japanamerica

Found in translation: the premiere issue of Monkey Business International: new writing from Japan , published in collaboration with A Public Space and featuring new material from Haruki Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, Hideo Furukawa, Mina Ishikawa, manga artists The Brother and Sister Nishioka and Barry Yourgrau, among many others , debuts this spring with a string of events & parties in NYC: Saturday, April 30 @ The Asia Society in Manhattan Monday, May 1 @ BookCourt in Brooklyn Tuesday, May 3 @ The Japan Society in Manhattan All of the above will feature authors, editors and translators from Japan, the US and Canada. Lineups, details and other specs forthcoming. (And, yes: amid the sterling stories, poems, and interviews--there will even be a dose of manga channeling Franz Kafka.) [photos from the original launch of Monkey Business in Tokyo, 2008] Monkey Business International was compiled and translated by Motoyuki Shibata, Ted Goosen and other stalwarts, and Shibata and Goosen al...

This is my first 'entry' for the newly launched "Pacific Rim Diary" segment of The Madeleine Brand Show on KPCC/NPR--on the perils of trans-national comedy, especially in the YouTube era: Sometimes comedy doesn't travel well: Pacific Rim Diary # 1 with Roland Kelts And here's my latest "Soft Power / Hard Truths" column for The Daily Yomiuri parsing the same:

Author, editor, photographer and friend Hiroko Yoda weighs in with one Japanese perspective on the question of trans-cultural humor and humiliation, via CNN Go Tokyo : The other day a friend of mine and I were talking the about the now notorious “ QI incident ,” where a British game show made light of a Japanese man’s having survived both the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As we chatted, he forwarded me a link to another British show by the name of “Turning Japanese.” “Here we go again,” he said. “This one is even worse.” The Channel Five show appears to focus on some of Tokyo’s strangest spots: a lingerie shop for men, a costumed stage performance, a samurai theme park. It was superficial. It was silly. But I couldn’t find myself getting upset about it. My friend couldn’t understand. “QI was about one man's situation,” he said. “But ’Turning Japanese’ is ridiculing an entire race of people!” He’s right about one thing: the foreign media always loves a good “wacky Japan”...

In honor of this Sunday's mega-game: some trans-cultural musings on my time at last year's Super Bowl, and a place we call 'home.' A Home of One’s Own When I depart Japan for the US, I usually target the American coasts. My flights out of Narita are bound for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle, and many of my fellow passengers are Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Singaporean, with a smattering of other Southeast Asians. As a half-Japanese American, I am surrounded by my ilk—people who look and behave approximately like me. Most of my fellow passengers have dark hair, slender builds and tawny skin. We use chopsticks and drink tea. We grin subtly. With few exceptions, we speak sotto voce . The same holds true when I fly west from T okyo to London or Amsterdam, with a smaller contingent of Middle Eastern passengers. Many Asians trek as tourists or businesspeople to flagship European cities, and numerous flights from the Asian continent connect through Narita. So w...

Hardly a tit-for-tat, of course--but a reminder, perhaps, that insular humor, decontextualized, can be perceived as tactless, if not offensive, beyond one's shores. Explanation courtesy of Japan Probe : On Monday night’s episode of “ Sekai Maru Mie TV ,” somebody thought it would be hilarious to put black paint on the face of a Japanese guy so he could apparently look like Tiger Woods. The character called himself Taraiga Woods, a pun on the golfer’s name and the Japanese word for tub ( tarai ). Celebrity guests would be asked to predict what would happen next in funny home videos. If someone answered incorrectly, the blackface Taraiga would drop a tub on his/her head. tiger woods black face [probe]

I was supposed to be on a plane back to Tokyo this week to shoot a segment for a BBC documentary on language and visual culture, both of which I write and care about deeply. Aside from being a half-Japanese raised in America and living in both countries, I have come to appreciate the uniquely visual nature of expression in Japan, from its ideographic language to its digitally animated landscape, and what it might tell us about the futures we are all rapidly inhabiting . I have also been startled by the degree to which Americans, especially the young, have been drawn to cultural artifacts, manga, anime and fashion, from an archipelago so far from their own shores, and so fundamentally different in nature and history. I wrote about these unexpected convergences in a book called Japanamerica . The BBC show was to be hosted by Stephen Fry, the British celebrity and author. Fry is ubiquitous in England, and I was immediately attracted by the opportunity to meet him and stroll around ...