With his encyclopedic knowledge and fan's love of both Japanese and American art and literature, Tatsumi is perhaps uniquely well situated to offer this study of the dynamic cross-currents between the avant gardes and pop cultures of Japan and the United States. Tatsumi shows how, over the past twenty years or so, writers and artists have openly and exuberantly appropriate materials drawn from East and West, from sources both high and low, challenging and unraveling Japan's and America's stereotypical images of one another.