This year’s Kentaro Kaneko Award celebrating achievements in furthering U.S.-Japan relations goes to a volunteer, an educator and a legendary musician. Read more
In 2023, releasing a big-budget anime feature about three Gen Z boys in a post-bop jazz band sounds like commercial suicide. Jazz is boomer music; anime is for kids weaned on Pokemon. Read more
Jiro Inagaki never settled into one music community. The 90-year-old saxophonist says that while he entered the industry via jazz, he was always interested in how the style could intersect w... Read more
Films about jazz musicians tend to fall into two categories: ones that focus on personal drama at the expense of the music and ones that don’t get made. That’s why Yuzuru Tachikawa’s anime “... Read more
On Japanese television, mornings are for drama — asadora, to be precise. Read more
