japanamerica

Okay, here goes the new book , out now worldwide from Penguin Random House and Titan Books. I'm no good at this launch stuff but I can assure you the book is beautiful. Just got big boxes of it here in Tokyo: So what's it about? I wrote a preview of it in one of my monthly columns for The Japan Times . "British director Ridley Scott’s 1982 original 'Blade Runner,' a Hollywood live-action movie set in a futuristic Los Angeles, features several neo-noirish nods to a dystopian urban Japan. Signs in Japanese flash above neon-lit alleyways lined with cramped standing food stalls. Snatches of Japanese dialogue are heard on the streets and from the radio in Los Angeles police officer Gaff’s hovercraft (the brilliantly designed “spinner”), and in the voiceover accompanying an indelible image of a geisha, popping a pill on a gigantic skyscraper video projection. Even today, seeing Japanese culture embedded so deeply in the mise-en-scene of a mainstream Hollywood film is st...

"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.

We're honored to be returning to Kansas City,  March 15 - 17 .

Off Assignment When Roland Kelts was commissioned by a travel magazine to write about Vietnam, he was drawn to the vestiges of its war with the United States. But he was seduced by a man on a motorbike. James Salter wrote that there were people we were born to talk to, and like so many of them in my memory, Hie was just there, short, squat and round-faced, a smooth-skinned twenty-something slowing down next to me as I walked. I answered his questions tersely, hoping he'd leave, but he stayed with me, turning the engine off and pushing his bike alongside: You live in Japan, ah. Oh, you're from New York. I want to go there. How can I go there? At the hotel I asked about Hie. Mr. Lai squinted through the lobby window. "He's okay," he said. For the next 13 days, Hie took me everywhere he thought I should go. He showed me how to slouch into the sunken nook of his vinyl bike seat and drape my arms across his belly and squeeze hard enough not to fall off, bu...

After Disaster: Embracing a Living Past through “Ghosts of the Tsunami”  (Words Without Borders) I flew out of Tokyo two days before March 11. There was a mild tremor as I packed, causing the overhead lamp in my kitchen to sway. I crouched over my suitcase, arms extended in my usual high-alert stance, but the earth soon resettled and I went back to folding my socks. Mild side-to-side rocking and the occasional vertical jolt are standard stuff in Japan, the most earthquake prone country in the world. During the days of the disaster and its immediate aftermath, I was in Oregon and California, giving university lectures and an NPR interview about, of all things, Japan’s obsession with apocalypse in its art and popular culture. I would not have remembered that tremor on the ninth had it not been for what happened on the eleventh. Read More >>

MONKEY BUSINESS US MIDWEST AND NEW YORK 2015 SPRING TOUR   MIDWEST With: Aoko Matsuda Satoshi Kitamura Susan Harris (4/28) April 27 (Mon.) – Chicago, IL: Columbia College-Chicago, 1:00 – 5:00 pm April 28 (Tue.) – Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 4:30 – 8:00 pm April 29 (Wed.) – Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo), 4:30pm~ April 30 (Thur.) – Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin (Madison), 5:00 – 7:00pm NEW YORK With: Aoko Matsuda Satoshi Kitamura Ben Katchor (5/3 – 5/6) Kelly Link (5/4 & 5/6) Jay Rubin (5/7) May 3 (Sun.) – Brooklyn, NY: BookCourt, 4:00pm~ May 4 (Mon.) – New York, NY: Asia Society, 6:30pm~ May 6 (Wed.) – New York, NY: McNally Jackson, 8:00pm~ May 7 (Thur.) – New York, NY: Japan Society, 6:30pm~