Did Korea embrace American pop culture more readily than Japan because the U.S. was seen as heroic? That’s not clearly the case. Despite, or more properly because of its defeat, Japan after World War II actively sought to immerse itself in the culture (especially the popular culture) of its triumphant occupiers, leading to a rapid “Americanization” period in which the media fantasies and material goods of the U.S. vision of the “good life” were prized above all. As Rikyo University law and political science professor Akio Igarashi notes, “In the immediate postwar period, what a majority of Japanese hoped for was the realization of a rational and affluent society… The spacious rooms and the big white refrigerator in the comic strip, Blondie, helped people to imagine the affluence of the American lifestyle….For Japanese at the time, America’s prosperous culture of consumption, symbolized by chewing gum, chocolate, and women’s fashion, represented ‘the American