Roland Kelts's Blog, page 92
October 22, 2009
October 20, 2009
Private WorldsLives spent lurking too long in the shadows...
Private Worlds
Lives spent lurking too long in the shadows of the virtual.
Roland Kelts | 19 Oct 2009 | 1 commentjapan[image error]Mareen Fischinger
Late last year when Japan's master animation artist Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Totoro) addressed a room of mostly Western journalists in Tokyo, many of us were expecting him to talk about his latest fantastical feature film, Ponyo, which was just about to open worldwide. Instead, the 68-year-old director spent 15 minutes issuing a stern warning about the...
October 16, 2009
Animation & Adbusters: two new stories
My latest contribution to
Adbusters
magazine is "Japan's Private Worlds," just released in the new November/December issue--
the Virtual World/the Natural World
. I set out to explore the nature of privacy in Japan amid questions of digital displacement and engagement, especially at a time when the nation's so-called 'digital natives,' those born and raised with intimate access to mobile and stationary digital media, are behaving very differently than their elders did and do.My latest story...
October 15, 2009
Jake Adelstein's TOKYO VICE
Pal and intrepid reporter Jake Adelstein's first book,
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan
, has just been published in the U.S., and Jake has embarked on a brief book tour ahead of an upcoming 60 Minutes/CBS report on related topics in early November. In our era of cheap armchair journalism and errant blog chatter (like this), Jake's book is something of an anomaly: an account of a singular story researched and written by a writer on the scene--or, more literally...
October 5, 2009
Live from St. Louis -- It's Saturday Night!
Mid-afternoon Japanamerica talk (courtesy Fred Schodt)
Christopher Born, me, Fred, Jeni Plough and Patrick Danzen, at the end of a long but not lonely day in Saint Louis.
October 2, 2009
September 25, 2009
NYAF official schedule
My NYAF official sched is as follows: NYAF Japanamerica sched: 9/25, 5:15-6:15, Yoshiyuki Tomino (GUNDAM) 9/26, 12:15-1:15, AKB48 9/27, 11:15-12:15, Yui Makino (Tsubasa Chronicle)
September 24, 2009
On Gundam, girl-power AKB48 and this weekend's NYAF
My new column for the
Daily Yomiuri
(co-hosted by 3:AM Magazine) covers Gundam's creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, and girl-power via AKB48--both of whom are in town right now to prep for appearances at this weekend's New York Anime Festival at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I'll be hosting panels with Tomino-san, AKB48 and voice actress Yui Makino. (Full schedule forthcoming.)Special thanks to NYAF Director Peter Tatara for his time and insights.
SOFT POWER, HARD TRUTHS / Mecha auteur and mega...
September 11, 2009
@ NYAF, Sept. 25-27, w/Yoshiuki Tomino (Gundam), AKB48 & Yui Makino (Tsubasa)
from . He is also a lecturer at the University of Tokyo, a contributing editor and writer for "Adbusters" magazine and "A Public Space" literary...
September 9, 2009
My review of "Tears in the Darkness" in Bookforum
I've just reviewed Tears in the Darkness , a capacious, brilliantly narrated account of the Bataan Death March in World War II, featuring interviews with Japanese, American and Filipino veteran and civilian survivors. Former NYT correspondent Michael Norman and his wife, author and NYU professor Elizabeth M. Norman, spent ten years researching events surrounding and involving the largest ever US military surrender and one of the most brutal and sadistic POW horrors in recorded history. The...
