japanamerica

One of my favorite recent English-language books on Japan is AMETORA ("American Traditional"), the enthralling, novelistic story of postwar Japan told through its brilliant refashioners of Western fashions (Take Ivy! Selvedge Denim! BAPE!). I will host a talk w/author W. David Marx at The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on Wednesday, Dec 13th , 6pm JST, both live and via Zoom. If you're in Tokyo (or not), please join us by registering here :  https://www.fccj.or.jp/event/book-break-w-david-marx-author-ametora-how-japan-saved-american-style-presentation  "Tokyo-based author W. David Marx will speak about his 2015 cultural history of American fashion in Japan — AMETORA: How Japan Saved American Style — which has recently been re-released by Basic Books with a new afterword after surprising global success. Marx will give a presentation in conversation with JAPANAMERICA author and moderator Roland Kelts on this fascinating micro-history of how Amer...

The Johnny's fiasco in Japan is but one reminder that tight corporate/big business control over creative industries can result in corruption and stymie creativity (leaving aside charges of sexual abuse). When I was tasked to write about contemporary Korean vs. Japanese films in my latest column for The Japan Times , one of the starkest differences I found was between the processes of movie and series production in the two countries. In Japan, delivering a product on or under-budget and on-schedule is prioritized, and creatives are treated by corporate owners like disposable gig-economy workers. In Korea, it's more about making works of art. When you see films like "Parasite" and series like "Squid Game" and "D.P.," you get the gist. Does South Korea now have the edge over Japan when it comes to film?         Thirty minutes into “Iron Mask,” the debut feature from Korean writer-director Kim Sung Hwan, its kendo-crazed antihero, Jae-woo (Jo...

  2023 My latest interview for History Channel airing this month pursues my work on a story I started researching and writing about 20 years ago: the fate of billions of dollars (at least) worth of treasure plundered from Asia by the Japanese military in World War II, much of it buried in an underground network of tunnels and caves in the Philippines.  It's now watchable online here . The loot was discovered forcibly by the Americans (i.e., GHQ), kept off the books, and deposited in bank accounts across the world--known primarily as the "M-Fund" ( M-Shikin in Japanese). How was that money used? You can probably count the ways, but don't overlook the Marcos regime.   Last time the producers cast me as a cafe-haunting journo. This time I'm playing an author/prof in a gulag.     Here's the first story I ever wrote on the conspiracy, published in The Japan Times and based on my work with the late authors Sterling and Peggy Seagraves and their book GOLD WARRIORS...

A couple of weeks after I wrote this story for Rest of World , the Tokyo Stock Exchange hit a 33-year high. Credit my editor. Japan’s sleepy tech scene is ready for a comeback After decades of slumber, the country that brought us bullet trains and Nintendo has mustered some momentum. Sho Hayashi might be a walking cliche in San Francisco or Austin. The 33-year-old founder, with two successful startups and a string of degrees to his name, met me in a light-filled coworking space before flying overseas for a weekend of meetings.  But here in Japan, Hayashi is a new breed of revolutionary. A graduate of the elite University of Tokyo, his standard path would have been to settle into a lifetime job — perhaps as an international diplomat, or at a time-tested corporate empire like Mitsubishi. When he attended a massive startup conference in Singapore in 2010 and realized Japan didn’t have a single representative, he asked to become one and found a new calling: entrepreneurship. “I realize...

  By TitleMax.com

[Running a little late with the updates owing to travel and, well, life.] Japan struggles to give up floppy disks and fax machines for the digital age KYODO When Kono Taro was tapped in August to lead the government’s one-year-old Digital Agency, dedicated to digitizing Japan’s bureaucracy, headlines lit up with his opening salvos. No more fax machines! Out with floppy disks! His proclamations, delivered via Twitter, elicited cheers overseas. Inside Japan, they were met with muted bemusement.  Fluent in English and dubbed a “maverick” by the global media, the former foreign affairs and defense minister Kono is Japan’s most visible and Twitter-friendly politician ever, in a country more typically known for faceless bureaucrats. (When Yoshitaka Sakurada, the 72-year-old cybersecurity minister for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games shamelessly said that he had never once used a computer, his confession was greeted by shock and embarrassment. Though he was promptly forced to resign, no one r...

I spoke to the BBC about the Japanese government's new campaign contest to get young people to drink more alcohol (!)—and the death of pioneering fashion designer Hanae Mori. I did not try to connect the two. Audio's online here .  "Japan's young adults are a sober bunch - something authorities are hoping to change with a new campaign. The younger generation drinks less alcohol than their parents - a move that has hit taxes from beverages like sake (rice wine). So the national tax agency has stepped in with a national competition to come up with ideas to reverse the trend. The 'Sake Viva!' campaign hopes to come up with a plan to make drinking more attractive - and boost the industry. The contest asks 20 to 39-year-olds to share their business ideas to kick-start demand among their peers - whether it's for Japanese sake, shochu, whiskey, beer or wine. The group running the competition for the tax authority says new habits - partly formed during the Covid pa...

[I broke my shoulder a couple of months ago and that slowed output considerably. Am on the mend now.] Japan once led global tech innovation. How did it fall so behind? When I first moved to Japan in the late 1990s, Japan’s technological achievements were envied. In 2001, at a book launch in New York, I recorded a video of fellow revelers on my Japanese cell phone. The model had just been released: a squared-off clamshell of sparkly maroon plastic, with an impressive color screen and emoji-like graphics. I emailed the video instantly to publishing friends in Tokyo, which was then home to the world’s second-fastest internet speeds. They responded just a few minutes later, flashing victory signs. My friends in New York cooed as if we’d just watched a new moon landing. But almost exactly twenty years later, vast regions of Japan’s digital universe are stuck in the early aughts. Online banking, airline booking, major newspapers, you name it: Services that have been streamlined by the digita...

My first "Letter from Tokyo" of 2022 is an ode to osechi ryori, the traditional Japanese New Year's foods that I love and long for every January. Last spring, I was commissioned by The Japan Society of Boston to write a series of short monthly musings called "Letters from Tokyo." These have enabled me to dip briefly into impressions and memories of my life in Japan without belaboring them or boring the daylights out of anyone who might bother reading about them. Wishing you a Happy Lunar New Year and a Healthy Year of the Tiger! Letters from Tokyo, January 2022: The Colors of Osechi Earlier this month it snowed in Tokyo the way it does in Tokyo—just enough to cover trees and buildings with a white fringe and make the sidewalks slippery and the parks sparkle in the sun. Because it will melt away in a day or so, snow in Tokyo is an event, spawning a million pictures and videos on social media. It’s like a mini-sakura/cherry blossom season in the middle of winter, ...

"The Inland Sea" by Donald Richie is among the finest books ever written about Japan (some would say it's the finest) and we're celebrating its 50th Anniversary on DEC. 8th with a live Zoom event. I'll be discussing the book with renowned Japan scholar John Nathan, translator of Mishima, Oe, Soseki and others, and a great filmmaker to boot. Our talk will be moderated by Peter Grilli, president emeritus of The Japan Society of Boston. Registration is free here . The book is still in print, beautifully so, and will be sold at discount during the event by Stone Bridge Press . Please join us for this landmark evening hosted by The Japan Society of Boston . I'm really looking forward to this one.

This was a whole lot of serious fun: My roundtable chat with author, historian, and dear friend Charles Solomon to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the "Lupin the 3rd" anime franchise, one of the world's longest-running animated series. Of course we talked a lot about "The Castle of Cagliostro," Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film as director, a charmed and stunning work that is often a gateway for non-Japanese to the Lupin universe.  Our roundtable is for Sentai Filmworks  and TMS Entertainment . 

  LETTER FROM TOKYO, OCTOBER 2021: GINGKO GOLD September still feels like late summer in Tokyo, with stretches of sunbaked days and lingering cicadas and humid stillness. But by October the air crispens and the leaves go vibrant. October coaxes forth the city’s magnificent foliage, blanketing its far-flung hillsides and spreading colorful canopies across its parks and university campuses.  This year, the humidity got siphoned away overnight and evenings grew chilly fast. But for someone like me, raised in the northeastern US and north-central Japan, the shift to windbreakers and warmer bedclothes is welcome. Wherever I am, that transition in temperature feels like home. Speaking of overnight: Have any other Olympic Games dissipated so quickly? No disrespect to the athletes, medalists and their retinue, but the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, held less than three months ago in 2021, almost feel more ancient today than the first Tokyo Olympics in 1964.  Things here have changed, ...

 

I'll be chatting with the Head of Content Strategy & Global Partnerships at anime streaming site Crunchyroll , Alden Mitchell Budill , this Thursday, July 8th from 2pm PST (with online access thru July 13th) at A-JAPAN — an exclusive content showcase of the hottest IP from Japan, incl. manga, TV and film. The event is hosted by Amuse Group USA, Inc. and actor-streamer Erika Ishii. Online registration is free here . A-JAPAN 2021 Teaser from Amuse Group USA on Vimeo .

I was just interviewed for the DEEP IN JAPAN podcast about growing up half-Japanese, writing  JAPANAMERICA , editing the literary magazine Monkey: New Writing from Japan , writing  "The Fifth Flavor ," reading Nabokov and Canetti ... and catching clout chasers who crib your ideas. Also chatted about my new book, the novel, my kindergarten years in Morioka, living with my grandparents and falling in love with Ultraman. Good fun all around thanks to Jeff Krueger and his team. (pic: Ultraman Taro & Mini Roland in Tokyo Tower.) Deep in Japan · Roland Kelts - On Contemporary Japanese Fiction & Japanamerica

Japan's obsession with perfection is an Olympic-sized problem  W hen clockwork does not work Japan is world-famous for its punctual and efficient customer service, and for most of the pandemic—with the country under varying states of emergency—this has been a godsend. Food deliveries arrive at your door, hot and hermetically sealed, up to 10 minutes earlier than promised. Packages sent from every corner of the country are handed to you the following morning by gloved couriers. Convenience stores really are convenient—located everywhere, well-stocked, impeccably sanitized and open 24/7, even in the smallest towns. In Tokyo, public clocks are ubiquitous. While it is true that you can set your watch to the departures and arrivals of Japan's trains, from the high-speed shinkansen to more humble commuter rails and subways, you do not really need a watch here. Yet now, when Japan does need to keep pace with global vaccinations just two months before the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympi...

Terribly well-timed to the rise of anti-Asian hate in the US, I will be talking about this brave and important new book, Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in WWII , with author Daniel James Brown in Boston. The event is hosted and sponsored by Boston Public Library , GBH , Japan Society of Boston and New England Historic Genealogical Society . This is a critical time to reexamine the Japanese American experience of WWII—incarcerated in the camps at home, and fighting for the US overseas. We hope you'll join us. Daniel James Brown with Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II Virtual Event: Wednesday, May 12 at 6 p.m. ET / 11 p.m. UK / Thursday, May 13th at 7 p.m. JST • Register here Moderator: Roland Nozomu Kelts , author, journalist, editor, and lecturer Presented in partnership with Boston Public Library, the Japan Society of Boston, and GBH Forum Network From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Boys...