The Japan Media Arts Festival has over the years been attracting increasing attention in Japan and abroad, and this year's festival once more attracted a record number of entries from a record number of countries and regions submitting works. It seems that – in the true sense of the words – the “festival atmosphere” evoked by an unequalled range of eligible genres from Art to Manga has generated a kind of centripetal force. It is fair to say that the specific character of Media Arts lies in the fact that there is no fixed border between radical experiment and entertainment.
I apologize for bringing forward ideas which might sound abstract, but the technology applied in Media Arts has not been developed for the Arts, but is strongly connected to social reality. When artists exploit this with their exceptional power of imagination as a resource for expression, they tend to frame a critical viewpoint on the circumstances surrounding us, in a sense showing the extent to which technology itself is inseparable from our everyday life. A tendency that stands out among this year's Award-winning Works and Jury Selections is the attempt to gather and exhibit various data from existing video/film and audio sources. The process of archiving data as such becomes a method of production, and there is no doubt that this forms some sort of comment on today's reality.
Of course there are many works of a serious tone, but on the other hand no small number of humorous works which draw viewers to outbursts of laughter. I hope you will enjoy the richness of this “festival” of Media Arts, where a wide variety of works – from websites to paper media, from video works to performances – by artists from all over the world are assembled.

This year as before, there has been a steady increase in the number of entries from abroad, especially in the Art Division. It is interesting how the four divisions of Art, Entertainment, Animation and Manga – occasionally crossing, and occasionally unifying – finally make up an arrangement like a lunchbox, displaying a typical Japanese style of serving dishes on a plate neatly. This differs from privately-run festivals abroad. Trying to summarize the individual divisions, you could say that in the Art and Entertainment divisions many digital works appear which connect big data and high technology to the creative sphere, but these are evenly matched by a strikingly healthy array of completely analogue works.
The Manga Division shows a very broad range of work, proof that this genre is as vital as ever – from the latest editions of extremely popular manga to serialized online doujinshi (self published manga). In the Animation Division, a feature-length animation entirely produced abroad has won the Grand Prize for the first time. In the shorts section, three new faces with unique styles arrive on the scene.
The Special Achievement Awards go to: MATSUMOTO Toshio, who is a “great vanguard” in the field of Japanese video culture, sound effect designer KASHIWABARA Mitsuru, who through his work gave the world of Japanese animation its shape; ABE Shuya, who as an engineer collaborated with Nam June PAIK and NAKAMURA Kimihiko, editor of the manga information magazine Puff, as well as founder and producer of COMITIA, a sale event for self-published manga.