School has let out, students have all gone home, and the neighborhood boys are running around in their various groups ignoring homework as well as their mothers. One group stands in an empty suburban lot, two boys facing off at a time with giant sticks pretending to be not army men, not European knights, but samurai warriors avenging their friend’s “death” by bonking with a stick not three minutes before.
While most of the other boys grew out of this interest and fascination of Japan, Will Gautney did not. A senior at the college of William and Mary majoring in Global studies with a special focus on East Asian Studies, he has been a consumer of Japanese goods, wither it be imported or localized, for as far as his memory can reach, being raised with easy access to not only the typical video games and anime, but also samurai movies and zen texts.