Tokyo nights

TOKYO NIGHTS
見つからない
本当の自由を探してる
輝きだす

Its been a while now since my Tokyo days, although with a Japanese husband, and living in Hong Kong, it never feels that far away. I did feel a little pang though to read about a couple of fabulous-looking new parties which have sprung up in my absence.

“Prism” is a fashion-y, whateversexual, ironic-camp-glamour party held in the (tiny) space of Rehab bar in Shinjuku Nichome. In other words, it is pretty much a new stamping ground for the FancyHim crowd, and there was a sprinkling of familiar faces in the photos I saw online.

Tokyo ArtGig meanwhile goes one better, a combination performance art space and nightclub most recently held in an abandoned hospital! I want to gooooooooo! Where is ‘ the old Tamai hospital’ anyway?

Of course, those denizens of Tokyo art-clubbing the Trippple Nippples performed.

John Ho

Local Hong Kong illustrator and some of the pictures from his cute new book, “I Love Tokyo and I Love You”.

More Japanese sex

Kohei Yoshiyuki is a Japanese photographer best known for his 1980 book “Koen” (park). In it, he took a series of creepy, night-vision photos documenting the real world of nighttime orgies in Tokyo’s parks. Who knew? His images are fascinating from a sociological perspective, showing a super-voyeuristic and unbridled side of Japan that few would have guessed at. There is a gay chapter (no surprise to anyone who has walked past the park opposite Club Arch in Shinjuku Nichome at any hour of the day) but more interesting to me is all the straight sex – who knew hetero Japanese were gangbanging in Yoyogi at all hours?

Just when you thought it was safe to take a walk in the park…

From the Yomiuri Daily:

A dead shark was found near an entrance of Yoyogi Park in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday morning, police said.

The 1.5-meter shark, which weighed more than 100kg, was found wrapped in a blue sheet by the entrance that leads to JR Shibuya Station.

According to the police, a security guard found the shark during a patrol of the popular park at about 6:30 a.m.

I love these kind of stories, which crop up in Tokyo with startling regularity. The city is a surreal concrete jungle populated by all manner of surprising creatures, from monkeys rampaging through Shibuya station, an alligator in a river in suburban Ebina and piranhas in the Tama, to a dead great white shark that was once found floating in a stinking canal in a Kawasaki industrial park. But a shark in Yoyogi Park? Even by Tokyo’s bizarre standards, that is unusual.

Apparently Twitter detectives have been on the case. It most likely originates from a Shibuya sushi store that was displaying a giant shark last week (after it proved too big to fit in the kitchen door). When it started to rot, the carcass was given away to an “artist” for his private use….and from there it is all murky.

Tokyo, I miss you….

I see with a bittersweet tinge that Tokyo’s coolest party FancyHim decamped this year from its home in Shinjuku Nichome’s Bar Exit (now renamed Geisha) to take on the poolside terrace at Tokyo’s superclub six-thousand capactiy Ageha. My little baby has all grown up

Great name too – FancyHim Skyscrapers. Anyone got pics from the party? There are none on the website (yet)?

Leslie Kee’s Japanese Super Sex – but is it art?

Leslie Kee is a (gay) Singaporean photographer who rocketed to fame as a kind of Asian David LaChapelle. Long based in Tokyo, his is a flashy (come might say trashy), glamorous aesthetic. His high octane fashion photography has graced CD sleeves for artists like Ayumi Hamasaki and Koda Kumi, while Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman and the creme de la creme of the Hong Kong and Taiwanese entertainment worlds have appeared in his own “WE” and “Super” magazines. Leslie’s women are often elaborately made up and attired, while his male stars are frequently “tastefully” nude .

The recent “Super Tokyo” photo book saw a slew of Japanese actors strip off for the camera, often adorned only by kitschy postproduction graphics of Hello Kitties.

This sensibility has landed him in trouble though. His “Super Stars” book of pan-Asian celeb portraits (ostensibly a tsunami fundraising project) was banned in Singapore, and several top Hong Kong stars complained that their photographs had been digitally manipulated without their consent to make them appear naked.

There should be no such problems with his latest client however.

Kee’s new project, rather admirably, is a a sexy catalogue of Tokyo’s gay world: gogo dancers, porn stars and pretty boys. After shooting covers for the gay magazine “badi” he has now produced  ”Super Pornstar”, a book of portraits of Masaki Koh, a model who has parlayed his boy-next-door looks into J-porn superstardom. Koh has made 85 movies since 2009 and now been immortalised by a top international fashion photographer. And for once, Leslie does not need to be so coy. Here are some of the tamer pics:

But that is not all. Kee has also produced a series of “Super Nude” limited edition books for each of his masculine Tokyo “muses”.

There is Kizuma, singer with Okinawan 90s pop-R&B band Da Pump:

Wrestler Akiyama:

Model, Taku:

And below, Tatsuya ( no idea who he is to be honest)

There is something really refreshing about a major fashion figure acknowledging his, err, roots (so to speak) in the gay world, not to mention seeing someone (a Singaporean no less!) ripping the door of the Asian closet with such gusto. There is nothing coy or ambiguous about a grinning, naked gogo boy with a hard-on, emblazoned with the slogan in large print “I’m gay!” These pictures leave nothing to the imagination.

Super.

Link to more (NSFW!) at http://sayonarababy.tumblr.com/#3 The pictures are also on show until January 28th at the Hiromi Yoshii gallery in Roppongi.

Issey Miyake

A retrospective of Issey Miyake photography currently on show at Tokyo Midtown.

New Tokyo giant

Fresh from its giant Gundam and firebreathing baby, Tokyo’s latest love affair with the oversized comes in the shape of this inflatable sculpture of actress Haruka Ayase, currently crouched next to Shinjuku station to promote Lumix brand cameras.

Tokyo Black and White

Images borrowed from this article in the Guardian.

 

Natsukashii….

I have just started the long-awaited IQ84 but I can say that for me, the book is already an unqualified success. By bizarre coincidence, the story parallels much of my own personal experience of Tokyo. Its a nice feeling, to be reminded of my bond with the city even three years after I have left.

Murakami’s books quite often contain allusions to places I know. He lived, afterall, in a small seaside town called Ninomiya a few train stops from my old school and for a time I believe, in my home ‘hood of Fujisawa.

IQ84 though is a whole other ballgame. By dazzling chance, I know just about every place mentioned it quite intimately.

The book begins with a heroine (?) stuck in traffic on the overhead freeway above Route 246 on her way from Kinuta to Yoga. Kinuta is where Daisuke lived with his parents and Yoga is the train station we would walk to whenever I came to visit. We would often drive along the very same freeway where Aomame climbs from her taxi, little realising that her life is about to spiral into strange new directions. In fact I always felt that way driving along the freeway, gliding speedily, eye level with the rooftops of Shibuya. It always felt to me more like a ride in an amusement park than a standard commute.

Late on, we discover that Aomame lives in Jiyugaoka, where Daisuke rented an apartment, and she visits her friend’s house in Okusawa, the station I used to use to get to work in the morning when I had stayed over.

Meanhwhile the other main protgonist Tengo takes a train trip on my old beloved Chuo Line to Tachikawa (where I lived for two years during my first stay in Japan). On the journey he stops at Kokubunji and Kunitachi (where he and his mysterious new female companion hold hands).

That is where I lived with my x-boyrfriend, Taizo.

Its a map of my Tokyo lives and loves. The only major location that I don’t know is the Shinjuku cafe Nakuraya where several of the protagonists meet (after flipping through books at Kinokuniya in Times Square). But then perhaps it doesn’t exist, a quirk of the surreal “other” Tokyo that Aomame finds herself in in the book, a city in most respects identical to the one we both know and love, but with policemen in subtly different uniforms, strange crimes and then (more noticeably) two moons in the sky…

Tokyo Urban Stereo

Korean band Humming Urban Stereo, with a Tokyo video clip.

New Tokyo party

Japan may (still) be in the grip of a twenty-year long recession with a rapidly ageing population to boot, but Tokyo still knows how to party. This week a new nightclub opened on Shibuya’s Love Hotel hill. With four floors and a capacity of 1500 people, “Vision Sound Museum” is one of the most significant additions to the city’s nightlife in a while.

It is not the only addition though. Since I left Japan the iconic “Spacelab Yellow”, owned by Japanese acid jazz/house group Masso Grosso has re-opened as “Eleven” (I went to its closing party in its last incarnation) and most interestingly, a bayside printing press in middle-of-nowhere Hinode has morphed into vast “art space” and event venue “Tabloid”, home to various pop-up installations, art exhibitions and an extravagant invitation-only, one-off performance by Lady Gaga last year at the height of her “Bad Romance” moment.

Meanwhile FancyHim seems to be going strong, with recent parties in Singapore and Seoul, and a spin hosting a Tokyo edition of the similarly electro-glam Seoul sensation “Locksmith Night”, at its headquarters at Geisha (formerly Hijoguchi or ‘Bar Exit’) in Shinjuku Nichome.

Nighlife in Hong Kong, meanwhile, continues to suck.

Film Festival!

Hong Kong is currently hosting an Asian film festival, just in time (I had thought) for my school holidays. It turns out though that most of the offerings I am interested in seeing will be on next week, when classes have resumed. Still, can’t complain when there is 90s Chinese noir Suzhou River, this year’s Thai action hero blockbuster Red Eagle, Korean low-budget offering Invasion of the Alien Bikini and a 1970s Japanese B-movie about lawless girl thugs on the streets of Tachikawa (where I once lived!!!!!!) to choose from.

Tokyo rising…natsukashiiiiiiiiiiii

This is odd. A documentary sponsored by a shoe company, hosted by Pharrell Williams about Tokyo “after the quake”. It makes me miss Japan though….

You can see the whole thing at the Palladium boots website here

In the second part, a member of the cool electro girl group Trippple Nippples takes Pharrell to the awesome G-Cans Project in Saitama.

Japanese Summer songs

Reggae singer Pushim’s remix by Masters at Work – the ultimate, all time Summer fun song!

Mika Nakashima’s lovely rendition of “Seppun” by Original Love is a close second though:

Below, more Pushim:

and a new discovery for me, Tomita Lab:

All the better to eat you with…

Tokyo wild!

There are piranhas lose in the Tama River! At least, according to Al Jazeera.

Piranhas stalk Japan river – Asia-pacific – Al Jazeera English.

Frankly it would not surprise me though. I still remember the crocodile they found in a river in Ebina (a policeman waded in to wrestle it out), and a dead white shark that floated to the no-doubt-stinking surface of a Kawasaki industrial canal. Strange things have a habit of turning up in Tokyo waterways.

For Tokyo Lovers

I recently saw this book “Tokyo on foot” in a Hong Kong bookstore. As soon as I get a more stable income, I am going to buy it. It is a book of illustrations by a French graphic designer. Florence Chavouet  lived in Tokyo for six months while his girlfriend interned in one of the city’s big hotels.

In a big, exciting city with nothing concrete to do all day ( I can relate) he ended up wandering around and drawing sketches of “his” Tokyo.

The book is really evocative of Japan. For anyone who has spent time in Tokyo, the illustrations will probably strike a chord. But for me particularly it was really amazing to be able to pick out individual buildings  - in the biggest city in the world – which I knew, time and time again.

I know where this is:

(That rickety old house on Shibuya’s “Cat Street”).

And I know where this is:

(In Shinjuku Nichome. Elsewhere he sketches the really quaint little restaurant on the same street that goes to Word Up bar.)

There are also lamposts I recognised from Daikanyama, maps of Okubo – one of my favorite old stomping grounds – and those typical suburban streets – neat and cluttered at the same time –  that define Japan

.

It is a really cute book.

Check out the artist’s charming website here.

Giving the public what they want

When I log in to update my  blog I get a list of the “search terms” that have lead curious browsers to the site this week. Lately there has been a surge in interest in the Australian/Japanese model and actress Shiori Kutsuna who I wrote about here and someone looking very actively for “Tokyo go go boy Kenta” from the Shangri-La parties at Ageha. I can’t blame him. So, I present to you….

Kenta even has, I discovered,  his own facebook fan page here. I forgot about how fun the Tokyo party scene was, with its cast of silent film star-like “go go boys”, each with their own devoted coterie off fans. Other than dancing at the parties, their main role is to model on the incredibly well-made (and often, sexy) flyers promoting the events. Surely no city in the world has better  - or more outrageous – nightclub flyers than Tokyo.

I wish I could also help the person who ended up on the blog searching for information on an “art deco giraffe in Tokyo park”. I’ve no idea what he/she is referring to, but it sounds wonderful.

Popular Hits of the Showa Era

Japanese fiction has always grappled with barely-suppressed fears of societal destruction (a hangover from collective memories of Japan’s flattened cities after the war) . How many manga or Japanese novels reference a “New Tokyo”, or end with the obliteration of society as we now know it?

Ryu Murakami tackled the topic in his brilliant, incendiary novel “Coin Locker Babies”, still probably my favourite  novel by anyone. He revisits the subject in the oddly-titled “Popular hits of the Showa Era”.

In “Popular hits…” we meet two groups of anti-social losers. The  writer seems to suggest that they are typical of their generation, children of the “Showa Era”. This refers to the reign of Emperor Hirihito stretching from the war to the end of the 1980s.

The men of the novel lack any capacity for human interaction, ambition or passion in their lives. They drift along aimlessly until they stumble on to the joys of crossdressing, karaoke and violent assault. Their unwitting (but unwavering) adversaries are “the Midoris”, a group of ‘oba-san’ middleaged women disappointed with their love lives, and united by little else more than the common name “Midori”. The feud in which the two groups find themselves escalates to a surprisingly devastating ending – but one typical of the author’s nihilism.

Murakami has always been inconsistent as a writer. As much as I loved “Coin Locker Babies” I found “Almost Transparent Blue” virtually unreadable.  ”Popular Hits…” reminds me most of his story “Piercing” (although perhaps it is not as strong as that piece). In “Piercing” a man’s morbid fear he will kill his own infant with an icepick leads him to attempt the act on an equally unhinged prostitute.

Many of the same ideas inform this book with its scathing indictment of a society where morality has crumbled and people are tormented by their little-understood and unfulfilled desires.

It made me wonder how Japanese fiction will deal with the current looming disaster in Fukushima – will Japan finally face its unspoken fears now they are out in the open? Or will a new even more nihilistic wave emerge?

Movies of 2010

#3 Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame – a  kung fu fighting, feminist-revisionist-historical epic with a whodunnit plotline, a touch of magic, humour and great, lavish costume/set design. Wins all round.

#2 Mother – Director Bong Joon-ho adds another stylish thriller to his repertoire, while re-exploring some of the themes of his earlier (and excellent)  ”Memories of a murder”. In both films a mentally-impaired man is accused of a terrible crime. In “Mother” the story plays out stylishly with some sharp turns, beautiful cinematography and the standout performance of the year( for me) from veteran Korean TV actress Kim Hye-ja.

#1 A clear winner and one of the most unforgettable films of the last decade: