https://www.scmp.com/rss/10670/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Given the reputation of the organisation he chairs, it’s hard to know what to expect before Tadae Takubo arrives – a whiff of sulphur, perhaps. Nippon Kaigi has been called an ultra-right cult and some say it wields a great deal of influence over Japan’s conservative government. As he walks unsteadily into the room however, the 83-year-old chairman of Nippon Kaigi seems less like Lucifer than a crusty old uncle with laughably out-of-date views. The impression is reinforced when he speaks. A... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2003033/secretive-cult-shaping-japans-future?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2003033/secretive-cult-shaping-japans-future?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Aug 2016 05:00:00 +0000 Megumi Igarashi introduces herself with a pink business card in the shape of her vagina. It gets better: before the interview begins, the artist, who goes by the name "Rokudenashiko", roughly meaning "bad girl", places plastic figurines of her genitalia on the table in her lawyer's office. "It's my pussy art," she says, smiling sweetly. In a country where first meetings are often deeply formal, the opener suggests a playful, subversive sense of humour - but Japan's prosecutors seem to have... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1831922/artist-says-her-vagina-creations-confront-japanese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-entertainment/article/1831922/artist-says-her-vagina-creations-confront-japanese?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Jul 2015 13:35:03 +0000 Like the trademark childlike characters in his work, neo-pop artist Yoshitomo Nara seems both vulnerable and prickly. Although famously reserved, he was once arrested for drawing graffiti in New York's Union Square underground. He generally shuns face-to-face interviews and dislikes questions probing his art. "People who see my works are free to understand them in any way they want," he says via email. "But I think that one of art's good points is that you can ambiguously perceive and feel based... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1728517/yoshitomo-nara-neo-pop-artist-who-defies-categorisation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1728517/yoshitomo-nara-neo-pop-artist-who-defies-categorisation?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:45:00 +0000 Amorbid if unacknowledged curiosity in watching a play by Yukio Ninagawa is wondering if his cast will all make it through the performance: the youngest actor is a pensioner, the oldest is 88. A trained nurse waits in the wings - just in case. But then Ninagawa, who brings his acclaimed Saitama Gold Theatre to Hong Kong for the first time next month, has made a late career out of not acting his age. One of Japan's most celebrated directors, Ninagawa - who turned 79 on October 15 - loves... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1623726/ageing-actors-give-stage-japans-seniors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1623726/ageing-actors-give-stage-japans-seniors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Oct 2014 15:32:11 +0000 Like millions of Japanese, Kazutomo Tashiro was left wrung out by the disaster of March 11, 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami killed 19,000 people, displaced 340,000 and left swathes of the country's northeast coastline in tatters. It also triggered a sort of collective psychic shock among twenty- and thirty-something Japanese, already reeling from the demise of the miracle economy and two decades of painful stagnation. I wanted to get viewers to not just feel sorry for my subjects, but... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1437162/ordinary-people-devastating-times?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1437162/ordinary-people-devastating-times?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Mar 2014 10:41:22 +0000 Nathalie Daoust has spent much of her professional life photographing prostitutes and sadomasochists. Her latest project involves shooting in hotel rooms with dominatrix who torture screaming, drooling men. The Canadian says she is drawn to the dark, inaccessible worlds of sexual desire and taboo. So I wonder what to expect - a tattooed, leather-clad vixen, perhaps? Not a bit of it. The woman who greets me in the lobby of a Tokyo hotel is clean-cut, with the cerebral air of an art student. There... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1386738/sexual-fantasies-theme-photographers-dream-project?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1386738/sexual-fantasies-theme-photographers-dream-project?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Dec 2013 09:19:57 +0000 BILLED AS JAPAN'S fastest-rising otaku artist, Masataka Iwamoto comes pretty much as advertised. An endearingly boyish 44-year-old, he beavers away in a converted warehouse in Tokyo's soulless northern suburbs surrounded by the geeky paraphernalia of manga and anime culture. Dolls, models and comics litter the studio. A collection of model guns has been mounted on a board. Saucer-eyed, scantily clad cartoon heroines stare down at us longingly from his paintings throughout the interview. Iwamoto... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1319212/otakus-rising-star-masataka-iwamoto-brings-pop-art-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1319212/otakus-rising-star-masataka-iwamoto-brings-pop-art-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:00:00 +0000 There can't be that many galleries that wedge Marc Chagall into the same exhibition space as John Lennon, Salvador Dali, Gothic Lolita and the psychedelic polka-dot art of Yayoi Kusama. That's before we get to Frida Kahlo, Tracey Emin and New York-based artist Laurie Simmons, who brings a faintly creepy photographic collection of Japanese sex dolls. What could possibly bind them all together? Love, says the Mori Art Museum. The Tokyo landmark, sitting atop one of the city's tallest buildings, is... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1234511/many-faces-love?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1234511/many-faces-love?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Is Makoto Aida a misogynist? It seems a fair question. Among his cheerfully scattershot collection at the Mori Art Museum is a series of manga-style paintings called Dog, showing naked young women with severed and bandaged limbs being led around on a leash. A 62-minute video depicts the artist tediously masturbating in front of the kanji characters "beautiful young girl". In Blender, he uses more naked girls to make a bloody milkshake. What was the thinking there? "Well," he says, smiling, "If I... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1166294/study-bad-boy-japanese-art?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1166294/study-bad-boy-japanese-art?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Japan's baking summer sun is hot enough to melt tar on the roads and inside the Nishijimax factory the thermometer is well above 30 degrees Celsius as Susumu Sugiura welds heavy steel plates, sweat pouring from his wrinkled brow. Next door, his wife Kimiko uses a solder and screwdriver to wire a junction box. The tasks are challenging for most, let alone a couple with a collective age of 145. In other parts of the world, the Sugiuras might be whiling away days like this watching daytime... https://www.scmp.com/article/725963/just-shy-retiring?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/725963/just-shy-retiring?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Whatever the rules about ordinary workers, many Japanese companies allow executives to work on well past 60. Some do this by the back door, insisting that prospective chief executives have experienced a minimum number of certain positions within the company that require somebody who is 55. The bulging ranks of sexagenarian, septuagenarian and even octogenarian bosses include All Nippon Airways chairman Yoji Ohashi, 70, Mitsubishi chairman Mikio Sasaki, 72, Canon chairman Fujio Mitarai, 74,... https://www.scmp.com/article/725962/staying-power-top-japans-corporations?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/725962/staying-power-top-japans-corporations?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Kengo Kuma is one of Japan's most acclaimed modern architects. Curiously, however, he dislikes much of the country's modern architecture, including perhaps its most imperious and striking example - the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which looms over Shinjuku. 'Japanese architects have lost their courage,' he laments. 'It's a symbol of their loss of confidence in society and in the future.' Meanwhile, China, where he is much in demand, is casting aside its unique architectural... https://www.scmp.com/article/724036/old-school-building?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/724036/old-school-building?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 It's an unlikely location, perhaps, for the creative hub of one of the planet's most cutting-edge architects: a dockside warehouse near Tokyo Bay hemmed in by dull concrete apartment blocks. Behind its cinder-block walls, young people toil over computers and diagrams in a cavernous open-plan office. Paper cut-outs crowd every desk. Ignore the atmosphere of beetle-browed intensity and it could be a giant origami convention for children. 'Oh, please don't show this - it's such a mess,' pleads ... https://www.scmp.com/article/717291/let-there-be-light?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/717291/let-there-be-light?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:00:00 +0000 In Tokyo's crowded gastronomic landscape, Les Creations de Narisawa enjoys perhaps the city's loftiest reputation. Seven years after quietly unleashing an idiosyncratic blend of Japanese and French eating on the capital, Les Creations has already taken its place in the pantheon of culinary greats, alongside a handful of establishments in Europe and the United States. The two-star Michelin winner has just been voted Asia's top restaurant in the San Pellegrino World's Best 50 Restaurants List,... https://www.scmp.com/article/714882/natural-selection?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/714882/natural-selection?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 19 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Nothing outside Tokyo's 24-Kaikan hotel hints at what goes on behind its grey concrete walls. In a back street near the Shinjuku business and shopping district, the seven-storey building could be an apartment block for retired civil servants. A stream of customers in the salary-man's uniform of dark suit, sensible shoes and winter overcoat files quietly through its innocuous doors. Only in the foyer, adorned with scenes from a sex movie, does it become clear that this is one of Asia's biggest... https://www.scmp.com/article/706053/fall-wild?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/706053/fall-wild?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000 There was a time when Japanese commuters left home in the morning clutching a newspaper and a boxed bento lunch. Today, the list is more elaborate: MP3 player, 3.2-megapixel camera, navigation system, digital TV tuner and Web browser - all squeezed into a palm-sized device that costs about the price of a good sushi meal. Millions of Japanese also use cellphones to read novels, magazines and office files, to make credit card payments, watch hours of recorded television and even check body... https://www.scmp.com/article/695485/hard-cell?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/695485/hard-cell?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Atimid man, Toshikazu Sugaya visibly trembles when he recalls the day the police came calling. From the minute they arrived at his door on a wintry morning 18 years ago, they were convinced of his guilt. 'They barged in and told me to sit down. Then they kept saying, 'You killed that child, didn't you?' I said 'no, no', but they didn't believe me.' At the police station in Ashikaga, a small city just over an hour north of Tokyo, detectives pulled his hair, kicked him and shouted in his... https://www.scmp.com/article/695149/japans-justice-system-dock?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/695149/japans-justice-system-dock?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 When his body is not groaning under the weight of its 83 years, and the sun is shining over his native Kyushu in southern Japan, Sakae Menda can forget the ordeal he suffered. But most days, there is no blotting out that the Japanese state stole 34 years of his life, or that he thought every one of those more than 12,000 days would be his last. 'Waiting to die is a kind of torture worse than death itself.' Menda is the first man freed from Japan's death row, which has come in for withering... https://www.scmp.com/article/695148/death-row-prisoners-torment-legal-system-grinds?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/695148/death-row-prisoners-torment-legal-system-grinds?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Rows of panelled alcoves in a columbarium in Tokyo, stacked floor to ceiling like bank safety deposit boxes, are just one sign of an ongoing revolution in Japan's 1.5 trillion yen (HK$120 billion) business of death. Until recently a staid, overpriced sector that offered customers few choices, funeral services are being transformed by technology and competition. Customised memorials, pre-death portraits and group outings to scatter ashes are among the smorgasbord of services available to the... https://www.scmp.com/article/689635/dearly-departed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/689635/dearly-departed?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Its leader is the wife of a reincarnated god with a spiritual hotline to Kim Jong-il. It plans to rearm Japan, make it the world's No 1 economy and attack Korea. Welcome to the Happiness Realisation Party. As a historic general election looms on August 31, Japan's long-suffering electorate face a clear choice: the conservative party that has virtually monopolised power since 1955, or its more liberal but untested rival that promises long-awaited reform. For those with a taste for the... https://www.scmp.com/article/688585/japans-third-choice-offers-voters-happiness-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/688585/japans-third-choice-offers-voters-happiness-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0000 In Japan they call them herbivores and on Saturday nights they come out to graze: a perfumed army of preening masculinity. Groomed and primped, hair teased to peacock-like attention and bodies wrapped in tight-fitting clothes, their habitat is the crowded city where they live in fear of commitment and the carnivorous females who prey on them. For much of this decade, the older men who made Japan an economic powerhouse have looked on in bewilderment at the foppish antics of the younger... https://www.scmp.com/article/683407/top-fops?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/683407/top-fops?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 What's the soundtrack to the most crowded, wealthiest and most seismically unstable capital city on the planet? After 36 years of experimenting with thousands of songs, Tokyo cab driver Toshiyuki Anzai believes he knows: Frank Sinatra, Wagner and Deep Purple. Throw in a little Abba, Louis Armstrong and Natalie Cole to liven up the mix and steer clear of anything Japanese. Take along a bottle of bubbly, just in case. The mood-setter, though, is Bobby McFerrin's 1988 iconic megahit Don't Worry,... https://www.scmp.com/article/680631/back-seat-jivers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/680631/back-seat-jivers?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 It takes about 17 minutes to traverse Tokyo's consumer generation gap. In the city's youth mecca of Harajuku, goths, lolitas, rockers and young fashionistas fill a shopping landscape crowded with boutiques and brand-name franchises. Nine stops away on the city's Yamanote loop line in Sugamo, the river of human traffic turns greyer and slower as it files past shops selling thermal underwear, hearing aids and orthopaedic socks. Shop entrances have been modified to accommodate wheelchairs, and... https://www.scmp.com/article/675645/grey-matters?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/675645/grey-matters?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Curled up in a deep leather chair and dressed in a sweat-top and training pants emblazoned with Snoopy the cartoon dog, Eri Yoshida is an unlikely sporting pioneer. Yet this baby-faced 16-year-old with the shy smile and tomboy haircut has just broken through a once shatterproof glass ceiling: Japan's unofficial ban on female baseball players. Next year, the Yokohama schoolgirl will begin training with the all-male team Kobe 9 Cruise on a salary of 200,000 yen (HK$17,365) a month, making her the... https://www.scmp.com/article/667482/one-boys?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/667482/one-boys?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Genius recluse, uber-perfectionist, lapsed Marxist, Luddite - like the legendary directors of Hollywood's golden age, Hayao Miyazaki's intimidating reputation is almost as famous as his spellbinding movies. Japan's animation king is also known for shunning interviews. So it's remarkable to find him sitting opposite us in Studio Ghibli, the Tokyo animation house he co-founded in 1985, reluctantly bracing himself for the media onslaught that now accompanies each of his new projects. Once a... https://www.scmp.com/article/667353/forever-young?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/667353/forever-young?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Japanese gangs, or yakuza, have a well-deserved reputation for unpredictability and violence that keeps most journalists away, but a vicious turf battle between two rival gangs in the southern island of Kyushu, has made them reluctant media fodder. Last month, in a remarkable act of collective courage that has electrified the fight against organised crime in Japan but divided Kurume city, residents took the gangsters to court. 'The yakuza are using weapons like the kind you see in the Iraq... https://www.scmp.com/article/654614/gangsters-rapped?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/654614/gangsters-rapped?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:00:00 +0000 As dusk falls on the western Tokyo suburb of Kichijoji, the smell of barbecued pork, chicken and beef wafts from the open front of ZuZu Bar. Like the managers of countless other izakaya - cheap-and-cheerful Japanese pubs that serve food as well as alcohol - Kenta Nakahara hopes the aroma will lure workers spilling out of nearby offices. But he reckons he has an advantage over the others: his pork and chicken come from local farmers. 'I'm from Kagoshima prefecture [in the south] so I know how... https://www.scmp.com/article/649486/pork-town?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/649486/pork-town?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:00:00 +0000 When DJs Sara and Ryusei Kishimoto took the stage at a Grammy Awards party in Los Angeles in February, the audience of artists and hardened music executives had to pick their jaws off the floor. Taking a short break from primary school in Japan, the brother-and-sister act 'tore the place up', according to one reviewer, before shyly waving to the crowd and heading back to their hotel for a cup of cocoa. At 1am, it was well past their bedtime. 'It was fun having all those people listen, but the... https://www.scmp.com/article/646686/child-djs-show-theyre-scratch-when-brought-out-play?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/646686/child-djs-show-theyre-scratch-when-brought-out-play?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Like many corporate samurai, Ken Aihara spends much of his life stuck behind a desk in an air-conditioned concrete bunker. So when his brother Masaomi suggested taking a break, he jumped at the chance. But instead of visiting a hot spring resort or driving to Japan's shrinking countryside - typical weekend pursuits for the burned-out Tokyo salaryman - the Aiharas opted to go fishing on a boat, with Masaomi wearing the captain's hat. 'I found I wasn't seeing my family enough so this gave us a... https://www.scmp.com/article/644044/sea-change-japans-stressed-out-salarymen?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/644044/sea-change-japans-stressed-out-salarymen?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Five years ago, Katsura Sugiura had the wiry physique of a sprinter, but marriage, good food and looming middle-age has softened him round the edges. Standing 172cm tall with an 87cm waist, he describes himself as a 'borderline' tubby. 'I don't have a problem with this weight,' says the 37-year-old construction engineer. 'My wife says I look good.' The Japanese government, however, has other ideas. Once the butt of jokes, the sight of men such as Sugiura sucking in their bellies to hide... https://www.scmp.com/article/637872/ire-belly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/637872/ire-belly?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000 It's nearly 10 minutes into the interview but famously potty-mouthed British chef Gordon Ramsay is disappointingly expletive-free. The tape could go out on any radio station in the world without edits, bleeps or warnings to the sensitively disposed. Is this the same man whose red-faced, profanity-laced tirades have reduced kitchen staff on two continents to blank-faced terror, tears and even violence? Perhaps the rumour that he has banned cursing from his restaurants is true. Ramsay gives a... https://www.scmp.com/article/637188/red-hot-and-blue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/637188/red-hot-and-blue?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000 In Korea they call them halmoni (grandmothers), although many are so scarred mentally and physically that they have never married or had children. In Japan, they are known as 'comfort women', a hated euphemism for their forced role of providing 'comfort' to marauding troops in military brothels. But around the world, another, altogether starker term will follow them to their graves: sex slaves. Kang il-chul is one of a handful of the surviving women living out their final days in Sharing... https://www.scmp.com/article/635131/tears-blood?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/635131/tears-blood?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Its name translates as 'peaceful country'. Millions have silently prayed there for an end to wars, and for much of the year the loudest sound is the buzzing of insects and the shuffle of old footsteps to the hushed main hall. Yet, Yasukuni Shrine, which occupies a single square kilometre of central Tokyo, is one of the most controversial pieces of real estate in Asia, resented by millions who consider it a monument to war and Japan's unrepentant and undigested militarism. A decade ago, when... https://www.scmp.com/article/632312/movie-laid-rest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/632312/movie-laid-rest?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:00 +0000 The tiny fishing village of Heneko in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, is an unlikely venue for a showdown between the forces of light and darkness. For 1,450 days, Reverend Natsume Taida has camped out with supporters on this beautiful semi-tropical beachside to fight what he calls a great evil: the US military. 'They have brought us nothing but trouble,' he says. Passions run high here. Protesters have gone toe-to-toe with security guards and taken to canoes to block government... https://www.scmp.com/article/627376/rape-cases-build-pressure-okinawa-volcano?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/627376/rape-cases-build-pressure-okinawa-volcano?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:00:00 +0000 At 12, Pov knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the seasoned prostitute he has become. 'They like girls,' he said, gesturing to four middle-aged Frenchmen. 'Small girls.' He also knows a sun-blackened and tattered woman a few metres away. She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia's choking capital is a slow-moving river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm in arm, tourists gaze at one... https://www.scmp.com/article/626194/endless-nightmare?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/626194/endless-nightmare?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:00:00 +0000 If you want to make Sayuki angry, mention the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, or worse, the best-seller on which it was based. 'It is a ludicrous, totally fictional book that came out of a white, middle-aged American male's imagination,' she says. 'I hope you're not going to write about that.' Unfortunately for Sayuki, who claims to be Japan's first foreign geisha, contemporary western perceptions of the so-called flower and willow world have been deeply shaped by Arthur Golden's million-selling... https://www.scmp.com/article/624597/line-beauty?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/624597/line-beauty?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Watching Free Run, a blurry, vertiginous MTV-style short by London-based photographer Henry Reichhold, is getting the digital equivalent of a sugar rush. Just 76 seconds long, the stylised film shows a young runner vaulting over commuters, shoppers and tall buildings in London, set to a Vangelis-like score. Free Run was shot on a camera-equipped mobile phone, as were about 150 other works screened recently at Japan's first Pocket Films Festival in Yokohama. Its brevity can't compare with the... https://www.scmp.com/article/621990/plot-quickens?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/621990/plot-quickens?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Acrop of new movie releases to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre is again set to dredge up controversy surrounding one of the 20th century's most notorious and disputed events. One perspective can be gained from Satoru Mizushima, president of Japanese right-wing webcaster Channel Sakura. After what he calls 'exhaustive research' on the seizure of what was then China's capital by Japanese troops in 1937 - estimated to have cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives - Mizushima... https://www.scmp.com/article/618882/unravelling-knots-nanking?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/618882/unravelling-knots-nanking?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:00:00 +0000 What's going on around the globe Tokyo's governor Shintaro Ishihara doesn't like using public money to fund what he calls 'academic exhibitions' that provoke chin-scratching but little cultural enlightenment. He slashed the city's Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibit budget to zero and demanded that future shows be run like businesses. Attract visitors or die, seemed to be the message. What would he make of Space For Your Future, an exhibition of 34 artists, designers and architects... https://www.scmp.com/article/618804/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/618804/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:00:00 +0000 At first glance, all looks as it should be in the Sample Lab, a bright, airy store in the heart of Tokyo's trendiest shopping district: products on one side, eager customers on the other and, in between, the polite, immaculately turned-out staff. But notice the odd details. For a start, most of the products lined up on the shelves have no price tags, and there are no cash registers or store detectives. Then there are the shoppers, who line up quietly in numbered lines before dashing for the... https://www.scmp.com/article/617179/moneys-no-object?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/617179/moneys-no-object?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Tokyo Imagine rebuilding a huge metropolis blasted to smouldering ruins by saturation bombing. That's the undertaking explored in Vision of Tokyo in Twenty Years, a documentary from 1946 that records the enormous urban reconstruction project. 'We have to plan our future,' says the narrator as he describes three comically optimistic architectural scenarios: sunny town, fun city and a capital where 'neighbours will love each other'. Few Tokyoites would later use the adjectives sunny or fun to... https://www.scmp.com/article/613345/rubble-renewal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/613345/rubble-renewal?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Surely it's time the international art world toasted the magnificent cultural conceits of Keiichi Ikemizu, who built a pyramid of logs on top of a mountain to capture a 'thunder demon', then waited a decade for lightning to strike. Ikemizu once walked from Kyoto to Osaka with a dozen sheep in a bid to challenge the boundaries between performer and spectator. While celebrating great eccentrics and visionaries, the critics may also recognise the Zen-like fortitude of Yoshio Yoshimura, who has... https://www.scmp.com/article/612331/mori-takes-nations-pulse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/612331/mori-takes-nations-pulse?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:00:00 +0000 If Nobuyoshi Araki likes you, he'll take you to the bar he owns in the Kabukicho red-light district of Tokyo. This is the night-time lair of the prolific photographer of the female form, a man dubbed a misogynist, a porn-and-bondage-merchant and a genius. The bar is wallpapered with Polaroid snaps of women: young, older, ripened by years in 'the water trade', some pigeon-toed and shy; others spread-eagled or hogtied. The middle-aged woman Araki employs to serve drinks flits about in a ... https://www.scmp.com/article/611529/indecent-exposures?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/611529/indecent-exposures?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Six years after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, it's a commonplace to say the world has changed, mostly for the worse. But the introduction to a new play asks: 'Can the world really change so much in just one day?' World Trade Centre as (in) Katakana, staged by Tokyo-based theatre company Rinkogun, explores the reactions of a group of Japanese living in New York on that fateful day. The title, says director Yoji Sakate, refers to 'an interpretation of what occurred that... https://www.scmp.com/article/611528/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/611528/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:00:00 +0000 What's going on around the globe In a world of slick blockbusters based on computer technology and digitalised animation, there's something wonderfully stubborn and unhinged about Tokyo's Studio Ghibli. The production house co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki still uses hand-crafted analogue techniques, a laborious commitment to old-style filmmaking that has helped earn Miyazaki the title 'the god of animators'. Every gorgeous frame of Miyazaki's masterpieces My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Princess... https://www.scmp.com/article/606373/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/606373/tokyo?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Tokyo In a war for territory, resources and oil, American planes indiscriminately bomb cities, killing women and children. Some of the aircraft are hit and 38 crew parachute to enemy soil. After a summary trial, all are beheaded. Plus ca change. Those air raids took place in the final months of the second world war, when American B-29s abandoned the last rules of warfare and dropped hundreds of tonnes of high explosives and napalm on Japan. By August 1945, almost 70 cities had been... https://www.scmp.com/article/602241/gallant-gallows-killer-who-hated-war?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/602241/gallant-gallows-killer-who-hated-war?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Back in the spring, Japanese television alleged that Shinzo Abe's ministers no longer stood when he entered the cabinet meeting room. Even worse, they kept chatting as the prime minister tried to start the meetings. Such disrespectful behaviour in a political culture where small acts carry huge symbolic weight could mean only one thing, most concluded: Mr Abe had lost the respect of his troops. After a string of scandals and 10 months in office that compare unfavourably to the rocket-fuelled... https://www.scmp.com/article/602128/battle-lifetime-looms?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/602128/battle-lifetime-looms?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:00:00 +0000 The good citizens of Liverpool in Britain woke up one morning a few years ago to find that one of the city's monuments had disappeared behind what looked like a giant garden shed. Somebody had built a hotel room around the five-metre statue of Queen Victoria: the monarch stood on a plinth inside, overlooking not an empire on which the sun never set, but an en suite bathroom and a red-carpeted room. The visual gag was topped off with a sign informing visitors that they could 'sleep with... https://www.scmp.com/article/600582/surreally-its-joke?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/600582/surreally-its-joke?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:00:00 +0000 In the movie Terminator II, actor Edward Furlong pokes the face of Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg to check for the machine beneath a fleshy exterior. Most people do the same to Geminoid HI-1, dubbed the world's most advanced android. The imposition brings a swift rebuke: 'Please don't touch me,' Geminoid says. 'It feels strange.' First meetings with the android, a doppelganger of its creator Hiroshi Ishiguro, can be unsettling. It has the same gimlet-eyed stare and shock of unruly black... https://www.scmp.com/article/600509/hes-no-dummy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/600509/hes-no-dummy?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:00:00 +0000 Joji Morishita has one of the more unenviable jobs on the global conference circuit: explaining why Japan wants to kill a thousand of the world's most-beloved mammals every year. At the acrimonious annual meetings of the International Whaling Commission, Mr Morishita spends hours trying to convince western reporters that Japan is not the Darth Vader of the marine world. 'It is not true that we want free, uncontrolled whaling,' Japan's alternate IWC commissioner said in flawless English at this... https://www.scmp.com/article/595249/japans-whaling-chief-tackles-mission-impossible?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/595249/japans-whaling-chief-tackles-mission-impossible?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:00:00 +0000