Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World.

By Matt Alt.
June 2020. 368p. Crown, $28 (9781984826695). 306.30952.
REVIEW. First published June 1, 2020 (Booklist).

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.

— Michael Ruzicka