While I was in Berlin and Paris, PingMag published a version of an article that I wrote about Kinya and Kao Hanada, a.k.a. Mumbreeze. If you have a chance, hit up Nagi Shokudo in Shibuya to see their current show.

If you have vegan homies visiting Tokyo, Nagi is my pick for the absolute best vegan food in Tokyo. It is also the cheapest and made by the raddest people.

While I am no longer a vegetarian, I tend to eat veggie around half of the time. I watched my previous fave veg restaurant, Ecru in Tama-Plaza, go under due to lack of patronage. I sincerely hope that this doesn’t happen with Nagi. They are in Shibuya, so it’s doubtful that rent is that cheap. Go there. Eat something. They do massive lunch and dinner specials where you will be stuffed to the gills for under ¥1000. And it’s DELICIOUS! They have an awesome drink menu and an English/Japanese zine library, to boot.

They also have an amazing shop section where you can buy books on off-kilter cultural topics like the history of elevators in Japan, zines from all over the world, and some of the best music coming out of the Japanese indie pop scene today.

Yesterday was huge for Apple: all sold out. I must have gone to every single Docomo store in all of Tokyo, and I can’t find anybody with iPhones to sell.

There sure are a lot of policemen around Tokyo these days. I have been used to seeing them every morning in Shibuya etc., but there was even one in my little local train station this morning, monitoring commuters. Are they looking out for G8 Summit terrorists or is there some other threat that I should know about?

Mumbreeze are Mumbleboy (Kinya Hanada), a Japanese contemporary artist living and working in Portland, Oregon, and his wife Kao Hanada, a jill-of-many-trades. They have crafted a new exhibition that will debut at Nagi Shokudo, Shibuya’s foremost vegan restaurant and exhibition space for an exhibition that opened on the 30th of June. (Note that Nagi Shokudo is a restaurant and not a gallery, so there will be no official opening, but the artists will be there often during the duration of the show.)

Please do come check it out and also enjoy the delicious food while you’re there! Nagi is a wonderful, sunny place full of ‘zines, great art, and awesome folks! Nagi’s proprietor, Oda-san, will be the subject of an upcoming profile on Néojaponisme. Oda-san has been involved in the Tokyo music scene for a number of years, publishing his zine, Map, and running a really interesting record label, Compare Notes. Compare Notes has put out a ton of great albums, including releases by Gellers, Popo, and Lake. Oda-san also organizes the occasional music festival and solo live event for foreign musicians (Tara Jane O’Neil, Howe Gelb, M. Ward, and others).

Oh, and he cooks the best vegan food in Shibuya, shutting out a handful of competitors in both flavor and price.

Kao Mumbreeze also has a small exhibition at HP France and HaNNa’s WALL space in LaForet in Harajuku that is well worth stopping by to check out.

A type foundry and distributor by the name of Fonthaus decided to swipe our image of Jens Gehlhaar for their promo mailer today. Hmmm….

Wait, his real name isn’t Tay Zonday? I want my money back.

Truly terrible. These kinds of mass killings always seem to happen in obscure villages and towns, nowhere close to home, but this guy brought the horror right into the heart of Tokyo.

The Akihabara angle is hard to ignore, and certainly, this could easily commence the Second Coming of Otaku Moral Panic. They already found some anime-style drawings from the suspect — something extremely ubiquitous among almost everyone in Japan — but the images will point the blame squarely at “pop culture.” (Will his middle-school tennis club picture lead to a crackdown on clay courts nationwide?) That being said, I don’t think this guy chose Akihabara just because it’s a “popular area,” as if Shinjuku or Ikebukuro would have sufficed. There will be some kind of link.

Patrick Macias sees the killings as the massified otaku culture’s own Manson Moment. The recent Akihabara-worship was good for the economy, the media, and global affairs, but this dregs up all the suppressed fears about the dark otaku heart, justified or not. The Hokoten will close down in order to restore safety. The girl flashing panties was a help to the police on establishing the threat to the public, but this tragedy gives them surplus mandate.

hpgrp gallery New York presents “Sticky, Messy, and Sweet”
May 23rd, 2008 – June 21st, 2008

It seems these days that Japanese art is hot or new or one of the next great things. Murakami’s enormous retrospective exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is an obvious milestone but the range of group shows and smaller exhibitions in galleries through out the city in the past year or two featuring art by Japanese artists have grown exponentially. Curator and Little Cakes gallerist Hanna Fushihara Aron presents her perspective on an under recognized faction of Japanese artists.

“Sticky, Messy, and Sweet” focuses on a particularity found not only in contemporary Japanese art but also in its culture where at first glance things may look candy colored sweet but there are other layers and depths which are opposite to the stereotypically orderly and clean image that outsiders have of Japan. The country being both historically xenophobic and self-conscious has the tendency to hide the unkempt, obsessive, or perverted underbelly. As one example, many have not heard about the growing number of young homeless in Japan. As seen in a recent NHK (Japan’s PBS) documentary, teenage runaways use “Manga Kissa” or “Manga Cafes” as cheap places to sleep overnight. The tiny rooms normally used to surf the net or sit and read comics offer only a lounge chair to sleep sitting upright in. During the day these kids might wear Hello Kitty bottled perfume to hide their unwashed body odor and sport their one and only in style outfit but at night they go back into the world of shadows. Another example can be seen in Mike Mills’ documentary “Does your soul have a cold?” which follows five people living with depression in Japan, a nation where the word for depression has only started to be known widely for less than ten years. Anyone “sick” should not be seen. Anyone with a hint of the sniffles should wear a face mask to protect others from getting sick.

This is not to say that this show is about depressing subject matter. On the contrary, the show is brightly colored and swirls with emotions and spontaneity. The references made were to give an idea of “What is shown widely” and “What is not shown as widely” especially when it comes to what is representative of Japan. “Sticky, Messy, and Sweet” shows other existences and experiences contrary to the slick and commodified or cutesy beyond belief. Although some the participants have graduated from prestigious art schools both in Japan and the United States, the others are more self-taught and could be referred to as being somewhat “Otaku”, fixated on anime or manga or on any other hobby, which in and of itself labels them to be outside the masses.

Some of the artwork in this show physically represents all three adjectives in the title; some a combination of two. Ai Tsuchikawa’s obsessive drawings filled with miniature fishy shmoo characters, rainbow flares and wirls are drawn on taped together pieces of paper, her installations of found objects covered in plastic “slime” epitomizes the idea of “Sticky, Messy, and Sweet”. Yui Kugimiya’s thick and goopy oil paintings cut and sectioned by colorful strands of yarn are gross and cute at the same time. Mumbleboy (pictured above) and Reiko Tada use craft to get sticky and messy. Gunji Yusuke uses scotch tape to put together little plastic bubbles holding drawings as if they were idea bubbles. Chie Fukao uses what is immediately around her like her own bed sheets to make an imaginary rabbit character’s resting area. Akinori Shimodaira uses simple, translucent brush strokes to create his dreamy, blurry, paintings.

With this show, the curator hopes to give a glimpse of another side of the Japanese psyche; one that goes beyond the polite exterior. She hopes to delve deeper and explore the more untamed.

hpgrp gallery New York
32-36 Little West 12th Street, 2nd Floor
(Between 9th Avenue & Washington Street)
New York, NY 10014
212-727-2491

http://www.hpgrpgallery.com

Gallery Hours – Tue-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12pm-6pm

MyFonts is now an official distributor of my type foundry, Wordshape’s typefaces. Stroll on by to pick up the now heavily discounted Cooper Black Swash Italic and/or Rubber Vloeren.

Cooper Black Swash Italic is a true digitization of Cooper Black’s swash characters which never made the jump from phototype to digital form. Most designers have settled for using the (IMHO) far inferior Goudy Heavyface swash characters in lieu of the more friendly Cooper O.G. action.

Rubber Vloeren is a digital adaption of Piet Zwart‘s lettering for old pre-linoleum rubber flooring advertisements. The same Rubber Vloeren alphabet was used by Zwart on several other occasions. There’s a showing in Dutch Type by Jan Middendorp of the most spectacular version: a gold-on-blue version on ceramic tiles made for the First Church of Christ Scientist in The Hague when working for the architect Berlage.

As some may have noticed, I have an “in” at the American version of The Office, so I tend to think about the show a lot. For the last few years, I would often meditate on why the formula would not work in Japan and came to the conclusion that the premise too strongly attacks the sanctity of corporate life.

Sure, there are plenty of office comedies in Japan, and many poke fun at ridiculous bureaucratic conventions. But the UK/US Office centers around the following ideas:

1. Work is an ultimately meaningless set of tasks
2. Your immediate boss is an idiot
3. Your corporate overlords are evil

These concepts are very familiar to anyone who has worked at an office in the United States. “Real life” and individual identity are intentionally kept distant from what happens at work. In the show, the secretary Pam secretly wants to be a graphic designer. Dwight likes his job but wears multiple hats in his afterhours as a beet farmer and a volunteer deputy sheriff. Michael seems to be the only one to unequivocally love his job, and he is basically a walking billboard for the human travesty of “Work.” While not “hippie” or Bohemian in appearance, The Office depends upon a post-’60s, anti-The Organization Man outlook on corporate ennui. Jobs are square, bosses are The Man — no matter how hard they try to be “with it.” Without this anti-corporate framework, The Office cannot create humor.

My guess is that these underlying digs at work life are still too pointed for mainstream Japanese TV. (Imagine Sazae-san incriminating the Japanese government and its corporate allies for presidential assassinations like in The Simpsons.) Just as the SNL parody shows the workers all bowing profusely to the Boss when the Japanese Jim and Dwight argue over the stapler-in-jello, putting the American Office‘s attitudes towards working life on Fuji TV or something would force Japanese TV executives to kowtow towards their advertisers. What is good for giant Japanese corporations is still good for Japan. TV stations, ad agencies, third-rate paper companies — these all contribute to the dignity and vitality of the nation. Being a good citizen means being a good worker.

The Office‘s horribly-boring, sterile “workplace” set is meant to visually represent the environmental blandness of low-level companies. In Japan, all companies essentially use the exact same desk layout, whether cool TV network or leading ad agency or fashion magazine, and this means an attack on a the physical space of selling paper in Scranton, PA is basically an attack on all Japanese companies.

Yes, the SNL parody is “racist” in the sense that they’d never dare dress up their white cast as The Office (Nairobi edition) and that they simplify Japanese customs to easily recognizable punchlines. But this is the closest we will see the Office in Japan. This country is just not burdened with internal contradictions of corporate life like in the West. Yanks and Brits want to bash their day jobs while still showing up every day or justify their own poor performance by placing “reality” outside of the office walls. The Japanese spend 12 hours a day at work and correctly assess that those tasks and affiliations create their “identity.” Debasing the office is not just heresy, it’s an insult to all those good citizen-workers.

I am amped to announce a number of new eco-friendly paper goods I designed for the Tenth & Grant line of paper goods. A few new greeting cards are out, as well as a Moleskine-esque gridded sketchbook with a pattern inspired by Japanese Modern 50s graphics.

Details on the sketchbook:
A handsome dark green on light green web pattern spans the entire front and back cover of this chipboard notebook. Perfect bound with a handy hinge-score, and 144 interior white pages. 100% recycled paper! Printed with soy inks! Perfect bound with a handy hinge-score, and 144 interior white pages. Forest and Avocado – 5″x6.75″ – gridded interior.

See it here.

On rainy days, the Inokashira train line smells exactly like a 1970s era school bus.

Tonight in Los Angeles: A celebration of ten years of LOST, L.A.’s primero graffiti magazine, celebrating the anniversary and the release of the new LOST book.

The book contains highlights of the past decade editor/designer EyeOne has spent documenting LA writing. Includes imagery by Atlas (if you haven’t caught the documentary on his work, watch it now!), Pale, Cab, Haeler, and more. Screenprinted board covers, numbered limited edition of 2000.

Even if you are not a graffiti fan per se, the LOST book is a must-have for folks interested in Angeleno culture. More about LOST here.

LOST is a picture-perfect example of designer as author. I’m proud to have written the foreword for it.

Denki Groove are back with their first single in eight years, and the accompanying video is so good that it makes me want to throw a temper tantrum. An homage to the Japanese 1980s pop moment, directors Prince Tongha (DG’s Pierre Taki and Super Lovers/Super Milk Chan art director Tanaka Hideyuki) collected a large and diverse group of intentionally-unremarkable girls to act out Matsuda Seiko, Pink Lady, Pro Golfer Reiko, Sukeban Deka, and other iconic aesthetic moments of the “idol” era. The song’s not bad either.

Now this is the J-Pop I remember! The video shows Sony Music Japan at its best: slightly alternative production and catchy melodies mixed with high-level art-driven visuals. Imagine the entire label filled with acts like this (Judy and Mary, Supercar, Sunahara Yoshinori, Puffy, the Chappie album etc.) and you’ll realize why the mid-to-late 1990s showed such creative energy in the mainstream arena.

The more this decade progresses, the more I realize that the quality decline of Japanese music in the last 7-8 years has been essentially a generational problem. We tend to discount bands once the members start hitting their late 30s, but Denki Groove, Scha Dara Parr, Cornelius, and other core members of Gen X keep providing a level of pop music and visual that strives towards artistry and critical irony. Maybe the latest Cornelius stuff is less essential, but he’s still schooling everyone else.

This ragtag mopey Generation Y has basically rejected any sort of artistic pretension on the grounds that it gets in the way of fraternal compassion. Everything’s gotta be “real” — like Let it Be over Sgt. Peppers. You can’t be earnest and ironic at the same time, and they’ve chosen the former.

Although I have blamed Gen Y’s cultural malaise on their navel-gazing insularity, Denki Groove shows that you can create gold out of exclusively domestic source material. The problem again is Generation Y’s failure to know how to remix, sample, and recontextualize their own Japanese pop heritage. When you think the entire exercise of “contemporary art” is pretentious fakery, you limit your creativity to a small scale that will not impress anyone outside of your peer group. Denki Groove are a band that contributed to the idea of “Japan Cool,” and they seem to be the only ones these days performing up to the promise.

I normally am not a big toy fan, but I do approve of old school-style kaiju. And as far as kaiju go, these Portland/Tokyo guys make some of the most tripped-out, interesting kaiju out there today. I will fully be attending this opening and insist that you do the same!

Tentacles, Horns, and Scales
April 19th Thrash Out in Koenji, Tokyo.
Artshow, toy release, sneak attack.
Featuring all new works by Koji Harmon, Bwana Spoons, and Martin Ontiveros.
Sponsored by Dekline footwear.

Come join us for good times, art, toys, prizes, and a few big suprises.
Thrash Out is the Flagship store and gallery of mind bending vinyl pioneers Gargamel.

Gargamel makes toys that look like Jolly Rancher coated diamonds.
Koji, Bwana, and Martin make art and toys that explode with color, depth, and endless imagination.
Collector and fan Takaomi Fujiki put it best when he said “Happy Beam Discharge!”
For more info as it becomes available, interviews and photos please contact Grass Hut in the U.S. at 503 445 9924 or grasshut.corp@gmail.com

Martin Ontiveros
Martin Ontiveros grew up in San Diego, California. Graduated CalArts in 1996 with a Bachelor’s degree in Experimental Animation. Then he moved here to Portland. He isn’t rich… yet. But he is getting paid to do what he enjoys, and he’s been doing it for years now. He lives in an awesome basement apartment that he shares with his cool son named Felix and two cats not named Felix. His many many years of pop culture emersion and empirical knowledge of useless trivial information have somehow paid off in spades. Call it luck. His work has appeared in publications like Craphound, Juxtapoz, Pencil Fight, The Stranger, Portland Mercury, and Nickolodeon Magazine, as well as awesome books like BEASTS!, The Darkening Garden, Neither Here Nor There (Melvins), Qeedrophonic, Dot Dot Dash and others.

Koji Harmon
Koji Harmon is a zine maker, photographer, and collector. Koji has worked on several projects with Gargamel, and is fast on his way to master sofubi painter. This is koji’s first venture in to toy design.

Bwana Spoons
Bwana Spoons was raised in the woods. He likes moss and Lego and monsters. When he was a little one he would draw detailed crayon renderings of all his favorite Star Wars figures. When he was older he lost them all in a battle with a mildew giant. He likes making zines and comics and paintings and silk-screened prints and designing toys and making things with rainbows and animals. Recently Bwana was bitten by the textile bug. He has designed shoes for Converse, and Dekline, tees for Giant Robot, and MonsieurT., and baby strollers for Bumbleride. Over the years he has worked on and/or created several zines and comics. “Ain’t Nothin’ Like Fuckin’ Moonshine” was the first and longest running; his most recent projects include Pencil Fight, and Soft Smooth Brain, and the upcoming Welcome to Forest Island book designed by Ian Lynam on Top Shelf Books.

Info and directions to Gargamel here.

Tentacles,Horns,and Scales
開催期間：4/19〜4/28(13:00〜20:00)入場無料
＊19日は14:00オープンとなります。
会場：Gargamel Flag Store THRASH OUT

See you there!