Plastic Fantasies: Globalization and the Japanese Cultural Imaginary

This essay broaches the location of cultural production and circulation through an analysis of popular aesthetics and fantasy structures specific to the postindustrial milieu. While tracing the influence of American popular children’s culture throughout Japan during post-World War II occupation, this essay demonstrates the rise of the Japanese cultural industry as a unique response to and anticipation of the pressures and anxieties of globalization. The Japanese cultural imaginary has significantly prefigured the very anxieties faced in an increasingly globalized world where bodies must be primed for instantaneous communication and be flexible and adaptable to rapidly changing consumer and material landscapes.