Author(s): Anne Allison

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.

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