About

Culture: An Owner's Manual is a newsletter / blog from Tokyo-based American writer, W. David Marx, to examine the social mechanisms that explain how culture works and why it changes over time.

Marx is the author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style (Basic Books, 2015), and the up-coming Status and Culture (Viking Books, 2022). Over the last two decades, he has also written for publications such as Popeye, Vox, The New Republic, Nylon, and The Fader. He has also worked with companies, including Grand Seiko, Uniqlo, Hermès, Levi's, New Balance, and Sotheby's.

His senior thesis on streetwear brand A Bathing Ape won the Noma-Reischauer Prize in 2001, and his Master's research on the Japanese music industry was anthologized in Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).