Sound Bites

Went to j-CATION? Samurai Beat Radio caught up with Yuki Chikudate, singer of the Brooklyn-based dream pop band, Asobi Seksu, just before their performance at Japan Society.

You can download the podcast of the interview here or visit the Samurai Beat Radio Official Blog to check out some cute photos!

On a similar note, STEIM, the Amsterdam-based music laboratory of experiments in electronic sound and instruments, are spending the weekend of May 7th-8th at Japan Society.

STEIM artists Yutaka Makino and dj sniff discuss the process of creating their innovative electronic music and share their perspectives on the latest international collaborations in an Artist Talk and Demo. Then, in the Mobile Touch Exhibition, visitors will have the rare opportunity to make their own music on STEIM’s wild collection of invented electronic instruments, including the Finger Web, the Cracklebox, the Voice Scratcher and the Headbanger.

And where would we be without throwing a concert?

For this performance, STEIM’s Artistic Director, Takuro Mizuta Lippit, has assembled a lineup of groundbreaking international artists from STEIM’s roster, including:

• Yutaka Makino (Japan/Germany): A composer and technical wizard who has pioneered the blending of music, sculpture and architecture
• ABATTOIR: A duo comprised of Audrey Chen (U.S.)—vocalist, cellist and analog electronics musician/composer and Robert van Heumen (Netherlands)—a composer and tinkerer equally at home with a keyboard or a joystick
• A collaboration between digital media composer Yannis Kyriakides (Netherlands) and guitarist Andy Moor (U.K./ Netherlands) of the legendary Dutch punk band The Ex
• dj sniff (Japan/Netherlands), a.k.a. Takuro Mizuta Lippit—turntable musician and Artistic Director of STEIM

Psst...If you want a sneak preview, check out this video!

Japan and Friends: Foreign Relations

The Editor-in-Chief of the Asahi Shinbun in Tokyo,Yoichi Funabashi, published an article for East Asia Forum called Japan-Korea FTA cornerstone of the East Asian Community, which makes several valid points. One example:

"A Japan-South Korea FTA would be instrumental in pushing for a further opening of the global trade system. It would also help Asian regional integration. Integrating the markets of the closest neighbors in Asia will become the cornerstone of the East Asia community."

Japan Society held a panel discussion on April 20th entitled The Japan – China – US Triangle: Competing Partners, which discussed the obstacles in navigating mergers and other alliances among China, Japan and the U.S. due to the nations' completely divergent cultures, histories, and legal systems. Japan and South Korea likely face many of the same issues thanks to their difficult history with one another. To quote from Funabashi's piece:

"During a visit to South Korea in March, farm minister Hirotaka Akamatsu was told by Yu Myung-hwan, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, that since this is the 100th anniversary of Japan’s annexation of Korea, many South Koreans consider it to be a ‘year of humiliation.’ Yu urged caution, noting that emotions were again running high over the territorial issue."

The relationship betweem these two nations is one that will spell out the future of East Asia's relations not only in trade but in cultural respect. It's a relationship that will be worth watching in the coming years, especially as China's economy pulls ahead of Japan's.

Japan Watching

For anyone interested in any part of Japanese life, there are thousands of Japan watching blogs and websites all over the internet. Some focus on current news, some focus on contemporary culture, some focus on in-depth articles, and some focus on food. I like to spend hours perusing the internet for interesting nuggets about Japanese society (heck, I even wrote my thesis on Japanese visual culture), and it's easy to forget how symbiotic culture and economics are.

That's one reason I appreciate Japan Society so much. Being able to learn about Japan-U.S. trade relations and about the global spread of anime all in one place really allows a visitor to get a full picture of contemporary and historical Japan.

Cosplay Party 2.0 is Coming!

May 15!

Following the massive success of Japan Society's KRAZY! Cosplay Party in 2009, we're hosting our second annual cosplay event, Cosplay Party 2.0, in conjunction with the exhibition Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters. Fans are invited to create and showoff costumes of their favorite characters, and share their enthusiasm for anime, manga, and video games.

This is just your first heads up! There will be more posts chock full of details closer to the date, so keep an eye out!

News Blast

AFP/File

Japan falls fast from Obama priority list

When he took office, US President Barack Obama moved quickly to show his commitment to Japan. He welcomed its then prime minister as his first White House guest and Hillary Clinton made the Asian ally her first destination as secretary of state. What a difference a year makes. When Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama came to Washington last week for a summit on nuclear security, his face-time with Obama consisted of approaching him at a dinner when the president asked guests to enjoy the food before discussions.

Now isn't the time to privatize Japan Post

Japan's government is planning to expand deposit caps at the country's state-owned bank -- already one of the biggest deposit-taking institutions in the world. Critics worry this move signals a fundamental rollback of the Junichiro Koizumi-era reforms. To the contrary: Now would be the wrong time to privatize the postal bank. Japan Post is a 200 trillion yen ($2.2 trillion) government-owned institution. Privatization advocates assume private-sector demand for funds isn't fulfilled by the postal savings bank, since its lending to the private sector is extremely limited. If this were the case, the correct policy would be for the government to aggressively reduce both its fiscal deficit and the role of the postal-savings program-and then get out of the private sector's way. That is precisely what former Prime Minister Koizumi wanted to do when he pushed hard for postal privatization in 2005.

Japan's flatlining is a future prototype

Immigration is a taboo issue in homogeneous Japan, leaving us to mull how it can fare with what it has, demographically speaking. The strategy seems to be morphing into Asia's Switzerland, proving that living standards needn't shrink with population. There are environmental benefits in making do with fewer people. Can our planet really sustain 9 billion people by 2050? Imagine the massive leaps in clean-energy technology required to make things even somewhat sustainable.

Reprieve for death row dogs in Japan 

Dog-lovers in Japan are dismayed because increasingly many pet puppies are being disposed of once they grow up, most ending up at the pound where more than 70 per cent are put down. The idea of adopting a dog from the pound has not caught on in Japan where many strays are seen as second-hand goods. Now a group has been formed in Japan to try to save dogs from death row.

Guide drafted for teaching Japanese to foreign residents

A government subcommittee has drafted guidelines for the first time on teaching Japanese to foreign residents to make their daily life easier, officials said Thursday. The draft guidelines compiled by the Cultural Affairs Council subcommittee lists examples of words and phrases that foreigners should be encouraged to learn for smooth communication in 10 main categories, including health care, travel and shopping.

Japan Society's First Annual Manga Competition

In celebration of Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s fundamental contributions to the world of contemporary manga, Japan Society is hosting MANGA MADNESS!

So, if you love manga and like to draw, submit your own previously unpublished manga and have it judged by world renowned manga master, Hiroki Otsuka, our Mangaka-in-Residence!

Prizes will be awarded for Best Overall entry and for 1st place in two separate categories: A Comic Strip Inspired by Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Doujinshi.

Best Overall prize winner will receive a $75 gift certificate for the Kinokuniya bookstore and 1st place winners will receive $50 gift certificates for Kinokuniya. Winners will also receive an exhibition catalog from Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection, a special mystery bonus prize and have their artwork displayed at Japan Society!

Click here to find the Rules and the Entry Form!

The Japan – China – US Triangle

Considering the fact that East Asia Forum has been reporting almost obsessively over the relationship between China and the United States, the United States and Japan, or Japan and China, it's obvious that whatever the results of this tense triangle are, their influence will be global.

Left to right: Philip Berkowitz, Henry Liu, George Pierce, Timothy Wilkins.

Japan and the U.S. have enjoyed the closest of relationships, politically and economically, for the last sixty years. However, China’s emergence as a world economy in the past decade has made it a power to be reckoned with. Japan Society will host a breakfast panel discussion that focuses on the business experience of multinational companies -- and their counsel -- in navigating mergers and other alliances among China, Japan and the United States, nations with completely divergent cultures, histories, and legal systems.

We've got a great line up for this event.

Speakers:
Carl Cheng, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP
Henry Liu, Chairman and Managing Partner of China Practice, Nixon Peabody LLP
George Pierce, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Toyota Tsusho America, Inc.
Timothy Wilkins, Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Moderator:
Philip Berkowitz, Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP

It's open to the public, completely free, and happening on April 20th! 

Artists: Sanaa & Contemporary Bamboo Masters

Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the Japanese architectural firm Sanaa, have won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession’s highest honor.

“They explore like few others the phenomenal properties of continuous space, lightness, transparency and materiality to create a subtle synthesis,” the jury citation said. “Sejima and Nishizawa’s architecture stands in direct contrast with the bombastic and rhetorical. Instead, they seek the essential qualities of architecture that result in a much appreciated straightforwardness, economy of means and restraint in their work.”

According to The New York Times, the pair’s buildings include the acclaimed New Museum in New York, a sculptural stack of rectilinear boxes on the Bowery, which was completed in 2007. The first Sanaa project in the United States was a glass pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art, completed in 2006. It holds the museum’s collection of glass artworks, reflecting that city’s history as a major center of glass production.

Although their work has been concentrated in Japan, Mr. Nishizawa and Ms. Sejima have designed projects in Germany, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the United States. Among their most recent projects is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, which appears in the above photo.

 Honda Shōryū (b. 1951) Untitled, 2006. Bamboo, 18 1/2 x 39 x 14 1/2 in. Jeanne and Michael Klein.

The Japanese have a stunning history in design and architecture in a variety of mediums. Sunday Morning on CBS News did a great segment called Japanese Bamboo Art that discusses the history of the use of bamboo in art and architecture and features artist Shochiku Tanabe.

And last year, Japan Society hosted an exhibit featuring the contemporary works of bamboo masters, such as the piece above by Honda Shōryū, which demonstrates the phenomenal lengths traditional materials can be taken to.

You can check out an online gallery of photos from the exhibit here

Films Galore!

 The Ramen Girl (C) Digitalsite Corp./Media 8 Entertainment

Shrinking from ten days to two, eighteen feature films to nine, and migrating east from last year's Santa Monica location to the New Beverly Cinema, the 2010 Japan Film Festival offered large crowds a taste of the past year in Japanese cinema.

Check out LA Weekly's fantastic coverage along with trailers for some of the most popular films here.

“The most well-attended and talked about L.A. premiere was with no question Ramen Girl, with a noodle cooking Brittany Murphy scrubbing toilets under the stern eye of revered actor Toshiyuki Nishida.

Besides the fact that it would be hard for a middle-aged salary man with twenty years of work under his belt to afford the Tokyo apartment Abby (Brittany Murphy) lives in as a beginning copywriter, Ramen Girl is a must see for anyone who fancies a good bowl of piping hot chashu ramen.

Nishida’s performance as Abby’s whiskey-inhaling teacher, Kimiko Yo as his kind-hearted wife and Tsutomu Yamazaki as the bow-inducing godfather of ramen (both from last year’s award winning film, Departures) gave exceptional performances supporting Abby’s coming of age story as she takes on the art of ramen.”

Japan's Society's Globus Film Series Mad, Bad...& Dangerous to Know is about to begin showcasing Mariko Okada films, including:

	Impasse A.K.A. Flame and Women and Flame of Feeling 炎と女 (Hono to onna) Directed by Kiju Yoshida, 1967 Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 7:30 PM Buy Tickets
	The Affair 情炎 (Joen) Directed by Kiju Yoshida, 1967 Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 7:30 PM Buy Tickets
	Woman of the Lake 女のみづうみ (Onna no mizuumi) Directed by Kiju Yoshida, 1966 Sunday April 18, 2010 at 6:30 PM Buy Tickets

The grand finale of the series will be Two Wives, which features not only the alluring Okada but also Ayako Wakao. This is the first time this film will be officially screened outside of Japan and with two powerful female leads, it's not one to miss.

News Blast

AFP/File/Yoshikazu Tsuno

Risk of Japan going bankrupt is real, say analysts

Greece's debt problems may currently be in the spotlight but Japan is walking its own financial tightrope, analysts say, with a public debt mountain bigger than that of any other industrialised nation. Public debt is expected to hit 200 percent of GDP in the next year as the government tries to spend its way out of the economic doldrums despite plummeting tax revenues and soaring welfare costs for its ageing population. Based on fiscal 2010's nominal GDP of 475 trillion yen, Japan's debt is estimated to reach around 950 trillion yen -- or roughly 7.5 million yen per person.

As violence escalates, Japan firms cringe

The nearly month-long street clashes in Bangkok have bought much commerce to a standstill. Japanese companies with operations in Thailand are no exception. Because of its location, Bangkok is ideally situated as an export base for Japanese companies with business dealings in the West and in Asia. Some business leaders fear that a prolonged suspension could hurt the trend toward a global economic recovery.

ANA prospers while rival suffers

Business was booming for All Nippon Airways Co. in February as ailing rival Japan Airlines Corp. suffered its second successive double-digit fall in international passenger numbers. JAL said Monday that the number of passengers on international routes stood at 804,191 in February, down 10.3 percent from the same month in 2009. Passenger numbers fell 10.7 percent in January.

Start-up rents out Tokyo's tight spaces

Japan is famous for its ability to make the most of limited space. The cocoon-like capsule hotels were first developed here and many single city dwellers live in tiny studio apartments known as rabbit hutches. Now, a new online real-estate marketplace is taking that trait to new levels. Nokisaki.com, named after the Japanese word for the space that juts out from the edge of a building, seeks pockets of "dead space" around cities and converts them into short-term rental property. In Tokyo, where every sliver of land is at a premium, a few feet of unused private property near the front entrance of an apartment building can be used to sell muffins.

Not shaken, Japanese martinis are stirred. And stirred.

Thirteen stirs. Plus one-half. That's just part of the recipe for a classic Japanese cocktail called mizuwari. Cocktail culture in the United States has blossomed, with bartenders across the country rejecting syrupy sweet-and-sour mixes and fluorescent cherries for homemade bitters and microdistilled spirits. But in Japan, things are even more serious. Bartenders spend 10, maybe 20 minutes, carving individual cubes out of blocks of ice. After liquids and ice are poured into a shaker, bartenders jostle the thing just so, to achieve the right temperature and texture.