

Overall, I liked Matt Alt's book Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World. I read the book on my kindle and listened to the audiobook version at the same time. The book is listed as having 352 pages, but it seems much shorter because the notes section takes up 25 percent of the book and I skimmed through that notes section rather quickly.The basic idea of the book is a description of how Japan experienced an incredible economic boom from the end of World War II to 1990 and how exports of popular culture were a big part of this. The story begins with toy manufacturing and, later, transistor radios, followed by such exports as the walkman, video games (Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog), manga and anime, Hello Kitty (this takes up a surprising amount of space in the book) Haruki Murakami (I wish the book had gone into more detail about him and his books), as well as 4chan and 8chan (which began as 2chan in Japan). I will not provide links to any of the chans because the less you think about them the better off you are.One of the most important companies in Japan is Sony which, when Alt first describes them in the book, were selling transistor radios. This moment is one of my favorites in the book: The headline in the January 24, 1958, issue of The New York Times read, "4,000 Tiny Radios Stolen in Queens." ... with [the thieves] disappeared $160,000 worth of transistor radios, the single largest heist of its kind in American history. ... You'd naturally expect the victims to be outraged, but in fact they ere quietly overjoyed. A series of newspaper articles and radio reports over the next few days repeatedly emphasized the fact that only one company's radios had been stolen, and that company was Sony. The Times coverage practically read like a press release: "The Delmonico Corporation says it is the sole importer and distributor of Sony Radio, built in Japan. Each of the $40 radios is 1 1/4 inches thick, 2 3/4 inches wide, and 4 1/2 inches high. The police said twenty cases of [other brands'] radios left behind, in addition to thousands of dollars of other electronic equipment." You couldn't buy publicity like this! For a few days, at least, Sony was on every New Yorker's lips as the story of the daring break-in and the discriminating thieves' focus on high-tech pocket-sized radios made the rounds. For weeks afterward, businessmen ribbed Sony's representative in New York City for tips on how they might be robbed so successfully themselves. All he could reply was that Sony hadn't planned it this way, and that they were at wit's end trying to ramp up production to replace the four thousand units. Their "pocketable" transistor radios, the world's smallest, were selling -- and in this one case, getting stolen -- faster than Sony could keep up.Sony, of course later went on to make the Walkman which became the hot item of the early 80s. However, Alt points our that Sony's head thought, at the time, that continuing to sell televisions was the best path forward. In addition, and I did not know this, Sony makes more money selling insurance in Japan than it does in consumer electronics.Alt demonstrates that two significant macro economic or historical events were essential to understanding Japan's export industry of consumer electronics, and popular culture. The first event was the second World War and the way it decimated Japan's industrial production and forced the country's manufacturing leaders to completely re-think how to do things. The second event was the collapse of Japan's economic bubble in the early 90s that the country has still not recovered from. This economic change had led to vast societal changes like young adults never moving out of their own houses. Alt argues that this stay at home culture has been pivotal in the development of comics, anime, manga, video games, and Internet technology in Japan that later came to the rest of the world. Judge for yourself if this is true or not.The final chapter is, at least in my opinion, not as good as the rest of the book. It starts with a discussion of what, in English, is called 2Chan, which later morphed into a site called 4chan and, eventually, 8chan. This chapter describes some of the recent events in technology and its relation to the alt-right by discussing Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, Breitbart News, and Gamergate. Alt goes into some detail about all these things, except it never says who Andrew Breitbart was. I had a problem with this chapter for two reasons. First, the rest of the book describes Japan's exports as benign and happy, but the things described in this chapter are neither happy nor benign. Second, I think Andrew Marantz described these issues much better in his book Antisocial:Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.Aside from the last chapter, I did like this book a lot. It is, at least for me, a quick read, and I learned some things about Japanese culture I did not know before I read it.

Not just for people who are interested in Japan. This should reach a global audience!

I'm not really a literary critic, but I've started reading more lately and this was one of the first books I picked up recently because I love Japan and wanted to start learning more about it's history. Rather than going neck deep into really thick text books, I thought this would be a good jumping in point, and I think I was right.This book not only provided a nice glimpse of Japan's history in the 20th to 21st century, but how it impacted those of us who live in the west. I learned more specifics about how Japan innovated after WW2 and the people behind such innovations.The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is I felt the last chapter focused a little too much on American politics, which I've already just am so tired of. The entirety of the 2010s seemed to only talk about what was happening in the west, rather than what was happening in Japan at the time. It just felt like reopening scars that I didn't wanna be reminded of, so I didn't enjoy reading that part as much.Otherwise I still really liked this book, and assuming all the information was accurate, which it seemed like it was well researched, I think it's worth recommending for anyone hoping to just become more educated about Japan, and how we got to where we are now as a society in the west.

Matt Alt is your guide to all things Japanese pop culture, and this book gives an excellent overview for aficionados and new fans alike.

As a Japanophile, I get my hands on a variety of books related to Japan and Japanese culture. Many of them are simply descriptive or derivative from other work, but Pure Invention offered a refreshing and original read. Alt combines some well known stories (Hello Kitty, Nintendo) with seemingly smaller ones to build a strong narrative on the direct and indirect influence that Japanese pop culture has had all over the world. Even for the better known brands and products, the author unearthed facts and stories that connected the dots in a robust way.The first few chapters had me buzzing with the vibes that a good thriller offers, and by the end of the book I didn't want it to end. The afterword, written in early 2020, offers insight into how these pop cultural moments will likely influence the world at large for the coming years.

Great read. Very interesting.

great read on how japanese influence is taking over the world from anime to gaming! Great illustrations.

For those who grew on japanese pop culture, this is a blast of a book. It's very informative, there's some great inside information, and first account interviews with insiders from the industry. It's written with passion, and the pages flip like the wind. It definetely is a recommendation.The only thing that started bothering me midway through is that, as much as the subtitle reads "how Japan pop culture conquered the world", it becomes clear at some point that what accounts for "the world", for the author, is actually "the United States." Everything is told in relation to the country, and it's breaking into the USA that is interpreted as "conquering the world."Now, I know that the USA has a major role in japanese history in the 20th century, due to the occupations forces that are kept in the country since the end of World War II. And I know also that much of this issue within the book is due to the author's own history with the subect that's spread througout the text - this is a work os passion as much as research, which is clear in the text and language, and that is part of what makes it such an engaging read. But at the same time, due to my own experience growing as a middle class boy in Brazil, I know of accounts of japanese pop culture conquering places that diverges and, a lot of times, predates the USA experience. In my own case, there'd be at least two other moments of "fantasy making" straight from Japan that left a strong mark on my obsession with the country - the tokusatsu invasion in kid's and teen's TV shows in late 80's, and the huge phenomenon that were Saint Seiya / Knights of the Zodiac in the mid-90's, that actually opened the doors of mainstream television to anime some three or four years before Pokémon (which was also big here, but essentially seen more as the continuation of a trend than the starter of one).None of this actually scratches the quality of research found within the book, of course, that is still a very informative and interesting read. It's still a deep and engaging book, that is at its height when it delves deep inside not America, but Japan, and gives firsthand accounts of the developing of technologies and fantasies that are such a core part of globalized cultural experiences today. But this matter of point of view and place of speech that's not entirely recognized (though eventually alluded) througout the text bothered me, because the subtitle in the cover promised a much wider account of the matter.

Dá série ""efeito Orloff – eu sou você amanhã!" "Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World" de Matt Alt especula se todo mundo não está virando "japonês" mesmo sem gostar de anime ou mangá.Isso porque ele analisa como o pop nipônico introduziu elementos culturais que influenciaram o comportamento das pessoas de todo mundo, seja com produtos como o Walkman, hábitos como o Karaokê e até mesmo coisas que só existem no mundo das idéias como o Emoji. 😘De fato, o que seria do K-Pop ou do manwa se antes não existisse o J-Pop e o mangá?Matt também levanta outra a bola, afirmando que o Japão não deixa de "ser você amanhã" ou seja, muitos fenômenos sociais negativos e bizarrices que assolaram os nipões nas últimas décadas também podem se repetir no resto do mundo, caso por exemplo da onda de depressão causada pela explosão da bolha e estagnação econômica dos anos 1990 no Japão que, de um certo modo, se repetiu nos EUA durante a crise econômica de 2007-2009.E se naquela época torciamos o nariz para aqueles otakus (nerds japoneses) que passavam o dia inteiro em casa jogando videogames e assistindo animes no videocassete, o que dizer hoje dos urbanóides que passam o dia inteiro em casa jogando videogames e assistindo séries no Netflix?Sim amiguinhos, pandemia é um inferno! 😈