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Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon and Hello Kitty, online argots like selfies and super-kawaii emojis. But these gadgets, escapes, and diversions did more than entertain. They created entirely new ways of living, paving the way for our perplexing modern lives. Pure Invention is a secret history about how a wild bunch of Japanese creatives shaped modern life, forging new tools for navigating the weirdness of late-stage capitalist societies.
I've long been fascinated by the ways things from Japan inflected Western worldview, whether gentle (such as the Japonisme of the Victorian er) to the jarring (the "chan culture" of online imageboards that gave rise to conspiracies like Qanon.) Pure Invention is a pop cultural detective story about how that came to be. Japan made itself rich in the 20th century by selling us all the things we needed, like cars and computers. It made itself loved by selling us everything we wanted -- with results none of us, even those Japanese creators themselves, could never have imagined.
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On April 28, 2015, President Obama publicly thanked Japan for "manga and anime, and, of course, emojis." How did emoji wind up at the White House? It was a long and winding road, and I wrote about it for the New Yorker. (Above, a set of some of the very earliest emoji released by DoCoMo in 1999 and 2000.)
'70s vintage "karuta" cards: Kitsune-bi (foxfire), oni, umi-bozu (sea phantom), hitotsume kozo (one-eyed kid), and a monster pumpkin. Several of these appeared in the pages of Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Can you figure out which?
The Japanese government commissioned a report on the history of Japanese robot animation. Yes, the government. My government's robot studies are undoubtedly focused on stuff like killer Predator and Reaper drones. Japan's? Astro Boy, Tranzor Z, and Voltron. More power to 'em, I say. (Pun intended.) "Japan" and "robots" go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It's fair to say that no other country has become so intimately associated with robots both real and fictional.
But until now, precious few have explored the history of the robot shows that are a virtual synonym for Cool Japan. Ryusuke Hikawa wrote the majority of the report. He's been on the front lines of otaku culture since day one, chairing the fan club that played a big role in getting the Space Cruiser Yamato movies made back in 1977. Today he's one of Japan's top anime critics and I can't think of anyone better suited to have authored the report along with Sunrise's Koichi Inoue and writer Daisuke Sawaki.
AltJapan was hired via the Mori Corporation to translate the 90-page beast into English. And now it's available for free download on the Agency for Cultural Affair's Media Arts Content site. (Scroll down for the English link.)
The English-language ebook editions of Fujiko F. Fujio's classic manga "Doraemon" have started coming out. AltJapan translated it for Voyager Japan in association with Fujiko Productions - some 12,000-plus pages over the course of last year, easily the biggest manga localization with which we have ever been involved. It's finally being released in 3-episode chunks: volumes one through ten have come out via the Kindle Store as of this posting. (Apologies if you can't see them - they're only available for download in North America at present.)
This release is a really big deal. Doraemon is Japan's single most popular character, yet the comic has never been officially released in English. There have been a handful of bilingual editions created for students of English, but never a truly localized edition intended purely for enterainment's sake.
If you've never read Doraemon, you can't truly call yourself a connosieur of manga. I challenge anyone to find a middle-aged or younger Japanese person, otaku or not, who hasn't read at least a few pages (and probably a lot more than that.) It is the first sci-fi most Japanese read. It's part of the fabric of Japanese life in the same way that classic Disney films or Peanuts are in the West. The cast of characters are archetypes: Nobita the nerd, Sneech the rich kid, Big G the bully, Shizuka the neighborhood idol. They are given homage in countless other works, parodied in nationwide advertising campaigns for car companies. People casually drop references to them in daily conversations in the same way an American might refer to Homer Simpson's love of donuts or Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown.
So why hasn't it ever come out in English before? It's hard to say. Perhaps because manga and anime are often associated with dark, edgy imagery in America, and that's the last word anyone would ever apply to Doraemon. It is kids' entertainment par excellence, but quintessentially Japanese kids' entertainment, meaning it's filled to the brim with subtle cultural references, occasional nudity, and inevitable toilet humor of the sort that sends certain types of parents into a tizzy. And simply due to the age of the series - it debuted in 1969 - modern-day analogues of many of Doraemon's "22nd century" gadgets are available to anyone with a credit card. The Asahi Shimbun quotes a "former industry ministry official" theorizing that Americans can't sympathize with a passive loser like Nobita, but that can't be right - Charlie Brown is an even gloomier protagonist, minus any hope of salvation from a pal like Doraemon.
Whatever prevented Doraemon from getting an English release didn't stop it from being translated into many European and Asian languages, where it retains a huge following (particularly in SE Asia.) The English-speaking world is simply behind the curve on this one, and it's been our loss - until now. Doraemon is a cornerstone of Japanese pop culture, and it has been an honor to be part of the team that is bringing it out in English for the very first time.
By now you've undoubtedly read the brou-ha-ha over the "racist" ANA commercial featuring a Japanese dude wearing a huge prosthetic nose in an attempt to look foreign. Putting aside for a moment how much of a transgression the commercial represents, there's no question that "foreigners" and "long noses" go hand in hand in Japan. What IS the deal with that?
Whatever the case is, it goes back a long, long time. Here's a pefect example. Commodore Matthew Perry! My third-favorite Commodore after the "64" and "Three Times a Lady." (On the other hand, he's my first favorite Matthew Perry after, er, Matthew Perry.)
Commodore Perry opened Japan to commerce in 1854. He looked like this.
Yet contemporary Japanese portrayals tended to look like this.
Or like this.
To be fair, more accurate depictions existed as well.
But even this one has a pretty pronounced schnoz and it's obvious that the whole long-noses-equal-foreigners thing was in full effect even 150 years ago.
But is it RACIST? Or even insulting? Before answering that, consider another famous long-nosed fellow from the Japanese zeitgeist.
Tengu are enormous, humanoid yokai from Japanese folklore. They're known for their humongous, borderline phallic noses. But they're no pushovers: they're also renowned for their physical strength and their prowess with weapons.
So big noses aren't exactly a "dis" in Japan. What they really represent is an attempt to do something pretty much everyone agrees is integral to Japan's societal DNA: visually "branding" concepts in an easy-to-understand visual shorthand. In other words, making mascot characters out of things. In this case, they're making mascot characters out of the concept of foreignness.
And believe me, the Japanese are equal opportunity mascot-o-tizers. (I hereby copyright this word.) Like for instance, this is what Commodore Perry's flagship, the USS Susquehana, looked like.
Yet filtered through Japanese sensibilities, it looked like this.
I love this image - the artist essentially took a steamship and turned it into a yokai monster, complete with leering faces and eyes. This isn't really an attempt to demonize the foreigners. It's, like all yokai characters, an attempt to grapple with something unknown and potentially scary. (And Perry's Susquehana WAS scary. Its fleet was armed with 70 giant cannon that could have laid waste to all of Edo had Perry so desired.)
So there you have it. Love them or hate them, big noses and foreigners have been a big thing for centuries in mascot-obsessed Japan. They're yet another example of the country's drive to create characters out of nearly anything at all.
Great news! The ebook edition of Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide is finally here. It's available both on Amazon for both Kindle and iPad/iPhone, and also on Kobo for those of you who roll that way.
We'll always be partial to the paper edition, but the ebook really shines for the illustrations. Not only does it display Tatsuya Morino's awesome illustrations at a super huge, screen-filling size - like this "Nue" below - but it also allows you to zoom in to see them in all of their cross-hatched glory.
Yurei Attack! The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide has been available as an ebook since last year, and of course the paper editions of all three books in the Attack! trilogy are on sale too. (The ebook of Ninja Attack! will be sneaking into an ebook reader near you soon.)
I'm just honored to have penned an article with a title like this. Why DOES Japan love giant robots so much? Find out in my feature for the Japan Times. Illustration by Hideo Okamoto.
I just got my hands on a copy of the just-released Yokai Museum: The Art of Supernatural Beings from the Yumoto Koichi Collection and can confirm that it is a visual treasure trove for yokai lovers. But even better, it's totally bilingual, featuring an English translation right alongside the Japanese text. This makes it perfect both for Japanese language students and monolingual yokai fans alike.
Professor Yumoto was the curatorial director of the Kawasaki City Museum for many years, and his personal collection of yokai-related art is some 3,000 pieces strong. I had the pleasure of speaking alongside him at the Japan Media Arts Festival in Hong Kong last year, and what struck me most about his presentation was his inclusiveness of the modern alongside the classical, such as 1960's menko cards as well as the usual woodblock prints and scrolls.
That's exactly what makes Yokai Museum so great. There is plenty of attention lavished on ancient scrolls, centiures-old paintings, 18th century books, and 19th century prints. There's even a series of extraordinarily rare Edo-vintage kimono and festival coats festooned with yokai motifs, the likes of which I've never seen cataloged anywhere else before. But there's also a large section devoted to more recent Showa-vintage kami-shibai, games, and trinkets that bridge the "era of folklore" and the era of modern character merchandise.
If there's any one complaint, it's that I wish it were even longer, with even more textual analysis. But let's not get greedy. At 288 full color pages, there's plenty to enjoy here. Large format, full-color yokai art books are a precious commodity to begin with, but those in English even more precious still. Bottom line: if you're a fan of yokai, or even simply of Japanese visual design, Yokai Museum gets two big claws up.
It's available in Japan now, but won't be hitting American shelves until October.
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