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Published in Japan Forward 22/ 11/2020
On November 25th 1970, novelist Yukio Mishima put the finishing touches to the last instalment of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Then, together with four members of his Tate no Kai (“Shield Society”) private army, he drove to the headquarters of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces and asked for an audience with the four star general in charge.
Mishima: You may think I’m an old fashioned classicist, but I don’t trust language without a logical structure.
Terayama: Then you couldn’t put up with a dog sitting on a book by Aristotle. I think it would be erotic if Brigitte Bardot was carrying Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
On the fiftieth anniversary of Yukio Mishima’s sensational death by seppuku (ritual suicide, vulgarly known as hara-kiri), it is worth looking back at the conversation he had with Shuji Terayama just five months earlier.
Published in the Nikkei Asian Review 13/11/2020
In December 1980, just days before his murder, John Lennon took part in a photo shoot in New York City. In one image, captured by photographer Bob Gruen, Lennon wears a jacket with a sleeve embroidered with the kanji (Chinese characters) that form the opening of the Heart Sutra, a core Buddhist teaching.
Published in Japan Forward 6/11/2020
“You only live twice, or so it seems
One life for yourself, and one for your dreams”
From the theme song of “You Only Live Twice.”
Sean Connery, who passed away in late October, inhabited the role of James Bond in a way that none of his successors could match.
America: In 65 lines to be yelled at 100 miles an hour while sitting on Mal’s piano[1]
Hey, America
Hey, map stuck on the wall of my cheap drizzly-damp apartment
Two years ago the empty shell of myself disappeared into Louisville Kentucky on that map
Soichi Akimoto, despised and remorseful second year student of English Literature who never woke up from a 20 year nightmare
Strokes the scratches on his Charlie Parker LPs
Published in Japan Forward 22/10/2020
How long before Japan looks back on the Trump presidency with nostalgia? It may be sooner than you think.
If Joe Biden wins the U.S. presidential election, as polls currently indicate, the focus of his policies will be overwhelmingly domestic.
Published in Japan Forward 9/10/2020
Miyazaki and I… were first shown clips from Fantasia 2000, which was then in production. Asked what he thought of the film so far, Miyazaki replied simply “hidoi … totemo hidoi” (terrible … really terrible), which I translated as “interesting … Mr. Miyazaki finds the animation very unusual and very interesting.”
In 1960s Japan, there was a particular institution which acted as an incubator for the burgeoning avant garde.
The Sogetsu Art Centre was sponsored by the Sogetsu school of Ikebana (flower arrangement), which was famous for its emphasis on individual creativity. Active from 1958 to 1971, the Art Centre was set up and run by Hiroshi Teshigahara, son of the founder of Sogetsu.
Both Terayama and Yoko came of age in the early 1950s, which made them significantly older than The Beatles and other sixties icons. Nonetheless, they came to symbolize and influence the counterculture of the era.
The dynamic they shared was the drive to fuse avant garde ideas with mass entertainment. That would leave them open to charges of ruthless ambition and “selling out.”
Japan handles political transitions with enviable speed and lack of drama.
On August 28th, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shocked the country by announcing his resignation on health grounds. Less than three weeks later, former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was appointed prime minister, having comfortably bested two other candidates in an internal party election.