Roland Kelts writes:
Last month I wrote of the growing interest in Japanese narratives — stories about and from the fringes of 21st Century life, where we all seem to be living in the narrowing worlds of our obsessions, or a kind of global otakudom.
I have just completed 9-city book tour in support of Japanamerica. I greeted audiences and members of the media in Tokyo, New York, Boston, Washington, DC, Berkeley, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland in Los Angeles, in that order, and am now ensconced back in Tokyo. I can confidently say that I have encountered that growing interest firsthand.
From Tokyo to Tacoma, I have been humbled as much by the sizes of my audiences as I have been impressed by their searching intelligence. In Tokyo’s Good Day Books, we ran overtime during the Q&A session, a scenario that has been repeated at events on both coasts of the US, where readers have ranged in age from the early teens to the late 60s and even, at the Embassy of Japan, early 70s. Topics of discussion have included the decline in America’s reputation and popular media/iconography; the rise in both the quality and quantity of Japan’s cultural output; the de-privileging of the photograph and the elevation of the illustration; apocalypse as spectacle, fantasy and the beginning of new narratives and worlds.
One young man in line for the book signing after my talk at UC Berkeley asked me in shaky voice: “How did you manage to write a book on this stuff that went mainstream?”
“I’m guilty of the book,” I confessed, “but the ‘mainstreaming’ is your fault.”
As I write, Natsuo Kirino is on her first US book tour in support of Grotesque, her latest book to be translated into English. (The paperback edition of Out, her first translation and a bestseller, glared at me through bookstore windows across America.) The magnificent Tekkon Kinkreet, the first anime feature film to be directed and scripted by Americans, is slated for its US premiere next week, in a five-day screening session at MOMA in New York from April 25 to 30. The American director and screenwriter, Michael Arias and Anthony Weintraub, Japanese artists and original manga author Taiyo Matsumoto and Japanese producer Eiko Tanaka will be flying on hand for opening night. I have been discussing the film, which I saw in Tokyo, with audience across the US — and my review of the feature is in the current issue of Animation Magazine.
A bit closer to home: I met with my editorial colleague at A Public Space, Brigid Hughes, in New York in late February. The occasion was auspicious: Matthew Sharpe was reading from his extraordinary new novel Jamestown, which I recently reviewed for The Village Voice, in the East Village amid a classic Manhattan ice storm. Japanese translator and author Motoyuki Shibata, his wife Hitomi, the author Lynn Tillman, and a Japanese journalist and her photographer from Tokyo were all in attendance. We convened for dinner at Esashi Sushi next door, sipping sake as the windows rattled.
I am preparing to debut some great new Japanese fiction planned for issue 5 of A Public Space, about which I will reveal more later.
The Japanamerica mobius strip of trans-cultural twists continues: Michael Bay is releasing his version of Transformers this summer, produced by Steven Spielberg. The Wachowski Brothers, creators of The Matrix series, are now finishing a live-action version of Speed Racer/Mach Go Go Go. Hong Kong and LA-based Imagi International are creating two new films for the global audience, both of which will be released in 2008: Astro Boy and Gatchaman.
Here in Japan, the nation is abuzz with rumors of the new Hayao Miyazaki epic, Ponyo, due out next year. And I am personally looking forward to the impending publication of two English-language novels: Haruki Murakami’s After Dark, and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.
Finally, the Japanese edition of Japanamerica streets on May 24 from Random House Kodansha — and the English-language paperback is due from Palgrave in October. I am headed to the UK May 20, and hope to post some Japanamerica event details soon. Be great to meet you.
First posted: Thursday, April 19th, 2007.
