Peter Carey's new book Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey With His Son is Out Now through Random House. In it, Carey examines Japanese culture through the lens of his son Charley's fascination with anime and manga. The two travel to Japan on Charley's proviso that they avoid The Real Japan - which means no museums, temples, raked stone gardens, teahouses, Kabuki or anything related to the picture postcard view of the country! Instead they hook up with a teenage local Takashi who shows them the flipside of Tokyo - the one that's not in all the guidebooks. And Carey and Charley make it their mission to meet and interview Japan's master animators including: Hayao Miyazaki creator of the Oscar-winning Spirited Away; Mr Tomino originator of the Gundam series; Production IG's Kitakubo director of Blood: The Last Vampire... and discover the many meanings of the word Otaku often used in reference to anime fans. Carey discovers that most of his perceptions of Japan are 'wrong', and takes obvious delight in challenging his misconceptions and ours.

FEAST YOUR EYES ON ALL THE ANIME THAT CAREY AND CHARLEY REVEAL AND REVERE IN WRONG ABOUT JAPAN.
ASTROBOY
AKIRA
SPIRITED AWAY
PRINCESS MONONOKE
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO
GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES
MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM
BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE


Peter Carey' son:
"No Real Japan," said Charley. "You've got to promise. No temples. No museums."

Carey: "What could we do?"

Charley: "We could buy cool manga."

Carey: "There'll be no English translations."

Charley: "I don't care. I'd eat raw fish."

- excerpt from Wrong About Japan


Insights from Peter Carey's Wrong About Japan
#1 "Although I knew that Japanese comics were called manga, I would have said that a comic was a comic no matter what you named it. At Forbidden Planet I slowly began to understand that I was wrong. The first and most obvious difference in Japanese comics is the broadness of subject matter, from saccharine stories featuring little big-eyed girls to the dense and serious works of Osamu Tezuka, although this is not something one discovers in a single Saturday morning. What was immediately obvious was the startlingly graphic nature of manga which, in its clarity of line and dramatic blocky forms, echoed the Japanese wood-block prints of the nineteenth century." from p.2


#2 "On Akira's graphic pages i found images so artful i could have hung them on my wall." Akira, born as manga, had also been made into an animted film which, being Japanese, is not called a cartoon but an anime... Certainly it differs from American animation, which has usually been - with some spectacular exceptions - a dumbed-down form. In America, cartoons are thought to be for kids. In Japan, anime is as much respected as live-action films, and not at all limited to a specific age group. The first anime I saw was based on Akira and i was struck by the artistry of their frames, their combination of realism, exaggeration, something ineffably and inarguably 'Japanese'... I was as hooked as Charley and I wanted more." from pp.3-4