Author(s): Roland Kelts
"This tells the incredible story of the way...Japanese entertainment and popular art...
continue to grow and draw two very different worlds together."--Pete Townshend, The Who
"Embrace the world of otaku in Roland Kelts' comprehensive study of how Japanese pop culture
enchanted the West, from Speed Racer and PokA¿mon to cosplay and hentai manga."--Wired
"If you wish to understand the nuances of otaku-dom, or are just hentai-curious, Japanamerica
is a broad primer" --The Village Voice
The influx of Japanese art and fashion into the American cultural mainstream gets an entertaining
treatment from Kelts, an essayist and lecturer at the University of Tokyo, who interviewed many of
Japan's leading culture gurus over the past three years. Kelts is clearly most interested in the
world of anime and manga (from Pokemon to Princess Mononoke), as his readers will most likely be.
A primary theme is that of the Japanese paradox: how has such a strictly defined and rigid society
produced pop art that is, compared to its American counterparts at least, wildly imaginative and
boundary bursting? Kelts's belief is that one directly created the other, that anime and manga's
wild and kinetic structures, hyperaddictive apocalyptic story lines and surprisingly emotional
content (not to mention sex and violence unheard of in American pop culture) could never flourish
in an openly permissive and individualistic society that had not experienced nuclear devastation.
Although the book grasps too eagerly at its subject's grander implications, it still effectively
conveys the cross-Pacific cultural dissonance. Kelts has a sharp grasp of his subject and is on
sure ground when discussing the history of the form, especially the impact of Disney on postwar
Japanese animators or the reverential awe in which American animators hold such filmmakers as
Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away).
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