japanamerica

In US Here : [Yoshi Domoto - Executive Director, Japan-America Society of Georgia ] " Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. " by Roland Kelts Roland Kelts visited Kennesaw State University in March 2010 for a lecture event, which was organized by KSU's Dr. Edward Chan and Atsuo Nishikata , the chair of the Japan-America Society of Georgia's Young Professionals group. The JASG was a promotional partner of the event and many of our members enjoyed the lecture very much. Roland Kelts has both Japanese and American ancestry like myself, and I was particularly interested in his views of the relationship between Japanese and American pop culture. The book gave me a better understanding of how Japanese popular culture developed to what it is today and how it has spread across the world. Although Japan is still a huge contributor to the world economy, its cultural influence, especially its pop culture, may now be more influential. Japanese pop culture ...

More @ Yomiuri Peace out.

Ishihara's big bill Last Friday, after ramming through Bill 156 —the so-called “non-existent youth bill” targeting manga and anime imagery while exempting live action photography and video, not to mention live human beings who actually possess child pornography—Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, the former taboo-busting novelist turned moralist politico, claimed in his monthly press conference that Japan had become “too uninhibited” compared with “Western societies,” and added that readers of offending manga had “warped DNA.” The subsequent decision by ten top manga publishers to boycott next year’s Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) , slated for March 24-27, amounts to an unusual act of corporate protest in normally conflict-shy Japan, prompting Japan’s otherwise reticent Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, to post his first message under his own name, pleading for both sides to find a resolution. TAF 2011: ripe for China? No wonder: reports out of this year’s TAF were dominated by the ...

Aunt Reiko, Uncle Iwane and me in Tokyo, 2010

They are not your average train ticket inspectors. Picture a bevy of young ladies dressed in flouncy blue and white dresses, accessorised with over-the-knee socks, pretty hair bows and undimmable million-watt smiles. Welcome to Japan’s latest eyebrow-raising innovation – a “maid café” train where passengers are “served” by a clutch of pretty all-singing, all-dancing and all-adoring female train staff. The popularity of Japanese maid cafés has been well documented over the past decade: primarily located in Tokyo’s subculture hubs such as Akihabara and Ikebukuro, they involve young women in maid outfits (often dubbed modern day geisha) innocently serving tea and cakes to manga and anime loving customers. Last weekend, the Seibu Railway Group installed a “maid café” on board its limited express Red Arrow train operating between Ikebukuro and Chichibu, a stretch of track renowned as home to a number of high-profile animation companies. Nine maids recruited from Akihabara’s maid café distri...

Earlier today in Tokyo, the Metropolitan Assembly passed the government's revised bill to amend the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance--otherwise known as the "non-existent youth" bill, a story I wrote about late last month , and also last spring , when the revised bill was first submitted for approval and was flatly rejected. While restrictions on sexually stimulating and/or harmful depictions have long been in place, the new revisions specifically target "manga and anime," while exempting real-life photography (explain that one), and focus on materials that may be "disrupting of social order"--much like Ishihara's own taboo-breaking novels and plays, and his more recent nationalist, racist and homophobic blather . In objection, ten major manga publishers--Kadokawa Shoten, Shueisha, Kodansha, Akita Shoten, Hakusensha, Shogakukan, Shonen Gahousha, Shinchosa, Futubasha and LEED--have vowed to pull their wares from the 2011 Tokyo International Anim...

My radio chat on the movie and Haruki with Lisa Mullins is here .

Felipe Smith’s is an exceptional story, to be sure, as is the story of Peepo Choo itself—a US-Japan culture clash comedy that both mocks and celebrates fans of comics and manga, illustrated in riveting and sometimes surrealistically violent detail. His achievement would seem many a foreign manga fan’s dream. But the artist remains frustrated by the us-vs-them mentality pervading the manga industry in Japan and overseas . “We have to get beyond these silly classifications of manga vs. comics and whatever,” he says. Smith even objects to English speakers using the term ‘manga.’ “There’s a word for them in English—‘comics.’ Just call them comics." Stu Levy of TokyoPop cites a personal favorite of his, the manga Zombie Hunter , authored by a Japanese, Kazumasa Hirai, and illustrated by a Korean, Kyung-Il Yang. “Does that qualify as manga?” he asks. “These distinctions are like splitting hairs. In Japan, ‘manga’ as a word is simply the term for ‘comics,’ but overseas, manga has com...

Japan may be the first nation to opt for a no growth, steady state economy. Roland Kelts “what’s wrong with being the world’s no. 2?” So said Renhō, the single-monikered and, for a Japanese politician, unusually single-minded 42-year-old female member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, tapped by Prime Minister Naoto Kan this summer to serve as minister of administrative reform (aka, chief budget-slasher). Renhō uttered the question during a debate late last year on financing a next-generation supercomputer project powerful enough to compete with the US, but her plaintive question resonated far beyond the walls of Japan’s Upper House chamber. By the middle of this year, as the stack of urgent reports concerning Japan’s stagnant economy, political paralyses, fading competitiveness, so-called Galápagos syndrome isolationism, emerging social strains amid widening income gaps, diminished labor pools and a rapidly aging population piled high, Renhō’s rhetorical query seemed to cut to t...

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN: READINGS AND TALKS MOTOYUKI SHIBATA Shibata, one of Japan’s leading translators of contemporary American literature, works at the University of Tokyo, but he’s making two appearances in New York City this week. On Dec. 7 at 6:30, he talks about the art of translation with Paul Auster at the Asia Society. (725 Park Ave., at 70th St. 212-288-6400.) On Dec. 9 at 6, he joins the New York writer Barry Yourgrau for a bilingual reading from Yourgrau’s new book of stories, “Gangster Fables,” which was just published in Japan. (Kinokuniya Bookstore, 1073 Sixth Ave., between 40th and 41st Sts. 212-869-1700.) Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/readings/motoyuki-shibata-various-locations-generic-no-phone#ixzz17QkcGPA1

Vast thanks to Vince Shortino of Crunchyroll Japan for the props in selecting Japanamerica as a "favorite book of 2010" for this month's Buaiso magazine (story online here ). Japanamerica, the Japanese edition is translated by Iyasu Nagata and was first published by Random House Kodansha, now Takeda Random House :

My latest for Adbusters is out:

Two of my conversations with Haruki are out now in a comprehensive collection just published in Japan, a week before the release of Anh Hung Tran's film version of Noruwei no Mori / Norwegian Wood . Here are some legal teasers: