The best way to talk to (and about) the entertainer and artist Ken Tanaka is to discuss his YouTube videos, of which there are many, and which vary wildly in terms of popularity, production and themes. But first, some biography:
Ken Tanaka is the second most famous white guy from Shimane Prefecture. Lafcadio Hearn occupies pole position. Hearn, like Tanaka, has a Japanese name (Yakumo Koizumi) and both men were abandoned before arriving in Shimane — Hearn multiple times, Tanaka only once, when he was just a "tiny white baby." Both men are writers: Hearn's prose lit the fuse that sparked great interest in Japan in the late 19th century; Tanaka's first book is called "Everybody Dies: A Children's Book for Grown Ups," and he's currently at work on a memoir. But unlike Hearn, with his double-barreled Greek-Irish identity, Ken Tanaka neither defines himself as Japanese-American or American-Japanese.
"I see myself as Ken Tanaka, mainly," he says.