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Familiar ingredients, strange recipe
Same materials, odd result
Around 2003, Japanese artists were working with the same materials as Western culture: designing T-shirts every American knew, wearing sneakers in a cool way, sampling old jazz records, and doing hip-hop that came out slightly off. They operated in the same zone as American culture, so the work seemed very strange while still speaking in the elements you expected.
The name Donkey Kong shows it. Americans vaguely know both words, but no American would put them together. Playing Mario felt like an American's dream with elements that wouldn't have been in the dream.
A slow build
That kind of mix had been bubbling in Japan for decades with no one outside seeing it. In the nineties and early 2000s, once there was a way to get access to it, it started exploding into the United States, and people were fascinated for the right reasons.
How did Japan fall for American jazz?
Jazz reached Japan in the 1920s, and after World War II American records and servicemen's radio spread it widely. Jazz kissa, small cafes where patrons listen quietly to records on high-end audio equipment, spread through the postwar decades. Japanese collectors became known for prizing original pressings, and Japanese labels reissued American jazz catalogs with meticulous care. Producers such as Nujabes later blended jazz samples into hip-hop beats.
Where did Donkey Kong's name come from?
Shigeru Miyamoto designed Donkey Kong for Nintendo, and it reached arcades in 1981. Miyamoto has said he chose Donkey to suggest stubbornness, and Kong refers to the gorilla. The hero, first called Jumpman, was renamed Mario after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America's warehouse. The game was Nintendo's first major hit in the United States.
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