I shamefully admit that 2009 has not been a great year for attaining my previous levels of web prolificacy. Recession and real life are keeping me from leisurely penning long essays on complex topics. Twitter has been a good outlet, but blogging has gotten to be hard. I think that Kyabajo one took me literally six months to finish up.
Anyway, here are some of the numerous things that I have been up to:
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1) I wrote an article in Japanese for Brutus on the late great writer George Plimpton for the Autumn Fashion Issue “Mr. Gentleman.” Now on stands, featuring a special Thom Browne-directed “Brutus Gentleman’s Book.” |
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2) I wrote about half the articles/interviews in the Onitsuka Tiger/Zoo Magazine collaboration “Made of Japan” — in celebration of the shoe brand’s 60th anniversary. It will be available on newsstands soon (I think), but TAB already has it on sale as part of a special limited-edition set. My interview/profile subjects include Shugo Tokumaru, Verbal (m-flo, Teriyaki Boyz), Chiho Aoshima, Kiyoshi Kuroda, Tomokazu “Matzu” Matsuyama, Hirofumi Kurino (United Arrows), Soichiro Ito (SOE), Toshikazu Iwaya (Dress33), Rinko Kawauchi, mint designs, Né-net, Writtenafterwards, Final Home, DOG, and Bruce Osborn. |
3) I was interviewed for a documentary on Japanese indie music called Live From Tokyo last year, and the trailer is out. Looks great.
Live From Tokyo Trailer from Lewis Rapkin on Vimeo.
4) I think I was on an episode of Tokyo Eye about Ura-Harajuku at some point this summer.
5) I completely forgot how to do formatting in HTML.
6) I published a Japanese language backpage piece in Weekly Diamond (週刊ダイヤモンド）in late July. New semi-monthly blog on market trends and culture in Japanese (and maybe also English) coming soon from parties related.
September 15, 2009 at 11:32 pm
More of the usual superfluous crap then.
Still pushing the “crazy Tokyo, look at the lights
and the trains and all the fashion” idea ?
September 16, 2009 at 7:39 am
Now you’re just being mean without making any sense.
September 16, 2009 at 8:49 am
Anybody who has spent ANY time in Tokyo knows there are no trains, lights, or fashions. Residents, if there even ARE any, get from “place” to “place” by bicycle, naked, in the dark.
Although I will say, in response to the implied accusation of frivolity, that it’d be cool to see a neoj panel about the election and aftermath.
September 16, 2009 at 10:47 am
Twitter is an amazing phenomenon, but I have noticed in many cases an alarming negative correlation (but not necessarily a causation) between the amount a blogger tweets and the amount a blogger posts. I would have thought that, in the same way a good jam session will bear fruit in a well constructed tune, the 140-character soup that Twitter is would materialize in everybody’s blogposts being more frequent and/or more informed.
It’s not just the Neojaponisme crowd. This negative correlation is everywhere.
[soapbox rant ends]
Anyhow, I like your podcasts, and I also hope to read the articles you mention above.
September 16, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Hmm there is an odd moderation policy here -
a load of legitimate comments got deleted all of a sudden.
Sorry not to be a sycophant, but my original question remains
as to why don’t you write about things that are actually
relevant in the real world rather than obscure fashion trends
and faddy indie music ? Seems like a waste of a good education
if you ask me…
September 16, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Our CMS tends to eat comments written in troll.
Your question is not a well-formed question. I am not sure when you discovered my writing, but I have clearly written a lot over the years about “serious” things. I mostly write about how markets and society work THROUGH looking at what you are outright dismissing as frivolous.
But at the same time, I am a culture writer. I enjoy culture. And if you have a problem with writing about fashion, music, and other mediums of artistic and social expression, we are going to have to agree to disagree. Or maybe I can troll on your blog in return. What’s the address?
September 16, 2009 at 8:55 pm
If we do a panel about the election, the Mutant Frog crowd will come and cut us up real bad. Just last night we had a meeting in an alleyway. I was all “I wanna bust! … an in-depth series on the new cabinet!” and Marxy was like “Bust cool! Keep cooly cool, boy!” Then we sort of ran half-hunched down the alleyway snapping our fingers. True story.
September 16, 2009 at 9:05 pm
point taken.
I don’t have time to blog as I have a family
and a job and a few hobbies that involve
interaction with people in the real world.
(old fashioned I know).
I do like to “stumble” across blogs on Japan though,
and I get the impression that you have made a lot of effort
to create this big internet persona, but your writing is
rather vacuous and self-congratulating. I retain my point that
the topics you chose to cover are superfluous and of little interest
except to the faddish and fashion conscious.
anyway good luck with it
September 16, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Barry B shows why the internet is hard.
You really really want to respond to this shit, because dude is walking into your house and calling you a dick for reasons that can be defused in about a half-second. But if you keep answering him, he thinks that this is now a forum for him to state more and more valueless opinions. But if I don’t answer it, I’m kinda saying, “Yes, you who clearly have little mastery of punctuation and have very little idea what I actually do and write about and claim to only stumble upon blogs in Japan despite living in the country, you have so NAILED me that I am too frightened to even respond!”
The Paradox of Trolls, if you will.
September 17, 2009 at 12:54 am
Congrats on the publications.
I’m with Peter on Twitter - 140 characters is enough for statements but we’ve been seeing precious little layered discussion or extended development of ideas in that format.
“I mostly write about how markets and society work THROUGH looking at what you are outright dismissing as frivolous.”
That’s exactly right. I’m very glad that there is a forum like this one. There is only so much “What will The Election mean for The Alliance?” stuff that one can take.
September 17, 2009 at 5:38 pm
The stuff that Marxy wrote on his Summer Non-Vacation seems to be more strictly cultural and fashion-related (although I haven’t read any so I can’t say for sure).
And therefore maybe of less interest to us casual blog stumble-uponers.
However, even a casual look at past Neojaponisme blog posts will reveal that most of the topics, although involving fashion, design, music, lifestyle and the media and entertainment industry, are also related to issues that concern society in general.
Therefore, calling the writing superfluous or irrelevant is inaccurate and unfair in my opinion.
That said, I too would be interested to see some reactions and thoughts on the election by the NJ contributors. Not because this is a political blog, or that you are all political experts, but because I think it relates to some societal and historical issues that you have addressed with cogency in the past.
September 17, 2009 at 10:58 pm
I fear that our guest confused this meta staff blog with our normal output.
September 18, 2009 at 10:18 am
Well it’s tough for such an old-fashioned guy. How can he keep it all straight–what with his job and family and real people?!
September 18, 2009 at 11:47 am
I, too, would like to voice my disappointment in your penchant for blogging about things that you blog about, on your blog. If you’ll excuse me now, I have to head over to Tobias Harris’s place and tell him to write more stuff on maid cafés. Hope he’s got a Star Wars costume of some kind.
September 18, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Matt,
Well played! I would try to be Officer Krupke, but see, I’ve got a job and a family and old fashioned hobbies to worry about.
September 18, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Calling fashion trivial is pretty short-sighted. Maybe it’s easy to dismiss people who think too much about their looks as shallow and inauthentic, but you ignore the significance of the enormous fashion business at your peril, and claiming to be above it all is as arrogant as it is typical.
An early Marxy a paper opened with an intro on the nature of the relationship between people and the stuff they buy. Everyone is a member of the market, and even if you think stuff like indie music and organic food are un-mainstream and thus authentic and non-trivial, they’re still marketed products just the same as Paris Hilton CDs. So get off your high horse, buster.