Sawaragi Noi and his presentation of the Neo-Pop artists in the 1990s have had a

significant influence on Murakami’s own emphasis on the inauthenticity of otaku cultural

identity. Sawaragi presented post-war popular culture as imported and domesticated: ‘[I]t
is not an originality deriving from Japanese history, but something foreign that has been
processed into its ‘own’ thing’ (Sawaragi cited in Woznicki). Thus, for Sawaragi the
Neo-pop artists take this ‘negative’ situation of the post-war period as an ‘empty’ space
for Japanese art, and then creating something positive from it. Sawaragi argues that the
originality of Neo-pop is expressed through the remaking of ‘borrowed’ cultural forms.
For Sawaragi this represents a refusal of using the West as a mirror through which to
reflect Japan’s self-image. So like Murakami, Sawaragi takes the hybrid identity of post-
war Japan and uses it as an expression of original Japanese identity, albeit ironically.