Pure Invention
Those of you who also read my newsletter may remember that for the last few months I have been exploring the question of Japanese pop culture and the United States. It has been fascinating and frustrating. I know a lot more than I did when I began my quest in early February, but I still don’t feel like I have wrapped my brain around the particular question I’m trying to answer, or even the subject in general.
For anyone who might be interested in the subject, I recommend Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World[1] by Matt Alt, which is by far the best of the general books I’ve read, though not the most useful for my purposes[2]. As his title suggests, Alt argues that in the decades since World War II Japan’s “pop-cultural complex” has transformed “how we interact with the world, how we communicate with each other, how we spend time along with ourselves, how we shape our very identities.” I’m not sure I agree, but I found the discussion fascinating.
Alt sets the development of Japan’s pop culture creations solidly in the economic, cultural, and historical context in which they were created. He divides the book into two sections. The first deals with period from 1945 through the early 1980s, when Japan rebuilt itself from the literal ashes of World War II into an economic and technological powerhouse. The second deals with the so-called Lost Decades of the 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century that resulted from Japan’s economic crash in 1990. He tells the stories of innovators and designers[3] and the corporations they founded. He sets the rise of manga and anime in the context of Japan’s increasing disaffected youth culture, connects the development of the karaoke machine in a tradition of bar sing-a-longs, and demonstrates the unexpected (at least to me) influence of Japanese schoolgirls in pioneering the use of digital communications. At each step, he discusses the way in which individual creations made their way to the United States, and why they succeeded.
I will admit that I found the first section more interesting than the second, though that says more about me than Alt’s work. If I owned the book, I would have filled the margins with exclamation marks, the occasional interrobang,[4] and many questions and comments.[5] Instead I have stuffed my library copy with sticky tabs,[6] as is my wont.[7]
If you are interested in Japanese popular culture, or modern Japanese history, this one’s for you.
[1] The title refers to a quotation from Oscar Wilde: “In fact the whole of Japan is pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people…The Japanese people are, as I have said, simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.” The Decay of Lying. 1891.
[2] It’s amazing how often this turns out to be true when I’m in the initial stages of grappling with a question. It’s a puzzlement.
[3] None of whom I had heard of.
[4] A piece of punctuation that combines a question mark and an exclamation point into a single item:
It was invented in 1962 by American advertising executive Martin K. Speckter, who believed it would make a a cleaner page than ending a sentence with both pieces of punctuation when you want to write something like “Who ate my cheese?!”.
I’m not sure it’s actually a useful change, particularly since many computer fonts don’t support it. On the other hand, it seems to embody the appropriate response to much of the news today.
But I digress. As I so often do.
[5] Yes, I literally write history in the margins.
[6] I am fond of a brand produced by a company called Semikolon—appropriate given the above punctuation diversion.
[7] Pro tip: I also use 4 “ by 6” lined sticky notes to write thoughts in the moment and keep them with the relevant text. This is true even with books I own, because sometimes I have more to say than the margins allow.
In Celebration of Independent Bookstores
Here is my annual Public Service Announcement:
Today is Independent Bookstore Day in the United States, assuming you are reading this on the day it comes out. It’s a nationwide party for book lovers. Here in Chicago, local independent bookstores are once again hosting their bookstore crawl in celebration. I’m lucky enough to have three independent bookstores within walking distance: the fabulous Seminary Coop, its more commercial younger sister, 57th Street Books, and, just around the corner from our house) Call and Response Books, which specializes in books by and about people of color. In addition, Barnes and Noble just opened a store in the neighborhood. [1] So many choices. So little room on my bookshelves. [2]
A bookstore visit always leaves me feeling a little better. I browse. I scan the shelf readers—those cards on the shelves that tell you something about a book. I chat about books with the booksellers. I eavesdrop on other people’s bookish conversations. I check to see if my books are on the shelves. I check to see if my friends books are on the shelves. I sheepishly take photos to post on social media. I try to resist the temptation to buy books I don’t need. [3] I give in to temptation and buy some anyway, which I justify by reminding myself that it’s important to support independent bookstores.
If you’re lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, stop by and show them some love. If not, you can adopt an independent bookstore somewhere else—most of them ship. Or you can buy your books through Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that supports independent bookstores.
[1] I must admit, I have mixed feelings about the new store. It is beautiful and well stocked, but I worry that my local indies will find it hard to compete.
[2] By which I mean no room on my bookshelves.
[3]I have enough unread books to keep me going for years, even without taking my habit of re-reading into account.
From the Archives: Cornelia Hancock–Civil War Nurse, Reformer, Muse
Dear Marginalia: As some of you may remember, ten years ago I wrote a book on Civil War Nurses called Heroines of Mercy Street: Real Nurses of the Civil War. Right now I have Civil War nurses on my mind again as I prepare to give talk on the subject at the historical museum in Marietta, Georgia. (By the time you read this, the program will be over.) It seems like a good time to share the story of one of my many favorites, Cornelia Hancock.
As the official superintendent of the Union Army’s newly minted nursing corps, Dorothea Dix had a clear vision of what her nurses should look like. Only women between the ages of thirty or thirty-five and fifty would be accepted. “Neatness, order, sobriety and industry” were required; “matronly persons of experience, good conduct or superior education” were preferred.
Dix turned away many able applicants because she thought they were too young, attractive, or frivolous. Twenty-three- year-old Cornelia Hancock, for instance, was preparing to board the train to Gettysburg with a number of women many years older than she was when Dix appeared on the scene to inspect the prospective nurses. She pronounced all of the nurses suitable except for Hancock, whom she objected to on the grounds of her “youth and rosy cheeks.” Hancock simply boarded the train while her companions argued with Dix. When she reached Gettysburg, three days after the battle, the need for nurses was so great that no one worried about her age or appearance. Too inexperienced to help with the physical needs of the soldiers, she went from wounded soldier to wounded soldier, paper, pencil and stamps in hand, and spent the first night writing farewell letters from soldiers to their families and friends. When wagons of provisions began to arrive, Hancock helped herself to bread and jelly, then divided loaves into portions that could be swallowed by weak and wounded men.
She quickly became accustomed to the realities of the battlefield, telling a cousin in a letter written on her second day in the field “I do not mind the sight of blood, have seen limbs taken off and was not sick at all.” In fact, she proved to be such a dedicated nurse that the wounded soldiers of Third Division Second Army Corps presented her with a silver medal inscribed Testimonial of regard for ministrations of mercy to the wounded soldiers at Gettysburg, Pa. -—July 1863. (She also had a dance tune named after her, the Hancock Gallop–a tribute that I suspect none of Dix’s middle-aged matrons received from the soldiers under their care.)
Hancock worked as a nurse for the rest of the war, tending the wounded after the battle of the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House Landing, City Point and Petersburg. She was one of the first Union nurses to arrive in Richmond after its capture on April 3, 1865.
After the war, Hancock helped found a freedman’s school in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where she taught for a decade. (At one point those who objected to the concept of education for black children riddled the schoolhouse with fifty bullets.) When she moved back north to Philadelphia, she helped found the Children’s Aid Society of Pennsylvania.
Hancock became a posthumous best-selling author in 1937, when her charming and insightful letters from the battlefield were published under the title South After Gettysburg. They are now available under the title Letters of a Civil War Nurse–well worth the read if you are interested in Civil War nurses or daily life in a Union army camp behind the lines.