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.

Franqueensense

A new ladies line from United Arrows.

How did they come up with such a catchy and succinct name? They took everyone’s favorite Jesus-friendly aromatic resin frankincense, replaced the “kin” part with “queen,” and then changed the “cense” to “sense” to indicate “having good sense.”

Now, I don’t mean to be sacrilegious or anything, but I don’t think the “kin” in frankincense is supposed to be “king” without the final g. The word is clearly a combination of “Frank” and “incense.” At this rate, the sister brand to Franqueensense is going to be Mxxrrh. Or maybe Fucqueen.

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.

肥留間正明の芸能斜め斬り フジは制作費5%カット テレビ局の大不況
(”Hiruma Masaaki’s Slanted Take on the Entertainment World: Fuji has cut production budgets 5%, TV’s Great Depression”)

If you thought that Japanese TV could not get less ambitious, I beg you to flip the switch and take a look at what passes for Prime Time. The beloved “variety show” hinges on its stable of “personalities,” and TV stations evidently can no longer afford anyone approaching funny. Dandy Sakano seemed like a low point a few years ago, but he’s Oe Kenzaburo in comparison to today’s hooligans.

But enough of my objective commentary. Professional TV critic Hiruma’s got some facts for us:

• TV stations are having a hard-time finding sponsors, and program sponsors want more on-air time for their products
• A decade ago, program success meant a 20% share. Now a passing grade is 12% and dropping.
• Hiruma blames low quality of TV for the drop in viewership. (Maybe Japanese networks should, I dunno, consider reforming their conception of “programming” that has not changed since the late 1950s and filming in Beta-cams that have not changed since the late 1980s…) But here we get the negative feedback loop: lower viewers means lower budgets, lower budgets means worse talent, worse talent means worse shows, worse shows means lower viewership, und so weiter.
• Variety shows are using “announcers” to host shows, since they are salaried and cost less than hiring talent from production companies.
• Youth are not watching TV.
• Television station salaries are still some of the highest in Japan, while programming production is being fished out to companies that only pay employees ¥2 mil a year.

Recently, I have taken to watch a lot of Discovery Channel programming through cable. Mythbusters and Man vs. Wild seem like perfect models for Japanese network TV, but I guess you would have to actually find individuals with interesting skills and Japanese talent agencies don’t really do the “skill” thing. Oh wait, they have that girl that eats a lot and that other guy who is half-Japanese…

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

Many may have read this essay by now, but I wonder how much its lessons apply to Japan. J-youth are watching less and less TV, but is there a concrete place where that energy is going besides 2-ch? Japanese Wikipedia isn’t bad, but has yet to reach a peak of activity. Is the idea of “creating public content for free” with your leisure time even an idea that exists within Japan? How could something that doesn’t cost money be worth anything?

Also:

“Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. “

This is certainly not true in Japan. You have to be a 40 year-old white-collar employee to have ever seen a real-deal personal computer. I have come to the conclusion that the cell phone in Japan is not a sign of advanced technology, but a “patch” to bring internet functions to those who cannot get access to computers. That is how it works in the Third World, why not with the “refugees of affluence” (豊か難民) of Japanese Gen-Y?

Japan Today supports Church of Scientology

What Japan Thinks pulls out some crucial investigative journalistic skills to show a creeping influence of the infamous religious cult Scientology on the infamous Japan news site Japan Today. Taking money for Scientology ads is one thing, but letting Scientology members write editorials on “moral education“? Why can’t they leave the bad persuasive essays to lay expats?

I have never quite understood how the Japan Times or Japan Today have much potential as businesses, and I guess turning to aggressively-recruiting religious organizations is the only solution. I feel kind of insulted that cults aren’t calling me up to invest in Néojaponisme! I would refuse and all, but I would finally know we had made it.

Oricon wins suit against writer

I have a lot of other stuff going on right now, but I just wanted to bring this to your attention.

The Japanese legal system has ruled that, yes, companies can successfully sue individuals quoted in magazine articles for libel. Even though Ugaya neither wrote or published the offending Cyzo article on possible Oricon chart-fixing for advertisers and had a certain amount of evidence to back up his statements, the judge agreed with Oricon that Ugaya had committed libel. Oricon did not sue the publisher Infobahn for publishing the article, did not sue the magazine that printed the article, and did not sue the writer of the article. They only sued the person quoted in it (whose quotes were edited).

This is obviously a very bad precedent, and even worse that the Japanese mass media has not uttered a peep about this possible threat to media freedom.

When we interviewed Japanese leftist terrorism expert Dr. Patricia Steinhoff last September, I commented that someone should probably release the otherwise-unattainable early ’70s Adachi Masao and Wakamatsu Kōji documentary Sekigun-PFLP Declaration of War on YouTube. The film, created for Red Army recruiting and fund-raising purposes back in Japan, showed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Japanese Red Army training in Lebanon camps. Steinhoff told me that the film is “definitely not a YouTube kind of thing,” but this is the internet we are talking about. Finally, someone has uploaded the first bit of the film, and I would hope that more will follow.

Not a particularly engaging piece of cinema, but as Steinhoff explained, the close-ups of young men handling guns was enough to excite the hearts of young Japanese leftists at the time. Midnight Eye has a bit in this essay about the film.

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!

Wow. SMAP’s Kusanagi Tsuyoshi is not so skilled of an actor, at least not skilled enough to play a “blind masseuse” without looking like a 1950s parody of the differently-abled. This movie Yama no Anata seems to be aiming for a certain nostalgic bittersweet, and yet, they had to throw the lead role to someone whose entire “acting” career was built on his management company’s economic extortion of the media.

Also, I love the fact that if you go to the press conference page, there are no pictures of the main actor. (This is why.) Is there anywhere else on earth that films are not allowed to use images of the STAR in the online promotional materials??? (Nevermind, he’s on the web page for the official site. Must be that he has his eyes closed and no one would want to steal this picture.)

Boonが5月号で休刊

Wipe those smiles off your faces, you ingrates: your favorite Japanese street wear magazine Boon is as dead as a noor dail. Okay, okay. None of you read Boon. I don’t even read Boon, and I read Japanese magazines for a living. While not exactly Relax-R.I.P. in stature, let me explain what this all means while you prepare your o-kouden to send to Shodensha.

The magazine market in Japan has seen steady decline over the last decade. Boon, however, has schooled everyone on how to
dramatically implode. Although launched in 1986, the magazine really hit its stride in the 1990s, becoming the main info source for the “vintage” clothing boom. At one point, Boon printed 800,000 copies a month! 800,000! This is more copies than every single contemporary O-nee-kei magazine (CanCam, JJ, Ray, etc.) combined. 800,000 copies of a men’s street wear magazine dedicated to dressing people in old, disposed American clothing.

By 2007, the whole vintage street wear thing had run its course, and Boon dropped to a 50,830 print-run — a mere 6% of its peak. Late last year, Shodensha rebranded the magazine as b., a Men’s Nonno clone showing you how to mix casual street wear with “high-brands” like Black Fleece by Brooks Brothers. Apparently that strategy didn’t work.

Unlike Relax, Boon did not really represent a particularly creative subsegment of Japanese youth culture, and I can’t claim that many will bemoan its absence. But look on the bright side: every time a youth fashion magazine goes under, another magazine targeted towards old people like Hers pops up. You guys are into off-season jaunts to Corsica, right?

Japan’s garrulous bloggers go strangely silent

I perfectly understand how “mean” I was being by pointing out that 40% of Japan’s blogs are fake spam pages set up to take in ad revenue. But now that we know that the original Technorati blog count was fundamentally flawed, isn’t the following statement — published just yesterday — basically, “an intentional regurgitation of incorrect information to bolster the thesis”:

According to a State of the Live Web report by blog search engine Technorati, 37% of the world’s blogs are in Japanese, putting it ahead of English, on 36%, and making it the international language of blogging.

The author then states that “Doubts remain over how many Japanese blogs are actually spam sites,” which seems to be a strange hedge that basically accepts the original report. We are still supposed to walk away thinking that Japanese is the “international language for blogging,” which taken literally, means that Japanese is the central language for international blog culture. I ask non-rhetorically: are any bilingual Japanese-English net readers out there content with this statement?

As for the main point of upcoming government censorship, the Japanese state has always been seriously conflicted about the spread of the Internet in Japan. They dragged their feet on hooking Japan up to the Net (for more on this, read Japan and the Internet Revolution), so I don’t see why they would have any underlying ideological belief in keeping it unregulated.

Kondō Kōji’s favorite cadence: Dan Bruno explains. (Spoiler: ♭VI-♭VII-I).

Not that I’m implying that anyone reading (or editing) this blog is a huge music and/or video game nerd, of course.

One of my old blog Néomarxisme’s early successes was my translation of lyrics from seminal idol-collective the Onyanko Club: “Don’t Make Me Take Off My Sailor Uniform“, “A Pervert! (Otto Chikan)” & everyone’s favorite ode to the fact that girls have to have sex with their married teachers to make up for being bad at math “Stop it, Teacher!” At the time I wrote those essays, however, there was no YouTube, so it’s worth going back and taking a look at these bizarre sexually-frank songs in action now that the internet has delivered video capability.

「セーラー服を脱がさないで」/ “Don’t Make Me Take Off My Sailor Uniform”

The archeo-feminist in me always shakes its head at this track, for the fact that crafty male producers and songwriters got together and forced a bunch of bland teenage girls to sing unambiguous, unpoetic lines like, “I want to have sex before anyone else does” and “It’s boring being a virgin.” But the song is even weirder in context: note how generally boyish, unattractive, and unerotically dressed the girls are. (If you think I am making an overly-subjective or personal judgment about their relative cuteness, ask anybody from that era how they were perceived. Onyanko Club started the “throw a bunch of mediocre daughters of overambitious stage mothers together and the total cuteness will suffice” strategy that Morning Musume perfected.) Also note how the (incredibly shady-looking) male hosts and male audience are so enthusiastic — much more so than the girls in the group or the female audience members. The Onyanko girls look like they learned the choreography ten minutes prior and are promised a half-hour outside of their cages if they can get through the three minutes without messing up too badly.

Nothing about the actual staging or execution seems to recognize the sexual content of the song, reinforcing the interpretation that the whole thing (along with the openly-sketchy title of the show Yuyake Nyan Nyan) was a massive subversive practical joke on the part of adult men. You can argue for some Shinto non-Christian morality at the heart of this TV phenomenon, but show me similarly open child sex-pop tunes from the ’70s and ’90s. In most cases, we get “flowers blooming” and other silly metaphors, but not “I want to do H like that shown in the weekly magazines.”

Rest assured that in this clip you are peering into a fleeting moment of Japanese pop culture that would never quite hit the same touchpoints. In this day and age, Akimoto Yasushi would never pass off such literal material to AKB48 or even Jero.

The kids aren’t alright ;-(

My challenge to you META no TAME and Neojaponisme readers: name one of the 10,000 ways this essay could have been written to make the same point about Harajuku without being a pointed personal take-down of me.

Sheesh, it’s like 2004 again or something.