Shimavision

One Month Later, Japan to America. 4/1~20

2011-04-19T13:16:00.004-07:00

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Leaving Japan was lonesome, like checking out of the hotel of your life: leave house keys loose on the table, door unlocked, push your belongings away...
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Dim the lights of Tokyo and people start to see the beauty of dusk again.

Power is never cut to the administrative heart, to central Tokyo. Grandmas and grandpas outside Tokyo can wait for their miniscule daily ration of electricity while shops in Shinjuku keep the new shit flowing, and the central governmental decision-makers (those guys in jumpsuits) stay insulated from lived reality. Tokyo governor Ishihara admonishes residents to stop cherry blossom viewing this year, not adequately solemn enough. Yes, let's reflect somberly while he readies yet another gubernatorial campaign for more of the same collective corporate back-scrubbing. Don't forget, it was the downfall of the newly created Environmental Protection Bureau of Japan when in the mid-1970s, Ishihara became chief and reversed his predecessors conservation work in favor of industrial development. What looms behind this is yet another renewed incarnation of bland capitalistic equanimity; the same kind of happiness we've been buying since before I was born. In solidarity with global protests, how can we waylay a nepotistic governing class that strives to continue business-as-usual nuclear power development?

Not to say new possibilities don't abound. But as Karatani Kojin pointed out recently, "there's always space for possibility, even when there isn't a disaster at work." For him, the current situation is disappointing precisely because larger changes, new forms of social reorganization, aren't taking place. Or are they? Effectively, Japan is going through a period of diaspora and migration. Relocation from destruction, relocation by choice, people are moving. I wonder if Tokyo's position as a cultural capital can be de-centered as a result? Will people move away from the center? Some friends may move to parts of Japan with space and air, with warm dialects, and beautiful ocean towns, islands, and plains. Plant new seeds, make new scenes, bring new life.
The first wave of photos of depopulated Fukushima prefecture have surfaced online. The internet gives us a distant, fetishized gaze, our homes safe from ruin. In terms of infrastructure, since the unplanned now regularly takes place, Fukushima's evacuation can be seen as part of a the larger global trend: the threat is uninhabitabilty of whole regions. We've already contaminated plenty of places now "unsafe to live." The fact we cannot swallow, the trauma we cannot feel here, is that people do live in these places. For many reasons people cannot move away from toxic places. We see the bleeding edge of 'first-world' society: slums, industrial centers, processing plants, special economic zones, whole villages picking apart the shards of computer hardware for elusive jewels. Groundwater undrinkable, air choked, too cold, too barren, too stripped. Continuously, we use more energy, expending resources in search of a fuller life. Flow toward the centers, steal from the periphery.

...somethinsgottagive

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I've been asked so many times how the quake was, and I'm tired of it. The event isn't over, it might not ever be. It's the new state of affairs, the new yellow-turning-to-orange level of daily stress: quake+radiation+power shortage. Yet, I can't keep my mouth shut, that despite what you see on TV, everyone I know is fine, likely, they're just tired and want to move on. I'm waiting for the better questions.

How are people to answer for their experience? I squirm at the quiet beauty of a Japanese fisherman's calm spirit as he rode his forty-year-faithful boat out to meet the tsunami (and survived). He is member to a generation that can cope with this. To people 60+, life without electricity or gas, without enough food, that was their youth, or the shadow hanging over their youth. Younger people, 20-40 are more shaken, more in need of psychological insulation. Already cast out of the bubble economy's consumer elation into slowly deflating reincarnations of the same consumer practices: our preoccupations with new crap can not, should not, fill the void. We've always used things to change our mood, like emotional tools, enhancements to our exterior character make us happy. But maybe we can get some perspective through this event.

There is a word in Japanese used to describe those who were irradiated by the US weapons used at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Bikini Atoll: hibakusha・被爆者. It denotes someone who has been exposed to radiation, the injured party, they to whom the violence was done. Later, it became a rallying word that problematized the conditions of radiation discrimination. Radiation was and is the problem that won't go away, victimhood that ages through dozens of political terms. Now, in all of it's fund-raising glory, the recovery of Japan has left the people living there, their food and water, their very being, verging on the same discrimination on a international scale. Lack of forthrightness by the nuclear authority and TEPCO continues this to swell the ranks of those seen as part of the "injured party." A creeping stigma approaches. You don't want American beef? Well, we don't want Japanese produce.

As a media side note, it seems necessary to point out that we enjoy the fantasy provided by apocalyptic narratives: world destruction to which we can bear witness. Maybe we get it in the end, and when we do, we’re likely more satisfied, because that's realistic fiction right? With the events of the last month, we've taken another step toward the cynical yet foreboding sentiment of a zombie film: a world finally ravaged by the warning signs we always see. We notice the signs, lying limp on the side of the freeway, abandoned at the edge of town, the indication that we're burning the world to the ground through our gastanks and checkbooks. But do we feel it deeply? For to feel sadness in America would also mean we feel beauty; truly, immediately, deeply. Fleeting beauty in the moment, unmediated emotional embrace. America is unpracticed. We are charmed, giddied, standoffish, and proud, but rarely sublime, grounded, or deeply sorrowful. Everything is externalized. We adorn ourselves with cars, homes, clothes, profiles, personality quirks, tattoos, titles, and badges, making "me" more Me. We encourage our egos on bumper stickers and appliances magnets. It's honest right? It's depressing.

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Home four days and it hit me. Embracing my mom I sputtered, "it was so hard," before bursting in tears, feeling for the first time not even destruction, but just erasure. The void gapes open between how things were and how they are.

The day I returned to the America I found myself with a car and more darkness and quiet than I’d I felt in a long time. The next day I circumnavigated San Francisco bay to reacquaint myself with life here, smells and colors of my homeland. America: society through a sideways freeway glance and incredible scales of distance and quantity.

Trauma seems unfelt by most here. The stagnancy of a saturated labor market vies with rising gas prices. And Japan is so contained in its distance as a radio expert tells me about how far radiation can travel. My new co-worker asks casually if anyone has died of radiation poisoning in Japan and ironically mentions how local soccer moms bought iodine tablets with the same detached fear that fuels antibacterializing their homes and their children's immune systems.

All the news, the diluted information, does it fill our void of understanding? Too many shallow sources drown us in informed speculation. Lap it up and be ill on the consumptive history of privatized energy, media, and shareholder return: scare us straight, protect us blind, inform us stupid. But only with peripheral information, not enough to foster a real response. A world built on durable goods is designed to be wasteful. The energy infrastructure must be supplied cheaply to facilitate projected annual growth. In some eyes, Fukushima is just an absorbed cost.

Press your face to the glass. The nuclear disaster is another indication that our place can become that place. That place we see on TV, or if it's the middle east or north Africa, that place which is distinctly absent from our screens. You don't see Red Cross boxes to clean up the irradiated produce and groundwater, or warzones. That would imply fault, responsibility. An earthquake's "accident" to a meltdown's "collision." We can watch natural disasters and send money, but man-made disaster is kept from our daily feed. Image on screen form a hallucinatory grasp: our contemporaneous global society. We "know" but can never know.

Conditions of Recovery

2011-03-28T00:59:00.002-07:00

Warm winds caress my face as Spring nudges life back into western Japan. We must lift our eyes to the quickening blue sky and acknowledge that time is not frozen. Yet now that we are in motion again, we look up from our shaken feet as see the road to recovery looms long in the distance. These last days a sense of social normalcy is returning: invitations and chance meetings with friends, random words exchanged. Stories of where and how, but almost never why. Outside our tiny house, my plants bud back to life and I realize it's times to water more often, time to nurture that stubborn energy: life ceaselessly pushes forward.

Two weeks have passed since the quake and the traumatized aperture of our gaze slowly clicks wider, allowing a bit more light to pass through our lens, exposing film, our minds, to the changed world around us. The full glare of life destroyed in Tohoku, the nuclear threat, the media cacophony, left our eyes and emotions overexposed. In Japan, since March 11th, our eyes allowed only pinpoints of reality to enter, any more overwhelmed our gaze, rendering us frozen or fleeing. I think the reason we keep exchanging stories of the quake and its following is to get in touch with an ungraspable event. A futile task but therapeutic nonetheless. It's our nature that even as glass shatters around us and the earth splits open, still we are in a state of disbelief, outside of ourselves, cracking jokes or screaming. Raised on heaps of images, we watch fictional and non-fictional things we never want to experience, so we doubt our eyes when the real thing occurs. In trying to remember, to bring ourselves back, we construct a memory, but memory is not experience, it is failed representation. As the gravity of the event pulls at us, our attempt to close off this trauma neatly into memory is bound to be lacking.

I was accused of being in denial of the danger of staying in Tokyo, and I supposed it's true. Denial is a part of coping, part of scraping out space to think, space to not panic. Now that I'm leaving, it's time to wrestle with this place, because even if I convince myself this is the right move, a normal move, I'm denying a part of my self who still needs to mourn, needs to affect the changes coming over the next weeks, months, and years.

'what to build?'

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Although I take photographs normally, I've been unable to throw the shutter since the quake. Being in Tokyo, the most visible 'disaster' was people's fear: pushing crowds, panicked lines for taxis, self-justified (self-serving) hoarding. As each day passes, I feel the ripples of the disaster spread. Not in real chaos but simply growth: there is ever more happening and much more to talk about. Now we deal with a perpetual cascade of reactions. My observational ability is not up to the task. There are many heroes who the media cannot notice or follow. There are many direct and consolidated efforts to help the situation. There are pitiful but typical attempts by companies and politicians to use this disaster to improve brand image with paltry donation campaigns, bleeding member point systems while encouraging love for thy neighbor. Rightfully angry anti-nuclear protesters crowd my local train station and I shake their hands in solidarity but know that I have no vote here. New lines are being drawn. All these different stakes and different needs branch out into a new tree that will hopefully support the weight of the older one. These branches are the ripples I can track only so far. At the same time, with my imminent departure, I find myself grouped on the side of the 'abandoners,' those who are leaving when help is needed. Despite my attempts at solidarity, this is my feeling. Life is all in the timing.

Yesterday I saw a special edition of Asahi Graph weekly magazine, a photo issue filled with powerful images of the Tohoku disaster. While I couldn't help looking, I felt somehow ashamed, was I exploiting people's misfortune as these images helped me piece together a memorial image?

A friend mentioned how the aesthetic trope of impermanence is fitting for thinking about this kind of disaster in Japan. In the classic text, "Tales of a Ten Foot Square Hut" [hojōki](12th C.), the fragile and fleeting nature of human life is embraced as traumatic yet beautiful. Through Kyoto's repeated destruction, the observer notes their own fragility and finds there a new liberation. Keep in mind, stories of impermanence have a victim, but necessarily there is an observer who narrates the tale, and who continues on with life. In this sense, through our stubborn continuation of life, we can understand the need to stay, how our everyday is an affront to the frozen effects of disaster. This gravity draws me in, tries to keep me here. We are all scared, but we can see this solidarity is also a beautiful thing. And arguably, the unique strength of this place.

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A Return to Normalcy?

2011-03-23T16:47:00.003-07:00

Lying in bed, I mistake the reverberations of my own heartbeat for tremors in the earth below. Sometimes the phantom ripple in my chest is answered by creaking beams and barking dogs that confirm something beyond my imagination. I think everyone in east Japan must suffer from such a feeling. An unsettling sense that our own bodies are not trusted: the ground beneath our feet is the new phantom limb of our earthy existence.

Many people have left Kanto to escape this shaken state of being, to regain their peace of mind on firmer ground south or abroad. Or arguably, more have left from the fear of radiation. Governments, universities, and companies were quick to move people out, and over the week following the quake, no information could appease this nuclear panic. However I sense this was more to protect liability, a "Get out now or you're on your own/Better safe than sorry" stance provided a quick handwashing of the situation for the administrators. We see the shallowness of corporate and diplomatic bonds in crisis. Don't forget you have to sign an agreement to absorb whatever price tag they put on your evacuation. Life continues in Japan with a slightly depleted population and plenty of people who still need help, peace of mind.

Our heads seem loose on our shoulders. We are still shaken regularly, and it's no surprise people took to imbibing more, self-medicating you could call it, because it seems the world itself is sloshing drunk in its geologic infidelity.

"see yourself"

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After a dry spell following the quake, it started to rain on Monday. Pollen allergies this year are horrible, tens of millions of cedars shaking their dusty yellow gametes on the wind only to find home in our eyes, nose, and throats. The rain provided respite but also filtered out that which invisibly floats above. Stepping out of the rain that fell yesterday, some drops from my umbrella fall toward a bag of fresh bread in my hand and I wonder: did any drops got on the food? Can I eat this?

Radiation breeds irrational fear: invisible and carried on the wind, Gamma rays flow through wood and concrete with ease. Flow through our bodies to embed intangible seeds, the fruit of which takes years to ripen. What defense is there against such an agent? Many sirens sing from abroad about this threat, yet radiation levels in Tokyo remain lower than Los Angeles. However, we are far from unscathed. The new sadness is more systemic, food and water now bear detectably higher radiation. Flowing up from the roots of life, from water to soil, rain and produce, we count particles. Adjustments by government bodies redefine "acceptable levels for human consumption" in figures I cannot equate to the coffee in my hand and the food on my plate. From now, we have to be careful about where spinach and milk comes from, and the water from my tap. On the other hand, I wonder what kind of readings you would find on oranges in Southern California, or rice is west China in the 1950s? Winds from the Gila Flats and Semipalatinsk test sites blew across the US, Russia, Europe, and China. Bikini, Nevada, northern Kazakstan all experienced many times Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, we weren't measuring spinach and milk then. What remains unspoken today is the history beyond Three Mile Island and Chernyobl, the nuclear weapons testing history. What were the radiation readings from the foodstocks of the baby-boom generation? Would they meet "acceptable human levels" today?

As the Japanese disaster ebbs out of international news for the new US aggression, we move toward recovery and problems of deep ecology. Solar, Hydro, and Wind power are the obvious solutions for the energy future but the still nuclear plans move ahead. The wind power stations on the eastern coast of Japan survived the tsunami and continue to produce power. And even if they'd been destroyed, no one would have fled their charred remains.

All the while, I pack my belongings and prepare our life for travel to a new home that was planned long before the quake. We try to maintain a sense of routine in the non-routine. Try to say goodbye to a changed place. Try and re-tune my heart to a new seismological reality.

"Here" or "There" - Yamanashi and Tokyo 3/16~17

2011-03-17T01:00:00.001-07:00

---Flee---

On Wednesday morning I saw the ordinary and familiar: my cat lounging in the dirt, old men on constitutional, deliveries made with expediency and politeness. All of these things tell me to relax, try to persuade me to settle into the unsettling.

From my phone, the TV, and the computer screen, cries resound, "duck and cover!" competes with "we'll be fine." We freeze and think, "where to?" "what's coming?" Speculation undermines my being. Speculation is the moisture creeping around my friend's eyes as she smiles and worries that we will be irradiated martyrs to the rest of the world, that she will live on a lonely island. Speculation is the knot in my stomach every time I read another embassy report. What do we learn in realizing that all of the work toward clean agriculture is ruined, that our nurturing actions toward the earth and each other are invalidated? That things may not recovery for a long time and that things will never be the same.

I cannot overcome a sense of abandoning parts of myself, memories that no longer match reality. My sense of place is formed upon these memories that each day are caste to the void without ceremony. I think this is the sorrow that people speak of when they mourn Japan: the unrememberability of the traumatic break between now and then. Through media we try to represent and grasp what happened, but our ability to transcend these events is caught in the twilight that is trauma. The wide reaching power of this event renders us emotionally powerless, yet we throw our best punches trying to prove we're still alive and that we can save what's in danger. People tell me to drop everything and just "get the fuck out!" It would be easier to react if we had no home.

Setō sunset

---All clear?---

When will this disaster finish so we can start again? Following 3/11, many including myself have embraced Japanese society as resilient and felt hopeful. However, in order to start rebuilding we need a starting point, a foundation upon which to build. It is beyond a matter of extinguishing fires or cleaning up ruble. This disaster has not ended and the call of "all clear!" seems perpetually held hostage by geiger counters, sea water, and politicians in jumpsuits.

Today we are in a hotel room in Kofu, Yamanashi prefecture, two hours west of Tokyo, separated from Fukushima by large mountains and hundreds of kilometers. Even here streets are empty. Gazing out to the street, a local acquaintance said, "no one is out, they're all eating cup ramen sealed in their tiny apartments." It's less obvious but fear is here too.

Tokyo's geiger counters were calm over the last day and a half and I wonder if our trip, this gamble for escape and a sense of relief, was well timed. Will distance alleviate our mental and physical stress? I asked before: how would it feel to not be here? In that case, 'here' was Tokyo, but for many people abroad, 'here' is Japan as a whole. People all fear for the safety of their loved ones but how far do we have to go, how much do we have to abandon to get 'there'? Unfortunately, coming to Yamanashi provided only temporary relief, much like what I would felt days ago in Tokyo as the sun sets and we can tell yourself, "we made it through another day." But the sinking feeling returns as I gaze up at my wooden ceiling in morning's sun. What seeps in? The problem is that once you start seeking for 'there' you feel that home will never be the same and therefore any resuscitation of life as you knew it is also lost. A very empty feeling.

Prior to the quake we planned to leave Japan at the end of this month. Our tiny house, filled with half-packed moving boxes, feels dark and cramped. Not organized, not ready to go. For close to five years I've tried to make Japan my home: to make this place, my place. But now we want to go if only to feel relief, to feel safe. But 'leaving' now means something different than a change of venue. We can place distance between here and there (us and them?), but where is safe, where is relief? How far is 'there' from 'here'? I feel like I'm sabotaging something: my sense of space falls apart in this suspended disaster. Today boundaries of safety and judgment are built and destroyed with each article, email, or memo. But even as I flee, judgment or action becomes no easier. This is what plagues us, lack of respite, lack of finality to confirm the effects of our action. We can judge the chance of dying in a car crash or from cancer because there are countless other examples of that risk. We cannot point to what "a 99% chance of safety in Tokyo" begets us in a nuclear disaster.

March 15th and 16th in Tokyo

2011-03-15T18:51:00.002-07:00

---3/15---

Yesterday was bad. Grey and colder than the previous: a misty slate-colored sky that felt welcoming to nuclear wind. City life felt muffled as the normal drone and brightness of the metropolis was tempered by electricity rationing. Fewer trains, fewer commuters, people quiet with their coffee and cigarettes as if neither had flavor but we suck it down anyway, for comfort. Shopping bags spill onto the sidewalk, fallen from a goods-laden bicycle, it's Japan so no one bothers to steal, yet no one picks up either.

People in Tokyo hastened plans to move to the west. From abroad more messages of care urging us to move somewhere else. From Tokyo friends I read messages of safely arriving elsewhere: Paris, Seoul, Okinawa, Osaka, or Kyushu.

I went out, took care of paperwork at the town office, had a burger with Mo, then made dinner for my co-workers at the bar, and dinner at home. I don't remember falling asleep. All of this normalcy is interlaced with moments where we feel compelled to make decisions for our own safety, and ultimately, decisions we feel could effect our mortality. Passing toilet paper lines twenty deep at the drugstore I can feel the growing tension. I wouldn't call it panic, rather the consumer-provider relationship is breaking down. You can't simply buy what you want when you want it, yet we've grown up in a world where the most common response to anxiety is to consume.

The geiger counter spiked in mid afternoon and we too thought of how we could flee and not be here. I wonder what sense of relief comes from not being here? This question made the day more difficult than any aftershock, grey sky, or consumer hoarding. People are getting out, on trains, planes, and buses. I found myself rushing to finish cooking the staff meal at the restaurant. I rushed because at that moment dusk arrived and the divide between "life as usual" and "we're getting the fuck outta here!" resounded in my mind causing a sense of limbo, of fear of rain, of exposure, at the same time spiriting me toward home but away from home.

---3/16---

Today is a beautiful spring day and businessmen push baby carts in the clear(?) morning air. As I take out the trash a dolled-up girl fingers her cellphone while piloting her bike with the other hand. Birds sing, peach trees are in bloom.

There are many things I need to do in preparation for moving home but the pace of progress has turned glacial. I don't want to ride trains and my normal alternative, a bike, also bears a sense of exposure. I will spend today packing, cleaning.

Watch minimal news and read few articles. If my friend's emails are too panicky or too detailed about the "hanging in the balance" state of the meltdown I pass over those too. I watch the geiger counter. I am unable to make the "next step" come to fruition.

"are you guys gonna go?"

"liftoff"

---Reflection/Reaction/Regret---

It's necessary to go out and see that 33 million metropolis of Tokyo continues to flow. Shops are open, papers are delivered, trash is picked up. If we stay inside closed rooms, illuminated by news screens and a solitary fear of irradiation, we might go crazy. We don't have it so bad in Tokyo. As the center of the country, as the metropole, we are also centered on ourselves. We are turning the disaster in on ourselves with our escape plans and stockpiling. My Japanese relatives are all staying here and this makes us stay here. This stubborn sentiment is of a sense of place. Foreigners are quicker to move elsewhere, we are already temporary, but Japanese friends and family (and myself too) are tied to each other in a net that binds our world, this place, together. It is relationship of emotional, biological, give and take of energy that is the basis for a sense of place. Place make us reluctant to tear that net, for to depart from that relationship undermines our being.

Aftershocks continue with some force. Even in our current earthquake-acclimated state, one tremor last night sent us into doorways or out to the streets. We are plagued by a phantom wobble that could always become something greater.

Motoko's brother said something interesting on the phone yesterday that I've been trying to understand: he doesn't mind being swept away by a tsunami or crushed in an earthquake, but he cannot forgive or accept death by an unnatural disaster like radiation. I think I'm starting to understand what this means: to be killed by a random act of nature retains one's balance with earthly existence but in the man-made causality of a nuclear disaster we can find no such randomness or balance. In this sense, people's fear is tied to a much deeper sense of regret at our human condition itself: as progenitor and failed master of a world we created.

The last few days have been...

2011-03-14T17:57:00.001-07:00

It's been a strange couple of days: image after image creating and transplanting trauma. In Tokyo, I see crisp clear spring days that we hesitate to go out in, crowded streets, and empty shelves. I feel that things will either rise to a panic or subside. It's like aging three months in the last three days. And seeing the aerial photos, the barren city, the road carved out of ruble, scarcity of basic goods, and nuclear reality, one thing keeps coming to mind: August 1945, war's end in Japan. Call it some loose reasoning but it's something about the level of destruction, the images of the tsunami-flattened town echoes firebombed cities. The voluminous but inconclusive information filling our eyes and ears brings about a state of impotence, like being unable to leave a cycle of trauma.

In imagining my state of things as similar to a country after war I could be falling into the same trap of narrativizing history into a story that fits well to assuage the seriousness or immediacy of the current situation, that I'm creating a certain view that tries to manifest itself as victim who is entitled to recover. But I wonder, does this comparison between the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown of today and the immediate postwar of of late 1945-46 gives us a bit of hope for the a next step and the future: some strength found in the ability of rebuilding and rebirth that occurred before?

Anyway, this isn't really a question because the current situation is mostly out of our hands, more complex and not to be overly simplified, but it's also a unique state of mind and being I've never experienced. And for that I'm strangely grateful.

In the meantime, all of the ups and downs of the news are not helping: better to watch/read less sometimes.

(Rather, I get more peace of mind from this geiger counter here in Tokyo and the fact that it continues to read radiation levels unchanged from before the quake: http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html )

Gravitational Modes of Viewing

2011-01-26T04:38:00.001-08:00

A new exhibition of Lee Ufan paintings.

In the quietly gesticulating art scene nestled among the winding streets of Tokyo’s Yanaka district, a series of Lee Ufan’s meditative paintings have come this month to reside on the welcoming walls of SCAI The Bathhouse.

Having recently received his own museum on Naoshima, and a solo show at the Guggenheim NYC approaching this summer, one can safely say that Lee Ufan’s time has arrived. Leaving school in Korea, Lee moved to Japan in 1956 to study at Nihon University, graduating from the department of philosophy in 1961. He is the most vocal and well-known artist of the Mono-ha (School of Things) movement originating in the Sixties when Lee drafted the group’s manifesto, expounding a theory of minimalist expression and relationality that he continues to perfect today.

Oil on canvas, 218 x 291 cm Photo: Norihiro Ueno" title="Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse" class="arc90_imgcaptionIMG" height="428" width="518">

Lee Ufan, 'Dialogue' (2010)
Oil on canvas, 218 x 291 cm Photo: Norihiro Ueno

Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse

As with most minimalist modern art, Lee’s work is best viewed with time and silence. Part of the great acclaim showered on his Naoshima museum is the result of collaborative planning between Lee and architect Tadao Ando to create rooms optimized to facilitate what I call a ‘gravitational’ mode of viewing, with paintings applied directly to the walls and stones embedded in the floors to avoid disrupting the totality of environment.

Most of Lee’s work can be divided into sculpture or painting, with similar concepts flowing through both. For sculpture, immovable stones and sheets of swarthy steel lean against a wall to create their own gravitational presence, while Lee’s painted works tend to be swaths of sandy textured painted waves, color gradation residing solitarily on large white backgrounds. Works from both styles imbue the exhibition space with a deep sense of their presence, like the pull of heavenly bodies against each other. The physiological density of rock, wood, pigment, and metal attract tendrils of light, nebulae of space, and the satellite of the viewer’s gaze in orbit around the work, binding the whole room together.

Photo: Norihiro Ueno" title="Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse" class="arc90_imgcaptionIMG" height="345" width="518">

Lee Ufan exhibition at SCAI The Bathhouse
Photo: Norihiro Ueno

Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse

The works at SCAI for this show are all canvases with ‘waves,’ sweeping gritty paint made from stone pigments, meticulously brushed linearly to form a monochrome ebb and crest. These works convey Lee’s meditation on material, on form: the straightness of a line, the precision of technique. One does get the sense that Lee could keep making these waves indefinitely, and that viewing such works is more about viewing periods of his creative meditation than autonomous statements. At SCAI the viewer must bridge the off-white canvas and white walls of the gallery to achieve the sense of continuity between the presence of the wave and space of surrounding room. Lee said that ideally there should only be one ‘wave’ alone in a whole room to achieve the proper ratio or relationship to the overall space.

Oil on canvas, 227 x 182 cm
Photo: Norihiro Ueno" title="Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse" class="arc90_imgcaptionIMG" height="444" width="257">

Lee Ufan, 'Dialogue' (2010)
Oil on canvas, 227 x 182 cm
Photo: Norihiro Ueno

Courtesy of SCAI The Bathhouse

While the generally held description of Mono-ha emphasizes the relationship between things, Lee pointed out that this is a common misconception in both Japan and abroad. Mono-ha is “not just a close-up on Things,” he says. Rather, “we tried to draw out those things that didn’t have an affixed image, things produced by an industrial society, steel or glass, things in as natural a state as possible like stones or water. Basically things to which images or ideology cannot be affixed.”

This is a gesture against the cognitive trap of labeling, of ‘making sense’ through transfiguration or the preemptive act of interpretation by the viewer and artist. About the direction of Mono-ha and his own work, Lee states: “We couldn’t go on thinking in the same ways as before, we tried to draw out something that couldn’t be put into words, things you couldn’t articulate….By placing things made by industrial society or by nature in galleries and museums we asked: What can we see? How do we see?”

By collapsing the categories of natural vs. industrial production in favor of base principals, Mono-ha was able to forward a new ontological position through seeking a precognitive aesthetic, works that came before words and ideology. Arguably, this was an attempt to short-circuit the continuous yet eternally incomplete act of labeling and interpretation — a fundamental way of being for contemporary society — by excluding or preconditioning the ability of discussion and contemplation itself. While this leaves Lee open to a materialist critique (Is there no difference between nature and industrial society?), he would likely argue that I’m falling into the exact trap he tries to avoid.

Previous TABlog editor Ashley Rawlings wrote an introduction to Mono-ha in 2007.

Ornamentalism: Minimal isn’t always better

2010-03-10T08:41:00.010-08:00

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo’s annual show this year introduces artists who the self through the “ornament”.

Any stroll through Harajuku or ride on an ad-covered subway car will show you the mode human socialization at this point in history is heavily concerned with accessorizing and personalizing.

We accumulate experiences and objects to fulfill a subconscious mandate constructing an appropriate “I as I”, making “me” feel like “me”. Our championed “power of choice” finds expression via an ever-increasing amount of minutia available for our contemplation and evaluation. Contemporary urban life is an exercise (struggle) to constantly recognize and register all those possible consumer/lifestyle/political “choices” – to the point where internally we are more concerned how we navigate these choices, rather asking why we must make so many? We build a specific social self-image via an ever more detailed databasing of minitia that is bound to eventually outpace us.

In a society where the practice of accumulation and reorganization is itself a skill (read: mobility), it is quite fitting that an expression would be found in contemporary art: Ornamentalism.

At MOT’s spacious first floor gallery, “Neo-ornamentalism” is a collection of new works by young Japanese artists that attempts to grasp the potential of ornamentation/decoration with provocative techniques and concepts. The ‘ornament’ is defined as that which adds beauty and decoration as opposed to merely function; it could even be said that the Ornamental is an outward decorative display with no specific function. This exhibition finds works with an incredible distillation of material use – artists often employing a minimum spectrum of materials to achieve a rich multiplicity of forms.

Junichi Mori, 'Flare-O' (2010)

Collection of the artist.

Junichi Mori’s unbelievably delicate wooden lattices, the “Flare” and “Minawa” series, invite the viewer to get closer and mount a macro lens to investigate the mystery of how they are made. Looking an aged orange color, these works appear as a bio-mesh of nodes and rings like a fruiting alien plant from an H.G. Giger planet, though more organic than mechanical. Along with the intricacy of the works there is a creeping feel of the grotesque – as in a shriveled eye or bird’s feather, like the beauty of a catacomb: Mori’s work is the most visceral of the group.

Katsuyo Aoki’s work may appear familiar; her white porcelain skulls have shown at a number of art fairs recently. Devoting a whole room, we see white walls where the magenta painted fantasy scenes of, ‘Trolldom’ and ‘MANIERA I, II’, draw in the viewer while the glistening porcelain pieces act as a frame. On the minute level, what differs in Aoki’s work in comparison to classical rococo motifs is the use of bio-elements: small sensitive-looking bumps and openings line the contours, giving the works an erotic or marine characteristic.

Katsuyo Aoki, 'Trolldom' and 'MANIERA I, II'
Installation view of 'MOT Annual 2010: Neo-ornamentalism from Japanese Contemporary Art' at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Courtesy of author

Be careful stepping around Motoi Yamamoto’s ‘Labyrinth (Meikyû)’, an installation of precise interlocking line-patterns made from poured salt, which covers the floor of a 10×17m room. The pattern resembles a printed-circuit board and a topographical view of a coastline where rivers feed into the sea. This work’s combinations of cartographic and electronic motifs push the viewer to navigate two colliding directions of abstraction: enlargement of the micro vs. simplification of the macro, for in this work, as in others at the show like (Hiroshi Mizuta hallucinatory oil paintings and Kentaro Yokouchi’s dyed silk landscapes), the concrete is ungraspable amongst the multitude visual layers in the work.

Gazing at Mizuta’s 6m-long oil painting ‘Apartment (Manshon)’ it takes a few moments to pull the specific content out of the repetitive luminescent patterns, layered on a bruised sienna background. We see something most urban residents are familiar with: the drone of an apartment block’s façade. Mizuta’s other paintings – ‘Sidewalk (hôdo)’ and ‘Road (dorô)’ – are equally magical in asking you to pull the pattern out of the mist.

Similar effects of layered abstraction are present in a number of the 2D works: Nao Matsumoto’s ‘Midnight Constellation’ and Yokouchi’s “Book – AO NAE” series, in addition to Mizuta. Front, mid and rear planes are of depth are mixed in a non-unified way. Like looking out the window of the train at night we see three planes simultaneously; the glass itself, the interior scene reflected and the exterior scenery.

Tomoko Shioyasu, 'Cutting Insights' (2008)

Takahashi Collection. Courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE

Also playing with this visual synchronism is Tomoko Shioyasu’s masterful ‘Cutting Insights’. In a black high-ceiling room a 6m long piece of hanging paper is lit from two angles, projecting infinitely fine cutouts of a dragon and cock motif, luminously cast onto the back wall. Because of the lamps’ depth-of-focus, both the anterior and posterior layers are sharply visible.

Ornamentalism is often associated with architecture: baroque and rococo styles adorned with cherubs and fleur-de-lis, or even further back in history to the meticulous geometric patterns on ancient tombs and pottery. Today we don’t really question why minimal or functional design is a priori better than the messy, elaborate or the repetitive. But this tendency comes from a rejection of Ornamentalism with the move toward industrialized society beginning in the late nineteenth century. In this sense a return to an art based on ornamental practice is a recuperation of artistic values entirely appropriate to a postmodern age of overproduction, abstraction, and mass culture. “Neo-ornamentalism” lucidly engages with the contemporary overstimulation of the visual, providing useful discourse for the present era.

Originally published here.

Last Night's Live Show-Medicine Bone

2010-02-28T07:59:00.001-08:00

This is the new band, me and Samm Bennett form Medicine Bone, coming soon to a live house near you.

"Coolin' Stone" Asagaya, Oil City 2/21/10

2010-02-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

A new song from a show last night. The sounds coming from the guitar are not from the effectors but just controlled feedback straight into the amp. Telephone element mic makes the vocal sound too.

Some Videos of Recent Shows

2010-01-27T16:51:00.002-08:00

So for those who don't want to bother with facebook and other social networking sites I thought I'd post a video of recent music activities.

From a show on 1/17/10 in Asagaya's "Oil City Blues House"

Sandro Chia – Beyond the Avant Garde

2009-12-18T16:27:00.001-08:00

New works feature heavily in an exhibition at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Tokyo.

In 1979 art critic Achille Bonito Oliva coined a new term Transavantguadia (or “Beyond the Avant Garde”) to describe a group of young Italian artists he saw as “moving beyond” the conceptual and politically-driven work predominant in Italian modernism through the late ‘60s and ‘70s. This loosely gathered group of artists included Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino and Sandro Chia amongst others, whose work can be viewed as a rejection of political or ideological messages in a work, and a revival/return to traditional painting techniques and the subjective, impressionist touch of the romantic painter. The experimentation and novelty championed in the notion of the avant-garde subjugated artistic form to the Darwinistic mandate that art must continually advance. By measuring worth based upon newness itself the avant garde excluded the subjective, interpretive and personal dialogue within the canvas.

Spotlighted in the 1980 Venice Bienannale this group of individuals received a rapid rise in the wealthy arms of the ‘80s art world. So the impetus of Transavantgardia to devolve the constant surge-forward of the avant-garde nonetheless became itself a new artistic elite, with its members well-entrenched in institutions throughout the world. However the return to painterly skill as a positive value for art as in the work of Sandro Chia did not equate to an open-embrace of a booming art market, and his politics of practice remain key to what makes up his work.

Sandro Chia, 'Senza titolo (Untitled)' (2009)

Courtesy of Archivio Chia S.r.l.

The current exhibition by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Tokyo shows new works by Chia painted primarily in the last year. The monumentality, aggression and intensity of Chia’s work in the ‘70s and ‘80s transitioned in the ‘90s toward a soft-cubism reminiscent of Picasso. The ‘90s works held more toward hard outlines and dense coloring, while recent works of the ‘00s have moved toward a round softness not unlike Chagall. This calm, if not subdued, style beginning of late seems less personal, less legendary and more focused on the somewhat bland everyday. With rich primary colors and a more mature yet still overt masculinity, these latest works are figure studies with reoccurring themes for Chia of angel wings, Romanesque faces and Christ figures. New touches are an interest in the full female and a nice smattering of sometimes lethal phalluses. While in Chia’s ‘80s works one sees domination of the muscular male on the canvas, to the exclusion of the female. This new collection shows a renewed interest in women, albeit at times borderline misogynistic: among the variety of poses some ambiguously resemble a disinterested strangulation or beating.

Upon viewing Chia’s work the immediate sense is of Classicism and Romanticism, a claim Chia himself is likely to support. This reviewer sees his work as two-fold: to learn and support great modes of art history (while not limited to the linear progression defined by modern art’s need for experimentation), while emphasizing a need to “metabolize” those modes through interpretation. Chia, who maintains studios in Italy and the US, is a tireless worker who spends almost every day in studio. Surprisingly, he does not paint models or outdoors, preferring a studio filled with drawing and paintings spanning art history. Chia draws from a mélange of images, things printed from the Internet and magazines next to the old masters, fold drawings and twentieth century art. This practice of metabolizing the mountain of images around him allows Chia to create his own imaginary artistic world that is “rooted in the profoundly personal subjectivity of the ‘immaginario’”.¹

Sandro Chia, 'Senza titolo (Untitled)' (2009)

Courtesy of Archivio Chia S.r.l.

Sandro Chia

Where will this ‘metabolization’ of images take Chia? One wonders if the return to classicism as a rebuke to conceptual art’s “progress for progress’s sake” remains more than conservativeness or is actually able to maintain an active relationship through the “depolitization” of the canvas thirty years later. Isn’t the Transavantgarde’s gesture to “go beyond” simply emblematic of a postmodernizing trend of art in the 80s: to discard art of social politics for an unavoidable acceptance of late-capitalism? In seeking to surpass the conceptual avant-garde, Chia’s work remixes images at will (simulacra), while apolitically affirming subjectivity and individuality all in a fairly lucrative and stable mode. We can take pleasure in the self-exploration taking place through these works while also acknowledging their status as the harbinger of Art as an socially uncritical commodity. As his son stated, Chia “quotes the greats from history, makes a lot of money. ”²

¹ Benson, Timothy, review: The New Art of Italy, Cinncinatti. The Burlington Review, Mar. 1986
² Interview with author, 11/24/09

Originally posted here.

December Shows: Junior Ken, Samm Bennett, SHIMAX

2009-12-01T06:55:00.001-08:00

Hey there,

Just wanted to do a little announcing for my shows this month. It's been six months since I started playing live so things are a little bit more fun this month as I'm joined by a number of friends. On the 5th, 20th and 23rd Samm Bennett will be playing the other set along with me. He's a percussionist mainly but sings pretty dame well. You might have seen him at some experimental music shows in Tokyo. Samm will be joined by multi string-instrumentalist (meaning many different kinds of stringed instruments) Tomo which should be great.

Check out Samm's music here: http://www.myspace.com/sammbennett

Then, on the 20th and 23rd Max and I will join our paltry collective juices to form (for a limited time only) "SHIMAX", a two-piece part blues, part punk band that's guaranteed to be shittily pleasing. Then on the 21st I've been invited to play with my friend DAICHI at is event in Koenji. He does some pretty good singer songwriter stuff. It'll be my first show out of Asagaya...

Details are:

■Dec. 5th, Samm Bennett/Junior Ken
8:00 open, 9:00 start 500¥+drink
JR Asagaya Sta, Chicago Blues House
(http://chicagoplanning.com/chicagomap.html)

■Dec. 20th Samm Bennett+TOMO/SHIMAX
7:00 open, 7:30 start 1000¥+drink
JR Asagaya Sta, Oil City
(http://chicagoplanning.com/oilcity.html)

■Dec. 21st, 「No　Way　Out　Vol.３」　Junior Ken／マーガレット廣井　／ＤＡＩＣＨＩ　
7:00 open, 8:00 start, 1000¥+drink
JR Koenji, Rakuya
（http://www.luck-ya.com/map.html）

■Dec. 23rd, ASAGAYA BLUES SHOW vol.6　
Ruby Eiko　／　Samm Bennett／　SHIMAX ／　　Mari & Kyu_Blues
7:00 open, 7:30 start 1000¥+drink
JR Asagaya Sta, Oil City
(http://chicagoplanning.com/oilcity.html

I've never played at Rakuya before but I've heard it's a tiny bar much like Chicago, always a good dark feel at those places. Oil City is a bit nicer, big enough to fit a tiny drum set and tables.

Hope to see you there!

Chill of Winter Playlist & The Great Zombie/Apocalypto Write-off

2009-11-13T21:41:00.001-08:00

Playlist Title: "Sitting on a bench on a Hill Watching the Sun Set over the City (on a clear winter day when like black dots zombies appear swarming on the horizon...)"

aka my post-apocalyptic/zombie movie soundtrack

down load here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4fwywf

How to explain this...what began in a still and contemplative mood about the chill of a sunny winter's day descends into night, and along with it a the music that I always thought would be good for a post-apocalyptic film. Said in another way, it's a collection of rather great and sometimes intense instrumental music for the bleak beauty of winter.

I thought it'd be fun if YOU, talented friends of mine, wrote up short scenarios based upon what you think the narrative for these songs would be. I don't know about you but there are so many bad zombie and diaster films our there that I'm sure you could do better.

The song order is not set in stone but I've ordered them in a strategic way for my scenario. How long they play for in your mental movie and what order they go in is up to you. You are also allowed to delete and add up to three songs but the total number should remain the same. Like one song could just be for a short scene and cut off in the middle, interrupted by the energy of the next song. The 'montage' effect of how you line-up and overlap can be used in anyway to shock or sooth etc.

--------------------------
Author:
Setting:
Character(s):
Plot:
Narrative:

(body)

(epilogue)

--------------------------
My take:
Author: Ken

Setting: A medium sized city in Japan-Present Day

Protagonist: I'm a foreigner teaching English to businessmen.

Plot: Our present state has reached a level of subconscious anxiety/neurosis and chemical/genetic/environmental modification that has come to effect not just our allergies and cancer rates but our genetic code--a "genetic psychosis," an agitation of our DNA makeup itself. It begins with a few people but has a chain reaction, like a fad or trend flipping the switch toward spontaneous genetic reorganization that sweeps along the networks spread through the global metropolis We no longer have the ability to mediate our reactions; a governing sense of social norms no longer exists. The thin line of tolerance that held all the energies together in something called society is crossed. Those who "Changed" are like animals, there is no logic of the self, they are post-human, working only upon their unmediated greed and desire, they want they kill, if they desire they take, they are the true post-modern human being of instant gratification. Luckily, it's a disease of sorts so it also kills those who contract it but not until after a period of frenzy. The trajectory of the story is not a full blood & guts style film.

First establishing a painfully recognizable everydayness, the film proceeds to dismember itself, showing what lurks always: a society driven by its all-to-human urges. Chaos erupts but the violence is not long lasting and the film is more about the world in it's bleakness and reflection upon what brought about this cataclysm. Finally there is a kind of redemption through understanding of our ills and even a kind of beauty in the cathartic process. The soundtrack spends more time in this contemplative space than in chaos leaving us to looking at what we've done to ourselves.

----------------------------------------------
Narrative
----------------------------------------------
(DO MAKE SAY THINK) A nice day in a city in winter, clear and sunny, just warm enough to open the windows and blow out the confined air of heaters and coffee. Sounds of construction and preschoolers drift in and out through the white curtain. I go out, riding the train to work, voices echoing off the tile walls of the tube.

(toe) Reading a book on the roof of my building and drinking tea during lunch break I look down at the streets. People like ants converge on the sidewalks endlessly flowing into each other. Closing my eyes I look through my red eyelids at the sun.

I notice more masks worn by my coworkers today, more people coughing. New flu is taking it's toll. It's too wide-spread now to quarantine anyway.

(TVOTR) [A night out montage] Drinks, live music and camaraderie at a standard smokey izakaya. We witness a mildly intense fist fight to establish a boundary of "normal" violence. The montage culminates in a buzzed walk home on dark streets alone and a shot a key entering the lock of my apartment. [Enough with the creation of identifiable normalcy right?––this has been and always will be nothing but a facade under which lingers the inherent need for disruption. But before this can happen a moment of foreboding enjoyment helps]

The next morning going down the escalator into the subway I hear people running, calls echoing. (LITE) Sirens sound in the distance and I turn to look back up escalator at the sky and people's silhouettes flash by, I start running down, slip in a pool blood and fall on my back. I get up quickly, scared but someone had already grabbed me. Another man has gashed his leg, people are gathered around, tense and trying to help the man but there's too much blood. I'm stained in this dude's blood, people are looking at me, or away from the whole scene, making their way to the trains, something is strange, too many masked people. Then from the group some people descend onto the injured man and those with blood on them, like me. I can feel an animal urge rising inside me, I have to get out of there. (Melt Banana) I run into the bathroom, a scream outside. Locking the door I listen to an eerie silence that slowly changes to many running feet and collisions. I look at the fluorescent light on the ceiling and notice a hatch just as a pounding erupts on the door. Climbing up I beat at the hatch before noticing the ring lock. The banging stops, I look back, then try and get up through the hatch just in time before the door breaks down and a very fresh looking Office Lady zombie, sweeps the room banging her bloodied Gucci bag against the sink . Clawing at my shoes I pull myself down the air shaft-her hands reaching up through the lit opening.

(Zombi) I make it to a service room; hands are cut up and dirty. Washing my hands in a utility sink I see a ladder leading up in the mirror and workman zombie making his way toward my back quickly. In slow motion I fall to the ground clumsily and the workman crashes into the sink, I run for the ladder but another workman zombie comes at me from the left, I have no weapon. Grabbing a cinder block I hurl it at he zombie's head stunning him and make it the ladder and am almost all the way up when they pull my leg, I slip hitting my chin on a rung but pull free dazed. I make it to a catwalk but pass out. (Explosions in the Sky)

Slow make my way somewhere else. (Jump to later that day, I've made my into subway service corridors) I've tried every public phone around, a time of no reply. Things burn around me, old ladies with their shopping carriages attack cops and salarymen attack each other. I just start running out of the city. It seems like the zombie are half content half weakened and now starting to die of the disease.

[Hereafter I don't really have a narrative of specific events to finish out the tracks. Rather, there is just the surreal state of trauma like when your ears are ringing and things move slowly. Something closer post-apocalyptic rather than the fury of a zombie attack, like walking through the ruins of a city (MONO). I watch the sun set over a burning oil refinery on the water’s edge (God Speed You Black Emperor). At this point, the magnitude of what occurred starts to takes on a sense of a destruction that humanity brought upon itself. Not a reclamation by nature, rather nature is also not doing so good but now neither are we. (Of course, the narrator must survive to tell the tale but in all likelihood we would have perished as well.)

I wander out of the city (Eluvium), everything has turned to gray and ash but then the sky starts pouring down and I seek shelter in barn on a hill. The barn is half destroyed, and through the holes I can see the stratosphere turning from gray to black as the fires are extinguished and sky is no longer illuminated. The rain continues as things go from black to dark blue and then it stops (Max Richter), revealing a night sky of such emptiness: an intense vacuous blue both that seems to suck my earthly existence into space.

Epilogue (Biosphere): After the climactic rise into destruction things have descended into a stillness that didn’t exist before. A dim morning arrives and silence that creates great space takes over the world, a space that in the current metropolitan world could only be brought about through great violence, a great cleansing. Now I'm (as a viewer) left to wonder if I didn't always desire this kind of world provided I survive and in thinking that am struck with an enormous guilt. Even when it's all over nature is reassuming some equilibrium but in the shadows the events of the past year have combined with nature to make a world seared into a new era.

-----------------------------
==This playlist would also work quite well accompanying this book: World War Z--a strange almost NPR-audience oriented oral history of fictional world Zombie devastation. ==

What does Bike Messengerism Really Deliver?

2009-09-02T04:31:00.006-07:00

This had been on my mind for a while but I was motivated to write when I was in one of the eclectic books and kitsch goods chain store "Village Vanguard" here in Tokyo today and noticed not one, but THREE MAGAZINES DEVOTED TO BICYCLE MESSENGER FASHION!

Dude, come'on, if you need to look in a fashion magazine to learn about how to fit the part, you've lost the basic tenets of bicycling lifestyle (Cyclism): it's a personal choice to use your body, be in contact with your environment and not pollute. Not to mention beat traffic, save money, and learn your city. At a deeper level, Cyclism is subversion of the global system of oil dependency, the violence and pollution that accompanies it, as well as a move toward independence and health. Part of this image of freedom and self-reliance is naturally attractive and therefore marketable.

I can't totally damn the magazines because if people change their lifestyle toward Cyclism from following a trend then the total effect is ecologically positive despite the shallowness of the impetus. But we also cannot remain silent to increasingly quick commodification.

In the large sense, the most significant aspect of Cyclism is arguably the environmental effect. Secondly, as a political move, avoiding the use of cars undermines the global market of dollars and gallons. The Gulf War, the Iraq War, the nuclear arms tensions with Iran, Israel and Japan's need for American military protection, what are they all for if not to secure oil?

It's common sense that people ride bikes because they are convenient, efficient, cheap and healthy right? But this shift toward a cyclism lifestyle carries meaning. Realistically, society cannot run without oil, not everyone can work within a cyclable distance to home. You can't carry home stuff from Costco or Ikea on a bike. But this is the current state of things – we also know that for the future this is not infinitely sustainable and sometime sooner rather than later societal change must take place. Just as we clean up the messes of the past, this means we have a duty to those unknowable people of the future. This change takes place on the level of the individual.

It is the initial gesture against globalism, against a system measured upon surplus value that makes cyclist (messenger) culture a choice that creates political actions everyday. However, the political consciousness for the individual is robbed when cycling culture is communicated primarily as a accesorization of one's fashion lifestyle. Like Ché T-shirts or the "Dada Café," systems of meaning, analytical gestures are picked up, reconfigured by politically meaningless repetition that usurps the not only the significance of the original action but also the depth of it's continued social relevance.

Bike are great, ecological, healthy, fast, efficient, I could go on and on. The thing I take issue with is how it takes the commercialization of messenger culture to get people interested in environmentally self-evident things. The trendiness of the messenger exterior gets people buying road-racing single-speed bikes and emulating a look to make that bike fit. Not to mention the machismo of no-brakes, no-helmets – the sexiness of risk also adds to the appeal but only in an egotistical way. Fashion will always be there to pick up the markings of the new sexiness, or a new counter-culture to sell to consumers who are aware enough to be searching for "the new" but unaccustomed to look for deeper significance. Built upon repetition and novelty, the fashion game depends on the quickest possible recognition and commodification of political content. Unfortunately, the reproduction of this content is only surface repetition, subconsciously stealing and diluting the consumer's (all of our) inclination to search for deeper connections between their actions and society as a while. At this point in history, this is the depth people are willing to accept.

At some point the political content of the messenger aesthetic was recognized as a genuine movement of individuals to secure a new space within society. And it was only moments later that others, recognizing the value of this movement tried it themselves. This was new evolution of Cyclism into an urban environment within the age of oil and was recognized as political lifestyle choice. Racers and punks got together to ride and take over the cars. This choice is likely evident in your city as seen in the rise of new riders copying the sexy single-speed model religiously with big shoulder bags (not to mention how this look has spread outside of the cycling community, just look for a messenger bag). Many new-comers to cyclism, not just the fashion, cannot break from the images of this fashion-lifestyle to a larger concept of how this works for them, politically and environmentally, and how this requires continued thinking and evolution about how to move beyond the latest offerings of fashion to why it is we search for self expression against dominant society in the first place.

Let's think about what a messenger represents in terms of social class and we might understand some larger movements in terms of the larger phenomena reification of visual culture. They are physical laborers. Uneducated risky physical labor, but you don't see people emulating miners or construction workers. It's the subversive gesture of their labor that makes it different as well as what makes it target being propagated through capitalism channels.Their bodies bear the signs of their labor and are symbolic of their commitment to an antagonistic stance toward their role in a dominant capitalist culture. Just like hippies or punks rearranged their exterior to reinforce their interior solidarity, the non-conformism of the messenger serves a purpose to identify and solidify their feeling of communal political action as an environmentalist insurgency of sorts. Here we see the remaining power of the lower-classes (at least as political image) within developed nations are seen as not powerless, just too easily reified and mislead.

In conclusion, I'm advocating daily action of individuals: ride bikes, get your friends to ride bikes, fix bikes, build bikes, give bikes away. Also, be aware that your action carries a political gesture against the dominant social class, against the dominant mode of production. See your society realistically, through the material conditions of your existence and take action to make your place in that society fulfill your duty to yourself and others.

---------------------
Some tangential thoughts:
-We do also see a rise in cyclism in general, those people who approach it socially-politically from the beginning. Often they're riding not-sexy bikes but it can it carry weight and ride it all day. They've been around since the invention of the bicycle.

-Also, the recent spree of TV shows that focus on messengers is also indicative. A type of typical show on Japanese television where some seemingly new and independent individuals (in this case three bike messengers from Tokyo) go out to help some elderly people through their new profession and the audience gets a nice cry when they have to leave after their week of TV crew laden philanthropy. Now they are sentimentally socially identified, conformed, manageable within the framework of pleasing humanism, disassociated from the political.)

For an example of the thin line easily crossed between spreading ideas and selling them see this article in Ping Mag.

"Superflat Japanese Postmodernity"

2009-08-31T19:28:00.002-07:00

Just some thoughts on a talk Azuma Hiroki gave at the inaugural USA Super Flat opening in LA.

Outlining a more coherent reading of post-war consciousness and its permutations for Japanese culture than Murakami Takashi, Azuma's text was able to take the ideas developed in the Little Boy/Super Flat series further, and in my opinion to a more substantial end. Azuma proposes a model of an information database, a vast collection of symbols and stories from which participants catalog, classify and rearrange at will. The surface non-distinction of neither original nor copy of the products around us (i.e. simulacra) is taken from some continental theorists (Kojeve, Lyotard, Baudrillard) and applied to Japan to explain the relationship of otaku (consumers) to their object (commodity). How simulacra are constantly rearranged to create new surface arrangements rather than new depth. This lack of depth is for Azuma a loss of Grand Narrative. Meaning, those collectively held beliefs that created cultural continuity in the past (religion, national effort etc) provided deep-seated ideas that transcended the connection between the individual and the community have how been lost and replaced with ultra-detailed(database) but shallow(simulacra/super-flat) relations.

Replaced with these wide but shallow relations into which individuals create their own depth through micro-narrative consumption and creation, Azuma is attempting to give us insight onto the overwhelmingly complex nature of contemporary human interactions. Essentially, the ability to reach the depth of individual/community transcendental consciousness (grand narrative) is no longer operational but that's ok, so now it's time to understand how consumer culture and our actions within that culture. For more on this however, the essay seems a bit lacking. Moving on to newly Azuma's newly translated 2001 book on the subject is one possible next step.

Azuma also raises the issue of the interrelation between American consumer culture and the conceptualization of post-war Japan. How the tension between Japan's desire for domestic, creative, and historical sovereignty are always to some degree denied because of the adoption/influence/evolution of American social models. How the defining motivator for Japan is contemporary culture is American consumer culture but how it is not so simple as to talk about influence, rather we have to talk about sociology and investigate how these tensions interact. Accordingly, for Azuma the social habits of otaku speak to this and provide what I feel is a critique of Japanese consumer habits as a whole.

One interesting distinction that came out of the discussion was just how the word 'otaku' is used for Azuma. In general this buzzword has been tossed around for a while meaning someone who is interested in a specific medium unto the point of exclusionary and anti-social behavior. But for Azuma, it is not about the obscure sub-culture specialist but rather those who investigate into the details of mainstream pop culture and through their action regain a foothold therein. As we talked about this, it became apparent that a critique of the word 'otaku' would run into certain problems if proposing a social theory about those interested in obscure specialization (rather than mainstream) by diluting any specificity of the argument due the subjects diversity.

I've used "otaku" to indicate anyone for whom the act of investigation/knowledge accumulation itself stands to compromise the integrity of the original object. Also, I've used it to explain seemingly strange, perverted or overtly obscure knowledge accumulation (Mandarake, Disc-Union Progressive rock-kan etc). However, Azuma's critique is not leveled against these groups of obscurist enthusiasts. Rather, the thing that makes his critique viable as a social critique is how he views otaku as the people who take mainstream culture (that which is designed for the largest audience) personally, and make their task to expand outward horizontally from the mainstream defining all outlying points of referentiality. For me, this seems rather close to talking about our relationship to the array of products, signs, and symbols (of Tokyo). How we know about, compare and catalog the data that makes up our knowledge of the world. But also, how there is a sense of ungroundedness and replaceablity in those things as well.

The Essence of Elements: Ito Kosho’s Distilled World

2009-08-16T21:18:00.009-07:00

Ki-no-niku, Tsuchi-no-ha (Flesh of Tree, Blade of Dirt) 1991

Showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo 8.1~10.4 2009

By K.M. Shima

Unlike a painter or photographer whose most basic materials are supplied to them, the cermaicist begins with the essentials of physical life: stone, soil, and water. In his 70s, Ito Kosho’s works can be defined by their search for the primordial character of materials and harmony rising from principles of nature and the ceramic medium.

Ito’s work examines the natural world through a dialogue between organic and inorganic nature. Rather than scientific determination of molecule and atoms, Ito has holistically distilled the material’s essential plastic form. The materials used could be in no more essential form than Ito has exposed.

Although Ito’s work is often placed exposed to natural elements, it resists the kind of dialogue with organic nature that the methods of Landscape Art emphasized; specifically the work Richard Long comes to mind. Long’s works holds essential the incorporation of materials of the region, whereas for Ito, it is a reversal. Instead of basing the material of the work in the natural environment, using things which decay, erode and eventually return to the natural world outside the studio, Ito has created a dialogue between the natural world within the materials themselves aiming not outward, like the interrelationships of an ecosystem, but inward, toward the forms within the material’s intrinsic natural harmony.

Most all of Ito's works are composed of similar objects displayed en masse and bearing a deliberate lack of the artist’s hand. Due to the untouched nature and the multitudinous placement there exists the harmony of things in nature without eliminating individual variations. As no two grains of sand are identical and Ito emphasizes this autonomy by placing some pieces as if they have a will of their own, slowly edging out of the space as in “Tananmentai”, “Seafolds” or “Feldspar”.

From the mixed acrylic shine and matte themes of the “Chromatics” series to the wavering vertical planes of the “Ki-no-niku, Tsuchi-no-ha (Flesh of Tree, Blade of Dirt),” all shapes appear to have developed in their own natural processes, like crystal formation, erosion, or bone development. In one aspect, the aesthetic of natural formation is reminiscent of the organic cycle but Ito’s work lacks a truly organic aspect in that everything is appears as distilled slices of a total spectrum. Therefore, however minimized the artist’s hand may be the artist process remains the focal point. The process of firing itself is captured, leaving a sterile and scientific appearance like a dissected or microscopic view of the artistic process as in “Fired Frozen Clay” or “Folds of Clay-Blue Freeze”.

The 1984 work “Eros of Alumina (The White Soilders are…)” fills the cavernous main gallery. The material used, alumina, is a hard, abrasive material with a high melting point and neutralizing white refractivity, has been fired until varying degrees of disintegration. Arranged in a bright circle on the floor of the gallery, the work also unmistakably triggers a likeness to a nuclear blast site: outwardly radiating rings and square, building-like shapes. Not the blackened aftermath of destruction, rather Ito has captured the split-second of the flash in view-encompassing 3D, providing a space of enduring contemplation, something unattainable photographically but rendered here through texture, light and space.

This retrospective presents Ito’s thorough investigation not just into materials, but his endeavor to convey a primacy of the medium and the conceptual relationship of one who works with elemental building blocks of an earth-bound existence.
Eros of Alumina (White Soilders Are...) 1984
--------------------------
Museum Info Here

Published Version Here

Show Me the Pinky Violence

2009-08-15T17:52:00.003-07:00

8/4/09
At Laputa cinema in Asagaya this month, late-night audiences are treated to what we all want to see: violence, debauchery and the fall of the status quo, all through the world of 1970s Japanese High School girls—the “Terrifying Girls School” series.

It’s 1972. For the last ten years or so the Japanese film industry has harkened to the signs of decreasing audiences and the rise of TV’s popularity, and has moved toward a more action and flesh-driven commercial model. First with the rise of taiyôzoku (Sun Tribe) films like Crazed Fruit in 1956, then yakuza film’s dominance, going from chivalrous and polished ninkyo-eiga, to hardboiled and realistic jitsuroku-eiga throughout the 1960s, Japanese film-makers responded to low budgets and waning box office sales by doing more with less. Keeping audiences in the theaters lead to films upping the spectacle. Youth film conventions that were offensive, not to mention illogical, like the rape victim falling for her attacker—that classic chauvinistic male-fantasy beginning in the mid-1950s—develop and evolve, with the 1970s changing the female role to be the active advocate of revenge against family in the Red Peony Gambler series (Fuji Junko), or against rape itself in the Lady Snowblood films.

Increasingly in the 1970s more studios were turning their production toward Roman Porno (Romantic Porno), aka “Pink” films, films that contain regular doses of the flesh. But unlike later hardcore video adult films, these films were soft-core and made to screen in theaters in Cinemascope, and were directed by professionals with structured plots and quality images. Often, commercial directors who came of age in the 1970s had no other genre within which to make films, resulting in creativity expressed within the confines of the genre. One vein known for more abnormal sexuality and exquisite violence are those films made at Toei of late known as “Toei Pinky Violence” through their rediscovery since the 1990s.

What can you do within the mandate of budget, of talent, of showing flesh every five minutes? Whatever grabs people’s attention: spurting blood, thrashing fight scenes, sex, seduction and the indomitable femme fatale grace the catalogue of Pink film’s heyday. The 1970s were a time when certain conflicting elements came together: studio quality, talented directors, low-brow content, and the need to pique interest gave rise to films that have experienced a comeback in recent years for their ingenuity and uniqueness.

At Laputa Cinema on the Chuo-line is screening four films for their late show that explicate just such a moment of genre brilliance: the “Terrifying Girls High School” series.

Bringing together the attitude of defiance from Kansai yakuza films and the sailor suit-wearing joshi-kosei (Girls-school girls), this series set in Kobe uses the High School setting to act out revenge and rebellion scenarios where school girls, typically the objects of fantasy or the victims of sexualized violence, take it upon themselves advocate their place in society and their role as master of their own destiny.

Conceptually an attack leveraged against male patriarchy, these films are nonetheless exploitation films on the surface. Breasts are flung out, crude jokes are told, street brawls and teacher seductions abound. Yet what must be kept in mind is not just the spectacle (however enjoyable or deplorable you find it), but how this kind of ostensibly soft-core cinema is engaged in a dialogue with the lineage of B-film in Japan. The conventionalization of violence and sex in entertainment film has been subverted here—traditional devices of female subjugation become the tools of empowerment.

The first two films in the series are directed by renowned Pink film director Norifumi Suzuki (School of the Holy Beast). At Kobe’s Seikô Gakuen school (seikô being a homophone for ‘purity’ as well as ‘intercourse’) things are out of hand. Girl gangs rule the school and the teachers are happy to just turn a blind eye to the lack of education while proclaiming their school’s motto, “We make refined young women and caring mothers”. The protagonists Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike both have suffered injustice that they are trying to remedy through rebellion.

The second film takes a different girls’ school to task; again agitation between girl gangs provides a catalyst for exposing the corruption of the school’s officials. Replete with scenes showcasing Kobe’s division of industrial bay and affluent hills, concepts of social class are emphasized. This film brings down pretensions of cultural capital in the pedigreed “girls’ school” education through riotous destruction.

In the third film in the series, directed by Suzuki’s disciple Seikô Sugimoto, the girls who rebel are those stigmatized in school by their poverty or mixed-race. In the final installment, the prestigious study abroad program is exposed as a prostitution ring and the girls must avenge the death of their friend.

In Tokyo, subculture is still more marginalized that in America, where “subculture” (music, cinema) has been subsumed into the channels of mass-culture. These films are luckily receiving a DVD release, however much of Japanese 1970s B-cinema is still unavailable on DVD and definitely difficult to view outside of Japan. See these films while you are here or not at all.

■Screening at Laputa, Chuo-line Asagaya Station 8/1~9/11

The Postmodern Guide to Train Travel

2009-06-27T20:32:00.008-07:00

Yuichi Yokoyama’s “Travel” (2006)

No rail system boasts as many lines, interconnections and crossed paths as Tokyo. Although Mexico City moves more people per day, one can certainly say that the train car environment in Japan is, for the most part, sterilely clean and markedly speechless, free from the boom-boxes, squeeze boxes and soapboxes that detract or enrich other countries’ rail systems. Things move efficiently most of the time and the relatively high level of hygiene makes tight quarters more bearable. But how do we interact, if at all, on trains?

In Yuichi Yokoyama’s painstakingly constructed manga "Travel" one encounters a postmodern world through a wordless train society. On trains we engage in superficiality; it’s all we can do. In fact, rather than the careful verbal maneuvering such as that which takes place in the office or the bar, on the train we engage in purely in a visual assessment of people around us.

Yokoyama is known as a painter as well, but this foray is on the printed page. His extreme attention to mise-un-scene in the cell renders words unnecessary and conveys an amazing unique modern society, one that feels like a Kraftwerk-inspired engineer-sociologist-cynic’s dream. The world of unspoken image exchanges, of the gazer and gazed, interactions that we cannot pin down with an utterance; the visual (architectural, fashion, facial) features that operate in that world.

With about ten years of planning and three years of work, “Travel” rewards the reader who searches these deceivingly simple images for a world bearing traits of our own. Maybe we’ve never paid attention to the latticed concrete hillsides outside, the way I sized-up that guy or girl, the flashes of light from an oncoming train at night or the way rain streams horizontally across the window in amoeboid tendrils. But Yokoyama has nailed these things down in his own semiotics of the rails. Yokoyama solidifies a range of certain looks, glances, wayward gazes and hidden peeks that form the most substantive human interaction in this anonymous place. He captures moments that we easily miss in his own linearly engineered universe.

But don’t be mislead, this is not documentation of Japanese trains or Japanese society exactly. The settings and inhabitants appear quasi-European (but don’t most characters in manga?), however in a non-stereotypical way. Everyone’s features are reduced to a strange set of nose, mouth, eyes, hairstyle and clothing. Shapes appear at first to be just random abstraction but as you read on you realize this stylization is more of a distillation and minimization of those features that we classify people all the time tinged with the sardonic. This visual style is effective in articulating our superficial engagement with an over-populated urban environment.

At its core, “Travel” is the journey of three people from one place to another – from rural toward urban landscapes. The society has recognizable elements of Japanese life but works more as meta-manga, explicating the medium’s euro-centric depictions of people through their overt simplification. It conveys more without words than any attempt by the most contemporary jargon. This manga is truly a work of art, which, unlike so much contemporary art’s denial of an interpretive gaze, actually yields a critical stance. A must for those of us who travel on trains regularly, this nice dose of irony points out the nuances

Published in the states by East Press 2006

Amazon USA
Amazon Japan

Kaneuji Teppei

2009-04-15T17:28:00.005-07:00

"Melting City, Empty Forest"
at Yokohama Museum Of Art

How do we visualize the building blocks of our world? Do we picture raw materials like sand, ore, trees or oil? Or do we construct from refined forms like bricks, girders, boards and plastics? In our industrialized world we construct things from already produced items. A world of surplus, of things unneeded, provides some artists like Teppei Kaneuji, with a mass of things ready for re-use.

Born in Kyoto, Kaneuji graduated from Kyoto City University of the Arts. His work has been exhibited in group shows at the Mori Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, with this first solo show in Yokohama sealing his status as rising star of Japanese contemporary art. Spread across two large galleries and a video room at the Yokohama Museum of Art is a collection of collage, photography, and sculpture, with copious use of plastic goods, resin, plaster and driftwood, some seventy per cent of which are works especially created for this exhibition.

Kaneuji is known for his assemblages of commercially produced goods. Not exactly ‘found’ as in discarded refuse, but ‘found’ to have different possibilities of use. He states, “(t)hese objects originally existed with a different meaning. Using them was meaningful.” As we find out, beyond creating meaning simply through the act of ‘use,’ these works carry a strong ambiguity. These works dwell upon the interplay of relational forms rather than any nuance in the details.

Teppei Kaneuji, 'Splash and Flake (Pipeline #1)' (2009)
Wood, Plastic and Steel Products
h.88×80×58cm

Courtesy the Artist
Photo: eric

In the first large gallery, works from the “White Discharge”, “Built-up Objects”, “Outline” and “Splash and Flake” series are on display and a neutral blend of white and crème tones dominate the room. A single black line that resembles the coastline from a map runs the perimeter of the room, weaving into collages that hang on the walls. Throughout the space, “Built-up Objects”, a series of homemade symmetrical temple-like sculptures of plastic goods covered in white resin rest. Concealed by this melting plastic ‘snow’, the distinct colors of the constituent plastics goods – the colors that would otherwise break one piece from another – are neutralized. The 2D collage pieces of the “Outline” series similarly imply a kind of vaguely recognizable unity. With images taken from coloring books the segments are not complete on an individual level: the outline of a train or of an explosion blends into the lines of the adjacent cut-outs; the outline of mountains flow into waves, into hands, into construction equipment and so on.

While Kaneuji’s poured-resin sculptures from “Built-up Objects” bear a likeness to the works of Petah Coyne’s wax-dead flower chandeliers, they differ in what they take as basic structures: Kaneuji’s could be described as architectural vs. Coyne’s beast-organism. Coyne’s works incorporate biomatter covered in wax with forms like a giant black chrysalises or monstrous sea creatures. They both show us a ‘new life form’, however Coyne’s works seem firmly grounded in a biologic vocabulary, while Kaneuji’s comes from obscuring the relationship between biological and manufactured into a unified form. For example, the relationship between plastic doughnuts stacked upon doughnut-shaped brown, one fake makes the other cruder fake look relatively appetizing on first glance in ‘Muddy Stream from a Mug (Hot Cakes)’.

Kaneuji’s works seem like formulae of creation wherein a decided group of relations are assembled. With this approach it does not matter if there is one completed work or ten works in the same fashion, it’s the

Teppei Kaneuji, 'White Discharge (Built-up Objects #4)' (2009)
Plastic, Woods, Steel and Rubber Products, Pigment, Resin
h.201×87×87cm

Courtesy the Artist
Photo: eric

underlying construction concept that provides structure. In the series “Splash and Flake”, we see bones and plastic wares arranged like the specimen table of an archeological site, or as a standing skeleton supplemented with plastic. There are five or six similar works presenting the same relationships over and over. In ‘Sea and Pus’, photographs are overlaid with cut-out images of goop, paste and creams. In ‘Muddy Stream from a Mug’, it is brown woods and plastics, real bits of nature and those imitating nature’s gestures. Coffee-stained paper blends with scraps of wooden dowel or plastic logs. One can think of Kaneuji’s work like the skeleton or relic of a society where the boundary between manufactured and natural things is blurred, and there resides a new intermeshed existence of flesh and plastic. Living beings and the products that support their life coexist and have fused or mated. While we might still conceptualize humanity as biological, natural beings, the reality of our existence is not purely natural anymore. Like the driftwood pieces of “Splash and Flake”, wood buds from plastic joints with a grotesque but strangely ‘natural’ integration. In the skeletons of the same series, small (plastic) bones perform similar roles alongside small plastic pieces of the total structure. The final effect of this is not a human form augmented with plastic but a new yet strangely familiar form. However, while Kaneuji says he creates “forms that people cannot control,” one wonders if he could not push his work out of these cycles of construction toward a more articulate and diverse examination of contemporary society.

Original article is here.

Roppongi’s Attempt at Creating an Art Space

2009-04-08T03:26:00.003-07:00

Roppongi became a night of fun, flashy lights and crowds. Well, isn’t that a normal Saturday for the area? No, this was art…

Like any Saturday night Roppongi was teeming. Train after train of visitors spilled up onto the streets: couples, families, groups of old ladies and the characteristic old man coupled with young lady all mixed as they headed for their respective destinations.

As the sun set on the concrete byways, crowds of people flowed steadily toward the lit façades of the Roppongi Hills or Midtown complexes, or the National Art Center (NAC) and Suntory Art Museum (SAM). Tonight was a highly publicized area-wide event, where from sun-set to sun-up “large-scale art installations and live performances to delight the sense” were placed around the area. What is it to try and turn a whole urban area into ‘art space’? How are we to take in such a large-scale event?

Photo: William Andrews

Regular art venues like the NAC and SAM were open for later hours, these spaces obligingly opening their doors and their grounds to visiting series of art works: 2×2m “Art Cubes” by a variety of artists, curated by Katsuhiko Hibino. One series of cubes by younger artists entitled “Orders from the Cube” had set guidelines to include a rotating vertical axis through the middle of the cube. Each artist was thus confined to include in this space some rotating centerpiece, a theme that gave each cube the feeling of containing a heavenly body or a Christmas ornament. One work did stand out; ‘Bud of the Typhoon’ (台風の芽) had as its centerpiece a brown papier-mâché tornado that instead of spinning freely like other works was intentionally designed to get hung up on each rotation, thus breaking up the repetitive feel of endless turning.

Behind Roppongi Hills were larger works, a light and fog installation, ‘Forest of Fog’ by Fujiko Nakatani. Originally constructed in 1992, the work was installed in the rear garden creating billowing clouds of fog backlit parallax across the viewing pond. The serene, hot spring-like nature of fog over water and silhouettes of trees was completely destroyed by sound spillage from the accompanying food court and Giant Robot arena. One could not tell if this exhibit was really meant to be viewed or merely passed by, “delighting the senses” on your way to the vendors. As a result, this much anticipated work was rendered mostly ineffectual.

Fujiko Nakatani, 'Forest of Fog'

Photo: William Andrews

Everyone was gravitating toward the most heavily promoted event of the night, a giant fire-breathing robot, Kenji Yanobe’s ‘Giant Torayan’s Great Adventure’. Having seen the publicity photo of this towering, shinny, baby-faced robot blowing fire, the crowd stood with cameras poised for the promised moment of excitement. The atmosphere was thoroughly like a carnival or festival with no small amount of Universal Studios, as people passed around this work, seamlessly moving from ‘art space’ to window display, from purportedly ‘interactive environment’ to beer vendor. The live music that kept people’s attention rose in crescendo and the robot’s mundane shuttering was broken by awaited bursts of flame, people snap photos and move on. Any reflexive commentary this work might embody on, say, amusement parks, or fascination with giant robots was rendered nil by the atmosphere that rather encouraged a superficial Disney Land-style engagement.

One of the uses of space that interconnected the whole area was a procession of people holding illuminated balloons weaving through the crowds. This stream of lights formed veins of bobbing white globes showing the different paths and elevations of the urban architecture, and indicated by the flow of people through the space. Following one stream as you moved from the Roppongi Hills area toward the newer Midtown and NAC there was a change of tone and the works on display became more independent and less attention-grabbing.

Mariko Mori, 'Plant Oval'

Photo: William Andrews

The second Art Cube series, “Artist File 2009”, were three works in front of the NAC, plain white cubes for use as a simple exhibition space. Ohira Minoru’s 1994 wooden sculpture, ‘Prayer’ hung from the back wall of his cube, the varnished bent wood strips terminating at the bottom in red Wajima-style lacquer. His other work, ‘Fission #3′, was, as a little kid next to me said, a “peanut-shaped” work made of burnt and sawed pieces of wood. Each block had been sawed nearly through and broken off, leaving the scar of fission visible. Naoki Ishikawa’s 2009 work ‘photograph’ gave some commentary on the predominate use of digital cameras, with the display of three professional-level cameras that looked as if salvaged out of a shipwreck. Their bodies rotted away, they were displayed as if at a natural history museum, looking like relics of a primitive time. On the rear wall were lengths of film presumably from the cameras; two 35mm and one large format strips held no exposed images of that previous ‘time’ but rather were muddied and unreadable. This cube series functioned well as portable exhibition spaces and allowed the viewer some time to contemplate the works while still maintaining the art event feel of “just strolling by.”

One wonders if it is the nature of the works selected or the audience for which the event was curated, but I couldn’t help feeling for the most part the subjugation of any ‘art space’ to the demands of a family and consumer-friendly environment at this event. How is one to engage with works that you are herded past like a carnival line, or where the ‘work’ is placed in front of brighter, more polished and more appealing commercial store-front displays? I was very pleased to see the simple number of people who had come out for an evening where “the entire townscape of Roppongi transforms into a giant canvas of encounters with art, culture, people and wonder,” but the dominant impression was of the art works’ convenient accompaniment to people socializing and businesses selling, all in an attempt to heavy-handedly forward Roppongi’s claim as an area wealthy in cultural-capital.

For more, see TAB’s photo report.

Fuzz

2009-03-25T21:25:00.008-07:00

Of late I've spent some time getting acquainted with rudimentary electrical engineering. Not because I just got off the couch and decided it would be interesting but actually encountered it kind of peripherally.

I was searching around for what kind of equipment Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys uses. Long story short I came across one vintage pedal called the Maestro MFZ-1, a fuzz pedal. What is a fuzz pedal? An obsession. Basically they create distortion, everything from Cream to punk to blues uses distortion, essentially any not crystal clean sound like jazz guitar is using distorted. There are more fuzz pedals out there than you can through a stick at. Luckily Dan made it simple for the rest of us, supposedly he has hundreds but uses only a couple, the Maestro being one.

It turns out that these vintage pedals are actually somewhat simple circuits. Unlike the more recent digital circuitry the old ones were just a basic assortment of discrete components like resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and ICs (all of which now actually mean something to me, they didn't about a month ago). So through a number of trips to Wikipedia and Akihabara to get knowledge and parts in that order things started to come together.

Wait! I forgot the most important part, that the main factor in my interest->understanding->completion was a website that is all about making effectors/pedals yourself, from scratch and avoiding boutique/vintage inflated prices. There a small but international group of committed nerds/junkies (myself included now) hash over the finery of anything minute. This is necessary since one wrong turn, or wrong solder I should say, means a working circuit compared to a dead one. There is a certain frustration and satisfaction that comes with this kind of project. When it doesn't work it's utter failure. When it does it's complete success. There is nothing like a jagged cut through wood with a saw blade or slightly not-staight line, there is no "kinda".

Getting to the point, I just wanted to share these photos of the two pedals I've completed so far, the Maestro Fuzz, and a 1977 Electro Harmonix Big Muff (sea green one). I must say that the Maestro is more useful for me, the fuzziness is a slightly modulating graininess. The Big Muff is almost muddy and works well only on the lower end of the scale. Coming up next; Tremolo and Overdrive pedals.

That's all.

Transposition onto the Future World

2009-03-22T18:20:00.002-07:00

Predictions of the future told by Yanagi Miwa's "My Grandmothers" project at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Part of the modern condition is a constant reassessment of positions. How do we locate our place within the world, society, and the family? Globally, how do we think about the environment or the development of technology into the future?

Almost ten years ago Yanagi Miwa began a project entwined these questions, specifically for women, asking what kind of world they live in and what possible futures they foresee.

Yanagi’s work focuses on women in society with special interest in mass vs. individual mentality. In her 2000 photo work, “Elevator Girls,” Yanagi depicted numerous young women dressed alike, going through repetitive gestures and confined to narrow quarters. During that time Yanagi felt she and young Japanese women like her were “just playing a role in a standardized society” and the elevator girls helped explicate her sentiment. The series provided commentary on the (self-)repressive nature of imitation and group mentality. Visually, “Elevator Girls” employs Yanagi’s characteristic digital enhancement of studio photographs, a technique that gives her works a polished if not artificial power.

Moving away from portrayal of the repetitive masses, Yanagi began focusing on individual women for her current series, “My Grandmothers,” (2000-present). For Yanagi, young Japanese women feel the need “to be lovable and liked by everyone around them,” and this limits their ability to express their desires or dreams. In “My Grandmothers,” young women are able to express ambitions and desires about themselves by imaging themselves 50 years in the future thus detached from the restrictions of being a ‘young woman’ today.

Using digital editing, Yanagi repaints women as they might appear in their future—wrinkled and old. Each work has a text and is named after the woman depicted.

This group of unique individuals lives out personal dreams, flying airplanes for Misako or playing koto for Tsumugi, yet there is more at work here than simple completion of ambition. Misako’s text reveals she lives in a world whose environment has drastically changed, while for Tsumugi, approaching the end of her life necessarily causes closeness to nature similar to Mitsue who lies like a fallen leaf on the forest floor in her photo.

Works like Mika, Ai, Yoshie and Miwa express concerns about the women who will take over the world after their death and what is their role is in nurturing the coming generation. Environmental concerns are expressed in post-apocalyptic worlds like Mie or through biotech modifications of the body like Kwanyi. Other works like Hyonee, Shizuka and Eriko depict women as independent and successful in their professional ambitions.

Women are also able to break contemporary sexual boundaries. One ‘grandma,’ Hiroko, lives in a world where sex work is no longer illegal but mainstream. Also a lesbian couple grows old together in Regine & Yoko advocating the normalization of open homosexuality.

Deliberately excluded is the common desire to grow old with a husband and grandkids, as are women who don’t think they will be alive in 50 years. This decidedly subjective view of the future of women nonetheless provides liberating possibilities and raising pertinent if not well-known issues.

(All images are property of the artist and are available with full accompanying text on her website here)

The Changing Faces of Japan

2009-02-20T08:42:00.002-08:00

A retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, charts fifteen series spanning fifty years of photographer Yutaka Takanashi’s work, which focuses on the nature of change and urban space.

Living in Tokyo is an exercise in looking at multitude. Often impressions here are formed by ‘not seeing’, by passing over the diversity and unbalance that exists around us. We draw out landmarks from the cityscape, beacons we use to demarcate paths of familiarity without being conscious of how the urban space guides our everyday consciousness.

Yutaka Takanashi’s work creates a biographical record of Tokyo and its residents. The world within his viewfinder gives the sense of a greater composition that extends beyond the focal center to include details to the extremities of the frame. Although employing a number of different methodologies his lens is consistently focused on the minutiae amongst the mélange. In one work from ‘Tokyoites’ for example, black suits crammed into a train car dominate the image, the small headline on an exposed corner of newspaper giving subtext to mood of the scene: “Public Opinion on America…”

Yutaka Takanashi, from 'SOMETHIN' ELSE' (c.1960)

©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist

His earliest series in this current exhibition, ‘SOMETHIN’ ELSE’, is the most visually abstract. A solo show held at the Ginza Gallery in 1960, it portrays cityscape by focusing on superficial form. Monochrome images of the city’s solitary geometry are captured in a soft, diffused light and shot straight on. These works are almost devoid of people, accentuating the pure figurative beauty of falling scraps of cloth or shadows across a common commercial façade.

(from 'Otsukaresama')" title="©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist" class="arc90_imgcaptionIMG" height="211" width="257">

Yutaka Takanashi, 'Yukari Uehara, TV Personality' (1964)
(from 'Otsukaresama')

©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist

During the early 1960s Takanashi developed a reputation as a commercial photographer, winning awards for his advertising works. Throughout 1964 the portrait series ‘Otsukaresama’ appeared in Camera Mainichi magazine. In it popular media figures act out their public personas against a white background, dislocating their character from the familiar media environment while foregrounding the ‘mask’ of public image and cult of personality inherent in the rise of television culture. Flexing her muscles, child star Yukari Uehara is literally plugged-in to the television aerial through which her popularity is ’strengthened’.

Pursuing non-commercial projects, Takanashi began searching the city with a smaller 35mm camera and wide-angle lenses (21-28mm), taking snapshots of the city’s residents. These images culminated in the highly recognized series ‘Tokyoites’ in 1966. Takanashi’s mentality for this series was something between “a hunter for images” and “a scrap picker,” he said. We see in these photos young families and the overlap of generations, lifestyles and landscapes that all co-existed during this period of booming capitalization. Lacking the critique of consumerism and reification of the subsequent ‘Tokyoites 1978-83′, this first ‘Tokyoites’ portrays a people still in ambivalent awe of the rapid change in their society, and less of the contradiction mixed with complicity present in the later series.

In 1968 with Takuma Nakahira and others, Takanashi co-founded the photography and criticism magazine PROVOKE, with the subtitle “provocative materials for thought.” However, Takanashi’s works stood in contrast to Nakahira and Daido Moriyama’s work, known for being “aré, buré, boké [grainy, blurred, and out of focus],” a style that dismissed previous photographic conventions in framing and shooting, snapping without using the viewfinder and having images of unaligned and unbalanced composition. Takanashi’s style is different, being grounded in the realistic image, though it still contains its own elements of subversion, and as a group the contributors to PROVOKE had a large influence on photography.

Yutaka Takanashi, 'Sensoji Temple, Taito-ku, 29 August' (1965) (from 'Tokyoites')

©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist

‘Hatsu-kuni: Pre-landscape’ (1983-92) searches the rural regions of Japan for religious iconography and traditional ceremonies — landscapes of pre-modernity. ‘Chimeiron: genius loci Tokyo’ (1994-2001) is perhaps the most difficult series: the works are paired shots of cityscape based around a specific area (loci) of Tokyo. However, the spaces are not ‘attractions’ in the conventional sense, but just spots buried in neighborhoods or parallax views of the same stretch of street. They attempt to convey the prevailing character of their place and here we see another example of minutiae — not something necessarily small but rather commonly thought of as trivial.

(from 'Chimeiron: genius loci, Tokyo')" title="Collection of Tokyo Zokei University ©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist" class="arc90_imgcaptionIMG" height="195" width="518">

Yutaka Takanashi, 'Arakicho, Shinjuku-ku, May 1996' (1996)
(from 'Chimeiron: genius loci, Tokyo')

Collection of Tokyo Zokei University ©Yutaka Takanashi, Courtesy of the artist

Recently, Takanashi has focused on the relationship between residents and the boundaries and pathways created within urban spaces. ‘Windscape’ emphasizes the image impressed on our mind from a sudden glance from a train. Presented as a slide show the viewer has only brief seconds to grab each image before the slides advance, emphasizing that intuitive or impulsive moment of snapping the shutter Takanashi himself experienced. The most relevant series for current Tokyoites is ‘Kakoi-Machi’ (2005-6), whose wall-sized images foreground barriers, grids and borders normally unconscious – construction barriers, mock-up posters, nets and patterns of light all of which confine and define the space around us: the process of which we rarely consciously see. Through Takanashi’s lifetime of works questions are posed about the nature of change in Tokyo — of space and patterns of lifestyle, and of how much of our world remains unseen. We see here patterns of work and consumption that physically and psychologically create boundaries for our ability to see. This formulation gives us the power to transcend our patterns and makes us conscious of what we were unaware.

See the Tokyo Art Beat version here

Mazes That Lead Nowhere

2008-12-10T18:56:00.002-08:00

Bruce Conner’s elaborate works, on display at Miyake Fine Art, tread the line between formalist beauty and socio-political commentary.

Although planned prior to Bruce Conner’s death earlier this year, Miyake Fine Art’s diverse exhibit of this American West Coast artist’s work coincides in a timely fashion as the art world looks back over the five decades of his career.

Born and educated in the mid-eastern United States, Conner’s work rose to prominence in 1956 first a solo exhibition in NYC at the Rienzi Gallery, followed by two in San Francisco in 1958 at the Designers Gallery and East West Gallery, following his relocation there in 1957. Works on canvas, made with both paint and his more characteristic mixed-media “assemblage” pieces were shown in San Francisco. Incorporating found items from the city, these works were imbued with new significance and their collage-like compositions echoed the city’s urban decay and consumerism’s waste.

Bruce Connor, 'Untitled'

Photo courtesy of Miyake Fine Art

With his short film A Movie (1958), Conner made a name for himself on a larger scale helping to form his current image as a multimedia artist. Filled with images of animals and accidents the film is composed entirely of found footage that has been interpreted as a metaphor for humanity’s violent nature. In a similar sense, his work on display at Miyake Fine Arts seems composed more by a brilliant editor as the work’s expressive content originates from the juxtaposition of the constituent found items, bits of discarded consumer goods or photos and the different possible origins of those items than a direct and singular subject. The compositions express meaning in ways similar to montage; the convergence of two disparate elements produces something more powerful and unique than each alone.

Unlike the collages and films, Conner’s original drawings and inkblot works that don’t incorporate found items. These images, drawn in felt-pen, are almost maze-like, incredibly dense, intertwined and sedimentary. Unlike a maze, however, these terrains have no path and leave you searching for some point of reference. Additonally, the intricately folded inkblot pieces are minimal and spontaneous in their combination of ink and folded paper. Here one engages with the aesthetics more than any symbolic political meaning.

Bruce Connor, 'Dennis Hopper One Man Show'

Photo courtesy of Miyake Fine Art

In the heavily textured assemblage piece Untitled (1960), the relationship of the work’s structural elements and its symbolic content proves more fruitful. The found items provide antecedents to their human histories making the viewer wonder where they come from, who they might have been used by. Similar to the assemblage works of his contemporary Robert Rauschenberg who also passed away this year, Untitled transforms the canvas space into a socio-geographic terrain adorned with all manner of found items. The central mass is comprised of heavy black mortar and imprinted with Inca iconography—a bird’s wing and Mexican beadwork cloth. The centerpiece, with a roughness to it reminiscent of melted and abstracted Incan art, sits in the middle of a bed of black fur and pearls, luxury items produced for post-industrial age of relentless consumption. The work’s center and surroundings parts are enclosed in an obscurant layer of taut black nylon; a representative consumer item to transcend luxury and working-class fashion into widespread and disposable consumption.

Bruce Connor, 'Criminal Act'

Photo courtesy of Miyake Fine Art

Two films are being projected on loop on one wall, their ambient Terry Riley-composed audio providing the soundtrack to the entire exhibit. Crossroads (1976) is composed of black and white documentary footage of the “Operation Crossroads” nuclear tests conducted by the US in the Pacific Bikini Atoll in 1946, and a musical score by minimalist composer Terry Riley. Immediately recognizable, the Crossroads tests are among the most common nuclear blasts: bulbous head of the explosion erupts upwards, beyond the frame, dwarfing the surrounding placid sea. However, contrary to expectations, Conner’s film mutes the sounds of the explosion and replaces it with a soothing minimal drone. The sequence itself continues longer than aphoristic anti-war footage of a quick explosion cut with destroyed buildings or burnt-in shadows of victims and the initial explosion bellies out into a drifting white cumulonimbus body whose soothing movement placates the initial violence, derailing anticipation of a typical anti-nuclear message. Here in Conner’s audio/visual equation, the viewer ends up de-politicizing the image and instead experiencing the formal, if unnatural beauty of the bomb.

Conner made a number of works on display, such asDennis Hopper One Man Show and Criminal Act, made with the painstaking technique of photo-etching. These monochrome images abound with the hair-line finesse of detail like an etching but the intriguing aspect results from this technique applied to a photo-collage thus eliminating the usual distinct borders between constituent parts of the collage. Visual space overflows with minute detail and although the mind can distinguish various discordant images and figures, the overall visual plane appears smooth and harmonious. Some common motifs do present themselves in Conner’s work; feathers and fur, industrial antiquity, fake jewelry and nylon stockings, disembodied eyes and circular figures.

Miyake Fine Art’s exhibit allows the viewer to take in the movement, texture and atmosphere of Conner’s work through selection that creates a bricolage of his varied styles. Upon viewing, the styles and techniques of the works seem disjointed but in reflection this is something that an artist who never stayed confined to one genre or medium might have found appropriate.

Destruction Coupled with Adolescent Provocation

2008-10-06T17:30:00.009-07:00

Yasuyuki Nishio's solo exhibition at NADiff's new gallery space in Ebisu is an ambiguous portrayal of female power and destruction.

Oozing machismo and a sense of hedonistic havoc, Yasuyuki Nishio's work a series of digital enlargements of small oil paintings that depict giant sensuous women in leather outfits and bathing suits insouciantly demolishing nondescript urban surroundings that are dwarfed beneath them. The digital enlargements emphasize the bombastic simplicity of the images: these women strike the poses you would see on the first glossy pages of weekly manga or magazines devoted to hot rods adorned with bikini-clad women lounging on metal. The impresion from these works is basically manufactured male seduction, albeit with a high degree of technical skill. The women take almost no notice of the destruction they wreak despite the seamless blending of subject and surrounding.

In terms of subject matter, there are two exceptions to the clothed pin-up girls; three uniquely naked women who actively attack the city, breaking the motif of suggestive titillation with nudity. Secondly, the lone male Ultra Seven character portrayed as he withdraws his fist from a shattered rooftop. They a two of a handful of instances where the figures are actively attacking the city-scape in contrast to those others whom are posed within a spectrum of conventional heterosexual male-seduction stereotypes.

Surrounded by these giant, dominating female figures on such enlarged canvas themselves it feels as if the gallery has been turned into shrine of sorts — but a shrine to what?

The effect the spatial emphasis on the women's form is a minimization of the their actions vis-a-vis the urban landscape. The lack of emotional involvement on the figure's faces in regards to their destruction could be an emphasis on the plainly sarcastic nature of the works. However, the lasting effect of their indifference is strong disassociation of the women from the city, leaving one to speculate at the point of involving the landscape at all. Devastation of a city could evoke a range of emotions from sympathy for countless victims to pleasure from the power wielded. With an absolute neutral response what remains is simply eroticism, comedy and fantasy. This last element, fantasy, draws is a emotional relationship similar to that with an action or disaster film. The spectator is allowed a safe distance from destruction, from where they are able to enjoy violence as well a sense of power.

Filling the canvases with their exaggerated poses, and gazing directly at you, the women take on a disproportionate predominance in the image. Underlying this affront, the emotion expressed on their faces is one of contrived allure with a uniform undertone of poised self-objectification. These works seek to juxtapose destruction of the city and seduction of the viewer, but the nonplussed expression on the woman's faces make any conscious relationship between the two tenuous: Although all around buildings are crumbling and buses are being stomped on, one's primary concern remains with the model's fixed stare, rendering the destruction itself incidental.

A search for the significance of these works could lead to the discussion of the type of power that these women embody. Extensive destruction of a city requires extraordinary power but unlike politics or war the type of power depicted here does not seem to be motivated by aggression, competition or self-preservation. Makoto Aida's female figures are the physically damaged victims of sustained misogynistic abuse, but Yasuyuki Nishio's characters remain unscathed, non-aggressive and seemingly unmotivated in their demolition, although at times they appear to take satisfaction in their exploits. What kind of power proclaims no aggression yet produces large-scale social violence? Perhaps "Justice". Posited as a non-aggressive ideology, "Justice" can allow any number of social actions that validate violence, war and revenge, while simultaneously maintaining the status quo by prescriptively defining approved or unacceptable actions, essentially a form of social delineation that prevents the voice of opposition from gaining an strength.

However, Nishio's work is more likely to lead the viewer to a better understanding of his mature yet conventional heterosexual fantasy: buxom women and the terror-turned-excitement of destructive power. Indeed, there is a heavy dose of sarcasm in the absurdity of these works and in the sex appeal's blatant delivery, what purpose does this sarcasm serve? If Nishio is suggesting we explore the deeper significance of non-aggresive power in society through his seductive giants, wouldn't he do better to take his portrayal beyond the constraints of the male adolescent gaze? The lack of complexity in his portrayal of these women might function successfully as a very abstract model of social criticism — namely the message that "power absorbs the spectator's gaze while violence goes unnoticed" — but the vagueness of the urban environments makes any connection between these women and the city seems tenuous and incidental.

Finally, the world created within these works is one where one can engage in a boy's costumed fantasy however, the stage has been reset for the contemporary frustrations and fantasies of an male adult. A world where the characters have no real enemy left to fight, destruction is committed but in the pursuit of no apparent goal outside of destruction itself. One's environment itself is the threat rather than a battleground for a larger foe. The message of fantasy has becomes simplified adolescent heterosexual lust for sensuous, disposable and inane beauties.

Arakawa and Mukai-"Homelessness, Yuming cities" /「ホームレスネス、ユーミン・シティーズ」

2008-09-15T20:19:00.003-07:00

Yokohama Triennale 2008, September 15th:

　　　　"Homelessness, Yumin-cities," resided in a large corner of warehouse gallery space on a Yokohama pier. Although the piece was performance art, a linear progression over 45 minutes, 'reside' seems an appropriate verb as the piece engages in themes of inhabitation, non-perminance and remanence in the city.
　　　　The piece seeks an interactive relationship with the lofty corner space and together with surrounding spectators forms a large cube space. There is a melange of modern building materials, insulation, plywood, ladders, wires, and power tools accompanied by a group of roughly 15 people including Arakawa (荒川医)and Mukai (向井麻理)who sit casually chatting as if picnicking before they begin.
　　　　Essentially, this group of workers and materials will construct, destroy and discard. The title of "homelessness" might lead one to think of temporary transient homeless who live on the streets but this in not emphasized in the work. Rather the homelessness Arakawa and Mukai seem to be seeking is the 'home'-less renting class as well as the rapid yet disposable nature of urban development.
　　　　The performance commenced in chaotic speechless activity accompanied by music. Materials were flung about, people dashed around, but rather than randomness, a goal of construction was apparent. While some participants seemed earnestly engaged in constructing something, others had theatrical and environmental roles; running about to create a sense of urgency or 'spreading' the art space into the audience by unrolling materials or creating boarders out into the crowd more to disperse the audience than to incorporate. Throughout all of this, music by Yumin (Matsutôya), a popular pop musician of about 20 years ago, gave the atmosphere of a music video or more operatively, a montage sequence.
　　　　The constructions/sculptures were of brand-new materials assembled in a rushed and unstable way. Circular wooden bases supported circular foam tops via metal supports. Pre-fab wire racks were adorned with tape, cloth, and plastic mats. The feel of a construction site was abstractly apparent with translucent plastic walls, bubble wrap, protective carpets and other elements of urban construction containment, a visual aspect familiar residents of large cities.
　　　　The act of building was subverted by the demands of time as experienced through the countdown. Montage was created by music and action so multifarious that the spectator could actively 'cut' between different characters and activity.
　　　　Completed precarious structures sway as they are attached to hanging wires. The idea is to hoist them into the space above but after a brief moment aloft. Quickly, the action transfers to one rear wall of the space where a large square hole is cut out by power saws annexing additional space, violating the pristine white walls. Structures are destroyed and the entirety of the piece, all materials and participants cram themselves into the hole. What is left is a garbage pile that the annexed hole cannot contain. Whether this was the intention or not, the final effect is of a space which cannot be entirely returned to it's original state, like a city, they will always be a garbage dump.

But how do we read this metaphor, this work? It this space city space or personal space, new development or urban renewal?
　　　　A strong impression was the newness of all the materials in contrast with the title of 'homelessness'. My visceral reaction to the work was toward the opulence in terms of materials and technology at odds with the re-used state of homelessness. For while there was an attempt at randomness in materials, their pre-purchased condition made them an unconvincing amalgam. The work incorporated two flat screen displays toward the rear of the space, one with a countdown timer another with music videos as well as a range of audio elements, music, microphones etc. Due to the nature of construction, the technical support, the "homelessness" Arakawa and Mukai seem t be addressing is the situation of transient rental domiciles or urban design that works on the basis of disposability.
　　　　However, if this is about urban renewal shouldn't the work begin with destruction of the old? Or if it is about people who live on the streets, shouldn't the materials be reclaimed? Since the space is at first a clean construction site with new material it seems less about 'cities' and more about new-development, suburban development. It seems to refer to the new, fast and cheap building techniques and uninspired design of development housing the world over as well as the somewhat banal nature to such kinds of design.
　　　　One wonders about the symbolic significance of raising the working into the air. Assuming that all the works were intended to raise skyward for a moment during the show this could be seen as the time when the structures/buildings are 'raised to existence' as functional objects. During that time they are no longer in a state of construction nor destruction. However, unlike traditional construction whose purpose is a state of completion and inhabitance, these structure exist almost entirely outside of completion and without residents.
　　　　Disposability is especially significant in the work's conclusion; all the new materials are spent and the structures already destroyed. The carcasses of structures-buildings are piled into the hole but the workers are gone.

　　　　Performance art is naturally about the process rather than the completed work and in Arakawa and Mukai's work, the linear progress, brevity, symbolism and completion along with the title "Homelessness, Yumin-cities" seems a more pointed reference to a larger social class of working transients for whom the title could also be read, "Home-less us, you mean cities".

Misako and Rosen Gallery and the Ice Cream Social

2008-08-04T00:17:00.000-07:00

"Ice Cream Social" by David Robbins, is a short film wherein a group of congenial people eat a brown, pink and white cake, dance, sing and and listen to poetry. If I had to pull out the defining moments of the film's content it would be the over-text at the beginning of the film that poses a question, "is there room for intellectual socializing in today's world?". Another sequence is of a poetry reading and a final musical/dance scene wherein the dancers are ironically singing along with a song that says something like, 'we are okay because we are in the majority', as they dance to a 60s pop-styled band. On first viewing, I wondered where the references for the ice cream social came from, what is the real history of such events? My uneducated guess is that these events were 'wholesome' church-group sponsored events held on sunday afternoon.

The film's director does not press hard to move away from this wholesome environment of sweets, dance and conversation. Ultimately, the goal of the event in relation to the film seemed to meet its goal, for, as in the film, people had the ability to chat and develop a conversation, engage and eat some tasty sweets while wearing pink, brown and white. One notable aspect being that it was a room of people who had ventured out to a art gallery to eat cake and ice cream, and the mutual awareness of an art 'scene' fueled a level of discussion not encountered often enough. Albeit, the people whom I talked with were for the most part not strangers, I had bumped into them before. To the host's credit, more than any time in the near past of random social events, a sustained group discussion about a variety of topics of aesthetics, the Tokyo art scene, people's work and the validity of various forms of popular media all made their way to the floor of discussion and were addressed rather than dismissed. This discussion however, took place after the event where it was spacious and quiet enough to talk, but hey, it's Tokyo. This, in and of itself, is an accomplishment not to be disregarded.

With the setting of a wholesome American past-time reminiscent of "American Bandstand" or some other sound-stage produced pop-music promotion show, "Ice Cream Social" creates a context of 'good clean fun' upon the whole event. But rather than introducing a new pop band a number as in the traditional TV show, the films manages to brush up against a couple of subtle sociological questions, like "is there room for intellectual socializing in today's world?" while more indirect references to an alternative culture are foregrounded by a reading of decent poetry and personal theorizing by the gamblers. The half-mock pop band, "The Ingredients" close out the show with a song whose lyrics again play with the theme of "wholesome or satirical?" Lines such as "we're in the mainstream" and "flowing through you" can lead one to interpret the scene as more than pink, brown and white dancing fluff, and read deeper into the irony of using a visually candy-coated setting to draw attention to art-subculture. Discussions within the film include someone explaining the personally deep meaning of a spiritually devoid passion, gambling, as well as a heartfelt introduction of two strangers that is quickly dismissed by an uncomfortable silence. Overall, the feeling one gets from the film is initially a lack of interest due to the setting's banality that eventually, possibly subconsciously, comes to reflects upon just the kind of topic depth, audience appreciation and critical listening that could lead to feeling relaxed and provoked enough to actually engage with some people in critically, expository discussion. This is something that art galleries and events often cannot manage to cultivate. I didn't think I would be saying this at first but, long live the ice cream social. Maybe what we gallery goers need is a less pretentious environment bordering on the mundane to actually step beyond pre-tense and enjoy the 'society' of the art scene.

Lastly, this gallery space was holding an exhibition of a palindromic texted title, "here's why patterns, here's why patterns" and I arrived with the intention of seeing the works on display for this theme. Most of the 8-10 works hanging were variation of essentially blank canvases with glued chunks of plywood or weightily applied monotone paint. None of the works invoked much more than a superficial pronouncement of it's comprising elements, the wood chunk canvases attempted to draw attention to the material of the canvas itself. For example, the plastic wrap from the store was only half torn away or just a bit of material glued to the raw white surface. These works, rather than invoking a sense of their physical construction, seemed more an underdeveloped attempt at constructionism, nothing stood up to anything beyond initial visual analysis. The painted works seemed like an exercise in weighty brush strokes of the left-overs of the paint can, with neither tone nor composition that stimulated the viewer to glance deeper. In a society where repetition and pattern inform so much of what is considered 'norms' or tolerance, it was a shame to raise the issue of "why patterns" with only a few droll cut-outs of wood or a muddily smeared canvas. I suppose some plain cut outs of wood or the oppressive monotony of the paints could have pointed to a distinctly uninteresting repetitiveness and thus said "here's why patters are uninteresting" but this is not the feeling I got. Why? because in order to address the banality of patterns a simple cookie cutter style pattern would suffice rather than an overtly hand-made creation. By foregrounding the flawed human assembly of the works this exhibition failed to either address or refute the controlling characteristics that a 'patterned' existence embodies. Ultimately, according to the title, the exhibit's subject seemed undeveloped or at least undetermined.

A Sudden Glut of Images

2008-06-27T07:55:00.002-07:00

I don't know what it was, maybe the color of the sky today, a cool humid gray like a dirty down comforter. It made me feel like some quality time with a photo editor and my library. The resultant so-called glut of images has been parsed into some identifiable groups as follows.

Hi, I finally got around to editing and uploading some photos from this year.

Here is a festival I participated in two weeks ago, hoisting a small but heavy shrine on my shoulders and painfully carrying it around Motoko's parent's neighborhood.

We enjoyed a weekend day in Ueno Park, a categorically interesting Bauhaus exhibit, a sold-out manga exhibit, pond, park, turtles.

Also, since the beginning of spring here in Tokyo we've had three picnics in Kichijoji's Inokashira park. The boat rides are from early spring when the weather was the best. Now were risk sweaty humidity.

Lastly, a collection of photographs of form and architecture.

And an ongoing project of capturing vacated spaces of Tokyo.

Art Talks: Round One

2008-06-11T07:02:00.004-07:00

Thank you all for talking to me about how to realistically approach contemporary Japanese art though a group discussion after the initial idea was proposed some weeks ago. Since most people agreed that they didn't have a lot of time available to do research on their own, an essay seemed a logical choice, we can all read a text, raise topics of discussion, vent some questions and hopefully gain an understanding. The text we have for the first discussion comes from Murakami Takashi, the curator of the exhibition of contemporary Japanese art entitled "Superflat," that toured around in 2001. I remember seeing it in Seattle, a first year Japanese student, caught by glossy, generic smiles on plastic people and anime images gone to Elm Street nightmare, as well as toys that looked ready to eat the child who chose them. However, I really had no concept of what that exhibit was about besides bizarre pop art, and only vaguely Japanese.

From the book, "Little Boy" by Murakami I looked at two essays by him, in the longer one, "Earth In My Window," he seems to categorized the cultural elements of Japan that make up the conceptual framework employed in the Superflat exhibition. In "Earth In My Window," the cultural examples serve to ground his ideas about contemporary culture which are reflexive to contemporary art. The second essay is shorter conclusion to the whole Superflat concept, a recap or roundup of the 'movement'. Either essay I think would be a good starting point, and the book also has a section of suggested further reading in the back we could work from thereafter.

Additionally, I found an article talking about Superflat by the curator of the traveling exhibition's Los Angles stop, Michael Darling. It might give a little more information on how the exhibit was received.

One great thing is that Murakami's essays are bilingual, so this talk will not be limited to only English readers and I would encourage anyone who wants to participate to do so. Enough of the members have skills in Japanese and English to facilitate a talk, so please invite your interested friends.

I think the best way to begin would be to read "Earth In My Window" and see if there are any ideas of interest to proceed with. It's possible the essay will leave us underwhelmed, so please any new ideas are welcome. Matsui Midori's "Micropop" exhibition and essay/book might be another direction to look in.

A date is still yet to be set but mid to late July should give everyone enough time.
For those of you not in Tokyo, posting your comments to this blog or emailing is a way to get your thoughts heard at the art talk.

If you are interested in participating, please contact me; nihoneiga1960@gmail.com

Mābō-dōfu (vegan)・ベーガン麻婆豆腐

2008-06-11T02:32:00.027-07:00

Chinese food exists in every industrialized nation in the world, and in my experience, each country's Chinese food varies to meet local tastes and ingredients. I've eaten Chinese food in Mexico(not recommended), Italy, Hungary, the USA, China, Thailand, and Japan. The same as 'western' food in Japan, Chinese food here is more accurately thought of as Japanese-Chinese food.

There are a number of 'international' foods that exist anomalously in Japan. Dishes that are well defined, uniquely Japanese genre foods like, Tako-rice (Taco-rice/Mexico?), Ramen (Chinese), Croquette/koroke (French), Curry, and Mabo. There is the large topic of Japanese-foreign food here but that is for another time.

If you like these foods in Japan, you know that you are best off not expecting anything similar from their home country. Japanese curry is homogeneous brown, savory spicy, and more like a stew than any Indian curry. Oddities like Taco-rice do not exist anywhere in Mexico with a possible culinary relative hanging around Azeta or La Hacienda chains in the USA dubiously dubbed Tostada Salad. As it stands, each of these Japanese interpretations is good in its own right. I've heard friends say we've eaten more curry in Japan than in any other time in my life. Some people think of Ramen as Japan's best food. Strange creations like Croquette sandwiches are good, cheap food with their own food history.

We are not talking about poor substitutes, rather finessed interpretations.

One recipe I've had a lot of success with is Mabo-tofu, a dish from Szechwan, but a standard all across Japan. Recent concerns about the health risks of meat and its impact on the environment as well enjoying a culinary challenge lead me to make a vegan Mabo recipe which is just as satisfying as it's meat incarnation. Really, the texture and flavor are great, I mean, what texture does ground meat have, little bits right. Soy protein can do the same thing with some finessing.

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Recipe: Vegan Mabo Tofu ベーガン麻婆豆腐
Time: 45 minutes (just right to make some rice to go with)

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Mabo is built off of a base sauce comprised of ginger, garlic, ground meat/Textured Soy Protein (TCP), Tenmenjan and Tobanjan. This base if called Mabo-Miso

Tenmenjan is Chinese sweet black miso. Abroad it goes by Sweet Black Bean Paste, or other variation on Sweet/Chinese/Soy trichotomy.

Tobanjan is Chinese red chili paste. Not the sweet kind or Vietnamese rooster sauce, just a plain spicey chunky paste.

Ingredients:
-Ginger (a golf ball sized bit, peeled)
-Garlic 6-8 cloves peeled
-1 Cup Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), rehydrated and drained
-A couple of packs of mushrooms and/or eggplant (Japanese varieties taste best in this kind of sauce)
-2-4 Leeks or Japanese onions, aka Negi, the more white part the better.
-3 Tbsp Tobanjan/Chinese Sweet Black Miso
-1 Tbsp Tenmenjan/Red Chili Paste
-Vegetable Oil (grapeseed or pomace olive oil)
-Sesame Oil (if you can get good sesame oil it's a world different from the cloying dark brown stuff, you can use to as a stand-alone oil without being overpowering)
-Salt and Pepper (S&P)
-Cornstarch(or agaragar) and cold water slurry
-1/4 C. Saké (unsweetened, cheap drinking saké works well)
-1 Pack of Tofu (Firm/Chinese/Momen) cut into large cubes
-Charles Bronson (to your taste, adds fiestiness)

Tools:
-A seasoned Wok or a Large Deep Fry Pan
-A Japanese style grater (Nathan and Lisa you know the kind)
-A prep bowl to hold stuff in
(Just a note on using a wok; if possible never use soap, hot water, or steel wool on a wok. The best flavors come out of a 'seasoned' wok but this doesn't mean dirty. Each time you cook start with some oil. When you are done vigorously wash the inside with cold water, then place on a burner to dry. Finally re-apply a light coat of oil before putting it away. Like a Japanese knife, keep it dry and oiled and it gets better with age.)

Prep:
First place the TVP in a bowl and cover with warm water to rehydrate for about 5 minutes then drain. Set aside. Then peel and grate all the ginger and most of the garlic. Take two remaining cloves of garlic and slice thin for sauteéing the mushrooms and/or eggplant.

Break up the mushrooms into small bunches of shoots if they are cluster-type mushrooms:Maitake, Shimeji, Oyster, etc or slice 1/4" if Shitakes or button.
(These are Maitake, only 250¥ for the box!)

Take the leeks, cut off the green area for later. Make two length-wise cuts down the white section to create an 'X' shape running down the middle, then cut into thin slices perpendicularly. For the green section, simply make slice thin rings, and set aside for later.

Cooking Method:

(Unless noted, all wok cooking is done on high heat)

Step 1: Heat the wok and pour a round of oil inside. Add the garlic slices and the mushrooms and/or eggplant, sauteé vigoriously for 3-5 minutes until tender. Remove from heat and transfer the veggies to a bowl.

(Maitake and Shimeiji mushrooms in the wok)
Rise and dry the wok.

Step 2: Have the ginger, garlic, sauces and TVP ready and waiting for use.

Heat the wok and pour a generous round of oil inside and 1/2 tsp. of Sesame Oil. Add the ginger, garlic and TVP, and sauteé for 2 minutes then add the sauces cooking for another 2 minutes.

(The ginger, garlic and TVP are sauteéd and I just added the sauces)

Now you have Mabo miso, you can use just this to add flavor to other dishes. Remove from heat and transfer into the same bowl as the veggies.

(completed Mabo Miso)

Rise and dry the wok.

Step 3: Heat the wok and pour a round of oil inside. Add the leek whites and sauteé for 2 minutes. Then add the veggies, Mabo Miso and Saké.

After 3 minutes, add enough water to cover the contents and reduce to medium heat. Then check the flavor, adding S&P and extra sauces if you want it spicier=chili paste, richer=black miso.

(Be careful not to add too much water)

Step 4: Gently add and stir in the tofu and leek greens. Cook for 10 minutes

The key at this point is to not stir too much or the tofu will disintegrate. Gentle turns of the spoon.

Step 5:
Lastly, get the cornstarch/agaragar and water slurry mixed up. Then, while mixing the Mabo pour a little bit at a time in until you reach a rich consistancy. This cornstarch method is typical for most Chinese food and the secret behind those thick but translucent sauce. (Be careful not to pour into much without stirring or you will end up with clumps of starch.)

OWARI!=All Done!

This dish can be good with some cubed avocado on top or with some lightly blanched baby bok-choy.

Kono-kashiya Art Talks

2008-05-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

There exist any number of possible topics for discussing art. Focusing on period, movement, region, medium, thought, chronological progression, academic level, analysis and criticism all come to mind as possible focusing themes for talking about art.

An art discussion I recently attended entitled, "What Do We Do About Contemporary Art?" in fact, did almost nothing in the way of addressing the question or disseminating information related to contemporary art, least of all, what we can do about it. The speaker, "controversial" curator Azumaya Takashi, smothered his palpable lack art lecturing skill by closing the discussion saying that, he "doesn't know the answers." To be sure, his unstructured, no-depth style was certainly "spontaneous" and "leaving only questions." Unfortunately, the only answer we were left with is that exhibiting narcissism alone is supposed to be acceptable subject matter for art. Using loaded but unexplained words like 'theory, mathematical, dangerous, and complex' are one way to make your individual babbling appear as something theoretical but the only danger is that it might waste a huge amount of time. The failure of this talk was also due to the near total lack of organization and non-existent discussion plan.

I suppose the most disappointing thing is that Azumaya should be in a good position to talk about contemporary art. He apparently has a good working knowledge, knows art spaces, styles of work, the dynamics of art investing, has years of experience and most importantly, he knows many contemporary artist and their work himself. On paper he is perfectly positioned to talk about contemporary Tokyo art. With is knowledge he could have framed, organized, and shared with the eager audience, all of whom payed 1000¥ to pay penance on uncomfortable benches, trapped, subjugated, for 2 hours of blather. He could have given us names, keywords, galleries or criticism to help understand "what is contemporary Japanese art" so we could take the next step and begin to think—"what do we do about it?"

The only redeeming realization about the event were the 50 or so people who were interested enough in art to come out to hear a supposed authority of art in Tokyo. This means that people want to hear about art, want to learn, want to engage and want to possibly discuss "what do we do about Contemporary Art". It also means that the Contemporary Art in Tokyo is difficult to figure out on one's own, that why people turn to experts, their status is supposed to be evidence of their skill. The room was full of people who had a desire to learn and interact, to feel that there IS a community to embrace, art appreciating peers, people with whom to push their understanding beyond exhibit tag descriptions, websites and reviews, people want to engage.

The two contemporary art discussions I've been recently have brought to light a simple point: People want to develop an understanding and appreciation of art and are going out to so do. We would like experts, but famous people do not necessarily equal those people who teach well. In fact, the goal for this kind of even is simple: we want to learn something, think, interact, socialize. Be it about contemporary art, or even simply developing our appreciation as whole, it is nice to do so in a social environment with the capacity to discuss and deepen our knowledge.

Therefore, I propose Art Study Talks. Participants prepare something of around 5-15 minutes, a summary, a review, a report, a presentation or some impressions. Gathering together we can teach each other, comfortable progress our understanding and learn. For those in the audience, since we are not all experts, the expectation for talk content is equally non-professional. Simply, we want to discuss, learn, identify and appreciate art.

That being said, we must have some organization of theme and of topic, a blueprint for executing this slightly more than casual relationship to art. To get things started I propose the ever interesting topic of early 20th C. art, ideally Japanese art, but not necessarily. Painting, architecture, fashion, music, all is fair game. Talks will be in English mostly, but Japanese can be translated.

A date: June 28th.
A place: Kono-kashiya, the registered name of my house (The Kono's rental house).

Invite your friends, use your library.
I'm interested in Japanese modern architecture since that Tokyo Architecture map book doesn't cover anything before 1980...ouch

The G8 Chimes in on Beef, Do Japanese know?

2008-05-26T04:49:00.003-07:00

In today's Japan Times, an article covering the current G8 summit taking place in Kobe reported some pretty direct criticism regarding environmental damage from beef production. Just to put into perspective the scale of beef production take a look at this quote,

"According to the U.N. report, the livestock sector internationally generates 18 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, than the transport sector."

This means that while the emissions from cars, trucks, ships, air travel might all seem pretty significant, beef production creates more gases...

Unfortunately, after cruising the Japanese language newspapers for a mirror article there were none focused specifically on beef or even mentioning beef in relation to the summit's activities. One article mentioned the overall goal of reducing gases by 50% by 2050 which seemd slightly in contrast with predicted double in beef production listed between 1999-2050 as mentioned in the English article.

This dovetail's perfectly with what I experience in terms of Japanese food awareness all the time. There is a strong concern for the quality of ingredients, health in general, and overt environmentalist stance you see toward waste handling, yet no one is mentioning any restrictions on diet aside from "scary" imports from China. In a society where the TV always has people enjoying food, oohs and aaahs, oishiis and umaiiis, there is harsh disconnect with where their food actually comes from, how it's made, and what environmental impact their gastronomic lifestyle has.

Take it from the experts, "The meat industry causes extensive damage and is linked to climate change and diversity loss. It's clear the planet can't sustain current levels of meat consumption and that people need to cut back."

Tofu is good for you right?

2008-05-15T19:24:00.005-07:00

In Japan, Tofu and other soy based products have long been part of the diet. Originating in China first, Tofu was introduced to Japan during the 8th C. Nara period. Since then the variety of tofu and soy products as a whole have become quotidian to Japanese food culture.

Tofu's nutritional profile is equally impressive, high in iron, protein, cholesterol reducing isoflavones, no cholesterol, and a healthy amount of fat (1-3%). Tofu made with a Calcium Sulfate coagulant, often used in Chinese or other firm types of tofu also give tofu a rich level of calcium. Since soy is such and important part of the Japanese diet, not just tofu, natto, edamame, soy sauce, soy milk, it seems worthwhile to look a little deeper in the food supply.

Soy, in it's most widely grown form is a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). GMOs provide many possible benefits for agriculture in terms of increasing nutrient value, durability, speed of growth, and yields of plants. However they also come with a number of challenges, possible dangers, that warrant a thorough investigation before widespread proliferation.

Contrary to the common understanding, most GMOs we eat are not modified to grow larger or faster, that would require a more complex gene augmentation and insertion process. Rather, the most common form of GMOs are plants which have been modified to tolerate heavy doses of a herbicide (Roundup by Monsanto for soybeans) that works by preventing the formation of an amino acid, stopping unmodified plants from growing. This doesn't sound so bad right? Easy elimination of weeds, something anyone who has had a garden desires. However, the method of weed prevention does not involve traditional methods of tilling and/or crop rotation, simply put, the fields are heavily dowsed with herbicide, enough to permeate and kill everything except the GMO. Not surprisingly, as something which kills by stopping amino-acid production is also harmful to surrounding ecosystems, namely fish and other plants. Additional, the herbicide resistant trait could be transferredhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif to some weed species thus necessitating increased herbicide use or the herbicide rendered ineffective. Logically, since the main method of plant maintenance for Roundup Ready Soy is saturation by a chemical element, the residual levels of chemicals remaining on the plant is significant. However fears of cross-pollination seem minimal despite some claims according to studies in Brazil and Maine show that little cross-pollination occurs after a separation of four meters. Corn, I hear, has a more dangerous range of 100 meters.

The three groups which monitor food safety, the FDA (Food and Drug Adm.), the EPA (Environmental Protection Ag.) and USDA (US Dept. of Agriculture) have instated no regulations to demarcate which products come from GMO and those that do not. The reason being that since GMO are determined to be "substantially equivalent" the people have no need to know.(Or they are unlabeled for fear that people would choose otherwise and affect the profits of GMO producing companies) To require labeling a plant must have significant change to the plant's genetic makeup, for example in the case when Brazil nut genes were spliced into soybeans causing nut-allergy reactions. This was flagged only after the harm was discovered. What this means is that the food production industry is supposed to police itself, then, WHY do we have these government agencies and why do they not take the time to test these products? A major reason for lack of review toward biotech agriculture is the nepotistic flow of high level executive from agribusiness to government offices. Politician to Monsanto Board of Directors or vice-versa, EPA director to Monsanto board. For details see here, and here.

Actually, GMOs are are very narrow stripe of US agricultural products by variety, only four main crops, soy, corn, cotton, and canola. However the amount that these crops make up in terms of human and animal consumption is significant. Additionally these crops are grown mainly in six countries, the USA, Argentina, Canada, Brazil, China and South Africa (reference). However, the percentage of growing space and of overall production is quite significant. In 2000, 27% of US soybeans were GMO, last year it was 94%. In Argentina 96% of the soy is GMO, most all cases requiring dependency on the Monsanto Roundup herbicide (reference) . In 2005 60% of all soybeans produced globally were Roundup Ready. Since many of these crops are unmarked as GMO in their respective countries of production it becomes difficult to track what we are receiving. For example, despite Europe regulations against GMO soy, last year they imported 40 tons of soybeans from the US, Brazil and Argentina, wonder what kind they were?

So what are the demonstrable heath concerns related to GMO soy? Interestingly, while skimming through the information regarding this topic, conclusive evidence of health risks seemed to take a far second to scandalizing the proliferation of GMOs themselves. Most often the slant of the articles emphasizes the interdependence of Agribusiness and chemical companies and as a priori evilness instead of just pushing forward the evidence. Sure GMO crops are monopolistic but if there is no real health risk is it collusion against the consumer?

There is evidence of GMO tomatoes and potatoes causing strange things is lab rats, liver atrophy and reduced size of the immune organs and brain shrinkage, yes, brain shrinkage, something we all suffer from enough. For soy the negative effects are not fore-grounded, but yes, they are definitely there. In laboratory tests on rats the internal organs either didn't grow to size or shrank, liver cell production was impaired, as well as a significant drop in enzyme production by the pancreas (as much as 77% of alpha-amylase, the enzyme that breaks down starch). Additionally, food allergies related to the inability to properly digest the proteins of GMO soy also have proponents on both sides of the fence, something that concerns me personally as I also have this sensitivity.

More than pointing out that GMOs might have this effect on humans, these results indicate that further investigation by the government agencies is desperately required, they are the ones who are supposed to certify food safety right? Tax dollars well-spent, etc. Let's be reminded too that with any GMO, the splicing of a gene is not as precise as science might imply. When a genome is take other bits come with it. These other pieces are essentially "Unknown DNA" that humans and the animals are feed (*animals which we later eat). These things end up in our bodies. This is simply more evidence pointing toward a more cautious approach to GMO deployment, if at all. So, what's the rush? Simply put, it's getting a majority of seed and plant chemical sales 'rounded-up' so-to-speak into one producer's pocket.

How does this affect Japan?

According to 2007 Japanese import screenings, the top of the top ten agricultural products to be turned away from Japan due to unacceptable levels of residual chemicals were four varieties of Soy Beans from the USA and Canada, followed by US grapefruit, and Philippine Bananas. The 10-30 range was dominated by Chinese vegetables, broccoli, edamame, cauliflower, and Oolong tea(refrence). But simply the fact that the USA's overuse of Roundup and other chemicals put the US levels of unacceptable chemical content in fruits and veggies above the more often criticized Chinese leaves world consumers of soy products a little worried.

The issue at hand for the Japanese consumer is information or misinformation depending on how you define things. Though Japan requires GMO labelling, there appears to be a loophole because while many soy products are listed as non-GMO/遺伝組み換える不使用, they also list the place of origin as the USA and/or Canada. So, it seems that the lack of labeling in the US allows Japanese consumers to be misinformed due to lack of information. Luckily, I've asked around at my local Tofu shop I was relieved to know that they use non-gmo beans from Kyushu. If you look at this label you can see the obvious contradiction.

It says, "Source: USA or Canada (Not Genetically Modified)". With 96% or the soybeans grown in the US being GMO I don't think that the makers of this cheap pack of natto are really zeroing in on the remain 4% of non-gmo. It is the lack of demarcation by the US government agencies that allow this kind of misinformation to take place.

By not labeling they take away the consumer's only real power, the power purchase choice through government sanctioned misinformation. Therefore, like it or not, the consumer is at a loss to influence producer's policies through what they'd like to consume; failure of the free market due to monopoly, week government and collusion. It seems that the *free market* might work if it were really free.

On a last note:
Despite the majority of GMOs being designed for herbicide resistance, as of late, modification of animals is also underway, check it.

Recipe: Lentil, Barley and Kabocha Curry

2008-05-15T18:27:00.006-07:00

This little recipe is one I use often when I want a good, well-balances meal but don't have time to soak beans or cook because lentils require no pre-soaking. So in the time you can cook rice, you can also make what goes with it. Also there are easy ingredients to have around

Cook time: 45 mins (15 prep, 30 on the stove)

Ingredients:
1/4-1/2 Kabocha (Japanese pumpkins, you could substitute sweet potatoes or acorn squash) de-seeded and partially skinned. You don't need to remove all the skin, just the hard parts. Leaving some green skin looks nice as well.

1/2 C. each of Red Lentils, Green/Brown Lentils, and Pearl Barley

1/4 C. Pumpkin Seeds or Papitas (mexican pumpkin seeds)
1 Large or 2 Small onions
2 cloves garlic
(2 Tbsp raisin or currants optional)
hot water

Spices:
2 Tbsp Curry Powder (any brand)
1 Tsp Cumin (seed and powder if you have it but just powder will do)
1/2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper (powder)
1 Tsp Salt to start & Pepper, 5 turns of the mill

Method:
1) Cut up the onions into 1/4"/2cm pieces, start sautéing in 1/4 c. of good oil, low hear with 1/2 tsp of Cumin seed if you have some.
2)While slowly browning the onions, de-seed and cut the kabocha, mince garlic.

3)Add the garlic, cook for 2 minutes, then add the Barely, Lentils, Seeds and spices, mix in the hot oil.

4)Add the Kabocha, mix in the hot oil sauté for 3 minutes

5)Add just enough hot water to cover the ingredients by about 1/4" 2cm, not dry not soupy.

6) Let simmer for 25-30 minutes, adding water if necessary. Salt liberally to taste.

Serve with mixed rice, or a breaded and fried tofu cutlet, slices of avocado to cool the spice.

On a completely separate note: Bronson attacks her piddily rival, Stalone...

Indugence, Moderation or Abstinence?

2008-05-11T19:48:00.010-07:00

It was yet another blow to my social consciousness after reading this article about world fish depletion, and what we see everyday out there in Japan, 68Kg of fish consumed annually, the world high.

Like the article pointed out, with increasing population and therefore, what the business world views as increasing profit, world food resources are channeled to those countries that sit atop the economic world. If there is a food demand in a highly industrialized nation there will be some profiteering food industrialists who want to supply this food with as little information about the real world effects as possible; place of origin, raising conditions, the overall state of world farmland, grassland, oceans, rainforests, fuel subsidies, chemical industry, etc. All of these points are carefully keep far far away from the 'bounty of the sea' and 'sakana sakana sakana(fish, fish, fish)' song that jingles away in Japanese supermarkets and the blissful black pigs (Kuro-buta), and Iwate and Kobe-prefecture happy cows. I've never seen so many happy healthy animal pictures in a supermarket as there are here in Japan. Usually there is a distinct avoidance of association of the living creature and the packaged end product in the USA.

My initial response to most data regarding world food supply is shock at the tenuous unbalance of environmental impact, world hunger, health risks and an industrialized food production culture. How, if we see such disparity, such a disconnect from the essential role of food in our life, do we reconcile this feeling of a situation that seems so hopelessly dependent upon every increasing growth? Because the supermarket, the chain restaurant, the sushi bar, the burger joint and the butcher all look so much about quality here in Japan. The industrialized world's culinary wants have been commodified and on the surface, consumer culture is simply oriented to provided the goods with whatever ideology market research shows is profitable. The evidence for this is everywhere, advertising for meat and fish as being essential to bodily well being, like the "sakana" song, droned on in so many supermarkets for so many years that few think to question the supply chain of this item. Simply content that "fish builds strong bodies and strong minds" without that scary, guilty reminder that Japan has developed as taste as the world's highest consuming nation of a vastly dwindling resource. The benefits are touted without any ideas like, "only eat fish three days a week, meat two days a week." Instead of aiming for beef or some other "luxury" meat once a week how about aiming for "luxury" organic vegetables once a week? We live in a world built upon the assumption of ever increasing growth on a planet with finite resources and we are reaching a point of reckoning.

This raises the question about conservation (or moderation) vs abstinence in terms of one's eating habits. The supporting evidence for moderation is that people have been eating an omnivorous diet for a long time and thus it seems natural to our bodies. However, lets keep in mind that the percentage of plant-based-food to meat was much higher in the past, as were the amount of physical labor, whole grains and non-chemically and non-genetically modified foods. Additionally the growth in world population entitles that we can no longer live "as we have for a long time" and that old food production is no longer a viable method to a 6 billion population. The frequency and availability of agricultural resource-heavy meat, beef and pork, have within the last 20-30 years in Japan moved to a table center role. A number of articles (article 1, article 2) point out the rising pace of meat consumption, and more worrisome, importation, as well as the reality of meat production industrialization in Japan.

That being said, I still feel that books and articles arguing for a solely plant-based diet do not give enough merit to sustainable animal husbandry however the motivation for such an approach is understandable. It is worth noting that of the total meat producing industry there is a small percentage of ranchers focused on sustainable husbandry and their efforts are to commended. However, my feeling is that this still remains a niche market and catered to those who can afford it, thus remaining largely ineffective toward the global issue of environmental abuse and degradation due general consumption level animal products. Take it from the recent UN report which aligns meat production with all kinds of huge environmental tolls, CO2 production, and inexcusably inefficient use of water, land, and grain in a time when 1.4 billion still live with hunger to supply the rich with beef.

The motivating factor in complete meat abstinence is to change the role of the resource heavy, essentially industrialized foods, from the center of the table into a position of global sustainability if not improvement (remember sustainable just means things don't get worse). Additionally health risks such as cancer and heart attacks decline sharply without meat, fewer environmental strains on our body the better. In order make a push toward global recovery, habits, and more importantly, the relationship of food consumer to food's production as a part of society need to be brought to the foreground of the consumer's palate. One way of doing so is not only making an effort to make as minimal an impact as possible but, some believe, through abstaining from meat entirely, hoping to have a regressive effect on the current increasing consumption of meat by giving the industrial meat and seafood producers a kick in the only place they are sensitive to, their bankbook.

On a slightly tangential note, I want to mention something about food consciousness in Japan. It is that my impression of Japanese food culture that, compared to anywhere else I've been, there is much more focus placed on locality of ingredients, seasonality, freshness, and foremost the beauty, appeal, and refinement associated with the unrefinement of 'natural' ingredients. However this exists as an aesthetic ideal not the practicing norm of consumption. As a world food consumer, Japan's ratio of imported goods effectively minimizes much of the 'natural' relationship with food. For example Japan imports 700-800 million tons of food a year, roughly 1//5th of all food being shipped by sea comes to Japan even though Japan has only 2% of the world's population. For more see here.

The problem is that when a society and nation get used to a heavily imported food, feed, agricultural goods otherwise supplied through industrial means it becomes difficult to return to domestic production. See the fall of domestic grain production worldwide and how, (due to a shift toward livestock production) we are becoming increasingly unable to secure stable food. See the report from the Earth Policy Organization here.

The key factors in the global rise in resource heavy meat is multifarious; nation, culture, religion, all of these components contribute to what type of meat, at what rate, and with what method of production are demanded and therefore produced. However, the underlying trend in Asia is an increasing rate of consumption along with increasing economic power (see 'article 2'). Is it the influence of the American beef-consuming opulence that motivates more meat on the table in Asia? Without getting so abstract, we could look at the face value appeal of meat, it tastes good, its rich, and it's finally getting to an affordable price for regular consumption. To speak about price, it is not simply an increase in spendable income, but an increase in the production efficiency, often via very unbalanced scales of supply such as gasoline and pharmaceutical subsidies, and interdependence these shadow components of food production that allow meat to be so readily and cheaply available.

This is what necessitates a closer relationship to food and knowing how, where, and under what circumstances it is produced.

In the USA the amount of open space used for cattle grazing is rather out unbelievable. One reason US animal products are so cheap is that 65% of open space in the western USA are leased out as pasture land to cattle companies at a fraction of the cost (averaging 23¢ per acre) of owning this land themselves. Rather than using open space for growing vegetables, a much more efficient and publicly beneficial use of land, cattle lobbies have sequestered this land for profiting and consumption by the middle and upper parts of society. For example, on 2.5 acres of land you can raise enough beef or eggs to feed one person. On that same land you can grow enough cabbage for 23 people, potatoes for 22, rice for 19, corn for 17 and wheat for 15 people. Those of you living in the USA know the current price hurt that is being felt because agricultural production has fallen to make way for production of meat and feed grains for meat. As recent food riots in Haiti, Africa go to show, these problems are in fact part of our present reality.

In Japan's case, around 65% of meat products are imported. This equates to most all of the commercially consumed meat, see: what you eat at restaurants. This meat is being imported from Australia and the USA (yes it's coming in) at every increasing rates.

All of this being said, my mind if still wants to believe in the power of moderation but abstinence seems more effective. Having looking into the real global effects of those beautiful advertisement of meat on display in supermarkets, restaurants, everywhere, I can't help but feel the appeal dying step by step.

For fairness, take a look at how the industrial handles the business of food production on this industry website.

For a well researched compact bit of information on the interaction between meat production your role therein, as well as many tips about how to help yourself and your environment take a look at this pamphlet from the people at Earthsave.

Japanese Vegetables

2008-05-01T20:12:00.012-07:00

Spring has come, and with it my favorite season to go to the vegetable stand. In my neighborhood there are two produce stands each bringing in more or less the same produce but there are usually some oddities as well. Today I'm going to introduce some Japanese spring ingredients, some of which you can find at a farmer's market in the states and some of the cooking techniques can be widely used for other vegetables as well.

-------------------
Na-no-hana 菜の花
-------------------
Nanohana are basically the spring shoots of anything from the mustard green family. They are slightly bitter but have a wonderful texture and are packed with nutrients.

Cooking techniques:
-------------------
Blanch: drop into boiling salted water for about 1-2 minutes, be careful not to over cook. Chill in a cold bath.

My Everyday Wok Sauteé:
ngredients
1 bunch of Nanohana, brocollini, baby bok-choy, gailan, etc. Soak in cold water and leave wet, maybe split lengthwise down the stalk for better cooking but basically you want some larger pieces, whole leaves etc. Baby Bok-choy is especially nice simply split down the middle.

1-2 cloves garlic minced
olive oil
sake or white wine
S&P (optional: red chili flake)

Cooking instructions
-Have everything lined up since this will take less that 4-5 minutes from gas to plate
1)Heat the bare wok until it begins smoking
2)In quick succession put one ring of olive oil around the wok, throw the garlic in, the still damp veggies(be warned that the wok will make some nice loud sizzling noise, that's good!). toss toss toss
3) Sprinkle salt and pepper around to taste, my experience says about 2-3 big pinches of salt is good, toss toss toss
4) If you are cooking heartier greens like brocollini, asparagus, something with a somewhat substantial stem at about 4 splashes of w.wine or sake on the upper area of the inner wok walls at the cardinal points to create some steam.
5)Plate it.

The trick is to not overcook. For spinach cooking time will be 1 minute, for nanohana, brocollini etc. 2-4 depending on how hot your stove is.

-------------------
Bamboo Shoot take-no-ko/竹の子
-------------------

In the spring you see these huge dirty-covered cone shaped items pop up at the markets. This is fresh bamboo shoot. Until this year I had only had the vacuum-sealed kind and like the crunchy but flavorless food well enough. You can either buy the whole thing and simmer it with a sawdust like powder that cuts the lye flavor out of the food. Or a good green grocer will simmer it for you and sell it ready to go. The flavor and texture of the fresh bamboo shoot are fantastic, firm, crunchy, with nut and corn flavors.

Cooking techniques:
-------------------
Bamboo Shoot Sashimi: Slice thin and eat as it!

Ni-Mono/Simmered: Many Japanese vegetables are prepared in the ni-mono fashion. Carefully washed and cut heartier vegetables are simmer slowly until they are just tender enough to eat. Try tubers of all kinds, squashes, mushrooms, fried tofu, konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly, will explain sometime later), etc.

Simmering stock is basically a personal taste, Japanese mom's all just eye-ball the amounts. To get started I recommend enough pescatarian or vegan dashi (see previous entry) to just barely cover the ingredients. Then 3-5 TBSP of soysauce and sake, and about 2-3 TBSP of mirin. 2 tsps of sugar and 1/2 tsp of salt. For variations put in some sesame oil or some chili flakes. For bamboo shoot simmer for about 20 minutes. Other recommended ingrediants to simmer with: carrots, taro root, burdock root, fried tofu, chinese dried woodear mushrooms, lotus root. Also, in the photo below I used large pieces of textured soy protein for a more 'meaty' dish.

-------------------
Taro Root Sato-imo/里芋
-------------------

These strange hairy looking potatoes are really satisfying. They are denser, a bit more slippery/starchy than your average potato and they hold together better when simmered. You can cook them alone or with the bamboo-shoot dish outlined above.

Cooking techniques:
-------------------
Ni-mono/simmered:see above

Pasta: Yes pasta, this little root has a great thickening aspect to it. If you already have some simmered, you can chop it into small pieces and use like meat in a olive oil based pasta sauce and it will thicken up like butter.

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Fava Beans Sora-mame/空豆
-------------------
These Japanese fava beans can be cooked any way you would do regular fava beans.

Cooking techniques:
-------------------
Salt Blanch: My favorite is to shuck the pods out and then simmer in pretty salty water for 2-3 minutes and just eat as a appetizer with some good drink.

Grill/Sear in the pod: You can grill or sear these beans in the pod in a frying pan, or on the grill. This technique steams the insides from the heat. After about 3 minutes on each side carefully handle these hot pods and make a slit down one side for easy opening. Serve with with a little hill of good salt covered with Sansho "Japanese pepper" or black pepper.

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Fiddlehead Warabi/蕨
-------------------
In Japan, like France or Quebec there is a history of gathering little sprouts and buds of the various plants in the spring. In Japan these "Mountain Vegetables" as they are called are basically like an assortment of tough looking little weeds. However, the fiddleheads (fern sprouts) are low in bitterness and quick to prepare. The texture is great and they are very nutritious.

Cooking techniques:
-------------------
Salt Blanch: see above

Then just put in salads or sauteés. I like it in potato salad.

Kabocha

2008-05-01T19:06:00.004-07:00

Lately I've been enjoying trying to cook Japanese food in a vegetarian or vegan style. This shouldn't be too hard due to historically having a largely vegetarian diet compared to America and Europe. However, with meat, egg, oil and dairy consumption up according to a 1955-2005 study (Meat, 9 times/Oil, 5 times), the ability to eat a stay away from meat as a everyday dietary choice becomes harder and harder. That being the case I thought I'd start to post some healthy, satisfying more or less traditional recipes. This being the first entry I have to lay out some basics.

The Stock: Dashi

Dashi is the basis for most Japanese foods and is made from smoked, dried, and shaved bonito flakes and kombu, a type of seaweed that is thicker and has a slight white powder. There are options, you can make if from scratch by placing a piece of kombu is cold water, applying heat and removing BEFORE boiling. Thereafter put in your bonito flake or omit for a vegan recipe. Or you can use some of the available ready-made pouches which are quit good, or the basic "Hondashi" an instant dashi powder containing MSG, ok in a fix.

Here I'm using a ready-made all natural dashi tea bag.

Basic Ingredients:

Soy Sauce (or tamari, just use a little less)

Saké (cheap drinking sake like gekikan etc. is the same as what is sold as 'cooking sake')

Mirin (sweet sake brewed to a lesser extent than sake)

-Now we can cook

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Kabocha
---------------------
Kabocha or Japanese Pumpkin as it is sometimes called is a great thing to prepare and just have in your fridge, you can put it in miso soup, salads or eat by itself. I recommend buying a half or a quarter instead of a whole one.

First de-seed the kabocha and peel parts of the skin. You don't have to peel the skin, just the gnarlier bits, plus leaving some on is aesthically quite nice. Then cut into 1/2"x1" pieces.

In a pot put you dashi, just enough to cover the kabocha pieces. Then add 3-4 TBSP of soysauce and sake, and about 1 1/2 TBSP of sugar and mirin. A tsp of salt too and raise the heat to a low boil. Simmer for 4-5 minutes then shut off the heat and let the kabocha finish cooking on in the residual heat.

Voila!~

A Drinker's Critique

2008-03-22T17:50:00.002-07:00

Over the last two months I've neglected this blog. Part-time jobs have kept my life surprisingly busy. Besides an increase in the frequency of my job pouring Belgium beer, I also finished the 6th month term at one English teaching job and substituted another.

Spending time around Japanese businessmen has had me thinking about alcohol culture in Japan. From a simply social standpoint, alcohol is involved in all aspects of business life in Japan. Drinking is the lubrication for company internal and external relationship building. Visually, the space between work and home, the commute, is pervaded by alcohol advertising. Standing on a packed train presented with a glistening beer, the alignment between alcohol and escape awakens. The major manufacturers compete fiercely, releasing their new products roughly every two months; presently the low/no-calorie beer seems to be the rallying call.

This pervasiveness of alcohol culture appears on streets, construction workers sipping canned Sapporo on the train, salary-men stumbling home down the streets from their station, and, the culmination, as one friend put it, "man, have you noticed all the pizza-splats?".

But each country has its drinking style. The copious Budwiser 12-pack and bourbon of the US, the packed pub of 11PM drinking and brawling of the UK, the constant sipping yet never becoming sloshed style of the French, the methodical drinking of Guinness from the AM of Scotland, etc. But not simply the amount consumed but the handling and style of drinking culture in Japan is what strikes me. In any of the aforementioned countries there is some shame about displays of drunkenness and the idea of succumbing to temptation of liquor as a moral fault. In western society's personal and societal consciousness there remains the influence of a christian history, at present, that sentiment is most pervasive in the USA, where battles of public morality are still political topics, followed closely by the UK.

To be a drinker in the west constitutes a personal fault, a weakness in one's character. Though some people proudly announce their love of booze, there is still a dissociation between private drinking and one's outward public face, rarely does one hear as much at the office or university. However, in Japan, not only is alcohol an indispensable social and profession lubricate, but it acts as a highly desired "baring all" for those relationships which are supposed to be professional. Additionally, while some people would minimize or hide their drinking for fear of a judgement on their professionally, my experience here shows me that there is no shame associated with an appetite for alcohol.

This leaves one other thing to mention, a large number of people here cannot drink alcohol. Where does this leave them? In the USA, out of my group of acquaintances, 30 people or so, there were maybe 3 who couldn't drink and another 3 who had quit drinking. In Japan, out of 30 people or so, there are about 10-15 who cannot drink and no one who has quit. Interestingly, residents of areas of Japan which have produced alcohol for a long time, Kyushu seems to have a higher ratio of drinkers and a higher tolerance (taste?) for alcohol as a whole.

This leaves me wondering about the motivation for drinking and lets add smoking in Japan. Some people have argued for the necessity of the Sakariba/盛り場 in Japanese society. The streets around any station where Nomiya/飲み屋/drinking spots, always exist, in fact the author of the book (by a owner of a bar in Shinjuku's "Golden Gai" nomiya area) argues that the subordinating nature of Japanese society requires such areas of 'release' to maintain society's balance, a response to the accelerated pace of business, employment and lifestyle of the 20-21st century. While this does ring true, it doesn't address the function of alcohol's role as anything more than sociability and escapism.

Maybe it is my own subconscious trying to find the sin in indulgence, but I think it's closer to a response to self-destructive behavior and a lack of education about alcohol and tobacco abuse by the Japanese health authorities that motivates these couple of paragraphs. I'm looking for other opinions, please share yours.

Snow Day!!!

2008-02-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

After a nice dinner party last night, some of us who stayed later experienced a rare evening of snow in Tokyo. Those who planned to walk were discouraged, and the evening became a slumber party. By about 3 am the snow fell steadily and our kotatsu (heated blanket covered table) lured those sitting around deeper and deeper into it's warm cave sleepiness. By morning the snow was significant and has continued all day. Here are some pictures.

Where's the sled?

The Brain Melt (Frustrations of School in Japan)

2008-01-21T21:24:00.000-08:00

This has been building up for a while. The feeling that something is just sabotaging the University experience for Japan.

Japan has some of the highest rates of higher education but one of the lower rates of graduate school attendance, one has to wonder why this is? We could point to a number of reasons for the lack of interest in graduate level education but let's talk about the idea of Immediate Employment (that motivates The Sense of Obligatory Education).

Immediate Employment, means students often feel so pressured to secure employment over a year before even finishing school, that something like applying, and possibly failing to enter grad school appears to be too much of risk.

The schools and companies of Japan really have the mentality of fear leading the whole push toward life accomplishment. Fear of failure in school/fear of failure in getting a job/and therefore in becoming an adult and finally feeling "free" of all those fear induced hurdles only to be presented with the fear of not working long enough hours like your peers and then fearing being alienated from the group. Fear of not being married on time/fear of not being a beautiful enough woman/or hard working enough man.

You hear that while Japanese University is hard to get into, it is easy to graduate from. This is true, but only recently have I understood why. Not only is the 4th of University basically light, since you have already acquired a job, the University just wants to gently push you adrift. In some humanities departments there are graduate theses, and this seems mandatory for all students, definitely harder than USA Universities who have these papers usually only for honor's students. Also the classes have almost no required participation. There is little chance at teaching will scold or humiliate you if you sleep in the front row, or respond to a question with "what?" followed by silence. What happened to a little humiliation to get students on the ball. When one professor was asked why he allows this kind of behavior he said, "If I push them too hard they might just commit suicide, so I have to make the interaction between student and teacher like that."

The other reason, I've come to believe, is the shortness of the school year. We have over 5 months off a year! How is anyone expected to build any sense of study as a lifestyle if the schedule is oriented like a series of projects in between coasting? For example, summer break (Late July to Late September), winter break (mid December to mid January), then after a mere two weeks back at school (Jan 9-21st) it is now Spring break (Feb to April). Sure, great, how can I complain with all this time off? It's simply that the brain gets soft with all this time off. For example the first day back at school last week, library was open and things were looking like study time again. Actually the library was empty, and outside in the quad students seems more concerned with rehearsing their break-dancing routines and smoking cigarettes, sound like a 80's high school flick, it's not far away.

I don't really blame the students, because of the lack of continuity throughout the year the emphasis of University shifts to their "Student Groups", like dance, anime, rugby, etc. These student groups end up providing the back-bone feel of continuity of University education instead of something like, for example, your major!?

Now, don't get me wrong, American students are equally unmotivated to become "scholastic," but the school year in the USA at least provides a structure that keeps you busy, and maybe academics will trickle in through contact like it did to me. So at the end of your four years maybe you've acquired some individual appreciation for your field and realize you've only really bitten into the edge of that knowledge sandwich, what's you option? Look for work or go to grad school, travel around the world, move out and live on your own? Not in Japan.

I asked my professor what the most popular major is at our humanities driven school. "Psychology" he replied, "because all these kids want to know about themselves."

It's true these students seem lost. Sure, this is not a new critique of Japanese youth, but I was able to put my finger on it the other day. Students are driven to conform, pass standardized tests, participate in "groups", achieve as a class, wear uniforms, all be equally devote to getting out of High School and into University. All of this is understood, then, reaching University you are suddenly on your own, out of uniform, left to create an identity intellectually and physically all at once. Creating identity either intellectually or in terms of appearance is always a process of trial and error. Usually to figure out who you are, you end up getting there through some regrettable choices, but that's how you learn. In Japan you are given about 2 1/2 years to figure out who you are before you have to finalized yourself into a ready-to-apply 3rd year student, trying to find your niche in the employment market.

So why is it this way? It's big business, headhunting, temp agencies, counseling, recruiting, training. On any train you see ads confronting everything in you: do you have a good enough X, shouldn't you be doing X, wouldn't you like X better, We can help you. Basic power of the service industry maintaining the status quo. If schools (also a for-profit business) keep pumping out these young workers, sans identity, who are presented with a modestly large salary for a 22 year old, it works right in that that new money then forms the means to for them to consumeristically continue on their search for creating of identity.

Another reason is that unlike the USA, most grad-students must pay their way all the way till the end of their PhD. Who can afford that? There is very little money being put out there for Japanese students. Even though with high levels of achievement cannot find anything like a grant funded education+TA-ship like the US.

Maybe I feel this way because I am at such a lack of being able to understand the system here. I can't imagine being given such a small dish of identity-building to snack on, only to be re-confined in the office hierarchy. This seems to feed back into the level of information control in Japan. Try to access something your interested in: if your not doing it the right way or through the right channels, then it's restricted from you. For example, libraries.

In libraries I used in the USA, getting, maintaining, and renewing your books was all linked, all easily accessed. Need a book from another library, click it. Need to know when you books are due, click it. Need to renew, you get it.

In Japan, not only is getting a book from another library a 1-sheet of paper-per-book ordeal, but you usually can't get books from another library without some pleading or paying some money. Each University seems to guard their collection like the king in the palace. Try to get into Waseda, even with a credential letter from another University and they won't let you in the building unless you specifically list what book you want, and they still look at you like vagrants trying to get a free meal. Request a book from an unfriendly library and you can't even removed it from the premises.

This is the way things are run. Knowledge can be power, and those holders of power in Japan barricade their power within a wall of bureaucracy. Most libraries cannot even be accessed without a card. Those elites whom the system wants to expose its power to are trained to fit into the power structure through the elimination system of elite schools. Afterwards they take the reigns and then know only to continue with the same style of restriction of knowledge to keep their positions safe.

So, while the new PM Fukuda says he wants to double the number of foreign graduate students in Japan in the next couple years one has to wonder why he isn't throwing that money at Japanese students? You really want to make Japan an intellectual powerhouse and an international country, then don't rely on imported knowledge, you need to make the students of Japan ready to receive knowledge in a new way first and that will only happen by changing the focus of learning from memorization and completion of standardized tasks to the process of education the whole being, creating spirit and identity through understanding and knowledge.

Me and the Mountains

2008-01-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Man, my legs are toast.

Four days ago I headed out from my home near central Tokyo, the destination: Yamanashi pref. Katsunuma, wine region. Full Photo Slideshow Here

I left late, around 11:45 am, bike was loaded with minimal camping equipment. I made my way out toward Fuchu, something I've done a number of times as "training rides". The parenthesis are because that training didn't really help much.

Making it out toward Takao was the first push, about 30 km and 2 hours with getting lost and finding the good entrance into the mountains. When I hit the first pass after Takao I said to myself, "oh yeah, this is real, do I have enough water?" It was a nice climb. But the decent made me realize how climbing mountains still covers distance, slow up, fast down.

I made up to the Uenohara area where thought I could find a campsite or hotel. On the last hill to town my legs were feeling funny. I couldn't make it all the way up so I stopped. When I tried to stand up next to my bike my right thigh cramped. I stood there gripping it as my left thigh cramped, as I bent over my abs cramped. I almost fell over. I must have been quite a sight, sweaty, red-faced guy in black on the side of a busy mountain road gritting his teeth and slowing lowering himself to a horizontal positon on the sidewalk. No one stopped.

I dazedly rolled through town, and then out the other side without realizing. I was actually at the edge of town, a combination Pachiko parlor, Chinese restaurant and Family restaurant, "Subara" 1,2,and 3. 100m past there the road just went up into the mountains. I saw a road going down to a gravel lot, out of view of the road, good enough for tonight. I rolled back and got dinner at the Chinese Subaru, then went back and set up, made tea, tried to dry some clothes. It was cold night, if only my sleeping back was down and -5 rated it would have been comfy.

The next morning I shook the ice off off the tent, made porridge and coffee. Got on the bike with frozen hands. Down the road I would split off the main vein and take an overland route instead of a tunnel. It was Sasago pass, by first real challenge. My legs were fatigued from the day before but suddenly being on a quiet road was worth it. The climb went on for a while, I had to keep taking breaks, walking the bike. I came to a sign after climbing for over an hour there as a roadblock saying the road was closed. Could've told me that about 5 tough km ago. I hopped it. Another 30 minutes and I came across a hiking group, the first people, at the pass, a single lane old tunnel with icicles hanging down, it was cold at that altitude.

I descended for a while, maybe 10 km into the next valley and rode another 10 into Katsunuma and the vineyards. I wasn't really looking like a wine taster, black, skin-tight, and sweaty. I stopped at one place, it was ok, nothing really interesting or tasty. Down the road I tried some interesting stuff at Haramo winery, bought two bottles and had them mailed home. I went to meet my contact at Enzan station, a man named Yamashita. I had forgotten the all-important house guest item, a present. I picked up just some local stuff, nothing special to them, a bottle of wine I like and some dried persimmons. Mr. Yamashita recognized me, walked up said "Mr. Ken? Mr. Ken!, I knew you Mr Ken!" He was an energetic old guy. A sketchy driver, and an excellent guide to Yamanshi, explaining the local figures and landmarks on the way to his home up in the foothills outside of town. His wife greeted us and they lead me to the o-furo (bath) immediately. I got inside and couldn't figure out how to get hot water, no go. I called to them, no response. I tried again, called again, still cold only. I took a cooold shower knowing that the hot bath was right there, it was actually refreshing, toughening.

After a nice dinner Mr. Yamashita and I discussed Japanese and American politics, the Japanese education system, and the lack of critical thought in Japanese universities over a couple glasses of tasty local white wine served out of a large size sake bottle. We made plans to go see Masumura's (the director I'm researching) grave at 6am the next morning.

He woke me up genki at 5:30, feed me coffee and mochi, then on the road to the neighboring town town of Kofu. We got to the temple and it was still dark. We wandered around looking. At 6:30 a monk rand the bell, Yamashita asked him and we found the grave, the final resting place of this guy I've been thinking about for years now. It was nice, though still dark. I would like to go back when it wasn't dawn. Still, I bowed by head and asked for Masumura's blessing in my research.

On the car ride back it became clear that the Yamashita's has misunderstood my request for two nights at their house and I didn't want to be rude and just ask "can I stay here another night?" So I gave up on my plans of going around to wineries and was back on the road by 8:00 heading back over a different set of mountains than I came.

I got lost getting out of their town and up on the road, the mountainous end of the crowded Tokyo road, Ome-kaido. The map said the pass was at 1500m. I started climbing, my legs had no strength, just slow, light gears, and the road went up, and then up some more, and them on the mountain ahead of me I could see the white guardrail continuing up some more. I came to dread looking up at the slopes above me for fear of seeing yet more white guard-rail. Getting to the top was a straight 3 hour climb, and the sun went behind the cloud an hour in, it felt f*&%ng cold.
The only thing that kept me going was knowing that if I turned around there only other option was disassembling and loading my bike on the train, and taking the fenders off my bike is a serious pain. Toward the top the road became increasingly engineered, huge soaring curves suspending me 50m in the air, not a car in sight. Huge tunnels and more ramps and tunnels int he works, gotta keep down employment with endless public works huh.

I lunched at the top, though this time I had to greedily nosh down my onigiri while riding because I was too low energy. Cup ramen and coffee at the top. I bundled up in preparation for the chill of the decent. I rocketed down the other side, no other cars, no other people. The road rough, looking pretty unused. The valley was more of a canyon. I looked up at the steep walls on both sides and hoped that my route out here wasn't up one of those grades. It felt like the most lonesome place I've encountered in Japan, almost post-apocalyptic, or deliverance. The road kept descending, which was a sinking feeling since I knew there was another pass between me and the onsen (hot spring).

I eventually came across the Japanese equivalent of hicks, three guys loafing around with bad hair (skunk bleach job), a kilometer of road lined with shacks, car bodies, burning stuff, and signs advertising "Fresh Mushrooms". I was tempted to stop and ask if they had any of "those" kind of mushrooms but was too set on getting the heck out of there.

I rolled into a town, no one around but there was, as there are everywhere, guys directing traffic, go, stop, wait while I make sure no other cars are coming on this road where I've seen 10 cars in the last hour. How do these guys get out here, aren't they cold (more anti-unemployment). I almost crashed into one of these guys, as he backed up into my line of approach.

You know you are isolated in Japan when there is no conbini (conveince store), this town only had a vending machine with NO WARM BEVERAGES, it was like 3 degrees out. I followed the signs up another hill to Kosuge-onsen, thank god, it was open. After the bath I tried to find a place to stay in the area but all the guest houses were out-of-operation for the season. The only place I could get a reservation was 25 km away in Uenohara again. I was warm, I started riding, climbed a steep pass and then decended through some of the oldest villages I'd seen on my trip. Beautiful wood farm houses, villages of maybe 50 homes, no conbini. I was great, it felt like a Japan I'd never seen before. Basically, if a town has a station, they end up having all the department stores and other generic (yet conveinent) stuff exported out to commercialism, station X. These villages were from like 40 years ago.

The light was fading, I switched on my flashers counting down the kilos to the hotel. When it really got dark I reached down to switch on my headlamp, dead, good timing. I rode the last 10 kilos into Uenohara in half-light, then no light. 90 Km day.

The hotel was heaven, basic, but warm, clean, steady water supply, ramen nearby. In bed by 9.

I left this morning swinging by my first campsite looking for my glasses that I thought I'd shaken out of my tent the first night, no luck :(

I rode back out toward Takao and Hachioji, the last 400m pass was a small blessing, the weather was good, sun the whole time. On my way out I stopped by this weird defunct hotel overhanging a lake, some cheesy luxury hotel from the bubble period. I was still there, pink and white, proclaiming some cellophane opulence. The front door was smashed in, I peaked in at the stuffed white peacock and pink marble, kinda scary actually after the recent zombi films and books (thanks Nathan).

I made in back to Tokyo and painfully made my way to Fuchu to meet a friend for lunch, rested, then painfully rolled the rest of the way home. 315km in four days.

Next time when it's not so cold.

Ken feels overwhelmed by the holiday season

2007-12-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

Last night we took the train down to Shibuya, then transfered to a train down to Yokohama. The destination was a friend's art exhibit. Getting off at the Minato-Mirai station a little past Yokohama, we walked out to see what really looked like 'neo-tokyo', soaring buildings, open spaces, florescent glow. We had been told it would be crowded but we weren't prepared, the effect of so many people will never
cease to be somewhat disorienting.

I wasn't planning on writing this, so be forewarned it's just a rant.

As we walked to the venue we were being passed by endless young couples on the sidewalk, and the street alongside was stopped traffic of family vans. Just goes to show, when you make big wide streets it doesn't solve the traffic problem, more people just think they should drive and the same gridlock resumes.

All of this crowding put me in a slightly cynical mood. Why were all there people out in this slightly windswept edge of Tokyo bay? Were they going to the art exhibit? No, of course not, the exhibit was a little off the main path and only five or six people where inside. The exhibit itself, from the first-year grad students of Gei-dai, one of the premier art schools of Japan, was focused mainly on digital arts, or arts including a technological aspect. I found a number of works really brilliant in their use of electronics to create engaging, inventive uses. One simple work was a pedestol with a large square map bar code, popular in Japan for accessing websites, maps, etc. you just point your cell phone camera at it and the image gets read into you phone's browser. Upon zapping up this address the site it takes you to is actually a snapshot taken of you accessing the site. The funny thing is there are no directions, but all the visitors are already involved in this electronic dialogs that they engage in this work almost effortless though it is simply a series of symbols.

So, of the tens of thousands of people out, only about 10 were going to see art. A little disheartening. Maybe because it's the Christmas season, maybe because the adjacent brick shipping building turned trendy mall was packed wall to wall with young people shopping and waiting in line to get into a cafe or restaurant, to join the collective opinion of approval this venue had, to have 'their' XX restaurant experience. I must admit that the shear mass of people consumed with consumption or out to join the masses checking out the lights on the amusement park filled me with some serious doubts for Japan's future. These people are our the next majority generation. Not that this is much different from the wide middle class in the US, just it's the crowd affect, so many people on one side, so few on the other.

Why is this? We talked,

"is it that people don't want to think?"

"No, I think people are thinking."

"Then maybe that they prefer one way of thinking over the other?"

"So what's the difference? Thinking about art verses thinking about shopping, or being in some place that people like to go?"

"I guess it's a matter of how you relate to the activity, if with the group mentality you sense of meaning is coming from an exterior judgment on the enjoyability of the event, whereas the relationship to work is can be based in the mental "consumption" of that experience, but it also has the possibility of creating meaning from within the experiencer, to interpret art is a matter of interiority, the sense of meaning comes from a relationship of the work to your personal thought."

"So all these people aren't enjoying themselves? You're to cynical"

"No, they are mentally enjoying themselves, I guess I just wondering such a big imbalance, maybe I'm just disaffected, I should remember that this isn't a venue for art, it's a venue for shopping and seeing lights, but so many people"

"But the *art* areas of Tokyo, Ginza and Hibya, are exclusive, I went there and tried to "get to know" current art, but they just ignored me."

"It seems like the small gallery owners should be the last people to be snobby, but that's the exact opposite of the reality."

"Yeah, it sucks, art is being smothered"

"It has to exist...maybe it's just the control of knowledge=power, deny newbies to the art world and maintain your authority, anti-art, but pro status quo."

"Do you want to get dinner around here?"

"No let's retreat, I'm getting overwhelmed."

Nice moon that night over the bay.

Japanese Wine Country

2007-12-11T03:53:00.000-08:00

Well, clocking in at around one post a month this blog needs to run it's ass around the block a few more times, de-stagnate, etc. Maybe it's just the slow, methodical, accumulated volume approach.

Over the first weekend of December Motoko, Mark and I did what all city dwellers should do more often, get out of town. We took a train out toward the west of Tokyo to the neighboring prefecture of Yamanashi (mountain pear prefecture!). It's always nice to ride some local trains long distance. The Shinkansen (bullet train) is fast but feels closer to an airplane cabin than a train, whereas on the local train you get more flavor of the journey. When it gets cold these mountain local trains stop at stations and just unlock the doors, you have to open them yourself to conserve heat. I picked up some bentos and we enjoyed climbing up into the mountains outside of the last part of Tokyo, Hacchioji. You can just take Chuo rapid from Tokyo Sta. or Shinjuku etc. out to Takao, then transfer to Chuo-hon-sen toward Kofu or Fuji; total cost 1,680¥, not bad.

Our first destination was something Mark and I had stumbled across on the internet a while back, a wine cave pouring Yamanashi wines, all you can taste for 1100¥. It is located at the aptly named "Budo no Kyo/Village of Grapes" station, and we were just struck with the sensation of walking through these tiny trellised fields, defoliated at the time we went, and experiencing a sudden and profound quiet and calm just an hour and half from our home stations. It was nice, there were not many people and we walked down one hill from the station and up another hill to the wine cave called"Budo no Oka/Hill of Grapes".

The place had the strange air about of a half derelict art/tourist attraction in some country corner of Japan, part old amusement park with piped-in music, and part bomb shelter with unused concrete structures. Anyway, it was odd, but we were there for the wine. The setup is you get a little silver ashtray sized cup on a ribbon that you carry around and pour your own samples for hundreds of bottles that are set out along the large cave. The cups are supposedly used in France because they show the color of the wine well against the reflective patterns in the bottom of the cup but they really are not well suited smelling the wine as the it's just a shallow saucer.

We began with whites, very dry, kind of too acidic to start with. We made our way down toward sweeter whites, rosés, and reds, kind of lost with the sheer variety and no guidance whatsoever about what to taste. Another difficulty was the environment of the tasting room. Subterranean with an acidic tinge to the air with all the open wine, spit out wine, and no food or other aroma to cut the astringency. This made tasting many dryer wines difficult and we found ourselves running back to taste some dessert wines to refresh the palette.

Overall it was enjoyable, but would be better done with a game plan and some snacks.

(click on images for full size)

Bronson's Loose

2007-11-14T02:46:00.000-08:00

So, I guess the time has come to officially, and I mean that in the "it's online" kind of officiality, that we have become parents, of Bronson, Charles Bronson, aka CB the cat. The summer-long battle with the rodents, another 'growing experience' of living in an older Japanese house (I heard from my landlord that this place might be about 50 years old). The mice would scamper and scurry over the thin cypress wood ceiling boards, up the walls, and when we weren't looking, into the kitchen and anything they could nibble into. This went on for about 6 weeks while the happy mice propagated and became more comfortable co-habitating with us. Eventually, an couple of heart stopping, mouse flying-at-my-face off a kitchen shelf incidents promoted us to take action, moving furniture, patching holes, calling in the professionals. We eventually poisoned the a bastards with some slow-acting stuff which they simply feel sick and retreated to the safety and convenience of the sewer to die.

Toward the end of the mice battle I suddenly realized that all mice problems could be solved, now and in the future, by having a cat. I'd seen postings on foreigner websites like this place, or this place. Things happened fast once we found someone who needed to leave the country and couldn't take their cat. We ended up renting a car and driving up in the rain to the interim prefecture between Tokyo and Gunma, Saitama, to the north of where we live.

After a somewhat dubious exchange in a McDonald's parking lot in the rain, we had a tiny grey kitty in basket and were on our way back home.

From the start she a mellow cat, in the car she fell asleep. We got her home and she was relaxed within an hour. She loves people, she wants to be with them.

The vet tells us she is 90% Russian Blue. I would say she is right since her characteristics match: feisty, always hungry, pretty smart, and emotionally well balanced. She wants to sleep when we do, eat with us (eat the things WE eat), and talk with us, she complains mostly.

As to her name, why Bronson? Is she a killer? She was supposed to be a killer of mice, but she sleeps with us so she doesn't notice when they are out. She is a fighter, she likes to kick ass on, for example, on my socked feet. She has her priorities straight, food, then ass kicking, then sleep sometimes proceeded by kicking some blanket ass or attacking my head.

I say she is smart because she learns things quickly, she actually obeys to a reasonable amount, meaning, for a cat, at all. She responds to verbal commands, sometimes. She can turn the lights on and off (via string), though without any concept of the the human use for lights as illumination.

The best is she goes for walks on my shoulder, perched up there next to my head talking to me. She is good, she doesn't jump down or fall off. I take her for a 5-10 walk each day. In some ways I can feel the title of "weird cat guy foreigner" creeping up on me, but I don't really care, it's cool, Bronson's loose!

Un Bon Verre de Vin

2007-10-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

Recently, aside from school reading and pouring though texts I've been keeping occupied by looking into Japanese wine, grape wine that is, not the misnomer rice wine, aka Saké, whose making process is actually more similar to beer in that it is multi-fermentation grain as opposed to single fermentation plant juices. Anyway, I guess the question is, what about Japanese wine? I really had little interest, seeing as how at my local markets and liquor stores the only Japanese wine you see looks very sketchy, labeled like some locality's omiyage(tourist shop item), and bearing the unappetizing words ama-kuchi=sweet wine (fortified? one wonders).

However, my friend Mark and I began to wonder, in this county with a fascination with food and food culture border lining on obsession, isn't there, shouldn't there be palatable if not good wine?

Some poking around revealed that the biggest wine seller in Japan was the beverage giant Suntory, not a very good indication if one takes the high point of Japanese beer as being Yebisu, a nice, but pretty characterless brew.

The real change in my opinion came when we went out to dinner a place in Shimokitazawa called "Tambourin" that specializes in Japanese wine and food. There they had simply delicious, unique, interesting wines with character, all from Japan. So, okay, this has all been a charade, there is good stuff, it's just hidden away.

But why?

Why isn't this selling at other restaurants? Why don't any of the liquor stores, places that pride themselve one on wine, another on Japanese liquors Saké and Shochu, carry more than a paltry bottle or two?

I started asking around. A wine lover in my English class said Japanese wine isn't good, I ask why, he says he likes Italian, that it doesn't go with Japanese food. Has he tried Japanese wine? Not recently.

So what did Japanese used to be like? My friend Taketo, a guy I encountered searching for informationa bout Japanese wine explained it this way;

"The first time wine came to Japan was during the Edo period and there are many stories of it being drunk by the likes of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Mitokomon, however the wine of that period was most likely port-wine. Thereafter, about 130 years ago, in Hokkaido, Niigata, and Yamanashi, Japanese wine making began. My thought is that the Japanese people of that time would not have agreed with the taste of wines from Bordeaux or Burgundy.
I think that being the said, the easy to drink, juice-like sweet wines are what the modern wines are essentially raised from.

For all practical reasons, the foundation of wine as we know it began in Japan in 1959. At the time the mainstay of wine was still port-style (fortified) sweet wine, however in preparation for the 1960 Olympics winemakers in Japan had the chance to change toward the styles we see today. That's why there still remains the juice-like wine (The organic 1100¥ bottle) that you drank recently, because there still remains a strong inclination for that style of wine for older people.

Also, another thing you can't forget about the state of Japanese wine is that by now Japan has had two "Red Wine Boom"s.

The first one was over 20 years ago, the "Beaujolais Nouveau Boom".
That was when Japan lifted the embargo (on Beaujolais N.) and also due to the time difference, Japan gets the wine first. It was the heyday of the Bubble period and Japanese people had money to order whole jet-loads of Nouveau shipped over from France. I think that was the period when the wine brand consciousness began for Japanese people.

The second "Red Wine Boom" was about 10 years ago, related to the so-called "French Paradox", the "Red Wine is Good For Your Health" boom. The truth is that unless wine is aged in new oak barrels the tannin amount is for the most part insignificant, but that knowledge wasn't widespread and at the time anything called red wine flew off the shelves. It was during that time when "Additive Free Wine/無添加/むてんか" wine was born, that horrible drink that you couldn't even call wine, nothing more than something that didn't use sulfites. One after another, the big makers of Japan all put out this stuff using imported juice, and I think it was from the horribleness of that taste that Japanese wine once again gained a bad reputation.

So, if we look at the history of wine in Japan in this way we see that rather than "Wine if for enjoyment" or "Wine is a part of Life", rather what is is more often the case is that wine is to used promote "status" or to be in the vogue.

But, as a result of the wine booms there was definitely a number of people who came to love wine, and for these people it is not brand but rather a strong recognition of tradition and flavor. These are the people who are changing the world of Japanese wine, and I am yet another one of those people who is trying their best to do so. "-Taketo, Yamazakiya wine shop, Eifukucho, Tokyo.

Last weekend I had a truely great Japanese wine, a pinot noir from Nagano called "Go-ichi".

Tropical=Hot+Bugs

2007-08-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

The flight left at 12:20 AM on Tuesday night. Go to sleep in San Francisco, wake up at G. W. Bush International airport (complete with dashing and artless statue of papa Bush, blazer blowing in the wind over his shoulder, marching somewhere in great wind with a briefcase, like from the aft to the fore deck cocktail bar of a large yacht), before hopping on a tiny, jittery plane to Zihuatenjo/Ixtapa INT airport.

Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac the air felt like central Florida when I would visit my grandparents. The airport was tiny and the total 20 or so passengers of our plane were the only people going through customs.

After a shot taxi ride on a freeway cutting through coconut tree fields we arrived at Zihualtengo and our bungalow perched on a steep little hill on the bay facing out toward the ocean. The town hugs a large bay and there are three main areas all referred to by their adjacent beach, ours was Playa Major.

Our bungalow was like an apartment, with enough beds to sleep a family of four or five with a huge balconey. The sound of the waves 50 ft below were constant. It was hot, probably in the 90s, and there was sounds of a tropical area, birds, bugs, and foliage blowing around. The town of Zihuatanejo was only mildly developed, nothing too polished for tourists, but many open air restaurants, fruit vendors and dusty traffic down the main drag. We spent a couple of days just walking around, getting heated up, retreating to the showers, cantinas, or the ocean. The ocean was actually cloudier than I expected and I have yet to experience a truly turquoise ocean, the Caribbean?

The time of year was actually, as in Japan, the rainy season. However the rain usually can heavily and in the middle of the night, not the afternoon like Japan or the American south. It was also the time when Mexican school kids are off, so many large families were grouped, sunning and playing on the beach. This was nice to see the locals on vacation instead of a bunch of tourists lounging and the locals working.

Zihuatanejo is in the state of Guerrero on the south/middle west coast of Mexico, near Acapulco and Ixtapa, both luxury beach resort towns. Guerrero is famous for Posole, a light, savory chicken or pork soup with hominy giant corn and a variety of possible things you can add, red or green chilis, seafood, pork head meat, innards etc.(all of this=ken needs a handkerchief or maybe a towel)

We had many good meals, some good seafood, good molé and Motoko tried her first fresh coconut, however it was more than she bargained for.

We were sitting a thatch roofed eatery next to the beach at the more touristy Playa La Ropa. I ordered a light lunch, guacamole, two coconuts, and some tiny tacos. We watched the coconuts get hacked open, then they were (strangely in retrospect) taken away. When the coconuts arrived at the table they had been filled with ice, some soda water and crushed mint, they tasted great and Motoko and I sipped away.
Motoko was doing a great job of taking picture of the whole scene, picture I usually am to shy to take, of people directly. We were having a great time, I believe there were phrases like "this is the best guacamole!". Toward the end of the meal I noticed I was feeling a little hot and wondered if the coconut concoction had some alcohol it in...

10 minutes later Motoko was red-faced, reclining in her armchair.

2 hours later we managed to get into a sleepy, unsteady but finally unharmed Motoko into a Taxi back home. Next time we'll use more caution when someone unrequested, puts a mojito in our coconuts.

Though Zihuatanejo was pleasant, it was also really hot and without much more to do besides sun, swim, and eat. After watching "The Transformers" at the local un-airconditioned theater and making the most of the lime tree on our patio, we went looking for a route to our next destination, Taxco, up in the mountains.

We went to the bus terminal to find tickets. Though Taxco appears basically in between Zihuatanejo and Mexico City/Districto Federal ("El De Efe"), we found out that the only way to get there was to swing a couple of hours south through Acapulco, up to Chilpanchingo, to Iguala, then to Taxco.

Also there was no direct bus.

We left at 6:00AM direct to Chilpanchingo on a nice "luxury" bus with deeply reclining seats and, for me, a newly found form of motion sickness that lasts for hours. Then we got "economico" bus to Iguala, another hour before getting a fully local bus from Iguala to Taxco.

As the ride from the coast to the mountains progressed we noticed a nice cooling in the air. Most of the roads ran gradually up into the mountains and the views of huge green valleys and mountains that didn't appear to have nearly anyone living in them were great. There weren't quite jungles, just vibrant green low bushes and trees covering every contour.

As we climbed out of the second to last town Iguala on the tiny bus, the air cooled significantly and in the newly discovered cool breeze we excitedly looked at up the mountain at a town of sandy colored homes graphed onto a steep valley, our next destination.

Check out the all of the Mexico photos from Zihuatanejo to Cuenavaca here in a convenient slide show , but before click here to for a download link and accomanpy the slideshow with this great album by "just another band from east LA".

'merican bar-ba-Q

2007-08-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

So, the idea was to have a dance party the day after the wedding. The people who couldn't come to the wedding itself, as well as those who did were invited to a BBQ up in the wine country. This was the party especially for my Mom's side and her numerous friends.

Mo and I had a combined feeling of relaxation and tiredness after the wedding so the mellowness of a BBQ was great. The venue was a garden center with a nice patio. The BBQ was effectively the reception though we had had dinner at the ceremony there was no departure and re-entry of the bride as might take place when you move from a church to a reception hall.

As for the dance party side of the event, I had arranged a number of dance mixes, rock, world, mellow, warm-up, etc., however due to the varied ages of the crowd there didn't seem to be any crowd pleasers. When I started it off with Femi Kuti I was dancing by myself but getting down. When I switched to modern indy rock my friends would dance but my mom complained. When we put on best of the Rolling Stones for my mom all of the older people got up and danced like it was 1969 all over again, but the classic rock vibe and "best of funk hits" was alienating the the younger crowd. While there was some good dancing on the floor, one wonders what the ideal mix is as well as a new found respect for any roller rink DJ.

The food at the BBQ was fantastic and though not technically a BBQ with coals in action, it was catered with a request for "Americana" and was perfect, cajun skrimp, potato salad, grilled asparagus.

Those more mature members of the party, my niece, some other kids, Patrick, Dane, etc. felt that the warm weather was ripe for a little throwing of ice, then water, then buckets of water, then water balloons. Leave it to the strong adults to up the ante, why cups of water when there are buckets? Even Motoko and her friends got involved. It was poor Shizue who actually had the guts to try to take out sly Dane, who, as expected would have no such sneak attacks, ultimately coming out much drier.

After much good food and booty-shaking we headed back home and many Seattlites head to the airport, too short :(

It was hot so it actually felt a pretty good, I could go for some water fights in Tokyo right now.

For Slideshow with more photos click HERE

First Time for Everything...

2007-08-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

So, I know it has been quite a while since I've put words to page, my apologies for any wasted time looking at a site un-updated, the most grossly offensive of internet crimes. The problem has been that each time something worth posting arises the project had become too big and cumbersome to be a digestible length. With this resuscitation of my blog into the world of the living the goal it to keep it ticking away at a regular basis.

Mo and I were married last month at a ceremony in California.(Photos Here)

We left increasingly muggy Japan for the clean and temperate delights of the central California coast. I actually didn't feel nervous, partly because I was returning to my hometown and am familiar with the area, and partly because the wedding itself was actually a small intimate affair, mentally quite manageable. In reality it was managed by my second mother Diana who is a pro at holding events of all kinds. Mo too seemed to be not totally frantic.

In order to get married we needed a marriage license before any judge or priestly type could ask us those officially required words of "do you take this_______"+"I do". The civic center of Marin County is a great Frank Lloyd Wright buildingFrank Lloyd Wright building in turquoise and sandstone with tons of elliptical designs. (Wright died with the plans complete in 1959 and various parts of the building were completed between 62-69, also it's the offices in the film "Gattica", but we didn't have to give a DNA sample to get in. )

Most of our friends came down from Seattle and Mo's closest friends and family made the long trip from Japan to partake. For those from out of town there was a rehearsal lunch the day before in a nice garden restaurant followed by the actual rehearsal of the ceremony. That evening we had our respective bachelor/ette's parties though mine fell a little flat because I over estimated how many people would be in town by Friday evening, regardless it was still fun and the level of humor was sufficiently low-brow (thanks guys!).

The next morning I went jogging with my note-cards for my English vows, trotting along in the early morning mumbling to myself and communing with a few deer I encountered. After breakfast I sent Mo and her mom off to get their hair and make-up done, knowing that thereafter I wouldn't see her until I was standing on our equivalent of the altar. At this point I still felt relaxed and my best men and I went out for Mexican food for lunch, warming up for the honeymoon I guess. After lunch was when a period of somewhat vacuous waiting began. Dane, Nathan and I sat around the hotel room, checking over suits and Nathan shuttled some people to the wedding site, the following two hours dragged by. I suited-up, hoped my hair was looking good and the 'men' and I headed to my dad's house.

The ceremony took place in the back yard of my father's house, wide brick patio with a creek and some fantastic trees. The sun was up but the crispness and clean feel to the air in rural California made for an ideal climate, women could wear sun dresses but the men in suits were not steamed-out of them.

The ceremony was officiated by our friend Andrew who got a license to be a public deputy of the peace for one day. When I arrived a little early some people where already mingling and I have no memory of greeting guests at the door though I'm told that was my duty. I can say that in whole hour before Mo showed up was very dream like, I felt the momentum of the 'ceremony' aspect revving up and the sense of historicity of the institution of marriage, how people for so long have found it necessary to have this social and communal agreement, declaration, and recognition between two people both saying "now you're committed" and "we're here to support you".

I stood facing Andrew, all family and friends in their respective places, Best Men had walked Brides Maids down the aisle, my niece and a young man I've known since he was a baby began the procession, sprinkling flowers and looking like a tiny businessman respectively. As the duet cello and violin played along,　I heard some gasps from the rear and Motoko and her father were in sight.

Mo looked white, luminescent and angelic.

Her dress was white satin and trailed behind her as she can down the steps. My feeling at this time was very peaceful, trying not to rush though this one moment, feeling happy to be there, then. Mo looked a little frightened facing me. Andrews words were well spoken and our friend Yoshiko was reading a Japanese translation at intervals. When the time for the vows came I tried to speak loudly and though I didn't make any huge mistakes I'm sure I sounded sufficiently formal. Mo's vows were going well until she heard some of her Brides Maids softly crying and then she too got choked up before being able to continue. Not long after that, with a quote of Hemingway, the ceremony closed out.

I felt relieved, happy.

It felt like my eyes had refocused, wide angle, I could see everyone again and they were all smiling, not to mention giving us the paparazzi photo treatment. But I didn't think that was going to happen again for a while so I hammed it up.

The sunlight coming through the pines was warm and women were using the parasols Diana and wisely chosen. There was a the sushi chef that my father and I went to for years making sushi, and a full western buffet as well. People began noshing, as did I, but Mo, thinking herself a typical bride who can't eat with the tightness of the dress held back (Once she started though, she ate pretty well).

The best men warmed up to give their speeches, both of which contained sufficient roast to earn them the title, if only I hadn't been the only heckler.

Mo's girls gave their speeches in Japanese with our friend Amanda reading the translation afterwards. They all gave very touching speeches, Mo was moved and very thankful.

The whole wedding was beautiful, and it all wouldn't have been possible without the careful organization of my step-mother Diana, who unfortunately didn't get many photos because she was behind-the-scenes helping the whole time, many thanks!!

Our friend Fumiko took many great photos, click here to see a full slideshow

Also, my sister posted her album here

And my friend Max's photos are here

2007-05-28T23:54:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to see another screening in Roppongi presented by Donald Richie. The film was one I had seen before entitled, "Vibrator" by Hiroki Ryuichi (Hiroki is strangely his last name). The film itself is a favorite of mine, portraying a couple of thirty-somethings drifting in and out of love throughout a spontaneously romantic journey through northern Japan in a small-load truck. The key issue of this film is luckily not a noxiously serendipitous romance but rather the phenomenon of people wanting to reach out and make contact with others, as it is simply put in this film; the desire to touch someone else. Richie supported with my conjecture that this film was pointing to a larger social issue in Japan and reawakened something I was thinking about a couple of months ago, namely, how is that people in Japan communicate, interact, and exist in modern Tokyo?

This fascinates me because I too feel awash in what seem to be a number of factors that encourage and reinforce a visually expressive yet interpersonally timid style of social existence. On a train, left without an object of attention like a book, ipod, conversation partner, or other distraction I am left with only an exchange of visual data of my surrounding and the individuals therein. I spend time and mental energy searching out that which simply stands out, be it the most beautiful, mundane, picturesque, or dilapidated, what my eyes are really doing is evaluating, judging, and ultimately discarding that momentary bit looking for another thing to 'consume'. What I'm getting at is the oppressive feeling of public interaction as dictated through a model of a heavily consumerist society where things are appreciated in a cycle of valuate-desire-consume-repeat. As a continental thinker once said of modern space, "the predominance of visualization serves to conceal repetitiveness. People look, and take sight, take seeing, for life itself"

People are keenly aware of their public appearance while at the same time fawn that they are not. This is the “anonymity” of public Tokyo and in many ways any metropolis where masses are using the same urban infrastructure. While anonymity is the norm I wonder about those who commute, people who glimpse each other every weekday leaving their homes, waiting for transportation, standing approximate to one another frequently and who never speak.

I propose that there is a social visual currency, and a form of non-verbal value-added communication. In urban society’s vocal void, Japan’s speechless public space is materialization of what is seen. Through what is displayed and observed, evaluated and deemed valuable (enough), and how this is how people interact with those around them in public space. Is this an essentially materialist approach to social discourse, no words, just a market of visual value? In public space the effect of increased sensory stimuli through the mass of people and imagery data upon the human brain in a Metropolis has left us quiet. To have one’s “community” stratified across space so large, so populated, and at a pace so hurried requires us to "conceal the repetitiveness" of so many unprocessable things and to process society in terms of visual values and sensory exchange.

It annoys me that advertising is sometime I spend my time taking note of(or from a different perspective, being accurately marketed to). Interested or not I am "looking", and like a good or bad habit, we get better at that "looking", our ability becomes faster and more innate with repetition until it becomes our means of existence. My eyes sweep the ads, the people, the scenery for a glimpse of sometime 'worth' looking at. My love of film tells me that some of the best moments are those when the camera stays still, allows a scene as a whole, rather than be quickly elated and move on. This kind of crammed society together with its visual currency kills some former ability that did not need stimulus to appreciate not only the visual but the whole canvas.

Personally I feel this "visually consummed-vocally lacking" society is due to the sheer volume, the number of bodies we pass and effectively try to ignore to get between A and B. In other words, I want to turn to the guy standing next to me and say, "isn't it beautiful when you see another train running parallel glowing orange and white in the night. You see all those other people, exposed, just looking out at the black city with a look in their eyes like they are somewhere else", transient but also a mutual experience of the moment.

School is Sick

2007-05-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

Normally I would be at school right now but due to a Measles outbreak, here in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area I haven't had classes for two weeks! Not that the added time at home hasn't been nice sometimes, but even the library has been closed. I've had reading to work on and the usual amount of films, about 4-5 a week under my belt.

The theater in my neighborhood is a pretty good repertory theater screening almost exclusively older Japanese films so I see some films there that I wouldn't see otherwise. But, "research" is still not what I'm mainly doing. It's more like just being a student, and I'm in a literature department so I'm becoming knowledgeable about J Lit but not too much on the theory side of things. I think I didn't take enough classes this quarter for fear of overloading myself but I could have handled more. But, if my eventual goal is to enter Japanese grad-school all the lit classes should buff up my Japanese the fastest and then get me prepared and closer to what I actually want to be doing. I think that if I were to have a full-blown image theory based class in Japanese right now it would be a few steps above the literary analysis that I'm doing now.

But the current grad seminar is pretty interesting, focused on revolutionary, proletariat, and overall social literature of the 1920-40s that was published in magazines and journals. Anarchists and Marxist make me feel empowered and motivated. One good thing about having a little time off is I've been able to read some stuff in English, which has been nice. It is getting me excited about the extended periods of leisure reading I will have on our honeymoon, which we've decided to do in Mexico, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Mexico City. Being well equipped with Japanese content, I think some large work of European literature might be in order.

I've been trying to make my digital camera as SLR-like in the types of photos it can take; here are some of the results.

A Trip to the Country

2007-04-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

As might be gleamed from total lack of posts, I've been want for computer space-out time lately. But I'm trying to keep something new, so I'm going to blog something a from last month, my trip to the country with my Mom. While my mom lived in Japan for two and half years in the early 70s and visited a handful of times thereafter, she had not been to Japan in about 26 years when she came last month. Meeting her at the airport you could see the disorienting effect modern Japan was having even on an experienced traveller. One look at the train system and you might need to sit down before thinking about getting from point A to B. However after a week or so she had regained her Japan-feet and was meeting friends and exploring places by herself, not to mention that she shopped around our neighborhood for groceries like she lived here. Interestingly she noticed many things that used to catch my attention but that I'm now quite used to, strangers not striking up conversation on the train, how packed the trains are, how much shopping there is, and how expensive it is to do so. I almost felt like, "hey mom, stop being the foreigner" meanwhile I am the same, but 6 months fermented in Japan, ah human adaptability, or stubbornness.

In contrast to the urban-ness of Tokyo my mom enjoys traditional Japan and snow so we headed off to a place called Hida-Takayama (hereafter Takayama) in a state called Gifu. We took the trains, transferring at Nagoya and then heading three hours up into the mountains. The train passed through increasingly smaller towns and about two hours in we started to see snow on the hillsides. The town of Takayama itself was chilly, around freezing and built on a old grid system.

Our lodgings were a traditional Japanese hotel called a Ryo-kan. You book not one room, but rather two people since food is included and personal service is a matter of pride to these places. Upon checking your bags are taken away, you are seated and given some hot tea and a tiny sweet. Meanwhile the mama-san or other authority greets you and confirms your stay, explains the rules, and in this place took the women, mom, to choose her yukata (Japanese house robe) and obi (waist wrap) out of a selection around 30 colors. I could see how this place would make an excellent romantic getaway as well. Then we are taken to our room, tatami mats and a kotatsu (heated table w/blanket) and are given a introduction from the maid who will be taking care of our room, "what time do you want dinner/breakfast" etc. We then say, "we are indebted to you and bow".

Most Ryo-kans have a hot spring or other kind of luxurious bath room separated for men and women and it is not unusual to take many baths a day, before dinner, after dinner, before breakfast, after breakfast etc. Remember, it's freezing outside so slipping into a really hot huge bath and sweating for while can fix you right up.

The meal that night was served to us in a private room where maids would come and knock and enter, take some food away and bring more. I was not used to the kingly service of being waited on, beer poured then a bowing withdrawal from the room. The food itself was really beautiful and interesting.
A Ryo-kan runs about $120->$$$ per night per person, our place was on the low end of that scale, but I could see that getting a good nights stay and two phenomenal meals was actually a pretty good deal, especially knowing the cost of eating out in Japan. Some things of note were the local "Hida Beef" very marbled, little fiddleheads, great tofu, and sashimi from the sea of Japan side.

In the town of Takayama they are famous for lacquer-ware, mountain sake, beef, and a yearly festival where people hoist huge floats onto their shoulders and carry them around town. Some of the floats are very intricate and have puppet theaters as part of their design. However if you want to go to Takayama during the festival it is crowded and expensive, luckily there is a strange cavernous museum that houses replicas of the floats with animatronic puppet shows so you get a feel for the grandeur and beauty of the floats without attending the festival itself. The strange thing was that the whole museum is underground, dug into the side of mountain. So, while it might be cold outside it was pretty normal feeling underground, not a bad place to be during the apocalypse, the float museum. One that day I was convinced that we could walk to that float museum, it didn't look to far on the not-to-scale tourist map, so my mom and I started walking, across town, out of town, up a hill, down a hill, basically it was too far to walk, but we made it (we took a taxi back).

There were also a number of historic sites, like old prefectural offices from the Tokugawa government period. Picture any Japanese period film, and you can see the formal bureaucrats walking around following protocol. Also if anyone has seen any of the "Hanzo the Razor" films with Katsu Shintaro you might recognize the torture devices from the films as being actual implements of interrogation, ouch.
On the second night there it snowed a little and we woke up to a little frosting. This year overall has been very light for the snowy areas of Japan. I still would like to experience the true "snow county", the trains moving through a tunnel of snow, and crossing the street through a walkway tunnel to get to the other side where awnings have kept the storefronts dimly open. Oh Kawabata, if we could all be meandering wealthy gourmands searching for the ultimately sublime aesthetic sensation, beautiful sorrow.

Suginami-Ku (The City of Lined-up Pines)

2007-03-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

Funny though it may seem, there have been some parts of NOT being connected to the internet at home that I have enjoyed. For while the internet is an endless resource it is also an endless distraction, fact-checking, browsing, reading etc. During the recent internet-free lifestyle some things about the pacing of life without constant connection have bubbled to the surface. For example, the act of writing an email has become more like the composition of a letter. It sits there, tempting revision, not cast off into the void of the “send” command’s expediousness. Also, going to find a connection provides some inroads to local exploration and thus experiences outside the normal routine. There are of course things that lacking a home connection I find hard to do like talking to people through Skype, downloading music, fact checking, and wasting time.

So as I sit here, quiet in the living/dinning room of our new house, I want to recall the events of the past few whirlwind weeks here in Tokyo. Boxes were packed, trucks were rented, maps consulted, and roads found in the process of moving what I thought a meager physical (until I tried to move it) existence from one side of Tokyo to the other. I gathered used appliances from the 23 burrows of Tokyo, a washing machine here a humidifier there, a kotatsu from some windy backstreet so narrow only my tiniest size rental truck van would have been able to make the corner and get back out unscratched. I broke in my shiny new Japanese driver’s license and experienced first hand what always appeared to be the hassle of driving and especially parking a car in Tokyo.

We have settled into our new neighborhood and are in the process of learning the lay of the land, how to live cheap, which of the numerous markets have what things cheap, how the light hits our house in the morning, and where the tiny walking streets (like the one we live on) lead to. Asagaya (our hood’) as a whole is a fairly normal feeling place to live. Not too busy, not too hip, but with enough things and places of nature and entertainment to keep us, well, entertained and comfortable. There are still many places outside out immediate walking commute to the stations and Shotengai (businesses street) that remain be explored but for the time being there is no rush. I have found a place to jog, turn right in front of our house the little walking street leads all the way to the next station Ogikubo, about 20 minutes round trip.

The house itself is older and has a style of interior framing that shows you basically how the house it held up. Exposed framing and stucco work allow a number of modification possibilities. Since the house is older there is not the same kind of storage (places to put too much crap) that newer places have. However this has proved a good incentive to be efficient, as I should be, with our space. I have made a couple of shelves and places to put our books, and a larger bookcase/tiny desk project is in the works. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a hardware store in the hood’ yet but I hold out hope the a place with a good selections of tools and wood exists somewhere in the local area. If not there is a “home center” about 30 minutes farther out toward the sticks.

Hopefully I will spend some time planting some stuff in our tiny (1 sq. meter) plot of dirt in from of the house and some window boxes of herbs in the next couple of days before my mom arrives. Our house came with a little Japanese maple in the from plot which has been fresh pruned by my shears and the peach and plum blossoms have basically already come and gone, though there remains the most sublime of blossoms, cherry, yet to come.

Wish you were here, or I there, K

Kinda Big News...

2007-02-14T05:38:00.000-08:00

More often lately there are the earthy smells of spring and the looming pressure of humidity of a Japanese summer in the air. Some peach blossoms are already clinging to the still dark urban scenery.

The other day I was riding my bike to northern Tokyo and saw a temple kind of stuck along an otherwise mundane and sleep thoroughfare. The small grounds around the temple, edged in by regular buildings on all sides, were mainly graves. However, Japanese graveyards don't seem to carry the lurch of sodden grass and abandon like America's spacious plots. The "graves" are just family memorials behind which are standing slates painted with people's poetic Buddhist names given in death.

When you ride the trains around Tokyo the feeling of endless urban expanse before your eyes can wear on me, tall buildings, no big trees, concrete, and teeming mobility. More or less I have gotten used to central Tokyo's green-free-ness, its well manicured, well-traveled, concrete superstructure, but given the choice of a place to live I wanted some reminder of the peace and balance of rural Japan.

Sometimes in modern Tokyo I need to be reminded of the history of this land. Coming from the land of short history, it is still awing; I especially like things that are old but artefactualized, still in use, bridges, walkways, stairs, or gates. Houses in the middle of the city that has climbing vines that are thicker than my leg and that support the wall as much as the wall supports it.

One of my Japanese literature teachers once said that when you live in Japan you should try at least once to live in an older style Japanese house. This means hot in the summer, cold in winter and windows at both ends that can be opened to allow a full breeze. In the winter, a kotatsu, a low table with a blanket sandwiched between the frame and the tabletop and a heater built into the bottom that everyone sits around.

From watching so many older films, it has long been my dream to sit at a kotatsu on a cold night with friends sipping hot sake and talking into the night, possibly falling asleep on the floor.

So, what's the big news?

We are moving! Not very far, only over toward the west of Tokyo. Mo and I found a house in the neighborhood we like called Asagaya. The area is famous for writers and sumo corrals.The name comes from "Asa tani/Shallow Valley" and was a ranching and farming area about 150 years ago. After the Kanto earthquake of 1924 many young writers and artists moved out to Asagaya because of the cheap rent and a literary community was formed. Writers such as Ibuse and Danzai Osamu lived there poor, young, and not famous.

Our house is a little two-story stand-alone house on a quiet walking only street. When you stand out front, it is (surprising when you don't hear it very often) quiet.
It is a little old so I think we will be in store for the "traditional Japanese house" experience and might come to appreciate why there are modern Japanese homes. We have two tatami rooms upstairs so if people come to stay we just rent some extra futons from the futon shop (they deliver) and guests can have their own room. The upper room has good southern exposure and is pretty warm even in winter with no heat.

One of the things that made me really want the house was the little patch of dirt in front with a little Japanese maple that is desparately in need of some trimming, good thing I brought my bonsai torture tools!

The ORDEAL of finding and moving into a place here will follow. First of all, apartment hunting here is not like SF, NYC, Paris or any other city that has a serious scarcity of apartments. You can basically choose you neighbohood and there places though no always cheap. All Japanese apartment ads have a floorplan, the distance from the station, and the dasterdly amounts of Rei-kin and Shiki-kin, gift money and deposite money respectively. Ya'see, since the Japanese housing market should be a renter/buyer's market the real estate companies and land lords have mainted a death grip on ways to keep their profit up. It is common to have to pay 5-6 months rent when you move in, 2-3 of that you don't get back, it's "gift money" that your honorable land lord recieves just for allowing you to rent their place. The fact is that this system is so oriented toward the dominant priorities for profit that it effectively bars the market from being more active. Also any protest against this system is meet with the "that's just the way it's always been" excuse. Other fees include another month's rent when you renew your lease, and another month's rent as a finder/handling fee to the real estate agency. All told, the high rate of Japanese savings seems to be the way to go.

In addition Japanese apartments don't come with most appliances. The advatange of this is that once you buy some stuff you like you can take it from place to place. We have to buy a fridge, stove-top, and washer as well as many things we don't have since we haven't lived on our own here like a microwave, iron, vacuum cleaner and gas heater. Luckily there is a population of people who are leaving Japan just as we are moving in so we can get a bargin on a bunch of stuff. Right now we are coordinating picking up used stuff from other gaijins moving out of Japan. Some Japanese appliances are pretty cool actually. The stoves a little two burner things with a little grilling over in the middle. This is perfect for fish, veggies, and steaks and it like have a "salamander" professional top-down grill at home. In addition you can get a stove with a sensor that lets you cook rice, set fry-oil temps, and boil water automatically.

In Japan people usually don't have dryers and just hang their stuff. This would never work in Seattle plus it saves energy and $$. Also many Japanese homes use either Kerosene or out-of-the-wall natural gas heaters in the home. Our place is woodedn construction so we can't use kerosene but we picked up a natural gas heater that should keep the place comfy.

Oh, and by the way, we found a increasingly rare adult products vending machine in a different area of Asagaya and Mo couldn't tear herself away.

Chinatown and Mochi-time

2007-01-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

Since the New Year life has slowly regained some normalcy. Mo, Mac, and I went to Yokohama’s Chinatown to dine and peruse. The area is larger than any Chinatown I’ve been to and being composed mainly of restaurants, seemed to be focused almost entirely on food. There was a surprising lack of shops selling inexpensive Chinese tea, shoes, etc. and I was unable to find my beloved Yunan black tea. We tried to find a place a little away from the main street with people waiting in front, guaranteeing good taste (so claimed Mo and Mac, my theory on the other hand was that people there is a line because people like to get in line). The atmosphere of the place was great, but the food was mediocre at best; tired Chinese dim sum.

(My "people in line" theory is from one time while walking around Shibuya in the rain, we saw a huge line of people. Upon asking what they were waiting for the guy said simply that he didn’t know, but was waiting in line because something must be good at the end.)

Last week Mo's parents celebrated their 47th wedding anniversary with a little cake and many candles. Looking at this relationship of almost 50 years they seem to know how to make it work between them, being kind, giving space, and respecting differences. It was motivational for us on the brink of a wedding to see how two pretty different people work well all the same.

Though it might sometimes otherwise having one’s own “community” in Tokyo is not unattainable, nonexistent, or exclusive. It is very possible; it’s just a matter of getting involved. I have felt “engaged” with communities of people at film gatherings, at art shows, and at concerts. This type of art or music based society is thriving here. Over the last couple of weeks, I did two things that helped shake off the feeling of isolation that can creep in when you spend most of your time in front of a computer or a book.

One live show was a band called Shibusa Shirazu (Unknown Bitterness). From what I understand, the band has 12+/- main members and at the beginning of each year, they do this larger show with a bunch of extra musicians, dances, the works. At their new year’s show that I went to there were maybe 40 people on stage, 8 dancers, maybe 20 different horn players, guitars, drums, synths, and a bunch of other unique instruments. The music is like a big swing/ska band mixed with some Pink Floyd guitars and African drumming; somewhat hippy-rock, but actually quite engaging and energizing if not long winded. The songs were driven by horn riff based melodies and layered with extended solos and plenty of stretching out. On the stage, there were dances dressed like lounge dancers who were doing some sexy and seductive moves. In addition there were body painted guys and girls who did a kind of broken puppet interpretive dance that was visually pretty cool and fit the eclecticness of the music well.

What was nice besides the music was the feeling of being among a group of people who had all come out to hear and see this music and dance, this was a feeling of community I had missed and that I often had in Seattle. I knew of the active music scene in Tokyo but the price and effort of going out to see shows had kept me away.

In terms of the neighborhood I live in, I didn’t really know many people besides those who live directly across the street from me. However, last week was a community mochi-making day so I was able to meet a lot of people. In our neighborhood there really are not many young people so they community gathering are mostly people Motoko’s parent’s age.

We all meet about a block from our house and the housewives were already preparing the accompanying ingredients for eating fresh soft mochi (pounded rice cake), sweet red bean, natto (yum), grated seasoned daikon, and this sweet brown powder made out of dried beans called kinako. I had never seen most of these people but was curious to meet them since we have lived close by for months but now meet. Most of the men were milling around, smoking and chatting until the action began.

To make mochi you steam special mochi rice and then pound it in a huge wooden mortar and hammer. There is usually a trio of guys, two pounding and one doing the dangerous job of flipping and moisturizing the mochi dough. Being the youngest adult male, I was drafted into service.

As batches of mochi were competed and given to the Obasan squad, the men poured each other sake, drinking and smoking, getting ready for another round. I quickly found out that I was in almost every round. But as a result, I was also the most feed. I enjoyed the fresh soft warm mochi, finding the natto-covered mochi most to my liking.

These experiences gave me the rare event of feelingly like I am engaging those around me. Living in a city can bring about a sense of isolation, especially Tokyo because you don’t interact with 4000 people in a day instead of maybe 500 in Seattle. More on this to follow, K

PS looks like the robot labor union in Tokyo has a strong lobby:

A Follow Up on Japanese College Admissions:

2007-01-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

The news today reported about a reform of Japanese college admissions to guarantee admission to all who want to attend as long as they are willing to go to a school not chosen by them. The motivations for this are the twofold. The number of Ronin (students between HS and college who are waiting to re-take entrance exams, or, masterless samurai) and Japan’s declining birthrate and increasingly empty classrooms. The proposal is that students who don’t get into their ideal schools will be granted additional testing opportunities at other schools that have vacancies. Universities with empty seats with will grant admissions until all seats are filled.

Because the current state of Japanese higher education is one of more open seats than prospective students, this new program should benefit those who are unable to enter into the competitive elite schools but desire a higher education.

I am sure than many students who don’t gain entrance into the school of their choice will opt for the status of Ronin rather than give up on their ideal educational path.

It seems that this is a positive move on the part of the Ministry of Education and should help loosen some of the pressure on students who worry simply about getting a higher education.

The issue of elitism in schools still remains. The big name schools are still turning away students who don’t make the cut, and, as with the announcement of Keio’s new Osaka campus, these major schools intend to maintain their status and increase their influence. But with the concession of “universal admissions” the possibility that schools will provide an education better tailored to a wider range of students is defiantly a move in the right direction.

On another note, in response to people’s interest as to the situation of the educational and employment world outside of business, I feel like I should mention that there are other options. Art schools, music schools, manga schools, animation/film schools, traditional craft schools, and agricultural schools are options for students not interesting in a business related job. Also, design, fashion, and beauty schools are popular options as well and you these all over Tokyo.

As for employment, the arts and music scene itself is, as in America, a relatively small community of passionate participants. My experience has been that while “new” art and artists do not have a wide berth in the public eye the actual art community is strong and from my skeptical outsiders point of view, very reassuring. The tiny galleries we have visited, as well as the arts and music events have been great.

It does seems difficult however to be a creative person in Tokyo (and everywhere else) and make a living.

For a musician or artist to get a venue or space to play or show their work they must pay their way. In contrast to music shows in Seattle, the musicians here must pay for their time on stage, and guarantee against loses to the club owner, bummer. This takes away from the “scene” as it creates a void between the prospective audience and new band. The same goes for galleries, but as a result galleries rent their space for weeks, not months, and more art gets exhibited more frequently.

In Tokyo, these specialty arts communities are filled with people who are impassioned. But the community really is “underground” and out of the common sight here and that takes time to find and more time to get into. Like everything in Tokyo, it all comes down to time one can commit to something.

On a lame note, Tamagawa University in Tokyo denied a Korean student from Yokohama the chance to even take the entrance exam because he was associated with the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon). The reason given was that his HS in Yokohama was not accredited and thus they didn’t recognize his status as HS Senior. In addition, the Ministry of Education showed other cases of graduates of non-accredited ethnic school being allowed to take the entrance tests. This could tie in to the larger problem of Korean and Chinese directed racism and the specific problem of Japan-born Korean nationals inability to receive Japanese citizenship and thus social rights and services.

Japanese Employment

2007-01-17T18:09:00.000-08:00

Walking through a station or down a street around commute hours, I am still sometimes awed by the sheer percentage of businessmen. Last night, after teaching three classes I had dinner with a friend and while walking through Shinagawa station, a large hub south central Tokyo, I was struck (again) by the sea of black coated men filling my view, I simply thought, “there’s no denying it, I’m in a businessman’s world.”

Recently my experience teaching English classes after hours at large companies has brought me into this world of “regular employees” (seishain) that historically implies a career at one company for “lifetime employment” (Shushin Koyo). In one class at a well respected company all three students are basically the same age as me, though their time at the company varies, 4 years, 2 years, 6 months, etc. they all laughed and said “not us” when I mentioned the idea of changing careers. I have other friends who are soon to be college graduates who are currently in the process of getting employed at a company or who out of fear of missing the 4th year college window to regular employment are entering companies with no intention of staying for a lifetime.

I have other acquaintances whose children are taking entrance exams and deciding on which middle school to enroll in knowing that this decision can make or condemn the future employability and earning potential of their child. Add this to the experiences of female friends who have difficulty entering or re-entering the workforce after a quitting, or who have worked as long-term “temp workers” (hakkenshain) because they are unable to get positions of regular employees. Other male friends who were able to graduate from high level Universities like Tokyo University, Keio, or Waseda have been able to leave the regular employee workforce and reenter (albeit a couple of steps down on the pay ladder) who admit that even that flexibility would not be possible if not for the name on their diploma.

The cumulative evidence of all of this is that the Japanese business/company world, the preparation/build-up to enter, and one’s life and progression within this environment deserve a deeper examination in order to separate assumption from real knowledge about Japanese society if one is to think accurately about life here.

However, to enter this discussion with the belief that Japanese employment is essentially motivated by repression and confinement of a workforce would be a mistake and misleading. The company system is motivated by the need for companies to nurture and secure human capital, but the belief that this is best accomplished through long-term development and loyalty of its workers has modern origins in the period of economic growth in the 1920s when a scarcity of engineers and technical workers lead companies to acquire workers of the length of their employed life. The current system of recruitment, salary increases, and (possible) forced retirement became firmly fixed by the 1950s. The cultural root of this life-long loyalty to ones employer has its roots in the business classes (Chomin) of the Edo period . Some authors relate this business class loyalty to that of the lord and retainer relationships of the warrior and royal classes of that period; kinship combined with social contract.

The system which exists in Japan is not inflexible per se and on some levels is experiencing increased mobility. It is common now that workers in their 20s can be reassigned or re-matched to a job better suiting their needs before the period of “permanent” employment starting at a latter age around 30 (Yamaguchi). However, this mobility is not based on meritocracy of one’s performance but is mediated by the reputation or relative elite of one’s education. It is this educational elitism that forms the Japanese system of employment as much as the company cultures itself. It begins with the filtering of students as early as kindergarten by interviewing of the parents, continues through the entrance of middle and high schools, and most importantly college. I say elitism because the filtering of candidates for schools of different prestige effectively predestines their future employment possibilities. Future upward mobility is determined by one’s success during entrance examinations. Students that lack either the mental ability to achieve and withstand this high pressure/high stakes environment or the financial support to pay their way into, for example, Keio middle school (virtually guaranteeing entrance into Keio High School and Keio University proper) are simply out of luck. This continual “weeding out” of those unprepared, incapable, or uninterested in proceeding through these mechanisms creates groups of differing elitism or alienation and threatens those underachievers with workforce unacceptability. As many students do not enter college in the first try they are relegated to retesting the next year and possibly the next, all the while increasing their sense of failure and rejection.

Why do these students keep trying in this same manner one must ask? Why not do something else? A recent rise in pushing trade school has been a response to this and lifetime employment goes for many blue-collar workers as well. Let it be said that there are independent jobs, artists, and entrepreneurs as well as small companies, part-time work, and some blue collar work that people select precisely because they value the flexible. However, the status quo remains company employments, around 50% of workers have lifetime employment.

The current educational structure of selection and (promised) high achievement has its origins during the early Meiji period (1868-1912) when Japanese government planners in response to the threat of American and European Imperialist advances restructured their educational system to “compete” with what they saw as the source of Imperialist power (Platt). They viewed the mobilization of the nation, extending down to the children as vital to Japan’s survival.

Time in university is, from my understanding, relatively free until the end of the 3rd and 4th year when students start the process of Job-Hunting (Shūshoku). Companies accept new employees yearly, screened from the batch of college students graduating that year. It is done in a specifically coded way in Japan with group interviews at companies often selected for their prestige without much actual knowledge about the specific type of work. As more experienced workers have said , this lack of knowledge is mutual, both companies and prospective new workers have a lack of information about one another when entering this period of selection. The motivation to become employed directly out of college is a fear much like that of not passing entrance exams the first time; of missing your “wave” of co-graduates and thus missing your entry into the next level of employment superstructure.

Funneling students directly into the companies creates pressure for students to decide on their likely long-term careers without any work experience, and often without much relation to their field of study at college. At the same time it clears up much of the ambiguity new graduates feel about what to do with their life and how to get employed. It effectively moves young people through the consequential period of higher education into the work force. This formulaic path toward employment also takes into account raising a family and that other form of national economic growth, population. There is a distinct advantage to lifetime employment in terms of raising a family because of the security and predictable wage increases throughout one’s career..

Elimination processes based on hard work, high pressure, and high stakes creates highly groomed and proven new employees ready for continued hard work in demanding jobs. This is not so different from the process that businesspeople aiming to enter the business elite prepare for in the US or Europe. The difference being that this preparatory process is not only for business elite but extends beyond “business” into the realm general employment.

The goal of general employment is being hindered by an educational and employment systems that is still focused on “creating a workforce” by national mobilization of the populous for economic growth and international economic competition. While the company world is experiencing new flexibilities for their younger employees with “job-matching” and a later beginning to “permanency” in one’s position, the largest issue remains the educational system’s fetishization of testing and filtration of the youth.

In a more immediate sense there are other issues that remain as holdouts of an older time such as the obligatory overtime of having to wait until one’s boss leaves and a heavily hierarchical communication structure that creates inefficiency and wasted time in the name of loyalty. Having progressed through many successive stages of self-discipline to enter the employed world, company workers have imposed on themselves the belief that a career of accomplishments requires an acceptance of these conventions.

By deprioritizing the ideal for an elite workforce, and refocusing on gainful general employment it relieves the pressure on educators to “produce” such elites. This generates a workforce that is diversified and flexible to find more fulfilling careers without the risk of despondency, ostracism, or financial dependency due to the inability or lack of desire to participate in this power-employment structure.

Tokyo 201

2007-01-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

With the passing of the holiday season and friends coming to Tokyo I haven’t had much time, so here is a condensed form of what has been on my mind lately.

The issue that has been of note lately has been a kind of secondary cultural adjustment that is taking place for me. There is the initial adjustment and coming to terms with my reactions and understandings of the way of life in Tokyo, much like how a traveler through error and correction acquires the basic movements of people, the flow of time, and their attempt at swimming through this new world. Rather, by secondary I mean the challenge lately has been coming to understand my own role in life here and how living as a member of Japanese society is filtering down into my basic subconscious daily workings.

For example, like most people I was overwhelmed by the volume of people, I still am, but as time has passed these people have become my peers in a way, and as a result, I am more apt to observe their habits and behavior, as well as my own behavior in relation. In a way, the masses of people have become more personal and their sheer presence effects some noticeable changes in how I interact or react to them. One notices that on any given evening or weekend that most people who are out in popular areas are shopping, women in Shinjuku, men in Akihabara, and anyone and everyone in Shibuya. My reaction is to “consumerism as sport” or “consumerism as entertainment” is what has been something I’ve had issue with lately: does one benefit by simply ignoring these people fixated on the short lived purchasable enjoyment of consumerism as entertainment as an essentially empty and cyclical activity since it is their right and choice to do whatever they want? Is it a waste of my time to look at the situation and recognize that in contrast to my own belief that the “filler” of purchase is essentially a capitalism-encouraged distraction that I treat it as all pubic space in Japan, essentially anonymous, private, and therefore none of my business.

In Japan there is an advanced form of capitalism, one where the cascade of new products washes away the old so quickly that is the average cost and quality of things remains high as does the demand. For example, you cannot buy a new TV in Japan that is not a high-end flat screen expensive model, they just don’t sell them. The consumer (me) is limited and driven to buy that which is newer, more expensive, and more desirable to own. This drive by companies to keep sales up by carefully managing the market is effective and has a direct relationship with issues of employment and the work force in Japan (more on this some other time).

Unlike America, people here save money regularly and don’t use credit cards very much, and most shopping is a paycheck to the register financial exchange. What this means is that many people are working to shop, especially younger people who live at home (me) and work (kinda me) and basically have a large disposable income (not me). This cycle of “work-to-shop” is pretty rampant in America but is accentuated here by the “living at home” factor and the generally good pay for most young workers who are employed at companies, bonuses, steady but modest pay increases, and overtime pay all add up.

I guess it comes down to the reality of Tokyo the place I have chosen to live and the economic heart of Japan with its culture of mental stimulation, endless entertainment, and distraction. Like what one of my American friends here said one time, “Tokyo is too far away from the Japan I came here too see”. Would I trade it for anything right now? Not really, but a life of material minimalism seems like a wise goal to work for here, and everywhere.