Pure Invention: How Japan s Pop Culture Conquered the World

Author Matthew Alt
Rating
Price1995

The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that capturedâ€”and transformedâ€”the worldâ€™s imagination. The Walkman. Karaoke. Pikachu. Pac-Man. Akira. Emoji. Weâ€™ve all fallen in love with one or another of Japanâ€™s pop-culture creations, from the techy to the wild to the super-kawaii. But as Japanese media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation of Tokyoâ€™s pop-fantasy complex, we donâ€™t know the half of it. Japanâ€™s toys, gadgets, and fantasy worlds didnâ€™t merely entertain. They profoundly transformed the way we live.In the 1970s and â€™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 the â€œlost decadesâ€ of deep recession and social dysfunction. The end of the boom times should have plunged Japan into irrelevance, but thatâ€™s precisely when its cultural clout soaredâ€”when, once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us.Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and entertainment empires like PokÃ©mon and Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products made Japan the forge of the worldâ€™s fantasies, and gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed themâ€”connecting as well as isolating us in new ways, opening vistas of imagination and pathways to revolution. Through the stories of an indelible group of artists, geniuses, and oddballs, Pure Invention reveals how Japanese ingenuity remade global culture and may have created modern life as we know it. Itâ€™s Japanâ€™s world; weâ€™re just gaming, texting, singing, and dreaming in it.

Publisher PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC- USA
Publication Date 23/06/2020
Number of Pages 352
Binding Paper Back
ISBN 9780593236741
Category Non Fiction , Business and Management , Economics

Price Offers From Different Stores

Store	Price
Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior	Rs. 746
Young Samurai: The Way of the Sword	Rs. 746
You'll Be the Death of Me - (PB)	Rs. 1295
The Night She Disappeared: the No. 1 bestseller from the author of The Family Upstairs	Rs. 1695
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko: A Novel - Hardcover	Rs. 2750
Scatter Her Ashes (A Thorkild Aske Mystery)	Rs. 1595
Reckless Girls: The exciting new psychological crime suspense thriller and New York Times bestseller!	Rs. 1195
Outbreak - A Terrifyingly Real Thriller from the No. 1 Sunday Times Bestselling Author	Rs. 1495
Jaadu Ki Tareekh	Rs. 500
In Pursuit of the Truth -	Rs. 570
Enna Burning (Books of Bayern) - Paperback	Rs. 746
Blacktop Wasteland: the acclaimed and award-winning crime hit of the year	Rs. 1395