japanamerica

Here's the video of our live streamed event for Japan Society New York. My thanks to fellow panelist Julia Mechler and moderator Bill Tsutsui, and to sponsors the Government of Japan, Portland Japanese Garden, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Orix Corporation USA. And big thanks to the great and vivacious audience who tuned in live and chatted up a storm of insights and questions.

JAPANESE POP CULTURE IN 2022 February 15, 2022 7:00 pm Live Webinar: Free Registration HERE Part of the "Living Traditions" series Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 7-8 pm EST (4-5 pm PST)   Japanese pop culture, symbolized by manga and anime, has become an increasingly significant part of the cultural conversation across the globe. Julia Mechler , manga creator and Content Production Group Manager at mixi, inc., and Roland Kelts , author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S ., provide their insights into the current state of the industry, from pen to paper to screen, unpacking some of the latest trends and emerging technologies in Japanese pop culture. This webinar covers the historical development of manga and anime, the global influence of otaku culture, and what the future may bring inside and outside of Japan. Moderated by Bill Tsutsui , author of Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization , the fifth and final event in our five-part "Living Tr...

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...

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

I will be a guest speaker at the 2014 Ottawa International Animation Festival in Ottawa, Canada, Sept. 17-21, at the behest of the Embassy of Japan.