Summer in Tokyo
Horribly hungover and torn between Alex Kerr’s rather depressing book about Japan’s destructive environmental (non) policies or flexing my flawed capacity for recall in order not to fall asleep and wake up with an imprint of said depressing book’s spine on my flushed cheek (I think I’m still drunk). Last night was a session of takoyaki, salsa dancing and shochu for the new tribe of Hioki ALTs and Yuko, Chris’s neighbour. Avoided the chewy chunks of octopus but praps went a bit overboard on the post-shochu vodka. Kacho has bought the remaining few office puppies a choux-cream (yesterday it was Shiro Kuma icecream- enjoying this spate of few-enough-suckers-to-justify -splashing-out).
Fuji Rock thus ended in a steamy haze of eyebags and scaring small children on the shinkansen (I decided to wear one of the boys’ wrinkly man masks leftover from Saturday’s dressing-up to cover my dreadful skin and haggard eyes). I’d lost a good bit of weight and a fair few brain cells so hot-footed it back to Ace Inn for some rejuvenation. Thus began a three day long hangover, which gradually grew apparent as I lay in my hostel booth expecting the much-delayed sleep to transport me to rejuvenation. Instead I got a heavy dose of the sweats and shakes, untempered by the bliss of sleep. The red bull had accumulated like a poison in my cranium and was zipping out in a delayed reaction that made me admit defeat- I might as well get up and start enjoying Tokyo. I’d arranged to meet Emily and the new Orientation A JETs for the Kagoshima Night Out so walked from Akebonobashi into Shinjuku. I bought throat medicine en route, in a bid to restore my vanished voice. I stopped in a scuzzy diner (with beetles in the salt cellar- they still had me pay for my salad though) to mix the vile concoction into water- it tasted revolting and I retched a bit. The whole thing is a bit of a nightmarish recollection- my loose hair heating up my face, not being able to find the Keio Plaza, the persistent shaking…still, made it to the hotel, made a dreadful first impression upon the new JETs by flopping in my chair and apologizing for my lack of voice/motor skills and ducked out at the last minute, leaving JET entertainment to Art, Emily and her walking stick. Managed to get myself back to my hidey hole without falling over, which is something miraculous. Snatched sleep but the rhythms of the party kept pounding me into sorely-throated wakefulness…lie-in impossible. At the computers befriended Simon, an Isle-of-Wight born London fireman- spotted his Fuji Rock wristband and did the ‘small festival world’ thing. He introduced me to Brodie at the computer down the line, a young Australian graphic designer who I ended up spending a good deal of time with. Simon invited me to eat with Ben and Emily, the couple he’d gone to FR with. He’d been to Norwich School and now had an imposing countenance of tattooed arms, goatee and white-framed wraps. Emily was slight, husky-voiced and reminiscing over her time spent in Japan as a student. Before I knew she could read kanji I tried my best to show off my menu-reading skills: “I think that one probably is egg and something else on rice”, I concluded confidently. Motioning to the picture of the donburi next to the description, Simon muttered “I’d never have guessed”. Still, lovely to have company despite my earlier decision to sequester myself away for a few days to let the shakes subside and my voice find itself. Emily and Ben then went to sort out the gruesome insect bite he’d got up the mountain so Simon accompanied me to Roppongi, nominally to check out the view from the top, but the gallery up there was closed and we decided to put the crippling fee to the 43rd floor to better use and indulged in Coldstone Creamery Icecreams. Almost offensively luxurious, you chose your flavours and toppings that are then chopped up with paddles on a cold griddle and smeared into a huge, crunchy waffle cone. I had white chocolate icecream with graham pie crust and brownie chunks. Dribbled as the cheery staff handed the creation over, singing to the tune of The Flintstones ‘we’re the happy Coldstone family/when you eat the icecream/you’ll be happy for eternity’ and other somesuch that promised to change the world for the better. Definitely. The answers are in icecream. Still, a treat. Then admired the big spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and wandered at the edges of the labyrinthine Roppongi Hills complex, built by Minoru Mori. “It incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafs, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheater, and a few parks. The centerpiece is the 54-story Mori Tower. Mori's stated vision was to build an integrated development where high-rise inner-urban communities allow people to live, work, play, and shop in proximity to eliminate commuting time”. It hasn’t been exempt from controversy, however- a 6-year old boy crushed to death by revolving doors and concerns over social responsibility to the environment, economy and its imposition onto the rest of Roppongi...you know how I’m allergic to malls anyway.
From there we trekked to Asakusa to meet Brodie, before Simon had to rush off to meet Lee, a girl he’d met at Fuji Rock. Asakusa was once famed as a pleasure district, a legacy reminiscent in the tiny theme park hidden behind the temple. Pleasure may once have been prostitutes, yakuza and priests (secularity and religious piety not being a distinction as evident in monothesistic societies). It also houses the headquaters of Asahi, in a building that looks a bit like a beer.The rendez-vous was at Kaminarimon, a huge ornate gate round which clustered tourists and the be-tabi’d men who pull tourists around in rickshaw-pram things. The gate is famed for its chochin, a traditional lamp with a split-bamboo frame wound in a spiral and covered with paper (red ones are often hung outside izakaya). Wandered through the intriguing tunnel of small shops that lead to Senso-ji, a 7th century Buddhist temple dedicated to Kannon. SMAP posters, green tea kakigori, girls in yukata selling lacquer boxes and incense and Buddhist statues- an interesting mixture of commercial and the holy. Brodie and I dived into a lovely little bar for a beer and a chat before heading to the Park Hyatt to meet Simon and Lee. Tramps bathe in the palatial pools shadowed by the roads around the 52-storey building whose top 14 floors are occupied by the Park Hyatt hotel, where Sofia Coppola filmed Lost in Translation. The live jazz bar has a 2000 yen cover charge, and we found the guys in a romantic-looking clinch at the bar a floor below, with the same fantastic views of the Tokyo skyline. Brodie, after putting on the cotton trousers the waiter discreetly asked him to put on (my shorts, however, were fine- grmph), ordered a scotch on the rocks- I’d gathered he is something of a privileged boy, having been privately educated in Brisbane and traveled all over the gaff. I went for the cheap-as-chips (ahem) sangria, a delicious riot of ice, fresh fruit and wine. Then a delicious sauvignon blanc. This can be described as hair of the dog- I was feeling a lot better by this time. The best bit was the storm, when ominous clouds clustered round the huge windows and suddenly let rip in a barrage of thunder and lightning, rain pelting against the windows as the glitter of Tokyo was obscured by the storm. Lee and Simon eventually slunk off for a twosome of a meal, so Brodie and I headed for an all-night izakaya where we shared eel, bacon-mochi yakitori, gorgonzola pizza and ume salad. Made it back to the hostel at 2.02am. The curfew was 2am. Things run on time in Japan. Emitted a few ineffectual ‘fucks’ before scrambling up the back of the building and bashing on the top floor fire door where thankfully a squitty-eyed owl was still in the common room and dared to open the door which could have been alarmed and separating him from bloodthirsty yakuza hopefuls.
Next day Brodie and I sniffed out sublime macaroons from the Aoki patisserie in Isetan department stores, carrying the delicious jewels to the top-floor garden to eat. Then we went to an exhibition of early 20th c Russian avant-garde paintings at the Bunkamura Museum in Shibuya. It was awesome, divided into the following sections: Influence of Western Art and neo-Primitivism; Niko Pirosmani (who painted a lot of advertisements); Malevich and Abstraction and Painting after the 1920s. There were some lovely Chagalls and I especially liked the following:
David Burliuk’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’s mother’; Ivan Malyutin: Smoker; Boris Grogoriev: Woman (from the Intimite); Boris Anisfield’s Shulamith, Nico Pirosmani: Feast; Vladimir Stenburg: Worker, Vladimir Dmitriev: Circus; Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine: The Flaming Redhead; Alexandra Exter: Woman with a fish, and Pavel Filonov: Composition with 11 heads.
Riot of colour, controversy, feisty women and social change. I still feel very nave and unharnessed when I go to exhibitions, but I no longer feel like an intruder and try to enjoy without being guilty for not commenting. I feel a bit silly expressing merely what I do and don’t like but I lack the vocab to justify those feelings. Still, Brodie was a good partner and we rewarded our cultural endeavours with a ham baguette from the department store’s French caf, where the waiters retain their J-boy quiffs and charms pinned to their lapels. I then headed off for my one and only kenshu-justifying Japanese lesson with Kay and then journeyed to the hip neighbourhood of Kichijoji to meet Rich, who’d agreed to let me couchsurf with him and his wife Kaori for a night. I don’t want to write too much about what was a lovely, personal experience but it was a true joy- Kaori is a clever, beautiful thing who cooked me soba and tempura and introduced me to Pan and James, the much-loved chimp and pug comedy duo. Rich works (like a dog) from home as a translator, and it was a fascinating peak into his world. He’s a purveyor of tea, even traveling to Las Vegas for a tea expo, is passionate about his image of England and yet knows he will always be in Asia, eventually with a tea-shop in Thailand. A charming, tired-but-generous couple who accepted me despite my lack of voice and feeling peaky...
Left the next morning after helping myself to rather too much Harrods Lemon Curd, and promptly bought myself a yummy-looking German sandwich for lunch. Kichijoji’s Inokashira Park is the location of Studio Ghibli, a supposedly magical destination for fans of Miyazaki and the world of manga, so I just had to try and go. The lady in Lawsons showed me to the ticket ordering machine and brought up a screen of dates, asking when I wanted to go. “Er, today?”….she shook her head and told me it was sold out. “Ok, I suppose tomorrow would be ok” I resigned. Stupid gaijin, thinks the lady, motioning to the 21st August as the soonest date with tickets available. Slap me thigh and call me a nincompoop. I slunk out and hid in the lovely park instead, admiring the swan pedalos and devouring my oishii german sarnie. Indulged in yet more icecream (sesame, ume and cinnamon pumpkin flavours all in one perfect pot) before treating myself to some hippy garb in one of the Asian boho-style shops that besuit a certain alternative Japanese trendster.
Headed over to Akihabara, the home of Japan’s famous geek culture, or otaku. Maid cafes, cans of food for boys too busy with their games consoles to eat things with vitamins in, bustling streets of awful export gadget shops full of leery, pushy salesmen and greedy tourists. Not to mention the hundreds of open stalls selling China-hailing electrical crap. Cheap and yet utterly unidentifiable to me- various plugs, sockets, fuses, fittings…plastic shaped in every way imaginable. The buildings stretch up endlessly above you, and you wander around, hemmed in by dull alleyways behind whose towering walls all manner of gadgetry, geekistry and carbon-footprint lengthening goes on. I didn’t even dare to go to a maid caf- annoyed with myself at this for being gender-conscious- could have befriended one of the spotty young ladies with chunky, frilly-socked legs and squeaky voices over a 1000 yen coke. But intrigued myself with a model shop filled with sexy dolls, mystery mini-boxes of unidentified plastic trinkets, and those dispensers where a coin will secure you a random plastic ball of crap. The maid-style boxes of omiyage were the best bit. Saw no evidence of the fearful wake of the recent massacre in this very area. The man drove a truck into a crowd before getting out and stabbing several people, killing a total of 7. The case received a huge amount of attention, capturing concerns over a generation of youths without employment or motivation. Often they are seen as cosseted by parents and isolated in parental nests they never leave, but Tomohiro Kato of the Akihabara case apparently had poor relations with the parents who over-pushed him academically and punished him for failure. He is alleged to have left several messages via his mobile on a website, stating his intentions and anger at life; "I don't have a single friend and I won't in the future. I'll be ignored because I'm ugly. I'm lower than trash because at least the trash gets recycled.” He’d visited Akihabara the previous day to sell his laptop and software to get the money to rent the truck. Arrests came in later days of people who claimed similar intentions, presumably in light of the media-hounded event. A serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, was executed a week later, again linked in the media to the Akihabara case as a show that ‘full justice’ will be metered out to perpetrators. I’m unsure- it seems executions have been on the rise lately- 13 under the current Justice Minister, including 3 on the day of Miyazaki’s hanging. Violent crime has been on the rise in Japan, but this is utterly out of proportion with this level of capital punishment, which goes tacitly supported by Fukuda and, in their lack of vocal protest, many Japanese. I’ve no idea what will happen to Kato but I doubt Japan will solve the problems of disillusioned youth and violent expression through fear of legal punishment. Strange that the killing happened in the home of the otaku, young people obsessed with manga and anime and subject of much media attention and foreign curiosity in recent years. The surreal, cultish atmosphere was evident as soon as you left the subway, with a giant manga mural of a grinning girl and ‘welcome to Akibara’, the fond shortening used by otaku to refer to their virtual home. I’m not sure that these kids would welcome or self-describe using the term ‘otaku’, a slang term derived from an honorific second-person address (lit. ‘your home’). Stereotypes and stigmatization have decreased in light of defensive spokesmen, academic interest and broad public interest in manga and anime, which is shocking in its range of spread and variety. Businessmen flicking through comics that border on the pornographic, elementary kids all versed in the basic skills of drawing wide eyes, spiky hair and cosmic outfits. In Akihabara, icons, role-play (‘cosplay’- dressing up to look like cartoon characters- maids, bunny-girls, superheroes….), computer games and the maid-service phenomenon add to the blend of imagery, fantasy and, I guess, a reality that I barely understand. Part of my embarrassment at the maid-caf issue was my sense, my partial assumption that the squeaky voices, inturned feet, French maid outfit and general occupation reflects a fetischization of cuteness and servitude for women that I can’t abide. I have thought enough about gender to accept that I cannot assume the relations of power from my outside perspective, but it’s a source of interest. I re-watched some of Jonathan Ross’s Japanorama series a while back, in which he interviewed Hayao Miyazaki about this very issue- Miyazaki has spoken of the difficult tension between creating loveable, ideal female characters and ‘lolicon’ depiction of women as possessions, pets, 2D dreams…
I mentioned briefly the negative connotations of ‘otaku’, which has been disputed as a label by many subscribers of the manga hobby world. But where geek has become a term of affection and even stylish aspiration in the west, ‘otaku’ in Japan has been generated alongside this stream of concern for isolated, obsessive, socially unskilled stay-at-homes as I mentioned above. Maybe I should talk to some of my Japan-ophile male buddies on this issue…
Fuji Rock thus ended in a steamy haze of eyebags and scaring small children on the shinkansen (I decided to wear one of the boys’ wrinkly man masks leftover from Saturday’s dressing-up to cover my dreadful skin and haggard eyes). I’d lost a good bit of weight and a fair few brain cells so hot-footed it back to Ace Inn for some rejuvenation. Thus began a three day long hangover, which gradually grew apparent as I lay in my hostel booth expecting the much-delayed sleep to transport me to rejuvenation. Instead I got a heavy dose of the sweats and shakes, untempered by the bliss of sleep. The red bull had accumulated like a poison in my cranium and was zipping out in a delayed reaction that made me admit defeat- I might as well get up and start enjoying Tokyo. I’d arranged to meet Emily and the new Orientation A JETs for the Kagoshima Night Out so walked from Akebonobashi into Shinjuku. I bought throat medicine en route, in a bid to restore my vanished voice. I stopped in a scuzzy diner (with beetles in the salt cellar- they still had me pay for my salad though) to mix the vile concoction into water- it tasted revolting and I retched a bit. The whole thing is a bit of a nightmarish recollection- my loose hair heating up my face, not being able to find the Keio Plaza, the persistent shaking…still, made it to the hotel, made a dreadful first impression upon the new JETs by flopping in my chair and apologizing for my lack of voice/motor skills and ducked out at the last minute, leaving JET entertainment to Art, Emily and her walking stick. Managed to get myself back to my hidey hole without falling over, which is something miraculous. Snatched sleep but the rhythms of the party kept pounding me into sorely-throated wakefulness…lie-in impossible. At the computers befriended Simon, an Isle-of-Wight born London fireman- spotted his Fuji Rock wristband and did the ‘small festival world’ thing. He introduced me to Brodie at the computer down the line, a young Australian graphic designer who I ended up spending a good deal of time with. Simon invited me to eat with Ben and Emily, the couple he’d gone to FR with. He’d been to Norwich School and now had an imposing countenance of tattooed arms, goatee and white-framed wraps. Emily was slight, husky-voiced and reminiscing over her time spent in Japan as a student. Before I knew she could read kanji I tried my best to show off my menu-reading skills: “I think that one probably is egg and something else on rice”, I concluded confidently. Motioning to the picture of the donburi next to the description, Simon muttered “I’d never have guessed”. Still, lovely to have company despite my earlier decision to sequester myself away for a few days to let the shakes subside and my voice find itself. Emily and Ben then went to sort out the gruesome insect bite he’d got up the mountain so Simon accompanied me to Roppongi, nominally to check out the view from the top, but the gallery up there was closed and we decided to put the crippling fee to the 43rd floor to better use and indulged in Coldstone Creamery Icecreams. Almost offensively luxurious, you chose your flavours and toppings that are then chopped up with paddles on a cold griddle and smeared into a huge, crunchy waffle cone. I had white chocolate icecream with graham pie crust and brownie chunks. Dribbled as the cheery staff handed the creation over, singing to the tune of The Flintstones ‘we’re the happy Coldstone family/when you eat the icecream/you’ll be happy for eternity’ and other somesuch that promised to change the world for the better. Definitely. The answers are in icecream. Still, a treat. Then admired the big spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and wandered at the edges of the labyrinthine Roppongi Hills complex, built by Minoru Mori. “It incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafs, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheater, and a few parks. The centerpiece is the 54-story Mori Tower. Mori's stated vision was to build an integrated development where high-rise inner-urban communities allow people to live, work, play, and shop in proximity to eliminate commuting time”. It hasn’t been exempt from controversy, however- a 6-year old boy crushed to death by revolving doors and concerns over social responsibility to the environment, economy and its imposition onto the rest of Roppongi...you know how I’m allergic to malls anyway.
From there we trekked to Asakusa to meet Brodie, before Simon had to rush off to meet Lee, a girl he’d met at Fuji Rock. Asakusa was once famed as a pleasure district, a legacy reminiscent in the tiny theme park hidden behind the temple. Pleasure may once have been prostitutes, yakuza and priests (secularity and religious piety not being a distinction as evident in monothesistic societies). It also houses the headquaters of Asahi, in a building that looks a bit like a beer.The rendez-vous was at Kaminarimon, a huge ornate gate round which clustered tourists and the be-tabi’d men who pull tourists around in rickshaw-pram things. The gate is famed for its chochin, a traditional lamp with a split-bamboo frame wound in a spiral and covered with paper (red ones are often hung outside izakaya). Wandered through the intriguing tunnel of small shops that lead to Senso-ji, a 7th century Buddhist temple dedicated to Kannon. SMAP posters, green tea kakigori, girls in yukata selling lacquer boxes and incense and Buddhist statues- an interesting mixture of commercial and the holy. Brodie and I dived into a lovely little bar for a beer and a chat before heading to the Park Hyatt to meet Simon and Lee. Tramps bathe in the palatial pools shadowed by the roads around the 52-storey building whose top 14 floors are occupied by the Park Hyatt hotel, where Sofia Coppola filmed Lost in Translation. The live jazz bar has a 2000 yen cover charge, and we found the guys in a romantic-looking clinch at the bar a floor below, with the same fantastic views of the Tokyo skyline. Brodie, after putting on the cotton trousers the waiter discreetly asked him to put on (my shorts, however, were fine- grmph), ordered a scotch on the rocks- I’d gathered he is something of a privileged boy, having been privately educated in Brisbane and traveled all over the gaff. I went for the cheap-as-chips (ahem) sangria, a delicious riot of ice, fresh fruit and wine. Then a delicious sauvignon blanc. This can be described as hair of the dog- I was feeling a lot better by this time. The best bit was the storm, when ominous clouds clustered round the huge windows and suddenly let rip in a barrage of thunder and lightning, rain pelting against the windows as the glitter of Tokyo was obscured by the storm. Lee and Simon eventually slunk off for a twosome of a meal, so Brodie and I headed for an all-night izakaya where we shared eel, bacon-mochi yakitori, gorgonzola pizza and ume salad. Made it back to the hostel at 2.02am. The curfew was 2am. Things run on time in Japan. Emitted a few ineffectual ‘fucks’ before scrambling up the back of the building and bashing on the top floor fire door where thankfully a squitty-eyed owl was still in the common room and dared to open the door which could have been alarmed and separating him from bloodthirsty yakuza hopefuls.
Next day Brodie and I sniffed out sublime macaroons from the Aoki patisserie in Isetan department stores, carrying the delicious jewels to the top-floor garden to eat. Then we went to an exhibition of early 20th c Russian avant-garde paintings at the Bunkamura Museum in Shibuya. It was awesome, divided into the following sections: Influence of Western Art and neo-Primitivism; Niko Pirosmani (who painted a lot of advertisements); Malevich and Abstraction and Painting after the 1920s. There were some lovely Chagalls and I especially liked the following:
David Burliuk’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’s mother’; Ivan Malyutin: Smoker; Boris Grogoriev: Woman (from the Intimite); Boris Anisfield’s Shulamith, Nico Pirosmani: Feast; Vladimir Stenburg: Worker, Vladimir Dmitriev: Circus; Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine: The Flaming Redhead; Alexandra Exter: Woman with a fish, and Pavel Filonov: Composition with 11 heads.
Riot of colour, controversy, feisty women and social change. I still feel very nave and unharnessed when I go to exhibitions, but I no longer feel like an intruder and try to enjoy without being guilty for not commenting. I feel a bit silly expressing merely what I do and don’t like but I lack the vocab to justify those feelings. Still, Brodie was a good partner and we rewarded our cultural endeavours with a ham baguette from the department store’s French caf, where the waiters retain their J-boy quiffs and charms pinned to their lapels. I then headed off for my one and only kenshu-justifying Japanese lesson with Kay and then journeyed to the hip neighbourhood of Kichijoji to meet Rich, who’d agreed to let me couchsurf with him and his wife Kaori for a night. I don’t want to write too much about what was a lovely, personal experience but it was a true joy- Kaori is a clever, beautiful thing who cooked me soba and tempura and introduced me to Pan and James, the much-loved chimp and pug comedy duo. Rich works (like a dog) from home as a translator, and it was a fascinating peak into his world. He’s a purveyor of tea, even traveling to Las Vegas for a tea expo, is passionate about his image of England and yet knows he will always be in Asia, eventually with a tea-shop in Thailand. A charming, tired-but-generous couple who accepted me despite my lack of voice and feeling peaky...
Left the next morning after helping myself to rather too much Harrods Lemon Curd, and promptly bought myself a yummy-looking German sandwich for lunch. Kichijoji’s Inokashira Park is the location of Studio Ghibli, a supposedly magical destination for fans of Miyazaki and the world of manga, so I just had to try and go. The lady in Lawsons showed me to the ticket ordering machine and brought up a screen of dates, asking when I wanted to go. “Er, today?”….she shook her head and told me it was sold out. “Ok, I suppose tomorrow would be ok” I resigned. Stupid gaijin, thinks the lady, motioning to the 21st August as the soonest date with tickets available. Slap me thigh and call me a nincompoop. I slunk out and hid in the lovely park instead, admiring the swan pedalos and devouring my oishii german sarnie. Indulged in yet more icecream (sesame, ume and cinnamon pumpkin flavours all in one perfect pot) before treating myself to some hippy garb in one of the Asian boho-style shops that besuit a certain alternative Japanese trendster.
Headed over to Akihabara, the home of Japan’s famous geek culture, or otaku. Maid cafes, cans of food for boys too busy with their games consoles to eat things with vitamins in, bustling streets of awful export gadget shops full of leery, pushy salesmen and greedy tourists. Not to mention the hundreds of open stalls selling China-hailing electrical crap. Cheap and yet utterly unidentifiable to me- various plugs, sockets, fuses, fittings…plastic shaped in every way imaginable. The buildings stretch up endlessly above you, and you wander around, hemmed in by dull alleyways behind whose towering walls all manner of gadgetry, geekistry and carbon-footprint lengthening goes on. I didn’t even dare to go to a maid caf- annoyed with myself at this for being gender-conscious- could have befriended one of the spotty young ladies with chunky, frilly-socked legs and squeaky voices over a 1000 yen coke. But intrigued myself with a model shop filled with sexy dolls, mystery mini-boxes of unidentified plastic trinkets, and those dispensers where a coin will secure you a random plastic ball of crap. The maid-style boxes of omiyage were the best bit. Saw no evidence of the fearful wake of the recent massacre in this very area. The man drove a truck into a crowd before getting out and stabbing several people, killing a total of 7. The case received a huge amount of attention, capturing concerns over a generation of youths without employment or motivation. Often they are seen as cosseted by parents and isolated in parental nests they never leave, but Tomohiro Kato of the Akihabara case apparently had poor relations with the parents who over-pushed him academically and punished him for failure. He is alleged to have left several messages via his mobile on a website, stating his intentions and anger at life; "I don't have a single friend and I won't in the future. I'll be ignored because I'm ugly. I'm lower than trash because at least the trash gets recycled.” He’d visited Akihabara the previous day to sell his laptop and software to get the money to rent the truck. Arrests came in later days of people who claimed similar intentions, presumably in light of the media-hounded event. A serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, was executed a week later, again linked in the media to the Akihabara case as a show that ‘full justice’ will be metered out to perpetrators. I’m unsure- it seems executions have been on the rise lately- 13 under the current Justice Minister, including 3 on the day of Miyazaki’s hanging. Violent crime has been on the rise in Japan, but this is utterly out of proportion with this level of capital punishment, which goes tacitly supported by Fukuda and, in their lack of vocal protest, many Japanese. I’ve no idea what will happen to Kato but I doubt Japan will solve the problems of disillusioned youth and violent expression through fear of legal punishment. Strange that the killing happened in the home of the otaku, young people obsessed with manga and anime and subject of much media attention and foreign curiosity in recent years. The surreal, cultish atmosphere was evident as soon as you left the subway, with a giant manga mural of a grinning girl and ‘welcome to Akibara’, the fond shortening used by otaku to refer to their virtual home. I’m not sure that these kids would welcome or self-describe using the term ‘otaku’, a slang term derived from an honorific second-person address (lit. ‘your home’). Stereotypes and stigmatization have decreased in light of defensive spokesmen, academic interest and broad public interest in manga and anime, which is shocking in its range of spread and variety. Businessmen flicking through comics that border on the pornographic, elementary kids all versed in the basic skills of drawing wide eyes, spiky hair and cosmic outfits. In Akihabara, icons, role-play (‘cosplay’- dressing up to look like cartoon characters- maids, bunny-girls, superheroes….), computer games and the maid-service phenomenon add to the blend of imagery, fantasy and, I guess, a reality that I barely understand. Part of my embarrassment at the maid-caf issue was my sense, my partial assumption that the squeaky voices, inturned feet, French maid outfit and general occupation reflects a fetischization of cuteness and servitude for women that I can’t abide. I have thought enough about gender to accept that I cannot assume the relations of power from my outside perspective, but it’s a source of interest. I re-watched some of Jonathan Ross’s Japanorama series a while back, in which he interviewed Hayao Miyazaki about this very issue- Miyazaki has spoken of the difficult tension between creating loveable, ideal female characters and ‘lolicon’ depiction of women as possessions, pets, 2D dreams…
I mentioned briefly the negative connotations of ‘otaku’, which has been disputed as a label by many subscribers of the manga hobby world. But where geek has become a term of affection and even stylish aspiration in the west, ‘otaku’ in Japan has been generated alongside this stream of concern for isolated, obsessive, socially unskilled stay-at-homes as I mentioned above. Maybe I should talk to some of my Japan-ophile male buddies on this issue…