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Osaka’s L’arc-en-Ciel becomes first Japanese band to headline Madison Square Garden  Rock group from land of rising pop culture builds a North American audience NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 8:00 AM A concert by L’Arc-en-Ciel was moved to Madison Square Garden after outselling the smaller Theater at MSG. They’ve got no major radio play, no prime video exposure and no mainstream media trumpeting their fame and glory. So how did L’Arc-en-Ciel, a Japanese band with a French name, become the first rock group from the Land of the Rising Sun to headline Madison Square Garden? On Sunday, the four-man band from Osaka will play the storied 19,000-seat arena, which surprised even the show’s promoter. Three month ago, the company (AEG) booked the group into the smaller Theater in the Garden — capacity: 5,000. But so many tickets were sold, they were bumped up to the big room. According to  Roland Kelts , author of “Japaname...

Story for the Los Angeles Times : [Ishinomaki Shotengai, March 2012] -- By Roland Kelts, reporting from Ishinomaki, Japan     IN early March 2011, Stu Levy was having a career meltdown. His 14-year-old company, TokyoPop, an L.A.-based importer and distributor of Japanese manga and anime, had just imploded. Borders bookstores, one of his company’s premier retailers, was in bankruptcy and owed TokyoPop close to $1 million –- and Borders wasn’t paying.  Levy was in Tokyo, making amends with his Japanese suppliers, when the giant earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis struck. Within days, he was making his way northeast, driving up the coast with a friend past increasingly tattered landscapes to volunteer for the recovery efforts. “I didn’t even think about it,” Levy, 45, said. “I had to do something. Doing nothing was intolerable.” Along the way, Levy was stunned by the vast amounts of mud and absurd sights amid the wreckage. The sludge “had spread...

The latest, and last, for the Yomiuri . [Anime auteur Soubi Yamamoto, 22, was inspired to work solo by Makoto Shinkai] SOFT POWER HARD TRUTHS / Indie anime opens doors for female creators Roland Kelts / Special to The Daily Yomiuri I was invited to write this column roughly five years ago by an editor who asked for a twice-monthly rumination on the soft power of Japan's pop culture. One of the first columns I submitted addressed the gap between the images of empowered females in anime and the status of real women in Japan. Many women in Japan remain mired in a patriarchal culture that limits their career opportunities. Japan continues to rank embarrassingly low on the United Nations index of gender empowerment, beneath several of its less developed Asian neighbors. Overseas fans of Japanese pop culture often see an illusion of female empowerment, delivered via enticing visuals and storylines, and created mostly by men. But the status of real...

In Ishinomaki, Minato Sho.