Hey Guys, if you're in Chicago in June, Co-prosperity Sphere is showing Japanese surrealist films, here is the blurb from the facebook event:
"Tokyo in the early 1960s was a breeding ground for a new wave of Japanese avant-garde art. This program surveys the landscape of experimental cinema in Japan during this moment, including films that were made by members of the famous “Group of Three” and the Nihon University cinema club. 

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s COMPLEXE (1964, 15 min., 16mm) centers on a man whose mundane walkabout metamorphoses into a surreal dreamscape in which manic pace of modernity is channeled via stop-motion animation and erratic editing techniques. To quote Donald Richie: “If there is any such thing as a popular avant-garde film, this 1964 picture is it.” Made with the Nihon University cinema club, Motoharu Jonouchi’s POU POU (1960, 22 min., 16mm) blurs the line between life and death as a group of children perform a burial ritual in an attempt to escape the monotony of quotidian existence. Takahiko Iimura’s AI (Love; 1962, 10 min., 16mm) features erotic close-ups of fragmented body parts with sound by Yoko Ono, and Jonas Mekas likened it to Stan Brakhage’s LOVING and Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES. Directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi in collaboration with surrealist painter Kazutomo Fujino, AN EATER (1963, 24 min., 16mm) is a grotesque (and graphic) comedy about cannibalism. The film foreshadows the fusion of slapstick gags and macabre humor that would come to define Ôbayashi’s 1977 masterpiece HAUSU (House)."

It sounds really great and i hope to see you all there~!!

Here is the fb event.

Japanese Ghost Revivals

Here is a great review of a number of new books out that explore the pantheon of traditional Japanese ghosts and their stories, yokai to yurei that might make your heart go どきどき (doki-doki).

andy

The Tears of Junichi the Rough by Takashi Taniguchi

A short animation by Takashi Taniguchi, who also was an actor and voice actor. 

Kazuo Ohno & Butoh

This is a video of Kazuo Ohno dancing, he is a co-founder of Butoh dance. Developed as both a reflection of post world war two Japan, and as a reaction against the popularity of western dance. I think its kind of cool to look at if we are trying to understand some concept of quintessential Japaneseness, because there a lot of ways to understand this in it's context. Its also worth mentioning that as of now Butoh is more broadly practiced than just in Japan.

Testsuya Ishida at the Venice Biennale +

The eerie work of Japanese painter Tetsuya Ishida is having the exposure it is due this year, with an exhibition of his work just having concluded are the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco
and now also being exhibited at this year's 56th Venice Bienalle (for example, the painting below)

Ishida was very prolific in his short life, having died at the the age of 33 in 2005. His work touched on many themes of psychological isolation in a highly urbanized and consumer-driven world, usually with specific reference to Japan, as seen in the works here:

 

andy

Art of Japanese American Internment Camps Liberated form the Market

 

 

The forcible relocation and interment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent - indeed whole families - in camps in isolated parts of the mid- and far west stands as a black mark of American history and civil liberties (similar internments happened in Canada as well).

This history was brought back into focus recently when over 450 artworks made by the incarcerated were brought up for auction, generating great controversy and an online drive to have the auction halted.

Halted it was, and now the Japanese American National Museum has acquired them as part of their collection.  The winding story of these artifacts touches on many issues of traumatic histories, lost (and refound) traces, as well as fundamentally who "owns" the right to such crucial personal artifacts, as commodities versus as collective cultural objects...

andy

wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi is a difficult moral/aesthetic principle to describe, what with all its nuances. Here are a few descriptions:

"simplicity combined with acute awareness of values... undemonstrative, noble austerity, most discriminating use of simple, well-formed tools, restrained use of color in the teahouses… It has given dignity to poverty.”

- Walter Gropius, Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture, 1960

Chaseki (tearoom) of Shokintei at Katsura Villa, mid-17th century, Kyoto

[As a moral principle:]

“a life of quietness and a withdrawal from worldliness"

“represents the view that an excess of possessions and consumption is a burden that actually diminishes rather than enriches life. An absence of clutter provides room to think and perhaps even to understand.”

[As an aesthetic principle:]

“values the beauty of simplicity and austerity, and looks for the serenity and transcendence that comes with it.”

-John Pawson, Minimum, 1996

And from my own research:

• 12th-century writers in Japan elaborated on the positive qualities of poverty and correlated poverty with liberation.
• In the 16th century, this idea was applied to the aesthetic sensibility of chanoyu (tea ceremony) chiefly conceived by the great tea master Sen no Rikyu.
• Wabi-sabi is often illustrated by the simple, rough, imperfectly shaped raku ware tea bowls preferred by Sen no Rikyu, and by the chaseki (tearoom).
• The concept of wabi-sabi also originated in the Zen principles of the tea ceremony.
• On its own, wabi implies the quality of voluntary poverty.
• Sabi refers to things that possess a quality of rustic imperfection.
• In the context of Zen Buddhism, sabi refers to a state of absolute emptiness, the goal of Zen meditation.

But this clip from Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge is the best description of all:

(start at 1:30)

Heidi Nast: "Into the Arms of Dolls: Japan's Declining Fertility Rates, the 1990s Financial Crisis, and the Comforts of the Post-Human"

Towards the beginning of the semester, Heidi Nast, a professor at DePaul's International Affairs department, came to give a lecture in one of my classes. She presented her latest project (title above) which has to do with "doll culture" in Japan, relating it to what she calls the "death-drive" of capitalism. The whole presentation was quite a whirlwind, and a couple of us in the class took offense to some of her points (specifically, her characterizations of otaku and even trans identity as privileged opponents of agrarian culture), but overall I thought her ideas were extremely interesting.

I'll do my best to describe her thesis here:

The popularity of "doll culture" among men in Japan is a result of (1) capitalist prosperity, (2) the financial crisis of the 1990s, and (3) feminist progress. In the big picture, this is related to Japan's declining birth rate.

1: Japan is a privileged "first-world" country where many people have disposable income to spend on hobbies. Therefore, there is a thriving market for expensive "doll culture" merchandise such as dakimakura, sex dolls, ball-jointed dolls, vocaloid avatars, figurines, etc.

2: After the financial crisis, young have people felt discouraged to go out and find jobs. Instead, they "turn inwards" (hikikomori) and this fosters otaku culture.

3: As a result of both feminist progress and the financial crisis, men have felt emasculated. They find that less women are willing to get married and play the role of mother and housewife. They also fear for their ability to be the male "provider." As an alternative, they find the female roles of mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, and sex friend in dolls, which can be idealized unlike actual women. Rather than spending money to support a family, they spend money to support "doll culture."

This is related to Japan's declining birth rate (the capitalist "death-drive") because while women are less interested in being wives, men find replacements for wives in dolls, therefore less people are having children... and ultimately this leads to a "post-human" society of machines.

(If you want to read her paper, let me know and I'll send you the PDF. Since this is a public website, I don't want to post it here. Copyrights and all.)

-Angela

The Presence of Cyberpunk in Japanese Visual Culture

Cyberpunk is an alternative genre with a bleak aesthetic and focus on real world anxieties. In America cyberpunk is a bit of niche market with occasional movies like the matrix becoming cult classics. But before there was The Matrix there was Neuromancer(1984) and Blade Runner(1982) which displayed dystopian futures which treated data as commodity and relayed cultural anxieties surrounding the tech revolution. What these two pieces of pop culture have in common is their depiction of Japan and the east in the social and political climate of the 80’s.

Chiba city in Neuromancer and the sprawling billboards of geishas in Blade Runner reflect the image of japan as a rapidly developing country.

• “Given that 1980s Japan served as a symbol of technological advancement, it seems only logical that cyberpunk authors depicted a future in which Japan remained an important international power.”

These themes of cyberpunk are even more present in Japan’s underground media with cult classics like Tetsuo the Iron Man, Akira, Ghost in Shell, and the ever present mecha theme in their visual culture. I think its interesting to note the stylistic differences in how media from Japan reacted to its own transformation in a much more grotesque way. The focus on how the body and ephemeral data and technology are mediated is much more visceral. Other than just being interesting visuals they deal with themes of the shifting of power to information, government corruption, rebellion, technological transmogrification, and gender politics among a number of other ideas. Some are more accepting of the tech revolution than others. This, of course, is just a cursory glance at what makes Japanese Cyberpunk so distinctive and the motives beg]hind it, but I think its an interesting subject to consider. 

On a lighter note, Akira is being crowd sourced and redrawn by over 500 artists in the west wherein all the original characters are drawn as Simpsons characters, an iconic cartoon in the west and being displayed in an exhibition in Tokyo. Seems like an interesting dialogue between two distinctive classics.  

some links to check out:

short essay on cyberpunk anime

Bartkira

Book: Tokyo Cyberpunk: Posthumanism in Japanese Visual Culture

japan reference books

Japanese Reference books

 Japan has some really cool pose books that can get really specific. They cover everything from weapons and cat girls to BL (boys love). I find this really interesting and didn't know how specifically in depth these got until recently. I'm not aware of a US equivalent, and when i search for it it usually just comes up with the Japanese ones.These seem super helpful rather than scouring the internet to find what you are looking for, but they also cost money so its a trade off.

Shae

Art and Crime in Japan

A number of years ago, I came across an article about Japanese fashion designer Aya Tsukioka and the dress/vending machine disguise she created as a form of self defense. I thought it was an interesting look at how art and everyday life shape each other. In this case, Tsukioka was responding not only to growing rates of street crime in Tokyo but also to the prevalence of vending machines in Japan as a whole.

http://gizmodo.com/313221/japanese-anti-rapemugging-dress-transforms-into-vending-machine-disguise

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/world/asia/20japan.html?_r=0

Aya Tsukioka's website

Semi-relevant video: Yakuza Tattoo Artist explains the significance of body art to the Japanese Mafia


Tess

Visual Kei "Air Rock"

Any of us who can conjure up an image of Japanese pop music would probably think of the hyper-cute girl groups in frilly clothes (has anyone heard of kyary pamyu pamyu?) but I happened upon a group that has a rather strange premise. Golden Bomber exists in the genre "visual kei" which looks kind of like a modern edgy glam rock, but that isn't the strange thing. Golden Bomber is an "air rock" band, meaning only one member actually plays any instrument at all.

The rest of the band simply pretends to sing and play along to prerecorded tracks by studio musicians. Despite this, they have managed to garner quite a following.
 Here is their most popular song, Memeshikute:

Pigments in traditional Japanese painting

Much of what contemporary painting is what it is because of progress made in synthetic pigment developments and processes in refining natural materials as well as the introduction of acrylic polymer. Cadmiums weren't available until the early 1900’s as well as neons and pthalo’s. However, I find the traditional mineral pigments used in nihonga (paintings made with Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials) interesting compared to what is available today and how the process of making paint for nihonga paintings created a distinct soft glow that is not present in a lot of acrylic and oil paintings of today. 

the mineral pigments for nihonga are usually ground from minerals, shells, corals, and stones like malachite, azurite, and cinnabar(the trademark vermillion color) and then mixed with a glue made from animal hide to create the paint. the result is a water based paint that is painted on a primed silk surface that gives the distinct ethereal and soft coloring that is associated with nihonga.

some sites documenting the pigments and process of making: 

pigment store,  making of.

I came across this picture of a woman in a 3d printed vagina kayak a while back and was lead into the fascinating art of Megumi Igarashi.

Her goal it seems is to de-mystify and de-sexualize female genitalia. A quote from an interview:

"So, with this project I wanted to release the vagina from the standard Japanese paradigm. Japan is lenient towards expressions of male sexuality and arousal, but not so for women. When a woman uses her body in artistic expression, her work gets ignored, and people treat her as if she’s some sex-crazed idiot. It all comes back to misogyny." 

Igarashi intends to change the world through art that can make people smile, which is definitely something I can get on board with. Also just look at these glow in the dark vagina characters.

 Original article/interview: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/japan-s-vagina-kayak-artist-fights-back-against-obscenity-charges-and-misogyny.html

Karakuri Ningyō

A few weeks ago I was doing some research on automata when I happened upon this video and I thought it would be really cool to share it here. The karakuri in this video was made sometime in the mid 1800s by Hisashige Tanaka, the first president of Toshiba group. Because of this, karakuri ningyo are an important precursor of modern Japanese robotics and technology. Apparently many forms of Japanese theater and puppetry were heavily influenced by the movements of these dolls, most of which are still functioning nearly 200 years later.

Some more information about karakuri ningyo:

"Robotic Karakuri Doll Brings the 19th Century Back to Life"

http://www.karakuri.info/about.html

Karakuri ningyo


Tess

Japanese Themed Cafes

Okay so one of the thing that I find really cool that they have in Japan but you don't find in the US are these cute themed cafes. There are a huge variety of them ranging from maids to cuddling to cats. I  wish this would catch on in the US cause they seem like so much fun. Though I have to say that the cuddling cafe is a little strange for me.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/inside-tokyos-wildly-popular-bizarre-themed-cafes/story?id=28117543
http://firstwefeast.com/eat/japanese-themed-cafes-rule/
http://japan-magazine.jnto.go.jp/en/1401_restaurant.html


Shae

I recently found these images online, it's a stunning work made by the the students in that highschool, and photograph by artist Yosuke Tan.
For more information, visit this website: Cherry Blossom