Peter Tasker — Feed Items
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Published in Nikkei Asia 8/2/2023
Could videodiscs make a comeback one day, if only for a specialist audience? At first glance, it would seem an unlikely prospect. The streaming services offer you a huge variety of films to watch at low prices without the inconvenience of leaving your couch. Why bother to resuscitate a dying medium from the pre-internet era?
Published in Japan Forward 1/2/2023
After watching Tokyo Vice, I had a great idea for a TV series. I’m calling it “New York Vice.” It’s about a rookie Japanese reporter who gets hired by a major US newspaper. Unlike his bumbling American colleagues who are content to regurgitate press releases, he is as brave as a lion and has a strong sense of right and wrong.
Published in Japan Forward 1/1/2023
2022 was a year when jarring shocks started to seem normal. It began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which marked the first outright land war in Europe since 1945. In the middle of the year the world was shocked by assassination of Shinzo Abe, the most consequential Japanese political leader for half a century.
Published in Nikkei Asia 28/12 /2022
“When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air; you can never recapture it again”.
So said ground-breading jazz saxophonist Eric Dolphy at the end of his final album “Last Date”, recorded in 1964. Many decades later and half a world away, his comment can be found inscribed on the coasters used at Tokyo jazz club B-Flat.
Christmas Day is not even a public holiday in Japan, and less than one percent of the population are Christians. Nonetheless, Akira Kurosawa seems to have had a special feeling for Christmas. He was in the habit of sending home-made Christmas cards to friends and associates, rather than the New Year’s cards that are almost universally exchanged by Japanese households and businesses.
Published in Japan Forward 28/11/2022
Toshiro Mifune passed away twenty five years ago this December. He was the first non-white superstar of global cinema, the first actor to play a yakuza (in the 1948 Kurosawa movie Drunken Angel) and the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” and every other cool existential loner via his role in Yojimbo (1961; Akira Kurosawa).
Published in Japan Forward 10/11/2022
On their first tour of Japan in 1971, hard rock maestros Led Zeppelin came up with a generous gesture. In addition to their scheduled concerts in Tokyo and Osaka, they decided to add a benefit performance in Hiroshima.
Published in Japan Forward 27th October 2022
Once upon a time Japan stood out for its rapid turnover of prime ministers, whereas British politics was generally stable, with leaders Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair holding office for eleven and ten years respectively.
Published in Nikkei Asia 22/9/2022
It’s not just Tom Cruise reprising the title role in Top Gun: Maverick. There is a distinctly 1980s vibe to the currency markets these days. “King Dollar” is blasting through the skies, leaving every other currency gazing in awe at its contrails.