• Monday, February 22nd, 2021
• Zoom, YouTube, Facebook live session: 1700-1800 (HKT)
• Free Admission 

Matt Alt is the author of Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World, a cultural detective story and history of modern life told through the lens of Japanese consumer products. Matt tracks down the creators of what he calls “fantasy-delivery devices” that changed us as we consumed them. From toys and gadgets like the karaoke machine and the Walkman to increasingly immersive virtual escapes of anime, video games and anonymous online imageboards, essential inessentials made in Japan profoundly transformed lifestyles and disrupted societies around the globe. They bewitched millions partly because they were well crafted products, but also because advanced nations across the planet have come to resemble Japan demographically, economically, and socially. That’s why when Japan’s economy crashed in the 1990s, its cultural clout paradoxically soared – and continues to.

Matt Alt is the co-founder of AltJapan Co., Ltd., a Tokyo-based entertainment localization company. With more than twenty years of experience working alongside Japanese game, manga, and other content creators, he brings a unique perspective from inside Japan’s pop-cultural production machine. The author of numerous books about Japan, his writing has appeared widely in print and online at the New Yorker, Slate, Wired, CNN, BBC, Vice, and more.

Kenneth Lee is a Hong Kong-based writer. He created Tales From Tabata, a blog about contemporary Japanese culture, where he writes about Tokyo Big Sight comic conventions and Twitter memes (among other things). Lee studied international politics and Japanese at Georgetown University and Waseda University. He was a Goodwill Ambassador at the National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual celebration of U.S.-Japan relations in Washington, D.C. He is a licensed sake sommelier, and currently works in legal services. Follow him on Twitter @talesfromtabata. (Moderator)