Murphy
cat malogen
Japanese Retro Arcade That Took 10 Years To Build Goes Up In Flames
"We never imagined it would end like this"
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The Meaning of Japan
- Thread starter luka
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ver$hy ver$h
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Anyone watching Shogun? Getting rave reviews, but I'll have to see for myself. The “most transportive TV epic since ‘Game of Thrones’,” according to at least one reviewer.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Mark Zuckerberg makes unique Samurai sword from scratch. Internet is amazed
Mark Zuckerberg shared a post on Instagram showing his journey of making and wielding katana, a special Japanese sword.
shakahislop
Well-known member
i've just left japan. what i think i saw was an alternative direction of travel. it seemed conservative, protective and traditional at core. but with an embrace of technology at every level. but the technology felt practical and bounded. the capitalism felt bounded as well. 'creative destruction' doesn't seem to be tolerated. the whole place felt very orderly. obviously i've got no idea what i'm talking about coz i was only there for a week but this is an impression
shakahislop
Well-known member
you get totally ignored and get given every exception as a foreginer. the culture felt automated
shakahislop
Well-known member
hadn't understood that there was a distinct aesthetic there. even the subway cars felt crammed full of symbols and colours. the ceiling hooks looked like computer game tokens. brightly coloured and shaped like icons. the pace and visual bombardment of the ticket machines at the stations felt like playing streetfighter. hadn't realized that anime was everywhere, not just in cartoons for people who like anime, but as a dominant visual style
shakahislop
Well-known member
the conformity of clothing was striking. school uniforms and office uniforms. the intention seemed to be copy and paste. and the conservatism of it as well. not much flesh showing. and then out of the blue you see someone dressed up as a kind of doll.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
shakahislop
Well-known member
in response to version: i have no idea where it comes from but i've always had a dislike for this kind of thing. which i think comes to us in the UK mostly refracted through the US. all that shit like anime and digimon and so on. things about samurai and ninjas. kung fu. wu tang. final fantasy.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
You mean you don't like the stuff itself or you don't like the way we treat the culture and that those are the things we latch onto?
shakahislop
Well-known member
i don't even know what the stuff itself is. i've only ever seen it via an american transmission belt i think. for the uk the meaning of japan comes via america no, most of the time. power rangers and so on.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
Fighting games are another big one. I think they're basically all from Japan. Tekken, Street Fighter and all that. Video games in general, tbh. I know America and other places make them now, but Sony, Nintendo and Sega are Japanese companies.
shakahislop
Well-known member
i went to one of the listening bars for about an hour. it was good; but not as good as the LA iteration of In Sheep's Clothing, and not as good as the planetarium events in nyc. i have the impression that the americans have taken the idea to a further and better extreme. the one i went to still leaned further towards a bar, the ones i'm talking about in america are much more about the listening
shakahislop
Well-known member
it was weird noticing how much of the aesthetic side of things was familiar from playing this stuff as a kid. soul caliber. another thing i noticed now that i am an expert on japan is that you get these kind of pastoral thing transmitted over, studio ghibli and shenmue, zelda, but the place itself so far as i could see is relentlessly urbanised, the biggest conurbation i've ever seen, reinforced concrete and metal. wires.
ver$hy ver$h
Well-known member
There's an interesting chapter in that book I read on Japanese mushrooms where the author claims the structure of American business was massively influenced by Japan:
'Two bookends frame the tale. In the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. ships threatened Edo Bay in order to “open” the Japanese economy for American businessmen; this sparked a Japanese revolution that over- turned the national political economy and pushed Japan into international commerce. Japanese refer to the indirect upending of Japan through the icon of the “Black Ships” that carried the U.S. threat. This icon is useful in considering what happened—in reverse—150 years later, at the end of the twentieth century, when the threat of Japan’s commercial power indirectly upended the U.S. economy. Scared by the success of Japanese investments, American business leaders destroyed the corporation as a social institution and propelled the U.S. economy into the world of Japanese-style supply chains. One might call this “Reverse Black Ships.” In the great wave of mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s, with their corporate reshufflings, the expectation that U.S. corporate leaders ought to provide employment disappeared. Instead, labor would be outsourced elsewhere—into more and more precarious situations. The matsutake commodity chain linking Oregon and Japan is just one of many global outsourcing arrangements inspired by the success of Japanese capital between the 1960s and the 1980s.'
'Two bookends frame the tale. In the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. ships threatened Edo Bay in order to “open” the Japanese economy for American businessmen; this sparked a Japanese revolution that over- turned the national political economy and pushed Japan into international commerce. Japanese refer to the indirect upending of Japan through the icon of the “Black Ships” that carried the U.S. threat. This icon is useful in considering what happened—in reverse—150 years later, at the end of the twentieth century, when the threat of Japan’s commercial power indirectly upended the U.S. economy. Scared by the success of Japanese investments, American business leaders destroyed the corporation as a social institution and propelled the U.S. economy into the world of Japanese-style supply chains. One might call this “Reverse Black Ships.” In the great wave of mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s, with their corporate reshufflings, the expectation that U.S. corporate leaders ought to provide employment disappeared. Instead, labor would be outsourced elsewhere—into more and more precarious situations. The matsutake commodity chain linking Oregon and Japan is just one of many global outsourcing arrangements inspired by the success of Japanese capital between the 1960s and the 1980s.'
shakahislop
Well-known member
yeah there's loads in the supply chain world as well. lean supply chains, agile supply chains, six sigma (which is a quality control process if i remember rightly). people were impressed weren't they in the 80s. people grabbed things from japan. it went from annihilation to people thinking it would be the world's largest economy. one of the things i was thinking when i was there was: maybe what i can see is the aftermath of that. it had a stuck in time quality. a lot of things made me think of the 90s.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Did you get much of an idea of how people there feel about their local trading partners/rivals, viz. China, Taiwan, South Korea?
shakahislop
Well-known member
nothing at all
It seems like to me that there is as much flesh showing as in the west, at least with younger people when they no longer have to wear school uniforms - as you say "copy and paste" because young people are very "copy and paste" with the trends even more there it seems to me.
If you ask someone why they are wearing something, they might just honestly say it's because it's everyone else is.
You generally need to go to specific places like Harajuku to see people dressing in more creative ways.
Did you see any old pervy men openly and brazenly trying to look up under school girl skirts, or just casually looking at manga porn?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
The odds that anyone else who posts here spotted you are infinitesimally small, if that's what you're worries about.