japanamerica

My NYAF official sched is as follows: NYAF Japanamerica sched: 9/25, 5:15-6:15, Yoshiyuki Tomino (GUNDAM) 9/26, 12:15-1:15, AKB48 9/27, 11:15-12:15, Yui Makino (Tsubasa Chronicle)

My new column for the Daily Yomiuri (co-hosted by 3:AM Magazine ) covers Gundam's creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino , and girl-power via AKB48 --both of whom are in town right now to prep for appearances at this weekend's New York Anime Festival at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I'll be hosting panels with Tomino-san, AKB48 and voice actress Yui Makino . (Full schedule forthcoming.) Special thanks to NYAF Director Peter Tatara for his time and insights. SOFT POWER, HARD TRUTHS / Mecha auteur and mega girl group hit New York Roland Kelts / Special to The Daily Yomiuri This evening in New York, I will have the privilege of introducing and conversing with Yoshiyuki Tomino, veteran anime creator, director, screenwriter and novelist. Tomino is most famous for his now 30-year-old seminal mecha anime masterpiece, Mobile Suit Gundam. He has been making the rounds of late, granting public appearances and interviews both in Japan and overseas, and speaking out on topics as diverse as v...

from Medium At Large Roland Kelts Comes To NYAF! "I have the great honor of announcing that Roland Nozomu Kelts will be attending this year's NYAF! Roland is a half-Japanese American writer who divides his time between New York and Tokyo and publishes in both English and Japanese. He is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US . He is also a lecturer at the University of Tokyo, a contributing editor and writer for "Adbusters" magazine and "A Public Space" literary journal, and a columnist for "The Daily Yomiuri" in Japan. His essays and stories can be found in the books "A Wild Haruki Chase," "Gamers," "Kuhaku," "Playboy's College Fiction," "Art Space Tokyo," "Zoetrope" and others. He is the Editor in Chief of the "Anime Masterpieces" screening and discussion series. His forthcoming novel is called "Access," and when he is not writ...

I've just reviewed Tears in the Darkness , a capacious, brilliantly narrated account of the Bataan Death March in World War II, featuring interviews with Japanese, American and Filipino veteran and civilian survivors. Former NYT correspondent Michael Norman and his wife, author and NYU professor Elizabeth M. Norman, spent ten years researching events surrounding and involving the largest ever US military surrender and one of the most brutal and sadistic POW horrors in recorded history. The result is a riveting book that is as artfully structured and well written as it is excruciating. John Dower ( Embracing Defeat ) and Herbert Bix ( Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan ), in particular, arguably raised the bar for English-language books on the Pacific War by conducting extensive research and interviews in Japan and with the Japanese. The Normans rise to the challenge admirably. Tears conveys our capacity for stark inhumanity with novelistic i ntimacy. My review is out in thi...

This is a short series of three related but discrete meditations on simplicity, minimalism and recycling commissioned by my editors at Adbusters magazine . The series was published to accompany a longer feature by my friend Amelia Newcomb, senior editor at the Christian Science Monitor, exploring the Japanese concept of wabi s abi , what some call 'the art of impermanence,' celebrating the bare essentials, humbleness and eloquent ruin. Amelia visits the town of Kamikatsu, whose residents seek to banish all waste by 2020. You can read her excellent feature story here . Some readers of the online version of this series understandably seem to think the three segments comprise an organic whole, but that's not the case. The three independent short pieces were interspersed with Amelia's feature in the magazine's print edition, just as intended, and should be read separately. Had I written them as a single, coherent article, they would contain many more segueways and q...

(heart medication)