japanamerica

The Identity Crisis That Lurks Behind Japan’s Right-Wing Rhetoric   from Time magazine By Roland Kelts May 31, 2013 Chung Sung-Jun / Getty Images South Korean hold placards carrying the images of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto during a rally on May 23, 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. Recent remarks by the mayor of Osaka on the historic perception of 'comfort women', conscripted by Japanese military brothels during World War II, have recieved intense criticism from neigbouring countries and the U.S. When anti-Japan protests , the fiercest in years, erupted in China over territorial disputes last September, I was attending a conference in Tianjin, roughly 80 miles south of Beijing. Footage from the capital was chilling: smashed Japanese department stores and automobiles, flags on fire, protesters hurling eggs and debris at the Japanese embassy with chants of “F*** Japan .” Someone tried to crash into a...

I wrote the lead story for Newsweek Japan 's new feature on Haruki Murakami, and it's available in digital format here .

Lost in Translation? Posted by  Roland Kelts Last month, Haruki Murakami published a new novel in Japan. Before anyone could read it, the novel broke the country’s Internet pre-order sales record, its publisher announced an advance print run of half a million copies, and Tokyo bookstores opened at midnight to welcome lines of customers, some of whom read the book slumped in corners of nearby cafés straight after purchase. But this time, the mania was déjà vu in Japan—a near-replica of the reception that greeted Murakami’s last novel, “1Q84,” three years ago. The response was news to nearly no one. Except, maybe, Haruki Murakami. “The fact that I have been able to become a professional working novelist is, even now, a great surprise to me,” Murakami wrote in an e-mail three days before the release of “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” He added: “In fact, each and every thing that has happened over the past 34 years has been a sequence of utter surpr...

Pop tourism gains traction BY ROLAND KELTS Pre-flight shopping at Narita airport a couple of weeks ago, I passed a mannequin sporting a light-blue necktie and a turquoise wig with pig tails dangling down to its mini skirt. The vision spoke volumes: It was Hatsune Miku, of course, Japan’s holographic, animated virtual pop star, beloved fashion icon and model for pop culture fans and cosplayers worldwide. But why was she suddenly manning the plaza concourse of Japan’s busiest tourist portal, standing tall beside Uniqlo and Shu Uemura? It turns out Miku is part of an expansive display in the new airport outlet of Cospa Akihabara , a shop devoted to Japanese pop culture products for global otaku (geeks)and cosplayers. The Narita venue opened in February and had a lively crowd of consumers at its counters when I stalled next to Miku last month, gingerly fingering my wallet. Tourism has long been a fiscal conundrum for Japan, the country’s potential cash cow stifled by its resis...

Thanks for the tremendous support of  Monkey Business this week in NYC. Our final event takes place tomorrow, May 4, at The Asia Society of New York, once again hosted by The PEN World Voices Festival . Paul Auster & Charles Simic will join Genichiro Takahashi & Mina Ishikawa for a "Japan/America Writer's Dialogue," facilitated by Monkey founders and editors Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen. Copies of all three issues of Monkey Business will be on sale at a special on-site only price.  Tix & info here . Joe's Pub, 5/1 BookCourt, 5/2

... before I even went.  Latest travel column about anticipating and imagining a voyage to virgin territory. For Paper Sky magazine.  [click to enlarge] (photos courtesy of Sevgin Adaliev) Virgin Visits V.S. Naipaul wrote about the futility of a man trying to understand a city he’d never seen by studying its map.   I feel that way when traveling to a new destination, which I do less often than I’d like to.   More often I travel between cities I’ve visited or known before or inhabited or worked in or live in today—New York, Tokyo, Osaka Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seoul.   Traveling to a city I’ve never seen brings me the twin sizzle of joy and apprehension.