Just got a reminder e-mail from the good folks at ICv2, reminding NYCC-goers to register to attend their conference. The expert panels, not to mention Milton’s very informative white paper, are really excellent looks at the comic industry, deeper and more nuanced than the general blog chatter that passes for same. Seriously, it’s smart stuff, and if you’re looking to ‘figure out’ comics and graphic novels, and maybe try to glean where the industry is headed, I recommend them.

http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1014166

Hopefully I’ll see you there!

– Christopher

Hey there,

On the Twitters last weekend I was talking about this comics and medicine conference taking place in Toronto, a really important one (that I missed almost all of as I was on vacation). The Beguiling sponsored a reception on the Monday evening as well, which was apparently a nice time.

Anyhow, my friend Jamie saw this article on the event and sent it my way, and since I’d original missed it as well I figured I’d post it here for you to check out.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1231183–comic-books-have-something-to-teach-future-doctors

Comic books have something to teach future doctors

In addition to the stalwart Manual of Clinical Oncology, medical students may soon see the comic book Cancer Vixen: A True Story on their required reading list.

Researchers at the University of Toronto are using graphic novels as a teaching tool to communicate the ethical and emotional complexities of illness, disease and trauma to medical students…

More in the link!

– Chris

I sometimes forget that people read my twitter feed, so here’s a few clarifying thoughts about DMP’s use of Kickstarter to fund manga projects by Osamu Tezuka. Their Kickstarter is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitalmanga/publish-osamu-tezukas-unico-in-english-in-full-col.

– I am really, really glad that there are going to be more Tezuka projects in print. They sell well for us, and UNICO in particular will do well through Little Island. I will be happy to own Barbara and Unico and whatever else gets printed.

– I like Kickstarter (and Indiegogo). I’ve backed 4 or 5 projects myself, and only one of them flaked out, and I’ve been assured that one will get sorted too. I think crowdfunding is a remarkable thing.

– It is disconcerting to see what should be a well-invested professional publisher need to take 380 preorders before a book is published. It’s only 380 pre-orders, that’s not a huge amount, but that is presented as the crux upon which the project will happen, or not. It is incredibly disconcerting as someone who is worked in the publishing industry in which this publisher operates for the past 16 years. It is disconcerting as a fan of Osamu Tezuka.

– I feel it speaks to a lack of confidence in the product, and a lack of confidence in the publisher to see a return in their investment of licensing this property, or has been hinted, “these properties”.

– Kickstarter has seemed to me, since its inception, like a method to reach beyond what might normally be possible into achieving something extraordinary.

– The basic acts of publishing are printing and promotion. If you are a publisher but you can’t print or promote, are you still a publisher? Some very smart people say yes, and I’m honestly not sure, because you’re unable to fulfill your basic roles and are counting on others to do that, and that’s where my conflict is.

– I want to stress that I feel this way about professional publishers using this apparatus, not an individuals or artists self-publishing, as an individual publishing a book and putting it into the world is still a remarkable thing. 🙂

– Further, I feel that this is a different apparatus than “accepting pre-orders”, as the implication is that publishing the work will require successful Kickstarting, which means Kickstarter is theoretically the beginning and end of the publisher’s commitment to printing and promotion, at least to get the book out into the world. And that number was 380 people. Again, some people see no problem with this, mostly because they want the material and the end justifies the means, and as a fan I’m on board. As someone who asks questions like “Well what’s a publisher then?” I’m not.

– I have no doubt that the future is going to continue to change the definition of “publishing” a great deal, and this is likely one such change. But it’s a change and it’s worth talking about and considering, rather than dismissing it as a new iteration of “pre-selling” or “pre-orders” or whatever.

– Finally, it should be stated that the opinions expressed above and at my Twitter are mine alone, and do not reflect any past, current, or future people who might employ me.

Christopher

Welcome everyone!

My name is Christopher Butcher, and I am the co-founder and Festival Director of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF). Just last weekend, I presided over our 7^th festival in 9 years, a continued celebration of all that is great about comics and graphic novels, and their creators.

TCAF 2012 was our fourth event since making the Festival an annual affair, and the fourth to be held at Toronto Reference Library with Presenting Sponsor Toronto Public Library. Continuing our increased success and attendance year-over-year, TCAF 2012 was clearly our biggest and best-attended Festival yet, with more people than ever filing into the library to take part in all that our exhibitors, and the library, had to offer. Personally, as the Festival Director, I’ve never been happier or enjoyed one of our Festivals more than I did this weekend, and that’s thanks to the great staff of Toronto Public Library and TCAF, our amazing volunteers and exhibitors, and all of you members of the public who came to take part in our event.

In keeping with our tradition, I’m sending out this informal little note to talk about TCAF rather than doing a big PR, because TCAF is just that kind of show. 🙂

Higher Attendance, Less Crowded: Win/Win!

When you’ve done 7 of these events, you can feel when things are a little more bustling, a little more energized than they’ve been previously… and Saturday afternoon I could tell that we were seeing record crowds at the show. The best part though is that, following up on feedback from our exhibitors, the public, and the Toronto Public Library, the flow of traffic was smoother and less crowded than it had been for the past several years. The Festival evolves with each iteration, and this year’s decision to add additional offsite venues, to widen aisles and remove tables from the atrium, and to cap attendance in certain areas, meant that all of the library customers—regardless of why they were visiting—could have a more enjoyable year.

TCAF 2012’s attendance was a record 18,000 people. What that figure comprises is 17,896 people counted by Toronto Reference Library’s security gate above the average attendance on a normal Saturday/Sunday. While people were coming and going all day, this figure balances out the instances of a flood of people exiting through the counter all at once where only one person might be counted out of 4-5. Beyond that, we’ve averaged in the 400+ people in attendance for our awesome Friday-night kick-off event in The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon with Jeff Smith, Gabriel Ba, and Fabio Moon, and the more than 800 people per hour accommodated in our off-site venues: Owlkids Day @ St. Paul’s on Bloor, The Marriott Bloor Yorkville, The Pilot Tavern, and Ristorante Fortuna. While the possibility exists that there were in fact far more than 18,000 participants in 2012, we’re quite happy with the idea of a 20% increase in attendance over 2011. 🙂

Thank you for your continued support!

As TCAF heads into its 10^th Anniversary show next year, it is our continued partnership with Toronto Public Library that enables it to easily remain an annual, free event for the people of Toronto and visitors from around the world. The partnership between TCAF and Toronto Public Library, and working with venue Toronto Reference Library, continues to reinforce the core ideals of the Festival: TCAF is a free event, TCAF is about books and authors, and TCAF is open to everyone—not just the ‘initiated’ comics fans. On behalf of myself and the entire TCAF organizational team, we’d like to thank our Partner and Presenting Sponsor Toronto Public Library for their support, promotion, and hosting of TCAF 2012. They’ve had a pretty tough year, as have many institutions in the City ofToronto, and we’re glad that we’re able to work with them.

We’d also like to thank TCAF’s other sponsors, the folks who help make the Festival viable financially. 2012 Kids Sponsor Owlkids was fantastically supportive in all of our new children’s and library initiatives, and allowed those initiatives the successes that they enjoyed. Thanks to Media Sponsor NOW Magazine, who provided us a wonderful avenue to help get the word out about the Festival and our satellite events, to The Marriott Bloor Yorkville as the Offical TCAF 2012 Hotel and to Air Canada for travel support. Our thanks also to local sponsors Midoco, who helped supply the festival with all of the supplies we needed for exhibiting artists to present their craft to the masses, and Little Island Comics, for stocking and representing the best of children’s comics at TCAF.

Our consular and cultural sponsors helped us bring the world of comics and cartooning to Toronto for a week, and we greatly appreciate all that they have done. Our thanks to The Consulate General of France in Toronto; The Italian Cultural Institute; NORLA—Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Non-Fiction; The Flemish Literature Fund; and The Japan Foundation Toronto.

Finally, TCAF would not exist without the funding and support of The Beguiling, and their generous donations. It’s TCAF every day at The Beguiling, and their dedication to the medium of comics is unwavering. I’m truly grateful to them to be able to do what I’m able to do with TCAF every year.

About TCAF 2012

TCAF 2012 was the most ambitious festival yet, and my most ambitious personal undertaking. With more off-site and lead-up events than ever before, more partnerships than in previous years, an additional day of programming, and more than 20 featured guests, I worried in the weeks leading up to the show that perhaps we’d bit off a bit more than we could chew. Luckily through the talent and support of some wonderful folks we had varying levels of success on every front, and as always, lessons were learned and we think 2013 will be even stronger.

The personal highlight for me was the strengthening of our programming for children, by including a large dedicated space for children’s exhibitors on the floor of TCAF, as well as the creation of a day-long special event for children’s graphic novel creators. TCAF is about engaging every reader with the medium of comics, and I’m so happy that our ambitions to promote the medium to the next generation were fully-realized this year. We also expanded our amazing “small press” area, headed once again by the fine folks in the Wowee Zonk collective. They really transformed the space they exhibited in and created something unique, wonderful, and surprising—it was amazing to see. The addition of a day of panels and programming about comics aimed at librarians and educators was the realization of a long-held dream of mine to more fully share the vast amount of knowledge possessed by our attending authors and exhibitors with the people on the front lines of bringing new readers into the medium. It was a success, and it is a service we will continue to provide and support in the years to come.

We were also treated to a wonderful array of ‘gala’ presentations this year, from Guy Delisle’s Thursday-night launch of Jerusalem: Tales from the Holy City, to Friday’s amazing Topatoco spring launch and the aforementioned Kick-off Event with Smith, Ba and Moon, TCAF started with the biggest bang yet! We also had a real first, a team-up between TIFF Nexus and The Hand-Eye Society that saw a gallery’s worth of comics/videogame hybrids that showed at both Magic Pony and TCAF! Joining the events of Thursday and Friday night was our co-presentation of Kid Koala’s Space Cadet Experience with Wavelenth, a truly incredible concert event! The amazing activities continued into the weekend with three wonderful Saturday night comics events—the launch of Alison Bechdel’s long-awaited new memoir Are You My Mother?, a once-in-a-lifetime interview with Konami Kanata, and the 2012 Doug Wright Awards for excellence in Canadian Cartooning. All three events were packed to the rafters—as were our various afterparties around the city!

In short, I feel TCAF 2012 engaged more people inToronto—and from around the world—than it ever had before, bringing the medium of comics to thousands of new readers. That’s a truly great thing, and everyone who organized, volunteered, or participated in these events should feel proud.

We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You…

Speaking of the folks who worked so hard to make TCAF 2012 a success, we’d like to thank some of the individuals and organizations who were a part of this event. Thanks to:

– Our Sponsors: Toronto Public Library; The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon; The Beguiling; Little Island Comics; NOW Magazine; Owlkids; The Consulate General of France in Toronto; Istituto Italiano di Cultura (The Italian Cultural Institute); NORLA—Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Non Fiction; The Flemish Literature Fund; The Japan Foundation; Midoco; Hotel sponsor The Marriott Bloor Yorkville; travel assistance by Air Canada.

– Our partner organizations and guest sponsors: TIFF Nexus; The Hand-Eye Society, Miguel Sternberg, and Matt Hawkins; Magic Pony; Wavelength; Kid Koala / Envision Management; Houghton-Mifflin & Thomas Allen and Associates, First Second Books; Drawn and Quarterly; Selfmadehero; Topatoco, Vertical Inc.; Scholastic Books; Wowee Zonk; and Koyama Press.

– Our TCAF Librarian and Educator Day Sponsors: VIZ Media LLC.; Drawn & Quarterly; First Second Books; Kids Can Press; Owlkids; Scholastic Books; and UDON Entertainment.

– Venue Partners Toronto Public Library, The Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, Magic Pony, The Carlton Cinema, 918 Bathurst, The Pilot Tavern, The Marriott Bloor Yorkville, St. Paul’s on Bloor, Ristorante Fortuna, The Japan Foundation, Buddies in Bad Times, Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall, Pauper’s Pub, and Lee’s Palace.

– TCAF 2012 Poster artists Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon for their amazing 2012 poster!

– To the staff of Toronto Public Library and Toronto Reference Library for all of their work on our behalf, with special thanks to TCAF Liaison Ab Velasco and Bram and Bluma Appel Salon Liaison Beth Kawecki.

– To our TCAF Featured Guests and Exhibitors, including Aislin, Gabriel Ba, Kate Beaton, Alison Bechdel, Arne Bellstorf, Jose-Luis Bocquet, Guy Delisle, Tom Gauld, Matt Holm, Jennifer Holm, Jason, Konami Kanata, Kazu Kibuishi, Kid Koala (Eric San), Bryan Lee O’Malley, Micol and Cornelius Books, Fabio Moon, Catel Muller, Michel Rabagliati, Jeff Smith, Pendleton Ward, Adam Warren, and the more than 300 other attending artists, exhibitors.

– To the hosts and staff of The Doug Wright Awards for throwing another wonderfully successful event.

– To Corey Mintz for his spectacular restaurant guide; To Chip Zdarsky for his continuing design assistance; To John Green and Dave Roman for their amazing TEEN BOAT comic in our program guide; To show photographer Paul Hillier for capturing so many wonderful aspects of the festival; To Nathalie Atkinson for her continuing support.

– To 2012 Festival Guide Designer Diana McNally—it was wonderful working with you, thanks for saving our butts… 😉

– To 2012 Website Designer Nadine Lessio; with additional thanks to Shane Bennett for technical assistance.

– To the staffs of The Beguiling and Little Island Comics, for once again working through their weekends.

– To on-site coordinators Greg Baker, Athena Pheasant, Linda Moss, Andrew Eaton, Alex Hureanzu, Christopher Hureanzu, Bled Celhyka, Michael Lamore, and Laura Prinselaar.

– To our more than 200 volunteers: You were amazing, and are routinely regarded by people all over the world as one of TCAF’s greatest strengths. Our sincere thanks for your time and effort, and we hope you’ll continue to support us into 2013 and beyond.

…and finally, my personal thanks to our amazing TCAF organizational team, Miles, Gina, Scott, Andrew, Andrew T, Parrish, and Krystle: It was a hell of a year. Everyone gets one month off until we start planning the next one. Speaking of which:

TCAF 2013: TBA

Last year, we waited a month until we had the date and location of TCAF 2012 locked down before writing this little note to all of you, and people didn’t seem to enjoy that as much—they wanted to know all about how the fest went down right after the big event! So this year we’ve released our little year-in-review much earlier, but that means we haven’t had a chance to sit down with our partners and sponsors to review this year, and talk about next year.

What can I say about TCAF 2013? Well there’ll be one, for starters. While we’d played with the idea of going back to a biennial event, there’s just no way we’re going to miss our 10^th anniversary year! From our modest beginnings as a one-day-event for 600 people on March 29^th, 2003 at Trinity St. Paul’s Church, to our new home for 18,000 at Toronto Reference Library, it’s been an amazing period of growth and change for the Festival and for comics in general, and we look to continue supporting and promoting authors and comics next spring.

As soon as we can confirm the 2013 show, we will.

In Conclusion…

So on behalf of myself and the entire staff, I’d like to offer our sincere thanks to everyone who made The Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2012 such a massive, unprecedented success. Whether you’re an attendee, and exhibitor, or a volunteer, your support of each other and of TCAF is what makes this amazing, free, accessible, comic book event possible. We appreciate it, and we hope we’ll have you back for the years to come.

Best,

Christopher Butcher, Festival Director and Co-Founder
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival

On behalf of…

Peter Birkemoe, Co-Founder

Miles Baker, Assistant Festival Director

Gina Gagliano, Programming Coordinator

Scott Robins, Kids Programming Coordinator

Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Volunteer Coordinator

Andrew Townsend, Festival Assistant

Parrish Kilthei, Tech Coordinator

Krystle Tabujara, The Beguiling/Little Island Comics Liaison

…and the staff of The Beguiling, The Beguiling Library Services, and Little Island Comics

All Photos by Paul Hillier.

http://www.indiegogo.com/sparkplugbooks

“Sparkplug Comics is ready to take on new publishing projects and we’d like to ask your help!

This campaign is a fundraiser for three of Sparkplug Books’ upcoming publishing projects.  Our soonest release, scheduled for April of 2012, is the graphic novel Nurse Nurse, by Katie Skelly.  This book compiles the previously self-published first seven issues of Katie’s ongoing sci-fi saga of nurses traversing the planets of our solar system.  The new book includes an eighth chapter to conclude the story.  The book has a two-color cover and black and white interior.”

This is a solid publisher who suffered a real loss. Head over and if you can spare a few bucks on some books, it’d really help them out.

– Chris

I had a really nice breakfast with a dude from Marvel Comics, and some other people. They were all great.. It was in the newspaper.

The Article: http://www.thestar.com/living/food/article/1150830–marvel-comics-talent-scout-has-us-marvelling-over-poached-eggs

The Transcript: http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fed-122-comic-scout-cb-cebulski.html

If you are my family or don’t care about comics, stop reading here.

—

I don’t have the best things to say about Marvel Comics a lot of the time–like most corporations they make every move for their own benefit, but unlike most corporations they end up controlling better than 50% of the industry in which they participate, and those moves tend to dramatically alter people’s livelihoods for the negative, other than Marvel’s. It’s a truly awful situation.

The problem is that many (though not ‘all’) of these decisions are made above the heads of the people who actually create the comic books. There are folks who are in essence good people, who do right by others, who have a passion for creativity and art. Some corporate fuck will come in and lay off a bunch of editors and staff, reduce the number of washrooms, admit that they’re consciously trying to wring as much possible money out of customers as possible through lower page counts, lower quality, and higher prices… but you (meaning you the reader, you the ‘comics journalist’, you the muck-raker desperate for hits on your site) can’t touch those people. You can’t. You’re not shouting at Isaac Perlemuter or whichever VP of TheBottomLine decided books didn’t need cover-stock any more–there’s a reason those people either aren’t on Twitter or simply know how not to respond to you at all. So ‘you’ lash out at the folks who are the public face, paid to put a spin on whatever the next shitty cost-cutting measure to come down the pipe is, because their job is to make a tenth the salary but eat all of the shit. Because they love comics.

I feel for someone like David Brothers, who is a smart guy who writes smart things, who bothered to engage someone like Steve Wacker on the subject of rotating in sub-par artists on a top title with Daredevil. The artist switch-ups on Daredevil are a shitty situation, I think we all agree, but Wacker proved himself completely damaged in his inability to engage a legitimate complaint in a direct way… I don’t know him but I’m going to assume eating other people’s shit (metaphorically) on the internet all goddamned day is why he responds to a legitimate question from a fan like a total nutbar stalker, maybe he was different before he started working for Marvel, but I can’t really say. But yeah, so much shit is flung at the public faces of companies that even when they’re greeted with real questions, real journalism, sometimes they’re too down it to do much but fling shit themselves. Being famous, or representing something famous, in public, it sucks. The public sucks. It’s an awful situation all around.

Occasionally, you can get someone in one of those positions, and you can take them out of the echo-chamber of insanity that Twitter/Facebook/Comics Blogs have turned into, and you can talk to them at least like they’re a real human being, and if you’re lucky you can even talk to them like you’re a journalist and they’re an interesting subject, and they respond in kind. So a month back or so, I was invited to brunch with journalist Corey Mintz, Jen Agg (owner of The Black Hoof), fine-artist Roland Jean, and C.B. Cebulski, talent scout for Marvel Comics. We sat down, we had a great brunch, had maybe two or three drinks over 4-5 hours, and we talked comics. We talked about the comics industry. Here’s a taste:

MINTZ
If you perceive what you do, whether it’s cooking or comic books, if you perceive it as an artistic discipline, not as a straight matter of business, is it ok that the majority of people, your clientele, don’t see it as an art form? Is there anything wrong with them seeing it as a product?

BUTCHER
Yeah. Because that’s where piracy comes from.

MINTZ
Ok. Food and comic books just separated themselves completely in that example.

BUTCHER
well, I know a lot of people who didn’t purchase the Momofuku cookbook but have it on their iPad. And I wag my finger at them.

MINTZ

Names!

AGG
What? What do you mean?

BUTCHER
People have scanned the Momofuku cookbook.

AGG
Scanned it?

BUTCHER
Scanned the whole book.

AGG
Who would bother to do that? Spend the $35 dollars you cheap fuck.

BUTCHER
Welcome to comics.

CEBULSKI
Every week.

From http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fed-122-comic-scout-cb-cebulski.html.

(By the way, Comics Internet, that’s how an “excerpt” works. If you’re reposting 75% of the content on the original site, you’re just being an asshole.)

We sat around and talked about the comics industry. As Corey said in his column, “Cebulski is extremely polite and candid in a way that has nothing to do with our drinking cider and rum at 1 p.m. A pleasure to talk to, he never once dodges a question.” Mintz treated Cebulski as he would any subject of his column, with respect, and removed from “the comics internet” Cebulski was able to discuss things like a grown-up would. He talked about the economic realities of superhero comics, of producing art, of working for Marvel. I disagreed with some of the finer points, but I never thought for a second that he was equivocating, or even speaking out of turn. It was a lovely brunch, a very fun time, and a great conversation with someone I respect, even while I don’t agree with all of his views. It was a pretty rare thing, for Marvel and DC Comics, and the internet went all kinds of crazy for a few days, with my favourite bit being that the words of this interview were so twisted as to somehow make it sound like a representative of Marvel says that Jack Kirby didn’t make art. Ugh. Uggggggggh. So stupid. I wouldn’t talk to people either. It got so bad Corey actually wrote a response to the public response:

“On the record, with the red light of a recorder going, C.B. Cebulski shared his views. I speak to a lot of people in my work, most often chefs and politicians. Most of them do not say what is on their mind. And who can blame them? I poke fun at the Toronto restaurant scene for the level of public insincerity and back-slapping, but I’m a hypocrite. It’s pretty rare that I’ll criticize a local news organization in public.

“So when someone does us the courtesy of speaking plainly, whether we agree with them or not, we ought to applaud them. True believers, take it from someone who has been paid to criticize others, the truth is a rare and valuable thing.”

– Corey Mintz, http://porkosity.blogspot.ca/2012/03/until-internet-gets-mailing-address.html

Unsurprisingly I haven’t seen anyone excerpting that bit of writing anywhere.

Here’s the thing though–does the comics internet respond so fucking poorly to people talking to them like grown-ups because it never actually happens (from Marvel or DC), or did Marvel and DC’s incessant, never-ending stream of hype and refusal to talk to people like grown-ups lower the discourse so far that the internet can no longer respond with anything other than cheers, outrage, or the standard comments-section-passive-aggressive-mixture-of-both? Was it always doomed to be a cesspool out here or are we now doomed to be in this cesspool? Discuss.

Actually, don’t bother, either way we’re still standing around in a cesspool. Recrimination is, in this instance, pretty pointless.

My pleas tend to fall on deaf ears so I get that this is all a bit pointless. But I wanted to point out that it is possible for people in this industry who disagree to respect one another, to sit down and have a meal and talk openly and honestly about situations that exist, and hopefully try to find some common ground. It’s possible to initiate these talks and cover them as a journalist and not be a jerk, and not have your subject be a jerk. I personally believe it’s even possible to not be that lazy reader and choose to interpret every single statement in the worst possible light because you’ve got an axe that needs grinding at every opportunity. This interview is by no means a rare thing-there are tons of great, professional and honest interviews out there. It’s just rare to see one from someone who works at Marvel or DC, sadly. I certainly hope that, given the reaction to this one, it hasn’t become rarer still.

– Christopher

I woke up on the morning of March 11th in my hotel room in Boston. I was working, running UDON’s convention booth alongside a couple of their artists, and I was on track to get to the show for opening when I decided to peek at my Twitter, and then was compelled to turn on CNN and run my computer to find out what had happened. It was horrible, and hours later I was getting texts from the guys at the booth asking why the hell I hadn’t shown up as I tried to hold my shit together in my room, watching people be swept out to sea.

I eventually got to the booth, didn’t tell the guys what had happened and let them discover on their own as they got texts for relatives and loved ones. I spent the day numb, worrying about the people I know, the friends that I’d made, and the country I’d come to love. I’ve talked about it before, but from the time Electronic Gaming Monthly previewed the Super Famicom and Super Mario 4 (World) to my pre-teen self, Japan and Japanese culture has represented tomorrow to me, and moreso than the economic fallout, the homelessness issue, or any of the challenges Japan had had to face in my lifetime, the quake and tsunami in Northern Japan illuminated for me the idea that the future was not set, that promise could go entirely unfulfilled. Without notice.

I tweeted and blogged and donated about it at the time. A month later I helped to organize a fundraiser to support relief and rebuilding in Tohoku–we raised $20,000! I grit my teeth and knew that visiting Japan in the months following the quake would be a mistake–Japan had to deal with a number of issues before worrying about my nonsense–and I got back to the country as soon as I could. Despite the hardships and the adversity, it still was, still is, Japan, and I recommend to anyone that’s ever been curious about visiting the country to please do so; improving the tourism economy improves day to day lives, and direct donations to affected peoples directly improves the lives of those most afflicted.

Now it’s one year later, and I continue to do my best to promote Japanese culture and ideas, and to help the country rebuild. I’m not so naive as to believe there are not fundamental, institutional problems with the country that are hindering rebuilding and progress–faith in the government and/or belief in anything they say is at a spectacular low. The economy is still suffering badly, with no real plan in site to fix that either. But I look at my life and around my world and the effect that Japanese culture has on the life I live is, frankly, inescapable, and why would I want to escape it anyway? I’ll do my best to continue to give back to the country that has given me so much.

I don’t have a grand statement here–this isn’t one of my best pieces of writing. But I’ve been thinking for the past few days what I could say about this event that can still bring me to the verge of tears if I think about it too long, and I’ve got nothing more than what I’ve said above.

– Donate for relief, if you can.
– Visit Japan, if you’re able.
– Support the Japanese artists and authors who create the culture you love with money.

To my friends in Japan: I’m glad I didn’t lose any of you, and you’re in my thoughts.

– Christopher