Fifteen short years ago, when I became aware of my interest in Japanese culture, I could never have envisioned what the future was going to hold for the media and entertainment industries of that particular nation here in the United States. At the time my interest in the media culture of Japan manifested itself, I was aware of only a couple of things; I really enjoyed what little I had seen and heard, and that it was extremely difficult to find here in the U.S. Over the course of the subsequent years, many things would change due to the globalization of societies, and more specifically, due to the globalization of media. In all of its forms, Japanese media has slowly begun to find its way here to America, and in the process, has managed to change the way some of us live our mediated lives, whether we are aware of it or not. Over the past two and a half decades, not only has this media become more accessible, but also it has become increasingly more important to our cultural development as a society. "One has only to look at the international popularity of the  Power Rangers, the enormous overseas sales of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga series Akira, or the vogue among American teenagers for Sanrio's cutesy character goods. Though not all of these links will continue to thrive, the evidence of the past few years suggests that the traditional Western resistance to the face of Japanese pop culture is weakening" (Schilling 13).

In the early 1980s,what little Japanese media that could be found in the United States was often overlooked, and usually not recognized as being of Japanese origin. At that time very few works, outside of classic films by legendary director Akira Kurosawa, from Japan could be found here in the U.S. Television is where the true roots of Japanese media influence can be found here in America, and they were scattered at best. Localized versions of a few Japanese cartoons such as Speed Racer (originally aired in 1967) and Voltron could be found during afternoon cartoon lineups on a few networks around the nation. While these were only the minor rumblings of what was to come, the true emergence of a Japanese-bred property into mainstream America came in the form of Robotech (known in Japan as Macross). Preceded by the release of the comic book in 1984, Robotech began airing on American television in 1985, and was received with much acclaim and fanfare. Although the show only aired for 65 episodes, spanning two years, the comic books and toys are still sold today. The show actually just reappeared on the newly formed Anime Network as well.

More information on the Robotech series can be found at http://www.robotech.com/

Another form of Japanese entertainment was slowly creeping its way into American culture at this time as well, and this singing pastime was known as Karaoke. The number one most popular hobby in Japan had found its way to US nightlife, and people couldn't get enough. Though Karaoke would remain largely unknown for a number of years, it would continue to gain popularity throughout the 1980s and well into the next century. It can now be found at almost any neighborhood bar or restaurant within driving distance of your home.

While Robotech was making headway into the television and publishing markets and karaoke was slowly gaining speed, a larger phenomenon was taking place in the videogame industry. Japanese electronics maker Nintendo was preparing a U.S. launch for their widely successful Japanese home videogame console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the NES. After the videogame crash of 1984 here in the United States, and with the emergence of home computers, the home videogame console market looked like it had come to an end. This was, of course, until the release of the NES in December of 1985 into the eager hands of American gamers in New York City, the system's test-market. "Satisfied by the system's success in New York, Nintendo markets the NES nationwide. The system debuts with Super Mario Bros., an arcade conversion, which becomes an instant hit" (11 http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hov/p6_01.html://). With the release of the NES came a reinvigorated videogame market here in the United States, which led to not only a renewed interest from American videogame makers, but also from other Japanese companies, ready to reap the rewards of the burgeoning market here in America. Following the success of the NES in the United States, NEC would release the Turbo Grafx-16, and Sega Corp. would release the, also 16-bit, Sega Genesis here in America. Japanese arcade giant SNK also followed suit with the massive, meg-crunching Neo Geo arcade and home console soon after. With such a rapid insurgence of Japanese videogame consoles on the market, American companies would be pushed out of the picture, and the age of Japanese videogames would begin here in the U.S. Japanese videogames have become so synonymous with the artform in fact, that in Mediated, De Zengotita refers to Nintendo versions of athletes as one of many mediated symbols of sport that saturate our culture (111). When referenced by name, as a representation of a larger whole, a compay has truly become part of the subconscious landscape of the nation.

At the same time as Nintendo's conquest of the United State's videogame market was just beginning, a manga (comic book) was rapidly taking over Japan, and would soon storm the shores of America as well. Katsuhiro Otomo's widely eulogized Akira, was a cyber-punk tale of young bikers in a post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo that captured the hearts and fascinations of not only Japanese manga buyers, but of those in America as well. Otomo's 6 book installment found its way to US shelves in 1988 via publication by Epic Comics, a subsidiary of comic book giant Marvel Comics. While solid sales figures for comic books are sketchy at best for that era, Akira was recently re-released in its uncut original format by publisher Dark Horse Comics. They reported in 2001 at the Diamond/Alliance Retailer Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada "The first Akira collection is on its third printing and has about 42,000 copies in print.  The second has about the same number of copies in print, and collections three and four each have around 30,000 in print" (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/69.html). While sales for the book have most likely increased due to it's cult status since the 1980s, these figures contribute to the legitimacy of Otomo's Akira as a truly watershed moment in Japanese media history in America. As a result of the manga's popularity here in the US, the Akira animated feature-length film also received a limited theatrical release on Christmas day of 1989. While it opened on only two screens in the country, it managed to pull in $11, 263 dollars, and had a gross revenue of $553,171 dollars thereafter (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=anime.htm). While the numbers may seem small, for a film released on only two screens at the time of it's debut, these numbers are surprisingly striking. As the first anime (Japanese cartoon) released in a theatre in the United States, Akira was a resounding success, as many anime films released since then still fail to produce that same amount of revenue.

After the success of Akira, manga would soon find itself with a much larger market here in the US. One of the earliest publishers, Viz Media, a subsidiary of Japanese publishers Shueisha Inc., Shogakukan Inc., and Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. (ShoPro Japan) (http://www.viz.com/about/), is responsible for most of the large scale publication of these early mangas. One of the cornerstones of Viz's early success in the US was writer/artist Rumiko Takahashi, whos work's Ranma 1/2, Urusi Yatsura, InuYasha, and more are still wildly popular and profitable today. Viz was dually responsible for the emergence of Japanese media in the field of magazine publications. Their early manga and anime based fan-magazine Animerica paved the way for other such magazines here in the US. Since then, the market for anime/manga themed magazines has grown large enough to support a number of genre-based publications including, but not limited to, Protoculture Addicts, NewType USA, Shonen Jump, and a score of others.



For more information on Viz Media please visit http://www.viz.com/

As manga was making steady headway into the comic book market, and Animerica was sewing the seeds of what would become a fruitful magazine empire built on Japanese cartoon mediums, the Japanese art of anime was just beginning to blossom here in the US. After the success of Akira, and with anime clubs starting to pop-up at universities around the country, it seemed that the time had finally come to introduce Americans to something that they had previously had a taste of, but had never fully experienced. Anime in Japan has been prime-time material for quite awhile now, but has just recently become regarded as a legitimate form of art here in America, and only in less discriminating circles. In the early 1990s the availability of these works was severely limited, and finding quality copies of these shows and films was akin to discovering a diamond in your Cracker Jack box. A few companies, such as Streamline Pictures, had tried to bring some animated features over from Japan previously, but sub-par efforts in dubbing, and unnecessary cutting of source material turned off many fans of this growing market. "Most industry experts agree the next leap was in 1992. US Renditions, a film importer, released the first English subtitled anime videotape that year. Before the release of Gunbuster (about a girl and her interstellar battle for the future of humankind), the only way to buy anime was to buy it from Japan for the rental market price" (http://www.japaninc.net/article.php?articleID=972&page=2). Another impediment in the early development of anime was the exorbitant price of purchasing these programs on videotape, the medium of the time, when they finally were released domestically. Episodic series only contained two to three episodes of a particular series and often cost upwards of $25.00 dollars to purchase. Another downside to this purchase was that a buyer had to choose between the subtitled or the dubbed version of the show or movie, not having the option to receive both for one price. While these obstacles were hard on the market, they were not insurmountable. Early growth was slow but steady, figures for this are extremely difficult to find, but having worked in video and laserdisc sales for the majority of the early 1990s, I can at least speak from my own experience in my geographical area. As sales continued to grow, so did the availability of the product. What was once only sold in comic book stores and specialty video outlets could now be found in small amounts at your local mall video store such as Suncoast Motion Picture Company, or for rent at the neighborhood Blockbuster Video. After surviving, and even thriving, in the early 1990s through tape swapping and fan-translated scripts, anime finally had found a proper place on the shelves of select retailers throughout the country.

As anime and manga continued their dual with American pop-culture sensibilities in the mid-90s, another Japanese media phenomenon was making its way to American shores, in the form of the country's national pastime, baseball. In 1995 the Los Angeles Dodgers drafted an already established pitcher from the professional Japanese baseball leagues by the name of Hideo Nomo. "Nomo became the first Japanese citizen to join an American major league team after having played professionally in the Japanese major leagues" (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9345112). Nomo was a phenomenon, both overseas and here in the US. "The Tornado", as he was called in Japan, not only amazed fans abroad and domestically, but he took home the coveted National League Rookie of the Year award. While Nomo's popularity eventually waned, he opened the doors for many more Japanese baseball players to come to the US and play in Major League Baseball. The first nationally recognized Japanese celebrity had landed here in America, and the true influence of Japanese media and entertainment was starting to sew it's seeds, thousands of miles from home.

To capture television audiences around the US, independently of baseball, Japan also exported the smash hit Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 1995. Although the show was localized in America, and dubbed over with domestic actors playing the un-costumed roles of the show's five heroes, it was still distinctly Japanese in it's quirkiness. The show was a hit not only with children, but also with teenagers and young twenty-somethings, due largely in part to it's excessive campyness and martial arts fighting sequences, interlaced with giant robot battles. This television dynamo was supported by the already established medium of anime, through the timely release of Sailor Moon; a series about five high school girls, empowered with magical abilities which they used to save the earth from the forces of evil. These two shows were often paired together on Saturday mornings and on weekday afternoons, presumably to capture the same audience.

By the late 1990s Japanese videogame companies had dominated the market for the better part of two decades, and nothing had changed. Electronics giant Sony had entered the market in 1995 with the introduction of the venerable Playstation home console system, and Nintendo and Sega had remained profitable with the releases of the N64 and Saturn, respectively. Videogames in the US had become synonymous with Japan, and the eastern-influence, in the consciousness of most Americans by the mid-90s. A video game "culture" had rapidly emerged domestically, with the surge of Japanese game makers leading the charge.

By 1998 a new technology had grabbed a hold of videophiles around the world, and America was no different. The VHS cassette tape was on its way to obscurity, due wholly in part to a new medium for home viewing known as the DVD, an acronym whose meaning is still hotly debated amongst collectors and enthusiasts. One of the greatest benefactors from the onset of DVDs was the anime genre. With the introduction of the DVD came the ability to not only lower production and resale costs, but also to include more information on the "memory" of the product. For the first time ever consumers no longer had to make the choice between subtitled or dubbed anime, they could have both, and for a lower price to boot. Extra features and commentary were also benefits of the medium fully exploited by anime releases long before their live-action counterparts.

Also of note at this time was the importing of the Japanese virtual-pet known as Tamagotchi to the United States. This tremendously popular form of on-the-go entertainment in Japan was a rousing success during the Christmas season of 1997 here in America. What Tickle Me Elmo was in 1996, Tamagotchis were in 1997.

The close of the century brings some truly remarkable milestones for Japanese media and entertainment here in America, both monetarily and culturally. Japanese film finally sees a minor breakthrough in the US in the celluloid form of Takashi Miike's Audition. Not since 1989's Tetsuo: The Iron Man was released, has a Japanese film received any notable attention in the United States. While the film is released in limited numbers under Criterion’s umbrella of "avant guarde" masterpieces, it garners much attention and praise from those limited few who are lucky enough to see it. In an interview in Mark Schilling's book , The Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide To Japanese Gangster Films, Miike says , "A few people in foreign countries happen to be interested in our films now--so we have to make something for them now. We have to seize the moment"(79),  acknowledging the impact his film has made abroad. While the film receives many subsequent re-issues, the Criterion version is the first, and still most sought after by collectors. Not since the days of Akira Kurosawa has any Japanese film received quite this much attention in somewhat mainstream movie circles. Though not a monetary success, the rumblings of Japan’s national cinema are beginning to make waves on American shores.

While Miike's film stirs interest in Japanese silver screen endeavors, the small screen receives its own dose of culture shock from the land of the rising sun, in the form of Iron Chef. The eclectic cooking show, airing on the burgeoning Food Network, rapidly becomes a fan favorite with watchers of the cable channel. Iron Chef finds a niche in the hearts of cooks and television watchers alike with its unique vision of cooking as sport. The show receives multiple slots in the network's lineup, as well as front-page coverage on the network's website www.foodtv.com. "FujiTV provides the subtitling and dubbing, and the Food Network is the distributor", therefore retaining the Japanese feel and discourse of the original show (http://iccom.ironfans.net/faq.htm#q1). A merchandising blitz follows from both branches of Food Network's media empire, and Iron Chef emblazoned cutlery and cooking utensils can even be found in storefronts around the country. In 2004 The Food Network would adapt the show here in the US, using American chefs (as well as Masaharu Morimoto from the Japanese version of the show), Western friendly ingredients, and filmed entirely here in America.

While the DVD and television markets are both experiencing their own brand of Japanese media-infusion, the most significant advance is made on the big screen, in the form of an anime inspired by a Nintendo videogame of the same name, Pokemon. With the wildly successful Pokemon already raking in huge sums of money from television syndication deals and merchandising, Warner Brothers decides to release Pokemon: The First Movie in US theatres. While anime feature-length films have already enjoyed some modicum of success at the US box office, no one will be able to comprehend just how well Pokemon: The First Movie will actually do. On opening day the film brings in $31,036,678 million dollars, the 19th highest opening day in United States history. Staggering numbers even for the most optimistic of analysts. The film will go on to gross $85,744,662 million before its run at the box office is over and it moves on to dominate the DVD market (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=anime.htm). While the mass majority of moviegoers in the US have easily ignored other anime feature-length releases, it seems that no one could escape the clutches of Pokemon.

That same year a science-fiction blockbuster by the name of The Matrix would be released. The film's writer/director brothers, Andy and Larry Wachowski, would go on to cite Mamoru Oshii's anime feature-length cyber-punk masterpiece Ghost in the Shell as a major influence on their work. This is apparently obvious when comparing scenes in The Matrix that are, shot for shot, identical to scenes in GitS. (Ruh, 139-140). Incidentally, the Wachowski Brothers are not the only successful Hollywood filmmakers to cite Oshii's influence and acknowledge his importance in the realm of film. James Cameron has referred to GitS as, "the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence" (Ruh, 3). With anime finally reaching an influential adult audience in America, it seemed that there was nowhere to go but up.

Here is a quick scene comparison of The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell. For more in depth scene analysis please visit http://www.mig81.com/matrixgits/index.html

The new millennium brought many changes to the world as we know it, and the Internet was at the forefront of this "wave of the future". With the Internet came access to new and old media alike. The importing of entertainment from cultures and nations outside of our own geographic boarders became as easy to obtain as clicking your mouse a few times on the computer screen. While the implications and impact of this technology could be subject enough for another website entirely, I feel it is worthy of a brief mention here because it is easy to see how greatly this affected the availability and influence of Japanese media within domestic culture here in the US. Entertainment, especially in regard to music, had never been so accessible, and people all over the country were opening doors that they never knew existed. What a great time to be alive!

2001 on the Cartoon Network was an historical year indeed for fans of Japanese entertainment in America. With the advent of Adult Swim on Sundays and late weekday nights, anime fans could at last have a steady outlet on cable television for their anime watching needs. While the Sci-Fi Channel and TechTV, and to a lesser extent FoxKids, had been showing anime intermittently during their broadcasting schedules, there was no set time or day for these airings. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim heralded a new day for the cartoons from Japan, as far as receiving a steady diet of them was concerned at least. While the programming lineup was not exclusively anime, it did include a heavy dose of it, and at the time it was as good as any anime junkie could get.


2001 also brought about the first Japanese superstar to ever achieve a huge following in the world of sports in America as well. When the Seattle Mariners drafted Ichiro Suzuki in 2001 it was unclear if he could be as successful here as his predecessor in Major League Baseball, Hideo Nomo. As it turns out Ichiro would become the most widely recognized and adored Japanese celebrity in the United States in recent memory, and maybe throughout all time. He, like Nomo, received Rookie of the Year honors his first season in Major League Baseball. Unlike Nomo, however, Ichiro would not only become a longstanding icon in his homeland, but in the US as well. In 2004 Ichiro broke the all-time MLB record for hits in a single-season with 262, and further cemented his place in the minds of sports fans all over the country. He is so popular, in fact, that during Mariner's home-games, Japanese companies advertise products that are not even available in the United States yet, due to the massive viewer ship of Mariner's games in Japan. Ichiro has not only become a star here in America, but has enticed Japanese companies into putting revenue into advertising half a world away, truly a remarkable series of events. When the World Baseball Classic took place earlier this year in Anaheim, California Ichiro was on center stage, as he led his homeland to the first ever WBC championship. The WBC's website
(http://ww2.worldbaseballclassic.com/2006/index.jsp) still adorns it's front page with pictures and headlines of Japan's, and Ichiro's, victory here in the United States. Because of Ichiro, America saw the talent that the second-largest baseball market in the world has to offer, and new celebrities were made here in America. Books such as At the Plate With...Ichiro by Matt Christopher and Glenn Stout, written about Ichiro here in the US, signify the recognition he has received in his newly adopted country, and serve to further the opinion that he has indeed become a celebrity here as well. If Japan has an international face to attach to it's entertainment industry, then it certainly is Ichiro Suzuki.

The man they call Ichiro

In 2002 American audiences would be treated to a harrowing experience in the form of a film titled, simply, The Ring. The Ring was a Hollywood adaptation of a Japanese film called Ringu, and would signify a continuing trend of Hollywood adaptations of the new wave of Japanese horror films. The advent of these adaptations also brought about the formation of companies such as Tartan – Asia Extreme, Tokyo Shock, and others, who exist almost exclusively for the purpose of subtitling and releasing Japanese horror films here in the United States. Since the initial release of The Ring, a sequel has also been released, as well as Hollywood adaptations of Japanese hit films Ju-On (The Grudge) and Dark Water. American born director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) cites Takashi Miike as his greatest influence during the DVD extras for Miike's yakuza-horror film Gozu. Roth, considered by some to be among the "new breed" of American horror directors even honored Miike with a cameo in his most recent film Hostel. As is evident in Roth's efforts thus far, not only is the content of Japanese horror films having an effect here in the US, but also the style in which they are filmed. The simple fact that these films are so readily available here in the United States now is a direct influence of the mediated culture in Japan bleeding into our own, literally and figuratively. Thanks to The Ring's blockbuster box-office showing of $129,128,133 dollars (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ring.htm), the localized remakes of Japanese horror films will almost assuredly continue.

Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 would further remind US audiences that Japan's film influence domestically was not only limited to the horror genre, but also in the long-standing tradition of samurai films. Tarantino's tale of a woman's revenge is directly influenced, as he himself has confirmed (http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=TARANTINO-FILM-04-12-04&cat=EF), and bears significant resemblance to the 1973 Japanese film Lady Snowblood. Not only do the films take direction from Lady Snowblood, but from the world of anime as well. In the first installment of the films there is an entire scene shot not with actors, but drawn in anime fashion to convey a particularly violent event in the movie. While the scenes are very much his own, Tarantino's use of Japanese entertainment techniques are applied wholly to an American art form. This sort of application of Japanese influence is subversive in its execution, but lends itself particularly well to the story Tarantino is telling in Kill Bill. With the "maven of cool" himself acknowledging, and borrowing from, Japanese film so liberally, there is no reason for this trend not to continue. Japan's refreshing approach to cinema has received a warm welcome already in the US, and will undoubtedly continue to enjoy more success in mainstream media in years to come.

As America moves deeper into the young millenium, Japan's entertainment and media markets continue to have a profound effect domestically, and only grow more important with each passing year. Earlier this month (April 02, 2006) in fact, the New York Times sent a reporter abroad to cover the Tokyo International Anime Fair. Situations such as this would have been unheard of as little as 20 years ago, yet here we are, in the 21st century, picking up our New York Times over our morning cup of coffe, and what do we see on the front page of the Arts&Leisure section, but a half-page spread on an anime convention taking place on the other side of the globe. If media theorists such as Raymond Williams were alive today, they would surely marvel at how they failed to address the impending influence of other cultures, such as Japan, on our mediated selves here in the United States. In fact, during The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, it was speculated that The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was using the Commitee on Internet Governance as a tool to "take regulatory authority over the Internet out of the hands of the United States-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)" (McChesney 264).

As we move into 2006 we already have the first US released single, to receive any form of promotion, from one of Japan's best selling musical talents, the American born/Japanese raised Hikaru Utada. Passion is the theme song from the hit Playstation 2 game Kingdom Hearts 2, and is featured in national commercials on all of the major networks and cable channels. While it remains to be seen how well the single will do on the charts, the fact that Utada even has a well promoted single out in America shows yet another avenue that is being explored by entertainment talent from Japan. With the advent of this development, it is possible that yet another door may be opened for the influx of Japanese media into the already rapidly changing culture of the United States. Perhaps border-bridging artists such as Utada serve as an example to show us why organizations such as the ITU, and their bid to gain more control over what they percieve as a global issue, may not be such a bad idea for all of us.

One of the strengths of our nation has always been the ability to open our arms to new ideas and cultures, and these are just a few examples of how those forms of entertainment from other cultures have changed the way we live, for the better. As we move closer each day to becoming a truly global community, I remember what it was that drew me to Japanese media those short 15 years ago, and I welcome this "global village", as it is beneficial not only to Japan or the United States, but to all of us.