まもなく

日本の音楽、映画、テレビゲームと文化

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Jun Togawa (戸川純) with a robotic arm, photographed by Masayoshi Sukita (鋤田正義) in 1984. 

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Tatsumi Hijikata (土方巽) & Sada Abe (阿部定), 1969.

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Based on Yukito Ayatsuji’s novel of the same name, Another (アナザー) is a 12 episode anime television series which aired in 2012.   In spring of 1998, Kōichi Sakakibara transfers to Yomiyama North’s 3-3 class where he meets fellow classmate Mei Misaki, a calm eye-patched eerie girl whom her class and teachers seems to ignore. After a series of some classmates’ gory deaths, Kōichi realises that there is a connection between the events currently occurring and the class 3-3 of 1972. A film adaptation of the novel also released in 2012 under the same name.

[mamo-naku]

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (修羅雪姫 怨み恋歌), starring Meiko Kaji, is Lady Snowblood’s sequel, made also by Toshiya Fujita in 1974. After being arrested, trialed and sentenced to death for the crimes she committed, Yuki is rescued by the head of Secret Police in order to assist him in a difficult task. She is asked to spy on a serious enemy of the state and obtain a document which is supposed to be the end of the government if it comes to light. Yuki finds herself in a difficult dilemma as to who is the real danger of the State.

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(from left to right: Yuki, Chiwaki, Ayumi, Yukarie, Chara) Mean Machine was an all-girl Japanese super-band formed in 1998 by Chara and Chiwaki Mayumi. Their aim was actually to have fun by experimenting each one of them on  an instrument they never had before. Chara took on drums and Chiwaki guitar. Later they recruited YUKI as the second drummer, Yukarie as the bassist and actress Ayumi Ito as their vocalist. Their raw, “messy”, grungy album CREAM came out in 2001 and is by far one of the most precious diamonds of Japanese Alternative Rock music. The lead single that introduced Mean Machine to public was Suuha (スーハー), which was written by Chara and inspired by the breathing exercises she had learned during pregnancy.After the release of their debut and only album together as a band, the members returned to their solo careers.

[mamo-naku]

Set in late 60's Tokyo, Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses is slightly based on Oedipus Rex diving deep into Tokyo's underground gay culture. Passionate and raw, it is a wonderful, harmonized mixture of documentary elements and avant-garde cinema. The movie follows Eddie, a gay boy whom I could not stop comparing to Edie Sedgwick for obvious reasons, portrayed by Shinnosuke Ikehata (commonly known as Peter), focusing on Eddie's past, fame and rivalry with the bar's Mama. The movie's title is a play on words: roses, bara (薔薇) in Japanese, is a symbol of homosexuality and also a shortened version of barazoku (薔薇族 ), the name of Japan's first modern gay men's magazine. One of Japanese New Wave's diamonds, Funeral Parade of Roses was a major influence on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

[mamo-naku]

Shunji Iwai’s Picnic was shot in 1994 but released in 1996. Although many consider it to be a short film because of it’s duration (68 minutes), I feel that it’s as long as it should be. Three mistreated mental asylum patients, Coco (Chara), Tsumuji (Tadabobu Asano) and Satoru (Koichi Hashizume) go on a small trip - walking only on walls and fences, since stepping down considered to be restricted by the asylum - in order to find the perfect place for a picnic to watch the end of the world. Beautiful direction, stunning acting (Asano is only 21 years old and Chara surprises us with her acting debut) and thorough character building combined with Japanese psychedelia make all in all a beautiful movie.

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DAOKO (not revealing her real name, born 4 March, 1997) is a Japanese rapper who began her music career in 2012, at the age of 15. Everything started thanks to Niconico (formerly, Nico Nico Douga), a video sharing website in Japan, when one of the videos she uploaded draw people’s attention. According to an interview she gave to J-Wave’s Tokio Hot 100′s navigator Chris Peppler, DAOKO had a hard time dealing with both studies and music in the very beginning, and she was also drawn to various styles of music. She is a big fan of Sheena Ringo and she respects her as a woman and a musician. She visits Shibuya almost everyday, thus ShibuyaK was her 2015 single. DAOKO has collaborated with Japanese rappers such as GOMESS and Jinmenusagi and claims that KOHH makes rap music that she likes listening to a lot.

[mamo-naku]

Maybe J-Horror’s most praised work, Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on: The Grudge made it’s debut in 2002 and introduced two of the most iconic horror figures of all time to the audience, Kayako and Toshio Saeki. The film takes place in a house in Tokyo, some time after Takeo Saeki murdered his wife and child, Kayako and Toshio respectively. Returning as onryō, mother and child haunt the house they were murdered in, tormenting the new family that moved in, the Tokunagas. Rika, a social worker who looks after the new occupant’s old mother, finds herself involved in a series of events that link back to the Saeki murders. Along with J-Horror’s masterpieces, Ring (1998) and Dark Water (2002), the film was made in an american remake in 2004, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.

[mamo-naku]

Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water has it’s place amongst Ring (1998) and Ju-on (2002) in J-Horror’s Top 3. Freshly divorced Yoshimi tries to start anew by finding an apartment for herself and her daughter Ikuko. Their bond is so strong that they spend quality time together most of the time and always have their minds on each other. Strange and unexplained events following their moving, along with a water leak in Yoshimi’s bedroom that grows bigger and bigger, make it hard for her to remain sane and calm, risking not only Ikuko’s custody but also her life. Similar to Nakata’s Ring, Dark Water also was made into an american remake starring Jennifer Connelly in 2005.

[mamo-naku]

Masahiro Shinoda’s 1964 Pale Flower is a successful noir thriller that follows Tokyo’s dark paths of yakuza rivalries, gangs, assassinations, imprisoning, promiscuity and gambling. Muraki, a Yakuza member who just got out of prison for a murder he did some years ago, crosses paths with Saeko, a young woman who shows interest in gambling and extremities, since they share the same haunts, gambling parlors. Muraki’s old love interest, yakuza duties and Saeko’s thirst for thrills make their relationship even harder than it already was, giving the chance to another person to grab the opportunity and step in...

[mamo-naku]

Fans of J-Horror are totally familiar with bizarre movie themes - and since they’re true fans they’re totally ok with it - but I have to admit that Sion Sono really took the prize for it in his 2007 movie “Exte”. The title is a Japanese slang word which derives from “hair extension”. A tricophile morgue watchman becomes obsessed with a dead girl’s body which he takes to his place when he discovers that it grows hair from it’s shaved head and open wounds. He cuts the constantly growing hair and sells it as extensions to hair salons. In one of those he spots Yuko, a young apprentice hair dresser and instantly falls for her long, dark, beautiful hair...

[mamo-naku]

In Hideo Nakata’s 1998 adaptation of Kôji Suzuki’s novel, reporter Reiko Asakawa is investigating the mysterious case of mass deaths because of a cursed video tape. After the death of her niece Tomoko, she watches the video found in a cabin in Izu, where Tomoko and her friends are supposed to have watched it and died a week after that. Now, she and her ex-husband Ryūji have only a week to stop anything happening to Reiko... Ring (リング) is a classic of the J-Horror genre and made a huge impact to the West, leading to an american remake under the name “The Ring” in 2002, starring Naomi Watts. There is a unique way in which the Japanese traditional vengeful spirit (onryō) elements blend with the modern world of technology. The movie’s antagonist Sadako Yamamura (山村貞子) has taken her place amongst the most iconic villains of all time.

[mamo-naku]

Based on the manga of the same name, Lady Snowblood is an action-thriller movie made in 1973 by Toshiya Fujita and starring Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子, born March 24, 1947). The movie’s theme is vengeance. Yuki, a girl born in a women’s prison in 1874, grows up to be a killing machine. Cold-hearted and bitter, revenge is the only thing in her mind, pursuing her mother’s rapists and killers of her father and baby brother. Her Japanese nickname Shurayuki-hime (修羅雪姫) is a play on words on Snow White’s Japanese name version Shirayuki-hime (白雪姫). While “shira” derives from the word “white (白)”, “shura (修羅)” derives from the Asura, semi-deities reflecting the mental state of a person who’s obsessed with violence and fighting. Meiko Kaji also sang the movie’s theme song “修羅の花” (Shura no Hana, Flower of Carnage), a song also used in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), a movie heavily influenced and inspired by Lady Snowblood.

[mamo-naku]

Sheena Ringo (椎名林檎, often seen as “Shiina Ringo”, born 25 November, 1978) is by far one of the most powerful names and distinctive voices in Japanese music industry.

The singer with “the removed angel wings” (due to the large scars left on her shoulder blades because of the surgeries against esophageal atresia) started her career in 1999 with her debut album 無罪モラトリアム (Muzai Moratorium), a blend of J-Rock, Alternative Rock and Grunge. Ringo managed to captivate the audience’s attention from the very beginning of her career. Not a fan of huge and distinctive stardom, she decided that her third album would be her last solo one and formed her own band Tokyo Jihen (東京事変) in 2004 and made six albums with them, from 2004 to 2012. Alongside with Tokyo Jihen, Ringo finally returned to her solo career, also as a songwriter for other musicians and a music director. She made four more albums with musical styles ranging from Pop, Punk, Rock and Jazz to Electronica, Classical and Funk. Due to her unique vocal style and songwriting, she caught Courtney Love’s attention on her visit to Japan in 2001 amongst other artists from the west.

[mamo-naku]

Smoking Cyberpunk Girl, from the video game “VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action”.

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Heavenstamp’s vocalist/guitarist Sally#Cinnamon’s frame from “Hype” video clip.