Cover of the Japanese edition of Rolling Stone Magazine featuring former Japanese toon pop sensation and political exile, Ayanami Rei.
Ms. Ayanami is an outspoken critic of her home country of Japan’s persecution of its Toon minority, its Ainu minority, and protests the continued Japanese occupation of Korea after the country briefly regained independence in 1960 before being re-invaded and this time directly annexed into the Empire of Japan as an overseas prefecture rather than becoming a colony again. After Rei did a concert outside Akihabara in 1990, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the “Akihabara Massacre”, the then 17 year old toon girl was forced to flee Japan for the United States when the civilian equivalent to the Kempeitai, the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu or Tokkō (Special Higher Police), came looking for her.
Rei now lives in San Francisco and has started to date an American toon model named Rachel “Raven” Roth.