© The Brother and Sister Nishioka.

American and Japanese artists have been inspiring each other for decades. Tonight, authors Hideo Furukawa and Steve Erickson share their strong apocalyptic imaginations, and Roland Kelts, half-Japanese author of Japanamerica, will discuss the mutual influences in narrative visual art. Haruki Murakami’s love of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver is well known; Susan Sontag and Paul Auster have professed their love of the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, and Ozu’s seemingly quintessentially Japanese films were created after he immersed himself in Hollywood movies during the war. American comics and animation by Walt Disney, Max Fleischer and others were transformed by Japanese artists into manga and anime, which now enjoy an enormous following among American youth. The panelists discuss how and why as they launch Monkey Business International, the first trans-national literary journal with fiction, poetry and manga from both nations. The influence has entirely been mutual, and they will discuss and contextualize contemporary Japanese visual and narrative culture.

Followed by a reception.

TICKETS
$12/$8 Japan Society members, seniors & students

Buy Tickets Online or call the Japan Society Box Office at (212) 715-1258, Mon. – Fri. 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 5 pm.