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Allison and other grantees pose with Justic Hideo Chikusa,
a 1961 Fulbright alumnus, during a visit to the Japanese
Supreme Court. Allison stands right of Chikusa (seated).
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I was mid-stream in my career, post-tenure with two books on
Japan, when I received a Fulbright/JUSEC grant to embark on a
new research project involving the globalization of Japanese toys
and character merchandise. My aim was to study children's merchandise,
like Pokemon, as it gets marketed and consumed in Japan and then
moves to export markets such as the United States. Since the early
90's and the global success of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,
Japan has become world famous for children's entertainment. Some
voices, both inside and outside of Japan, refer to this as a break-through
in Japanese cultural influence around the world. And yet, in the
U.S. marketplace at least, many of these products have been reshaped
to appear less Japanese and more American. What are the politics,
economics, and cultural dynamics of Japan's children's business
as it operates in, and between, the two marketplaces of Japan
and the United States?
In late August 1999, I arrived in Tokyo with my two teenage sons
(my husband came later). Thanks to Fulbright, we moved into a
fully furnished house on the Inokashira line convenient to (though
still an hour from) the American School my boys attended. There
were major adjustments and a few rough times (including a house
fire in January), but our ten months in Tokyo were a wonderful
experience for us all. Indeed, Fulbright is the only granting
agency (for research in Japan) that pays tuition for children
in an international school--a benefit without which I would have
been confined to short-term (summer) research trips for years.
Having an extended stay, however, gave me the luxury to conduct
careful and extensive research on my subject. And given the prominence
of Pokemon that year (both in Japan and elsewhere, including the
United States), I concentrated on that, interviewing producers, marketers,
analysts, authors, children, otaku (expert fans), scholars, activists
and advertisers. I learned about the history of Pokemon, its place
in the business of Japanese character merchandising, the brilliant
marketing strategies that have made it such a hit, the mythology
of its poketto monsta and the currency pokemon spawns in kids
circles across the world.
Midway through, I also conducted a short research trip back to
the United States to interview child fans and also all the major players
involved with the Pokemon empire here. Having now completed my
grant, I face the daunting prospect of write-up--a book, in my
case, that will feature Pokemon, but also include chapters on
other waves of Japanese character merchandise that have crossed
into the United States. (Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, tamagotchi). As I see
it, the Pokemon phenomenon--with wild monsters that get collected
by kids who compete and bond over virtual interactions--crystallizes
conditions of global capitalism in a world where the real and
the virtual, and the nation and transnationality, are getting
continually played out and collapsed.
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