japanamerica

Interest: Smithsonian Museum to Host Satoshi Kon Tribute on Saturday posted on 2011-03-30 21:13 EDT Author Roland Kelts to present Paprika , preview of Makoto Shinkai 's Hoshi o Ou Kodomo Japanamerica book author Roland Kelts confirmed with ANN that he will host a tribute event dedicated to the late anime director Satoshi Kon at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. this coming Saturday, April 2. Otakon parent company Otakorp is serving as a co-sponsor for the event, and the D.C. Anime Club as a co-presenter. The event will include a speech from Kelts honoring Kon's life works, and a screening of Paprika . The Smithsonian is also hosting a screening of Makoto Shinkai 's The Place Promised in Our Early Days following a preview of Shinkai's upcoming film Hoshi o Ou Kodomo , a screening of Hayao Miyazaki 's Kiki's Delivery Service , a cosplay contest, and an art workshop. The schedule is as follows: 11:00 a.m. Kiki's Delivery Service screening 2:00...

Still standing:

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun , the nation's largest and most widely-read newspaper, introduces Monkey Business International , the first ever English-language Japanese literary journal, co-published here in the US by A Public Space , the Brooklyn-based US literary journal. Whew--that's a mouthful. Pre-orders are now available via APS here . NYC launch events for April & May posted here . More MONKEY info forthcoming.

Listen here

Special and humble thanks to generous CCBC students and faculty, Profs. Heather L. Harris, Kim Jensen, Rachel Lawton and Japanamerica publisher, Macmillan.

Starts tomorrow: info here

Friend and scholar Bill Tsutsui, author of Godzilla on My Mind , and I speak with Studio 360 's Kurt Andersen about Japan's post-apocalyptic sensibility in the wake of the quake and wave. On WNYC / NPR:

MONKEY BUSINESS: New Writing from Japan LAUNCH EVENTS April 30 Crossing Boundaries: Contemporary Asian Fiction in Translation (part of the PEN World Voices Festival) Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue 2:30–4:00 p.m. Hiromi Kawakami and Rebecca Brown, moderated by Motoyuki Shibata Minoru Ozawa and Joshua Beckman, moderated by Ted Goossen May 1 Monkey Business Launch Party at BookCourt 163 Court Street, Brooklyn 7:00 p.m. Join us for an evening of readings and celebrating with Monkey Business editors and contributors! May 3 Contemporary Japanese Storytelling: The Verbal and the Visual Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street 6:30-8:00 p.m. Hideo Furukawa and Steve Erickson, video reading by Barry Yourgrau, co-moderated by Motoyuki Shibata and Roland Kelts For more information about Monkey Business and to order a copy, visit www.apublicspace.org

I'll be giving two talks in Baltimore this Thursday, March 24--one at 10 a.m., the second at 2:30 p.m. Details are here (and on the poster above). Books will be available and signings will follow. If you are in the area, please stop by and say hello. We've plenty to talk about.

[tokyo, 3-11] My second entry for the "Pacific Rim Diary" segment of The Madeleine Brand Show on KPCC/NPR is about watching devastation from afar as two hometown skylines go up in smoke and down in tragedy, and the prescience of Hayao Miyazaki's PONYO--recorded in the show's home studio in Los Angeles: Pacific Rim Diaries: an expat's view on the Japan earthquake [new york city, 9-11]

This column was supposed to be about recent upheavals in the manga industry that have permanently rearranged the publishing landscape in Japan and overseas. A few weeks ago, Kodansha, Japan’s largest publisher and owner of licenses for Akira , Ghost in the Shell and other internationally renowned anime titles, purchased New York-based Vertical, Inc., the decade-old indie publisher of Japan-related literature, manga and nonfiction works, in a joint acquisition with Dai Nippon Printing. Vertical has become especially notable for producing elegant paperback editions of lesser known titles by Osamu Tezuka, the father of modern manga and anime, such as Ayako and Ode to Kirihito , in addition to his popular Black Jack series. Given that Kodansha ended its licensing agreement with Del Rey Manga late last year, its Vertical buyout is seen as another step the company’s move toward more ‘hands-on’ management of the US manga market. But the company wasn’t finished. One week after its purc...

Thanks so much for queries of concern. I am, and have been, safely ensconced in Eugene and Portland, Oregon, and family and friends in Japan are thus far reporting safe, if shaken. Many others less fortunate.

Speaking at Daiwa Foundation House , London, UK. Info and booking online here .

So the Asst. Sec. of State makes his apologies over the now-fired Maher's bigotry to incoming foreign minister Matsumoto, who is replacing the now-resigned Maehara. Ah, politics. March 10, 2011 U.S. Removes Diplomat Over Comments Angering Japan By MARTIN FACKLER TOKYO — A top American diplomat has been removed from his post after stirring outrage in Japan for reportedly belittling Okinawans, a State Department official said on Thursday. The official, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell, also said the United States ambassador to Japan, John V. Roos, flew to Okinawa on Thursday to apologize in person to the governor of the island, which hosts about half of the 50,000 American military personnel in Japan. According to Japanese press reports, the diplomat, Kevin K. Maher, told American university students in December that the Okinawans were “masters of manipulation and distortion.” Mr. Maher, who was head of the State Department’s office of Japan affairs, has called the medi...

Roland Kelts on Multipolar Japan, 3/10 4pm Posted on March 3, 2011 by roberthilllong Pop Culture from a Multipolar Japan Roland Kelts, Author and Journalist Knight Library Browsing Room March 10, 4:00 pm Is there something more to the U.S.’s fascination with Japanese anime and manga? How are anime films and manga comics cultural channeling zones, opened by the horrors of war and disaster and animated by the desire to assemble a world of new looks, feelings and identities? Roland Kelts addresses the movement of Japanese culture into the West as sign and symptom of broader reanimations. With uncertainty now the norm, style, he argues, is trumping identity, explaining, in part, the success of Japanese pop and fashion, design and cuisine in the West. As Western mindsets encounter a rapid decline in longstanding binaries – good/evil, woman/man, black/white – Japan’s cultural narratives evolve in borderless, unstable worlds where characters transform, morality is multifaceted, and endin...

Am back on the road again this spring. Oregon March 10-14; Baltimore/DC March 23-25; DC April 2. London April 11-18. NYC April 29-May 3. More details TBA. Please join in.

We're all BIG IN JAPAN.