Roland Kelts's Blog, page 8
September 26, 2022
Watching anime with my parents, by JAPANAMERICA reader and assistant, Fintan Moore, 17
I was thrilled by the feedback on my first post so I hope you enjoy my second entry. Here, I talk about how my Mom and Dad have different reactions to the anime we watch together.
I’ve re-watched a decent amount of anime with my parents. Together we’ve watched Attack on Titan (3x), Jujutsu Kaisen (4x), Hunter x Hunter (3x), Death Note (2x) and The Promised Neverland (2x). For my dad, the jokes don’t land. He has strong opinions about jokes because he himself is a comedian. He thinks anime can be overwritten: Too much internal dialogue during fights (“if I do this, then that will happen”); too much internal analysis of the opponent. He gets taken aback when there are inappropriate moments. In HxH, Hisoka is always looking for a fight to entertain himself. His desire for a worthy opponent is so strong that he gets aroused when he comes across someone of similar strength.
Dad’s enjoyed Attack on Titan the most so far, interestingly enough. He’s a huge Star Wars fan, and AoT and Star Wars both play with the concept of time jumps.
My mom, on the other hand, is drawn to the heart of the characters. We’ve cried together multiple times: Gon and Killua’s farewell in the final episode; Komugi and Meruem’s final moments together (HxH). She likes the goofy, slapstick humor, and was so invested in Death Note and Light Yagami getting caught that she almost stopped watching when he kept succeeding.
I tell them both that when we watch something, I’m paying more attention to them than to the show. Keeping their attention can be difficult, especially my Dad’s, who seems more prone to sleeping during even the most exciting moments. We’ve made it to the penultimate arc of Hunter x Hunter, and he still hasn’t fully grasped what makes it impactful. When I watched it with my Mom, we had already cried at multiple moments, while my Dad was still falling asleep during almost every episode. Hopefully he pulls through to the end, but it’s not entirely about making sure a parent is always engaged. As long as we get to share these moments, that’s what’s most important to me.
August 30, 2022
Restarting "Letters from Tokyo" monthly series for The Japan Society of Boston: August, 2022, "Hot and Tired Town"
This August, we've resumed my monthly series, "Letters from Tokyo," with the Japan Society of Boston after a 6-month personal hiatus. Tokyo August 2022 saw record-breaking heat and Covid numbers and almost zero tourists. The city feels muted and a bit fatigued. But it's also calming and a lot less expensive than the US cities I've recently been in, and Tokyo's food, design and infrastructure remain unparalleled. Also, as you can hear for yourself in my closing video shot at the lovely Kumano Shrine in Jiyugaoka, the semi/cicadas are sizzling at full tilt.
Roland Kelts' Letters from Tokyo, August 2022: Hot and Tired Town
In recent years I’ve spent late-July and August elsewhere, usually at US retreats in New York and New England, abandoning Japan to escape the heat. But this year everything is different. I broke my shoulder in the spring and got sidelined for a while, albeit in a friend’s beautiful house in storybook Carmel, a town in north central California. Family medical emergencies (not mine) sucked up much of my summer in the northeastern US. Now I find myself back home in smothering Tokyo, August 2022.
August 23, 2022
BBC interview: Japan's campaign to get young people drinking more alcohol and the death of pioneer designer Hanae Mori
I spoke to the BBC about the Japanese government's new campaign contest to get young people to drink more alcohol (!)—and the death of pioneering fashion designer Hanae Mori. I did not try to connect the two.
Audio's online here.
"Japan's young adults are a sober bunch - something authorities are hoping to change with a new campaign.
The younger generation drinks less alcohol than their parents - a move that has hit taxes from beverages like sake (rice wine).
So the national tax agency has stepped in with a national competition to come up with ideas to reverse the trend.
The 'Sake Viva!' campaign hopes to come up with a plan to make drinking more attractive - and boost the industry.
The contest asks 20 to 39-year-olds to share their business ideas to kick-start demand among their peers - whether it's for Japanese sake, shochu, whiskey, beer or wine.
The group running the competition for the tax authority says new habits - partly formed during the Covid pandemic - and an ageing population have led to a decline in alcohol sales.
It wants contestants to come up with promotions, branding, and even cutting-edge plans involving artificial intelligence."
Roland Kelts is a writer in Tokyo, author of JAPANAMERICA, and visiting professor at Waseda University. Half Japanese himself, he's an authority on the interplay between Japanese and Western cultures. Is this campaign purely about tax revenues?
BBC interview: Japan's campaign to get young people drinking alcohol and the death of pioneer designer Hanae Mori
I spoke to the BBC about the Japanese government's new campaign contest to get young people to drink more alcohol (!)—and the death of pioneering fashion designer Hanae Mori. I did not try to connect the two.
Audio's online here.
August 16, 2022
JAPANAMERICA reader Fintan, 17, on his generation's wild love of anime and manga
Anime and Manga have become increasingly popular in recent years, predominantly outside of Japan. From the perspective of an American teenager, I want to write about what I think it is that makes the medium so widely consumed.
To me, the vast majority of American media feels generic and lacks depth. The movies we see in theaters follow the same plot, as our standards for cinema hardly change. These movies seem to always lack the confidence to go outside of the invisible box they’re all made in.
It’s been a while since a movie came out that I genuinely considered a 10/10, and the most recent one I can think of is Parasite, which originates from Korea, from filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. It addressed the social pyramid in an entirely new way, with every shot of the movie having some meaning. It used visual effects to show the class divisions, putting a rich family literally on the top of a mountain and a poor family living near the sewers. With comedy throughout and a totally unseen plot twist at the end, it was a breath of fresh air for cinema.
I think Anime and Manga are so popular because they explore a wide variety of unique themes and break norms constantly. They tell stories about people relating to each other in the face of great challenges, sometimes with supernatural elements, sometimes not, but always exploring the human condition.
Mangaka produce stories that have much more developed plot points. Anime and Manga don't shy away from violence. It can seem cathartic, almost over-the-top. They aren’t afraid to take “side trips” from the original storyline. They don’t worry about losing the viewer’s/reader’s attention.
The first Anime I ever watched was Hunter x Hunter, a seemingly lighthearted show about a little boy setting off on a hero’s journey to find his father. As it progressed, the underlying themes of predator and prey and despair and domination became more apparent, turning the show into something completely different than what I thought it was going to be originally. Not only was the transition from a wholesome adventure to a dark conclusion flawless, but the character development and parallels I noticed were like nothing I’d ever seen in media from the States.
Another great example of a unique protagonist and story is Thorfinn from Vinland Saga. What separates Thorfinn from other characters is how he lets revenge shape his life. At a young age, his father is killed in front of him, so he decides he will continue to get stronger until he kills the man responsible for his father’s death.
When that man dies at the hands of someone else, Thorfinn’s years of built up fury have nowhere to go, and he feels morally lost, like his life no longer serves any purpose. He falls into a depression, becoming a farm worker for the next years of his life. As he spends more time on the farm, the friends he makes help him decide that he will devote his life to pacifism, intending to create a nation free of violence. Rather than let revenge be his driving force as another character would, Thorfinn devotes his life to seeking out peace, leaving the life of violence and his past demons behind him.
July 13, 2022
A (very) personal interview for The Guy Perryman Show (GPS) on InterFM and via podcast
Er, this one gets personal. Apologies in advance if I said something I shouldn't have said. Guy's very good at what he does: The Guy Perryman Show
Roland Kelts and Guy Perryman in Tokyo, 2022
June 27, 2022
Latest JAPANAMERICA podcast interview for NO FUTURE NYC
Here's my latest JAPANAMERICA podcast interview with NYC-based comedian and writer, David White, who is blessed with a very soothing voice: No Future NYC Episode 6C (or click on pic).
David got me talking about the economics of anime—how much has changed (budgets), and how much hasn't changed enough (wages). We also talked about the Pokemon scam of the late 90s/early aughts, the strategy behind the success of Kimetsu no Yaiba/Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, released mid-pandemic and now Japan's highest grossing film ever, and why The Who's Pete Townshend blurbed . A little bit of MONKEY and my new art book in here, too.
This was a lot of fun. (Or, kinda fun, at least.)
June 14, 2022
June 7, 2022
May 18, 2022
My IDEAS column on Japan's deficient digital domains for Rest of World
[I broke my shoulder a couple of months ago and that slowed output considerably. Am on the mend now.]
Japan once led global tech innovation. How did it fall so behind?
When I first moved to Japan in the late 1990s, Japan’s technological achievements were envied. In 2001, at a book launch in New York, I recorded a video of fellow revelers on my Japanese cell phone. The model had just been released: a squared-off clamshell of sparkly maroon plastic, with an impressive color screen and emoji-like graphics. I emailed the video instantly to publishing friends in Tokyo, which was then home to the world’s second-fastest internet speeds. They responded just a few minutes later, flashing victory signs. My friends in New York cooed as if we’d just watched a new moon landing.
But almost exactly twenty years later, vast regions of Japan’s digital universe are stuck in the early aughts. Online banking, airline booking, major newspapers, you name it: Services that have been streamlined by the digital revolution in much of the world are, in Japan, still plagued by convoluted drop-down menus that lead to dead ends, and detailed forms that need to be printed, filled out by pen, returned by fax. In a country that justifiably prides itself on excellent customer service, something happens when it comes to relaying information through a user interface displayed on a flat screen.
Japan’s high-quality, mostly physical public infrastructure has actually long disguised its sclerotic digital systems. The juxtaposition is jarring between the country’s clunky digital interfaces and its unrivaled engineering prowess — trains that depart on the minute, escalators and elevators that rarely break down, and heated toilets that will hide your sounds, clean your nether parts and sometimes talk, even sing to you. Why the disconnect?
Forty years ago, Asia scholar Chalmers Johnson coined the term “developmental state” to describe the Japanese government’s hands-on role in its post-war economic growth spurt. A so-called “iron triangle” linked the Liberal Democratic Party – which remains in power today – with big business and the bureaucracy, creating well-engineered public infrastructure and jobs to roaring economic success. In Western media, this was sometimes labeled “Japan Inc.,” a pejorative phrase implying a public-private partnership rooted more in government-led collusion and coercion than competition. But it also gave birth to systems like the Tokyo metro and its accompanying FeliCa-pass technology, produced by technology giant Sony and embedded throughout the transport network.
State-backed innovation was so effective because it reduced uncertainty. But when a new breed of software entrepreneurs began to lead innovation elsewhere in the world, Japan’s own private sector found it hard to follow. The iron triangle had ossified, locked in something resembling an immovable jiu-jitsu hold. If one player moved an elbow an inch one way, they were all at risk of a stumble; if a corporate actor tried something new and moved their elbow, the politician’s might get broken. On balance, it was better to stay in one place: Even if the match was boring and nobody was making progress, at least you were holding a position.
By any metric today, Japan’s digital performance is dismal. Among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, Japan is now ranked 27th in digital competitiveness and 22nd in digital talent by the International Institute for Management Development — embarrassingly low for the world’s third-largest economy. A recent McKinsey & Company study revealed that two decades after the government launched its first digital initiative, “e-government,” only 7.5% of its procedures can be completed online. IT and software engineering degrees are less prestigious than those in economics or management, and batches of developer talent are hired from overseas.
In 2022, these numbers have serious ramifications. Japan’s initial vaccine rollout last spring was slowed partially by inefficient analog systems, poor communication between governments and clinics, and a paper mail-based coupon campaign. When Covid-19 hit two years ago, most Japanese corporations had no contingency plans for remote work, and few had experience with platforms like Zoom.
Yes, you should work from home, some said, but you need to show up at the office to stamp your personal seal (hanko) to prove that you worked. It was Covid-19-meets-Kafka: some employees commuted by train, risking infection just to stamp their seals and go back home. Last summer’s Tokyo Games saw international athletes and media griping on Twitter about the reams of Japanese-language print documents they were required to sign and array of apps to download — many of which were buggy and dysfunctional. (A year on, there’s progress: a recently introduced fast-track entry app has many pleasantly surprised.)
In what looked like a panic-stricken move, the Japanese government launched its first “Digital Agency” in September 2021, shortly after the Tokyo Games ended and just before a national election. But few announcements have followed, and the agency’s current English website looks more like a hastily-penned government memo nailed to the internet. Lack of cohesion at various levels has fed into a lack of momentum, too. As of December 2021, the world’s third-largest economy has produced six tech unicorns — despite the existence of various incubator programs, including the ambitious government-backed J-Startup. Last year’s total venture capital funding, at around $9 billion by one count, remained a fraction of the amount invested in the U.S.
One barrier to change, at least for me, is that the irritation passes. A startup founder might be rightly frustrated by the still-nascent ecosystem. But as an ordinary consumer, there are workarounds; using Amazon over the visually-challenging Rakuten, or embracing the habit of paying bills at the convenience store over automated direct debits. And even when you travel to a shinkansen station with your digital PASMO — a prepaid transportation card — and it prevents you from using the ticket machine, forcing you to line up at the manned booths, you still glide down the escalator, where a bullet train speeds you to your destination, on time to the minute.
When the product at the end functions infallibly, the old ways of communicating and consuming are kind of quaint: comforting signs that one of the world’s most aging nations, home to most of the world’s oldest companies, is behaving in character.
