Japanamerica
October 2, 2008
7:00 pm
Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S., will talk about the incredible popularity of Japanese imports like Pokemon, Speed Racer, Transformers and other anime and manga, plus Japanese fashion and food, and how they translate into a new vision of American culture. His discussion will expose what he describes in his book as the "Mobius strip" of intercultural exchange between Japan and the U.S., beginning with the postwar American occupation of Japan, both militarily and culturally. Kelts will explore the explosion of interest in hot conceptual artists like Takashi Murakami, as well as the rise of the broader Asian region in the twenty-first-century American psyche--and how the new Asian identity contains more American DNA than most of us realize.
