japanamerica

Culture Rules: Japan Found its Cool in the 21st Century, But Can It Keep It?  In-Person / Online The branding of "Cool Japan" in the early aughts kickstarted Japan's 21st Century pop culture juggernaut. Global demand for Japan-produced anime, manga, games, fashion and food skyrocketed, and Japanese creatives scrambled to feed it through a rapid succession of media platforms--DVDs, Torrents, Cinemas and Streaming sites--as post-Covid inbound tourism stats exploded. Fiscal analysts now forecast a rosy CGR of 9.8% for Japan's pop culture products and a global market more than doubling to $72 billion in less than 10 years. But spotty government support, a shrinking labor and consumer pool, and rising costs amid a retreat from globalization mean that the sustained business of Cool Japan is hardly a sure bet. Where do we go from here? Pokemon's lucrative lightning might not strike twice. Speaker:  Roland Nozomu Kelts is an award-winning Japanese American journalist, aut...

Join legendary British guitarist, photographer and author Andy Summers and acclaimed Japanese American author and scholar Roland Kelts for this uniquely intimate onstage dialogue and performance for Asia Society Japan. Summers will unveil his powerful photographs of Tokyo—some dating back to 1980, when The Police first toured Japan and filmed their hit video “So Lonely” on the Tokyo metro—and give a public reading from two of his seven published books: his award-winning memoir “One Train Later” and short story collection “Fretted and Moaning." As a bonus. Summers will also perform live on guitar, creating a dialogue between photography, prose, and sound that reveals his lifelong fascination with Japanese aesthetics. That fascination with Japan began in his youth, when he discovered Akira Kurosawa’s films “Stray Dog” and “Drunken Angel” at an art-house cinema in Bournemouth, UK. Since the 1980s Summers has visited Japan several times to take and exhibit his photos and perform as a...