japanamerica

Wonderful review of our panel on "Japanese Pop Culture's Successes in Covid-19" for The Japan Society and The Japan-America Society of Dallas/Fort Worth, featuring William Tsutsui, Aki Nakanishi, Seio Nakajima and me. Demon Slayer, anime vtubers, Evangelion, record-breaking sales in anime and manga, and the virtues of lockdown/isolation helped Japan's pop culture industries innovate and flourish against the odds. "The panel includes a history lesson on Japanese isolationism in the past, plenty of talk on Demon Slayer, Japanese and Western co-productions, and how the pandemic might affect Japanese entertainment in the future, among other things. At just under an hour and twenty minutes, it gives interesting insight and perspective on the issues." Thanks to Danica Davidson for the great story. Watchable here:

Fukushima: A photographer's 10-year journey through wreckage and recovery Photographer Ko Sasaki drove me through the Fukushima evacuation zone in the summer of 2016. I had been there twice before to record programs for National Public Radio and NHK, but I was hired by both to report post-disaster stories of resilience and show what had changed since the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Sasaki was showing me what hadn't. Sasaki's photographs appear in The New York Times, Forbes magazine, Wired and other mainstream publications. But his obsession with Fukushima and its people comes from a personal commitment: He feels that the region is still being exploited, mistreated and misrepresented by Japan's government and corporate officials, who cling to tatemae (public face and behavior, or "keeping up appearances"), he says, without a hint of honne (genuine inner sentiment and emotional truth). 2011 He is galled by the government's plan...

WHY IS JAPANESE POP CULTURE THRIVING? Hope you'll join us for this free Zoom conversation with Harvard's Bill Tsutsui (GODZILLA ON MY MIND), Waseda's Seio Nakajima, and Aki Nakanishi from the Portland Japanese Garden and the US Embassy, Tokyo. It's free and you can register for nuthin here . Sponsored by The Japan-America Society Dallas/Fort Worth , The Japan Society , The Japan-America Society Oregon and Dentsu . Let's talk. 

After Disaster: Embracing a Living Past through “Ghosts of the Tsunami” in Words Without Borders Gymnasium, Namie, 2016 Seven years ago Japan underwent its most devastating national crisis since the end of World War II. On March 11, 2011, the genpatsu shinsai triple natural and industrial disaster—a 9.0 earthquake, a tsunami that rose to 128 feet and flooded 217 square miles, and a meltdown and radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—is now cited as the costliest such catastrophe in the world, running to an estimated $400 billion as of 2017. At the time, the impact reverberated nationwide—physically, in the form of aftershocks that rattled buildings throughout the night, and logistically, as distribution and transportation routes were hampered or shut down entirely, leaving some store shelves periodically bare. Japan’s network of nuclear power plants went offline, and the term jishuku, denoting a measure of self-restraint in the face of others’ suffering, was manife...

 On the 10th anniversary of the genpatsu shinsai triple disasters on March 11, 2011—earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown—here is the documentary film I hosted for NHK on the volunteer base in Tono, the birthplace of Tono monogatari, a font for Japanese folklore. 

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...