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TOKYO ~ More than a thousand people crowded into Minato ward’s Zojoji Temple to pay their final respects Sunday to movie director and screenwriter Shindo Kaneto (photo left), who died of natural causes on May 29 at the age of 100. A sought-after art director and apprentice to Kenji Mizoguchi in the 1930s, Shindo made a name for himself in the 1940s as a prolific and popular screenwriter before working as assistant director to such iconic filmmakers as Kon Ichikawa and New Wave titans Seijun Suzuki and Yazuo Matsumoro. In 1950 Shindo formed one of Japan’s first independent production companies and began to direct politically outspoken features with a distinct class-consciousness, focused principally upon the struggle of the lower and working classes – an interest which would culminate in his extraordinary study of a rural 20th century peasantry The Naked Island, considered by many to be Shindo’s masterpiece. Children of Hiroshima ~ 1953 Shindo’s real cinematic breakthrough, however, may have come in 1953 with his controversial Gempatsu no Ko (Children of Hiroshima), the first and among the most powerful Japanese narrative films to depict the atomic bombing of Shindo’s hometown and its aftermath. Gempatsu no Ko starred his regular leading lady Otowa Nobuko as a young teacher who returns to several years after the bomb in search of her former students – was a critical success when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The powerful and controversial film was released in the United States only last year, in a retrospective of Shindo’s work at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Hadaka no Shima (The Naked Island) ~ 1960 The Naked Island, released in 1960, is a stark, wordless drama, filmed in quasi-documentary style, about an impoverished farming family scraping out a living on a barren outcropping devoid of fresh water. The film, which has no dialogue, follows its characters’ lives of crushing toil on their daily pilgrimage to haul water by hand from the mainland. Shindo was also known for two critically praised horror films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). Both are set in Japan’s feudal era, a time of war, famine and lawlessness. Onibaba ~ 1968 In Onibaba, a woman and her daughter-in-law, desperate to survive, murder roaming samurai and sell their weapons and armor. In Kuroneko (The Black Cat), two peasant women, raped and killed by samurai, return as seductive, vengeful demons. [Japan Zone ~ RIP Shindo Kaneto] [The New York Times ~ Kaneto Shindo, Wide-Ranging Filmmaker, Dies at 100] [Harvard Film Archives ~ Masterworks by Kaneto Shindo]
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Maya Nakanishi was a 21-year-old dreaming of a tennis career when a five-ton steel girder fell on her at work severing her right leg below the knee. After six months of hospitalization, a resolute Nakanishi began training with a prosthetic limb and showed remarkable progress right away, qualifying for a berth on the Japanese team at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games. Although she barely missed medalling at the ’08 Paralympics, Nakanishi vowed to transform herself into one of the best prosthetic-wearing sprinters in the world, and a year later was accepted into a program that enabled her to train under gold medal triple jumper Al Joyner at a U.S. Olympic Training Center in California. Nakanishi is currently training in preparation for the 2012 London Paralympic Games to be held August 29 till Sept. 9, the biggest paralympic event ever with 4200 athletes from 160 countries competing in 20 events. But world-class “amateur athletics” is a misnomer, and para-athletes often pay their own expenses to compete unlike they able-bodied counterparts. Nakanishi, now 26, found herself scrimping to make her athletic dreams come true. Aside from everyday living expenses, Maya had to pay to use training facilities and for her trainer. Paralympic regulations required that she have at least two prosthetic limbs for the competition. And at about 1.2 million yen ($14,500) a piece, they cost a pretty penny. During the worst times, Nakanishi found herself living in her car. But Maya lost a limb not her resolve. Earlier this year, she decided to publish a calendar featuring photographs of her posing semi-nude wearing nothing but her rose-pink prosthesis, raising quite a few eyebrows across prudish Japan. Some people went as far to criticize Maya for “humiliating disabled people” by baring her disability. “A prosthetic limb is something beautiful, not something you should be embarrassed at being seen with,” said Nakanishi, whose prosthetic legs are made of red fabric and fabric with a rose print. She also said that publishing a semi-nude calendar is also meant to bring more attention to the financial adversity fellow Paralympic athletes are facing. “No matter how much disdain and bashing I will receive for the calendar, I want to pave the way for younger athletes to shine,” she said. A limited 2,000 copies at 1200 yen (US$15) apiece are available. Visit Nakanishi’s website at ameblo.jp/n-maya/ for details. [Yahoo! Sports ~ Maya Nakanishi] [Spiegel Online ~ Maya Nakanishi: Ein Kalender als Paralympics-Ticket] [The Asahi Shimbun ~ Athlete poses seminude to fund Paralympic dream]
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TOKYO ~ A 9-year-old boy has become the youngest Japanese to have ever designed a government memorial coin after his artwork was chosen for one of the coins to be issued to commemorate the Great East Japan Earthquake reconstruction project. The design by Taichi Kojima, a fourth-grader at Odawara municipal Kuno Primary School in Kanagawa Prefecture, shows a boy holding Japanese flags, with “Ganbaro Nippon” (Hang on, Japan) written in colorful words beside him. This is the third time the government has chosen designs for memorial coins from the public. The previous coins commemorated the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1985 Tsukuba Exposition. [Kyodo ~ Commemorative Coin]
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The hackneyed phrase: “Well, back to the chalkboard,” is usually a roundabout way of admitting failure. But when Brooklyn-based Japanese American graphic artist Dana Tanamachi reaches for her chalk, stand back and be prepared to be stunned. Her layout concepts and font usage flows onto the slate directly from her mind’s eye through her hands ~ an art lost in this age of Adobe®. Webpage Biography: After graduating in 2007 with a BFA in Communication Design from The University of North Texas, Tanamachi moved to New York City to design Broadway show posters at Spotco—a leader in arts and live entertainment branding. In early 2010, she took a job working under Louise Fili at Louise Fili Ltd, specializing in the design of restaurants and food packaging. Currently, Dana works full time as a custom chalk letterer and has been commissioned by clients such as West Elm, Rugby Ralph Lauren, Google, The Ace Hotel, Adidas, EveryDay with Rachael Ray, Lululemon Athletica, and Garden & Gun Magazine. She has been interviewed and featured by The Wall Street Journal, Design*Sponge, and The Great Discontent. In 2011, Dana was named a Young Gun (YG9) by the Art Directors Club and a Young Creative to Watch by HOW Magazine. Most recently, Tanamachi had the honor of creating O Magazine‘s first entirely hand-lettered cover for their February 2012 issue. Here’s Dana Tanamachi in time lapse:
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If you happen to pull off the highway in one of the more picturesque areas of Japan during the extended Golden Week (April 29 through May 6) you might be in for a surprise. Aghast truck drivers have found young couples pulling off the road not only to enjoy the beautiful scenery but each other. “There are too damned many of these outrageous people,” said a 45-year-old tanker driver. “We can’t see anything because they have curtains on their windows, but we can hear the women moaning and saying stuff.” (The Tokyo Reporter – Ribald Motorists)
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