1Q84 by haruki murakami


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On the newly legal 'hentai' erotic, pornographic manga/anime site, FAKKU, for The Japan Times

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Finding opportunities overseas with the ‘art of hentai’ By ROLAND KELTS When Jacob Grady began pirating anime and manga online eight years ago, he was still in college. He took out student loans to pay the server bills, and figured that if he ever made enough money from the site to purchase a round-trip flight to Japan, the effort and expense would be worth it. Like many Americans, he got hooked on Japanese pop culture as a kid through the Cartoon Network’s action-oriented programming block called “Toonami” (“cartoon tsunami”). He would race home from school to catch the latest episodes of “Dragonball Z” and “Gundam Wing.” But Grady was not pirating anime adventure series or kids’ shows like “Pokemon.” The content on his site was what most non-Japanese call “ hentai ” (abnormal, perverted), and in Japan is still largely known as ero-manga, ero-anime, or just porno. “At some point, going through puberty and exploring the Internet for the first time, I came across hentai,
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Ten Years After Disaster: My essay on Japan's 2011 triple catastrophes and "Ghosts of the Tsunami" for Words Without Borders

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After Disaster: Embracing a Living Past through “Ghosts of the Tsunami” in Words Without Borders Gymnasium, Namie, 2016 Seven years ago Japan underwent its most devastating national crisis since the end of World War II. On March 11, 2011, the genpatsu shinsai triple natural and industrial disaster—a 9.0 earthquake, a tsunami that rose to 128 feet and flooded 217 square miles, and a meltdown and radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—is now cited as the costliest such catastrophe in the world, running to an estimated $400 billion as of 2017. At the time, the impact reverberated nationwide—physically, in the form of aftershocks that rattled buildings throughout the night, and logistically, as distribution and transportation routes were hampered or shut down entirely, leaving some store shelves periodically bare. Japan’s network of nuclear power plants went offline, and the term jishuku, denoting a measure of self-restraint in the face of others’ suffering, was manife
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Video: Interview for Hype Magazine

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I was recently interviewed in Tokyo by Darren Paltrowitz of Hype Magazine . He was in New York City, my former hometown.  We talked about my gig hosting the Japan Cats doc, but also a lot of stuff I hadn't planned to discuss, like pandemic work, my forthcoming Blade Runner book, the novel, the other books, my Who T-shirt and interviews with Pete Townshend, the shows "Better Call Saul," "Westworld" and "Barry"—and my cat.  Darren's opening gambit disarmed me.  Vid's up at YouTube:
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