japanamerica

Three years ago, I asked Kun Gao, a co-founder and former CEO of anime site Crunchyroll, whether he thought the medium on which his company relied would ever go mainstream. We were sitting in what were then Crunchyroll’s headquarters on the seventh floor of the sprawling Westfield Mall building in San Francisco — a space once occupied by Microsoft. He smiled. “It’s still niche,” he said. “But it’s a pretty big niche.” Last week, Sony took a big bite into that niche by purchasing Crunchyroll from American telecoms giant AT&T’s WarnerMedia for a cool $1.2 billion. The deal puts the company Gao co-founded 14 years ago with five other computer engineering grads (and self-professed “nerds”) from the University of California, Berkeley, at the very center of Sony’s push to become a direct-to-consumer player, joining the fray with behemoths Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. Entertainment, and anime in particular, will be its cornerstone. To industry observers, Sony’s purchase, while likely over

The state of the world in 2020 is one that Lastlings, a half-Japanese, half-Australian musical sibling duo, seem oddly prepared for, right down to their name. “Lastlings” was the title of a short story that guitarist and producer Josh Dowdle, 27, wrote in high school about the survivors of an apocalyptic event. Nature has reclaimed the cities, nothing is open and the “lastlings” are the only remaining people on Earth. “We have a dystopian aesthetic,” Josh says on a video call from a studio in Australia. “I guess it’s a coincidence.” Josh and his sister, Amy, 21, have just released their debut album, “First Contact,” with an anime-inspired three-minute video trailer shot entirely in Tokyo. Their studied poses, artful silhouettes and symmetric good looks set against metamorphosing cityscapes recall scenes from a psychedelic Satoshi Kon anime. Were it not for the pandemic, you could’ve seen them perform live here this month. “We were supposed to play (in Tokyo) right about now,” says Josh

Free registration is now open here . Featuring award-winning poet and novelist Hiromi Ito, author/illustrator Satoshi Kitamura, translator, editor and scholar Motoyuki Shibata, and Maesy Ang of the wonderful Post Bookshop, Jakarta .  Wish we were there (Indonesia) again, but hope to see you here on Zoom. 

To celebrate this month's global release of the new issue of  MONKEY   in print & digital formats: Novelist Hiroko Oyamada is compared to Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami in this recent  New York Time s review of her latest novel, "The Hole."  We are excited to introduce Hiroko to you on Friday, Dec. 11th (US) / Saturday Dec. 12th (Japan) in MONKEY IS BACK! - a celebration of the global print release this month of MONKEY: New Writing from Japan literary magazine. • The Zoom event is free, and registration is here .  • You can now purchase your copy of the new English-language MONKEY here . Hiroko will read with her English-language translator, the scholar David Boyd. Artist Satoshi Kitamura will present kamishibai , a classic form of paper theater visual storytelling that was a precursor to manga. Founding editor Motoyuki Shibata will host, I will moderate. See you soon!

Earlier this year I signed off on another foreign-language license for a new Spanish-language translation of my book JAPANAMERICA: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US , which has been updated with a new subtitle (in Spanish, of course): How Japanese Pop Culture has Conquered the West . I'm pleased to announce that the new Spanish edition will be released just in time for Christmas 2020.  My thanks to Jennifer in Barcelona and Marta in New York for managing the deal via my US publisher St. Martin's Press, and to Samuel and Iñaki for publishing the new edition at Odaiba Ediciones. They had planned some launch events and signings with me in Madrid but all have been postponed until our post-Covid era commences. More info forthcoming.

I write about my 10 years helping to make MONKEY , the only annual English-language Japanese literary magazine, in my latest column for the Nikkei . This project has taught me a ton about language, translation, art, culture and friendship, and has taken me around the world on book tours. I am humbled and grateful. The new issue is available for preorder in print and digital editions here . 

I will be appearing on a panel for the annual US-Asia Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles this Saturday, November 21st, at 10 am Japan Standard Time (Friday the 20th, 5 pm PST/8 pm EST) to discuss "Hollywood's New Anime Gold Rush." I will be joined by the presidents of Sentai Filmworks and Production I.G USA , and the senior vice president and creative director for Toonami's Adult Swim/Cartoon Network : John Ledford, Maki Terashima-Furuta and Jason DeMarco. These are some of the finest and best-qualified professionals you could assemble for a discussion of this topic.  The event is hosted and sponsored by Asia Society of Southern California, Japan House Los Angeles, JETRO and The Cool Japan Fund.  More info and registration for the livestream is here . I hope you'll join us this Saturday/Friday the 21st/20th.   

I am honored to be a guest again at The Makassar International Writers Festival this Saturday, November 14th at 2pm Japan Standard Time. The in-person event is magical, held on the grounds of a 17th Century Dutch fort along the coast and featuring live music, readings, art and heaps of Indonesian cuisine.  Alas, I won't be there this year but will be on Zoom (again!) and hope you'll join us. Registration is here: https://bit.ly/RegistrasiComicTalkMAAF

I'll be participating in two public events next month, one of which may have a live audience in addition to Zooming heads. Hope you'll join us, online or off.  •    Saturday 10/10, 10am - 12 pm Japan Standard Time (Friday 10/9, 9pm - 11 pm EST, 6pm - 8pm PST): Voices from Japan: Launching the New Literary Journal MONKEY , with Motoyuki Shibata, Tomoka Shibasaki, Hideo Furukawa, Satoshi Kitamura, Ted Goossen, Meg Taylor, Polly Barton and Jordan Smith. Hosted by Hitomi Yoshio at Waseda University. Click here to register. •      Sunday 10/18, 10am - 11:30 am Japan Standard Time (Saturday 10/17, 9pm - 10:30 pm EST, 6pm - 7:30pm PST):  Mieko Kawakami (BREASTS AND EGGS) in conversation with Roland Kelts (JAPANAMERICA) , with Motoyuki Shibata (introduction) and Hitomi Yoshio (interpretation). Hosted by International House Japan and The Asia Society. Click here to register.

From the battlefield to manga to Zoom: A Kyushu samurai clan and its legendary warrior get an online outing Now that almost no one can travel, what do you do with the 400-year-old villa and gardens of a UNESCO World Heritage site in one of the country’s most beautiful seaside cities? If you’re in Japan, you forge a link between today’s soft power standbys — manga and anime — and the enduring draw of samurai culture. And if you’re living through a pandemic, you do it the way nearly everything else is done these days: on Zoom. For the first time in its history, Sengan-en, the estate of the Shimazu family, a samurai clan that ruled the southern Kyushu region from the 12th to 19th century, is going virtual.  In partnership with Shonen Gahosha, publisher of the manga “Drifters,” whose hero is modeled on the family’s legendary warrior, Toyohisa Shimazu, Sengan-en will present an online English-language event in three parts: a guided tour of the house and its grounds, an exhibition of over 6

How the pandemic, and local politics, threaten the future of anime conventions The Japan Times Morgan Kollin is exhausted. During a video interview from his home near Detroit, Michigan, he nods and blinks against fatigue. The 40-year-old is the founder and chairman of Youmacon , Michigan’s largest anime convention, with a 15-year history and an annual draw of 23,000. Youmacon is scheduled to take place as an in-person gathering on Halloween weekend, Oct. 29 to Nov. 1 — though many think it shouldn’t. For the past few months, Kollin has been struggling to keep things together for the sake of his staff and his well-being. When asked if he sleeps much, he shakes his head: “Not remotely.” The reason for Kollin’s restlessness may seem counterintuitive. After spending a year preparing for his convention, he is now trying to cancel it. The technicalities of U.S. law have him hoping that local politicians will soon prohibit all large public events in his region, granting him the legal right an

I was honored to represent Japanese Pop Culture for the Asia Society's series, "Around Asia in 80 Days," a work-from-home pandemic production. This is a look back, and a look forward. Wish we could have done this on a stage in Hong Kong, as planned. Next time.  (click to play)

(click to play) Now that a U.S. politician has called  Dragonball Z "anime porn, " this interview I gave to CNN is unfortunately apt. <<"Miller condemned DBZ in a tweet on Wednesday, where he claims that 'They are now introducing a great deal of anime porn into the internet matrix,' and that 'Dragon Ball Z is one of the top issues here.' Without offering any additional context, Miller then continues his accusations of an unspecified 'they,' saying that, 'They are sexualizing cartoon characters to push a depraved agenda on our kids. What’s next? Where will it end?'">> Oh, that internet matrix. Where will it end, indeed.

Thanks to the Nippon Foundation for the honor of being a chosen book .

Honored to be appearing at this year's Virtual Crunchyroll Expo 2020 with my friend Arthell Isom, anime director, background artist and co-founder/CEO of D'ART Shtajio , Japan's first black-owned anime studio.  We'll be talking about Anime and Race  — a timely topic, and one that is rarely addressed.   

(click to play)   I gave an interview in Tokyo to the BBC for a documentary about Japan's birth rate. I talked about Japan's expanding menu of options for virtual romance and sex — from dating sims to erotic manga, anime and video games. It's not just Japan, of course. The annual birth rate here remains higher than it is in South Korea, Singapore or Hong Kong, and birth rates have also been steadily declining in the United States and across Europe. Options for virtual romance and sex are increasingly popular in developed nations worldwide. Dating app , internet hookup and pornography addiction are hackneyed phrases by now. But what I didn't know during the shoot was that virtual romance and sex would be among the safest, sanest and most responsible options for intimacy in the middle of a global pandemic.

The Details of Hiroshima The New Yorker The first time I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I carried a notebook and a sense of dread. The mood was as solemn as I expected, but the place was crowded and not very peaceful. Visitors were silently urged to go with the flow, move in step with others and not linger too long. The displays were impressively well kept—maybe too well kept. There were life-size dioramas of the victims trudging barefoot through ashen sludge, shredded and bloodied; massive models of the city as it was, pinpointing the exact location of ground zero; bent and crushed watches and clocks frozen to the moment—8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945. The feeling that all the carefully curated and eye-catching exhibits sometimes felt like part of a Hiroshima theme park was probably unavoidable. “A lot of people died instantly,” I wrote, but I was wrong. While trying to soothe burning skin, some died in the river when fireballs swept up the oil-slicked water. Others died year

Soundtrack to Ghost of Tsushima stands out for its seamless blend of musical influences The Japan Times Here in the middle of 2020, a terrible year by nearly every measure, cultural authenticity is the name of the game. Pretending to be what you are not will get you canceled in a TikTok minute. Fortunately for Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and developer Sucker Punch Productions, they have just released the year’s most celebrated transcultural video game, Ghost of Tsushima. The last major title created exclusively for Sony’s PS4 console platform and already a money-spinning international hit, Ghost of Tsushima earned its online street credentials through painstaking research and collaboration. The game’s stunning visual depiction of feudal Japan under Mongol invasion in the year 1274 is rendered so convincingly that it has won praise from industry critics both here (Weekly Famitsu gave it a coveted perfect score) and abroad, as well as near-unanimous thumbs-ups from gamers on soc