ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to shed light on the multiplicity of images, stories and discourses that Moomin and Finland invoke in late capitalist, post-affluence Japanese society. In the process, the idea of imagination as capacity becomes fundamental, because of its social-institutional and heteronomous power on the one hand, and its open-ended, unpredictable and radical capacity on the other. The chapter explores the 'pastness' that the Finnish troll conjures up in Japan's 'social imaginary'; the author identifies what people imagine to have been lost in the past and to be yearned for in the present. Moomin's international acclaim began in Britain in the 1950s when the Moomin comic strips featured in The Evening News became a social phenomenon. North America was in fact one of few places where the Moomin comic did not succeed; the Pasadena Independent was the only paper that expressed an interest, but Moomin books and comic books circulated widely in Europe.
