Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World
Matt Alt
Crown: 2020
.
In this pandemic season Tokyo’s Electric Town is drab and half-empty. Akihabara, just to the north of Tokyo’s financial district of Marounuchi, emerged after the Second World War as a hub for the trade in white goods, appliances and electronic components. Its narrow backstreets are still lined with hole-in-the-wall outlets selling neon strip lights, fibre-optic cables and resistors and transistors from plastic haberdashers’ cabinets.

Now those warrens are patrolled by young women, many dressed in police uniforms or military fatigues cut high on the thigh, handing out fliers for theme clubs and cafes. Above, the upper floors are barnacled with neon and billboards, and contain emporia hawking a mix of adult toys and toys for adults; sex shops stacked on top of second-hand phone retailers; and hobby shops stocked with figurines of pneumatic doe-eyed heroines and angular robots. With the state of emergency barely over, the theme cafes—maid, cat, military—are not doing much trade, but there are still glimpses into the depths of Akihabara’s strangeness. Outside Bic Camera, a young woman in a nylon gothic maid’s outfit clutches an albino hedgehog in a Tupperware box.

• Tags: Issue 20, Japan, Matt Alt, Peter Guest