Book Review: "Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World" by Matt Alt

 Holy cow Japan...you guys have a lot to unpack. You are a complicated country.

 My friend Garrett gave me this book for Christmas this year because we often discuss Japan and their place in history (generally WWII) and the unusual (to us) societal quirks that may have come from the shock of the nuclear bombs and the upsetting of their empire. If this is something that interests you I can't possibly recommend Dan Carlin's podcast and his series on the Supernova in the East enough. 

Also a beautiful independent theater in the Milwaukee area has started doing Anime April and Miyazaki March so I (reluctantly at first) went to a couple of movies the last few years during those times with Garrett and our friend Gage and while a couple of them weren't my favorite I have enjoyed far more than I have disliked. Totoro, you cute sonofabitch.

This is a lot of words to basically say that, before reading this book I would say "I mean, I dabble in a few Japanese things but that's really about it". Now that I have read this book I realize that I have: sang karaoke, know who Hello Kitty is, almost ran over people staring at their phones playing PokemonGo and played with a Tamagotchi I guess I know more about Japanese pop culture than I thought I did. And I bet you do too! 

As usual, as follows are things that I found interesting or questions that I have after reading this book.

-For a time, and maybe still now, women were expected to graduate from college, work for a couple years, and then get married and quit their job. That's what happened to the woman who designed Hello Kitty did. And then the company was kind of like "uhhhhh so should we just let hello kitty die out even though it's really popular because we don't know what girls/women want?". The assistant to the original designer bucked tradition, stayed unamarried and at her job and became Hello Kitty's human "manager" and helped keep the company out of bankruptcy and maintaining and worldwide phenom. Hello Kitty makes a half billion dollars in revenue at year. The company that makes her is the 8th biggest licensor in the world - ahead of Pokemon, the NFL and Playboy.

-The guy who created Pokemon loved playing outdoors as a child. However, one day his favorite fishing spot suddenly had a new building built there, an arcade. He went in, became obsessed with Space Invaders and it changed the direction of his life. The irony on this kills me because a lot of little kids probably were yelled at by their parents to put down their Pokemon stuff and GO PLAY OUTSIDE. Though I bet the PokemonGo everyone goes outside and wanders looking for invisible critters kind of balances the scales back. I've also decided that Lickitungs is the grossest sounding Pokemon name. 

- Prewar Japan was like, a huge producer and connoisseur of children's toys. This obviously screeched to a halt during the war. 6 months after the war a man who was a toy maker before the war started collecting the tins that occupying Americans trashed (we are preeeettty great at generating trash) and made little toy American Jeeps. They were a sensation. It was one of the first little luxuries that Japan had after the war. 

- There are a lot of pages devoted to Dragonball Z, early origins of anime (RocketBoy) and how it came to America, some super shady stuff on the internet, the invention of the Walkman and karaoke machines. 

Most of the information on this book was completely new to me, so it made reading a little slow going and a lot to digest but I learned so much! If you have an interest in pop culture this would be a great book for you!