Short answers, pulled from the story.
Japanese popular culture includes cinema, cuisine, television programs, anime, manga, video games, music, and doujinshi. Many of these forms retain older artistic and literary traditions, with themes and styles traceable to traditional art forms. Today it plays a major role in Japan's soft power, tourism, and economy.
Cool Japan, written as クールジャパン, refers to Japan's government-led effort to project soft power internationally through cultural influence rather than military force. It was initiated by the Japanese government as part of postwar national image rebuilding, packaging pop culture as a form of diplomacy. In 2008, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally embraced this strategy by adding anime and Kawaii Ambassadors to its cultural promotion efforts.
Purikura was conceived in 1994 by Sasaki Miho, an employee at the Japanese game company Atlus. The first machine, called Print Club, was introduced in February 1995 by Sega and Atlus, initially in game arcades before expanding to fast food shops, train stations, karaoke establishments, and bowling alleys.
Osamu Tezuka, born in 1925 and died in 1989, is known as manga no kamisama, meaning God of Comics. Influenced by Walt Disney, he created the character Astro Boy, a robotic boy with spiky hair, fist-sized eyes, and rockets on his feet. He spent forty years shaping the evolution of anime and the content of Japanese comic books.
Deep Love, written in 2002 by Yoshi, was the first keitai shousetsu, or cell phone novel. It was later adapted into a manga series, a television show, and a film. By 2007, ten of Japan's bestselling novels that year were derived from cell phone novels.
Kizuna Ai is regarded as the first VTuber, having debuted in 2016. She accumulated more than 4.3 million subscribers across two YouTube channels, A.I. Channel and A.I. Games. VTubers use motion capture face tracking technology to animate digital avatar models in real time, distinguishing them from virtual idols like Hatsune Miku, which are voicebanks rather than real people behind a character.