I’ve spent, I think I can say, an inordinate amount of time browsing through the fetishization of the most mundane activities in order to provide you, dear readers, with interesting material. Yes, it was for you that I watched dozens of Japanese YouTube clips of earwax removal, trapped in a horrific, personal grooming K-hole, desperately trying escape only to do so and realize that most, if not all of the people who would be interested in such a thing are already ensconced in a vast, virtual library of such material. Alas, such is the life of an internet spelunker.
We are not here to talk about earwax removal, however, (though, if you want to I have some videos to show you) no, we’re going to briefly discuss Konapun. Konapun is a Japanese cooking toy that allows the you to create realistic, miniature food with the use of chemicals. It’s like molecular gastronomy — a practice in which people who are bored by food and the idea of it as nourishment torture it into funny shapes and forms with needles and eyedroppers — but without the pretense of being edible.
Here’s a widely unknown, but interesting example of intercultural influence exchange: Hans Bellmer can be easily called the godfather of Japan’s thriving puppet scene. In fact, the majority of currently active Japanese doll designers graduated from the famous Ecole de Simon. Its founder, Yotsuya Simon, was the originator of the now thriving dollmaking scene.
In 1965, a young artist nicknamed Simon (because of his love for jazz, especially Nina Simone) learned about surrealism and avant-garde theater, which would influence him for the rest of his life. Soon after, he became a member of Jokyo Gekijo (Situation Theatre), which was considered one of the most progressive art movements in Japan at that time. Simultaneously, fascinated by Bellmer, Simon began to create his own ball-jointed dolls.
His most famous works – the Narcissisme and Pygmalionisme series – appear to be studies on the ambiguities of the human body. The life-like, waifish, pale bodies, surgically opened and exposed to the spectator’s eye, bear a mark of complete sadness, leaving the observer with a feeling of acute unease. One might raise the subject of ambivalent eroticism here: it’s remarkable that one of Yotsuya’s past exhibitions was named Dolls of Innocence.
One of the world’s most dearly loved filmmakers and animators turned 70 today. Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu, Hayao Miyazaki-sama! Deep bows, and deep thanks.
Between 1929 and 1945, Okunoshima Island (located in Takehara, part of the Hiroshima Prefecture) was a chemical warfare production site for the Imperial Japanese Army that produced over six kilotons of mustard gas. Mainichi Daily Newsreports that Okunoshima was even “once erased from the map of Japan for security reasons. […] The poison gas produced at the site took the lives of many people in China and other battlefronts, and former facility workers are continuing to suffer from health ailments caused by the gas.” The moldering husks of the Imperial Army’s power plant and other long-abandoned facility buildings remain standing to this day. In 1988, The Poison Gas Museum was established on the island “in order to alert as many people as possible to the dreadful truths about poison gas.”
Photos of the abandoned Imperial Army poison gas factory on Okunoshima Island via Wiki and JulieInJapan.
But now, Okunoshima Island is becoming better known as “Usagi Shima” (meaning Rabbit Island), a “bunny paradise” where robust leporids numbering in the hundreds roam freely and fearlessly. According to the Mainichi paper’s reportage, it’s believed that the rabbits were first introduced to the island in 1971 when an elementary school in Takehara dumped several of the animals there after being overwhelmed by the responsibilities required to keep rabbits at school. However, many other sources state that the rabbits of Usagi Shima island are direct descendants of lab animals (upon which the Imperial Army’s poisonous gases were tested) set loose by factory workers at the end of WWII.
In either case, the original bunnies of Okunoshima and their successive generations of offspring appear to have thrived in their predator-free environment, grazing on wild greens that grow in abundance all over the island, and accepting food from an ever-increasing stream of enchanted human tourists. The Kyukamura Okunoshima resort hotel located on the island has recently seen a steep increase in visitors to the island thanks to the spread of knowledge of the island via the internet “Many visitors […] are bringing their cameras to take photographs of the rabbits, next year’s zodiac animal, for their New Year’s greeting cards and personal blog sites.”
Blogger Julie in Japan sums up the island’s appeal very well: “Okunoshima has a great message of peace, a chilling history, adorable rabbits, incredible abandoned buildings to take pictures of, and a lot of nature with no crowds. For those reason, I’d recommend going there.” Although, chances are there will be more crowds now, due to the increaseinpress. Hopefully all of this attention won’t upset the bunny balance!
Warning: This film is not for the faint of heart, the faint of stomach, or the easily offended. Make the decision to click the play button accordingly.
On June 11, 1981 a Dutch student named Renée Hartevelt arrived at an apartment at 10 Rue Erlanger She had been invited there by a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris, France. The classmate was 32 year-old Issei Sagawa. Not long after she arrived he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat at a desk with her back to him. Afterward he had sex with her corpse and, over the course of the next two days, proceeded to eat much of her body.
He was held without trial for two years after his arrest until he was declared legally insane (and thereby unfit to stand trial) by French psychiatrists and confined to a mental institution. While there, his account of the crime was published in Japan as In The Fog. His new celebrity was no doubt a determining factor in the French authorities’ decision to extradite him to Japan. There, he was examined once again by psychiatrists who declared him sane but “evil”. Due to a technicality, in which Japanese authorities cited the lack of certain papers supposed to have been provided by French courts, they found it impossible to hold him and on August 12, 1986 Sagawa checked himself out of the mental institution.
For the past 24 years he’s been living in Tokyo. He is still a minor celebrity and has written over twenty books, mostly having to do with his own crimes or commentary on the crimes of others. He’s also been in a few exploitative films and sells his paintings, most of which are portraits of women. This is where VBS meets him then, seemingly running out the tail end of his notoriety and not particularly hopeful for the future. Vice does a commendable job in staying completely out of the way and letting the man speak for himself. Sagawa, for his part, has spent most of his life reflecting on one event and, as is usually the case with interviews of murderers, he has no real answers to provide.
Throughout, Sagawa speaks at length about his disgust both with himself and the public whose interest in the macabre has allowed him to flourish for so long. The last few minutes are of him describing how he would like to die in excruciating pain. It would have been easy for VBS to leave us with that sentiment; the image of the fiend undone by the horrors he has committed. Instead, the last image we see is of Renée Hartevelt, from whom everything was taken and whose death has made everything in Issei Sagawa’s life possible.
VICE Magazine’s short, riveting documentary on Japan’s Aokigahara forest (also known as The Sea of Trees), perhaps the country’s most popular location for those wishing to end their own lives (and reported to be the second most popular location in the world behind the Golden Gate Bridge. The forest’s popularity is often cited as being due to Seichō Matsumoto’s 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai, which features two lovers committing suicide there, but the forest has a history of being associated with suicide and death in general before its publication. In the 19th century families would practice ubasute (literally “abandoning an old woman”) a tradition in which an elderly or infirm family member was brought to a place and left to die, exposed to the elements. In recent years, the rate of suicides has been on the rise:
[…] people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. The authorities sweep for bodies only on an annual basis, as the forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji and is too dense to patrol more frequently.
It’s a very well done piece. Azusa Hayano is, perhaps, the perfect tour guide. It would seem that a geologist would be completely out of his element combing the woods for corpses but he makes for a peaceful and truly compassionate Virgil; managing to keep the horror of the surroundings from being completely overwhelming. His ability to retain some hope amidst such profound sadness is, perhaps, the film’s greatest gift.
Jared Leto’s always been just a little too-cool-for-school for my taste. I wanted to swat his My So-Called Life character’s laconic ass for being such a jerk to sweet grunge ingenue, Angela Chase. The slick, overproduced 30 Seconds to Mars pap he’s pumping out more recently makes me do the green apple quick step. But Helena SelfOblivion, the Russian cosplaying sorceress behind the following clip, well, she’s another story. If this young lady turns out to be underage, I’m going to feel like even more of a filthy old lech than usual, but it has to be said; this is huuhhhhHAWT:
Am I right? Teh hawt. Also? ADORBZ! (Be sure to watch to the end.) Her DeviantArt account is brimming with creative genderfuckhattery as well.
Japanese photography studio Neon O’Clockworks, previously mentioned on Coilhouse, recently released a short film titled Déjà Vu. The film features an assortment of complex, theatrical headgear crafted by London-based designer Tomihiro Kono. Influenced by 1920-30s, Dada, Surrealism and Assemblage, the hairpieces are constructed from found objects and vintage materials.
More images of Kono’s intricate hairpieces, wigs, masks and other “head props” can be found at Kono’s site and blog. At the latter, you can find full credits and behind-the-scenes stills from Déjà Vu. Full video, after the jump. [via TwistedLamb]
Samuel Cockedey’s time-lapse of Tokyo has been making the rounds, and many of you may have already seen it, but it deserves to be enshrined here. Set to “Paradigm Flux” by Paul Frankland, aka Woob, it’s just the right thing for a quick afternoon break.
