Anne Allison: Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination Podcast

by About Japan Editors Ed. Note:  For a lesson exploring the roots and global context of Japanese pop culture, please see Dr. William Tsutsui's lesson Popular Culture and Japan's Gross National Cool.

 

 

Podcast Summary:
0:00   Robert Fish, Director of Education & Lecture
          Programs, Japan Society
2:14   Thomas Looser, Associate Professor of
          East Asian Studies, New York University
4:55   Dr. Anne Allison, Professor & Chair of
          Dept. of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University

May 8, 2008

From sushi and karaoke to martial arts and technoware, the currency of made-in-Japan cultural goods has skyrocketed in the global marketplace during the past decade. The globalization of Japanese "cool" is led by youth products: video games, manga (comic books), anime (animation) and cute characters that have fostered kid crazes from Hong Kong to Canada. Drawing on popular examples from Pokémon to Sailor Moon, Anne Allison speaks about the popularity of Japanese goods today, and the relationship of these products to the cultural and historical context in which they were both developed and consumed. Dr. Allison is Professor and Chair of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, and author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination.

Moderated by Thomas Looser, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University.