Plastic Culture - How Japanese Toys Conquered the World (Amazon USA UK) written by London-based designer and illustrator Woodrow Phoenix

Editors say: Plastic Culture explores the world of toys: why we love them, what they represent, and why there is a growing market for "designer" and "art" toys aimed at adults. In this book, British author Woodrow Phoenix. takes a look at our relationship to toys in the twenty-first century, with particular reference to Japan--an exporter of both merchandise and ideas. Plastic toys based on Japanese comics, movies, and TV shows, from Astro Boy, Godzilla, and Gatchaman, to Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and Pokémon have had a powerful effect on the imaginations and markets of the West, and have kick-started trends in design and pop culture that have crossed from Japan to the West and back East again.

I bought the book on an afternoon when i was in need of easy and shallow reading. But it proved to be much better than i expected.

The author argues that the current fascination for designers toys/urban vinyl is not about regression or infnatilism. It's a mix of a "journey from wishspace to reality", an object that triggers memories and as such it becomes a part of its owner, cultural objects shaped by the values and obsessions of the society that produced them and have recently become art pieces of a new genre. Designers vinyls are now sold in limited editions, snapped up by collectors and are exhibited in art galleries.

Ultraman toys from the '70s and Garon vintage tin wind-up by Osaka Tin Toy

The book takes a look at the history of plastic toys, starting with the post-WWII period and the first plastic dolls manufactured by Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. Along with generic toys (trains, farm sets, teddy bears, etc) the biggest sellers were dolls modelled on film stars, comic book characters and later on science-fiction (robots, flying saucers, ray guns, etc.) then tv programs.

Later on came character merchandising and mascots created to attract customers and entice them to buy more of a given product. The best example of the phenomenon being breakfast cereals packets of the '50s and '60s. McDonald's has understood the potential of giving away free toys with their Happy Meal menus. They started as early as 1977 and the success of the scheme has turned the fast food giant into one of the largest distributors of toys in the world.

Choco-eggs

The role of TV and character merchandising in disseminating culture was very important in Japan as well but the phenomenon of plastic toys took a more exciting turn in the '80s, the decade when the word otaku started to get used in the country. Phoenix examined (a bit superficially imho) the social background of otaku and the emergence of "garage kits." In the beginning of the '80s young enthusiasts started making reproductions of characters from old animes, manga and special-effect movies first for their own use then they opened a studio at Kaiyodo. In 1999 though Kayiodo broke through the otaku barrier when they collaborated with confectionary company Furuta to produce the Choco Egg, each of the chocolate egg contains a limited-edition miniature model of an animal. The success was so big that Choco Egg speciality stores opened and fans started to trade duplicate or rare models.

After the long introduction on the history of toy culture for adults, the author proceeds by spotlighting several of the most famous designers of urban vinyl: starting with Michael Lau and Eric So who customized standard GI Joe action figures and turned them into either "gardeners" or Bruce Lee figures. Bounty Hunter, Presspop Gallery, Junko Mizuno, etc.

My sweet dog pull toy by Yoshitomo Nara and Murakami plushes

The most fascinating chapter for me was "The Toy as Art". Takashi Murakami's view in particular. He believes that his plushes and figurines work both as fine art and toys, adding that the consumer groups for these will be different, "but it is the same aesthetic form in the end. And i would like it if these consumer groups were one and the same." A confusion further increased by the fact that some of his sculptures actually had their toy form first, not the other way around. Toys are just another way to bring art in the life of everyone: "Art does not habe to be in a gallery. It does not have to cost thousands of dollars. It does not have to be elitist. It can be entertaining, and available."

I was also glad to read the history of the Blythe doll. I discovered them a few years ago on a postcard. The doll had huge green eyes, jet-black hair and porcelaine skin just like my friend Caroline whom i miss a lot since she fell in love with a surfer and moved to Biarritz. The doll was launched in the US in 1972. Her eyes change color by pulling a cord at the back of her head. Children found her too scary and production stopped. In 1997, Gina Garan started using a 1972 Blythe to practice her photographic skills. She took the doll everywhere with her and took hundreds of photos. In 2002, Gina published her first book of Blythe photography, This is Blythe. Later that year, Hasbro gave the rights to make Blythe dolls to Takara of Japan. Blythe was used in a tv commercials in Japan, its re-vamped version was marketed to adults and became an instant hit. Success in Japan led Blythe back to the U.S.

This month there was an exhibition of Blythe dolls dressed by designers at the Galeries Lafayette in Berlin)

More toys: Girltron that mix doll parts and transformer-style toys to create a new species; Tickle Me Elmo vibrating coat; Modified Toy Orchestra makes electronic music that derives from the modification of toys; and the magnificent Ken Stelarc.

Loving The Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots, by Timothy N.Hornyak (Amazon USA and UK.)

Publisher's blurb: While U.S. companies have produced robot vacuum cleaners and war machines, Japan has created warm and fuzzy life-like robot therapy pets. While the U.S. makes movies like Robocop and The Terminator, Japan is responsible for the friendly Mighty Atom, Aibo and Asimo. While the U.S. sponsors robot-on-robot destruction contests, Japan's feature tasks that mimic nonviolent human activities. (...) What can account for Japan's unique relationship with robots as potential colleagues in life, rather than as potential adversaries?

I've been looking for a book that answers that question for quite some time now.

Let's divide the book in two parts and start anti-chronologically. The second part is dedicated to the country's current state of robotic technologies, and what the future holds. If you only expect to discover new robots, you will be disappointed: we've all read about the like of Murata Boy the cyclist, Actroid the booth babe and Tomotaka Takahashi's super cute Neon in blogs such as the one where Hornyak documents his latest findings about robots. But that shouldn't stop you. What you won't find in blogs are information and quotes taken from conversations that the author had with today's robot engineers and experts.

What fascinated me most in the book was the first half of it, the one that looks at Japan's historical connections with robots, in particular its "karakuri" tradition and the influence that manga characters have had on the public's imagination.

Just like our Western automata, Karakuri were made to entertain and create a sense of wonder. The author argues that unlike their more sophisticated Western counterpart the Japanese automata were regarded more as dolls than machines. The aim was not to achieve realism but to charm the audience, it was art for its own sake rather than the advancement of science. It all started during the Edo period, when Japan was completely isolated from the rest of the world. Around 1662, a businessman named Takeda Omi opened an amusement park which quickly became famous for the theatre performances that starred automats as well as puppets and human actors. The mechanisms of the dolls were carefully hidden behind their kimonos and delicate smiles. Much of their technology owe much to the Western guns and clock-making know-how introduced in the country before the sakoku, the national seclusion period that would last some 250 years.

Recreating dolls would be impossible were it not for the Karakuri Zui, a treatise on "Illustrated Machinery" written in 1796 by Yorinao Hosokawa. The engineer, artisan and inventor described in three volumes how to make four kinds of wadokei clocks and nine types of mechanical dolls, including a famous boy which courteously serves tea to guests while nodding the head.

The Yumihiki Doji aims his bow

Another Estern influence on Japanese robotics was Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), the play that gave its name to robots. However, it might well be Mighty Atom/Astro Boy who left the biggest imprint in Japanese minds when it comes to robotics. Osamu Tezuka's character embodies the belief that robots can not only be friends with human beings but might also be the country's salvation. An idea that shouldn't be underestimated, especially if you think that the manga hero was born in the mind of a young medical student who was deeply affected by fire-bombed Osaka during WWII. According to Nagoya University robotics professor Tohio Fukada, the desire to create a robot like Atom exists among Japanese roboticists in varying degrees.

Astroboy by Hiroshi Araki, 1993

Astro Boy gained recognition in Occident as well. In particular in 2004 when he was inducted into Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame. The jury decided that Astro Boy deserved the title for being "the first robot with a soul."

The book keeps on with a look into the legacy of other popular characters such as Ironman No. 28/Gigantor (which might soon get its own statue in Kobe), , Mobile Suit Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc. And also the Mecha, walking robotic vehicles controlled by a pilot. My favourite was Grendizer or in french as Goldorak with his fulguro-poings and missiles gama. Il traverse tout l'univers aussi vite que la lumière. Qui est-il? D'où vient-il? Formidable robot des temps nouveaux. I never missed an episode of the series, had all the gadgets (or stole them from my little brother), and had a ridiculous crush on Actarus its pilot.

There's one really annoying thing about that book that pops up once in a while: the style. Most of the time it's ok, usual essay style, nothing to complain about and who am i to give lessons of writing style anyway? But here and there appear some paragraphs that seem to be taken from a cloying novel, i don't know what motivates these grandiloquent endeavours but they really weaken the otherwise compelling "plot".

Related: Where Anime and Art Meet: Gundam Exhibition, From Anime Center to Manga Museum, Robots. Better than people?

In February, Bibi started a daily blog with videos of films, ephemeral, vintage commercials, animations, cartoons, series and short films public domain, and videos that aren't in public domain, but which can be shared. There are a few gems in there but here's my rather inappropriate choice for Easter break.

The Street Fighter is a 1974 martial arts film known for being the first film to receive an X rating solely for its violent content. Would a 2007 eye would be appalled by the violence of the movie and its sequel?

Starring Sonny Chiba who played Hattori HanzÅ? in Kill Bill.
Image.

ICC in Tokyo is currently running an exhibition called OpenSky2.0, which showcases various artifacts relevant to Kazuhiko Hachiya's ambitious ongoing project with its ultimate goal of developing a personal "flying machine."

Hachiya's previous works include Inter Dis-Communication Machine, Seeing Is Believing, AirBoard (a jet-powered skateboard) -- to name a few. He's also the creator of PostPet, a popular email client application in which Kawaii digital pets take care of email messages.

The sky so far seems to be a "closed" space in which "end-users" cannot easily participate in. Imagine an "open" sky in which anyone can fly freely -- it would be so nice -- but making it actually happen would be extremely difficult. The OpenSky project started in 2003 and, so far, a flying machine was designed, a half-size radio-controlled prototype was built, a full-size aircraft was built and tested. It is being integrated with jet engines and the plan is to test the next version of the flying machine with a person on board. The exhibition will last till March 11.

I met Takashi Matsumoto in a charming village somewhere in the Swiss Alps for the Collaborative Artefacts Interactive Furniture workshop. He was presenting a very exciting object called Z-agon, a small cube which is in fact a video player. Each face of the cube is an high-res display for multi-media contents (video). I then started to follow from afar the activities of the Keio University and discovered so many nice projects that i asked him if he'd have time to answer a few questions. Somehow, between a laptop battle, his research and maybe a couple of turntable sampling he managed to find a couple of hours to unveil what he and the other designers in his laboratories are working on.

Can you tell us a few words about you? How did you get to work at Okude Lab? What is your role there?

First of all, I am really happy to get an interview for WMMNA! I am checking the feed everyday.

I am now a Ph.D. student of Keio University, Media Design Program and I belong to Okude Lab. In Shonan-Fujisawa Campus (SFC). I am designing user interfaces for network-based mobile gadgets. Those designs aim to provide simple embodied interactions for everyday objects to access web resources and to make our everyday lives more entertaining. My research interest is to produce an integrated design between hardwares, systems and business models for such devices.

My works like Z-agon and Pileus are futuristic but trying to be fit into a market right now. In my teenage years, I was living in Shibuya, a big commercial district in Tokyo. I have been watching how industries drop marketing to us, and I was aware of that there was a big chasm between product planning, marketing processes, and real user needs. So I studied marketing and intellectual properties in my undergraduate days. Then I realized we need a "design" of entire social and market systems to solve that problem. For example, Sony's Walkman and MTV were medias changed a market balance and our life styles in '80s music industry. I wanted to make such medias to change our life.

Then, I moved to Okude Lab just before I went on to master's course. Okude Lab. is an interesting laboratory researching a media design with such a wider vision. It has been developing actual works but also concerning humans and social factors. It's recent research focuses are designs of embodied interactions and social systems of communication media products. Okude lab. have a design method of ethnography and prototyping skills of assorted technologies to make concepts of works. Now It's quite a big laboratory having 50 students (incl. undergraduates and graduates). Each work is designed in a collaborative team of 3 to 5 people. My works are also developed in a team.

Okude Lab is a member of Media Design Program of Keio University (a.k.a. KMD). KMD now has 10 laboratories and we are collaborating in a big research project named "Ubiquitous Content". I am also working as a research assistant for the Ubiquitous Content project.

What is Ubiquitous Content about? What does this expression mean? Which area does it cover exactly?

"Ubiquitous Content" is a project designated by a governmental grant of JST-CREST (Japan Science and Technology Corporation: Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology). This is one of the biggest projects of KMD.

"Ubiquitous Content" is an idea of a new design objective of our lives in the post-PC era. In 20th century, a notion of media contents has been meant contents like movies, music, animations, video games etc. Figuratively speaking, such contents were entities supplied in containers designed as "boxes". But now, a spread of networks and a
realization of ubiquitous computing technologies are going to change those styles of media. The container is not like a "box" any more: It will change its forms freely to give us advanced computer augmentations in a specific context and it will be sometimes invisible embedded into our environments. It is more appropriately called Ubiquitous Media and it will be a new style of media. When we design such Ubiquitous Media, we need to think about the container as our environments in which many things are cooperating rather than a single hardware, a single software or a single standard. Users will not need to be conscious of those medias, therefore such containers emerge for users as "their lives" themselves. "Ubiquitous Contents" are contents for such media. Those must be "experiences" in "their lives".

As Ubiquitous Content project focuses on our lives and experiences, all things in our everyday lives are targets of the design. The 10 Laboratories of KMD are working on this wide subject from different perspectives.

For example, recent works of Ubiquitous Contents include the following topics: Yoshiro Sugano's ShootBall (Okude Lab) implemented a new sport using a ball with a built-in sensor and goals of visual projections. Midori Shibutani's Fabcell (Wakita Lab) is developing a new fabric changing colors for cyber fashions. Projects like a LivePic (M. Katsura for imgl; video) and BiblioRoll (Okude Lab) are introducing a new interaction techniques for both environmental and mobile media. It also includes research topics like Cyber Sound Project (Iwatake Lab) and New Ambience (Hiroya Tanaka Lab). Topics of Ubiquitous Contents are very wide.

Each design and research works from 10 laboratories are working separately under the concept of Ubiquitous Content. And we are collaborating together to make its design theory and a platform for the basis of Ubiquitous Content. Several a year, we hold demonstration events of Ubiquitous Content works together.

BiblioRoll and LivePic

Most of the projects you and your colleagues have worked on are very original. There's a magical and fairy aspect to most of them. Where do you find the inspiration? Many brainstormings? Observation of and discussions with technology users? Reading science-fiction?

The design approach of Okude Lab is based on phenomenology, which requires designers to expand their experiences and to find meanings in interactions. In particular, we go to a ethnographic fieldwork of participant observations. We participate in one activity as an apprentice finding a master of the activity in a field to find a design concept from our experiences. Then we describes a scenario to be a vision, and we iterate prototypings and its improvements. We do not do problem finding on existing designs with examinee like interviews and objective observations. The important thing is that we "designers ourselves" need to be changed in an experience in a field.
We do not start a design from a technology either. To achieve our vision for us, we will learn necessary new technologies to implement a demo. Yet we are not engineers having high-tech, we have a skill to bridge very wide technologies and know-hows between hardware, software, network technologies, form modeling, branding etc. In most of our cases, one work is implemented with numbers of programming languages, numbers of chips and hacked device modules, numbers of materials, and numbers of expression styles such as demo, video, and online.

A lodge of Okude Lab is filled with fun, free and energetic atmosphere and we are collaborating in a joyful way everyday. We don't have hierarchies and divisions of roles in a team, and all members required to be produces with responsibilities. Some members start to live in the lodge when they get into the swing of it, and we often have a meal together, plan a short trek, and sometimes get up to mischief (did you see MacSaber video of us?). We also knows what's up to members out of the lab sharing Flickr photos and blog RSS, and we creates edgy local and global buzz words in a lab. Such a relationship between members are making creative circumstance.

Do the researchers at Keio University Media Design get green light on whatever project they propose? What are the basic rules to respect? Do you have to come up with a marketable product for example?

In many cases, our research target is a development of a core concept of new media, but actually we eye the possibility of makertable products. However, many of our works are concepts for future and those will have some challenges to be marketable products now. So, each team manages project's intellectual properties (such as patents) based on their long-term strategies.

We do not always have to think up a maketable product. We also have fundamental research projects, for example a design of an ubiquitous computing platform and a development of a Bayesian network engine.

Keio University is encouraging ventures from university research. Now start-ups of small innovative team is getting easier in Japan by the New Corporation Act and a diffusion of broadband internet. We are going to bring some businesses from our design research in near future. If someone interested in global business partnership and investments, please get in touch with us. We wanna make money not art.

Our aim is to give a social solution with our design proposing a new lifestyle. And recent design challenge is to learn how to design a social system. We think businesses from Keio Media Design should be a way to make a contribution to society. This is a school philosophy of Keio since inception.

Your graduate thesis was the amazing Cubic Display Device "Z-agon". What have you learnt from this project? What were the biggest challenges of the design and construction of Z-agon?

Z-agon was the first work at Okude Lab for me. The project was started during the summer of 2002. Our team was thinking about a portable media of next generation, and we decided to design a new video player as we all agreed that our needs are shifting toward video (multi-media) contents like music clips and animations. The first inspiration was a 6-channels-TV-Cube, and it did not take time to find a target of the "Wi-Fi based video cube for social-sharing contents".

The concept is that 6 displays of a small cube get vide displays, and it is operated by physical turns of the device.

Most parts of Z-agon's design are envisions. Its goal is to provide high-res color images of movies, music, animations and games, and the 2.5 inch size was also necessary for its interaction and its element as an accessory. However it was almost impossible to realize Z-agon at the time when the 1st-gen music ipod just appeared to the market with a black and white display. When we introduced our concept to public, there are many company engineers who are really critical for it.

However, as we have had experiences feeling needs for this concept and we believed from surveys that technologies evolves to this direction in few years, we thought we should not throw off this concept. The first prototype was in a 12 inch cube that was quite big apart from the concept. And we filled in the gap making a conceptual movie with a futuristic scenario, and studying interaction research on a 2.5 inch cube. We got a patent for the basic device of the interactive cubic display. Then its design has been progressed. Z-agon has a dream that one day it has a quality of a commercial product. In that regard, our handmade prototypes are still functionally incompletion with technological difficulty. But now 5 years after the project started, it is obvious that the concept is getting more realistic, here, we already got similar devices like iPod Nano and Nintendo DS.

We already excepted that users want to share video contents on the Internet. (See the concept movie in 2002) It was because we found that needs from experiences and observations as new generation in Tokyo. Now, you see a big boom of YouTube. We hope Z-agon will be a wi-fi video player for such content sharing services. We feel this kind of predictions and envision on design were really important to drive the project.

What inspired Pileus: The Internet Umbrella (video)? What did you want to achieve with this project from the KMD Okude Lab? How will it evolve in the near future?

Pileus is the most exciting project for me right now. This work is designed in a team with Sho Hashimoto, who has a unique engineering skill in the lab. We started this project in a kick-off camp of a spring semester in 2006. the initial concept and the first scenario movie were completed in just 3 days of the camp.

We have many rain in Japan. So the umbrella is one of the closest article of everyday use, but it is also a bulky article in such a climate. Traditionally we have been feeling many kinds of air and mood in a rainy day, and we wanted to expand that feeling to be more fun and vivid with the re-design of an umbrella. From that perspective, we came up with the idea of umbrella to take photo-logs and to browse internet contents in a rain. Me and Sho already took notice of that we can provide many kinds of services in a real world with Web2.0, and also had a technological vista to mash-up those with a mobile hardware. Additionally, it was another target that this can be the first example of a hardware mash-up to indicate a new economic solution for mobile gadgets joining into an economy of Web 2.0. We do not want a small "Cellphones" (Smartphones, whatever) squashing up many functions inside, but we re-designed an object of everyday use from scratch to be mashed-up with web services.

At the end of last year, we founded a spined-off LLC for the project, and we are thinking how it will go a business exit.

As the ideology of the design of Pileus, we would like to show that design is not about its shape any more; an apt assortment of modules and interactions are more important factors for the design. So, our prototype is showing off the circuits to see how modules are combined rather than covering it. Some people suggest us to give a beautiful surfaces for it as a "design", but that is not what we want to do now, we are meticulous about the interaction of information visualizations on the screen though. Fortunately, this rugged look is loved by many audiences at demo sites.

As an exclusive info, we have builded a new version of Pileus with GPS. A new function with GPS is geo-tagging of photos taken by Pileus. It will help to users to check and share records of their walks in the rain. Another function is a map display of an area. This will be used for a big-screen navigation in an umbrella, and it will be able to show local pictures and local ads are loaded on the umbrella. Of course, this function is also realized by a mash-up technique. Now we are using Yahoo! Maps API, but we may switch it to Google Maps API because Japanese map on Yahoo! maps has bad scale ratio. We are going to go an experiment in a city in a rain, however, unfortunately we have had few rainy days this year yet.

Can you tell us a few words about Post-Bit: Multimedia E-paper Stickies? (video 1 and 2)

I have participated in an internship at FX Palo Alto Laboratory Inc. (FXPAL) in Silicon Valley in 2004. Post-bit was an e-paper device designed at the intern. As you will see, it is a small e-paper memo and It is named after 3M's "post-it".

When I studied a working space, I found paper post-its are still heavily used in a office although PC and digital gadgets are diffused. As FXPAL and the Xerox group has a technology of e-paper, I thought about a design of tiny memos of e-paper. I imagined making paper prototypes that encrusting multimedia contents on tiny papers in a physical workplace must be be useful and kawaii.

The design theme was to integrate the advantage of tangibility of papers and the advantage of dynamic usages of digital data. There, I invented "drop-beyond-drag" which is a exchange system between GUI and TUI. It enables users to directly drag-and-drop a file from GUI desktop to an e-paper putting on the display flame, and reversely user can just squeeze the memo to splash a content onto the GUI desktop from a memo on the flame. I made a prototype and a concept video with helps of Maribeth Back and Tony Dunnigan, and the video was introduced on a video track of ACM multimedia 2005.

Are you an ipodj?

Haha, Yes, that was a funny trial with my high school friends. This idea is still popular. As we got busy for our primary jobs, the project has been stopping after the creation of tiny DJ mixer for ipods, though.

I do DJ sometimes at my friend's home parties and parties in the lab with analog turntables. I like scratching on it. By the way, to do mash-up on a design is really similar feeling to do sampling on turntables, you know...

Thanks Takashi!

More images.

Ryota Kuwakubo's Prepared Radios are handmade and programmed to extract only consonant sounds from the broadcast. All meaning and information is removed, only breath remains: a human essence.

Image from the Galerie Lucy Mackintosh, in Lausanne where the Cocosocoasoco exhibition is still running until January 28.

Via air artlog and John Hansard gallery.