japanamerica

Movie animates Murakami's portraits of empty lives     American writer Nathaniel Rich once claimed that Haruki Murakami, lauded internationally and regularly short-listed for the Nobel Prize in literature, actually writes "genre fiction," the commercial label for stories that repeat formulas, conventions, plots and sometimes whole casts of characters to satisfy reader expectations (think "Game of Thrones" or "Harry Potter"). Genre works are distinguished from the less predictable and less marketable aims of literary fiction -- and have a much better shot at the bestseller list. The kicker, according to Rich, is that Murakami created his own genre, absorbing literary conceits into a blend of other recognizable storytelling tropes from the realms of noir, fantasy, horror and sci-fi. The most salient hallmark of the Murakami genre is its fluid shifts between a ruthlessly humdrum reality and poetic, often borderline erotic and prophetic dreamworlds. These ...

When Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop) show up in the same small venue in the same small city on the Sea of Japan--magic happenstances. I was invited to attend the first annual Niigata International Animation Festival and I'm glad I went. My take below. New Niigata film festival brings out the big names in anime Roland Kelts JAPAN TIMES column CULTURE SMASH It’s no secret that Japan loves animation. Despite being a marginalized medium elsewhere, animation in Japan regularly tops the domestic box office, earning billions of yen for films made without movie stars and on relatively low budgets. Of Japan’s 10 highest-grossing movies ever, seven are animated. But there’s a hitch: six of those top seven titles are homegrown. Animation produced elsewhere, aside from the occasional old-school Disney blockbuster like “Frozen,” rarely gets seen in Japan, let alone embraced by moviegoers. Like short-grain white rice and unagi (fr...

Still swinging for the fences: Murakami in conversation The Times Literary Supplement “You see, I’m like a cat”, he tells me, twice. “I know the best position, and I go there straight. And I do it on my own time. Many people don’t like that about me.” Despite Murakami’s discomfort in Japan, and the disdain he receives from Japanese literary critics ten or more years his junior, his legacy is everywhere in contemporary Japanese culture. He’s there in the unvarnished prose and surreal happenstance in the work of younger writers, including Sayaka Murata (whose bestselling Convenience Store Woman is an eerily Murakamiesque blend of the magical mundane punctuated by violence) Mieko Kawakami and Hideo Furukawa (who wrote what he calls “a remix” of an early Murakami story, entitled Slow Boat ), all of whom claim that his model as an independent, uncompromising artist forged their paths from the parochial forests of Japanese letters to the broader plains of world literature. The...

We're honored to be with Haruki Murakami, Hayao Miyazaki, Frederik L. Schodt & Susan J. Napier.  Happy holidays.

Defining the Heisei Era: When anime and manga went global The Heisei Era commenced after two gods fell in rapid succession. The first, Emperor Hirohito, was no longer officially a god, having repudiated his quasi-divine status under the terms of Japan’s surrender in World War II, but he remained god-like in stature. His January death in 1989 at age 87 signaled the end of a Showa past both turbulent and glorious. It drew global attention from the world’s leaders and media, but had been widely anticipated in Japan. The other fell just one month later, in February, and his death shocked the nation. Osamu Tezuka, the beloved “god of manga,” died of stomach cancer at the age of 60. News of his declining health had been kept secret, as was then customary in Japan. Tezuka was a prolific workaholic and omnipresent television personality. He was also a licensed physician. Almost no one expected his sudden passing. The two deaths would augur a new life for Japan’s twin pop cultu...

via GLLI Editor’s note: Forget the old saw that English language readers won’t read literature in translation. For the last seven years, Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan has been publishing an annual journal of what it calls “the best of contemporary Japanese literature” in English. The paperback editions of the first three issues were completely sold out. This year, though, for reasons the editors call “both professional and personal,” it will not be releasing a new edition. Monkey Business will return with issue no. 8 in 2019 but the digital and most paperback editions of issues 1-7 are available for purchase at its online store . I asked Roland Kelts, who has been involved with the journal since its founding, to tell us about Monkey Business and his connection to Japanese literature in translation.   Eight years ago I had the good fortune of being asked to do a favor. Professors Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen, esteemed literary translators, invited me to di...

Japan’s pop culture and literature drive soft power Anime, manga and Haruki Murakami may form an unlikely trinity, but outside of Japan they’re responsible for filling Japanese Studies departments and sprawling convention halls with generations of the devoted. They’re at the core of Japan’s global allure, the center of its soft power, and last month I was immersed in all three in the span of two weeks in two countries: the United Kingdom and the United States. In Japan they’ve been around for decades, yet they continue to draw younger audiences abroad. It was 40 years ago that Murakami decided he could write a novel after watching an American baseball player hit a double for the Yakult Swallows, his favorite Japanese team. That novel, 1979’s “Hear the Wind Sing,” won Japan’s Gunzo Prize for New Writers and launched the literary career of a rarity: a bona-fide international best-selling writer who is now short-listed annually for the Nobel Prize in literature. Twenty years...

Honored to be joining friends and colleagues in Newcastle, UK for "Eyes on Murakami," a symposium on the 40th anniversary of Haruki Murakami's life in fiction.

Honored to be returning to Tokyo for my second talk at International House of Japan, April 24. Register here  for tix.

My generous thanks to Hajime Kosai, my fellow Japan alum from Columbia University, and a brilliant audience at Aux Bacchanales in Tokyo. Hope to see you in the UK & US next month. (photos: Hajime Kosasi)

Back on the road.

I'm honored to be joining fellow Columbia grads in Tokyo for a talk & Happy Hour on Thursday, February 8th, 7 - 9 p.m., at Aux Bacchanales, Kioicho,  Shin Kioicho Bldg. 1F, 4-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo  (at Hotel New Otani ). Info & rsvp here .

Godzilla shows Japan’s real fear is sclerotic bureaucracy not giant reptiles By ROLAND KELTS Five years before the release of Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Godzilla), the first Japanese-made Godzilla movie in more than a decade, Japan’s north-east coastline was slammed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, causing a meltdown at the region’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Citizens were either misinformed or kept in the dark about the damage: the government would not even use the term “meltdown” until three months later. In an interview with a national newspaper in 2014, novelist Haruki Murakami diagnosed a national character flaw: irresponsible self-victimisation. “No one has taken real responsibility for the 1945 war end or the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident,” he said. “I’m afraid that it can be understood that the earthquake and tsunami were the biggest assailants and the rest of us were all victims. That’s my biggest concern.” Resurgence director Hideaki Anno, a revered...

Illustrating Murakami By  ROLAND KELTS Haruki Murakami’s illustrated novella, “The Strange Library,” arrived in the mail last month looking like a Christmas card from a bipolar ex. Two cheery and colorful cartoon eyes adorn the card’s top half; beastly fangs in sepia tone snap down below. When I slid open the envelope-like front cover, its button seal bearing the numerals “107,” I expected to find menace, and I did. One dark-rimmed emerald green eye glared at me from the broad interior fold, embedded in hair and encircling a black pupil. On the smaller bottom flap was the upside-down half-moon mouth of a smiling child, skin pink and over-bright, canines pristine. Two realities trading places, the threat of violence in an uneasy state of play: classic Murakami, of course. But also vintage Chip Kidd, the associate art director at Knopf who has been designing U.S. first editions of Murakami books since the author’s 1993 short-story collection, “The Elephant Vanishes.” Kidd’...

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COOL JAPAN | BEGINNINGS  ( ACCJ Journal ) Cultures Intertwined American influence on Japan’s soft-power push By Roland Kelts In 2002, American journalist Douglas McGray published an article in Foreign Policy magazine called “Japan’s Gross National Cool.” After spending a few months traveling around the country, McGray concluded that Japan was transitioning from being a manufacturing exporter to a cultural exporter. What he called “the whiff of American cool” that dominated most of the 20th century was being supplanted globally by “the whiff of Japanese cool,” in the form of cultural products such as manga, anime, fashion, and cuisine. McGray cited the phrase coined by Harvard professor Joseph S. Nye (who was, incidentally, President Barack Obama’s first choice for ambassador to Japan in 2008): Soft Power.

Haruki Murakami’s Cool Japan BY ROLAND KELTS I was in New York last week to host a launch event for the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” My good friend and Murakami translator Ted Goossen, professor at York University in Toronto, joined me, as did pianist Eunbi Kim, whose multi-media project, “Murakami Music,” I saw performed at Symphony Space in Manhattan last year. With all the talk of the Cool Japan campaign, it’s worth remembering that author Haruki Murakami reigns as the nation’s most potent global cultural export. I wasn’t surprised to find the venue packed when I arrived. Kinokuniya bookstore’s New York branch in midtown comprises two floors and a basement. Events and readings are staged in the center of the ground floor. Audience members filled the seats and spilled into adjacent aisles, many of them peering over bookshelves. I first met Murakami 15 years ago on a kind of bet.

Summer gigs, 2014 -- thanks to Nobuyuki, Tsuyoshi, Marlan, Ian, Marc in LA; Peter, Nagame, Lars at Embassy of Sweden, Tokyo; Manabu and Lisa at Meiji University, Tokyo; John, Ted, Eunbi and Haruki at Kinokuniya, New York City. Next up: Ottawa, San Diego, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco and Berkeley. Project Anime / Anime Expo @ Los Angeles The Embassy of Sweden @ Tokyo Meiji University @ Tokyo Kinokuniya Books @ New York City NHK "Tomorrow" shoot @ Tohoku

My latest interview with Madeleine Brand for "Press Play" on KCRW / NPR.

Haruki Murakami's Pilgrimage @ Kinokuniya NYC , Tuesday, August 12, 6 p.m. To celebrate the release of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage , join author Roland Kelts, who has known and interviewed Murakami for 15 years, Murakami translator Ted Goossen, and Murakami Music composer Eunbi Kim for an intimate encounter with the author's life, work and personal journey from Japan to the world. Info here .