In order to explain why Japanese toys and associated character mechandising are winning over the world, it’s of course essential to take a long hard look at Japan and the Japanese. That’s what Prof Anne Allison did at the beginning of her book, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination.

The commonly held view of Japan is it’s a country which places the collective before the individual. This can be taken to extremes. Work yourself to death for the good of the company. Forget your dreams, marry a man you will hardly ever see, stay at home, submerse yourself in family and raise a child for the country’s future. Study hard, little child, enter a good university in order to secure a future which might see you work yourself to death.

But Japan, a country that has previously seen society-wide transformations during the Meiji era and following the end of WW2, is now undergoing a transformation which sees the rise of individualism. This, too, can be taken to extremes.

Reject society and shut yourself in. Reject the empty promise of a job for life and jump from job to job. Reject marriage and family. Immerse yourself fully in the goods you buy for you are the goods that you buy.

(As one Japanese woman put it, “We go to brand-name universities, enter brand-name companies, and wear brand-name goods. And this isn’t just on the outside. On the inside, too, we’re ‘brand-name people.'”)
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