japanamerica

I first interviewed Hayao Miyazaki for Japanamerica in the early aughts. I was very fortunate. It was the usual story--a friend of a friend of a friend, and so on. He was a bit tight-lipped at first but relaxed and opened up when he realized that I was no otaku .  Later I was invited to interview him live onstage at UC Berkeley in California ( video here ), and we've had a few informal chats since.  When he was awarded a second Oscar this year (third if you count his 2014 honorary statuette), I gave interviews to the BBC, CNN and The Guardian , in addition to a couple of online Japanese media. The business has undergone a revolution since our first meeting for Japanamerica . File-sharing and streaming media have made Japanese pop culture in general and anime in particular a content goldmine. The reputation of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli has grown in prominence over the past 20 years, partly owing to its rich and unparalleled catalog of quality content, but also because of li

      "What Kelts did for manga and anime can be compared to what the late Donald Richie did to bridge Western audiences and Japanese films, creating an accessible entry point that both facilitated and commented on cross cultural communication."   Er, here .

I used to run like hell from Godzilla movies, not out of fear but embarrassment. As a Japanese-American teenager in diversity-poor rural New England, I winced at the sight of a dude in a rubber suit stomping on cardboard cities. It looked silly and cheap, two Asian stereotypes I was trying hard to live down, so I ran even faster from the Americans I knew who actually liked Godzilla to avoid being cast as yet another Asian American nerd.   Evidently, Godzilla outran me. Japan’s nuclear lizard is now the face of the world’s longest-running film franchise, according to Guinness World Records, turning 70 this year on the heels of its most successful iteration yet. Released into U.S. theaters with scant publicity, “Godzilla Minus One” is North America’s highest-grossing Japanese-language movie ever and has surpassed the $100 million mark globall y on a production budget of under $15 million. A box office blockbuster with a price tag minus one of Hollywood’s lavish digits. It’s also an a

Two Japanese-made films premiered within a week of each other in US cinemas last December, "Godzilla Minus One" and "The Boy and the Heron," with very little publicity. Both are now huge commercial successes: "Heron" is the highest grossing non-franchise anime feature ever in the US; "G-1" the highest grossing Japanese live action film. Both are also critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated.  For Miyazaki, a win would be his second after 2003's "Spirited Away." For the "G-1" VFX team, led by writer-director Takashi Yamazaki, a win would be a first for any film in the 70 year-old Godzilla series and would make Yamazaki the first director to win for VFX since Stanley Kubrick, who was so awarded in 1968 for "2001: A Space Odyssey." • I spoke to CNN about Miyazaki's first Golden Globe earlier this year and the chances that he will receive his second Academy Award (not that he cares all that much) at next month&