Oct 20

Interview with Roland Kelts in Consulate e-Newsletter

Interview/Profile, Roland Kelts, Writers Comments Off on Interview with Roland Kelts in Consulate e-Newsletter

I get the Consulate of Japan’s (NY) monthly e-newsletter, and in the October issue I noticed they have a nice interview with Roland Kelts (Osaka, 1998-99) about Japanese pop culture and his book Japanamerica.

Published by the Consulate General of Japan in New York / Japan Information Center

Japanese Pop Culture

Japanese pop culture, such as manga (comic books) and anime (animation), is attracting more and more people outside of Japan. In the following interview, Mr. Roland Kelts, half-Japanese American writer and lecturer, tells us about his observation on this phenomenon as well as his teaching experience in Japan.

JIC (Japan Information Center) : Your position as a resident of Tokyo and New York is unique. What do you see happening now from your vantage?

Mr. Kelts : I think both countries are undergoing severe transitions. America is losing its central place in the world’s imagination. And Japan is finding its current position, as America’s ‘little brother,’ to borrow Takashi Murakami’s term, untenable. A lot of people are looking to Japan for guidance, and Asia is rising fast. Japan needs to understand and accept its own unique strengths.

JIC : But you also teach Japanese students about their own culture-as a half-Japanese American. What do they tell you?

Mr. Kelts : In Japan, a lot of my students are stunned to learn that foreigners care about their cultural products. They (my students), know they’re cool-but they don’t care that much, because they are sincerely worried about their futures. They think that Japan is over, finished, and they are amazed to find that young Americans think they are the hottest culture in the world.

JIC : How do you address that disjunction?

Mr. Kelts : I just try to show them the evidence. Artists like Takehiko Inoue, Naoki Urasawa and, of course, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata are auteurs-totally independent geniuses working for the sake of art, and art alone. In some ways, Japanese anime and manga are where American movies and comics were in the 1970s-ideal media for fresh visions.

JIC : Do your Japanese audiences react differently from your American fans?

Mr. Kelts : Definitely. In Japan, there is a generation gap-and it’s huge. Older Japanese audiences are shocked to discover that Americans and other Westerners care about Japanese cultural exports. But younger Japanese seem to take it all in stride. ‘Of course they love us,’ young Japanese seem to say, ‘because we’re better than they are.’

American audiences, by and large, are just thrilled that Japanese are creating this wonderful art and not promoting it. It’s almost a paradox: Japan is seen as ‘cool’ partly because it’s not trying to be cool. And American pop culture is at a dead-end creatively.

New York Anime Festival 2007

JIC : It sounds like American fans form communities around Japanese pop culture. Is that true?

Mr. Kelts:  Absolutely. And this is where the story becomes interesting to me. What I wrote about in Japanamerica was the way Americans have come to appreciate Japan as a brother, a sister, and even a partner-as American influence becomes weaker. Japan is seen as a leader in the 21st Century by young Americans who have grown tired of what they see at home.

JIC : Do you think this will bring Japanese and Americans closer together?

Mr. Kelts : It already has. Americans are now studying the Japanese language because of titles like Dragonball Z, and Japanese are now thinking of Americans as good friends, as real people, rather than freakish celebrities from the West. I am very hopeful. I think America and Japan are natural allies in the 21st Century. I wrote Japanamerica because I wanted to write a story about the future, and Japan and America are the story of the future.

If you watch Grave of the Fireflies, or Ghost in the Shell, or Akira, you can’t avoid the intimate relationship forming between two very different cultures. That alone gives me hope. Japanamerica is about the future. I can’t wait.

JIC : What are you doing now to further this relationship?

Mr. Kelts : I am teaching at the University of Tokyo and Sophia University, and I have a new project called Anime Masterpieces, that aims to introduce Americans and Japanese to the wonders of Japanese creativity. I will also be continuing my work as a writer to drive this relationship further. I will continue giving talks around the world, and my first novel, ACCESS, will be published next year. It’s a novel about the love of crossing cultures.

JIC : Thank you, Mr. Kelts.

Mr. Kelts : Arigato.

Mr. Roland Kelts is a half-Japanese American writer, editor, and lecturer who divides his time between New York and Tokyo. His book Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. (www.japanamericabook.com) was recently released in updated paperback editions in English and Japanese. He is also a contributing editor and writer to A Public Space and Adbusters magazines, and a columnist on contemporary Japanese culture at The Daily Yomiuri. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Tokyo and Sophia University, and he is currently co-director of a new anime lecture and screening series, Anime Masterpieces (www.animemasterpieces.com), launching in the U.S. this fall and winter. He has lectured at New York University, Rutgers University, and Barnard College, and he is a graduate of Oberlin College and Columbia University. His forthcoming novel is called Access.