Millennial Monsters

Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination

Anne Allison author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:27th Jun '06

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Millennial Monsters cover

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. Examining the crossover traffic between Japan and the United States, Millennial Monsters explores the global popularity of Japanese youth goods today while it questions the make-up of the fantasies and the capitalistic conditions of the play involved. Arguing that part of the appeal of such dream worlds is the polymorphous perversity with which they scramble identity and character, the author traces the postindustrial milieux from which such fantasies have arisen in postwar Japan and been popularly received in the United States.

"Allison manages to present these play commodities in a way that says something fresh about Japan, about the hoary notion of globalization, and about contemporary intersections of capitalism, culture, and pleasure. Millennial Monsters is clearly an important book - important because the subject is of such broad interest, and because Allison's analytic interpretation is clear, powerful, and provocative." - William Kelley, Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, Yale University"

ISBN: 9780520245655

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 25mm

Weight: 590g

356 pages