Roland Kelts's Blog, page 36
December 9, 2014
Hosting "Tomorrow" in Tohoku for NHK
I host the documentary, "Tomorrow," on ongoing post-quake/tsunami volunteer & recovery efforts in Tohoku, northern Japan, for NHK television. The film was shot not far from where I once lived with my grandparents in Iwate Prefecture. Summary here.
December 3, 2014
Meet half-Japanese Ryan Potter / Hiro Hamada in "Big Hero 6", for The Japan Times
Disney’s ‘Big Hero 6′ animates a bridging of cultures
BY ROLAND KELTS
This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival was hot on animation, featuring screenings of the collected works of Hideaki Anno, creator of the epic franchise, “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” and 3-D shorts directed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of “Donkey Kong” and “Super Mario Bros.” But the festival’s opening animated film was from America — even if Japan is very much on its mind.
The world premiere of “Big Hero 6″ (released in Japan as “Baymax”) from Disney and Marvel Comics took place in Tokyo on Oct. 23. It opened in theaters in the United States on Nov. 7, and will drop in Japan on Dec. 20. Last month, as I swung through Los Angeles, where the film was produced and directed, the pre-release buzz was palpable.
The eponymous hero of the film is a “Hiro” — Hiro Hamada, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian boy genius with a flair for robotics. Hamada and his robot companion, Baymax, fight evil forces who threaten to destroy their home city — an urban hybrid called “San Fransokyo.”
The city is a visual astonishment: meticulously detailed renderings of San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods with Tokyo’s Odaiba Rainbow Bridge spanning its bay and Shibuya skyscrapers hugging the iconic Transamerica Pyramid. Animation critic and historian Charles Solomon notes that the artists had long stays in both cities, where they studied the architecture and skylines to combine them into a single metropolis.
"‘Big Hero 6′ suggests the Disney animators are offering a more thoughtful response to the challenges presented by Japanese animated action-adventure films,” Solomon says. “It’s not as dark or violent as ‘Akira,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ or ‘Evangelion,’ but the artists have raised the stakes for the hero and pumped up the action. ‘Big Hero 6′ preserves the polished animation of American films but combines it with exciting, contemporary filmmaking that rivals the hit live-action fantasies.”
Hiro is voiced by Ryan Potter, who, like his character, is half-Japanese, half-Caucasian — born in Tokyo to an American mother and Japanese father and raised in Japan and the U.S. He even looks like the illustrated character — though that, he tells me, is pure coincidence.
“It was surreal,” Potter explains at his home in Los Angeles. “People say, ‘the character kind of looks like you,’ but when I first walked into the studio, the character was already designed. Even I said, ‘Hey, that kind of looks like me.’ “
Potter grew up with Japanese pop culture, admiring giant robots and the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. After his mother moved to California, he became immersed in the works of Disney and Marvel Comics. Now 19, he still loves Lego and model kits, and says playing a 14-year-old kid was hardly a stretch.
“Hiro’s just like me. We’re both pretty emotional and wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re both what you see is what you get. The only real difference is that Hiro is a lot smarter. He’s a genius.”
The film’s predilection for brains over brawn is yet another sign of anime’s growing influence over a new generation of American producers and animators. In addition to its nods to the works of Miyazaki and other anime auteurs, the film features several icons of Japanese culture sprinkled throughout the background scenery.
“You see robot characters in Hiro’s room that closely resemble robots from Gundam or Appleseed or Voltron,” says Potter. “All these different pieces of Japan. You even have the lucky cat with its right paw up (maneki neko). The film is crazy because there are so many Easter eggs of Japanese culture tucked into its world. It’s fun just finding them.”
Part of the pleasure of animation is sensing the sheer joy and freedom experienced by the artists who make it: Miyazaki’s ecstatic renderings of flight, for example, or Kon’s playfully elastic doppelgangers. In “Big Hero 6,” the cross-pollination of American and Japanese cultures takes visual form. One scene shows a historic San Francisco streetcar with its destination posted on the back: the intersection of Market Street and Meiji Dori.
Potter thinks Japanese audiences will love the film, but not just because of its mis-en-scene. The cast is as ethnically diverse as the characters, he points out, which he believes will transcend a purely American audience and help bridge cultures. The Latina character named Honey Lemon is voiced by Venezualan/Cuban-American actress, Genesis Rodriguez. Asian-Americans Daniel Henney and Jamie Chung voice the characters Tadashi Hamada and Go Go Tamago. Another character, voiced by comedian Damon Wayan’s son, Damon Jr., is named Wasabi.
“But what’s great is that they don’t make a big deal of it in the film. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s an Asian American character.’ It’s just part of the story, part of the world.”
Japan remains a big part of Potter’s own world. He visits every year and retains powerful memories of his childhood in Yoga, the neighborhood in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward where he was raised until the age of seven. But don’t expect him to speak Japanese at the movie’s press conference.
“I wish I could. I know the Japanese would love to see that, and it was my first language, but I’ve forgotten it. My mom still speaks fluently, though. Maybe she can be my interpreter.”
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
BY ROLAND KELTS
This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival was hot on animation, featuring screenings of the collected works of Hideaki Anno, creator of the epic franchise, “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” and 3-D shorts directed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of “Donkey Kong” and “Super Mario Bros.” But the festival’s opening animated film was from America — even if Japan is very much on its mind.
The world premiere of “Big Hero 6″ (released in Japan as “Baymax”) from Disney and Marvel Comics took place in Tokyo on Oct. 23. It opened in theaters in the United States on Nov. 7, and will drop in Japan on Dec. 20. Last month, as I swung through Los Angeles, where the film was produced and directed, the pre-release buzz was palpable.
The eponymous hero of the film is a “Hiro” — Hiro Hamada, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian boy genius with a flair for robotics. Hamada and his robot companion, Baymax, fight evil forces who threaten to destroy their home city — an urban hybrid called “San Fransokyo.”
The city is a visual astonishment: meticulously detailed renderings of San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods with Tokyo’s Odaiba Rainbow Bridge spanning its bay and Shibuya skyscrapers hugging the iconic Transamerica Pyramid. Animation critic and historian Charles Solomon notes that the artists had long stays in both cities, where they studied the architecture and skylines to combine them into a single metropolis.
"‘Big Hero 6′ suggests the Disney animators are offering a more thoughtful response to the challenges presented by Japanese animated action-adventure films,” Solomon says. “It’s not as dark or violent as ‘Akira,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ or ‘Evangelion,’ but the artists have raised the stakes for the hero and pumped up the action. ‘Big Hero 6′ preserves the polished animation of American films but combines it with exciting, contemporary filmmaking that rivals the hit live-action fantasies.”Hiro is voiced by Ryan Potter, who, like his character, is half-Japanese, half-Caucasian — born in Tokyo to an American mother and Japanese father and raised in Japan and the U.S. He even looks like the illustrated character — though that, he tells me, is pure coincidence.
“It was surreal,” Potter explains at his home in Los Angeles. “People say, ‘the character kind of looks like you,’ but when I first walked into the studio, the character was already designed. Even I said, ‘Hey, that kind of looks like me.’ “
Potter grew up with Japanese pop culture, admiring giant robots and the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. After his mother moved to California, he became immersed in the works of Disney and Marvel Comics. Now 19, he still loves Lego and model kits, and says playing a 14-year-old kid was hardly a stretch.
“Hiro’s just like me. We’re both pretty emotional and wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re both what you see is what you get. The only real difference is that Hiro is a lot smarter. He’s a genius.”
The film’s predilection for brains over brawn is yet another sign of anime’s growing influence over a new generation of American producers and animators. In addition to its nods to the works of Miyazaki and other anime auteurs, the film features several icons of Japanese culture sprinkled throughout the background scenery.
“You see robot characters in Hiro’s room that closely resemble robots from Gundam or Appleseed or Voltron,” says Potter. “All these different pieces of Japan. You even have the lucky cat with its right paw up (maneki neko). The film is crazy because there are so many Easter eggs of Japanese culture tucked into its world. It’s fun just finding them.”
Part of the pleasure of animation is sensing the sheer joy and freedom experienced by the artists who make it: Miyazaki’s ecstatic renderings of flight, for example, or Kon’s playfully elastic doppelgangers. In “Big Hero 6,” the cross-pollination of American and Japanese cultures takes visual form. One scene shows a historic San Francisco streetcar with its destination posted on the back: the intersection of Market Street and Meiji Dori.
Potter thinks Japanese audiences will love the film, but not just because of its mis-en-scene. The cast is as ethnically diverse as the characters, he points out, which he believes will transcend a purely American audience and help bridge cultures. The Latina character named Honey Lemon is voiced by Venezualan/Cuban-American actress, Genesis Rodriguez. Asian-Americans Daniel Henney and Jamie Chung voice the characters Tadashi Hamada and Go Go Tamago. Another character, voiced by comedian Damon Wayan’s son, Damon Jr., is named Wasabi.
“But what’s great is that they don’t make a big deal of it in the film. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s an Asian American character.’ It’s just part of the story, part of the world.”
Japan remains a big part of Potter’s own world. He visits every year and retains powerful memories of his childhood in Yoga, the neighborhood in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward where he was raised until the age of seven. But don’t expect him to speak Japanese at the movie’s press conference.
“I wish I could. I know the Japanese would love to see that, and it was my first language, but I’ve forgotten it. My mom still speaks fluently, though. Maybe she can be my interpreter.”
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
Meet half-Japanese Ryan Potter / Hiro Hamada in "Big Hero 6" for The Japan Times
Disney’s ‘Big Hero 6′ animates a bridging of cultures
BY ROLAND KELTS
This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival was hot on animation, featuring screenings of the collected works of Hideaki Anno, creator of the epic franchise, “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” and 3-D shorts directed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of “Donkey Kong” and “Super Mario Bros.” But the festival’s opening animated film was from America — even if Japan is very much on its mind.
The world premiere of “Big Hero 6″ (released in Japan as “Baymax”) from Disney and Marvel Comics took place in Tokyo on Oct. 23. It opened in theaters in the United States on Nov. 7, and will drop in Japan on Dec. 20. Last month, as I swung through Los Angeles, where the film was produced and directed, the pre-release buzz was palpable.
The eponymous hero of the film is a “Hiro” — Hiro Hamada, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian boy genius with a flair for robotics. Hamada and his robot companion, Baymax, fight evil forces who threaten to destroy their home city — an urban hybrid called “San Fransokyo.”
The city is a visual astonishment: meticulously detailed renderings of San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods with Tokyo’s Odaiba Rainbow Bridge spanning its bay and Shibuya skyscrapers hugging the iconic Transamerica Pyramid. Animation critic and historian Charles Solomon notes that the artists had long stays in both cities, where they studied the architecture and skylines to combine them into a single metropolis.
"‘Big Hero 6′ suggests the Disney animators are offering a more thoughtful response to the challenges presented by Japanese animated action-adventure films,” Solomon says. “It’s not as dark or violent as ‘Akira,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ or ‘Evangelion,’ but the artists have raised the stakes for the hero and pumped up the action. ‘Big Hero 6′ preserves the polished animation of American films but combines it with exciting, contemporary filmmaking that rivals the hit live-action fantasies.”
Hiro is voiced by Ryan Potter, who, like his character, is half-Japanese, half-Caucasian — born in Tokyo to an American mother and Japanese father and raised in Japan and the U.S. He even looks like the illustrated character — though that, he tells me, is pure coincidence.
“It was surreal,” Potter explains at his home in Los Angeles. “People say, ‘the character kind of looks like you,’ but when I first walked into the studio, the character was already designed. Even I said, ‘Hey, that kind of looks like me.’ “
Potter grew up with Japanese pop culture, admiring giant robots and the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. After his mother moved to California, he became immersed in the works of Disney and Marvel Comics. Now 19, he still loves Lego and model kits, and says playing a 14-year-old kid was hardly a stretch.
“Hiro’s just like me. We’re both pretty emotional and wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re both what you see is what you get. The only real difference is that Hiro is a lot smarter. He’s a genius.”
The film’s predilection for brains over brawn is yet another sign of anime’s growing influence over a new generation of American producers and animators. In addition to its nods to the works of Miyazaki and other anime auteurs, the film features several icons of Japanese culture sprinkled throughout the background scenery.
“You see robot characters in Hiro’s room that closely resemble robots from Gundam or Appleseed or Voltron,” says Potter. “All these different pieces of Japan. You even have the lucky cat with its right paw up (maneki neko). The film is crazy because there are so many Easter eggs of Japanese culture tucked into its world. It’s fun just finding them.”
Part of the pleasure of animation is sensing the sheer joy and freedom experienced by the artists who make it: Miyazaki’s ecstatic renderings of flight, for example, or Kon’s playfully elastic doppelgangers. In “Big Hero 6,” the cross-pollination of American and Japanese cultures takes visual form. One scene shows a historic San Francisco streetcar with its destination posted on the back: the intersection of Market Street and Meiji Dori.
Potter thinks Japanese audiences will love the film, but not just because of its mis-en-scene. The cast is as ethnically diverse as the characters, he points out, which he believes will transcend a purely American audience and help bridge cultures. The Latina character named Honey Lemon is voiced by Venezualan/Cuban-American actress, Genesis Rodriguez. Asian-Americans Daniel Henney and Jamie Chung voice the characters Tadashi Hamada and Go Go Tamago. Another character, voiced by comedian Damon Wayan’s son, Damon Jr., is named Wasabi.
“But what’s great is that they don’t make a big deal of it in the film. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s an Asian American character.’ It’s just part of the story, part of the world.”
Japan remains a big part of Potter’s own world. He visits every year and retains powerful memories of his childhood in Yoga, the neighborhood in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward where he was raised until the age of seven. But don’t expect him to speak Japanese at the movie’s press conference.
“I wish I could. I know the Japanese would love to see that, and it was my first language, but I’ve forgotten it. My mom still speaks fluently, though. Maybe she can be my interpreter.”
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
BY ROLAND KELTS
This year’s Tokyo International Film Festival was hot on animation, featuring screenings of the collected works of Hideaki Anno, creator of the epic franchise, “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” and 3-D shorts directed by Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of “Donkey Kong” and “Super Mario Bros.” But the festival’s opening animated film was from America — even if Japan is very much on its mind.
The world premiere of “Big Hero 6″ (released in Japan as “Baymax”) from Disney and Marvel Comics took place in Tokyo on Oct. 23. It opened in theaters in the United States on Nov. 7, and will drop in Japan on Dec. 20. Last month, as I swung through Los Angeles, where the film was produced and directed, the pre-release buzz was palpable.
The eponymous hero of the film is a “Hiro” — Hiro Hamada, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian boy genius with a flair for robotics. Hamada and his robot companion, Baymax, fight evil forces who threaten to destroy their home city — an urban hybrid called “San Fransokyo.”
The city is a visual astonishment: meticulously detailed renderings of San Francisco’s hilly neighborhoods with Tokyo’s Odaiba Rainbow Bridge spanning its bay and Shibuya skyscrapers hugging the iconic Transamerica Pyramid. Animation critic and historian Charles Solomon notes that the artists had long stays in both cities, where they studied the architecture and skylines to combine them into a single metropolis.
"‘Big Hero 6′ suggests the Disney animators are offering a more thoughtful response to the challenges presented by Japanese animated action-adventure films,” Solomon says. “It’s not as dark or violent as ‘Akira,’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ or ‘Evangelion,’ but the artists have raised the stakes for the hero and pumped up the action. ‘Big Hero 6′ preserves the polished animation of American films but combines it with exciting, contemporary filmmaking that rivals the hit live-action fantasies.”Hiro is voiced by Ryan Potter, who, like his character, is half-Japanese, half-Caucasian — born in Tokyo to an American mother and Japanese father and raised in Japan and the U.S. He even looks like the illustrated character — though that, he tells me, is pure coincidence.
“It was surreal,” Potter explains at his home in Los Angeles. “People say, ‘the character kind of looks like you,’ but when I first walked into the studio, the character was already designed. Even I said, ‘Hey, that kind of looks like me.’ “
Potter grew up with Japanese pop culture, admiring giant robots and the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. After his mother moved to California, he became immersed in the works of Disney and Marvel Comics. Now 19, he still loves Lego and model kits, and says playing a 14-year-old kid was hardly a stretch.
“Hiro’s just like me. We’re both pretty emotional and wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re both what you see is what you get. The only real difference is that Hiro is a lot smarter. He’s a genius.”
The film’s predilection for brains over brawn is yet another sign of anime’s growing influence over a new generation of American producers and animators. In addition to its nods to the works of Miyazaki and other anime auteurs, the film features several icons of Japanese culture sprinkled throughout the background scenery.
“You see robot characters in Hiro’s room that closely resemble robots from Gundam or Appleseed or Voltron,” says Potter. “All these different pieces of Japan. You even have the lucky cat with its right paw up (maneki neko). The film is crazy because there are so many Easter eggs of Japanese culture tucked into its world. It’s fun just finding them.”
Part of the pleasure of animation is sensing the sheer joy and freedom experienced by the artists who make it: Miyazaki’s ecstatic renderings of flight, for example, or Kon’s playfully elastic doppelgangers. In “Big Hero 6,” the cross-pollination of American and Japanese cultures takes visual form. One scene shows a historic San Francisco streetcar with its destination posted on the back: the intersection of Market Street and Meiji Dori.
Potter thinks Japanese audiences will love the film, but not just because of its mis-en-scene. The cast is as ethnically diverse as the characters, he points out, which he believes will transcend a purely American audience and help bridge cultures. The Latina character named Honey Lemon is voiced by Venezualan/Cuban-American actress, Genesis Rodriguez. Asian-Americans Daniel Henney and Jamie Chung voice the characters Tadashi Hamada and Go Go Tamago. Another character, voiced by comedian Damon Wayan’s son, Damon Jr., is named Wasabi.
“But what’s great is that they don’t make a big deal of it in the film. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s an Asian American character.’ It’s just part of the story, part of the world.”
Japan remains a big part of Potter’s own world. He visits every year and retains powerful memories of his childhood in Yoga, the neighborhood in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward where he was raised until the age of seven. But don’t expect him to speak Japanese at the movie’s press conference.
“I wish I could. I know the Japanese would love to see that, and it was my first language, but I’ve forgotten it. My mom still speaks fluently, though. Maybe she can be my interpreter.”
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
November 28, 2014
COOL JAPAN: Doraemon in the USA, for the ACCJ
COOL JAPAN | CARTOON (ACCJ Journal)
Exporting Doraemon
The tricky art of translating Japan’s biggest anime series
By Roland Kelts
[Photos courtesy of Tokyo Otaku Mode]
In 2008, Japan’s consul general appeared on stage at Sakura-Con, the largest anime festival in the Pacific Northwest, grinning mischievously with his hands behind his back. “Ohayo gozaimasu,” he said to the crowd of 10,000-plus, many of whom roared the greeting back.
He turned around, slipped a mask over his head and faced the audience bearing the plastic countenance of a wide-eyed bright blue cat.
A few murmurs arose. Someone at the back shouted, “Doraemon!”
A week earlier, the robotic cat manga and anime character, Doraemon—a cultural icon in Japan akin to Mickey Mouse in the United States—had been dubbed Japan’s first “anime ambassador” by the foreign minister.
But at the time of the consul general’s performance, Doraemon had neither aired nor been published in the United States. Only the most diehard American otaku (geeks) knew the character even existed.
“Doraemon is the biggest manga and anime series in Japanese history,” said Tokyo-based American writer and translator Matt Alt, citing the title’s 45-year domination of Japanese popular culture. “His face is almost everywhere in Japan. If you’re here, chances are, you’ll see it.”
Over the past year, the gap between the character’s ubiquitous presence in Japan and his lack of recognition in America has finally been narrowed. The anime series, translated into English and localized by Los Angeles studio Bang Zoom! Entertainment, launched on Disney XD on July 7. The English-language manga debuted in digital formats in November 2013 and is currently being released, volume by volume, online.
Alt and his wife Hiroko are translating the manga via their decade-old two-person company, AltJapan. Alt says it’s a joy to spend every day with an atomic-powered blue cat, whose wacky misadventures with his boy charge, Nobita (Noby in English), remain quirkily entertaining—at least in Japanese.
“The toughest part is translating the puns, many of which come in the form of the gadgets.” Doraemon has a 4-D pocket from which he can extract any object imaginable, most of which have unintended consequences.
Part of the challenge is to convey culture-specific references without the aid of footnotes.
“If they’re playing the Japanese version of badminton,” Alt said, “we have to try to work little explanations into the dialogue. What’s most important is not to translate directly, but to localize, to make it as entertaining in English as it is in Japanese.”
Aging feline
Alt’s reference to Japanese badminton points to another obstacle when selling Doraemon to Americans: the series is old.
Its longevity is reflective of its mammoth success, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee relevance. The original manga premiered in 1969; the anime series in 1973. In 1979, a revamped version of the anime exploded into a mega-hit.
The story is a time-travel conceit: the eponymous magical cat is sent back to the past from the 22nd century to save a proverbial male slacker, Noby, from indolent behavior that will ruin the fate of his family’s future generations.
Its faith in atomic energy, science, technological wizardry, and the inherent value of diligence are all vestiges of a bygone era. Five years after hosting the 1964 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan was rising fast, about to become the economic and technological juggernaut that would awe the world.
True to its time, the series depicts a decidedly male-centered universe.The one female character is the smartest of the bunch, but is reduced to the supporting roles of reliable guide and romantic love interest.
“The original manga series is so old that even in Japan, young people probably find the world depicted to be a slightly different, even alien place,” said Frederik L. Schodt, veteran manga translator and author of Manga, Manga and Dreamland Japan, among other works.
“The original series was very much Showa-era, when young people did not yet have everything—or more than—they really needed, and when the idea of getting something as simple as a new food treat had a lot of appeal. The physical environment has also changed a great deal.”
Global appeal
Even so, those in the know have been clamoring for years to get a US release, generating campaigns online and off to bring Doraemon to America. And the consul general was not wrong in assuming that overseas fans might identify with a Japanese diplomat in a Doraemon mask.
The series has enjoyed decades of success across Asia, in both official and heavily pirated versions (an unlicensed Chinese Doraemon rip-off is a notoriously brazen imitation). In India, the Hindi translation of the anime was the highest-rated kids show in the country.
Author Pico Iyer in Time magazine dubbed Doraemon “the cuddliest hero in Asia,” noting the character’s relentless optimism and faith in the future amid a challenging present.
Still, does the 45-year-old robotic cat have a chance in the overcrowded children’s media landscape of the United States, 2014?
Translator and associate professor of manga at Kyoto Sekai University, Matt Thorn, believes that children’s programming can be especially tough to market overseas. “It’s always challenging to sell something foreign to children,” Thorn said.
“[It’s] not so much because they’ll be confused by people eating with chopsticks and taking their shoes off in the house, but because it will have to ‘click,’ and there’s simply no way of predicting what will and won’t click with a whole population of children.
“It’s complicated by the fact that, today, it is hard to get away with the kind of massive changes that were made in adaptations like Robotech, Warriors of the Wind, and Power Rangers. The Internet has made the world too small for that, I think.”
It’s still early days for Doraemon in America. The series’s strength at home and in other parts of Asia and the Middle East was bolstered by this summer’s blockbuster 3-D Doraemon movie, Stand by Me, which opened in 57 countries and earned an estimated $65.5 million after only six weeks in cinemas.
Thorn is not willing to prognosticate on Doraemon’s future in the United States, recalling another children’s anime series that he second-guessed in the past, much to his regret.
“I’m sure there are any number of people out there betting that Doraemon will fall flat in the North American market. I will not jump on that bandwagon. In 1998 or thereabouts, Shogakukan Productions called me to tell me that they were planning to promote Pokemon in the US and to ask me if I could help them.
“I told them I was too busy and that, to be honest, I did not think Pokemon would sell in the US. It’s too violent for girls and too cute for boys, I told them. Of course, Pokemon was a runaway hit, and Shogakukan Productions never called me for advice again.”
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
Exporting Doraemon
The tricky art of translating Japan’s biggest anime series
By Roland Kelts
[Photos courtesy of Tokyo Otaku Mode]
In 2008, Japan’s consul general appeared on stage at Sakura-Con, the largest anime festival in the Pacific Northwest, grinning mischievously with his hands behind his back. “Ohayo gozaimasu,” he said to the crowd of 10,000-plus, many of whom roared the greeting back.
He turned around, slipped a mask over his head and faced the audience bearing the plastic countenance of a wide-eyed bright blue cat.
A few murmurs arose. Someone at the back shouted, “Doraemon!”
A week earlier, the robotic cat manga and anime character, Doraemon—a cultural icon in Japan akin to Mickey Mouse in the United States—had been dubbed Japan’s first “anime ambassador” by the foreign minister.
But at the time of the consul general’s performance, Doraemon had neither aired nor been published in the United States. Only the most diehard American otaku (geeks) knew the character even existed.
“Doraemon is the biggest manga and anime series in Japanese history,” said Tokyo-based American writer and translator Matt Alt, citing the title’s 45-year domination of Japanese popular culture. “His face is almost everywhere in Japan. If you’re here, chances are, you’ll see it.”
Over the past year, the gap between the character’s ubiquitous presence in Japan and his lack of recognition in America has finally been narrowed. The anime series, translated into English and localized by Los Angeles studio Bang Zoom! Entertainment, launched on Disney XD on July 7. The English-language manga debuted in digital formats in November 2013 and is currently being released, volume by volume, online.
Alt and his wife Hiroko are translating the manga via their decade-old two-person company, AltJapan. Alt says it’s a joy to spend every day with an atomic-powered blue cat, whose wacky misadventures with his boy charge, Nobita (Noby in English), remain quirkily entertaining—at least in Japanese.
“The toughest part is translating the puns, many of which come in the form of the gadgets.” Doraemon has a 4-D pocket from which he can extract any object imaginable, most of which have unintended consequences.
Part of the challenge is to convey culture-specific references without the aid of footnotes.
“If they’re playing the Japanese version of badminton,” Alt said, “we have to try to work little explanations into the dialogue. What’s most important is not to translate directly, but to localize, to make it as entertaining in English as it is in Japanese.”
Aging feline
Alt’s reference to Japanese badminton points to another obstacle when selling Doraemon to Americans: the series is old.
Its longevity is reflective of its mammoth success, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee relevance. The original manga premiered in 1969; the anime series in 1973. In 1979, a revamped version of the anime exploded into a mega-hit.
The story is a time-travel conceit: the eponymous magical cat is sent back to the past from the 22nd century to save a proverbial male slacker, Noby, from indolent behavior that will ruin the fate of his family’s future generations.
Its faith in atomic energy, science, technological wizardry, and the inherent value of diligence are all vestiges of a bygone era. Five years after hosting the 1964 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan was rising fast, about to become the economic and technological juggernaut that would awe the world.
True to its time, the series depicts a decidedly male-centered universe.The one female character is the smartest of the bunch, but is reduced to the supporting roles of reliable guide and romantic love interest.
“The original manga series is so old that even in Japan, young people probably find the world depicted to be a slightly different, even alien place,” said Frederik L. Schodt, veteran manga translator and author of Manga, Manga and Dreamland Japan, among other works.
“The original series was very much Showa-era, when young people did not yet have everything—or more than—they really needed, and when the idea of getting something as simple as a new food treat had a lot of appeal. The physical environment has also changed a great deal.”
Global appeal
Even so, those in the know have been clamoring for years to get a US release, generating campaigns online and off to bring Doraemon to America. And the consul general was not wrong in assuming that overseas fans might identify with a Japanese diplomat in a Doraemon mask.
The series has enjoyed decades of success across Asia, in both official and heavily pirated versions (an unlicensed Chinese Doraemon rip-off is a notoriously brazen imitation). In India, the Hindi translation of the anime was the highest-rated kids show in the country.
Author Pico Iyer in Time magazine dubbed Doraemon “the cuddliest hero in Asia,” noting the character’s relentless optimism and faith in the future amid a challenging present.
Still, does the 45-year-old robotic cat have a chance in the overcrowded children’s media landscape of the United States, 2014?
Translator and associate professor of manga at Kyoto Sekai University, Matt Thorn, believes that children’s programming can be especially tough to market overseas. “It’s always challenging to sell something foreign to children,” Thorn said.
“[It’s] not so much because they’ll be confused by people eating with chopsticks and taking their shoes off in the house, but because it will have to ‘click,’ and there’s simply no way of predicting what will and won’t click with a whole population of children.
“It’s complicated by the fact that, today, it is hard to get away with the kind of massive changes that were made in adaptations like Robotech, Warriors of the Wind, and Power Rangers. The Internet has made the world too small for that, I think.”
It’s still early days for Doraemon in America. The series’s strength at home and in other parts of Asia and the Middle East was bolstered by this summer’s blockbuster 3-D Doraemon movie, Stand by Me, which opened in 57 countries and earned an estimated $65.5 million after only six weeks in cinemas.
Thorn is not willing to prognosticate on Doraemon’s future in the United States, recalling another children’s anime series that he second-guessed in the past, much to his regret.
“I’m sure there are any number of people out there betting that Doraemon will fall flat in the North American market. I will not jump on that bandwagon. In 1998 or thereabouts, Shogakukan Productions called me to tell me that they were planning to promote Pokemon in the US and to ask me if I could help them.
“I told them I was too busy and that, to be honest, I did not think Pokemon would sell in the US. It’s too violent for girls and too cute for boys, I told them. Of course, Pokemon was a runaway hit, and Shogakukan Productions never called me for advice again.”
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
COOL JAPAN: Doraemon in the USA
COOL JAPAN | CARTOON (ACCJ Journal)
Exporting Doraemon
The tricky art of translating Japan’s biggest anime series
By Roland Kelts
[Photos courtesy of Tokyo Otaku Mode]
In 2008, Japan’s consul general appeared on stage at Sakura-Con, the largest anime festival in the Pacific Northwest, grinning mischievously with his hands behind his back. “Ohayo gozaimasu,” he said to the crowd of 10,000-plus, many of whom roared the greeting back.
He turned around, slipped a mask over his head and faced the audience bearing the plastic countenance of a wide-eyed bright blue cat.
A few murmurs arose. Someone at the back shouted, “Doraemon!”
A week earlier, the robotic cat manga and anime character, Doraemon—a cultural icon in Japan akin to Mickey Mouse in the United States—had been dubbed Japan’s first “anime ambassador” by the foreign minister.
But at the time of the consul general’s performance, Doraemon had neither aired nor been published in the United States. Only the most diehard American otaku (geeks) knew the character even existed.
“Doraemon is the biggest manga and anime series in Japanese history,” said Tokyo-based American writer and translator Matt Alt, citing the title’s 45-year domination of Japanese popular culture. “His face is almost everywhere in Japan. If you’re here, chances are, you’ll see it.”
Over the past year, the gap between the character’s ubiquitous presence in Japan and his lack of recognition in America has finally been narrowed. The anime series, translated into English and localized by Los Angeles studio Bang Zoom! Entertainment, launched on Disney XD on July 7. The English-language manga debuted in digital formats in November 2013 and is currently being released, volume by volume, online.
Alt and his wife Hiroko are translating the manga via their decade-old two-person company, AltJapan. Alt says it’s a joy to spend every day with an atomic-powered blue cat, whose wacky misadventures with his boy charge, Nobita (Noby in English), remain quirkily entertaining—at least in Japanese.
“The toughest part is translating the puns, many of which come in the form of the gadgets.” Doraemon has a 4-D pocket from which he can extract any object imaginable, most of which have unintended consequences.
Part of the challenge is to convey culture-specific references without the aid of footnotes.
“If they’re playing the Japanese version of badminton,” Alt said, “we have to try to work little explanations into the dialogue. What’s most important is not to translate directly, but to localize, to make it as entertaining in English as it is in Japanese.”
Aging feline
Alt’s reference to Japanese badminton points to another obstacle when selling Doraemon to Americans: the series is old.
Its longevity is reflective of its mammoth success, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee relevance. The original manga premiered in 1969; the anime series in 1973. In 1979, a revamped version of the anime exploded into a mega-hit.
The story is a time-travel conceit: the eponymous magical cat is sent back to the past from the 22nd century to save a proverbial male slacker, Noby, from indolent behavior that will ruin the fate of his family’s future generations.
Its faith in atomic energy, science, technological wizardry, and the inherent value of diligence are all vestiges of a bygone era. Five years after hosting the 1964 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan was rising fast, about to become the economic and technological juggernaut that would awe the world.
True to its time, the series depicts a decidedly male-centered universe.The one female character is the smartest of the bunch, but is reduced to the supporting roles of reliable guide and romantic love interest.
“The original manga series is so old that even in Japan, young people probably find the world depicted to be a slightly different, even alien place,” said Frederik L. Schodt, veteran manga translator and author of Manga, Manga and Dreamland Japan, among other works.
“The original series was very much Showa-era, when young people did not yet have everything—or more than—they really needed, and when the idea of getting something as simple as a new food treat had a lot of appeal. The physical environment has also changed a great deal.”
Global appeal
Even so, those in the know have been clamoring for years to get a US release, generating campaigns online and off to bring Doraemon to America. And the consul general was not wrong in assuming that overseas fans might identify with a Japanese diplomat in a Doraemon mask.
The series has enjoyed decades of success across Asia, in both official and heavily pirated versions (an unlicensed Chinese Doraemon rip-off is a notoriously brazen imitation). In India, the Hindi translation of the anime was the highest-rated kids show in the country.
Author Pico Iyer in Time magazine dubbed Doraemon “the cuddliest hero in Asia,” noting the character’s relentless optimism and faith in the future amid a challenging present.
Still, does the 45-year-old robotic cat have a chance in the overcrowded children’s media landscape of the United States, 2014?
Translator and associate professor of manga at Kyoto Sekai University, Matt Thorn, believes that children’s programming can be especially tough to market overseas. “It’s always challenging to sell something foreign to children,” Thorn said.
“[It’s] not so much because they’ll be confused by people eating with chopsticks and taking their shoes off in the house, but because it will have to ‘click,’ and there’s simply no way of predicting what will and won’t click with a whole population of children.
“It’s complicated by the fact that, today, it is hard to get away with the kind of massive changes that were made in adaptations like Robotech, Warriors of the Wind, and Power Rangers. The Internet has made the world too small for that, I think.”
It’s still early days for Doraemon in America. The series’s strength at home and in other parts of Asia and the Middle East was bolstered by this summer’s blockbuster 3-D Doraemon movie, Stand by Me, which opened in 57 countries and earned an estimated $65.5 million after only six weeks in cinemas.
Thorn is not willing to prognosticate on Doraemon’s future in the United States, recalling another children’s anime series that he second-guessed in the past, much to his regret.
“I’m sure there are any number of people out there betting that Doraemon will fall flat in the North American market. I will not jump on that bandwagon. In 1998 or thereabouts, Shogakukan Productions called me to tell me that they were planning to promote Pokemon in the US and to ask me if I could help them.
“I told them I was too busy and that, to be honest, I did not think Pokemon would sell in the US. It’s too violent for girls and too cute for boys, I told them. Of course, Pokemon was a runaway hit, and Shogakukan Productions never called me for advice again.”
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
Exporting Doraemon
The tricky art of translating Japan’s biggest anime series
By Roland Kelts
[Photos courtesy of Tokyo Otaku Mode]
In 2008, Japan’s consul general appeared on stage at Sakura-Con, the largest anime festival in the Pacific Northwest, grinning mischievously with his hands behind his back. “Ohayo gozaimasu,” he said to the crowd of 10,000-plus, many of whom roared the greeting back.
He turned around, slipped a mask over his head and faced the audience bearing the plastic countenance of a wide-eyed bright blue cat.
A few murmurs arose. Someone at the back shouted, “Doraemon!”
A week earlier, the robotic cat manga and anime character, Doraemon—a cultural icon in Japan akin to Mickey Mouse in the United States—had been dubbed Japan’s first “anime ambassador” by the foreign minister.
But at the time of the consul general’s performance, Doraemon had neither aired nor been published in the United States. Only the most diehard American otaku (geeks) knew the character even existed.
“Doraemon is the biggest manga and anime series in Japanese history,” said Tokyo-based American writer and translator Matt Alt, citing the title’s 45-year domination of Japanese popular culture. “His face is almost everywhere in Japan. If you’re here, chances are, you’ll see it.”
Over the past year, the gap between the character’s ubiquitous presence in Japan and his lack of recognition in America has finally been narrowed. The anime series, translated into English and localized by Los Angeles studio Bang Zoom! Entertainment, launched on Disney XD on July 7. The English-language manga debuted in digital formats in November 2013 and is currently being released, volume by volume, online.
Alt and his wife Hiroko are translating the manga via their decade-old two-person company, AltJapan. Alt says it’s a joy to spend every day with an atomic-powered blue cat, whose wacky misadventures with his boy charge, Nobita (Noby in English), remain quirkily entertaining—at least in Japanese.
“The toughest part is translating the puns, many of which come in the form of the gadgets.” Doraemon has a 4-D pocket from which he can extract any object imaginable, most of which have unintended consequences.
Part of the challenge is to convey culture-specific references without the aid of footnotes.
“If they’re playing the Japanese version of badminton,” Alt said, “we have to try to work little explanations into the dialogue. What’s most important is not to translate directly, but to localize, to make it as entertaining in English as it is in Japanese.”
Aging feline
Alt’s reference to Japanese badminton points to another obstacle when selling Doraemon to Americans: the series is old.
Its longevity is reflective of its mammoth success, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee relevance. The original manga premiered in 1969; the anime series in 1973. In 1979, a revamped version of the anime exploded into a mega-hit.
The story is a time-travel conceit: the eponymous magical cat is sent back to the past from the 22nd century to save a proverbial male slacker, Noby, from indolent behavior that will ruin the fate of his family’s future generations.
Its faith in atomic energy, science, technological wizardry, and the inherent value of diligence are all vestiges of a bygone era. Five years after hosting the 1964 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Japan was rising fast, about to become the economic and technological juggernaut that would awe the world.
True to its time, the series depicts a decidedly male-centered universe.The one female character is the smartest of the bunch, but is reduced to the supporting roles of reliable guide and romantic love interest.
“The original manga series is so old that even in Japan, young people probably find the world depicted to be a slightly different, even alien place,” said Frederik L. Schodt, veteran manga translator and author of Manga, Manga and Dreamland Japan, among other works.
“The original series was very much Showa-era, when young people did not yet have everything—or more than—they really needed, and when the idea of getting something as simple as a new food treat had a lot of appeal. The physical environment has also changed a great deal.”
Global appeal
Even so, those in the know have been clamoring for years to get a US release, generating campaigns online and off to bring Doraemon to America. And the consul general was not wrong in assuming that overseas fans might identify with a Japanese diplomat in a Doraemon mask.
The series has enjoyed decades of success across Asia, in both official and heavily pirated versions (an unlicensed Chinese Doraemon rip-off is a notoriously brazen imitation). In India, the Hindi translation of the anime was the highest-rated kids show in the country.
Author Pico Iyer in Time magazine dubbed Doraemon “the cuddliest hero in Asia,” noting the character’s relentless optimism and faith in the future amid a challenging present.
Still, does the 45-year-old robotic cat have a chance in the overcrowded children’s media landscape of the United States, 2014?
Translator and associate professor of manga at Kyoto Sekai University, Matt Thorn, believes that children’s programming can be especially tough to market overseas. “It’s always challenging to sell something foreign to children,” Thorn said.
“[It’s] not so much because they’ll be confused by people eating with chopsticks and taking their shoes off in the house, but because it will have to ‘click,’ and there’s simply no way of predicting what will and won’t click with a whole population of children.
“It’s complicated by the fact that, today, it is hard to get away with the kind of massive changes that were made in adaptations like Robotech, Warriors of the Wind, and Power Rangers. The Internet has made the world too small for that, I think.”
It’s still early days for Doraemon in America. The series’s strength at home and in other parts of Asia and the Middle East was bolstered by this summer’s blockbuster 3-D Doraemon movie, Stand by Me, which opened in 57 countries and earned an estimated $65.5 million after only six weeks in cinemas.
Thorn is not willing to prognosticate on Doraemon’s future in the United States, recalling another children’s anime series that he second-guessed in the past, much to his regret.
“I’m sure there are any number of people out there betting that Doraemon will fall flat in the North American market. I will not jump on that bandwagon. In 1998 or thereabouts, Shogakukan Productions called me to tell me that they were planning to promote Pokemon in the US and to ask me if I could help them.
“I told them I was too busy and that, to be honest, I did not think Pokemon would sell in the US. It’s too violent for girls and too cute for boys, I told them. Of course, Pokemon was a runaway hit, and Shogakukan Productions never called me for advice again.”
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
November 21, 2014
October 13, 2014
October 6, 2014
Blue Bottle Coffee goes to Tokyo, for The California Sunday Magazine
Tokyo Brew
James Freeman takes Blue Bottle to the city that inspired him.
BY ROLAND KELTS
I am on my way to meet James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, and every inch of Tokyo feels sun blasted and overstuffed — except where he is. Freeman is hunched over a cup of coffee inside a Tudor-style café called Chatei Hatou, a 25-year-old relic of Japan’s bubble-era economy, nestled between a narrow okonomiyaki grill and a basement bar on a hill in Shibuya, one of the city’s busiest neighborhoods. When I step in from the glaring street, it’s like walking into a well-appointed cave. The café is spacious, cool, and dimly lit; the soundtrack is classical; and the white-haired, blue-eyed Freeman has the long 12-seat wooden bar all to himself. It’s his favorite place in the world.
“See, I love that,” he says, breaking off mid-greeting. He nods toward the barista, who wears a necktie and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “I love that he warms the saucer. He pours hot water in the cup, then splashes some onto the saucer. It’s more refined to have the saucer the same temperature as the cup.
“If we can learn from that,” he says, “and compete here in Tokyo, that will give us an enormous competitive edge in our markets back in the U.S.”
Freeman is in Japan to oversee preparations for the February opening of Blue Bottle’s first international branch in Kiyosumi, an older neighborhood east of the city center. He considers this out-of-the-way location to be ideal, reminding me that his company was born 12 years ago in an equally unassuming Oakland neighborhood. Today, there are more than a dozen Blue Bottle cafés—in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York, each with its own distinctive look. Earlier this year, the company raised a reported $26 million in venture capital to expand further.
“Kiyosumi’s not glamorous, not hectic,” Freeman tells me. “It’s a little bit old-fashioned, sure. But I saw some young guys riding bikes the other day, and I said, ‘Oh, that one. That bike will be a part of our clientele.‘” He pauses, then adds, “The guy, too, of course.”
Growing up in Humboldt County, with its dense forests and plentiful marijuana plants, Freeman gravitated toward the uncool, monkishly pursuing a career in classical clarinet. While his classmates favored AC/DC, Freeman stuck to Stravinsky. “There wasn’t a single person who could relate to what I was interested in. I was totally alone, listening to my Seiji Ozawa records, dreaming about real cities like Boston and New York.”
When he was 19, Freeman finally visited one, filling in for a member of an L.A.-based chamber group bound for Tokyo. He was mesmerized. “Tokyo was just so dazzling,” he says. “All these people living together who knew exactly which side of the escalator to stand on and which side to walk on. That close-knit, harmonious use of space. Everything was alien and new, of course. I couldn’t even read the signs. But it didn’t feel alien to me.”
Coffee was not something Freeman remembers from that first trip to the land of the tea ceremony. Although Japan is one of the world’s top importers of coffee beans, the beverage is often, at best, something to knock back quickly: overly sweetened in vending machine cans, watered down in dour cafés, or lukewarm in teacups at hotel breakfasts. The exception (before the inevitable onslaught of Starbucks) was the culture of kissaten: dimly lit, typically wood-paneled cafés emphasizing high-quality food and drink. Hangovers from a once-nascent bohemian culture in the 1950s and 1960s, each is defined by its owner’s particular passions – French New Wave film, for example, or bebop jazz.
Freeman went to his first kissaten in 2007; the same day, he visited nine more. That’s how he discovered Hatou, where the barista now serves me a house blend that seems to bloom afresh each time I take a sip. A single cup costs between $8 and $15, but that seems worth it to experience what Freeman likens to “drinking a mink coat.”
The luxuriant flavor is created using a siphon, a one-cup technology pioneered in France but, arguably, perfected in Japan. In fact, soon after his introduction to kissaten, Freeman, who would here be called an otaku – a geek – of coffee culture, imported a Japanese siphon to his San Francisco café. It cost him $20,000. For iced coffee in three locations, he installed an Oji cold-drip system, whose glass globes recall a mad scientist’s lab.
Many of Japan’s signature values, such as the emphasis on professional discipline and micromanaged orderliness, dovetail with Freeman’s. At Hatou, he rhapsodizes over the bamboo paddles used to stir the coffee, the flower arrangements, the carefully edited playlists. I ask him if he’d consider settling in Tokyo himself.
“Oh, absolutely,” he replies. “That would be so cool. I do think there are a lot of good, solid business reasons for opening in Tokyo. Success here means pleasing the toughest customers in Asia, so our staff will be executing at a higher level. But a lot of this is about, ‘Where do I want to go?’ And I really want to go here.”
James Freeman takes Blue Bottle to the city that inspired him.
BY ROLAND KELTS
I am on my way to meet James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, and every inch of Tokyo feels sun blasted and overstuffed — except where he is. Freeman is hunched over a cup of coffee inside a Tudor-style café called Chatei Hatou, a 25-year-old relic of Japan’s bubble-era economy, nestled between a narrow okonomiyaki grill and a basement bar on a hill in Shibuya, one of the city’s busiest neighborhoods. When I step in from the glaring street, it’s like walking into a well-appointed cave. The café is spacious, cool, and dimly lit; the soundtrack is classical; and the white-haired, blue-eyed Freeman has the long 12-seat wooden bar all to himself. It’s his favorite place in the world.
“See, I love that,” he says, breaking off mid-greeting. He nods toward the barista, who wears a necktie and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “I love that he warms the saucer. He pours hot water in the cup, then splashes some onto the saucer. It’s more refined to have the saucer the same temperature as the cup.
“If we can learn from that,” he says, “and compete here in Tokyo, that will give us an enormous competitive edge in our markets back in the U.S.”
Freeman is in Japan to oversee preparations for the February opening of Blue Bottle’s first international branch in Kiyosumi, an older neighborhood east of the city center. He considers this out-of-the-way location to be ideal, reminding me that his company was born 12 years ago in an equally unassuming Oakland neighborhood. Today, there are more than a dozen Blue Bottle cafés—in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York, each with its own distinctive look. Earlier this year, the company raised a reported $26 million in venture capital to expand further.
“Kiyosumi’s not glamorous, not hectic,” Freeman tells me. “It’s a little bit old-fashioned, sure. But I saw some young guys riding bikes the other day, and I said, ‘Oh, that one. That bike will be a part of our clientele.‘” He pauses, then adds, “The guy, too, of course.”
Growing up in Humboldt County, with its dense forests and plentiful marijuana plants, Freeman gravitated toward the uncool, monkishly pursuing a career in classical clarinet. While his classmates favored AC/DC, Freeman stuck to Stravinsky. “There wasn’t a single person who could relate to what I was interested in. I was totally alone, listening to my Seiji Ozawa records, dreaming about real cities like Boston and New York.”
When he was 19, Freeman finally visited one, filling in for a member of an L.A.-based chamber group bound for Tokyo. He was mesmerized. “Tokyo was just so dazzling,” he says. “All these people living together who knew exactly which side of the escalator to stand on and which side to walk on. That close-knit, harmonious use of space. Everything was alien and new, of course. I couldn’t even read the signs. But it didn’t feel alien to me.”
Coffee was not something Freeman remembers from that first trip to the land of the tea ceremony. Although Japan is one of the world’s top importers of coffee beans, the beverage is often, at best, something to knock back quickly: overly sweetened in vending machine cans, watered down in dour cafés, or lukewarm in teacups at hotel breakfasts. The exception (before the inevitable onslaught of Starbucks) was the culture of kissaten: dimly lit, typically wood-paneled cafés emphasizing high-quality food and drink. Hangovers from a once-nascent bohemian culture in the 1950s and 1960s, each is defined by its owner’s particular passions – French New Wave film, for example, or bebop jazz.
Freeman went to his first kissaten in 2007; the same day, he visited nine more. That’s how he discovered Hatou, where the barista now serves me a house blend that seems to bloom afresh each time I take a sip. A single cup costs between $8 and $15, but that seems worth it to experience what Freeman likens to “drinking a mink coat.”
The luxuriant flavor is created using a siphon, a one-cup technology pioneered in France but, arguably, perfected in Japan. In fact, soon after his introduction to kissaten, Freeman, who would here be called an otaku – a geek – of coffee culture, imported a Japanese siphon to his San Francisco café. It cost him $20,000. For iced coffee in three locations, he installed an Oji cold-drip system, whose glass globes recall a mad scientist’s lab.
Many of Japan’s signature values, such as the emphasis on professional discipline and micromanaged orderliness, dovetail with Freeman’s. At Hatou, he rhapsodizes over the bamboo paddles used to stir the coffee, the flower arrangements, the carefully edited playlists. I ask him if he’d consider settling in Tokyo himself.
“Oh, absolutely,” he replies. “That would be so cool. I do think there are a lot of good, solid business reasons for opening in Tokyo. Success here means pleasing the toughest customers in Asia, so our staff will be executing at a higher level. But a lot of this is about, ‘Where do I want to go?’ And I really want to go here.”
October 1, 2014
COOL JAPAN: Hatsune Miku live this month in LA & NYC
COOL JAPAN | MUSIC (ACCJ Journal)
First Sound from the Future
Hatsune Miku weaves her magic for US audiences this fall
By Roland Kelts
Not all trends sweeping the domestic market in Japan strike gold with overseas audiences. The exceptions are headliners such as Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and the manga series One Piece, with its record-breaking 345-million print run worldwide. Most Japanese pop culture phenomena are for the home crowd only.
Sports manga, such as Slam Dunk, rarely find a mass audience in the United States. Even trendy fashions, like last decade’s yamamba girls with their towering platform soles and bronzed faces, fail to charm most foreign tastemakers.
In the 80s, when I was a teenager set free in Tokyo streets by my Japanese mother, I was entranced by quirky Japanese idol groups, fantastical haircuts, and animated television graphics. Still, I didn’t think any of it would register with my peers in America.
It was altogether too light, too cute, too whimsical and self-conscious: a brightly twisted mimicry of Western tropes. Why opt for a cheery, slippery copy when you can get the hard-won original in New York, London, or Los Angeles?
I was wrong about a lot of it. After Godzilla became a global sensation, several Japanese pop icons filled the screens and streets of Western cities.
Sushi went from weird to cool. Obscure Japanese rock icons such as The Yellow Magic Orchestra became cult classics, and the band’s chief composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, moved to New York.
Animator Hayao Miyazaki’s confections became DVD standbys for American parents, and Miyazaki won an Academy Award in 2003. Animated rock bands became cutting edge via Britain’s Gorillaz.
American monster and sci-fi movies such as The Matrix, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, and this summer’s blockbuster Godzilla nodded homages to their land of origin.
Parts of the colorful Japan I encountered as a teen had arrived on the global stage. But which parts? And how would they stick?
Virtual celebrity
Enter Hatsune Miku, Japan’s virtual pop star. Her name translates roughly as “the first sound from the future.” Like Hello Kitty, she is a blank slate—an animated pop star whose songs are created by her fans, written for her via a software program called PiaPro.
She dances, gyrates, and croons via computer, and her only defining characteristics are visual and statistical. She is a diminutive five-foot-two-inches tall and weighs all of 96 pounds (44 kilograms).
She has very long, blue pigtails and wears a big necktie with a very short skirt. She is a drawing in the imagination. When she performs live, she is a hologram swaying and prancing before a backing band of live musicians.
“She doesn’t exist,” said her creator, Hiroyuki Itoh, of Sapporo-based Crypton Media. “Never has.”
That may be technically true, but she’s about to appear before a sea of American fans in Los Angeles and New York via a project called Miku Expo.
The shows are slated for October: two in Los Angeles, at the Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE in the newly revamped downtown district, and two in New York, at The Hammerstein Ballroom.
Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga’s North American tour in May. Crypton’s Kanae Muraki said the exposure helped drive interest in this month’s expo.
“We want it to be more than just a concert. Through exhibitions and workshops, we want to introduce works created by many contributors, to make the event one where the audience will be able to participate in the entire act of creation.”
It’s hard to argue against the success of a pop star who has no hang-ups. Miku, by virtue of being virtual, won’t have drug addictions, spousal fights, or pneumonia on tour. She will be what you want her to be: cute, pig-tailed, live, and alive.
Naomitsu Kodaka, cofounder and CFO of TokyoOtakuMode Inc., which provides platforms for otaku (obsessed fans) via its website and a Facebook page with nearly 16 million “likes,” said Miku may be the network’s most popular character.
“I think one of the reasons she’s so popular is because otaku can collaborate openly with the character without commercial concerns,” he says. “Plus, they can be both artist and audience, creators and consumers.”
Consider Facebook and Twitter: All the content is user-generated, and the creative team can relax at their desks and enjoy the stream.
“Other Vocaloids (avatars) are popular, just not as popular as Miku,” said Ian Condry, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a specialist in Japanese popular culture and teaches a section on Miku.
“[She] was the first to cross the threshold of quality voicings, the first to be presented as a character with a look.”
Putting the pop in popular
The US shows in October will be expensive and labor intensive, with a team of over 20 technicians from Japan manning computers backstage to make the hologram look alive.
But will the experience be magical?
The answer, from fans in the United States, seems a resounding yes. Tickets for all four shows were selling briskly at the time of writing, according to the show’s US promoter.
Overseas fans of Japanese pop culture are well-acquainted with the naked artifice. “We don’t care if it’s real,” one Miku fan told me at this summer’s Anime Expo in Los Angeles. “We just care if it feels real.”
Hatsune Miku’s global success mirrors that of Hello Kitty, who just turned 40 years old. Recent articles asked if Kitty was really a cat or a girl, English or Japanese.
It is liberating to realize that such questions are beside the point. Kitty is very much what you want her to be, like a haiku poem, or a Zen koan (a paradoxical question that forces meditation and reflection).
“To me, it seems hard to frame [Miku] as simply a user-generated content platform,” argued Rebecca Suter, a professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney.
“Miku has a name and a gender, much closer to an anime character, something artificial but personified enough to become an object of emotional investment. What is interesting is that Miku’s appeal goes well beyond the relatively niche audience of Japanese [and non-Japanese] otaku.”
For Suter, Miku’s trans-cultural draw is rooted in the character’s tabula-rasa (blank slate), enabling fans and users worldwide to see (and hear) in her whatever they want.
“It reminds me of Haruki Murakami’s literature in the way she appeals to different audiences for different reasons.
“For a Japanese customer, Miku can be read within familiar frameworks of idol culture and the attraction to manga and anime characters, which she resembles; for a foreign customer, she has the exotic charm of ‘Cool Japan,’ and can be the object of techno-orientalist fascination.”
Miku’s version of Cool Japan hits LA and NYC this month. We’ll soon see if she can strike chords in American audiences as well as she can sing to them.*
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
First Sound from the Future
Hatsune Miku weaves her magic for US audiences this fall
By Roland Kelts
Not all trends sweeping the domestic market in Japan strike gold with overseas audiences. The exceptions are headliners such as Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and the manga series One Piece, with its record-breaking 345-million print run worldwide. Most Japanese pop culture phenomena are for the home crowd only.
Sports manga, such as Slam Dunk, rarely find a mass audience in the United States. Even trendy fashions, like last decade’s yamamba girls with their towering platform soles and bronzed faces, fail to charm most foreign tastemakers.
In the 80s, when I was a teenager set free in Tokyo streets by my Japanese mother, I was entranced by quirky Japanese idol groups, fantastical haircuts, and animated television graphics. Still, I didn’t think any of it would register with my peers in America.
It was altogether too light, too cute, too whimsical and self-conscious: a brightly twisted mimicry of Western tropes. Why opt for a cheery, slippery copy when you can get the hard-won original in New York, London, or Los Angeles?
I was wrong about a lot of it. After Godzilla became a global sensation, several Japanese pop icons filled the screens and streets of Western cities.
Sushi went from weird to cool. Obscure Japanese rock icons such as The Yellow Magic Orchestra became cult classics, and the band’s chief composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, moved to New York.Animator Hayao Miyazaki’s confections became DVD standbys for American parents, and Miyazaki won an Academy Award in 2003. Animated rock bands became cutting edge via Britain’s Gorillaz.
American monster and sci-fi movies such as The Matrix, Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, and this summer’s blockbuster Godzilla nodded homages to their land of origin.
Parts of the colorful Japan I encountered as a teen had arrived on the global stage. But which parts? And how would they stick?
Virtual celebrity
Enter Hatsune Miku, Japan’s virtual pop star. Her name translates roughly as “the first sound from the future.” Like Hello Kitty, she is a blank slate—an animated pop star whose songs are created by her fans, written for her via a software program called PiaPro.
She dances, gyrates, and croons via computer, and her only defining characteristics are visual and statistical. She is a diminutive five-foot-two-inches tall and weighs all of 96 pounds (44 kilograms).
She has very long, blue pigtails and wears a big necktie with a very short skirt. She is a drawing in the imagination. When she performs live, she is a hologram swaying and prancing before a backing band of live musicians.
“She doesn’t exist,” said her creator, Hiroyuki Itoh, of Sapporo-based Crypton Media. “Never has.”
That may be technically true, but she’s about to appear before a sea of American fans in Los Angeles and New York via a project called Miku Expo.
The shows are slated for October: two in Los Angeles, at the Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE in the newly revamped downtown district, and two in New York, at The Hammerstein Ballroom.
Miku was the opening act for Lady Gaga’s North American tour in May. Crypton’s Kanae Muraki said the exposure helped drive interest in this month’s expo.
“We want it to be more than just a concert. Through exhibitions and workshops, we want to introduce works created by many contributors, to make the event one where the audience will be able to participate in the entire act of creation.”
It’s hard to argue against the success of a pop star who has no hang-ups. Miku, by virtue of being virtual, won’t have drug addictions, spousal fights, or pneumonia on tour. She will be what you want her to be: cute, pig-tailed, live, and alive.
Naomitsu Kodaka, cofounder and CFO of TokyoOtakuMode Inc., which provides platforms for otaku (obsessed fans) via its website and a Facebook page with nearly 16 million “likes,” said Miku may be the network’s most popular character.
“I think one of the reasons she’s so popular is because otaku can collaborate openly with the character without commercial concerns,” he says. “Plus, they can be both artist and audience, creators and consumers.”
Consider Facebook and Twitter: All the content is user-generated, and the creative team can relax at their desks and enjoy the stream.
“Other Vocaloids (avatars) are popular, just not as popular as Miku,” said Ian Condry, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a specialist in Japanese popular culture and teaches a section on Miku.
“[She] was the first to cross the threshold of quality voicings, the first to be presented as a character with a look.”
Putting the pop in popular
The US shows in October will be expensive and labor intensive, with a team of over 20 technicians from Japan manning computers backstage to make the hologram look alive.
But will the experience be magical?
The answer, from fans in the United States, seems a resounding yes. Tickets for all four shows were selling briskly at the time of writing, according to the show’s US promoter.
Overseas fans of Japanese pop culture are well-acquainted with the naked artifice. “We don’t care if it’s real,” one Miku fan told me at this summer’s Anime Expo in Los Angeles. “We just care if it feels real.”
Hatsune Miku’s global success mirrors that of Hello Kitty, who just turned 40 years old. Recent articles asked if Kitty was really a cat or a girl, English or Japanese.
It is liberating to realize that such questions are beside the point. Kitty is very much what you want her to be, like a haiku poem, or a Zen koan (a paradoxical question that forces meditation and reflection).
“To me, it seems hard to frame [Miku] as simply a user-generated content platform,” argued Rebecca Suter, a professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney.
“Miku has a name and a gender, much closer to an anime character, something artificial but personified enough to become an object of emotional investment. What is interesting is that Miku’s appeal goes well beyond the relatively niche audience of Japanese [and non-Japanese] otaku.”
For Suter, Miku’s trans-cultural draw is rooted in the character’s tabula-rasa (blank slate), enabling fans and users worldwide to see (and hear) in her whatever they want.
“It reminds me of Haruki Murakami’s literature in the way she appeals to different audiences for different reasons.
“For a Japanese customer, Miku can be read within familiar frameworks of idol culture and the attraction to manga and anime characters, which she resembles; for a foreign customer, she has the exotic charm of ‘Cool Japan,’ and can be the object of techno-orientalist fascination.”
Miku’s version of Cool Japan hits LA and NYC this month. We’ll soon see if she can strike chords in American audiences as well as she can sing to them.*
*Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of the acclaimed bestseller Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US and the forthcoming novel Access. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal. Kelts authors a monthly column for The Japan Times, and is also a frequent contributor to CNN and NPR.
September 26, 2014
Manga's fastest-growing market is India -- for The Japan Times
New markets may save Japan’s manga exports
BY ROLAND KELTS
[Simon & Schuster India]The North American manga business took a beating last decade. After peaking around 2005-06, the lethal storm of oversaturated shelves, a collapsing U.S. financial industry and the bankruptcy of major American bookstore chain, Borders, left publishers and distributors in a panic. Downsizing, restructuring and layoffs became de rigueur.
“The bankruptcy of Borders in 2011 was definitely the final straw in forcing me to close down the office and stop print publishing,” says Stu Levy, the founder and CEO of Tokyopop, a pioneer and stalwart of the North American manga market that once introduced millions to the iconic “Sailor Moon” series. Levy believes rampant digital piracy and reduced print runs combined with the closing of Borders to force his hand.
But after the losses sustained in the wake of Japan’s natural and nuclear disasters of 2011, manga publishers and their overseas partners see signs of hope — though not necessarily where they were looking for them.
“India is the new market, and it’s the fastest growing one now,” says Kevin Hamric, senior director of sales and marketing at San Francisco-based Viz Media, one of the oldest North American distributors of manga and anime.
At the start of this year, Viz entered the English-language Indian manga market in partnership with its global distributor, Simon & Schuster International. The move follows Viz’s successful foray into the Philippines last year and signals a new focus on emerging manga markets in South and Central Asia, South America and the Middle East.
“It’s overwhelming how fast (Japanese pop culture) conventions have grown in India,” says Hamric. “Last weekend in Bangalore, they were expecting 60,000 attendees, and I’m sure they exceeded that. We sold out of every single book we had in our booth. We could have easily sold more, but we didn’t have enough room.”
The explosive growth of conventions in India and other parts of Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon, Hamric says, that took place over the past three or four years. By contrast, he notes, it took seven years for North American Comic Cons in San Diego and New York City to hit record-breaking tallies.
And it’s not just strength in numbers; fans in India and the Philippines are passionate, even frantic, to get their fill of manga.
“In Manila I was treated like a god, and I’m just a publisher,” Hamric says. “There were rabid fans who were so desperate to talk to anybody who had anything to do with anime or manga. All knew the Viz brand, which was good to see. But it was more fulfilling just to see kids who want to get their hands on something they want to read.”
The rapid expansion of such conventions in India has created the need for more professional organization and strategies. Enter ReedPOP, the division of Reed Exhibitions responsible for staging next month’s massive New York Comic Con and the annual Book Expo America, among other global trade shows.
Earlier this month, ReedPOP announced a tie-up with the original founders of Comic Con India. The collaboration will enable the Connecticut-based company to bring bigger names to shows in India, and stage events backed with years of experience and know-how.
[Simon & Schuster India]“What’s amazing is that fandom — whether in Bangalore, Brisbane or Boston — is universal,” says ReedPOP Senior Vice President Lance Festerman. “Comics, movies, anime, manga and video games have created a global culture. It’s pop culture, sure, but it’s a shared culture that people are consuming at the same time all around the planet. At Bangalore Comic Con this month, fans queued up to play the Xbox One, to get an autograph from David Lloyd, to hear Neil Gaiman speak, and to photograph cosplay guests from Japan dressed as Sailor Venus and Satsuki Kiryuin from ‘Kill la Kill.’ ”
Still, Festerman admits that the Indian market and its burgeoning con scene remain underdeveloped. The Bangalore venue was old and so small that organizers had to erect makeshift sheet-metal additions to house the fans, power was piped in from a fleet of adjacent generator trucks, and ticket prices — as high as $50 per day in the U.S. — hovered around $5.
“It was a little rough around the edges,” he concedes. “Polishing these things are a big part of our partnership.”
Despite the opportunities, the biggest obstacle to the growth of manga in emerging markets is Japan itself. Publishing industry veteran Hamric is frustrated by the hesitation and outright resistance of many Japanese publishers to license their titles in untested markets such as India.
“That’s the slowest part of the process,” he says. “The publishers of this kind of book, manga, just haven’t had experience with this. They don’t understand the marketplace. Where there’s been no distribution whatsoever, or where distribution has been localized — they’re very careful about letting English-language books go into those territories. They don’t want to disrupt the local distribution.”
The profitability of rising manga markets in India and across Asia, South America and the Middle East is impossible to ignore. If Japan’s manga publishers hope to survive amid a shrinking domestic market, they would do well to risk some disruption to secure a future.
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
BY ROLAND KELTS
[Simon & Schuster India]The North American manga business took a beating last decade. After peaking around 2005-06, the lethal storm of oversaturated shelves, a collapsing U.S. financial industry and the bankruptcy of major American bookstore chain, Borders, left publishers and distributors in a panic. Downsizing, restructuring and layoffs became de rigueur.“The bankruptcy of Borders in 2011 was definitely the final straw in forcing me to close down the office and stop print publishing,” says Stu Levy, the founder and CEO of Tokyopop, a pioneer and stalwart of the North American manga market that once introduced millions to the iconic “Sailor Moon” series. Levy believes rampant digital piracy and reduced print runs combined with the closing of Borders to force his hand.
But after the losses sustained in the wake of Japan’s natural and nuclear disasters of 2011, manga publishers and their overseas partners see signs of hope — though not necessarily where they were looking for them.
“India is the new market, and it’s the fastest growing one now,” says Kevin Hamric, senior director of sales and marketing at San Francisco-based Viz Media, one of the oldest North American distributors of manga and anime.
At the start of this year, Viz entered the English-language Indian manga market in partnership with its global distributor, Simon & Schuster International. The move follows Viz’s successful foray into the Philippines last year and signals a new focus on emerging manga markets in South and Central Asia, South America and the Middle East.
“It’s overwhelming how fast (Japanese pop culture) conventions have grown in India,” says Hamric. “Last weekend in Bangalore, they were expecting 60,000 attendees, and I’m sure they exceeded that. We sold out of every single book we had in our booth. We could have easily sold more, but we didn’t have enough room.”
The explosive growth of conventions in India and other parts of Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon, Hamric says, that took place over the past three or four years. By contrast, he notes, it took seven years for North American Comic Cons in San Diego and New York City to hit record-breaking tallies.
And it’s not just strength in numbers; fans in India and the Philippines are passionate, even frantic, to get their fill of manga.
“In Manila I was treated like a god, and I’m just a publisher,” Hamric says. “There were rabid fans who were so desperate to talk to anybody who had anything to do with anime or manga. All knew the Viz brand, which was good to see. But it was more fulfilling just to see kids who want to get their hands on something they want to read.”
The rapid expansion of such conventions in India has created the need for more professional organization and strategies. Enter ReedPOP, the division of Reed Exhibitions responsible for staging next month’s massive New York Comic Con and the annual Book Expo America, among other global trade shows.
Earlier this month, ReedPOP announced a tie-up with the original founders of Comic Con India. The collaboration will enable the Connecticut-based company to bring bigger names to shows in India, and stage events backed with years of experience and know-how.
[Simon & Schuster India]“What’s amazing is that fandom — whether in Bangalore, Brisbane or Boston — is universal,” says ReedPOP Senior Vice President Lance Festerman. “Comics, movies, anime, manga and video games have created a global culture. It’s pop culture, sure, but it’s a shared culture that people are consuming at the same time all around the planet. At Bangalore Comic Con this month, fans queued up to play the Xbox One, to get an autograph from David Lloyd, to hear Neil Gaiman speak, and to photograph cosplay guests from Japan dressed as Sailor Venus and Satsuki Kiryuin from ‘Kill la Kill.’ ”Still, Festerman admits that the Indian market and its burgeoning con scene remain underdeveloped. The Bangalore venue was old and so small that organizers had to erect makeshift sheet-metal additions to house the fans, power was piped in from a fleet of adjacent generator trucks, and ticket prices — as high as $50 per day in the U.S. — hovered around $5.
“It was a little rough around the edges,” he concedes. “Polishing these things are a big part of our partnership.”
Despite the opportunities, the biggest obstacle to the growth of manga in emerging markets is Japan itself. Publishing industry veteran Hamric is frustrated by the hesitation and outright resistance of many Japanese publishers to license their titles in untested markets such as India.
“That’s the slowest part of the process,” he says. “The publishers of this kind of book, manga, just haven’t had experience with this. They don’t understand the marketplace. Where there’s been no distribution whatsoever, or where distribution has been localized — they’re very careful about letting English-language books go into those territories. They don’t want to disrupt the local distribution.”
The profitability of rising manga markets in India and across Asia, South America and the Middle East is impossible to ignore. If Japan’s manga publishers hope to survive amid a shrinking domestic market, they would do well to risk some disruption to secure a future.
Roland Kelts is the author of “Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S.” He is a visiting scholar at Keio University in Tokyo.
