japanamerica

At the start of July, I called my sister in New York from Tokyo.  She was driving north in a rented car with her new puppy to visit our father, who was alone for the weekend in Boston while our mother took a brief vacation tour of Northeastern Canada.  Our father had undergone open heart surgery in the spring of 2012.  At the end of 2012, he had reconstructive surgery on one of his knees.  Earlier this year, a doctor removed a cataract from his right eye via surgery. Surgery equals risk, but he seemed okay until June, when he was hospitalized for two weeks with a bacterial infection.  He continued antibiotic treatments at home.  He seemed okay again. But I called my sister at the start of July because I couldn’t call my father – or, rather, I called him, alone at home, and no one answered.  She called, too.  Nothing.  Even our parents’ answering machine was absent.  The disembodied digital voice was disengaged. My ...

Banner year for manga One week before Thanksgiving on Nov. 28, readers of   The New York Times were greeted by a spiky-haired, wild-eyed manga character named Monkey D. Luffy, his fists clenched and chest bare, charging forward as if the newsprint could barely contain him. Behind him in massive text screamed the words: “Hey world, this is the manga!!” above a smaller query, “Are there real adventures in this country?” Most NYT readers over the age of 40 probably had no idea who he was or why he was bringing it on. But millions of others do — 345 million worldwide, to be specific, according to Japanese publisher Shueisha, and U.S. distributor Viz Media — making Luffy the wily and mischievous pirate hero of what is now the most popular manga series in the world: Eiichiro Oda’s “One Piece.”

THE CHERNIN GROUP ACQUIRES MAJORITY STAKE IN CRUNCHYROLL LOS ANGELES, CA – December 2, 2013 – The Chernin Group (“TCG”), which manages and invests in businesses in the media, entertainment and technology sectors globally, today announced it has acquired a majority stake in Crunchyroll, Inc., the leading global video streaming service for anime content.  The Company’s senior management will maintain a significant stake in the Company along with existing investor TV TOKYO. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, CA, with an office in Tokyo, Japan, Crunchyroll has built the world’s premier over-the-top video service for Japanese anime content and one of the leading OTT and SVOD platforms online.  Crunchyroll features both a free, ad-supported online video offering as well as a subscription online video service to a targeted and passionate fan base in more than 160 countries.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, NYC, 2013

"Manga Nation" at The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. My thanks to Kirun Kapur & Dawne Shand of The Tannery Series, Jennifer Evans and her team at PEM, and Robin Brenner. The audience in the East India Marine Hall, est. 1825. Book-signing w/Robin Brenner.  (photos by Brigid Alverson)

Dig out your Astoboy and put on your Pokemon ears. It's time to join the Tannery Series for a discussion of manga and anime, the Japanese cultural imports that have taken America by storm. You know? Soulful robots, gender-bending plot lines, punk-haired heroines and heroes with stars in their eyes? But “Manga Nation: Japanese Design and American Pop Culture” will go beyond the usual notions of cartoon and costume, fantasy and reality, to explore ideas about public and private selves and what the popularity of manga in the United States reveals about the changes in American identity. The program is slated for 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 21 at the Peabody Essex Museum, which has become something of a home away from home for the series, which was founded by Port residents Kirun Kapur and Dawne Shand three years ago and, naturally, got its start at the Tannery. The Peabody Essex brought the series into the PEM fold this year, saying the series represented cool cutting-e...

Video here .

Fan base: This year's New York Comic Con drew some 133,000 attendees, yet only 9 percent of its content was devoted to anime and manga. | NEW YORK COMIC CON / REEDPOP Has anime lost its cachet in America? BY ROLAND KELTS NOV 12, 2013 I had been invited to host a Q&A with renowned “Gundam” creator and sci-fi novelist Yoshiyuki Tomino at The New York Anime Festival. But when my handler and I arrived at the designated room, we found it empty and dark. “Over here,” a staffer called from across the hall. “Too many people.” The auditorium we entered was cavernous — the largest room in the city’s biggest convention venue, the Jacob K. Javits Center — and its seats were filled from front to back, with a string of fans and photographers lining the perimeter. My handler escorted me backstage to greet Tomino, who was squinting through the curtains as he scanned the room. He turned to me and said: “I am very surprised.”

Think Astroboy, Speed Racer, and Pokemon Soulful Robots Japanese Street Culture Invades Salem November 21, get ready for gender-bending plotlines, punk-haired heroines and heroes with stars in their eyes! Two Manga and Anime experts will explain what your kids are reading and what you'll be reading next. The Tannery Series returns to PEM with Roland Kelts ( Japanamerica ) and Robin Brenner ( Understanding Manga and Anime ).  They'll take us beyond the usual notions of cartoon and costume, fantasy and reality, to explore ideas about public and private selves and what the popularity of Manga in the United States reveals about the changes in American identity. As always, the wonderfully warm and unconventional PEM/PM evening will include music (VJ Beyonder Domela), craft (Manga drawing lessons), and an opportunity to visit PEM’s latest exhibit, “Future Beauty: Avant-Garde Japanese Fashion,” which showcases the work of designers such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo an...

Photographer and friend Stuart Freeman found that Astro Boy/Tetsuwan Atomu was keeping a close eye on me as I talked about his creator, Osamu Tezuka, last night at The Japan Society in New York City.  I was and remain humbled by their presence.

Join me and NYC-based comic artist Katie Skelly for "The Life & Works of Osamu Tezuka" this Thursday, Nov. 7, at The Japan Society of New York.  Next year marks the 25th Anniversary of Tezuka's death. Learn why he is still the consecrated "God of manga and anime." Wine and Japanese hors d'oeuvres will be served. Copies of my dear friend Helen McCarthy's The Art of Osamu Tezuka , Ryan Holmberg's The Mysterious Underground Men (by Tezuka), Skelly's Nurse Nurse , and Japanamerica will be raffled off.  Copies of Japanamerica will also be on sale, and a book-signing will follow.

Watch here .

Backlash against Miyazaki is generational BY ROLAND KELTS OCT, 2013 If you haven’t lived in Japan, it’s hard to appreciate just how beloved are anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki and his creative hub, Studio Ghibli. Annual surveys of Japanese consumers often find that Ghibli is their favorite domestic brand, ahead of stalwarts such as Toyota and Sony. Miyazaki’s animated epics regularly top the domestic theatrical market. “Kaze Tachinu” (“The Wind Rises”), his latest film — loosely based on the life of engineer Jiro Horikoshi, designer of Japan’s wartime Zero fighter plane — soared above its box office rivals for seven consecutive weeks after its July release. Meanwhile, his Oscar-winning “Spirited Away” (2001) remains the top-grossing film in Japanese history, knocking aside Hollywood live-action contenders such as “Titanic” and the “Harry Potter” films.

Roland Kelts The stickers went up a few months after Japan’s triple disaster in 2011—an earthquake and tsunami that took twenty thousand lives, and an ongoing nuclear crisis that threatens more. They first appeared along the shabby backstreets of Shibuya, in downtown Tokyo, a place that offers some of the very few canvasses for graffiti in a city not given to celebrating street art. The British expat photographer and filmmaker Adrian Storey couldn’t ignore them. “Being a foreigner, there was a sort of brief period after 3/11 when there was this sense of community in Tokyo that I haven’t felt before,” Storey says. “Then it kind of went away, and people just went back to shopping. I was drawn to the stickers because I realized it was a Japanese person behind them, and they actually cared about what was happening. I started photographing every sticker I found.”

York University, 9-9-2013 The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, 9-10-2013 The Japan Foundation, 9-11-2013 Hockley Valley, Ontario, 9-12-2013

With author, scholar and Haruki Murakami translator Jay Rubin, and author, scholar and Haruki Murakami collaborator Motoyuki Shibata -- @BookCourt in Brooklyn.  Missed us? Video is here , courtesy of Lawrence Brenner. [photo by Susan McCormac Hamaker]

Will be here .

"This is Their Youth," my story on Japanese youth culture and pathologies for "Studio 360:" "Nerd's Paradise," my story on Akihabara, virtual worlds, and mass murder, w/Kurt Andersen:

California Thursday, September 5:   The University of San Francisco, Center for Pacific Rim, 5 - 8 p.m. Friday, September 6:  The University of California, Berkeley, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1 - 3 p.m. Canada Monday, September 9:  York University, “Japanese Authors at York,” 12 - 2 p.m. Tuesday, September 10:  Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, “Japanese Literature Today,” 7 - 9 p.m. Wednesday, September 11:  The Japan Foundation, Toronto, “Japanese Literature at Home and Abroad,” 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. New York City Sunday, September 15:  BookCourt, Brooklyn, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Haruki Murakami,” 4 - 6 p.m.

Roland Kelts is speaking on behalf of the Japan Society of Northern California thanks to a generous grant from The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. His lecture will be held at 2:00PM on Sunday, August 25th at the Hall Stage. ANIME vs. HOLLYWOOD in JAPANAMERICA, with Roland Kelts Roland Kelts, author of “ Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. ,” talks about modern Anime, its influences on Hollywood, and vice-versa. An in-depth examination of how Japanese and American entertainment businesses are influencing each other in an infinite loop. Just as Japanese artists like Osamu Tezuka, Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo were fascinated by classic and sci-fi American movies, George Lucas, The Wachowskis, Guillermo del Toro and other directors were influenced by Japanese anime classics like Gatchaman, Speed Racer, Spirited Away, Akira and Ghost in the Shell.

Otakon celebrates 20 years of anime fandom in the U.S . BY ROLAND KELTS The American anime convention, Otakon (“Otaku Convention”), begins with a costume parade before it officially opens. Last week I had a bird’s-eye view of the spectacle from my 14th-floor hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland. An endless army of imaginary characters trudged across the elevated concourse and down adjacent sidewalks to the Baltimore Convention Center to register and obtain entry badges. Most were instantly recognizable from anime series old and new, brandishing swords or other weaponry fashioned out of homemade materials, or wearing massive multicolored wigs, capes or sewn-on tails — or very little at all. For three days the colorful mob overtook Baltimore’s downtown and Inner Harbor neighborhoods, and until they returned to their hometowns in 42 different states, you couldn’t walk 20 meters without bumping into, overhearing and/or following them. Roughly 35,000 fans of Japanese pop culture atte...