japanamerica

Anime oasis of the Midwest flourishes By Roland Kelts The 18th annual Anime Central (ACen) , North America’s third largest anime convention, was held May 15 - 17 in Rosemont, near Chicago. Last year’s event drew a record 29,000 unique attendees, tallying 81,000 in total over its three full days. Organizers breached those figures again in 2015, hosting over 31,000. ACen is something of an oasis for anime fans in Middle America. While official celebrations of Japanese popular culture take place across the United States nearly every weekend of the year, many of them are modest affairs, geared toward less populated regions and local fans, sometimes hosted by municipal libraries and schools. The larger conventions and expos, with their bus-loads of cosplayers and A-list Japanese guests, tend to be coastal events, hosted in urban centers such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and New York. ACen is held in the heart of the American Midwest. Chicago hugs the shores of Lake Michigan ...

After a stellar tour of the Midwest and New York City with Monkey Business magazine, I am back in Chicago, honored to be appearing with Japanamerica from May 15 - 17 at Anime Central , the region's largest celebration of Japanese art and culture. 

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~

From Timbuktu to Kalamazoo -- Monkey Business at Western Michigan University, April 29th.

At last, Japan gets it by Roland Kelts The Japanese entertainment industry is finally growing up, says Shin Unozawa, and he should know. Unozawa joined Bandai Entertainment back in 1981, and serves as chair of the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA), co-hosts of the Tokyo Game Show. Now he is CEO of the recently formed Anime Consortium Japan (ACJ) — a multipartner corporation launched last November, with the goal of localizing and consolidating the digital streaming of official Japanese content. The ACJ’s lineup is top shelf: Production and advertising giants Toei, Sunrise, TMS, Aniplex, Asatsu-DK, Nihon Ad Systems and Dentsu have teamed up with major shareholders Bandai Namco Holdings and the government-sponsored Cool Japan Fund. Their primary aim is to tackle piracy and develop the first Japan-centered streaming entertainment and e-commerce platform called Daisuki. It’s as impressive as it is long overdue.

What the west can learn from Japan’s “lost decades” Roland Kelts wonders whether Japan-style stagnation would really be so bad in the west. by Roland Kelts I travel back and forth between Japan and the United States, mostly Tokyo and New York and a few other American cities, several times a year. The contrast is jarring. Arriving in the US can feel like rolling back a decade or more, returning to a time when information was scarce, infrastructure was creaky and basic services such as ground transportation were chaotic and unreliable. I steel myself before landing, my mind tallying variables and unknowns: will my luggage land with me and emerge on the dingy carousel? Will the taxi that I booked online arrive on time, at the right terminal, or at all? Will traffic impede me on my journey? And then there’s the view. Whether it’s the outskirts of Queens on the way from New York’s JFK International Airport or the fringes of the Los Angeles highway off-ramps by LAX, everything...