ART & CULTURE (4)
Hanjo
Hanjo
German Photographer, Yoram Roth, Pays Tribute to Yukio Mishima’s Noh Opera Adaptation
A sullen geisha sitting alone at a station, Hanako waits, For years, she has waited every day in the same place, gripping a treasured fan in her hand.
Such an exquisite beauty, she was noticed by all. The world wondered how she could be so passively obsessive. The conclusion was that she must be mad.
What her spectators didn’t know was that the fan she held was the embodiment of a vow she had made to the man who possessed her heart. Hanako had promised to love Yoshio eternally. When he had to depart, he had given her a fan to represent their love, which would be requited upon his return. And so she had sworn that she would wait.
In Memoriam: Nagisa Oshima
How a studio trained director quit the system to go independent and become one of the most influential filmmakers in Japanese history.
NAGISA Oshima, one of Japan’s most influential and controversial film directors, died January 15 in a hospital near Tokyo at the age of 80. Several years prior I attended a few screenings of his work at a Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s retrospective, the first showing of his films in North America in over two decades. It was during the “In the Realm of Oshima” retrospective that I discovered the genius of Ôshima, a genius to be honored with his passing.
Nagisa Oshima Interviewed by Nick Bornoff
Reprint of August 1983 article
You switch on your TV set any day of the week and there’s Oshima Nagisa conversing about things sociological on a mid-day women’s program or on the panel of a “Whodunit” murder-quiz or, a few days ago, introducing the highlights of Star Wars. He even appears clad in shorts and wielding a butterfly net in a current anti-cockroach TV commercial. Ten years ago, Oshima Nagisa was the darling of dissent, the hirsute enfant terrible of the Japanese cinematic New Wave which he had virtually created in 1960. Whatever Oshima was then, it was and still is impossible to hang a label on him. His radical ideas and politically oriented films placed him in the camp of the leftists, but his Night and Fog in Japan denounced the power-hungry in-fighting and monolithic structure of Japan’s leftist factions. In a country in which everyone voluntarily ascribes to one group or other, Oshima stands alone.
TATTOO CULTURE TAKES HOLD
In Japan, tattoos have long been associated with yakuza gang members. Today, tattoos represent a form of self-expression that is here to stay.
Tattoo You
Tattooing through the Ages
For centuries, many cultures around the world have practiced the art of tattooing including tribal groups in Borneo, Cambodia, Europe, Japan, the Mentawai Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, Nigeria, North America, the Philippines, South America, Taiwan, and Turkey. “Britons” translates as “people of the designs” and the British remain the most tattooed in Europe.
Tattoos no longer taboo?
The cultural status of tattooing has evolved from being considered an anti-social activity in the 1960s to a trendy fashion statement in the 1990s. No longer are tattoos limited to the bikers, gangsters, rock stars and the military. Today, movie stars, professional sports figures, fashion models and other public figures who play a significant role in setting cultural norms and behavioral patterns are sporting tattoos.