“Now it’s the citizen snoopers: Councils recruit unpaid volunteers to spy on their neighbours”

I can’t tell you the stress it puts on me every second Tuesday having my recycling silently judged by local volunteers at the recycling drop-off point. One time I even got into a Kafkaesque argument over whether aluminium cans should be pre-crushed or not. If that woman had had the authority to call the cops on me for showing up with a bag full of uncrushed cans, she would have done it in a second.

This is getting to be a bit like Twitter, but in a newspaper article I am reading, there was a quote from a guy with this title:

執行役員メンズ館事業部長兼MD本部本店店舗事業商品部紳士服商品統括部担当

Talk about overkill.

Listening to the original release of the first YMO album right now. I think I like it better than the American release. Maybe there was some remastering, but it sounds more robust and I like “Tong Poo” without the lyrics.

A comprehensive review of my now sold out book by Ricardo Cordoba is up on Speak Up.

It’s a nice, solid piece of criticism.

「すみません。次の駅はどこですか。」
「きくな！」
「あ。分かりました。ちょっと自分で調べてみます。」

A new competition for Japanese artists who have practiced or studied in the UK. The competition is a form of research into a fluid ‘Japanese community’ in the UK and its ‘alumni’ by curator Helena Capkova. This competition is open to Japanese of any age, including students, graduates, and established artists. The competition is also open to any media including design. The only condition is contemplate the particular task of the competition.

The competition invites artists to assess 12th Century Japanese art theoretician Soetsu Yanagi’s 12 Criteria of Beauty through the creation of original works of art.

More here.

The application for the competition is here.

The deadline is 1/11/2008. There will be small prizes, but the most important thing is to give exposure to people who would not otherwise exhibited in the competitive London art world.

The exhibitions will take place in three places in London in December and January 2008/2009.

Good luck!

Obama / Biden

Osama Bin Laden

My first line of skateboards designed for Lesque, Tokyo’s hottest young skate company, is back from the plant. They may be available at your local skateshop if the Lesque boys don’t sell out on tour. Their “Couch Surfing” tour is pretty much the highlight of skate demos and culture in Japan this summer. If you have even the most remote interest in skating, go check them out. Seriously.

Lesque is an interesting company in that they have eschewed the traditional Japanese business model of sucking up to a distributor for manufacturing/funding, choosing to handle management and manufacturing themselves in a similar style to D.I.Y. outfits like Dischord Records.

Recently, one of their two pros, Shinichi Ito, got fed up with the minimal support offered by his supplementary sponsors and told them to take a hike. The result was this video. He is currently on the lookout for new sponsors (though Elwood already snatched him for clothing).

I’ll be briefly introducing the team before their presentation at the next PechaKucha Night at SuperDeluxe on September 24.

I am now a “Contributing Editor” for excellent global fashion business blog The Business of Fashion. My first two articles:

No Ametora | Why the Neo-Trad Trend Failed to Catch on in Japan

Japanese Women | From Luxury to Yuru-Nachu

Also, my “real job” these days is Chief Editor of new Japanese fashion site MEKAS. Although most of the information is targeted towards professional business subscribers, there are many free articles such as:

Interview with Takeji Hirakawa

Cher Scores with Eco Bag

(Please view MEKAS in browsers other than Internet Explorer.)

New ladies’ shirt design over at Graniph. Snap it up before it’s gooooone….

Debate over Google Street View continues

Global Voices Online is really, really good for this kind of coverage. Hats off.

経験人数は減少し1人エッチは増加中　ananのセックス特集

According to anan, onanism is on the rise within the Japanese female community. (Although similar surveys in ViVi etc. show much different results…)

Just finished a new music video for the one-off song “Day Ditty”, released by Craig Wedren (Shudder to Think) & E#Vax (Ratatat) for my imprint Mold Recordings.

The Meeting Modernity series of found photographs is the focus of Néojaponisme’s first traveling exhibition. Recently unearthed outside of the city of Sano in Tochigi-ken, this series of pictures documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taishō Periods. The series is comprised of portrait photography in particular.

The exhibition debuts next month at Young Art, a gallery in Los Angeles’ Highland Park.

MEETING MODERNITY
September 13- October 4 2008
Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 13, 2008 7-10pm

Young Art
747 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles CA 90042

Hot off the presses: I wrote an essay on the film “Beautiful Losers” for the latest issue of Idea.

There is also a glowing review of Néojaponisme contributor Ed Fella‘s recent exhibition in Australia by Dylan Rainforth, as well.