Erog Sum

Japanese cyberspace is a-buzz about "erogs" - erotic blogs where women post naked pictures of themselves along with spicy narrative text. The "experts" quoted in this story seem to believe that "there are a lot of eroggers who want people to look at them as 'real women,'" but a quick glance at the top erogs (courtesy of erog.jp) instantly raises some serious doubts about the "authenticity" of the bloggers.

These sites' homogeneity of structure, high-quality pictures, and highly voluptuous authors question the premise that these are just "everyday" women uploading pictures of themselves for sexual ego-boosting. To start, most of the camera angles would require a photographer, and most of the shots appear to have been done at one session. I asked around about the erogs, and a friend of a friend apparently belongs to a temp agency that finds girls willing to expose their bodies, but not their faces. I don't quite understand the profit-making abllity of this particular scam (hit-related advertising revenues?), but I would guess that the sex industry is behind the entire thing.

Like most media in Japan, everything sold on the premise of "reality" is planned and artificial, and as long as there's money to be made, no one has the slightest interest in questions of veracity. We automatically lower our standards for nonfiction, and as long as no one's fact-checking, cultural producers can easily make their fiction more interesting by creating an air of reality. These erogs' sole appeal is the illusion of amateurism. Uncovering the assembly line production would clearly destroy the entire phenomenon.

I Can Can Cam

Let us applaud the crazy girls in Tokyo wearing demented maid costumes and late 18th century lace contraptions, for they have pulled off the greatest media coup in Japanese history! These are girls from the lowest-rung on the high school ladder - even beneath the college-bound bookworms - and they've convinced the world that their nerdy deviance is what's cool in Japan! And how could someone not want to visit a country so ridiculous that the young women dress up in doll clothes and Broadway makeup in the depths of summer!

Meanwhile, society's prom queens and sorority sisters - the Can Cam girls - silently rule the school and win new recruits to their female order by the minute. They are the everyday office lady, the big sister, the bank teller off at five-thirty, the good girl who likes to go bad on the weekends - long, slightly-curled brown hair extending four inches beyond the shoulders, white pants or denim skirt, Louis Vuitton or Gucci bags or at least a LV dayplanner, high-heeled sandals, painted nails, shiny lips, immaculate. They are, for all practical purposes, the real Japan.

The monthly magazine Can Cam runs at 600 pages, around five-pounds, the kind of book you throw to kill a bug and end up denting the wall. The motto: "Come on, Join us!" Inside holds page after page of the same six models displaying hundreds of outfits, dozens of brands, and thousands of possible style permutations on this female fashion trope. 600 pages of wall-to-wall information - no articles, only instructions. There are no artistic, theme-based fashion shoots with fancy photographers and there are oddly few ads - just raw recipes for exact personal duplication of this irreproachable code to upright womanhood. And it's monthly - as if the 600 pages from last month could not possibly answer all the questions required for matching a denim jacket to a pair of black pants. The manpower required to write, edit, and layout the material must resemble the Triangle Shirt Factory.

Long ago girls dressed head-to-toe in vibrant fashion, whether high or street, roamed Harajuku and Omotesando, but now the Can Cam tornado leaves nothing but designer bags and parvenu values in its path of destruction. But who can blame its adopters - the "o-nee-kei" (big sister) style is easy-to-build, liked by boyfriends, respected by friends, understood by parents, approved by employers, and attractive to candidates for o-miai. This look is a guaranteed free dinner at one of the expensive (!) restaurants in Roppongi Hills (!!), courtesy of Mr. Mitsugu with long brown hair, an Armani suit (!!!), and no-(!!!!)-tie. (He's also totally rich!)

The alternababes reading Cutie, Spring, Olive, and Mini are gone, boys. If there are any left, they are holding on the doorframe, while the house is being sucked into the spinning vortex known as the Can Cam look. Come on, join us!

Marxy on Marxy Reviews

As you all know, I'm very pro-cultural criticism, and yet I still feel the sting from a negative review of my own album. When you're a new artist from a new label, the record generally gets assigned to new writers with a mere one hundred words to burn, and there's little room to make a coherent argument.

For example, here's a slam from PopMatters:

Kyoshu Nostalgia can be best described as an intriguing thesis paper compiled into an album format, with the subject matter being the deconstruction of the pastiche of J-pop or something along those lines. Being an assignment of one of those wacky cultural studies courses, Marxy also throws in some Super Mario Bros. 8-bit tunes and Pet Sounds-type arrangements as fashionable postmodern digressions. Academically, I give Kyoshu Nostalgia First Class Honors. Critically however, it is a rather weak effort. Solid though unmemorable reproductions of the music of Ayumi Hamazaki, the Beach Boys, and Nintendo pepper the proceedings, a random bedroom enthusiast's uninspired production. Let's keep the arts faculty in the university, shall we?
- Kenneth Yu

Meanwhile at PopMatters University:

PROF. KENNETH YU: I give this album First Class Honors! Academically of course, not critically.
SENIOR PROF: What's the difference between those two words?
PROF. KENNETH YU: Academics are just a bunch of "wacky cultural studies" classes where you use meaningless words like "deconstruction" and "pastiche." Being critical is listening to an album once and then calling it "uninspired."
SENIOR PROF: Okay. What was the album about?
PROF. KENNETH YU: I don't know. J-pop or something.
SENIOR PROF: How can you give it First Class Honors if you don't know what the album is about?
PROF. KENNETH YU: He sings in Japanese. It must be about J-pop.
SENIOR PROF: Wait, have you ever heard J-pop? Do you actually know who Ayumi Hamasaki is?
PROF. KENNETH YU: ...
SENIOR PROF: And why are you assuming that every song without electric guitars is based on Pet Sounds? Marxy's album sounds much more influenced by the Smile bootlegs - which are all fractured and "postmodern."
PROF. KENNETH YU: Whatever. They need to keep the ideas out of music. But high-five: I totally smoked that Marxy dude.

But the irony of it all is that my new press sheet will read:

"Fashionable... I give Kyoshu Nostalgia First Class Honors." -- Popmatters

Japanese Blogging: A Recap

Both Japanese conservatives and Western orientalists are quick to claim that a lack of visible, external opposition to the social system in Japan is serious proof of a society built on perfect consensus. Now with the expansion of new media in Japan - namely, BBS's, blogs, and online forums - the world gets a less-mediated view of how individual Japanese see their society. Those hoping for an outpouring of discontent have generally been disappointed with the current blog boom's pedestrian, non-controversial content, but I think we've yet to see some ultimate level of "free" expression.

The heavily critical chatter and information exchange on the national BBS 2-ch shows that the Japanese are happy to vent, rant, and criticize when giving the promise of anonymity. The popularity of "anonymous blogs" further confirms this idea. This phenomenon suggests quite clearly that social pressures, norms, and conventions are the number-one barrier towards self-expression in Japan, not media access. Japanese running personal blogs under their own name know that they must take social responsiblity for their ideas and opinions, and under this pressure, generally step away from critical topics. (Yuki says so herself.) Just like Japan's weekly tabloids rarely use bylines in order to protect the writer from backlash, anonymity is the most obvious self-protection strategy on the Internet as well.

Anonymous blogging and BBS posting could still lead to an information revolution in Japan, but anonymous sources have almost no credibility. When writers take responsibility for their own words, they also bestow upon them any trust located within the position of the author. A well-written anonymous essay criticizing the Bush White House would be perceived differently than one openly known as the work of an Republican ex-White House staffer. At present, I can read about many taboo topics on 2-ch, but I must go elsewhere to validate the information.

All in all, the Internet appears to be a mere extension of "regular" social space, and the most important factor for change in Japanese behavior is a chance for anonymity. But the oligopolistic mass media will probably exploit this natural desire for anonymity to further demonstrate how ideas generated in the blogosphere are fundamentally untrustworthy.

Japan Media Review on Blogs

For those interested in Japanese media issues, the University of Southern California's Japan Media Review is an invaluable resource, featuring interviews with journalists and professors, essays on the current media conditions, and a rolling blog with links to weekly news.

A week ago, I posted a short comment arguing that an increase in the quantity of Japanese blogs did not especially mean an increase in media influence, and in response, the JMR asked several media experts like Prof. Ellis Krauss and Prof. Hattori Takaaki about that idea in a new post "Their Numbers May Be Increasing, But Will Japanese Bloggers Have Impact?". The comment from Prof. Hattori (Rikkyo University) explains the somewhat "superficial" nature of Japanese blogging: "Even looking at my own students, they seem to use their own blogs not for debate or for expressing their opinions, but rather to relate their activities or impressions about things (good food, stylish restaurants, etc.) ..."

On a side note, according to Yuki at kissui.net, many Japanese bloggers do not allow links to their page without expressed permission. The idea is to keep your life online, but only for those in your personal community.

Japan as Number One! - Part Two

Knowledge: Pursuit and Consensus

In his work Japan as Number One, Ezra Vogel analyzes the secrets to Japanese success, starting first with the "group-directed quest for knowledge." After WWII, Japan's unfailing interest in new ideas and new techniques led to the adoption of supremely beneficial strategies from the minds of both Japanese and Western thinkers. While business leaders in the U.S. ignored the ideas of Demming and Drucker, the Japanese used their concepts of quality control and management as the fundamental base to economic recovery.

Vogel ties this industrial knowledge learning in with widespread "popular" learning in hobbies, sports, and study. The Japanese read more printed media than Americans, which he sees as a post-schooling commitment to information gathering and knowledge acquisition. I cannot help but think, however, that the dominance of the written media in Japan is mostly determined by the transportation patterns; in other words, books, magazines, and newspapers are a perfect fit for long train commutes, but not long car rides. No matter, the Japanese do show great interest in learning English and other skills, forming study groups to work out problems, and bringing in foreign experts to teach advanced techniques. The field of sports and athletics is a perfect example: after years of dedication, the Japanese are now internationally competitive in a large range of "foreign" sports.

There is certainly a case to be made that the Japanese are in constant pursuit of knowledge, and this contributed greatly to Japan's economic recovery on both bureaucratic and individual levels. But now that the world has visibly moved into a "knowledge" or "information economy," why do Japanese firms have a difficult time producing knowledge-based products like software?

Possibly, an aggregate interest in learning has fallen since the time of Vogel's book, but more likely, the kind of knowledge acquisition dominant in Japan has little direct link to the new knowledge industries. As authors like Marilyn Ivy have pointed out, the Japanese "consume" intellectual works (like Asada Akira) without particularly understanding or digesting them. With high-schools dedicated solely to test-preparation and the low class attendance of students at elite colleges condoned by professors/administrators, there is essentially no part in the Japanese education process that teaches students "how to learn." Effort becomes the panacea to all intellectual problems, and while this works perfectly for sports or hobbies, there is no evidence that "effort" alone can solve more complicated queries.

The Japanese pursuit of knowledge seems to be symptomatic of a larger campaign of social-involvement and self-improvement - both extremely beneficial to the daily workings of society. However, there has been a failure to move this habit of information-acquisition into the computer age. The Japanese may have reached that barrier where a new regimen of learning is necessary, but the bureaucracy would need to uproot the entire Japanese system to employ these new techniques and strategies.

Proto-Blogging: A Hoax?

People on the Internet have been recently discussing "proto-blogs" from 1980s data systems, but something about the screen shots makes me think they're modern hoaxes. For example:

This one seems pretty on-target for late 1980s political commentary, but the next one...

... is just total anachronistic nonsense.

8-bit graphics from 19th century Europe - the Age of Nationalism? I seriously doubt it!

Wait, maybe these are real...

NPR on Japanese College Entrance Semi-Hell

NPR recently had a radio segment about the effect of the falling birthrate on the Japanese college admission system. With less students applying every year, universities are having to ease their admission standards to create an adequately-sized student-body, which feeds-back into requiring less study of high school kids to enter universities.

This report vaguely hints that the system is becoming "more like America," but this is highly misleading. Almost all Japanese universities still base their admission decisions on one examination and not the myriad of data used by American colleges - grades, recommendations, activities, standardized test scores, awards, special talents, etc. So, the education process still hinges on mindless test preparation, but now at a weaker level. The system - built for bureaucratic self-preservation and a manufacturing economy - continues unabated albeit at a weaker level: not a new type of student, just a lesser version of the old one.

Japan as Number One! - Part One

In 1979, Harvard professor and eminent Japanese Studies guru Ezra Vogel published his seminal book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America to uproarious commotion in America and enormous sales in Japan. For the decade after the book's release, Vogel's premise perfectly conformed to the global reality: America for all its power and hubris was in aimless disorder, while Japan was rising majestically from the ashes of WWII to an august seat in the international economic order. When Japan's economy self-destructed in the 90s, Number One became a lightning rod for the "Revisionist" school of academics who accused Vogel of pandering to the Japanese government and glossing over the negative sides of Japanese life. Certainly, the future proved the book "wrong" to a certain degree, and today it is little more than a quaint historical document without much contemporary relevance.

I personally thought it would be interesting, however, to step out of my normal critical milieu and try to follow the logic behind Vogel's appraisal. I very much agree with his main point: America would benefit from learning about the Japanese socioeconomic model in that all nations should fight an arrogant adherence to traditions and learn from other nations in a mutually-progressive manner. So in this spirit, I aim to calmly discuss the book's main points and what they mean for Japan today.

The Japanese Miracle

From the get-go, Vogel's main argument gives greatest primacy to comparisons of Japan and the United States' industrial manufacturing potential. For example, he notes that Japan had fourteen "modern blast furnaces" for steel production while the U.S. had zero (10), and Japan supposedly "edged past the United States" in production technology after 1973 (11). In the late 70s, this certainly spelled trouble for American steel companies, but now in 2004, steel production has gone the way of the agricultural economy and the quill pen. In other words, this technological edge turned out to be a short-term advantage but ultimately worthless in the new information economy. Japan still makes a lot of steel, but the leading position in the 70s and 80s only shows modest promise for the future.

On the information-technologies front, however, Vogel warns that Japanese computer systems and media technologies are quickly outpacing American ones. For example, videotape recorders caught on in Japan way before the U.S., starting almost two decades of speedy diffusion of new technology in the Japanese market (16). And here's an odd warning about a proto-Internet:

The idea of putting all books and magazines on computer tapes and having this information available through a telephone or television system to every household in a nation is not unique to Japan, but Japan is far ahead of the United States in working out the organizational, technical, and legal problems. It is not impossible that Japan might begin to implement this system in not much more than a decade, far ahead of the United States (17).

Vogel was probably right about this at the time, but looking back at the last twenty years, it was America saved by the Internet explosion, not Japan. With industrial production, Japan eventually lost some of the action to its cost-competitive neighbors Korea and China, but why did Japan drop the ball on a leading edge in information-technology? I have a gut feeling that Japan's "mediocre" universities (Vogel's words) did not provide the fertile nesting ground for the Internet's rise. And even though companies like Nintendo were poised to create modem-based data networks in the mid-80s, the monopolistic NTT's high prices and restrictions on second phone lines killed all such projects. Supposedly, the Japanese links to the Internet started as a grad school project at Keio University without government support.

Now in the 21st century, sluggish Japanese entry into the mp3 player and hard-disc recording markets suggest Japan has lost its one-time IT advantage. In the next installment, we'll look closely at Japanese information-acquisition habits to see whether Japanese culture still provides the positive cradle for IT growth that Vogel suggests.

A NewKeitai, A Newson

About two days ago, my two-year old clunky keitai (cell phone) started to internally malfunction, so I ran out this afternoon to buy a new one in the hopes that I could transfer data from the old one before it fully melted-down. Japan's cell phones are generally fancy, gaudy little boxes filled with unnecessary space-age features (television! radio! crazy text characters!) but the Marc Newson-designed Talby series is a nice piece of attractive, yet functional industrial design. I chose the "Hole Black" over "Hornet Green" and "Orange Orange," and so far I'm pleased with its super-tenuity and unbearable lightness of being. I miss my old self-made ringtone of Citrus' "Blue Mercedes," but hopefully I can download a cheesy stripped-down version of Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" from the Ghostbusters 2 soundtrack.

Star Wars III - In July!

Many of you are familiar with the Star Wars motion picture franchise and the fact that the final episode - Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith - has opened in America to huge fanfare and even larger box office receipts. A quick scan of the international release dates will show that unprecedented technological progress, high consumer demand, and greater globalization have created a world in which all of God's children can enjoy the saga of Anakin Skywalker within a mere two days of the U.S. release.

Except of course, Japan. Release date: July 9th.

I don't know if you've noticed, but Japan ain't playing "the game." She's a dreamy rebel you can't tame, playing by her own rules, and just because "everyone" is watching Star Wars on May 19th, doesn't mean that Japan is going to do what everyone else is doing! She's a loner, Dottie, a rebel.

Japan is apparently the only country in the world self-absorbed enough in its own Star Wars traditions to actually postpone the release - in this case, until the beginning of summer vacation. No one in the Japanese film distribution world seems to have had faith that the Force ("that ancient belief system!") would bring kids to the theaters in May. So Japanese fans will have to wait, because they should be hard at work/school and not galavanting at moving-picture nickelodeons!

Of course, this is just one more example of Japan refusing to follow the ever-greater trend of global cultural convergence. And if they want to punish their consumers in order to snatch onto petty control of their own traditions, more power to them! When I finally see Star Wars in July after hearing two months of nonchalant references to plot points on the Internet, I'm sure I'll be ecstatic that Japan's the kind of dude who runs on his own clock. They're fighting the power, brother.

Marxy Back, Lance on Hiatus

Coming back to the computer this morning, I was a little worried about the effect of Lance's posts on my readership, but I checked my stats: my unique visitors went up 25%! Apparently, you would all rather read musings from an American 16 year-old than whatever it is I usually write about. I should have known that this day was coming.

I was amused to find that some people doubted Lance's existence, but surely, Lance exists whether in Charlottesville, Nashville, or Rockville. Reading his posts, I was reminded of why I don't currently reside in the United States and refreshed on some of the weaker points of Kurt Cobain's lyrics.

I'm back to essaying about Japan this week, so stay tuned if that's your kind of thing. Lance fans can check "the Internet" for similar-type posts.

Bloggin'

TGIF - And I don't mean the restaurant! (Although the buffalo wings are tight. EXTRA HOT, y'all.)

I hate that skool is totally gettin' in the way of the bloggin' but whadda do? I'd love to skip German III and dative prepositions, but there's no way Frau Hess would believe I'm editing a blog.. abotu Japan no less~!

I wanted to take Japanese, but my skool SUCKS and doesn't have it. Only French, Spanish, and German. They don't even have Latin, which puts me out of competition for like the BIG TIME Latin Competition in Richmond. (The winners all go to top 10 colleges. Totally laaaaaaame.)

But this summer I'm going to Japan for three weeks for this Lions Club homestay program. Not going to TOkyo, but hopefully Okayama will be kewl. That'll be after Boys State, which kids from last year tell me is all baseball jocks. "Democracy doesn't work" they tell me, and I'm like, yo, TELL me about it.

Marxy gets back sometime tonight (his morning, I guess), and I'll be sittin' back with the ladiez watching some STAR WARS, so this is my last post, suckas. I saw those rereleases when I was like 8 or something and was pretty blown away (although those haircuts make everyone look like tards), and Episode 1 and 2 were pretty kewl. Yoda KICKS ASS. Frank Oz RULEZ.

peace out, y'all. suckas...

Nirvana

When I was a freshman, I was pretty into Puddle of Mudd, and then earlier this year my friend Kaitlyn's college boyfriend (is it really cool for a guy in college to be dating high school girls?!) was like, "if you like PofM, man, you gotta check out Nirvana." Nirvana was one of those bands that older kids liked I never quite understood, seeing that they sound like every single band ever. But I went onto Soulseek and DL'd like all their stuff (accidentally DL'ed "Nirvana UK" some 60s band! LOL!) and you know what, and you may disagree, but Nirvana is SO much better than Puddle of Mudd.

I'll tell you why: Kurt Kobain tells it LIKE IT IS. That guy is afraid to take on nothing.

For example, he talks about all the stuff you're not SUPPOSED TO talk about like:

Insanity - "Tourette's", "Very Ape","Lithium","Dumb"

Sex - "In Utero","Come as You Are","In Bloom","Pennyroyal Tea" (you guys knwo what this is, right?), "Rape Me","Polly"

Hate - "Territorial Pissings","Stay Away","Frances Farmer will Get Her Revenge","Radio Friendly Unit Shifter"

Power - "Serve the Servants"

And check out this lyrics from the gorgeous "All Apologies":

He NAILS it. That song like describes what it's like to go to high school.

Japan or Japan?

sorry for the late post, dudes. my mom has this weird rule about no 'nettin' until after supper.

So, there was supposedly a band called Japan in the 70s! and they were like totally unkown outside of Japan even though they were British. How ironical.

Here's a link to their Wikipedia page.

Check out the TOTALLY AWESOME cover art above. you could not fake the funk on the awesomeness. (no, I did NOT photoshop them.)

So, Japanese stuff is like really really popular in my town right now. Like you go to to Blockbuster and it has like 100 anime tapes, and most of them are checked out.

Plus, there's this girl at my school who was like, "I really like Puffy Amiyumi," (the TV show) and so I stayed up all night DLing mp3s from Soulseek and made her this sweet mix cd with a bunch of Japan-only trakcs. (She listens to it all the time, and I don't get one thank you!)

I'm totally seeing Star Wars tomorrow night. (Craig says its so "f*ckin' awesome" and that's a quote.) Lucas rips off Japanese stuff so hardcore. The word "jedi" comes from the Japanese word "jidai" (I forget what it means) and Han Solo was a samurai name.

Lance in the Hiz-OUSE!!!

Lance is in the muzafuzzin' HIZ-HOUSE, y'all. Gonna pimp' it up like itz hott.

totally syched that AP American History is behind me (i bet I got a 4, maybe even 5) and Marxy is letting me guest editor his blog. (Don't erase my posts, Marxy!) Gonna keep it kewl, ya'll.

gotta get to skool but before i forget:

TOP REASONZ WHY JAPAN KICKS AND THE US SUCKS

1) anime ALL THE TIME. even on baisc cable.
2) dudes ride the subway to school. (Here in Sh*tsville, Virginia, I gotta pick up like eight freshman in my 1996 Subaru while rich kids like Hunter drive around in tight SUVs with full iPod-integration.)
3) the wi-zeed is totally legal.
4) phat cellphones that play games and watch TV.
5) no O.C. - I hate those girls who all think their summer.
6) no AVRIL LATRINE or ASHLEE PIMPLESON
7) earlier PSP and game release dates (can you believe that sucker Brandon's dad picked one up for him on a biz tripp to Tokyo before they even came out here? w.t.f.)
8) probably no lawns to mow.
9) no more years of BU$H.
10) GODZILLA, baby!

Marxy on Break, but Guest Editor Arriving

I have a presentation in Japanese tomorrow about institutional economics (制度派経済学) and a weekend trip out of town, so I won't be able to post for the next couple of days. I hate to let this blogspace go fallow, so I've invited a guest editor - Lance - to take the helm until I get back to a computer sometime this weekend. Lance is the best friend of my sixteen year-old American cousin, who reads my blog and is apparently "totally into Japanese culture." Hopefully he won't go too crazy, and if he does, I'll just erase his posts when he gets back. (Just kidding, Lance.)

日本風のブログ：巨大な犬！

僕の一番好きな犬は、アトラスとエルザという二匹のピレネー犬です。群馬県の北軽井沢動物病院に住んでいて、病院のスタッフに愛されています。雄のアトラスは白熊のようにものすごくデカくて、ふわふわしています。どうしてもピレネー犬が飼いたいけれど、東京のアパートでは、雪が好きそうな、遠くま走れることが必要な犬に大変なんじゃない？近所の世田谷区にピレネー犬がいっぱいいるけど、ちょっと可哀想です。解放して、それから北極まで連れて行こう！

Shukan Post on Nigo's "Vast Tax Evasion Scheme"!

The sometimes-reliable, always-sensational news magazine Shukan Post reports in their May 27th issue about a "Vast Tax Evasion Scheme" (巨額脱税工作) linked directly to A Bathing Ape's Nigo. I very much doubt that this story would have made the magazine had Nigo not recently started to date popular model/actress Makise Riho, but the ultra-wealthy fashion capitalist has bought himself into the big time - which also means becoming fodder for extravagant headlines and closer media scrutiny.

Apparently, Japan's Tax Administration Agency opened up an investigation last year on Nigo's company Nowhere, and from there, they began a compulsory investigation on a man the Post identifies only as Mr. A (A氏) - who was allegedly involved in the financial management of the Ura-Harajuku brands. In the 80s, Mr. A ran several successful tarento goods stores in Harajuku, but when the Bubble burst and the kids fled to Shibuya, Mr. A went bankrupt and moved overseas. He was called back to Japan by Mr. B during the late 90s "Harajuku revival."

Mr. B is the "don of Ura-Harajuku" - the man who financed all the major streetwear brands, including Bape - by acting a mediator between the young fashion designers and the shady backroom figures providing the money. Although the Shukan Post does not give his name, he is supposedly listed as a board member for the Nowhere corporation. Mr. A worked for Mr. B's consulting company "W" as a managerial advisor to the young Ura-Harajuku brand runners. According to the article, Mr. A helped these brands evade taxes through imaginary receipts and inflated orders - in three years, they hid 1,500,000,000 yen, which according to A's friend Hasegawa, was given directly in cash to Mr. B in kickback money.

Nigo's tax counselor happens to be an alumni of the National Tax Administration Agency, and according to him, the investigation is focusing only on Mr. A, and not Nowhere.

In an interview with the Shukan Post at the end of the article, Mr. A proclaims his innocence and also takes the fall, saying that he just cheated Nigo, who knew nothing about the scheming.

To Nigo's credit, the article does not give much proof that he directly participated in the tax evasion, but having said that, this is one of the first media attempts to investigate the long-standing rumors about the financial workings of the Japanese street fashion business. As with all pop culture in Japan, it's nearly impossible to figure out who's paying the bills.

Internet Fiction

....A shorthand letter from Theodore: "I've sent you a telegram. (emoticon)" and lo and behold, there's a small discolored envelope from Western Union sitting on top of the icebox:

is scrawled on the envelope in burnt sienna crayon. The message inside says more or less the same thing: his "webpage" burned down? Again?
....For every friend who graciously contributes to my overall sanity, there's an idle bastard who plunders from my mind like a poll tax - and if Theodore had a motto - outside of the self-absorbed "J'adore Theodore" - that motto would surely be "theodore.com" - a sly reference to a website dedicated to the band The O'Dore.
....A recap of Theo's last pecuniary mishap:
....In a moment of sheer genius, Theodore decides to invest all his cash money and sundry currency into the stock market on White Wednesday - October 23rd, 1929, but gets mugged on his way to the broker's office - and what's worse, he had gone out of doors sans chapeau. As I chide him, the phone rings, "Call from an Archibald." - "Thanks, Doris."
...."Hello, Archibald! How is 'Ars Poetica' going?"
...."What?"
...."I'm sorry, this Skype connection is terrible."
...."This is Archibald Cox."
...."Oh, I'm sorry. This Skype connection is terrible."
...."I need a favor. I'm about ten short of FTP. I was wondering if you could spare some. I'll pay you back once we finish up this Nixon case."
...."I'd be honored. Alger Hiss is my third cousin, you know."
...."I didn't know that."
...."I would never have thought Nixon would find proof of Alger's guilt - pumpkin seeds - inside a pumpkin."
...."You've lost me, but okay."
...."I'll send you the FTP later via Telnet."
...."Tchuss. A poem should not mean."
....(click)
....Click? Again? I must get this rotary phone fixed.
....The phone rings again.
...."But be."
....I hang up, and go about my day - trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to deal with Theodore and my gopher problem (I own a farm). I load up Mosaic, place in two buffalo nickels, and crank the dynamo until the screen starts producing moving images. After a laborious search requiring a half-dozen upgrades of Shockwave, I find the Western Union corporate page, scribble down the address on a sheet of newsprint, and jump into my automobile.net. The landscape is dull - like a blog written with a dull pencil - and I think to myself that I'd very much like to see a man speaking Basque in an old-timey hat riding an antique bicycle with one large wheel and one larger wheel.
....I recognize the teller at Western Union as the young woman who "lost her virginity" on the Internet - an obvious hoax, seeing that an Internet could not possibly support the weight of two able adults. She makes small talk about the weather and stagflation, and I cash in my last war bond to help Theo (see above). I look out the window: teenagers on wheeled-boards are doing tricks with names like "Reverse IP Lookup" and "But Torrent."
....My iPod rings: "Hello?"
...."Am I speaking to yahoo@prodigy.com?"
...."No, this is her husband."
...."We got a call from WHOIS, and they've traced your wife to Linux, Nebraska."
...."Linux?"
...."It's an open source town. Very altruistic."
...."Is this a symbolic element in an allegory?"
...."Yes."
...."Well, I appreciate your call. Vote Debs."
....I would just telephone over to my wife's office and end this mystery, but I had unfortunately written her phone number down on a scrap of yellow cardstock in BinHex, thinking that it would save space. Standing in the parking lot, I think of a good pun on the term "cookie" and the physical object "cookie" - remembering only seconds later that my virtual shoe-shine boy had said the same thing hours before on a live televised chat session. Across the street, a thresher is podcasting green beans very loudly. Backslash, backslash! I cover my ears but I - a soft system of flesh and blood - am no match for machine.
....By the time I get home, a quick WAIS search shows that Theo's site is back up. I drink a Pepsi Free and read raw AP feeds - stopping every once and a while to pour myself another round of Liquid Audio.

Alas, the iPod Shuffle

While the iPod took three years to break into the Japanese market, the iPod Shuffle exploded onto the scene. At least in Tokyo, everyone aged 18 to 30 is dangling the little white trinket from their necks like an ID pass to Coolsville (Population: You). Rumors have it that Apple designed the iPod Shuffle specifically for Japanese consumers, but regardless, the success of the Shuffle over the regular tank iPod seems to prove the following points about Japanese consumers, which mostly contradict the "common" understanding of Japanese buying behavior:

Clone University Yearbook 2183 C.E.

	Class President Arthur Jacobsen		Best Sense of Humor Jerry "Funnyman" Funnymen
	Best Looking Patricia Smith		Least Good Looking Henry Peret
		Identical Twins Joey and George Milner

Fraternal Triplets Dorothy, Howard, and Finn Nagel

	President of African-American Student Committee Paula Johnson		Least Clone-like Jesse Marquette
		Separated at Birth? Jonathan Jackson and Paul Moussali
		Best Friends Forever Freddy Marsh and Susan Little
	Most Emails Stess Chetson		Most Foreign Exchange Student El-Habbib Malik Shabazz
		Newest Scott Hadfield and Scott Hadfield
	Best Yearbook Photo RX8-7URKab(II)		Yearbook Editor-in-Chief T-RexFanBolan@aol.com

A No-Tenkou Japanese Youth

Traditionally, Japanese youth are expected to shed all their fads, fashions, radical ideologies, dreams, aspirations, and ideals upon entering the workforce - and subsequently, adulthood - in a process called tenkou（転向). Like all the youth before them, the hardcore student Marxists of the early 60s went straight into a white-collar life come graduation. While a handful of hardhat radicals in the late 60s/early 70s were blacklisted for their participation in severe Leftist violence, Japan's tiny counterculture evaporated very quickly when its members turned 23 and adjusted their values back to mainstream society. To a large degree, Japanese adults' high tolerance of extreme youth fashion stems directly from their understanding that a tenkou will instantly clear away the zoot suit to make room for the recruit suit.

In the last five years, however, there has been much speculation about whether the high number of youth without full-time employment - the freeters - were voluntarily rejecting the lives of their parents; in other words, these were possibly the first kids in history refusing to go through the tenkou process, working in a bakery four days a week to keep living a life centered on fashion, design, and music. What progress for international bohemianism! Western scholars since the 50s have been hoping to see the tenkou disappear, predicting that its demise was just around the corner. For example, Robert Jay Lifton in the 1961 essay "Youth and History: Individual Change in Postwar Japan" (from The Challenge of Youth) says in his concluding remarks about Japanese collegiate Marxists, "Much of what I have described may be understood as youth's efforts to resist tenkou and to acquire a new form of integrity." Turns out - those idealistic kids he interviewed all became cogs in the capitalist machine. And the tenkou psychology only became stronger when a dazzling economy threw money at anyone willing to go out and buy a nice pair of loafers.

So, what about our friitaa/freeters of 2005? Are they going to stay punk rock forever?

According to a 2003 survey, 70% of freeters would happily take a full-time white collar job if offered one. So, they're not exactly ideological rebels - just simply "unemployable." This other 30%, however, may be the proto-bohemians that everyone from "Slow Life"-advocates to David Brooks-followers are searching for. But if you've ever seen the lifestyle of workers in Japan's hipster cultural industry, you'll notice that even without the dark suits and chourei morning exercises, these "cool kids" have just replicated the work-style and values of the sarariiman life within the magazine/music making process: long hours and expectations of total-dedication.

There does seem to be a handful of freeters who are rejecting the tenkou value-conversion, but they are essentially being pushed out of society rather than forcing society to find a business organization that does not demand a total re-formulation of selfhood. For better or worse, tenkou is a fundamental principle of Japanese psychology, and the perceived need to abandon "selfish" interests for entrance into an adult "human matrix" (Lifton's term) is built into the social structure, which means that we're not going to be seeing the Bohemian army any time soon. Welcome back to the Fast Life.

The Trials and Tribulations of Japanese Entertainment

This Japanese site lists trial outcomes for legal cases involving celebrities and the entertainment industry.

For example:

I love his plea for leniency.

Suzuki Ami's Mystery Boss

As we all should know by now, pop idol Suzuki Ami was blacklisted from the entertainment industry from 2001 until this year for attempting to leave her management company, AG Communications. Her impedance for leaving was that the head of her artist jimusho was arrested for tax-evasion. Now, very mysteriously, as far as I've seen, not a single news source or even internet gossip site will name the CEO of AG Communications. When most company heads are arrested, the press can easily figure out whom exactly has been arrested, seeing that most firms are open about their head employee. As far as I can tell, Suzuki's management company never had a public outlet for information, such as a website, so there is no easy way to verify the identity of Suzuki's boss.

Now, why won't anyone simply release the name of the mysterious arrested CEO?

Update: According to this Cyzo article, the AG Comm boss was not Taira Tetsuo, whom earlier I had earlier fingered as a possible suspect in an irresponsible blog-like manner. Cyzo just calls the boss "Y-shi" - probably because the media is legally required to not name names in cases like this. (But why is it then that they could talk openly about Taira from Rising?)

However, a little research on "AG" (you have to spell it correctly in katakana) easily directs one to the name "Yamada Eiji" - an ex-producer for the TV show Asayan - as the ex-head of Ami's company. Mystery solved.

Den Hideo on the Japanese Media

From 1962 to 1968, Den Hideo hosted the TBS news show "News Scope," becoming the original prototype for the Japanese "kyastaa" (newscaster). In WWII, he had been moments away from departing on a kamikaze suicide mission when news came of the war's end. After making comments on his show critical of the LDP's leadership and foreign policy, Den was forced to quit his job as news caster, and later went into politics, holding a longtime seat in the Diet's Upper House as a member of the Japanese Socialist Party. In 1972, Den said the following about leaving his job:

(As quoted in テレビー「やらせ」と「情報操作」 by 渡辺武達, 1995. Translation mine.)

The Japanese Media: A Recap

Quote from PR agency employee, "Ishikura T." in Anne Cooper-Chen's Mass Communications in Japan (bolding mine):

So, here's the score: the six mainstream Japanese news media sources work together in highly collusive arrangements to standardize news (esp. kisha clubs), reporters have allegiance only to their sources (politicans, authority figues) and to their companies but never with the public, and to top that off, there is absolutely no idea of "journalistic ethics" to the extent that news content is frequently changed to please advertising sponsors and politicians in the ruling party.

With those as the "standards," the lower media sources - namely, consumer guides and variety television - not only mimic all of the three actions above, but are much worse about it because the editors/producers themselves see their content as frivolous, youth-oriented and unrelated to any political concern.

This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the symbolic economy totally dominates our lives. Since the cultural commodities market and corresponding media determine which items litter and decorate the public sphere, companies are always attempting to directly buy up the visual/sensual real estate as much as possible. Total escape from consumer culture means departing society, so our one possible saviour is an independent media fighting back for consumers in the symbolic arena. As we've seen, the Japanese media's sole job is to further promote and ultimately legitimize the agenda of the political-economic hegemony - in other words, they are an abject failure in protecting consumers/citizens.

The United States, unfortunately, is headed down the exact same path of media-concentration, collusion, and unethical commericalism. Hopefully the legal and cultural barriers preventing the commercial world from totally devouring ideas of independent media power will stay intact, but they must resist mounting pressure from those with money and authority, who aim to remove ever hurdle towards total commercialization.

#3 of 10

When you're a soldier and all the hotels in town are booked for the night, are you not totally bummed about the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

Shibuya is the New Roppongi

The latest Shibuya trend: the neighborhood smells like an open sewer. I live relatively close so it's a convenient place to meet friends, but everytime I exit the subway, I can't help feeling that it looks dirtier, has more foreigners, and smells worse than the last time I left it. Whether there's really a correlation between the increasing odor and the massing of non-East Asians, I don't know, but Shibuya - the most ultra-Japanese of all Tokyo neighborhoods - has been transformed into a mini-Roppongi.

Shibuya's always been about shopping and sex and dropped on the youth culture radar in the late 80s/early 90s when rich kids went there to rove in chiimaa (teamer) gangs and pick up trashy girls from good families. A bit later, the ko-gyaru boomed, and their much-ballyhooed enjokousai made the neighborhood a symbol of illicit sex and vapid hyper-consumerism. Shibuya's always had a nasty edge - the love hotels, head shops, Middle Easterners (both Jewish and Arab) selling jewelry and crank - but the ko-gyaru nation was oddly anti-foreigner and pro-Japanese. If Aoyama/Harajuku were internationalist in perspective, Shibuya was their dark nationalistic pop cultural cousin.

Roppongi has a much longer history as a nightlife destination, and it is the shadowy business ground for Tokyo's underworld of drugs, sex, and politics. While foreigners have always been a colonial presence, the Japanese used to actually think Anglos were cool, and at least in the 70s, Roppongi was the symbol of "goin' Downtown" for young, swinging Japanese. Once Japanese tastes vastly exceeded Tokyo's perennial loser ex-pats, they got the hell out, and in the 90s, Roppongi became solely the home to a modern Gas Panic version of the WWII private-meets-local tale of romance. Now with Roppongi Hills, Mr. Mori and his cult of wealth are using the area to revive Bubble era values.

Even though Roppongi's getting this new fancy face-lift, every foreigner I meet will automatically expresses his disdain for Roppongi in the first five minutes of conversation, and the old Colonialists seem to have made an exodus towards Shibuya. This goes hand in hand with the perceived "coolness" of Japanese culture itself. Roppongi and Hiroo were places for foreigners to "escape" Japan; Shibuya is a place to be enveloped in it. The soldiers and working holiday'ers now eschew the foreigner-friendly women for a chance to stare at the crazy girls in too much make-up.

At the same time, however, I can't seem to go anywhere in the hipster quarters of Nakameguro or Daikanyama without running into a half-dozen other super-skinny, intentionally dirty-looking indie-boys who've evidentially all moved to Tokyo to get a bit of "Gross National Cool." If you went to a small gig or club event five years ago, you'd be guaranteed to be the only foreigner there, but now I can't even be taken to a hidden kayoukyoku (歌謡曲） bar without being the second foreigner to enter the premises that night.

I do welcome this influx of like-minded foreigners and I've met a ton of super interesting non-Japanese lately, but there's a fundamental problem, which will be no secret to those who've lived in Japan: all foreigners with interest in Japan hate all the other foreigners with interest in Japan. The Colonialists all like their ex-pat buddies and pubs, but the Japanese-speaking foreigner contingent is in constant battle with themselves, vying to prove linguistic abilities, obscure knowledge, and depth of societal penetration. I call this the "gaijin complex," and I'm only finally finding my way out of it now after a long period of affliction and convalescence. But it's time we all get over it, because Japan is no longer a place where Western misanthropes can go to escape humanity, but a growing international hub where speaking Japanese fluently will no longer be such a rarity. Right now, Shibuya may be the odorous hot spot, but wherever we venture, there will soon be the stink of the West.

(I call Nezu 1-chome!)

The America in American Idol, the Japan in Asayan

If you follow the American media, you may have heard that ABC's news program Primetime did a behind-the-scenes look at top FOX music show American Idol, alledging that the judge Paula Abdul (ex-partner to MC Skat Kat) coached one of the contestants. Gasp! Seeing that the contestant in question Corey Clark was kicked off the show and unable to "win," the scandal stems solely from what appears to be an unfair connection between the judges and the singers.

Slate.com's TV critic Dana Stevens has a good piece on why this all matters: the American viewer enjoys American Idol because it is a miniature version of U.S. civic democracy. In other words, viewers believe it's a "fair and genuine contest" where the singers are judged on talent/presentation alone and the call-in votes matter. There should be no surprise then that rigging a quiz show or game show is a federal crime in the United States in the same way that rigging an election is a crime. When there's corruption and collusion in these shows, we don't just pass it off as "popular entertainment" but fret that our entire political system is in danger.

This makes an interesting comparison to the world of Japanese entertainment where yarase (rigging, fake reality) is the fundamental mode of "reality TV." In the late 90s, there was a popular "talent search" show on Terebi Tokyo called Asayan, which was very similar to American Idol. Producers put the idol group Morning Musume together through the course of the show, and then used the girls' television-based popularity to launch their music career.

More famously, the very popular Suzuki Ami came-to-fame through a well-publicized Asayan contest, winning the right to be produced by super-producer Tetsuya Komuro. The word-on-the-street, however, has a different story: Suzuki's shady jimusho AG Communications set up the Suzuki-Komuro project beforehand and used the show's contest as clever marketing for her artist launch. The reason this strategy worked is that like Americans, Japanese viewers enjoy the idea of a "fair and genuine contest." They were excited to follow the idol contest and were very happy to support Suzuki once she won.

Behind the Japanese entertainment world, there is enough bribing, yakuza-involvement, and graft to provide years of "exposes," but seeing that the TV stations collude to not criticize each other and they're all beholden to the criminal underworld for casting/star-booking, they don't dare show you what's going on behind the curtain. And running parallel with Japanese democracy, voters/viewers don't particularly seem to care. If American Idol is a miniature version of democracy, Asayan and the other fake reality shows are a miniature version of Japanese semi-democracy. And just like the Japanese voters and media don't ask the politicians or stringpullers any difficult questions or try to figure out how decisions are really made, the viewers of these shows don't question the "reality" even when the scripting and manipulation are obvious. Those who don't care about the "reality" of their media tend not to care about the "reality" of their reality.

New Movie Idea: E.T.

So, I've got this new idea for a movie, and I went ahead and made up some storyboards:

The story is called E.T., and we find out in the last scene what the letters E.T. stand for.

Everybody wants to get E.T. - especially 2 out of every 4207 doctors.

E.T. befriends a young boy named SZIS, but...

E.T. keeps falling into holes! This needs to be the main focus of the film - falling into holes randomly.

Eventually, E.T. gets captured and placed into the Greek Parthenon.

Golden Interview Week: No. 7 - Justin Hall

Justin Hall was essentially the world's first blogger. The guy was on the Net so early that his own personal page is improbably located at links.net. (More biographical information can be found at the "Justin Hall" Wikipedia entry.) He is currently is getting a MFA in Interactive Media at USC.

1) As a trail-blazing pioneer who set up house early in cyberspace, what's been the biggest surprise to you in the development of the Net?

Early on I was invested in personalizing the space. Both for myself, and seeing other people join me there. It was a sort of party - I was having fun, but it felt slightly lonely at first. I thought the party of the internet would be more fun if there was more diversity, more voices, more participants. So I've been thrilled and delighted to see the way that people have taken to the internet. Home Pages, Diary Sites, and now Weblogs, and whatever's next. I was sort of afraid that the internet would be completely colonized by commercial and professional media interests, but instead there seems to be this professional-amateur information middle class developing where people use weblogs to pose themselves as experts, and it actually works, which i think is wonderful. There's too much information in the world, and we need people to organize it and share it together.

And all the fifteen year old kids who just have blogs, because, well, just because, why not? I love that. And I'm not sure I would have predicted it.

2) A huge part of what we talk about on the Internet is the Internet itself. I'm not old enough to remember the begining of TV, but I doubt they had shows all about TV. Do you think this meta-netting netting is going to go on forever or is it just a temporary stage?

Over time I think the technology might become more transparent, such that architecture will be less of a commonplace debate, and more up to specialists. That's already begun to happen - the technological fluency required to publish online goes down, so fewer people write about technology standards for online publishing. And they write about their travels or their cooking, so hurrah.

But think, if you go to a party, which is arguably a delivery means for the medium of people, and socializing, often people talk about other people. There's a tendency to reflect on the medium you are in. Books are often about books, or about the experience of being in text. Or being in the mind as the mind is enshrined or explored in text. So the netting and meta-netting are part of a global effort at this time to understand what this experience is, of writing little bits of digital text and passing them around and stringing them to other people's bits of text. It's a literacy thing. And I think it's healthy - because people are both producers and consumers, because Internets have users and not watchers, there's more debate, more meta-talk required. So I'm okay with that.

At times it does get a bit circular, redundant, navel-gazing for a small group of seemingly homogenous people. At those times I'm profoundly glad when I see someone make a bridge to a new subject, or a new geographical area, or a perspective outside of the technological self-referential group that has founded popular internet culture. And that's happening more and more, as the tech gets easier, more appealing and more accessible, and as people get more literate, more bored by linear/broadcast media, and more eager to share their own media.

3) Now looking back on it, did putting your entire personal life online for a decade have a net positive, neutral, or negative effect on your life?

I look at the circumstances of my life now, between my work and my personal life, and I enjoy what I have around me. Whether that's acclimation or optimism or delusion, it's hard to judge from within this personal sphere. It mostly works for me.

It's hard to judge the net effects of anything like that. There were definite tradeoffs. I spent so much time so fervently believing in what I was doing, plumbing the depths of that online oversharing, that I'm just now maybe beginning to get some perspective.

I could say that the internet is a different place now, rather than when I started. I began publishing when it felt more like a nerdy club. I wanted to see that change; and it has changed, and part of that change is that it's no longer quite the "safe space" that it might have been. There's more diversity, so more people to react poorly or inappropriately to gestures of friendship issued to the internet public. But trust still rules the day, I think - there's examples of people doing precisely what I did, in their own ways, and they seem to be finding a rich stimulating life out of that.

The main takeaway from my life lead in public, online? Correspondence with other searchers. People who found me because they were looking for meaning or self or whatever I was looking for. I value that lack of isolation I felt as I poured myself into my web pages. And, I like looking back at memories. Some are painful; most are funny and I want to rewrite them. Mostly I'm glad they are there; they amuse me and it's useful or entertaining to be able to refer to them.

I recently stopped publishing my life online. At least in the same kind of detail as I had been. I'm still not exactly sure why I did that, and what it means. There's the craft of writing and composing pages I miss; there's the self-expression I sometimes want to exercise. There's the relationships with other like-minds online I miss stoking. In their place? Maybe I'm more focused on my local personal relationships. The circles of people I have non-internet exclusive ties with. I'm not prepared to value one over the other. It's an experiment; something I felt inclined to do in time.

I suspect near-future internet literacy will involve striking a balance over personal expression online and that balance may involve striking out for one extreme or another as we go through different phases of our lives.

4) What led you to live in Japan, and from your experience there, where do you see them fitting into the Internet picture?

Couple of reasons I moved to Japan: one, I think I was looking for a change, some stimulation, some change of scene. I visited Japan for a video game trade show and I found it profoundly stimulating. So much visual culture, so tightly packed with media and people.

Then as I began to look into the language, I realized that there was a communication challenge there for me. If I think of myself as a communicator, someone who listens and interprets and retells, then I want to understand different modes of communication. I believed that moving to Japan, losing my ability to read and write and express in the world around me, it would help me see essential human communication characteristics. I would have to rely on the basics and relearn human expression. Japan was a fairly easy place to do that, because it was very technology-friendly, which was a sort of language I understood, and it was something I could parlay into freelance article gigs to buy my ramen and ryokan bills.

Also, it's safe, at least muggings-wise. I could wander around and feel like I wasn't going to get shot or looted really. But it was daunting in ways I didn't expect - there was a lot of personal distance established, even in those overcrowded situations. I felt steadily alienated in these small ways and as a person craving intimacy and intensity in human contacts, that drove me insane. Sometimes.

So it sort of mirrored my internet life I guess - I was most often alone, pondering and wandering. And I would see people around me who seemed to be culturally aligned with me; video gamers, hipsters, fashionistas, artists, sex explorers, travelers, whatever. I wasn't making a profound connection with many of them; I couldn't approach them as I could in the more visceral, English-speaking America. Instead, there was a kind of silent information exchange that I think I'm still digesting. Japan taught me to observe and participate in silent social cues in a way that I never learned from the Midwest. Or the East or West coasts.

Speaking less personally, seeing all those folks who were deeply wedded to the internet, as the internet was 10 keys of a mobile phone and a small screen in their pocket, it gave me some foreshadowing: I think the Japanese experience of the internet as personal, portable, pedestrian (to quote Mizuko Ito's upcoming English-language essay collection on Japanese mobile life) - that experience is a sort of comfortable native internet experience for many people around the world. It's just not so widely available elsewhere yet.

So in Japan, I was seeing a place, a mode of being, a media environment I appreciated and felt kinship towards, and some distance too from that. I am still trying to fashion the techno-social circumstances I want to live in, and whatever I end up with will be undoubtedly informed by Japanese manners and customs.

5) Can you describe the grad school program you are currently attending?

In 2004 I enrolled in the "Interactive Media Division" at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television. It's a 3 year MFA program, where I will be learning about making video games, mobile phone applications, and immersive media (like virtual reality). All this in the context of a large university and the oldest film school in the world. So there's traditional screen-based media understanding abounding: I just took a kick-ass class called Visual Expression. The teacher has written the book on breaking down the picture plane, any picture, to describe the ability to create or calm emotional intensity through "contrast and affinity" using visual elements like line, color, tone, shape, etc. It was a fascinating exercise in learning to look differently.

I want to take these screenwriting classes they have here that explore the formula of Hollywood storymaking. They can say, yep, page 90 of a script, minute 90 of a film, that's when the hero realizes he needs to improve himself. That kind of formula is so alien to my mode of production which has been much more haphazard. Working on the web starting in 1994 was a chance to make up any structure that would serve my recounting memory. That was delightful, but I'm eager for this program since it gives me a chance to experiment with new vocabularies. Because at the same time we can learn about traditional linear media making, at USC IMD, we're also forced to generate a steady stream of non-linear projects. So I've told thousands of small stories in hypertext on the web. But I've never made moving pieces in Flash. Or experimented with Zork-like Interactive Fiction tools. Or created a chat bot that can carry on a sort of conversation.

There's a million new tools out there for telling stories. And people are groping around, mostly adapting old things to the new mediums. You can argue that anyone can experiment with these things on their own; certainly I found freelance writing could support a fair amount of experimentation.

This time of focus on practice and learning new tools is a lucky time for me - a chance to see what other types of stories I want to tell. I mean, the core of the stories remains the same - what do I believe in? What excites or saddens me? But maybe there's important ways to touch people.

And I feel a bit of that charge I felt in the early days of the web - when I was worried about commercial colonization of the internet space. Today, video games are dominated by space marines and athletes. There's not a lot of alienated youth as protagonists. Or disenfranchised people sharing their experiences through interactivity. Video games offer a chance to enter someone else's mindset, where the player is encouraged to adapt their goals and solve their problems. Accordingly, the potential is great for video games to teach empathy, compassion and understanding.

So I'm hoping through my work in school to see how I can tell stories that are more engaging to me through moving characters onscreen.

I've been thinking a lot about the "native religious experiences of the internet" - wondering what kinds of sacred spaces and sacred texts would suit life online and life in virtual worlds. You can import the collected wisdom of the sages of the Middle East and the Ancient Orient to the online knowledge banks. But what kinds of symbols and stories and metaphors might suit online specifically?

After school is over? I have no idea. Someone suggested I could teach. I'm still not sure what I'd be useful to teach, except digital generalism and participation. The USC program I'm in has been funded by a large video game company, so there's some momentum/pressure to take a corporate job with a big video game company to help evolve the medium there way.

Truth be told, I think there's a shit-ton more excitement and gratification to be found in the independent interactive media cultures that are springing up worldwide. People hacking into videogames and starting to seed stranger stories. The success of Katamari Damacy is one testament to this - it's really a poem, a meditation on movement and living. And it's fired up a ton of imaginations. People want to be able to tell their stories and live their dreams onscreen.

The XBoxes and PlayStations of the world are still wedded to traditional packaged content - they're like interactivity broadcasters. My best hopes for a program like mine is to see those platforms, the medium of videogames, interactive media further cracked open for more mind-bending digital experiences from a million small producers, each trying to simulate their problems or recreate their dreams. We're a ways a way still, because of technology and funding and literacy, but I can start to see a broad culture of interactive participation taking shape and damn it's exciting!

A Nixi of Marxy on Mixi

Is there really a need for the "Marxy Community" on Mixi?

I finally went to check it out earlier this evening, and it's just posts by frequent blog commenters slagging me for not joining my own community (how meta - a community about the behavior of the members of said community.) But I ask you, do you really want to be in a Mixi community where the "subject" is a member and all the other members have their own communities in which they are members? I feel I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't...

Golden Interview Week: No. 6 - Shugo Tokumaru

Shugo Tokumaru is the rising star of the Japanese indie scene, and his debut album Night Piece was the best thing that ever happened to 2004. Pitchfork gave it an 8.6, and it eventually charted at both Other Music and Darla. The remix album NPRMX is out now on our small label, and his sophomore release should be hitting the streets in the near future.

Golden Interview Week: No. 5 - Momus

Momus is a modern man-of-letters with an auspicious track record spanning a half-dozen media and several continents. A pioneering Internet essayist, he currently offers art crit and audioscapes at his blog, Click Opera.

1) America is anti-intellectual, Japan is a-intellectual, Europe is.....?

Yesterday I saw a report on Arte about how Jacques Chirac had invited about one hundred "artists and intellectuals" to the Elysee Palace to discuss the European constitution. I tried -- and failed -- to imagine George Bush or Tony Blair consulting with intellectuals in this way, or even admitting that such a thing as an intellectual exists. On the other hand, I'm sure that the event was mildly farcical, and that nothing creative or original was said, thought, felt or done. I'm sure none of the artists and intellectuals present was as incisive as Jean-Luc Godard, who said, in his film "JLG/JLG", "There is the rule and there is the exception. The rule is culture, the exception is art. Everything speaks the rule; cigarettes, computers, t-shirts, television, tourism, war. No-one speaks the exception. It is the rule to want the death of the exception." I think that's the case wherever you are in the world. Thought will always be dangerous and originality unpopular.

2) Artists and "personalities" are all aggressively using marketing techniques these days to "brand" themselves for consumption in the public space. What do you see as the logical endpoint for this phenomenon? Are we co-opting business practices or just making ourselves commodities?

Being a recording artist is, amongst other things, a crash course in seeing -- and then selling -- yourself as a commodity. It's tempting to say that this is a modern capitalist symptom, something dangerous and accelerating. Books like Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated: The hidden effects of media on people, places and things suggests that we're all now learning the self-presentation skills once confined to celebrities. But self-marketing is as old as life itself. Even apple trees do it. What is an apple but a piece of "marketing" designed to convince birds and insects to spread apple seeds? So, to answer your question, maybe the endpoint of this process is that we'll stop using money and become more and more like apples. Capitalism may disappear: money isn't really necessary (after all, nature gets by just fine without it). But marketing will never disappear. It's essential. Ask the apple trees.

3) Do you feel like music still has the same energy it had in the 20th century or do you think other art forms have moved in to share the pop cultural space to the ultimate detriment of music?

There's a secret that musicians know: there's absolutely nothing as powerful as sound, and specifically songs. People still define their feelings and their sensibilities by them. They make mixtapes, they talk about their music tastes on dates. Songs can touch you more profoundly than just about anything. I think Freud got it wrong when he said the unconscious is structured with language. In fact, the unconscious is structured with pop songs. Next time a song pops into your head, think about why it's there and what it means to you and you'll be amazed at how the song "knows" more about you than you do yourself. So I think music doesn't really have a lot to fear from other cultural media. It can be made cheaper and still go deeper than just about anything else. Of course, there are times when the mainstream embraces radical experiment, or when music seems to be the most exciting thing going on in a society. I'm reading Simon Reynolds' book about post-punk just now, Rip It Up And Start Again, which is based on this sort of premise. And yes, PiL's "Metal Box" did feel very exciting in 1979. But I'm still able to find music that excites and touches me today. I don't think there was ever a Golden Age, and I don't think we're living through the death of music.

4) Did you feel a change in Japan between coming for Poison Girlfriend and then later Kahimi?

I came in 1992 and 1993, and then I didn't come back until 1998. So I missed the five big Shibuya-kei years. I didn't start spending serious time in Japan until 2001. Did I feel a change in that gap between 93 and 98? Not really. I remember being blown away by Shibuya and Harajuku in the early 90s. The big TV screens, the insane teen fashion, the sexiness, the safeness, the playfulness, the tender-mindedness, the togetherness. And all that was still there in 98. If there has been a change, it's been since about 2000. Some of the confidence and colour have gone. But it's a 5% shift. Okay, maybe 15%! The basic things that make me love Japan are still very much there, though, and I'm reminded of that whenever I go to other Asian countries. I could never trade Japan for China, or Thailand, for instance. They just don't have "it". If you ask me what "it" is, I really don't have an answer. It's a "way of being".

5) Explain in detail the experience of being on Music Station.

I'm not a big fan of the show. Like Britain's Top of the Pops, it's a bit of a cattle market. But as I recall, we arrived quite early in the afternoon. A big office building. Kahimi, her management, me, Toog, Horie and someone else, a bassist perhaps. Toog and I had been flown in specially from France to do the show, at the expense of 3D Corporation. We had to wait ages in a hospitality room which felt like a school classroom. We met staff, consumed snacks and tea. Hours of hanging about. I remember seeing a script in which camera angles and shots were mapped to the lyrics of the song ("One Thousand 20th Century Chairs", co-written by Hirohiso Horie and me). We were allowed to wear what we wanted. I had on an outrageous baroque suit in cream nylon. I think we had face make-up applied. Then we were taken to the big dark studio, met the host (the one who looks like a yakuza, I forget his name [Tamori--ed.]) and were sat down on the benches behind him. We were sitting next to girlband Max and visual-kei New Romantics L'Arc-en-Ciel. Max weren't particularly pretty, and the singer in L'Arc-en-Ciel was small and wore a stupid brim hat which he probably thought made him look charismatic. Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra were on the show too. None of the bands talked to each other. The presenter didn't speak to us gaijin at all. We did two or three takes of the song. I mimed playing the guitar despite the fact that I didn't play on the record. I did a goofy thing on the solo where I grinned and kind of fell down in a parody of rock'n'roll excess. People seemed to like the silliness of that. The camera angles were tightly scripted, but you could be goofy and spontaneous and they didn't mind, in fact they encouraged it. The different bands all had a different feel. Max's routine was joyless choreography, whereas the Paradise Orchestra brought a genuine sense of fun to their performance. I'm pretty certain it's the only time in my career as a musician that I'll appear in front of ten million viewers, but I still feel kinda "meh" about it. It was just an excuse for another trip to Japan, with someone else paying. The real joys of that trip were elsewhere: shopping and fucking.

Golden Interview Week: No. 4 - Trevor

Trevor runs the NY-based indie label music related - home to Shugo Tokumaru's Night Piece and a split 7" of Japanese pico pico poppers MacDonald Duck Eclair/Micro Mach Machine, among others. His personal music project Pandatone has an album - Lemons and Limes - out on high-profile UK electronic label Neo-Oujia. Skylab Operations will be releasing his new EP - what has nature done for me recently - later this year. Trevor's blog at space-computer.com offers links to free Japanese indie mp3s floating around the Internet.

1) Do you have any advice for someone that wants to start an all 7" label?

Yes, it's really cheap and easy to manufacture 7" vinyl records. And you should do them in runs of about 2000 - it's even cheaper then. Nothing is more popular than 7"s. It's foolish not to start a 7" label.

2) How do you think technological progress is shaping what music sounds like?

Technology is allowing anyone to make "music," so the ratio of crap to good has increased 10 fold. Luckily, people's personal demands to be "different" from everyone else has allowed completely crappy music to flourish, which wouldn't have been the case if not for cheap computers and pirated software. But on the reverse, most "electronic" music these days, ironically, is done with no electronic instruments, and rock music is using lots of electronic instruments and less "real" ones. Crazy technology.

3) Now in 2005, has Citrus gotten better or stayed equally awesome?

Only better as it becomes apparent no one else is able to even come close to being as good.

4) Scandinavian indie pop vs. Japanese indie pop?

Woah... curve ball. Right now as I type, the Scandinavians have J-Indies beat. There are still things that you'll only hear out of Japan - it's still more cute. But maybe right now the S-Indies have better song-writing and production. Hate to say it. but it's true. The J-Indies have to step up their pop game.

5)Is there any truth to the rumor that your personal studio is based on recreating the exact gear from the production of the 1993 Kris Kross album Da Bomb?

Yes, that was the pinnacle of rap AND hip hop music. But, no, unless they had a Roland TR-505 in there, which they could have, but might not have... So, no.

Golden Interview Week: No. 3 - Sheila Burgel

Sheila Burgel runs Cha Cha Charming - a net 'zine, previously in print form, dedicated to international girl pop of all eras. She also writes a column for MTV Japan's monthly free paper and is a frequent contributor to Bust Magazine. After finishing up a massive liner notes project for Rhino Records, Sheila is currently in Japan buying old records for her DJ arsenal and doing reconnaissance for a possible Japanese beat girl compilation.

1) The first time I ever saw Cha Cha Charming in 1999, you had dedicated an entire issue of your 'zine about 60s girl pop to 90s Jpop. Why the sudden disinterest now in the current Japanese pop scene?

It's dead. Only Shiina Ringo and Halcali remain. But even those two artists are on their way out. So in short, I feel like I discovered J-pop at it's all-time high - mid-late '90s when squeaky-voiced female pop-ettes fronted bands that could actually string a tune together (without having to resort to the over-used J-pop formula). Groups like Judy And Mary, My Little Lover, Puffy. But when the clock struck midnight on Dec 31 1999, all Japanese musicians suddenly realized that Green Day, Blink 182, and/ or Jay Z, Fat Joe were the way to go, and thus put all their eggs into mainstream American crap. Had they chosen smarter influences, J-pop might still be breathing. Yet, that is only one of the reasons J-pop has become so awful as of late...

2) So do you still listen to Japanese music?

I listen only to Japanese music from 1966-1970. And within that, only female singers. If you'd like specific artists, I'll say Chiyo Okumura, Linda Yamamoto, Ayumi Ishida, Mieko Hirota - girl-pop singers with enka-twinged pipes singing GS [Group Sounds]-styled oriental rock n'roll. Some of Japan's best songwriters and producers backed these girlies, and these guys - Tsutsumi Kyouhei and Kunihiko Suzuki - really knew how to merge American/ British influences with Japanese traditional music. The result is often dark - lots of minor key melodies - but add that to some heavy bass and groovy GS garage/rock n'roll, and you've got yourself some FAB records.

3) Can you discuss the compliation you're putting together?

Basically, ever since I "discovered" Sixties Japanese beat girls I've been wanting to put together a compilation for the world outside Japan, most of which isn't even aware that Japan boasted a pretty swingin' Sixties scene. In the mid-90's British reissue label Ace Records produced three Group Sounds compilations for Europe - the GS I Love You series - which comprised three volumes, and since it sold a fair amount of copies, I went to them with my "Nippon Pop Girls" pitch, and they gave me the go ahead to begin researching the potential for such a compilation. So here I am in Tokyo, meeting with Japanese '60s pop record collectors, producers, compilation kings to get the scoop on licensing these tracks for Ace. So far so good.

4) What's the rarest 45 in your collection?

Probably Dutch gal Bonny St. Claire's "Tame Me Tiger," which I found on Ebay for a ridiculous amount of amount of money. The reissue is everywhere, but I've got the original.

5) Can you describe for the process of writing liner notes?

My first liner notes gig was for a Girl Group box set that Rhino Records will be putting out towards the end of the year. 4 CDs, 120 tracks - and I don't mean "Be My Baby," "Chapel Of Love," "Johnny Angel" - this box delves into the obscure girl group stuff, which is my expertise, but also extremely difficult to obtain info on. I wrote the track-by-track commentary. 120 tracks X lotsa lotsa words. Process is research followed by hours of condensing the info into 150 words. And writing an introduction and conclusion 120 times. This is a dream job for any music writer. But to get this at the start of my "career" is even better.