The lasting instant

Selection from Polaroid's archives to go on sale at Sotheby's.

More on Polaroid here

The Information Age

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

A few lines I came across recently. But not a quote from the current, so-called Information Age, but a pre-computer one from 1934, from T.S. Eliot's The Rock. If that was true back then…

The complex side of Osamu Tezuka

As I had recently finished reading Swallowing the Earth, an old (but recently available in translation) manga book by Osamu Tezuka, I was thinking of posting something about him, but there was no real timely connection. Then, earlier this week, Japan Today reported that manga-academic (if there's such a job title) Helen McCarthy is nominated for a prize this summer for her book The Art of Osamu Tezuka, God of Manga. So that'll be my excuse.

Tezuka (1928-89) is of course widely known, mostly for Astro Boy. I've only read a couple of the volumes of Astro Boy (originally published in 1952), but love the character's look and feel generally (so, naturally, I have an onsen towel of the character and various figures). However, although the character is officially known in translation as Astro Boy (adapted from the Japanese, Tetsuwan Atom, literally "Iron-arm Atom", or as he is sometimes actually known, "Mighty Atom") I've never been able to think of him as that. I've always thought of him as Atom Boy – in fact, for years I used to think that actually was his name. It has always seemed strange to me that the Americans went for "Astro" with the excuse that it was then more contemporary, more in keeping with the space-programme era. It seems more likely to me they just bottled out of accurately translating his name because of American associations with the atom while Japan, as it has in many an action manga, took on board all those associations. So, to me he remains Atom Boy.

Astro/Atom is justly celebrated. (As in the stamp issue in Japan shown above.) But Tezuka was the most prolific of manga artists – 700-odd manga from the medically-themed volumes of Black Jack, via the re-imaginings of Hitler's pre-war history in Adolf (which has Hitler having to keep his Jewish ancestry secret), to the sci-fi Phoenix. What I especially like – and wanted to highlight in a posting – are the book-length, darker stories and the 8-volume history of Buddha. Swallowing the Earth (left, originally 1968), the one I just finished reading, in fact turned out to be a somewhat confused and simplistic addition to his ouevre. (And was another which has a 16+ age restriction suggested on the cover in the U.S., though that may be for the somewhat silly alcohol-consuming antics of the hero than for the sexual theme. With the simplistic story, an age restriction above 16 seems odd.)

By the way, there is a casually negative illustration of South Pacific islanders in this volume which is why Tezuka Productions and some translation publishers add a note in modern editions of his books to point out that no offence or insensitivity was intended – an desire apparent in Tezuka's otherwise obvious intention to "promote" equality and peace. In this age when we expect "perfection" from everyone in public, such a "failure" seems almost inexplicable – hence the attempt to explain it though the note – and, while it's feels a shame that someone as wholly laudable as Tezuka should be seen as having "slipped up", it is not out of keeping with other cartoonists' received perceptions at the time. Anyway, although this note appears in some other of his books – at the front of Astro Boy, for example – Swallowing the Earth was the first time where it has seemed relevant to me. Coincidentally, it's also Tezuka's least coherent and most simplistic story.

But on with the aim of this posting in generally celebrating Tezuka's art. To get to the heart of Tezuka's perhaps "lesser-known" works (Astro Boy and Black Jack lead the way in terms of fame, and their conversion to TV anime etc) the Buddha volumes (originally 1972) are a good place to start. In these, his drawing combines comic-strip simplicity with the occasional detailed landscape to tell a story mixing an entertaining ride through inter-kingdom warfare alongside details of Buddha's biography and thoughts from birth to nirvana. In the UK, book-length cartoon "for beginners" were popular introductions to various ideas and historical figures (Freud, Marx, Buddha etc etc), but Tezuka's Buddha is nothing like those. It's a manga entertainment first and foremost, yet it couldn't be the story it is without its biographical and philosophical content. Don't expect an academic biography explaining ideas like those UK introductions. Do expect to be entertained while being very casually "informed".

In recent translation, the U.S. publishers Vertical have almost cornered the "alternative" Tezuka market, promoting what were these "lesser known" books into the spotlight and also giving the books superb presentation by book-designer Chip Kidd. The Buddha volumes (pictures left) are a prime example. But Tezuka's 820-page Ode to Kirihito (originally 1970-71) also gets superb Chip Kidd treatment (with a sliding vertical obi to reveal and hide a split cover illustration). Kirihito is a dark story of a disease which transforms a person into a dog-like beast. A medical thriller (health issues having been a favourite of medically-trained Tezuka) dealing with in- and feral- humanity, ostracisation, fear, violence and power. Tezuka's this-time darker cartoon style is supplemented again with detailed landscapes, cityscapes and single oppressive images.

Equally dark, is his MW (originally 1976-78) Another 16+ age recommendation and a story dealing with warfare, sexuality and homosexuality, violence, Christianity, guilt and the desire for power. War history infiltrates the story of a boy who survives exposure to posion gas in Okinawa to become a murderer in later life – when his aim is to get hold of the poison gas, the MW of the title, for his own ends

It should already be clear that Tezuka wasn't all a light-hearted, "super-robot" approach to his themes of addressing violence and the world's problems, and assessing the human condition.

Apollo's Song (1970) ponders the nature of love, unrequited or ungiven, the nature of lust and the too-human disregard for its consequences, as a goddess in the story forces a teenager to confront human loves and losses. From World War II to an imagined future, rape, desire and love are drawn in a clear-line style, often against a more detailed background style. The drawings somewhat bely the darkness of the story to give this book a more open look – the teenage protagonist is drawn almost as though Astro Boy had grown into a flesh-and-blood teenager – but the darkness of the story and serious nature of the theme remains.

Despite the suggested age restriction (is it because it's a cartoon? I've never seen age suggestions on books before, unless they're aimed at children), I'd think that many a thinking teenager would enjoy these books – while, in contrast, many a thinking adult would find the cartoony inserts as really for teenagers. Take your pick.

Tezuka's drawing style only varies slightly across the different volumes, but gives each book its own energy. These scans are from the copies of the books I have. Perhaps now I'll get a copy of McCarthy's award-nominated book for more detailed information on Tezuka's art.

Discovering villagers killed by poison gas in MW

A synthetic human of the future tries to force the real humans to have sex in front of her in Apollo's Song

Insanity in Ode to Kirihito

You are here

First time I've seen this set of extraordinary photographs by Liu Bolin (in the New Yorker magazine), each with a "hidden" person camouflaged into the cityscape. (It takes looking to see the person in the bulldozer image.) Powerful, complex images of human protest and presence.

A problematic "best"

Don't you love it when newspapers have a question in their headline which you can answer with a simple "yes" or "no" and move on? In this case The Guardian asks, "Masahisa Fukase's Ravens: the best photobook of the past 25 years?"

To be fair, they were reporting the find of a panel of "experts" which the British Journal of Photography had asked to come up with their best photo book of the past 25 years. And this was it, and maybe The Guardian was wanting a simple "no" (the page was open for comments).

In fact, it really does look like an interesting book, though the troubled life of the photographer (divorced, depressed, obsessive, drinking) seems to be what feeds the interest in the book as much as the content. After determinedly photographing ravens, he is unfortunately now in a coma after falling down a flight of stairs in a bar in 1992.

I'd like to see more of these curious photos. But the question is the same as asking "what is the best film of the past 25 years?" – your answer would be different to mine, and different again to a panel of "experts". (By the way: Gattaca? American Psycho? Tropical Malady? Nobody Knows? Breach? Cyclo? The list is long.) But to have the depression and trauma of the creator feed in to the answer in this case seems unsuitably voyeuristic, even if this is photography.

In short: new capsule hotel

A new design approach to the established capsule hotels in Japan. I stayed in one of the regular hotels only once, and it was a surprisingly comfortable night: mine, in Osaka, had a basement sento and a nicely ventilated capsule with built-in TV. Here, with the "9 hours" hotel, they've been given a design makeover for this, so far, one-off hotel in Kyoto.

Reported in Monocle magazine. Via Watashi to Tokyo and Christophe on Vimeo

The line-up

Yesterday was my friend's school sports day (undokai). Above: the start of coordinated gymnastics.

Looking back

Here's a very small selection of 1920s' photos of Japan – that somehow seem even older. Most of their interest is their age, as their subjects are not always so interesting. Like a trend around the turn of this century (in the photos of Hiromix, for example) that continues with ubiquitous mobile phone cameras, they are just unspectacular photos of the everyday. A title like the first – 'The Color of Spring Outside The Window' – is a nice oddity for a monochrome photo, while the Afternoon in Foreigners District is a curious reminder of changed times. I do like Quiet Town, above.

Tokyo Design Festa

About a decade ago I went to an Italian food festival at Tokyo Big Sight. It was so crowded it was almost frightening and I hadn't been back to any "festa" until the anime fair in March this year. Bolstered by enjoying that, this weekend I was back again to check out for myself what the attending crowds were there to assess at the Tokyo Design Festa.

This the first time I've been to the bi-annual Design Festa (under which "Design" covers mostly "art" – illustration, painting, postcards, photos etc, alongside fashion, 3D artwork, and a few products etc which would make "Art" Festa also a misnomer. The Design Festa is like the funky young sibling to the "grown-up" design of Tokyo Design Week.). At first I thought it was not going to turn out to be the way I'd want to see what the individual or small-scale creators (1,145 of them) – at the entrance, Festa workers, calling out directions with spread arms to prevent the thousands attending going the wrong way, direct you to the right place to buy a ticket. But inside at least there's an atmosphere of over-sized, creative flea-market, with space to walk among the stalls. There's a sizeable performance area to welcome you in the atrium (band, dance, fashion take their turns), and the stalls are off to the 3 sides (and the floor above).

So what's on offer?

Well, the Harajukian off-centre dominates. Or perhaps those attendees just have the visible upperhand. The stall-holders mostly have a one- or two-tatami area each to set up and display their work (or just sit on the floor among the work) as well as any promotion (costume, balloons etc). The undemonstrative are settled next to the flamboyant, and it's easy to miss the small display of self-created postcards or simply fashion (hats, shoes, T-shirts) next to in-your-face "transgression" of certain dolls/fashions/poster designs/illustrations etc.

The seemingly damaged psyche sits next to the apparently healthier. With a broad selection of healthily damaged between. Make what you will of small sunset paintings; drawings on the theme of self-cutting harm; business card-sized paper-folding cars and animals; decorated flip-flops; cos-play attendees perusing cos-play illustrations; a non-slip, easy-to-tear toilet roll holder; oni dolls; quick portraits or happy cartoons; dolls with runny noses; cat photographs; a bath-time-rubber-duck gimp-style mouth-plug (and the model's welcoming photo area in a child's paddling pool); brightly shot day-in-the-park-style photos; darkly painted blood-themed paintings. The list goes on (to 1,145 in fact) – and includes and outside band space, a Ghanaian food stall, and the upper floor which I didn't explore.

Promoting beer for sale in the outside live space

Certainly, someone is probably making a good profit – it's a reasonable 1,000 yen to enter as a viewer/buyer, but each stall-holder also pays (up to around 50,000 yen for two days). Some of the creators, perhaps the less prone to promotion, may be passed over in the melée. Promotion – whether by display or live illustration – counts when in competition with 2,799 other stalls. And in the end it can seem overkill, but a plethora of middling creativity sits alongside the more-than-occasional gem. Surely an outpouring of general creativity – just the sheer amount of making of things – is surely worth celebrating in some way?

The Festa seems to be a youth thing – by reputation and energy, though there's no special limit on who can apply, either by genre or age. It's also an international event with various overseas contributors.

The next already is planned for November.

Someone reading a stallholder's business card
Crowds on the escalators
Watching the live performance

An exhibitor in promotional costume peeks from a neighbouring stall

In black and red

Yoshimi Iwasaki's new live CD – celebrating 30 years since her debut – is out now. It has my cover design, but unfortunately not with the picture of mine I would have like to have used. But, since I like the shot, I might as well feature it here…

Crush hour

Neat montage of Tokyo's commuter-train crush by a photographer caller Ryan Hoover. (Used today as a photo of the day for Japan Today.) Original available for use from Ryan's photo site here.

36 views of the NTT Docomo BuildingNTTドコモビル三十六景

Not quite Hokusai, maybe… but let's say my pictures are "after Hokusai". The heading explains it all, really: take a look here.

Tran-ji?

Toymaker Bandai is releasing some transformer toys next week – kanji which transform into their meaning. Obviously just a tiny selection (for example, 犬 – inu – to dog as pictured). Fun, though. And only 105 yen. More examples on Bandai's site

From Pink Tentacle and Mainichi

Ruins… and re-imaginings

Where in hell can you go/Far from the things that you know/Far from the sprawl of concrete/That keeps crawling its way/About 1,000 miles a day?

Take one last look behind/Commit this to memory and mind/Don't miss this wasteland, this terrible place/When you leave/Keep your heart off your sleeve 

– Natalie Merchant, Motherland 

There are few ancient ruins in Japan. No Roman walls, no Middle-Ages ruined castles like I know from the UK. Ancient things in Japan are mostly either well preserved (like the 1,000-year-old Kiyomizu temple) or reconstructed (many old castles have been reconstructed after historical fires, or partly replaced with concrete). That ancient buildings were often being made of wood, the frequency of earthquakes – and a culture of replacement – have largely seen to the lack of such ruins.

But there are ruins. There is decay. It's just that often it's under a century old… and often concrete. Stuff that in the UK would largely be considered solely an eyesore sometimes becomes an attraction.

Since a partial opening last year, there's an interest in tourism to Gunkan-jima, an island off the coast of Nagasaki that became a mining community around 100 years ago and, since 1974, is deserted. It's a tiny island – nicknamed Battleship island for its size and shape – with a cast of decaying brick and concrete buildings. (It also has memory-ruins of Korean war-time forced labour.) NHK featured it on TV here only about a month ago. Meanwhile, the magazine WonderJapan still seems to be going strong, featuring its roadside attractions, strange children's playground structures, big Buddhas, bizarre statues… and industrial, often concrete, ruins.

That's at one end of the spectrum of a post-industrial landscape. At another – one of improvement and change – in the Seto sea between Honshu and Shikoku another former industrial island, Inujima, where granite was mined and refined, has remade itself into a tourist attraction… for quiet, retreat, and memory of industry. Nearby, but with no industrial ruins, more a reimagining of a declining fishing island into an art, relaxation and holiday destination – the nearby Naoshima was featured in Time magazine last week.

But back to the concrete, which is still too-often an eyesore in Japan (avoid concrete-littered beaches, look in awe at a concrete road bridge spanning farmland in the countryside). "Ruins" are constantly being made: as a money-saving exercise, the current government stopped construction on the Yamba dam when they were elected last year, leaving a SF-style dystopian vista of half-finished construction.

The photograph above is in Chichijima, Ogasawara and is not much of a tourist spot in itself. It's from World War II and had a decidedly eerie atmosphere, although it was only, I found from research later, an electricity generating station. Wandering around it, I could imagine why people find concrete industrial ruins curious. Though in Chichijima give me the beautiful forest land, wild beaches and wild life first. I generally see enough concrete in Tokyo, impressive metropolis though it is, so give me woodland, farmland, parks (and restaurants) for my travel attractions. Concrete is everywhere, anyway. Which I suppose is why its ruins are also celebrated.

Credit where credit is due

It's extraordinary what people will do for their own amusement… and ours. This site has an extensive collection of film titles as they appeared in the start-credits of a large array of movies. One for film buffs and typography lovers – and any combination.

Via spd.org

Blimey…

…if I cut into my savings, even I could have bought a Leonardo. (If it is one of his.)

I'll call you Jaguar, if I may be so bold

This week has been "Golden Week" in Japan – four national holiday days in one week. So all's been quiet work-wise. Therefore, I thought I'd gather together thoughts that have been milling around aimlessly in my mind about the car as metaphor for (or simply accompaniment to) our lives. It's a bit off-topic, but it's a holiday...

In the total span of human existence, cars have only been with us for a very, very short time. Yet, it seems we can't live without them – even as we have to adapt our petrol-consuming ways. In fact, in one way or another all of a human life could involve the car. The shortest description of a human life could be birth, marriage and death. Only this weekend I was speaking to a friend who said he was told his first word was "car". He's not alone. The death connection is obvious, though you don't have to die in a car crash (as thousands of unnamed people do each year, while the named make big news.) Even if you are not killed by the car, your death could be an integral part of living with a car.

Of course, pre-birth there is sex. Sex in cars is simply the everyday. It doesn't have to be sex in the car, some people have it with the car. That's how much part of our lives a car can be.

"Part of our lives", not least in being a potential living space itself, should you have the misfortune to be down on your luck. If so, it could also be somewhere to carry all your worldly belongings in search of a better life. (Replacing the horse in this last respect.)

Then there is the status symbol. A car may be an everyday object, but it's still capable of making you stand out. America led the way when cars became an accompaniment to the teenage right-of-passage.

Starting you on the road (so to speak) to adulthood. Already, the car was both status symbol and the demonstration that you were an everyman on the move.

Politics of course is integral to human society, as the car is to politics – sad associations with good politicians, or weird associations with the weird associations with the bad.

Birth, marriage, sex and death. What else is there? (Meanwhile, gays shouldn't feel left out because of the "marriage" bit.) Well, art. Modern art quickly caught up with the car. And film, of course, has been around about as long as cars. It seems that the view through a car windscreen could almost double as the view of a movie.

America invented the "road movie", though there are no walking road movies – the definition of one is that it takes place in a car (or, all right, a motorbike). Essentially road movies are car movies. But you don't have to be a road movie to be on the road.

Music caught up instantly with the movie obsession.

The car has infiltrated all popular music whether as metaphor, memory or hope or…

Of course, the time between birth and death is only sustained by food. (An American neighbour when I was young in Britain laughed at our trips in stereotypically rainy England that could end with picnics in the car rather than outside it.) And it's not only the family fast food, a car may be equipped with a bar or fridge (or the other way .)

Since their introduction, cars have represented the future (and after time has passed, they've come to represent the past). Now they can be a measure of a country's possible wealth (or a company's loss of it). Money is the other ridiculous necessity of the time between life and death. Cars have it covered – even if, perhaps especially now, their closeness to our lives has made them a little scary.

Cheese manga

I came across an unexpected connection between England and Japan this month – and a link between manga and cheese. It turns out that the Osamu Tezuka calendar a friend gave me for this year has a Tezuka illustration for May of... cheese-rolling in Gloucester. I was happily surprised to find a cheese-rolling illustration included from the office of the master creator of Atom Boy (Buddha, Ode to Kirihito, MW etc). The cheese-rolling takes place within walking distance of my mother's house, though I've only been to it once. It's a great event. I love the fact that people risk life and limb (well, usually only limbs – and ambulances are waiting at the bottom to ferry those who need it to hospital, so no need to worry) for a cheese. Yes, first prize is the cheese you see bouncing down the hill in front of the contestants. No fame, no fortune. Just a cheese. Seems good values – and good value entertainment – to me. Here's a video from a Gloucester magazine: