Live Gig at The Harvard Club of Japan, Wed. March 26th!
I've given a number of talks and interviews on Japanese pop culture over the years but this one will be different: a look at the industry from the inside, via the artists and producers I now know well. Things have changed and are changing fast, my friends.
Register for great convo and catering here:
https://hcjapan.clubs.harvard.edu/article.html?aid=599
I'm honored to be joining Harvard Club of Japan on behalf of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard for this special evening Wednesday March 26th with some of those industry professionals on hand. From my book, JAPANAMERICA.
"The value of Japan's pop culture exports anime and manga now rivals that of Japan's steel and semiconductor industries, making it the centerpiece of recent government meetings. Overseas sales of anime have grown exponentially, its market size more than doubling over the past decade. Major funds like Blackstone and Mizuho are now investing in Japanese pop culture, and the Japanese government aims to expand its global market fourfold to $130 billion in less than a decade.
But how did a low-budget, 75 year-old entertainment medium from Japan become the biggest content driver for Netflix worldwide in 2025? Why do more Gen Z Americans now prefer anime to the NFL--and why is the fan base growing so quickly in every corner of the earth, from Chile to India to Saudi Arabia?
Join renowned author and media expert Roland Kelts as he tells us the whole story, from start to finish, including its biggest future challenge: AI piracy."
SPEAKER'S BIOGRAPHY:
Roland Nozomu Kelts is an award-winning Japanese American journalist, author, editor and scholar. He is best known for his highly acclaimed bestseller, Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US, and the more recent, Blade Runner: Black Lotus. He contributes to numerous media in Japan, the US and Europe, including the BBC, CNN, NHK, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Guardian and The New York Times, and has been a contributing editor to the literary journal "Monkey: New Writing from Japan" since its inception in 2011. He has worked as an author, editor and consultant for publishers in Japan, the UK and the US for over twenty years, and was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard in 2017. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.
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