New interview by the lovely and talented Ms. Selena Hoy over at PingMag. It’s an interview with Patrick Tsai of My Little Dead Dick.

One of the more widespread intellectual theories about the “2-ch Flame Mob” is that their #1 enemy is the Japanese mass media. This “WaiWai/Mainichi scandal” combines two great sources of wrath for the Net Swarms: mass media mistakes and foreigners tainting Japan’s international image. Mainichi has “disciplined” the writer for carrying out a project they most likely approved, but the 2-ch Flame Mob has yet to be placated.

毎日新聞、「小額で日本の少女を買春する方法」を紹介。海外大手サイトに掲載

and

毎日新聞に学ぶ「売春で捕まらないための11の方法」

So everyone is up in arms today that WaiWai had a story about teaching readers how to pick up schoolgirl prostitutes in a “safe” way. Now, this story didn’t come from the brains of Mainichi: they stole it from some second-rate tabloid. But instead of attacking that tabloid (which relies on the same jingoistic, horny engine as 2-ch), the Flame Mob has pinned the whole affair on Mainichi. And now even Japundit’s getting some heat for re-posting the story…

Begin the witch trials. I don’t see the 2-ch crowd ever directing their anger at the actual shukanshi responisble for WaiWai’s stories. The anonymous rioters are having too much fun taking the moral upper hand with Mainichi and a bunch of foreigners.

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

It can’t all be book release parties and WaiWai-felling, folks.

• Postcards from Nowhere: Jed Perl complains about modern art at TNR, devoting several column inches to Murakami “Superflat” Takashi and his LV connection.
• Eegra’s game blog on the hot new Lady Groper release for Nintendo DS.

毎日新聞英語版サイト　「変態ニュース」を世界発信

Last week, the Japanese net press started to open up a Japanese dialogue about the problems with Mainichi Daily News’ WaiWai tabloid column — probably long overdue.

Now this…

Mainichi ends WaiWai column

2-ch’s trumpet brings another wall crumbling!

I have had my share of criticisms against WaiWai over the years (see this), but I think the basic idea of translating non-mainstream news into English had a lot of promise. If they had only had a nickel’s worth of skepticism about junk tabloids or had not been so cynical to post every single clearly-fake titillating sex story, they would never have been such a backlash. You can’t be a news service and also offer shameless articles concerning “bestiality restaurants.”

Japan’s Latest Fads — Marketable in U.S.?

Anyone else think these are all really boring? Who wants to take a bath in wine? Is that the best that “Wacky Japan Inc.” can come up with? Acerola? Slow down, Japan. You are blowing my mind.

Themed Hot Springs Resorts: because normal onsen in the United States have gotten so boring.

Shower Washable Suits: so you can be just as stylish as the average salaryman, now with less hassle.

Kool Boost: I’m not a smoker or anything, but that sounds like it will revolutionize cancer delivery.

G-Shocks: Oh, Japanese kids watch so much CNN that it only makes sense they would learn their style from it.

I also like this statement:

It would be wise for futurecasters to look beyond the much-watched Japanese schoolgirls who indulge in fads.

If futurecasters are obsessed with Japanese schoolgirls, I am not sure they can call themselves “futurecasters.” Trend spotters need to spend a lot less time predicting the future and a lot more time actually figuring out what is going on in the present.

連続幼女誘拐殺人：宮崎死刑囚の死刑執行　他の２死刑囚も

In the late Bubble era, the chilling case of “otaku” serial killer Miyazaki Tsutomu firmly established the supposed link between anime-loving social outcasts and sex criminals. The witch-hunt was kicked off by the (now disputed) discovery of his collection of over 5,000 videotapes — many of them pornography and anime — after his arrest in 1989. The resulting moral outrage at the otaku subculture lasted close to a decade and is almost difficult to fathom in this era of otaku symbolizing “Cool Japan.”

After nearly twenty years on death row, Miyazaki was finally executed yesterday. Given the opacity of the Japanese justice system, it’s hard to speculate, but one can’t help but wonder if the recent Akiba massacre had any impact on the timing.

Generic Name for Soft Drinks by County (U.S.A.)

I mostly grew up in Northwest Florida, which is a mere 12 hours to Miami by automobile. The culture of the Panhandle is distinctly “Southern.” However, no one ever believes me when I say that my Florida bears little resemblance to the Florida they’d know from Orlando or Miami or Key West, etc.

Finally, some proof of Florida’s cultural diversity: in my part of the state, we say “Coke” as a generic term for all soft drinks. This is also true in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. In South Florida, it’s a bunch of Northern immigrants who say “Soda.” This also explains why the state is a battleground state every election

There is a new Japan page for Alltop, and Néojaponisme is on it. (So is Clast.)

Japanese hip-hop artist ZEEBRA disrespects MTV Japan on Youtube

Many Japanese bloggers are calling J-rapper Zeebra a modern day hero for uploading a YouTube “diss” to cable music network MTV Japan. Japanese hip hop has finally become political! F**k the industry and shi*! For example…

You talk to the fucking sponsors,
All the bull shit rap you wanna push

Heavy stuff. I remind you that this is the same Zeebra who made a serious video dedicated to the Snickers candy bar.

Zeebra’s beef is very simple: he was invited to the MTV Video Music Awards Japan, and if you get invited, you are guaranteed to win. Yes, the #1 criteria for winning a MTV Video Music Award is being the one act in the category to actually show up.

But he forgot about a more important criteria: having a video that MTV produced and received money to make. In this case, it’s Rip Slyme’s ode to the Sony VAIO “ING.” (Read my original one act play about the video here.) MTV brought Rip Slyme and Sony together on this marvelous work, so it was only right for the independent music channel and cultural arbiter to award itself for such achievement in the field of commercial enterprise hip hop.

So imagine if you are Zeebra and you show up thinking, “Hey, I showed up. I can’t lose” and then losing to a commercial for a computer. You’d be pissed enough to air your grievances in rhyme.

ZEEBRA the ill skill Makes peace with MTV JAPAN

But hey, maybe his efforts will get him a VMA Award and a Twix commercial next year! The possibilities for hip hop are limitless.

Louis Vuitton’s Mythic 93.4%

Hate to cross-post and self-promote, but I have been very excited about debunking this oft-repeated number for the last week.

“PORK AND BEANS”: WEEZER RUINS THE ENTIRE INTERNET

I have an essay on the new Weezer video up at the Anthem Magazine website.

Joel Martinsen’s “Willow fluff and trashy romance novels” is a great read on the topic of Zhang Ziping, an early 20th-C. Chinese novelist who borrowed freely from Japanese sources. (Anyone know what “归儿日” might be?)

Hostessing an honorable profession, young women say

I had never seen any polls backing up the thesis outlined in the article title, but the larger youth culture definitely pointed signs towards a general acceptance of hosts and hostessing. I mean, the hottest subcultural styles in recent years have been O-nii-kei for boys and Koakuma Gyaru for girls — admittedly “yankee” delinquent fashion looks, but both based on idolizing people in the mizu shoubai nightlife. Now thanks to marketer-extraordinaire Miura Atsushi, we see that about a quarter to a third of young women are pretty comfortable with “lighting pathetic smelly old misogynist patriarchs’ cigarettes” as a career aspiration.

You don’t have to be a moral crusader to be upset about this development. Wanting to become a hostess either requires an incredible lack of imagination or just chronic disillusion at work opportunities for women. Being a hostess is not a “long-term career,” but when your options as a woman are being a “secretary” or a “serious employee who has to drop out of the management track once pregnant,” hostessing looks like an equally winning destination. And when you work as an “office lady,” you have to flatter the exact same suits every day for much less money than a hostess. You can at least change out your assigned salarymen every 30 minutes as a hostess.

The main problem with the ensuing Sankei Shimbun moral outrage, however, is that this is clearly a product of social stratification. Dead is the idea that anybody can work hard enough to become a successful white collar employee. If you have no college degree and live in some godforsaken Iwate Prefecture village, what other options do you have upon arriving in Tokyo, with no money and no social capital, than to become a hostess. Imagine more and more people every year falling out of the middle class, and now hostessing makes more and more sense as an occupation.

By some estimates, 30% of professional models moonlight as cabaret hostesses.

This is only half the story. The real scoop here is that professional modeling agencies own and operate hostess clubs at which they employ their less popular models. Yes, if you want to be a model in Japan, your agency will basically half-pimp you out to Roppongi and Ginza to serve on entertainment executives while you are “in training.” If one of the corporate media bosses likes you, he will go to your agency head and say, “Hey, I like that girl Miho,” and they’ll say, “Which one is Miho? Oh you mean Kaho. Same bitch, thousand names, right? Ha ha. Okay, maybe we can let her be a model now instead of treating her like an indentured semi-sexual servant.” And the media guy will say, “Let us treat her like an indentured semi-sexual servant.” Then they’ll both laugh and money will change hands. Seriously, can you think of a better fly trap for hostesses than opening a “model agency”?

Screed aside, I blame the male customers for all this. There are a million hostessing jobs because there are ten million guys who are so inept with talking to normal women that they happily pay ¥6000 for an hour of “banter” and Suntory Old on the rocks. Prostitution is a universal; “kyabakura” is an aggregate of guys who need a pep talk and to learn to think about their own wives as human beings.

YouTomb

No surprise that Japanese companies are some of the world’s most active YouTube clip executioners. I am sure they are only taking video off YouTube so that they can go and monetize their own archives themselves… Who am I kidding? There won’t be a move towards making past material available to viewers until Japanese TV stations are no longer run by 200 year-old zombies afraid of electricity who spend half their day filing receipts for hostess clubs.

I am exaggerating though. They aren’t actual zombies.