japanamerica

  By TitleMax.com

I'm honored and chuffed to be returning to the nearly 80 year-old Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, this time in their swanky new Marunouchi digs , to talk about the rising convergence of Anime & Hollywood and my new book, "The Art Blade Runner: Black Lotus," out now from Titan Books and Penguin Random House.  I'll be joined by veteran film and animation producer Joseph Chou ( The Animatrix, Halo Legends, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, Appleseed, Ultraman , and the forthcoming Lord of the Rings anime) for a multimedia presentation rife with making-of clips, sketches and insider reveals. Print copies will be on sale for signings, and I've just learned that we will also have copies of Monkey: New Writing from Japan , the annual English-language Japanese literary journal to which I am a humble contributing editor, bowing to my dear friend, author, scholar, translator, renaissance genius, Motoyuki Shibata, who will be on ha

Letters from Tokyo by Roland Kelts, December - January: When the Colonel is a Claus The latest in my "Letters from Tokyo" series for the Japan Society of Boston  looks back at my holiday seasons in Osaka, New York and Tokyo, and forward to the state of Japan today. Asian tourists are back and residents are out and about, still masked but less anxious. The pandemic has taken a toll on rural onsen-mura villages, where darkened streets and shuttered storefronts are sad reminders of what's been lost. What's been found? Inflated prices and deflated birth rates mark mid-winter in Tokyo, 2023. I rode out my first Christmas in Japan alone, far from the US mania of gifting and parties and family. I thought it would be ideal. Sequestered in my narrow danchi apartment with time to write, read, reflect and phone home through the operators at KDDI—which sometimes felt like risking collect calls from prison: Would my family accept the charges? Through my front door I had an unobst