japanamerica

Writers recall their initiation to Japanese literature via Donald Keene   The Japan Times Roland Kelts, author: Bookforum asked me to review Donald Keene’s memoirs , “Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan.” I said yes and winced. Keene was in his 80s at the time and had a lot of life to remember. His book would be massive. But then he, too, was vast: a bridge from my America to my Japanese mother’s land and literature. Also, a graduate of and professor emeritus at my alma mater, Columbia University, whose Center of Japanese Culture bears his name. A slim package arrived: 200 pages. In one chapter, Keene jet-sets around Europe, lobbying for Mishima’s Nobel, when his mother falls ill in New York. He arrives at her bedside too late. She can no longer speak. One cannot live and love in two worlds at once, he observes. The chapter closes so softly I had to put the book down and stare at the wall, shaken. Keene did what Kafka asks of writers: Ax the fr...

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

Netflix anime welcomes the dark side Go Nagai is the original bad boy of manga. His series “Shameless School” (“Harenchi Gakuen”) cemented his status as the inventor of the hentai (erotic) genre. “Shameless School” debuted in the first issue of Shueisha Inc.’s Weekly Shonen Jump , Japan’s best-selling manga magazine, in August 1968. The adult shenanigans and sexualized students Nagai depicted rendered him the target of national media, Parent Teacher Associations and women’s groups — and an infamous artistic pioneer. Over the past year, both Nagai and Shonen Jump have been celebrated for their 50th anniversary milestones. But one of Nagai’s later manga has gained immediate relevance. The animated adaptation of his 1972 “Devilman” series, “Devilman Crybaby,” directed by Masaaki Yuasa and released on Netflix back in January, has become one of 2018’s most talked-about anime and biggest international hits, despite its source being 46 years old. Now 73, Nagai looks like a profess...

رولاند كيلتس يتحدث إلينا خلال مشاركته في معرض الشارقة الدولي للكتاب Roland Kelts, well-known speaker and author chats with us. Here's what he said about #SIBF18 and about his participation. #الشارقة #الإمارات #معرض_الشارقة_الدولي_للكتاب #Shj #UAE #SBA pic.twitter.com/xpmg3QSUik — Sharjah Book Authority (@SharjahBookAuth) November 9, 2018

( PROJECT ANIME 2018 , Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, CA. photo: Kumo Takeda) ( ANIMEFEST 2018 , Sheraton Dallas, Dallas, TX.)

Honored to be visiting Akita, my grandmother Ebata's furusato (hometown), to speak at Akita International University .

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...

Honored to be joining friends and colleagues in Newcastle, UK for "Eyes on Murakami," a symposium on the 40th anniversary of Haruki Murakami's life in fiction.

Back on the road.

Breaking the comic book glass ceiling Four years ago, Chinese-American writer Marjorie Liu had a simple but persistent idea: create an epic fantasy comic book series about a classic Japanese kaijū (strange beast) movie monster that has a connection to a girl. She knew it should take place entirely in Asia, and that Asian women should be the main characters. She also knew that she wanted to work with an Asian artist. The West, and men, would remain peripheral. The artist she wanted to realize her vision was Japanese illustrator Sana Takeda. The two had worked together on the Marvel comic series “X-23” in 2010, and Liu says their chemistry was uncanny. Marjorie Liu “She was one of the finest artists I ever worked with,” she tells me at a cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lives and teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Sana is capable of illustrating silence, quiet moments. That’s rare in comics. And I write superheroes as real people wi...

Japanese folklore meets anime in Kyoto By  ROLAND KELTS The colors were jarring. Beneath the vermillion torii gates of Kyoto’s Shimogamo Shrine and surrounded by the olive broadleaves of Tadasu Forest was a pool of furry, bright yellow ponchos, decorated with the brown facial features, rounded ears and bulbous oblong tails of the tanuki, or Japanese raccoon dog. Out of roughly 2,500 applicants, 200 anime fans, the majority of them young women, won entry to the Jan. 12 “Uchoten Kazoku 2 (The Eccentric Family 2) Event: Tanuki Gathering at the Forest of Tadasu, Shimogamo Shrine” via raffle tickets sold at ¥2,000 each in November and December.  The lucky fans had access to an intimate seating area to view the solemn Shinto blessing of the series’ second season, which premieres on April 9. They also received swag bags of merchandise supplied by the show’s sponsors, attended a talk show including photo ops with its seiyu (voice actor) stars, sipped ceremonial sake...

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~

AnimeJapan 2015 sees the big picture by Roland Kelts For most in Japan, April marks the beginning of the new working year. But for the anime and manga biz, it all starts in March. Last weekend, the second annual AnimeJapan trade fair overtook Tokyo Big Sight, with more than 120,000 total attendees (a spike of 10,000 over last year’s tally), 2,500 of whom were business representatives from Japan and overseas. This weekend, March 28 and 29, will see the first-ever “Otaku Summit,” a special edition of the biannual Comics Market (Comiket), featuring manga-fan artists from 18 countries and held at Chiba’s Makuhari Messe. AnimeJapan is the union of two events, the former Tokyo Anime Festival (TAF) and The Anime Contents Expo (ACE), whose initial split was caused by a rift over ex-Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara’s controversial censorship drive in 2010. The first TAF I attended in 2005 targeted industry insiders — domestic studios, networks and media. But AnimeJapan has evolved ...

‘The Anime Encyclopedia’ goes full digital By Roland Kelts “The Anime Encyclopedia, 3rd Revised Edition: A Century of Japanese Animation” was released on March 3. Editions 1 and 2, published in 2001 and 2006 respectively, have long proved invaluable to English-speaking scholars, fans and writers, serving as reliably exhaustive and often highly entertaining guides to a world that can seem as massive as it does impenetrable. As author Neil Gaiman gushed, the book is “an astonishing work." In the era before the Internet was awash in anime trivia, it was also an imperative one. But the Encyclopedia’s publishers, California-based Stone Bridge Press, were not only aware of the flood of anime sites online since the last edition, they dove straight into it. The e-book version of the third edition is peppered with hyperlinks to Internet sites relating to the films, series, directors, authors, studios, genres and terminology highlighted in the text, enabling readers to leap sea...

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.

Haruki Murakami’s Cool Japan BY ROLAND KELTS I was in New York last week to host a launch event for the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.” My good friend and Murakami translator Ted Goossen, professor at York University in Toronto, joined me, as did pianist Eunbi Kim, whose multi-media project, “Murakami Music,” I saw performed at Symphony Space in Manhattan last year. With all the talk of the Cool Japan campaign, it’s worth remembering that author Haruki Murakami reigns as the nation’s most potent global cultural export. I wasn’t surprised to find the venue packed when I arrived. Kinokuniya bookstore’s New York branch in midtown comprises two floors and a basement. Events and readings are staged in the center of the ground floor. Audience members filled the seats and spilled into adjacent aisles, many of them peering over bookshelves. I first met Murakami 15 years ago on a kind of bet.

Summer gigs, 2014 -- thanks to Nobuyuki, Tsuyoshi, Marlan, Ian, Marc in LA; Peter, Nagame, Lars at Embassy of Sweden, Tokyo; Manabu and Lisa at Meiji University, Tokyo; John, Ted, Eunbi and Haruki at Kinokuniya, New York City. Next up: Ottawa, San Diego, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco and Berkeley. Project Anime / Anime Expo @ Los Angeles The Embassy of Sweden @ Tokyo Meiji University @ Tokyo Kinokuniya Books @ New York City NHK "Tomorrow" shoot @ Tohoku

My latest interview with Madeleine Brand for "Press Play" on KCRW / NPR.

Haruki Murakami's Pilgrimage @ Kinokuniya NYC , Tuesday, August 12, 6 p.m. To celebrate the release of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage , join author Roland Kelts, who has known and interviewed Murakami for 15 years, Murakami translator Ted Goossen, and Murakami Music composer Eunbi Kim for an intimate encounter with the author's life, work and personal journey from Japan to the world. Info here .

At the following times, streaming here: NHK WORLD TV Mon. 01:30, 07:30, 13:30, 19:30 (UTC) NHK WORLD Premium Wed. of next week 17:00 (UTC) NHK BS1 (Japanese language only) Wed. 14:00 (JST)   Sun. 04:00 (JST)