Japanamerica by Roland Kelts
The first book to specifically explore the American fascination with Japanese popular culture, including anime ranging from Haruki Murakami’s fiction to violent pornographic anime, Hayao Miyazaki’s epics to the developing hentai industry, is Japanamerica. This book highlights the shared conflicts both countries face as anime and manga become a global form of entertainment and change both the United States and Japan. It includes interviews with the Pac-man creator and executives from TokyoPop, GDH, and other significant Japanese and American production companies.
Japanamerica by Roland Kelts
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The writing in Japanamerica is excellent. He spends a lot of time researching the rise of manga and anime. Roland is someone who has extensive knowledge of both Japan and the US.
Kelts discusses the period in the late 20th and early 21st centuries when Japan and America were affecting one another. He likens this feedback cycle to a Möbius strip in which things originate in Japan, goes to America, and then return to Japan. He gives the example of the movie The Matrix. The Wachowski sisters, the directors, acknowledge watching the manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell, which served as its inspiration.
“Japanamerica” by Roland Kelts is a refreshing change of pace. Kelts concentrates on the rise in popularity of manga and anime among Americans as well as the “Mobius strip” of exchanges between the two cultures, but he also discusses the wider shared curiosity between these two worlds. I adore how Kelts avoids the two dangers of Japanophilia and Japanophobia because she is an American with a Japanese mother. His analysis has a soberingly realistic and reasonable middle ground, a realism that tends to lighten things up and make everything more approachable and friendly.
The finest part of it is probably that Kelts is delightfully unpretentious and his style is as accessible and plain as it is full of fascinating ideas and insights, which is a marvel in the world of cultural analysis. We never have the slightest question that Kelts is knowledgeable about what he is discussing, and he conveys this knowledge with contagious enthusiasm.
