Here we go! We unfortunately missed Sakura-Con last year, so we made doubly sure not to miss it this year. As we’ll mention in an article soon to come, we decided to focus a bit more on checking out panels rather than just the cosplays, concerts and anime.

One of my favorite panels I attended at the whole convention was with Roland Kelts, titled “Japanamerica: The Invasion of Japanese Pop Culture in the US”, based on his book by the same name.

So who is Roland Kelts? He’s a half-Japanese American writer, editor and lecturer, who presents on contemporary Japanese culture worldwide. He’s taught courses in Japanese popular culture at numerous universities in Japan and the US. He has also written both fiction and non-fiction in publications like Zoetrope: All Story, Psychology Today, Playboy, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Japan, Adbusters magazine, The Millions, The Japan Times, Animation Magazine, Bookforum, and The Village Voice

First of all, he is an excellent speaker. His pace, rhythm, and diction is just right. The entire talk was very informative, yet not bogged down with too much information, and even without visual aids (technical difficulties on SakuraCon’s side) he kept my undivided attention until the very end.

In his talk, Mr. Kelts began first by making the disclaimer that the title of his book, does not accurately convey what he really means. Japanese pop culture hasn’t “invaded” the US, but has been brought to the US by demand. The bulk of the talk was based on his research for his book, ranging from research of literature to interviewing some of the most influential icons of Japanese pop culture in the US, such as Hayao Miyazaki, the creator of iconic films such as Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, etc. He describes the historical background that the new age of anime and manga sprung from; namely the devastation of WWII and the subsequent surrender of Japan. He also spoke about the definitively Japanese characteristics of Anime; namely that of line art.

Ok, so it’d be pointless and impossible to try to recapture everything he talked about in his talk, so I leave you with these two points:

1. Roland Kelts is really just a delightful lecturer to listen to. In fact we all enjoyed it so much that we almost tailored our Saturday and Sunday schedules to attend all of his panels!
2. If you have any interest in Anime, Japanese culture, pop culture or history, definitely check out his book: Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the US. We were lucky enough to get an autographed copy of his book! Very cool indeed!