Matt Alt's Blog

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The sad news is, this blog has been dormant for many years now.

The good news is, I'm writing more than ever!

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Thanks for all the support over the years!

Japan is the forge of the world���s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pok��mon and Hello Kitty, online argots like selfies and super-kawaii emojis. But these gadgets, escapes, and diversions did more than entertain. They created entirely new ways of living, paving the way for our perplexing modern lives. Pure Invention is a secret history about how a wild bunch of Japanese creatives shaped modern life, forging new tools for navigating the weirdness of late-stage ...

On April 28, 2015, President Obama publicly thanked Japan for "manga and anime, and, of course, emojis." How did emoji wind up at the White House? It was a long and winding road, andI wrote about it for the New Yorker. (Above, a set of some of the very earliest emoji released by DoCoMo in 1999 and 2000.)

'70s vintage "karuta" cards: Kitsune-bi (foxfire), oni, umi-bozu (sea phantom), hitotsume kozo (one-eyed kid), and a monster pumpkin. Several of these appeared in the pages of Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Can you figure out which?

The Japanese government commissioned a report on the history of Japanese robot animation. Yes, the government. My government's robot studies are undoubtedly focused on stuff like killer Predator and Reaper drones. Japan's? Astro Boy, Tranzor Z, and Voltron. More power to 'em, I say. (Pun intended.) "Japan" and "robots" go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It's fair to say thatno other country has become so intimately associated with robots both real and fictional.

But until now, pre...

The English-language ebook editions of Fujiko F. Fujio's classic manga "Doraemon"have started coming out.AltJapan translated it forVoyager Japanin association with Fujiko Productions - some 12,000-plus pages over the course of last year, easily the biggest manga localization with which we have ever been involved. It's finally being released in 3-episode chunks: volumes onethrough tenhave come out via the Kindle Store as of this posting. (Apologies if you can't see them - they're only availab...

By now you've undoubtedly read the brou-ha-ha over the "racist" ANA commercial featuring a Japanese dude wearing a huge prosthetic nose in an attempt to look foreign.Putting aside for a moment how much of a transgression the commercial represents, there's no question that "foreigners" and "long noses" go hand in hand in Japan. What IS the deal with that?

Whatever the case is, it goes back a long, long time. Here's a pefect example. Commodore Matthew Perry! My third-favorite Commodore after th...

Great news! The ebook edition of Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide is finally here. It's available both on Amazon for both Kindle and iPad/iPhone, and also on Kobo for those of you who roll that way.

We'll always be partial to the paper edition, but the ebook really shines for the illustrations. Not only does it display Tatsuya Morino's awesome illustrations at a super huge, screen-filling size - like this "Nue" below - but it also allows you to zoom in to see them in all of...

I'm just honored to have penned an article with a title like this. Why DOES Japan love giant robots so much? Find out in my feature for the Japan Times.Illustration by Hideo Okamoto.

I just got my hands on a copy of the just-released Yokai Museum: The Art of Supernatural Beings from the Yumoto Koichi Collection and can confirm that it is a visual treasure trove for yokai lovers. But even better, it's totally bilingual, featuring an English translation right alongside the Japanese text. This makes it perfect both for Japanese language students and monolingual yokai fans alike.

Professor Yumoto was the curatorial director of the Kawasaki City Museum for many years, and hi...