Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World

Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World

Alt, Matt

Paperback

Business GeneralGeneral SociologyJapanese History

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 1984826719
ISBN13: 9781984826718
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Published: Jun 22 2021
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.10 Depth: 8.10
Language: English
The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured--and transformed--the world's imagination.

A masterful book driven by deep research, new insights, and powerful storytelling.--W. David Marx, author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style

Japan is the forge of the world's fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives.

In the 1970s and '80s, Japan seemed to exist in some near future, gliding on the superior technology of Sony and Toyota. Then a catastrophic 1990 stock-market crash ushered in the lost decades of deep recession and social dysfunction. The end of the boom should have plunged Japan into irrelevance, but that's precisely when its cultural clout soared--when, once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us.

Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and multimedia empires like Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed them--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 Japan's pop-media complex remade global culture.

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