User:Palmerftw/Ken Tanaka

Ken Tanaka Ken Tanaka is a YouTube personality, film maker, author and visual artist. According to his YouTube introduction video, Tanaka was born in Los Angeles, CA but adopted as a baby by Mari and Hideo Tanaka and taken to Japan. Tanaka was raised in Japan and returned to the United States in 2007 as an adult to search for his birth parents Jonathan and Linda Smith.

YouTube
Tanaka started on YouTube making videos about his search for his parents. He later started making videos about Japanese and American pop culture and also satirical videos about learning the Japanese language.

Controversy
There is a debate about whether Ken Tanaka is a real person or a character portrayed by American film and TV actor David Ury. Tanaka addressed this issue in his video #13 Ken Tanaka meets David Ury. In the video Tanaka learns that he and David Ury are long lost identical twins. Ury also appears in videos #28 and #48. The debate continues in the comment sections of Tanaka's videos.

Art
In April of 2009, Ken Tanaka had an art show at the Los Angeles gallery "Billy Shire Fine Arts".