japanamerica

There is a model 17th century Japanese house squatting in the middle of a park in Philadelphia . It has been there for 63 years, but not many knew why until the city's Japan America Society staged an exhibition called "Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration Between Japan and Philadelphia." Meant to highlight the JapanPhilly2020 campaign -- an Olympics-related celebration of nearly 150 years of transcultural exchange between Japan and the city -- the exhibition ran from September through November 2020, and will reopen later this year. The story of the Shofuso (Pine Breeze Villa) house and grounds brings together four artists from Europe, the U.S. and Japan: Antonin Raymond, an architect from Prague; his French wife Noemi, an interior decorator; famed prizewinning Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura, designer of International House of Japan in Tokyo and the Japan Society building in New York; and George Nakashima, a Japanese-American wood craftsman and furniture de...

It would be hyperbolic to call 2020 a great year for anime. But it ended better than it began . Last April, the Japanese government’s first declaration of a state of emergency raised the specter of 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown stopped anime studios cold, forcing many to consolidate for survival and some to close for good. The triple disasters of nine years ago disrupted the industry for at least a month and took three or more to overcome. “We almost went under in 2011,” said Joseph Chou, the CEO of computer animation studio Sola Digital Arts, when I spoke to him in early May. Work had just been abruptly suspended on major shows such as “Pokemon,” “Doraemon” and “One Piece,” and his own staff were struggling to make progress on their forthcoming series, “Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” due out in spring 2021. Chou compared interrupting the production process to halting a speeding train: “You can’t go from 100 miles per hour to zero and then ex...

Three years ago, I asked Kun Gao, a co-founder and former CEO of anime site Crunchyroll, whether he thought the medium on which his company relied would ever go mainstream. We were sitting in what were then Crunchyroll’s headquarters on the seventh floor of the sprawling Westfield Mall building in San Francisco — a space once occupied by Microsoft. He smiled. “It’s still niche,” he said. “But it’s a pretty big niche.” Last week, Sony took a big bite into that niche by purchasing Crunchyroll from American telecoms giant AT&T’s WarnerMedia for a cool $1.2 billion. The deal puts the company Gao co-founded 14 years ago with five other computer engineering grads (and self-professed “nerds”) from the University of California, Berkeley, at the very center of Sony’s push to become a direct-to-consumer player, joining the fray with behemoths Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. Entertainment, and anime in particular, will be its cornerstone. To industry observers, Sony’s purchase, while likely over...

The state of the world in 2020 is one that Lastlings, a half-Japanese, half-Australian musical sibling duo, seem oddly prepared for, right down to their name. “Lastlings” was the title of a short story that guitarist and producer Josh Dowdle, 27, wrote in high school about the survivors of an apocalyptic event. Nature has reclaimed the cities, nothing is open and the “lastlings” are the only remaining people on Earth. “We have a dystopian aesthetic,” Josh says on a video call from a studio in Australia. “I guess it’s a coincidence.” Josh and his sister, Amy, 21, have just released their debut album, “First Contact,” with an anime-inspired three-minute video trailer shot entirely in Tokyo. Their studied poses, artful silhouettes and symmetric good looks set against metamorphosing cityscapes recall scenes from a psychedelic Satoshi Kon anime. Were it not for the pandemic, you could’ve seen them perform live here this month. “We were supposed to play (in Tokyo) right about now,” says Josh...

Free registration is now open here . Featuring award-winning poet and novelist Hiromi Ito, author/illustrator Satoshi Kitamura, translator, editor and scholar Motoyuki Shibata, and Maesy Ang of the wonderful Post Bookshop, Jakarta .  Wish we were there (Indonesia) again, but hope to see you here on Zoom. 

To celebrate this month's global release of the new issue of  MONKEY   in print & digital formats: Novelist Hiroko Oyamada is compared to Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami in this recent  New York Time s review of her latest novel, "The Hole."  We are excited to introduce Hiroko to you on Friday, Dec. 11th (US) / Saturday Dec. 12th (Japan) in MONKEY IS BACK! - a celebration of the global print release this month of MONKEY: New Writing from Japan literary magazine. • The Zoom event is free, and registration is here .  • You can now purchase your copy of the new English-language MONKEY here . Hiroko will read with her English-language translator, the scholar David Boyd. Artist Satoshi Kitamura will present kamishibai , a classic form of paper theater visual storytelling that was a precursor to manga. Founding editor Motoyuki Shibata will host, I will moderate. See you soon!

Earlier this year I signed off on another foreign-language license for a new Spanish-language translation of my book JAPANAMERICA: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US , which has been updated with a new subtitle (in Spanish, of course): How Japanese Pop Culture has Conquered the West . I'm pleased to announce that the new Spanish edition will be released just in time for Christmas 2020.  My thanks to Jennifer in Barcelona and Marta in New York for managing the deal via my US publisher St. Martin's Press, and to Samuel and Iñaki for publishing the new edition at Odaiba Ediciones. They had planned some launch events and signings with me in Madrid but all have been postponed until our post-Covid era commences. More info forthcoming.