Tag: Japan
The BFI’s upcoming season celebrating Japanese cinema goes online, with retrospectives for Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu to get the ball rolling. Buuuuut it’s UK-only, which is utter bollocks considering Ireland is essentially a branch of the UK film marketplace. #link
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From Tokyo at Night, by Mateusz Urbanowicz, c/o the recent Kottke.org post on his Tokyo Storefronts. Prints are available, too, though I don’t see shipping info so YMMV. #image
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Forty-plus years of Super Sentai tokusatsu covered in about eight minutes. Interesting to see how blatantly toy-oriented the Japanese shows are compared to the western adaptations. #video
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Another novel for the tsundoku pile, so. Mind you, I read two books last week, 800-plus pages’ worth, so this might get a look-in sooner than later. #link
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Real-life locations, or approximations thereof, crop up in a lot of slice-of-life anime (and the manga it’s often adapted from), which is no small part of why the genre appeals to me. #link
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An hour in the driver’s seat from Nagano to Kanazawa by Shinkansen bullet train. This is my jam. (Be advised: there are a lot of tunnels along the first half of the journey.) #video
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Consider this a supplement to my previous link on PSF Records. #link
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My first MetaFilter FPP, after 13-plus years as a member, on Dan Hill’s visit to two especially interesting houses in Tokyo. #link
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I’m pained by the notion that Studio Ghibli is considered a genre unto itself, let alone anime as a whole. (It’s a medium, not a genre!) But gripes aside, this is a fine list for the uninitiated, with a spread that spans drama, action, romance and more avant storytelling. #video
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In case you were wondering — and yes, it’s the signifier/metaphor you might expect. Though it also fits with the not-necessarily-metaphorical groundedness of most contemporary anime (street scenes, convenience stores, vending machines, vehicles and public transport, etc). #link
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I’m (very slowly) learning Japanese with Duolingo, and this is a great resource to keep fresh on the relevant alphabets. Maggie Sensei is another source for info, when I’m ready to step up my game. (Not any time soon.) #link
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Saw this place in a YouTube video the other month and yes, I want to go to there. #link
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I will never not be impressed by the sheer variety and freedom in the Japanese cultural approach to music, and there are some fine examples here. #link
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Aggretsuko (who is pretty funny, as it happens) represents part of a new wave for the people behind Hello Kitty, with characters that are “more in sync with the ambivalent humor of memes or the antihero characters of prestige television”. Like an egg yolk with ennui. #link
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Atmospheric psych-noise from Japan’s PSF Records, as previously noted here. #video
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Midori Takada’s 1983 LP Through The Looking Glass. Prompted by this short profile in the Guardian upon its recent reissue, which has promptly sold out. And it isn’t available digitally, for some stupid reason. So here you go. #video
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An audio tribute by Tristan Bath upon the death of label founder Hideo Ikeezumi. Some beautiful noise here, my favourites being acoustic bass solo improviser Motoharu Yoshizawa and the ghostly Shizuka’s ‘Bloodspattered Blossom’. #link
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Doors, taken by Yukihito Ono. One of the many stunning commended entries to the architecture category in the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards. [c/o Kottke.org] #image
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Osaka cityscape, taken by Pedro Szekely. Apropos of nothing. #image
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Spiral baggage claim at New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, Japan, taken by Masakazu Matsumoto. #image
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Because why not? #link
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A Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word.
Kinda like that game where one person starts with a word in a particular category, and you have to follow with another in the same category starting with the last letter of the first. That’s a convoluted explanation, but you know what I mean. #link
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These photos of the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami tell a remarkable story. But maybe a more remarkable one is that of Japan’s resilience in the face of disaster. Even amid all the shocking imagery – roads split down the middle, cars and houses washed away and disintegrated in the surge – I’m not left with the same sense of hopelessness that followed the 2004 Asian tsunami.
The fact is, with an earthquake of that sheer magnitude (now thought to be 9.0), and as bad as things are right now, the situation could’ve been far worse. It’s a testament to good forward planning that they aren’t.
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