Pure Invention

Chapter 1

Tin Men

In the toy-shops of Japan one may see the microcosm of Japanese life. William Elliot Griffis, 1876

Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are the prelude to serious ideas. Charles Eames, 1961

Riding chariots built in Detroit, American conquerors surveyed the nation they had brought to its knees. The devastation wrought by months of firebombing was almost beyond imagination. Prior to the outbreak of war in the Pacific in 1941, Tokyo was the planet s third-largest city, home to nearly seven million people. Through military conscription, civilian casualties, and mass evacuations, by the fall of 1945 fewer than half remained. The same could be said of the city itself. Skeletons of railway cars and locomotives remained untouched on the tracks, wrote the war correspondent Mark Gayn of his first drive into the fallen metropolis. Streetcars stood where the flames had caught up with them, twisting the metal, snapping the wires overhead, and bending the supporting iron poles as if they were made of wax. Gutted buses and automobiles lay abandoned by the roadside. This was all a man-made desert, ugly and desolate and hazy in the dust that rose from the crushed brick and mortar. Charred bodies still lay beneath the rubble, filling silent streets with their stench. The only sound of industrial civilization in this grim landscape was the rumble of the American jeep.

The U.S. Army Truck, ¼-ton, 4×4, Command Reconnaissance, as it was officially designated, was designed for hauling things around and nothing else. Mass-produced to military specifications by the automakers Willys Overland and Ford, the jeep offered little in the way of amenities save the promise of near indestructibility. It was boxy, open to the elements, and painful to ride in for any length of time. The drab yet dependable vehicle was somehow down-to-earth and larger-than-life; even the Americans knew it. General Eisenhower went so far as to credit the jeep as

Matt Alt is a Tokyo-based writer, translator, and reporter. He is a contributor to The New Yorker online, CNN, Wired, Slate, The Independent, Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, and many other publications, and is the co-author of six illustrated books about Japan.

Fascinating . . . Alt s choice of interviewees and attention to detail marks Pure Invention as one of the best of its kind. If you re a curious reader looking for an accessible (and recent!) popular history, I highly recommend this book. Crunchyroll

A kinetic canter through the social history of globalizsed Japanese culture. Peter Guest, Mekong Review

From karaoke to manga, emoji to Pokémon, the creations of modern Japanese style have transformed that country and daily life around the world. Pure Invention is a delightful and highly informed view of the people, ideas, and insights behind this pop-cultural revolution. James Fallows, author of China Airborne

Pure Invention is part careful ethnography, part insightful cultural history of the creative men and women who reimagined Japan in the postwar period. It s difficult to imagine a more instructive or entertaining account of a fascinating place, people, and period. Stephen Snyder, professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College and translator of Yoko Ogawa s The Memory Police

Hello Kitty and Pikachu didn t just wander into your house by accident. Maybe they snuck in while you were out crooning karaoke with Super Mario? Intriguing and insightful, Pure Invention hands readers a backdoor key to Japan s culture trend factory, whose offbeat creators remixed and reimagined the world right under our noses. Alfred Birnbaum, translator of Haruki Murakami s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
 
As startlingly original as the inventions that it describes . . . Required reading for Japanophiles, this book reads like your most interesting anthropology textbook, weaving together interviews, anecdotes, and primary source material about some of Japan s most iconic creations. . . . People often ask me why, as an American, I'm so interested in Japanese culture. This book finally provides me with an answer.