Tour of Asakusa

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo can be crudely described as a metropolis of soaring and undulating concrete collectively illuminated by a glow of garish neon. Yet bordering the Sumida River in the east is the Asakusa district, which adheres to many of those characteristics but also retains certain cultural elements of life back in the Edo Period (1615 – 1868).

Tourists and locals will often flock to the area’s temples and shrines, which create a lively atmosphere around the New Year’s holidays, a prelude to the various festivals and carnivals held throughout the year.

It was once Japan’s version of Vaudeville, with one district having offered many performance theaters, a legacy that still lingers today.

Ladies in kimono shuffling through Asakusa’s narrow alleys is not an unusual site as it is one of Tokyo’s six remaining hanamachi, literally “flower town,” a reference to the locales in which customers can be entertained by a geisha.
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Pairity for charity: Tokyo porn channel raises funds for AIDS

TOKYO (TR) – Very few company presidents could sit in a conference room and casually explain why he will later this month allow the general public to enter his corporate headquarters and fondle the breasts of a selection of the female staff for a modest donation to charity. Yet Tsuyoshi Shiba, chief of provocative porn channel Paradise TV, is indeed one of them.

“By simply broadcasting our programs, that is one way to interact with society,” says the soft-spoken 60-year-old from beneath a billowing mane of dark hair. “But we wanted a more direct interaction with our viewers so that we can better distinguish ourselves.”

The use of “direct” might be the understatement of the year.

Over the last weekend of August, viewers are invited to the Shinjuku studio of Paradise TV, which will be broadcasting live on its satellite provider Sky PerfecTV!, to grasp the exposed chests of five of the female staffers who anchor the channel’s naked news programs — and yes, the segments are exactly as revealing as the name implies — for a suggested donation of 1,000 yen that goes to the prevention of AIDS, a condition that continues to be a worsening problem in Japan. Read more

Porn again: Historic Tokyo ‘pink’ theater upgrades, seeks female audience

TOKYO (TR) – The Kabuki-za theater in Ginza is not the only notable Tokyo structure dating back to the 1950s that has shut its doors this year.

With large illuminated lettering affixed to its pasty white facade proclaiming “Adult Movies,” the all-night Ueno Okura Theater, located in Taito Ward close to Shinobazu Pond and at the edge of Ueno Park, has been entertaining fans of erotic cinema for nearly five decades.

The two-screen building, however, closed Saturday due to safety concerns and aesthetic problems resulting from its aged interiors. But the theater widely regarded as Japan’s top outlet for soft-core “pink” pornographic films will continue inside a new complex across the alley and begin targeting a different type of cinemagoer: women.

“Female customers can’t typically come to this kind of place because they feel embarrassed,” says the theater’s bespectacled general manager, Hidekazu Saito. “But we want them to come without hesitation.” Read more

The celestial journey of Shoko Tendo

TOKYO (TR) – Upon introduction, author Shoko Tendo does not offer the image of a woman who has spent much of her life mixed up with drugs and yakuza gangsters.

With straight brown hair and sharp facial features shaped by reconstructive plastic surgery, this 42-year-old daughter of a mobster reveals no visual hints as to her past, aside from the occasional glimpse of one of her elaborate tattoos peering from under the cuff of her long shirtsleeve.

She is not shy about revealing that striking artwork covering her pencil-thin frame. A courtesan with a dagger gripped in her teeth fills her back as serpents crawl along her arms and legs. Kanji characters and carp fill in the spaces between and around.

“In public, people don’t see tattoos,” explains the soft-spoken Tendo, seated in a coffee shop in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro Ward on a rainy day in February. “They disapprove. But when I grew up I saw my father and people around him with tattoos. It was close at hand, and I thought, that’s me.” Read more

Back to basics with Nobel Prize winner Masatoshi Koshiba

TOKYO (TR) – Following his graduation from the School of Science at the University of Tokyo in 1951, a young Masatoshi Koshiba departed on a two-week voyage by ship from Japan, still under Allied occupation following World War II, to the United States. He knew that with his father having served as an officer in Manchuria for the Imperial Army that there would be a psychological conflict. But after landing in Seattle, he was soon overwhelmed by something else altogether.

“The first impression I had of the U.S. was that it was such a big country,” says the soft-spoken Koshiba, 73, sporting a tweed jacket during an interview in April at Tokyo University, where he is professor emeritus. “People were eating a very big bowl of ice cream soda. And for me, during the war, that was something so high up in the sky. If these people are eating this everyday, I thought, it is no wonder that we lost the war.”

He graduated with a PhD in physics in 1955 from the University of Rochester, and through his future work he found more than sweet dreams high up in the heavens. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his observations of neutrino particles, which result from nuclear decay reactions, such as those taking place in stars like the sun. Read more

New wave of Japanese cult films look overseas

TOKYO (TR) – Japanese arthouse dramas and comedies routinely receive substantial critical acclaim internationally, but slipping under the radar and steadily gathering an overseas following is a new wave of low-budget cult films.

Japan’s domestic market continues to be dominated by films based on well-known comic books or television programs. Targeting foreign coin by exploiting interests in exotic Asia is another option.

One company responsible for the trend is Japan’s oldest studio, Nikkatsu, which last year launched its Sushi Typhoon gore label, whose aim is to assemble Japan’s best ultraviolent helmers.

“In the domestic market now, a collaboration with a television network is almost a necessity,” explains Nikkatsu’s Yoshinori Chiba, who has produced dozens of gangster and action thrillers. “But if you want to make a profit overseas, you have to do something different.” Read more

Tortoise return to Japan

TOKYO (TR) – Tortoise’s blending of dub, electronica and jazz over its two decades in existence has established the instrumental five-piece as the band that brought progressive rock into the present.

Yet 2009’s “Beacons of Ancestorship” sees the Chicago-based band, which will appear in Japan for two shows this week in Tokyo and Osaka, going in a different direction.

“Beacons,” the band’s sixth full-length, is much harder to pin down compared to its predecessor, the almost ambient “It’s All Around You” (2004) — and that was entirely deliberate. “It is our attempt to move on to something new,” explains bassist and guitarist Douglas McCombs. “We intentionally made it more raw, leaving some imperfection in the mix.” Read more

Koji Wakamatsu challenges merits of war with ‘Caterpillar’

TOKYO (TR) – From his start in soft pornography in the 1960s to “United Red Army,” the 2007 film that recounts Japan’s leftist student movements from four decades ago, director Koji Wakamatsu has never shied away from provocation. For his new war drama “Caterpillar,” he attacks the hypocrisy inherent in nationalism and the suffering of innocent civilians.

“More than anything, we must not be duped by figures of authority,” said the director following a screening of the film last month at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

The 74-year-old Wakamatsu grew up in a small farming village about 5 kilometers from Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture. He has childhood memories of the World War II air raids upon the metropolis and seeing it burning red.

“In my village, I regularly saw villagers sending off their youth and later welcoming them back dead, flags waving,” he said. “I wanted to make a film so that those memories would not be forgotten and provide an alternative to the sort of aesthetically pleasing visions of war that we now have, such as images of kamikaze or the noble idea of fighting a war for a nation.”

Adapted from a 1929 Edogawa Rampo 1929 short story that was banned from republication in 1939, “Caterpillar (see trailer below),” for which Shinobu Terajima (“Tokyo Tower”) won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, tells the story of lieutenant Kyuzo Kurokawa, played by Shima Ohnishi, who also starred in “United Red Army,” and his traumatic return to Japan as a limbless man during the second Sino-Japanese War in 1940. Kurokawa’s wife, Shigeko (Terajima), then endures extreme frustration and mixed emotions as she dutifully cares for him in honor of the Emperor. Read more

Saori Hara, Maria Ozawa and Shelly Fujii shine at 2010 porn awards

TOKYO (TR) – The last few months have been a whirlwind of activity for adult video (AV) starlet Saori Hara.

Just prior to being served papers in January for an “indecent” appearance in the photo book “No Nude by Kishin 1 20XX Tokyo,” Hara released her memoir “My Real Name is Mai Kato: Why I became an AV Girl.”

But certainly most memorable was her crowning last month as Best Actress at the Sky PerfecTV! Adult Broadcasting Awards. “I am so surprised to have received this wonderful award,” beamed the 22-year-old, attired in a low-cut light purple dress during the ceremony that took place at a theater in the love hotel area of Tokyo’s Shibuya district.

Now in its sixth year, the somewhat tongue-in-cheek event was a mix of accolades and entertainment that featured many of the hottest stars performing regularly in bondage and fetish roles on programming carried by satellite broadcaster Sky PerfecTV! Read more

‘It’s a return!’ — Nikkatsu resurrects ‘roman porno’

TOKYO (TR) – The promotional flyer says it all: “This is not a remake — it’s a return!”

Four decades ago, struggling studio Nikkatsu shifted its focus from action and gangster films to a form of soft pornography termed “roman porno” (an amalgamation of romance and pornography), a breakthrough genre for a major studio that was characterized by relatively substantial storylines blended with copious nude scenes.

“Danchizuma: Hirusagari no Joji” (Apartment Wife: Afternoon Affair), released in 1971, detailed the erotic extramarital activities of a married woman residing in one of Japan’s infamously bland suburban block-housing units.

“At that time society regarded it as a dirty film,” said the female lead, Kazuko Shirakawa, 62, at a speaking engagement at theater Eurospace in Tokyo’s Shibuya district in February. “It was not ordinary for a woman to be seen naked. The overall content was a bit shocking.” Read more

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