What is the global attraction of Japanese popular culture?

The Japan Foundation, Sydney is pleased to invite Mr Roland Kelts and Professor Susan Napier to present a series of lectures discussing the driving forces behind the worldwide popularity of Japanese anime and manga in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

Roland Kelts will present a talk entitled ‘21st Century Global Culture from a Multipolar Japan’, exploring the movement of Japanese culture into the West as sign and symptom of broader reanimations. As Western mindsets encounter a rapid decline in longstanding binaries – good/evil, woman/man, black/white – Japan’s cultural narratives evolve in borderless, unstable worlds where characters transform, morality is multifaceted, and endings inconclusive.

In ‘Transnational Power Play: Japanese Media and Power in the Twenty-First Century’, Susan Napier will explore two seemingly dissonant concepts – ‘power’ and ‘play’ – and seek to show how, in the case of contemporary Japanese media, the two unite to create playful products that have impacts across transnational structures of power. Japanese popular culture engages with play on many levels – from video games to anime conventions – to bring about real world power connections that include the economic, the political and the technological.

In Sydney, Mr Nobuhito Hobo, Consul-General of Japan in Sydney, will give a welcome speech and the panel will be joined by Mr Dean Prenc, Product & Licensing Manager at Madman Entertainment and Ms Amanda Setiadi, Executive Manager of Animania Festival. In Melbourne, the panel discussion will be joined by Dr Carolyn Stevens, lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Melbourne. The panel discussion in each city will be moderated by Dr Rebecca Suter, and will address such issues as fan participation through fanzines and ‘fansubbing’ of new titles into English; the historical ‘domestication’ of Japanese culture into the West in contrast to the recent trend towards authenticity; and the strategic use of pop culture as a ‘soft power’ in Japan’s relationships abroad.

Audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions of the panellists so come along and meet the experts!

SYDNEY
Panellists:	Roland Kelts, Professor Susan Napier, Amanda Setiadi, Dean Prenc, Dr Rebecca Suter (Moderator)
Date:	Friday 17 July 2009
Venue:	Education Lecture Theatre 351, Education Building A35, Manning Rd, University of Sydney
Time:	6pm – 8pm
Admission:	Free. Bookings essential. RSVP reception@jpf.org.au or phone (02) 8239 0055
BRISBANE
Panellists:	Roland Kelts, Professor Susan Napier, Dr Rebecca Suter (Moderator)
Date :	Monday 20 July 2009
Venue :	Room 110, Building 69 University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane (To access the room please go down the stairs between Parnell Building (67) and Building 69. The room is on your left).
Time :	2pm – 4pm
Admission :	Free. Bookings essential. RSVP joanne.hopper@uq.edu.au
MELBOURNE
Panellists:	Roland Kelts, Professor Susan Napier, Dr Carolyn Stevens, Dr Rebecca Suter (Moderator)
Date:	Wednesday 22 July 2009
Venue:	Yasuko Hiraoka Myer Room Level 1, Sidney Myer Asia Centre Cnr Swanston Street and Monash Road University of Melbourne
Time:	6pm – 8pm
Admission:	Free. Bookings essential. RSVP wlew@unimelb.edu.au

Panellists’ BIO

	Roland Kelts Roland Nozomu Kelts is the half-Japanese American author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S. (www.japanamericabook.com), published by Palgrave Macmillan in the U.S. and Europe, and in Japanese by Random House Kodansha. He is also a professor at The University of Tokyo, Sophia University and the University of the Sacred Heart Tokyo, a contributing writer and editor for A Public Space and Adbusters magazines, and a columnist for The Daily Yomiuri. He is the editor in chief of Anime Masterpieces, a U.S.-based anime lecture and screening series, and his writing appears in numerous publications in both the U.S. and Japan.

	Susan J. Napier Susan J. Napier received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Japanese Literature. She has taught at Harvard, Princeton, The University of London, The University of Texas at Austin and is currently Professor of Japanese Studies at Tufts University. She is the author of four books, the most recent of which are Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Japanese Animation and From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West which was selected by Choice as one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 2008.

	Dean Prenc Dean Prenc is Product and Licensing Manager at Madman Entertainment and specialises in anime and cult animation. Always a fan of cartoons and comics, Dean discovered manga in 1992, MAISON IKOKU became an early favourite and Dean remained blissfully ignorant that his favourite comic was a shōjo book. From there came university, uni anime societies, employment in a local comic book store and exposure to the wider world of anime fandom. Commencing work at Madman in 2002, Dean moved from the Sales Team to his current role in early 2005. Working closely with Managing Director and Madman founder, Tim Anderson, Dean and his small team sources, acquires, schedules, markets and manages Madman’s anime and manga releases.

	Amanda Setiadi Amanda Setiadi has been involved in Sydney’s anime community for the past seven years, and currently sits on the Animania Festival’s organising committee. Animania Festival is Australia’s leading Japanese and wider Asian popular culture event. Within the Animania Festival committee, Amanda has worked on various projects, including its volunteer recruitment and training program, Insight discussion panels, sponsorship and media. Amanda also dabbles in musical rompery in the occasional band, Halcyon, covering various anime-related and J-rock songs.

	Carolyn Stevens Carolyn S. Stevens is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Melbourne. Originally from the United States, she migrated to Australia in 1994 after living in Japan for four years. Her AB (magna cum laude) from Harvard College is in social anthropology, and her PhD in cultural anthropology is from Columbia University. Before coming to Australia, Dr. Stevens taught and conducted research at Jochi (Sophia) and Obirin Universities in Tokyo. Dr Steven’s main research interests include consumer culture and fandom in contemporary Japan and Japanese popular music.

	Rebecca Suter Rebecca Suter is a lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research interest is in modern Japanese literature and comparative literature. She is currently working on issues of translation and cross-cultural representation between Asia and the West, concentrating on the phenomenon of the Japanization of Western culture and the way it challenges current views of colonialism, postcolonialism and globalization. Before coming to Sydney, she has taught Japanese modern literature at Harvard University and at Brown University. She also works as a translator of manga, and has translated works by Shinohara Chie, Anno Moyoko, Miuchi Suzue, Asano Inio, Kitoh Mohiro, Katayama Kyoichi, Matsumoto Taiyô, and Unita Yumi, among others.

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