Kyosho jutaku: Small house living in Japan

TOKYO (TR) – On one of Tokyo’s crisper mornings, ride the elevator up to the lounge on the 41st floor of the Shinjuku Park Tower building in Shinjuku and gaze in the direction of Mt. Fuji. The view will be of a nearly uninterrupted blanket of concrete and infrastructural morass that is likely unmatched anywhere in the world for its enormity and unsightliness. Blending to fill much of this scene are massive apartment buildings and smaller, block-like “mansions,” their bland concrete facades and uninspired designs resembling hospitals or penitentiaries.

Some architects, however, are in the process of adding small bits of color to this picture, both literally and figuratively. Small slivers of land that in days past may have been used for an industrial or commercial purpose are now the location of unique housing structures — a trend dubbed kyosho jutaku (micro living).

Watch the video (above) for a CBS news Sunday Morning program (May 23) that includes an interview with a Tokyo Reporter writer or read more about this topic here.

On the ‘Tokyo Vice’ beat with Jake Adelstein

TOKYO (TR) – The extortion, racketeering, prostitution and gambling rings associated with Japan’s yakuza criminal organizations have been written up in books and glorified in films too numerous to count. Yet a substantial first-hand peek inside this insidious underworld by a foreign journalist — not straitjacketed by Japan’s rigid press system — has not existed.

Enter reporter Jake Adelstein, a 40-year-old Jewish-American and the author of the recently released memoir “Tokyo Vice,” an account of his 12-year stint of working the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.

Following the successful completion of the paper’s entry exam in 1993, Adelstein began covering Japan’s seamier side. Written in a fast-paced, acerbic and sometimes humorous style, “Tokyo Vice” recounts his investigations into serial rape, child pornography, murder and his greatest scoop: providing details on how four gangsters were able to travel to the U.S. between 2000 and 2004 to receive liver transplants. “Either erase the story, or we’ll erase you,” was the subsequent threat from the particulars involved. “And maybe your family.” Substantial repercussions linger to this day. Read more

Toshio Maeda: Hentai pioneer

TOKYO (TR) – Toshio Maeda’s groundbreaking manga series “Urotsuki Doji” from 1986 firmly placed him in the history books as the pioneer of the genre known as hentai, or perverted. The work featured violent and graphic images of shapely young women being probed, felt, and fondled by the tentacles, elongated tongues, and miscellaneous extensions of creatures. The world of manga would never be the same again.

From that auspicious beginning, Maeda’s work blossomed over next two decades, one tentacle at a time. Subsequent work included the six-volume “Trap of Blood” and the very successful tentacle-rape opus “La Blue Girl.” Though a recent traffic accident has left him with limited drawing abilities, next year – fresh on the heels of the worldwide success of his recent “La Blue Girl” animation series – he plans on releasing a new anime feature and contributing to the women’s hentai manga magazine Amour. In preparation for the latter, he is being forced to change gears; much to his chagrin, he is poring over scripts for such TV shows as Ally McBeal to “understand women’s feelings.” This is in the hopes of creating a hentai piece that will satisfy the demands of females. Read more

Takeshi Oshima: adult manga artist

Takeshi Oshima’s home in west Tokyo seems very ordinary: His wife opens the door with a warm greeting, and soon after his son appears, tugging on her apron. But things change on the stairs that lead to the basement.

Large stacks of dusty manga comic books are on the edge of each step. Upon reaching the basement, more multi-colored volumes can be seen running half-way to the ceiling. A cluttered desk holds five mugs of pens and an inkwell. Just below are a drawing board and color pictures of bikini-clad young girls beneath heavy see-through plastic shields. These ladies are used as drawing guides for Oshima, who is a manga artist specializing in adult comics.

Oshima does not consider his comics to be pure hentai manga, whose focus is on the molestation of women through the use of elongated tongues, tentacles, or other long, thin probes. Though he has dabbled in the hentai genre, his 25-year career has mainly featured women simply enjoying sex. Read more