Pop goes Japanese culture

San Francisco Chronicle

Five years into the millennium, Japan's most visible export isn't economic, but cultural. The jury's still out on whether anime (Japanese animation), manga, toys, gadgets and fashion will sweep across middle America. "This stuff is getting globalized like never before," says Anne Allison, chair of cultural anthropology at Duke University, whose examination of the subject, "Millennium Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination" (University of California Press) will be out in 2006.

"In the last decade, especially in the last five years, Japanese pop culture, particularly youth culture -- anime, manga, Pokemon, kids cards -- has circulated not just in the United States, but in Western Europe, East Asia and South America." >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Interview with anthropologist Anne Allison about her research in Japan (Japan Review)
Book review: Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture (Japan Review) , see same book reviewed by H-Net Review