LA Times report on Ken Tanaka

Shave your sideburns!!!

I see this dude in Silverlake all the time and he is a fraud. Just a pervert white dude into Japanese girls.

Uhhhhh… No. Maybe some people get confused by the truthfulness since his stuff ain’t funny. Not funny = true.

This guy sounds as real as a three-dollar bill.

There ARE people like this, though. I once met a 16-year-old girl in Chiba who looked 100% Caucasian, but was in fact monolingual in Japanese. She shunned the spotlight and was obviously embarrassed by the paradox of her birth and appearance.

creepy picture Oo

The Tanaka videos are much more subtle in the statements they makes than something like Borat. If you watch all the videos, a number of motifs present themselves: the intersection of art and life and the purpose of art (this is revealed in his confluence of an art show and a garage sale); the solitude of people within culture and society; the search for individual contentment; and most prominently, the commonalities and distinctions between Japanese and American culture.

There is a good analysis here: http://eyeslitcrypt.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/the-japanicity-of-ken-tanaka-and-the-social-media-community-of-youtube/

The other thing you will notice if you watch the videos is that he frequently highlights Japanese and Japanese-American artists, serving as sort of a patron, publicist and sometimes muse for this community.

Has he made money at it? I don’t know. YouTube isn’t much of a profit making device and for a gallery show, it’s a one time hit that depends on how much you’ve made.