"What is a nation? Show me one! I don't want to be killed by an abstraction."

Death by Hanging・絞死刑

Dir. by Oshima Nagisa, 1968

Street of Love and Hope (1959)

VA - J Jazz Vol. 4: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan - Nippon Columbia 1968 -1981 - a new entry in BBE Music's excellent comp series

With J Jazz volume 4, the BBE J Jazz Bullet Train continues its journey traversing the expansive landscape of modern Japanese jazz. Volume 4 is the latest in the universally praised compilation series exploring the best, rarest and most innovative jazz to emerge from the Far East. Please take your seats for a first-class ticket to J Jazz central. This latest station stop off is with the famed Nippon Columbia label, one of the biggest labels in Japan, whose jazz output embraces every possible style imaginable. Focussing on the key years 1968-1981, J Jazz volume 4 sees compilers Tony Higgins and Mike Peden dig even deeper into their record collections and pull-out tracks that span styles ranging from solo to big band, jazz classical interpretations and heavy jazz rock, to febrile post-bop, white hot samba fusion, and modal psychedelic wig-outs. J Jazz volume 4 features icons such as drum master Takeo Moriyama, keyboard magi Hiromasa Suzuki, Fumio Itabashi, and Masahiko Satoh, and guitar wizards Kazumi Watanabe and Kiyoshi Sugimoto, alongside big band maestros and innovators Nobuo Hara and his Sharps and Flats, and Toshiyuki Miyama’s New Herd. Thunderous basslines nestle alongside glistening runs of electric piano, bubbling synths and air-tight drumming as the heavy psychedelic modal blues of Jiro Inagaki flows with the infectious samba grooves of Takashi Mizuhashi featuring Herbie Hancock; Shigeharu Mukai’s fusion funk epics take the music to another level and Mikio Masuda’s driving keyboard rhythms brings the heat to an incendiary dancefloor zone. With 7,000 words of extensive sleeve notes, J Jazz vol 4 comes in a triple 180g vinyl set inside a deluxe gatefold sleeve with obi strip plus a 4 page insert. The double CD features two bonus tracks not on the vinyl edition. Mastered at the Grammy-nominated Carvery Studio by Frank Merritt, this latest collection is a worthy successor to the preceding three volumes that have set the bar so high. J Jazz is curated for BBE Music by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden. 

Fumio Watanabe, from JCA Annual 8, 1989

Do-yun Yu and Akiko Koyama in Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968) Cast.: Do-yun Yu, Kei Sato, Fumio Watanabe, Hosei Kamatsu, Rokko Toura, Ishiro Ishida, Masao Adachi, Akiko Koyama. Screenplay: Michinori Fukao, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, Nagisa Oshima. Cinematography: Yasuhiro Yoshioka. Music: Hikaru Hayashi. Nagisa Oshima is one of the great artists of the second half of the 20th century whom nobody has heard of. That's an exaggeration, of course: Lots of cinéastes and students of Japanese film obviously know Oshima's work, but ordinary people who pride themselves on their knowledge of Kurosawa or Ozu often know little about him, unless it's his English-language film starring David Bowie, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). Maybe it's because Oshima doesn't lend himself to easy description: You can't take any one of his films as representative of the style and content of any of the others. There's a vast difference between the harrowing upperclass family drama The Ceremony (1971) and the poignant account of an abused child's initiation into crime, Boy (1969), or between the scathing look at rootless Japanese young people in Cruel Story of Youth (1960) and what is probably Oshima's best-known film in the West, the sexually explicit In the Realm of the Senses (1976). His willingness to experiment has tagged Oshima as the Japanese Jean-Luc Godard, but he seems to me more the heir to the great modernists of the early-to-mid-20th century: Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner, Brecht, Genet. Certainly Death by Hanging has been singled out as "Brechtian" for its outrageous transformation of politically charged subject matter, capital punishment, into something like tragic farce. It's also "Kafkaesque" in its lampoon of bureaucrats. But mostly it's an audacious transformation of a polemic into an uproarious and finally sad satire. The protagonist (Do-yun Yu) is called "R.," which immediately brings to mind Kafka's "K."  He has raped and murdered two young women and is about to hang in the Japanese prison's scrupulously neat death house. But the hanging doesn't take: R. simply doesn't die, and in the ensuing confusion, none of the prison officials knows what to do. There's a flurry of arguments about whether, having survived the hanging, he's even still R., his soul presumably having left the body after the execution. Things grow still more problematic after R. emerges from a post-hanging coma and doesn't remember who he is. Can they hang him again? Much of this hysteria is over-the-top funny, especially the determination of the Education Officer, played with farcical broadness by Fumio Watanabe, to restore R.'s memory by re-creating his past and his crimes. He was the son of poor Korean immigrants, and the satire shifts away from capital punishment to the Japanese treatment of Koreans, as the prison staff voices some of the worst prejudices and stereotypes that the Japanese have of Koreans. Eventually, the Education Officer, trying to re-create one of R.'s crimes, murders a young woman himself. But by that time, the film has departed from any resemblance to actuality into symbolic fantasy. It's a very theatrical film in the sense that even when it departs from the confines of the death house, where most of it takes place, and explores the outside world, talk dominates action. But where that might have been a strike against the film, it adds to its claustrophobic quality, the feeling of being plunged deeply into an absurd but entirely recognizable situation. Maybe that should be called "Oshimaesque." 

Japan PM to Reinstate Ex-Reconstruction Minister Watanabe, Sack Incumbent -Kyodo : Inside US

Japan PM to Reinstate Ex-Reconstruction Minister Watanabe, Sack Incumbent -Kyodo : Inside US

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will reinstate former reconstruction minister Hiromichi Watanabe to replace incumbent Kenya Akiba, whom he plans to sack on Tuesday, Kyodo News reported. Opposition parties have accused Akiba for being involved in violating election laws as well as for having ties with the controversial Unification Church. (Reporting by Kantaro Komiya;…

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Let’s Hear Voices from Fukushima: “I feel like a tree in my garden is gone and my roots have been pulled out” — nuclear-news

Let’s Hear Voices from Fukushima: “I feel like a tree in my garden is gone and my roots have been pulled out” — nuclear-news

Vol. 41: Talk Session “Let’s Hear Voices from Fukushima! vol.41 Report (Part 2) “I feel like a tree in my garden is gone and my roots have been pulled out” (Kazue Watanabe) October 26, 2022Let’s Hear from Fukushima!” In the first part, Fumio Horikawa, who evacuated from the town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture to […] Let’s Hear Voices from Fukushima: “I feel like a tree in my garden is gone and…

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Japanese Famous Brands

People in India would soon be able to enjoy the juicy and sumptuous taste of Japanese apples – also called Ringo as the Indian government has finally approved the import of apples from Japan. Till now, the import of Japanese apples into India is completely prohibited to check the entry of pests though Japan is allowed to export peaches and cherries to India.

According to the Japanese Embassy and Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) officials, the Indian authorities approved import the  Japanese apples during Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to India in March this year. This approval is, however, subject to the pre-inspection approvals and clearance of quarantine procedures.

“In October, an Indian team of inspectors would visit apple farms and exports facilities in Japan to check the situation of the farms, and see how do they grow apples safely and naturally. We expect the first commercial shipment of apples to reach India after this sometime by the end of this year,” SUZUKI Takashi, Chief Director-General, JETRO, India and WATANABE Ikko, First Secretary, Embassy of Japan told Asian Community News (ACN) Network.

Fumio Watanabe, from JCA Annual 10 (1993)

Nagisa Oshima

- Boy

1969

Silence Has No Wings (1966)

Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子) and Fumio Watanabe (渡辺文雄) in a lobby card for  Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (女囚さそり　第４１雑居房), 1972, directed by  Shunya Ito (伊藤俊也).

http://fuckyeahmeikokaji.tumblr.com

Finally!!! I am FINALLY done with part of the big project I’ve been working on! I still have 5-6 more ocs to do, and they’ll be in the part 2 (Found right here!) ! These are all the heroes / heroes to be I have so far in my list of BNHA OCs! :D Going from left to right:

- Makoto Toyama, aka “Mime”. Quirk: Mute. They can stop soundwaves in a certain radius around them

- Yasu Shima, aka “Multiplicity”. Quirk: Clones. She’s able to make clones of herself, up to 5, each one taking an aspect of her personality for the time it’s active. 

- Norio Kawakami. Quirk: Blueprint. Anything he touches he’s able to create a mental blueprint of to break it down, including creating floor plans of buildings. 

- Fumio Watanabe, aka “Boost”. Quirk: Boost. His quirk powers up other people’s quirks so long as he’s within proximity of them, or it can negate drawbacks of a person’s quirks. 

- Takara Watanabe. Quirk: Discord. Depending on their emotions, they will manifest a different elemental quirk, though it’s consistent. Fatigue is a quirk that intensifies gravity, excitement is electricity, happiness is wind, anger is fire, fear is ice, sadness is water, etc. 

- Danielle Fisher, aka “Updraft”. Quirk: Aero kinesis. She’s able to manipulate the air around her with incredible precision, typically using it to fly or to lift things she physically wouldn’t have been able to

- Max Fisher, aka “Igneo”. Quirk: Magma Blood. His quirk makes his blood magma-like, and hardens the skin around the activated areas to a tough rocky texture. However in order to move with his quirk activated he has to heat up the area, leading to him radiating heat and not being able to be touched by someone non-resistent to heat. Cooling down limits his mobility. Damage taken with his quirk activated leaves scars in the pattern of the magma trails. 

- Mai Kanemoto, aka “Monarch”. Quirk: Monarch Butterfly. She has the wings of a monarch butterfly, and they’re able to produce a neurotoxin powder that paralyzes those who inhale it.

Bad movie I have Death by Hanging aka Kôshikei 1968

#Nunday viewing: School of the Holy Beast (Seijū gakuen 1974)