The back of Naoko Higashi, Zine’s Mate project manager and extremely nice person. From Papersky’s first FOOD CLUB event at Lucas and Kaori’s very old house.

I have finished reading ‘A Lateral View: Essays on Contemporary Japan’ by Donald Richie. Although i feel more intelligent and justifiably opinionated about the quotidian aspects of japan than ever before, i fear i’m still behind the times. Essays from the eighties don’t really qualify as contemporary anymore. When did that happen? At some point over the last few years? When Michael Jackson died? I actually don’t care. The book still seemed valid to me. I enjoyed reading; it was smart and careful, if sometimes a little stiff. Richie embedded himself in the avant garde japanese filmmakers of Japan in the 50’s and 60’s. He is an expert on Kurosawa and others and he even made some films of his own. Above is his snuff masterpiece. It makes a lot of sense after reading his essay on Japanese pornographic film ‘The Japanese Eroduction’—”Yet this is precisely what the eroduction does. With a truly compulsive insistence, it monomaniacally maintains that…woman are evil, that men are their prey, and that sex is their instrument”. Sounds like a good summary of Lars Von Triers recent film. Richie felt that in these erotic films the tortures suffered by woman are viewed as a justified preemptive strike by the men–”they are doing in the woman before the woman have a chance to do them in”. I suppose the film above is his retaliation. NOTE: contains nudity, sexualised murder and incense in anus. Perennial thanks to the worlds greatest digital archive, UBUWEB, and to J. Gatto and M. Villalba for the book!

Today I am writing about food for a new magazine from Melbourne called Condiment (LINK HERE). It is edited by Chris Barton and Jessica Brent, two people doing good things in Australia. The writing is quite slow. It began as an interview with Yoyo, who runs Vege Shokudo in Koenji and also VACANTEEN at the VACANT gallery space in Harajuku. Two of the cities best temporary restaurants. Then I found some journal articles about the conceptual underpinning’s of 7-Eleven and everything changed. Here is a pull out paragraph from the upcoming article:

“The first convenience stores, in America, sold bread, milk, eggs and ice. There is no room for desire with such a utilitarian inventory. But In Tokyo there is only desire when it comes to food. Toshifumi Suzuki makes sure of that. He is the CEO of 7-Eleven; global head of the world’s largest chain of convenience stores. For Suzuki, desire is what his company runs on. Need is not necessary. The point is to give people what they want before they knew they wanted it; to preemptively fulfill eating desires. To achieve this with the highest chance of success, 7-Eleven staff are involved in heavy sessions of ‘knowledge creation’ where they discuss the forecasting of human desire, it is openly tactical and strategic, even going to point of attempting to ‘systematize’ customers unknown tacit knowledge – to help them “externalize deep layers of personal reflection.”

Most of the claims in that text came from ‘Knowledge Creation in the Convenience Store Industry: Seven-Eleven Japan’ by Ikujiro Nonaka. The more i read about Suzuki, the more he turns into a monstrous guru. His plans are nothing short of global domination of the psyche. Photos from the McDonald’s in Nishi-Shinjuku.

That top one looks like a fake documentary. A few pained faces trying to convincingly express relatively simple ideas. It’s good. I came across it while researching Len Lye for AAP, which also led to a new book about him called ‘Art That Moves’, published by University of Auckland press in November of last year. I read the introduction. Lye is one of New Zealand’s most important artists (despite living in England and New York for much of his life). He worked with motion: kinetic sculpture and early animation. There are a couple of his early films on Youtube, some of which supposedly doubled as advertisements. Like in ‘Trade Tattoo’: fluttering shapes and colours, the antithesis of torpidity, and then some text about the British postal service appears. It’s amazing how dominant Lye’s visuals are compared to the squeaky promotional shout out; no Fortune 500 company would grant such a jolly latitude these days. The Royal Mail funded experimental films under the guise of the ‘G.P.O. Film Unit’ from 1933 – 1940. “Kinetic art is the first new category of art since prehistory”, said Len Lye in 1964. He felt that movement played an essential role in modernist art, but was neglected and sidelined, never granted it’s rightful place in the limelight, due to financial constraints and the lack of interest from the art world. Maybe he is just a little bitter that his kinetic theme park never got built, which is understandable.

Photos by a stranger. From a listing on Craigslist for a Sayonara Sale in Shimokitazawa. Almost all foriegners in Tokyo are transients which means that when it comes time leave (visa expired, contract expired, deportation) they resell the contents of their house as a ‘Sayonara Sale’. I don’t really know why, but i check the Sayonara Sales almost everyday, compulsively. Sometimes you see the same television or bicycle reappear two or three times. Once someone was giving away a Sugar Glider – those little possums with the wings. We tried to take it, and had even named it and found a cage, but it was given away a couple of hours before we were supposed to pick it up.

Owakudani, a sulfer mine in Hakone.

A few years ago I used to work with kids doing workshops in Tokyo. Some friends, Mejunje from Argentina, will be coming to Japan soon to run kids workshops this April, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Tokyo is also beginning kid friendly art programs and I just (very behind the times) ran across the Tezuka’s Fuji Kindergarten (see HERE for a good article). All of a sudden i have come in contact with many people who are thinking about ways to engage children. Historically Europeans seem to have been the most articulate and imaginative at engaging children; Bruno Munari has to be credited as the king of child workshops, with Reggio De Emilia and Montessori coming in second and third. American’s educators don’t really seem to have the same authority. But that might change. Video’s above from ‘Songs of Higher Learning’.