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'The Wind Rises': the beauty and controversy of Miyazaki's final film The World War II biopic sparks an animated debate By Sam Byford Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises is a lot of things. It's the final feature-length film from one of the all-time greats of Japanese animation. It's a gorgeous, Oscar-nominated work that brings prewar Japan to life in ways that have never been seen before. It's Miyazaki's most pointedly adult movie, with a slow-burning tragedy replacing the magical realism and cute characters that have made Studio Ghibli's films appeal across generations. And it's the most controversial animated movie in recent memory. That's because The Wind Rises is a sympathetic biography of a man whose work contributed to Japan's brutal campaign of imperialist aggression during World War II. Jiro Horikoshi designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane that Japan used in Pearl Harbor and countless other assaults; the Zero was fear...

Big investment means silver lining for Asian pop culture abroad [Story first published in The Nikkei Asian Review ] ROLAND KELTS, Contributing writer NEW YORK -- 2013 went out with a bang for fans and creators of Asian pop culture, and the reverberations are being felt on both sides of the Pacific.      In December, the deep-pocketed Chernin Group, founded by veteran Hollywood mogul Peter Chernin, announced it had taken a majority stake in San Francisco-based Crunchyroll, the world’s leading anime and Asian pop culture streaming website. Peter Chernin      Crunchyroll offers free and paid content from Japan and South Korea, including TV dramas, anime series and digital manga, alongside subscriber-only interactive features such as chat rooms, forums and daily discounts on pop-related merchandise.     With an investment estimated at just under $100 million, Chernin Group placed a meaty bet on what its president, Jesse Jacobs, calls ...

Botan-Ebi, BFF. Eel power.

Scientists say Fukushima's food is safe. So why aren't the Japanese eating it? Since the nuclear meltdown, the region’s seafood and agriculture industries have suffered -- largely because of mistrust of the government. By Roland Kelts TOKYO -- After Fukushima suffered the world’s worst nuclear meltdown since Chernobyl nearly three years ago, Japanese government officials say the region's food is safe to eat. Problem is, neither its producers nor consumers trust them anymore. Irradiated "ton packs" roadside in Date. [photo by Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky] While not quite the proverbial breadbasket of Japan, Fukushima was, for a long time, home to the nation’s fourth-largest farming area and has long supported itself through the production of rice, fruits, vegetables, tobacco and silk, in addition to a hefty supply of fish and seafood fetched from its 100-mile coastline.

CULTURE | CULTURE SMASH Anime/manga experts hopeful for year ahead BY ROLAND KELTS Aside from Hayao Miyazaki’s sudden departure from filmmaking in September, the anime world saw some potentially hopeful developments in 2013. Hayao Miyazaki and Susan J. Napier at Studio Ghibli, Tokyo, January, 2014. As I reported here, the government’s multibillion-yen Cool Japan Fund was launched last summer, after years of empty promises. Following the lead of Crunchyroll, the profitable San Francisco-based online anime and manga portal, domestic startups such as Daisuki began streaming anime series globally. Crunchyroll itself opened a digital manga site — and got a Christmas-time jolt of Hollywood cash from big-ticket investor The Chernin Group. A bold new apocalyptic anime series, “Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan),” earned raves and fans, as did the virtual reality adventure, "Sword Art Online," and the  jazz-inflected new show “Kids on the Slope,” from veteran Shinichir...

TOMOKO SUGIMOTO’S MONOZUKURI BY ROLAND KELTS [Tomoko Sugimoto photographed by Chris Mosier] The expatriate Japanese artist Tomoko Sugimoto ’s first solo show in the United States, “Whirl and Swallow,” was held in Brooklyn on March 12, 2011, one day after Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Sugimoto got word of the disasters in New York, where she has lived since 1996. She didn’t think anyone would show up. The gallery owner in Williamsburg and her close friends urged her to see it through, and she did, preparing for the exhibition with one eye on the increasingly grim television footage from her native land. “At first, I was so depressed,” she said. “We already knew what was happening and could see these crazy scenes, and the numbers of dead kept rising. We were very upset. But so many people came. I think everyone came to see each other and talk to each other. And people kept saying to me, ‘I feel a little better now just viewing your work. I feel a happy energy....