japanamerica

Out now in Animation magazine's May issue is a feature story I wrote on Studio 4C's GENIUS PARTY project, which premiered in the US at the Kennedy Center's Japan! Festival in February. Studio 4C is one of the most ambitious and innovative of Japan's anime studios, and its teams of creators and producers are among the most generous in the industry. I remain grateful to Eiko Tanaka, Yukie Saeki, Michael Arias and others at 4C for their enduring support of my work. Have a look at some of their work-- Genius, Tekkon Kinkreet, Mind Gam e and more--for an edifying glimpse at the medium's possibilities.

[Roland Kelts delivering the keynote address for the Brooklyn Museum's Takashi Murakami exhibition, Saturday, April 12. Photo courtesy of Erin Silverstein.] After last week's keynote address and my closing comments, an enterprising young reporter for Kyodo News asked me, quite reasonably: With all these wonderful manga and anime artists working for years in relative obscurity in Japan, why is Takashi Murakami the one who gets hung on American museum walls, while the others are considered 'pop' artists, banished to Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster shelves? Murakami's uncanny ability to abstract the embedded emotional characteristics of manga and anime--the rage, violence, suspicions about kawaii or super-cute interdependencies, native postwar resentments, et cetera--is one clear reason. Like a surgeon, he seems to isolate and extract these raw states from their narrative bodies and splash them onto walls and sculptures to lay them bare. He has also--like Haruki ...

Join us in New York's biggest borough this Saturday, April 12 at Noon. I will deliver the keynote at the Brooklyn Museum--in a KEY noTe. Info HERE

A huge Honto ni Arigato to: Ulmira, Sabrina, the indefatigable Harry Porter, brother Bruce, and the lot who bothered to bother me. Vast thanks. After a great night at Elliott Bay Book Company (thanks to Seattle TV for the bright lights), we're on again tomorrow (Tuesday) night at the Japan America Society. If you haven't had enough already in Seattle, please join us tonight. INFO is HERE . Else I'll see you in DC later this week. Thanks to all of you for tremendous support and kindness. NEW interview at Sakura Con is HERE , replete with jet lag hoarseness.

Am now in Seattle for Sakura Con 2008 , which is opening in frisky and festive fashion downtown, with its largest number of pre-registrants ever. I've been told this is now the second largest such convention in the US, behind only Anime Expo down the coast in Anaheim. If you're in this town over the next three days, please do swing by and say hello, costumed or not. More info is here . On Sunday afternoon, we'll have a tad more conventional-style reading and signing at the venerable Elliott Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square, info for which is here . All are welcome, admission is free, commentary reasonably unfettered.

Pretty hard to beat Westwood in Los Angeles in March for a lovely locale in which to convene--and talk Japanamericana. Vast thanks to Adrian Favell, whom I first encountered at the Pink Cow in Tokyo, Kristin Surak and the folks at UCLA for hosting the three-day event (minutely detailed info is here ). It was an honor for me to be introduced by the Consul General and a pleasure meeting friends old and new, such as Laura Miller, Ted Bestor, Mike Tatsugawa, David Marxy, Patrick Macias, Ai Aota and Jamie Rivandeniera, whose brilliant "Japan LA" shop (see here ) I was finally able to visit yesterday. The conference was especially revealing in its focus on entrepreneurship on this side of the Pacific. We all know that what sells in Japan does not always fly in the US, and vice-versa, but it remains fascinating to hear more specific examples of both, and to learn of various strategies for handling the transcultural challenge. One could do worse than Southern California in early s...

... and other news from California. Many thanks to the fine folks at UC Berkeley and City College of San Francisco for a stellar last week in the Bay Area. More news to report soon. Up next: UCLA, Thurs-Fri., March 13-14: Join us.