| DATE: | Thursday, November 17, 2005 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 4:30 PM |
| PLACE: | IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor |
| FORMAT: | IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia |
| SPONSORS: | Institute of East Asian Studies |
Within the past decade, the currency of made-in-Japan cultural goods has skyrocketed in the global marketplace. From sushi and karoke to martial arts and techno-ware, the globalization of Japanese "cool" today is being led by youth products: video games, manga (comic books), anime (animation), and cute characters that have fostered kid crazes from Hong Kong to Canada. What precisely is it about the fantasies enjoined by these goods and about the conditions of life that inspired them that accounts for such global popularity? In her new book Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination Anne Allison examines the crossover traffic between Japan and the United States of four waves of youth goods.
Anne Allison is a professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. Allison's current research is on the recent popularization of Japanese children's goods on the global marketplace and how its trends in cuteness, character merchandise, and high-tech play pals are remaking Japan's place in today's world of millennial capitalism.
Other programs in the IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia.
