This book is, then, an attempt to analyze the cultural history of the creative imaginings inspired in the West by Japan and its aesthetic products since the state opened its doors to the outside (meaning Western) world in 1853. It is a spirited attempt to bring together all these areas in one sustained analysis, an effort she herself admits recalls Oscar Wilde's quotation: "The whole of Japan is pure invention." 2 That is, it is not that Japan as a modern nation-state does not exist but that Japan as imagined by many in the West does not exist, just as Tibet as Shangri-la does not. 1 This current book combines her interests in literature, film (anime especially), the fantastic in general, and Japan and modernity with the added themes of globalization and Western fan culture. From Impressionism to Anime represents a further development of the ideas Susan Napier has written about in two well-known and frequently cited books on fantasy in Japan, The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature and Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle.
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