japanamerica

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

Anime gives Japanese bands a new route to potential fans By ROLAND KELTS ‘Retro” was the theme at this year’s Anime Boston, the largest anime convention in the Northeastern United States, and that extended to the event’s featured musical acts: veteran pop duo Puffy AmiYumi and 1960s-styled rock quartet Okamoto’s. “The only other time we played in Boston we performed a short set in a musical instrument store down the street,” says Okamoto’s lead singer Sho Okamoto during our backstage meeting. “We thought we might have 25 people in the hall today, but there were thousands out there.” Okamoto’s play top-tier venues in Tokyo. Seeing their name on the roster of an anime convention reveals how much more intimate the two media have become. Anime soundtracks used to travel poorly, with Western fans dismissing the melodramatic scores and lyrics. Songs for TV in particular were often composed to appeal to Japan’s karaoke-driven demographic: Fans would memorize every word and melod...

AKB48 turns to an American studio Director Keishi Otomo and AKB48 By Roland Kelts AKB48’s commercial success in Japan is often derided as a sign of the culture’s patriarchal infantilization of women, and the girl group’s inability to appeal to Western audiences a sign of Japan’s increasingly isolated ideas about femininity, sexuality and pop music. Put simply: outside of Japan, AKB48 will never be Psy. But inside Japan, it’s a reliable moneymaker. Its most recent single, “We Won’t Fight” ( Bokutachi wa Tatakawanai ), topped the Oricon charts in June. The idol group is the no. 2 bestselling music act in the entire history of Japanese pop music in terms of singles sold. And Japan is the second-largest pop music market in the world – just behind the United States. Cuteness sells in Japan, especially if it’s well-marketed. Which is why AKB48’s latest music video is puzzling. The ironically titled 12-minute epic, “We Won’t Fight” [ short v. ], was released this summer. In it, th...

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’...

COOL JAPAN | MUSIC  ( ACCJ Journal ) First Sound from the Future Hatsune Miku weaves her magic for US audiences this fall By Roland Kelts Not all trends sweeping the domestic market in Japan strike gold with overseas audiences. The exceptions are headliners such as Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and the manga series One Piece, with its record-breaking 345-million print run worldwide. Most Japanese pop culture phenomena are for the home crowd only. Sports manga, such as Slam Dunk, rarely find a mass audience in the United States. Even trendy fashions, like last decade’s yamamba girls with their towering platform soles and bronzed faces, fail to charm most foreign tastemakers. In the 80s, when I was a teenager set free in Tokyo streets by my Japanese mother, I was entranced by quirky Japanese idol groups, fantastical haircuts, and animated television graphics. Still, I didn’t think any of it would register with my peers in America. It was altogether too light, too cute, too w...