NAKA-KON 2019
We're honored to be returning to Kansas City, March 15 - 17 .
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MANGA & MURAKAMI
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...
US cons embrace Japan's rock, for The Japan Times
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...