And now the bookings are live for Scotland Loves Anime’s second weekend, over at the Edinburgh Film House from Friday 15th October until Sunday 17th. Films on show include Summer Wars, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, Redline, and One Piece: Strong World. There is also a rare chance to catch Akira in a cinema.
The organisers are flying in voice actor/director Michael Sinterniklaas from America to talk about dubbing anime, and on the 15th I’ll be handling the morning session of the education day, discussing the miseries that anime creators face in dealing with sponsors, producers and audiences. I will also sign any Schoolgirl Milky Crisisthat is proffered, so it’s yet another chance for you to amaze your friends with a personalised copy of the book that the Comics Journal praised for its “easy wit” and “sparkling humour”.
“I turned 55 last year,” notes Mamoru Oshii. “When you’re young, there’s so many things you want to do, so many mountains to climb…. Then, it was like I woke up. Suddenly, I’m the adult on the production, and the staff are all younger than me. I thought, very deeply, very strongly, that this film had something to say to the young people of today.”
Oshii is speaking of a common theme in science fiction all around the world, ever since the end of WW2 – the concept that today’s children have never had it so good, and yet don’t appreciate their luck. “Modern Japanese youth live in a country without hunger, without war, without revolution. They don’t have to worry about clothes or food or a home. Everything is just handed to us. But on the flipside, I can’t help but wonder if that is really a sort of misfortune…. Now I’ve got to this age, I wonder if this easy living isn’t doing them more harm than good.”
Hiroshi Mori’s Sky Crawlers was the first of several books to be published about the “Kildren”, clone-like soldiers in an unspecified future war, who fight similar artificial people in what is either the most savage reality TV show ever made, or a genuine war fought by proxy in order to avoid damage to “real” people. Although the origin of the Kildren is no real secret, they are discouraged from dwelling on the implications. Nevertheless, many react to their existence with apathy – after all, what difference does it make if they die in battle if a replacement will be rolled off the production line within days?
Hiroshi Mori’s books have sold over eight million copies in Japanese, and are clearly immensely popular with the young. But director Mamoru Oshii wished to turn Sky Crawlers into a film for his own purposes, regarding it as “a work that should be made into a movie for young people now,” not because it is a book they read, but because, in Oshii’s view, of the attitudes they hold.
Although Sky Crawlers was the first in the sequence of five novels to be published, it is actually one of the last stories in the chronological narrative. Other books, telling the stories of Kusanagi’s first meeting with the Teacher, the fate of Kannami’s predecessor, and the aftermath of the events in Sky Crawlers, were deliberately released out of order, as part of Mori’s desire to make it clear to readers that the books were more rewarding if read out of sequence, leaving the reader as much in the dark about past events as newly-arrived Kildren.
“I guess I got the offer for the film rights about three years ago,” Mori recalls, “when I was writing the second book in the series. I’d always thought that I’d written something unfilmable.” The news came in that Production IG, celebrating its 21st year of operations, wanted to turn Sky Crawlers into a film. Mori was initially reluctant.
“Then I heard that Mamoru Oshii was going to be the director. I thought to myself, ‘Ah, well if it’s going to be Mamoru Oshii, then we’ll be okay.’ I remembered in particular his work on Avalon, and I thought this is a guy I know who will bring out the beauty in my work.” Continue reading →
Details are now up online of the first weekend of Scotland Loves Anime, to be held at the Glasgow Film Theatre on 9th and 10th October 2010. Screenings include Redline and Trigun Badlands Rumble, the latter to be introduced by Satoshi Nishimura and Shigeru Kitayama.
I shall be there introducing a bunch of other films, including Summer Wars and Professor Layton & The Eternal Diva. Someone has already asked on the Twitter feed if I will be signing copies of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis. God, yes! In fact, this is Glaswegian anime fans’ big chance to bring in a copy of SMC. I can sign it to you, to your mum, or to that anime fan you are hoping to impress with a bespoke gift this Christmas. So get over to Amazon and order your copies now!
Andrei Borisov’s epic film By the Will of Genghis Khanpresents the historical figure Temujin not as the terrifying bogeyman of European lore, but as he is remembered across much of the East, as a just ruler, a lawgiver, and a man of honour. It places the lifestyle of the steppe peoples front and centre, presenting the ever moving, herd-following Mongols, Naimans and Buryats as the norm, and questioning the “civilised” notion of putting down roots in one place. The history of Central Asia has long been a story of tension between nomads and farmers; By the Will of Genghis Khan deliberately pushes a nomad’s eye view of the beauty and wonder of life on the steppes.
“In the province of Yeka Mongol, there was a certain man called Chinghis. This man became a mighty hunter. He learned to steal men, and to take them for prey. He ranged into other countries taking as many captives as he could, and joining them unto himself. Also, he allured the men of his own country unto him, who followed him as their captain and ringleader to do mischief.”
— Friar John of Pian de Carpini, 13th century AD
“Not long ago, Genghis Khan evoked only unpleasant memories; he was thought of as a tyrant,” producer Vladimir Ivanov told Variety. “The film will strike a wide audience with its honesty about complex historical facts.”
Temujin (played here by three actors at different stages of his life) might have been a famous Mongol, but the extent of his empire from the edges of Europe to the Pacific coast ensured that his memory had a much larger footprint. The activities of his grandsons, who conquered Hungary, Persia and China, ensure that the name Genghis Khan is a bankable movie idea across the whole of Eurasia. By the Will of Genghis Khan is a truly international production, growing out of a novel and play first performed in the Republic of Yakutia, adapted into cinema form with co-producers in the USA, and a cast including members from China, Germany and a dozen Russian republics. But the bulk of its talent and industry is rooted not in Mongolia as one might expect, but in the vast region of Siberia – once ruled by Genghis Khan, now the Russian Far East. Continue reading →
Higanjimais a multiple pun in Japanese. It literally means Equinox Island, or the Yonder Isle, perhaps even The Island on the Other Side. However, as noted by the characters when they first arrive on the notorious “vampire island”, it is also a reference to higanbana (Lycoris radiata), the red-flowered spider lilies whose poisonous bulbs are sometimes strewn at the edges of Japanese farmhouses to kill mice. Flowering around the time of the autumn equinox, spider lilies have become associated in Buddhist tradition with the onset of winter, and hence the threshold between life and death. They should never be presented to a living person.
In Japan, spider lilies are usually associated with graveyards. In Chinese and Japanese legend, they are said to be the flowers that grow in hell, and also the flowers that mark the path towards reincarnation. For this latter reason, they are sometimes presented as bouquets to the deceased at Japanese funerals. Another superstition suggests that if two associates will never meet again, spider lilies will be found in their path as they part. Hence the ominous tension that surrounds the characters as they come ashore at the island, to find that every path, in every direction, bears the flowering symbol of eternal separation and death.
Koji Yamamoto’s original 2003 manga Higanjima was soon snapped up as a game adaptation, turned into a text-based interactive adventure by Now Productions, released in Japan on the PSP in 2005. The action of the 15-rated game would be reflected in the later movie, with the player guiding Akira on his search for his missing brother. The manga story, however, extends far beyond the events in the movie, introducing numerous new forms of enemy, and setting up Higanjima as the perfect survivalist playground – an island that is literally off the map, infested with evil, and inviting return visits by adventurous heroes. Running at thirty volumes and still ongoing, it is also very popular in France, where many volumes have been translated as L’Ile des Vampires.
Higanjima the manga, and its game spin-off are grab-bags of horror ideas. It eagerly mixes the locked-room combat of Battle Royale with the viral horror of Resident Evil, with just a dash of the old-time religion of The Wicker Man, and presents that most tantalising of locations for the role-playing gamer – a private island of adventure, close to home and yet inhabiting a world of myth and magic. Continue reading →
With a gruelling shoot that spanned April 2007 to September 2008 after its leading man’s injury on set, filmed in the sub-tropical heat of Japan’s idyllic Ryukyu island chain, Kamui: The Lone Ninjarecreates a lost world of fishing villages on the Inland Sea, a time when the samurai wars were done, and the people of Japan returned to their fields and their boats. It also evokes a savage era where all unwelcome influences were ruthlessly suppressed, and plays with the notion that the Japanese peasantry of the 17th century had formed secret societies of semi-magical assassins.
The son of a renowned left-wing artist, Kamui’s creator Sanpei Shirato (1932- ) was one of the last of the kamishibai painters, making panels of artwork for Japanese “magic lantern” shows. A narrator, or benshi, would tell a lively story to a crowd while pushing pictures through a lit frame. Soon after Shirato’s first kamishibai work, Mister Tomochan (1951), the advent of television destroyed the medium, leading Shirato to transfer his skills into comics. His early work included adaptations of the animal stories of Ernest Seton and works for girls, but it was as the creator of Ninja Bugeicho (Chronicle of a Ninja’s Martial Achievements, 1959-1962) that he achieved true fame. Even in his early days, Shirato was notable for his insistence on an external narrator, a voice outside the story itself that would comment on the action and steer the viewers like an old fashioned benshi.
His first big success in the TV world was Shonen Ninja Kaze no Fujimaru (Fujimaru the Wind Ninja, or Ninja the Wonderboy), broadcast in 1962. His original comic was called Ninja Clan, but in a tense compromise for Shirato the committed socialist, the show was renamed to establish a link with its sponsor, Fujisawa Pharmaceuticals. Each episode of the rollicking boys’ drama would open with a Fujimaru theme song that transformed into a jingle for Fujisawa. Notably, it would close with a live-action sequence in which a breathless interviewer would quiz Masaaki Hatsumi, an accomplished martial artist who claimed to know the secrets of the ninja world, and who imparted them to an entire generation of Japanese boys. Continue reading →
Since this week is probably the best (and only) time to post anything I have about the Frank Chickens, another article from the vault, this time about Kazuko Hohki’s book Underfloor World (Rondon no Yukashita)
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Kazuko Hohki is the driving force behind the Frank Chickens pop phenomenon, but also the author of a Japanese-language book about life in London. Hohki has taken her title, Underfloor World, from The Borrowers, the children’s book that drove her to come to England in the first place. It also influenced her album of the same name and my favourite Frank Chickens song, “Megalomaniacs”.
Underfloor World was first published in serial form, and has a helpful table of contents that facilitates ‘dip-into’ reading. Hohki’s own method of organising her material consists of subdividing the contents lists into seven extra categories: Life, Love, Work, Women, Japan, The World and ‘The Job’ (ie. her personal career). Within these seven areas, she covers an awful lot of ground, and with headings like ‘World Peace through Karaoke’ and ‘The Siberian Grandfather of Punk’, you know you’re going to be on a magic carpet ride to weirdoville.
The happiest readers will already be big fans of the Frank Chickens. You’ll get insider gossip on the band’s many line-up changes, and backstage goings-on as they perform around the world. Those readers who are not already Chickenised may find those sections tiresome, as it often takes it for granted that you will be interested in the band’s activities, or the solo acting career of Hohki herself. After reading a Tokyo Journal article about Hohki, I was under the mistaken impression that her book was a tourist guide to London’s less-known sites, whereas it is in fact a very personal emigrée diary. The title of her original column in Kachin magazine was “Kazuko’s Diary”, which should have been a hint, I suppose.
Hohki’s notes on English life are all the more interesting because they are a window on the way Japanese people view us, and her autobiographical asides are in keeping with a long-standing tradition in Japanese literature. I think I managed to inadvertently insult the author when I told her I’d be recommending her book to students of Japanese. She claims to have modelled her writing style on that of Yukio Mishima, and she certainly reproduces his deadpan, rather British, narrative structure. However, that’s where the resemblance ends.
For a start, Mishima was never this funny. It never ceases to amaze me how the Japanese sense of humour is so close to that of the British. If Douglas Adams ever had the chance to work with such a wonderful book designer, I’m sure that he, too, would include both an Afterword and an Afterafterword, a DIY secret society membership kit, and a fold-out activity section. Also, Hohki has binned Mishima’s pretty but tiresome practice of using hentaigana, extremely difficult characters where simpler ones will do. This makes it easier-going for a start, aided still further by the fact that her subject matter is often already familiar to English-speakers. So while you’ll be reading a book written by a Japanese for the Japanese, you may find that it’s much easier to relate to the material. Can you really resist a deadpan discussion of the British penchant for Irish jokes, or a Japanese view of what it’s like to live in East London? I know that I can’t, and if you’re one of the increasing number of readers who tell us they’re learning Japanese, Underfloor World would be a rewarding place to begin looking at the Real Thing.
Jonathan Clements is the author of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade. This article first appeared in Anime FX magazine, sometime in 1996, as part of a Japanese-language book round-up under the original title “The Real Thing”.
In honour of Stewart Lee’s tirade against modern evils, and the possibility that the Frank Chickens might become comedy gods…
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The Frank Chickens are a trio, or a duo. Sometimes they’re more like an octo. But anyway, they’re all Japanese. Apart from the ones who aren’t. In fact, the Frank Chickens are a nebulous entity, born from the London Musicians’ Collective. They’ve had more members over the last ten years than Spinal Tap have had drummers, but the one unifying figure is the incomparable Kazuko Hohki. This one-woman entertainment conglomerate is a journalist, singer, dancer, puppeteer (don’t ask, but it involves Godzilla and Jack Kerouac) and educational psychology graduate. She also hosted Kazuko’s Karaoke Club for Channel 4 in 1987, whose quick demise brought sighs of relief from all over TV-land.
Hohki is a practised outsider, a professional gaijin if you will, whose concentrated weirdness has also received attention in her country of origin. She even wrote and starred in a Japanese sit-com called 90 Days Tottenham Pub, about the Frank Chickens’ ill-fated attempt to marry gay English aristocrats for a visa fiddle. There’s a lot of it about in Tottenham.
Hohki’s other claim to fame in her homeland is her concerted efforts to convince the Japanese that England isn’t all red buses and Harrods. Her book Underfloor World is a tourist guide for the Japanese non-tourist in the UK, presumably citing Tottenham as a major spot of perverse historical interest.
If you have ever seen the UK depicted on Japanese television, you will see something very different from ‘real life’. The Japanese media present a very idealised picture of our faraway land, selling Nescafé on the idea that it is drunk by tweeded Oxbridge undergraduates, with tourist programmes that concentrate on the more asinine elements of our national culture. Thus it is that Kazuko Hohki’s songs can really shock her home audience, who are faced with tales about the wide boy ‘Johnny Reggae’, and the dreary everyday life of ‘Living in Tottenham.’
Hohki lives in the no-man’s-land between her two ‘homes’, and she is equally uncompromising in her treatment of traditional Japanese stereotypes. ‘We are ninja’ is arguably their trademark, a poppy track that says while Westerners like to think of Japanese girls as demure geisha, these girls would rather be assassins: “You’re a ninja / I’m a ninja / Amidst the blinding sand / we disappear.” They also claim to feel up alligators on the train; not the kind of girls you’d like to meet among the cherry blossoms, that’s for sure. The real joy in ‘We are ninja’ comes when you find out the nonsensical chants in the background actually mean something in Japanese; this is another typically Frank Chickens touch, and it can lend a whole new level of appreciation to their music, not unlike discovering ‘Showaddywaddy’ means something obscene in Swahili. (It doesn’t, by the way).
There is similar in-yer-face bricolage in ‘Do the karaoke’, which begins like one more depressing Japanese ballad, but soon perks up when we hear “…I dumped my love in the Sumida river.” Some of the Frank Chickens’ best work is in a similar vein, not only because they can have a lot of fun mincing up the lyrics of traditional songs, but also because they can show off their musical ability. Some songs sound suspiciously like those 80s ‘electronic’ hits, where some muppet had just discovered what the green button did on his Casio, but there are also some marvellous tracks which incorporate traditional supporting instrumentals from the obscenely talented Clive Bell.
The Frank Chickens remain very much a live group, rather than studio performers. Occasionally the songs on their albums seem to be missing a certain something, and you can only find out exactly what when you see them live. Hohki makes no secret of her wish to be a permanent amateur, kicking her heels around the edges of the Tokyo/London pop scene and doing her best never to become ‘too English’ or ‘too Japanese’. She told the Tokyo Journal that London is the best place for her to ‘be herself’, and her real vocation seems to be standing up in front of bemused foreigners and trying to get them to be as zany and free as she is. This is what you’ll see at a Frank Chickens concert, where you’re treated to their silly costumes, their insane dancing, and their nasty habit of dragging members of the audience up on stage to humiliate themselves. This is not a particularly ‘Japanese’ habit, unless you count karaoke bars as institutions of ritualised humiliation, but this is yet another thing that makes Hohki and friends so exciting. They are not exclusively Japanese or exclusively British, but they live in a strange world between both cultures, and that gives them an insight and appeal that calls out to the weird in us all.
And now the bookings are live for Scotland Loves Anime’s second weekend, over at the Edinburgh Film House from Friday 15th October until Sunday 17th. Films on show include Summer Wars, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, Redline, and One Piece: Strong World. There is also a rare chance to catch Akira in a cinema.
“I turned 55 last year,” notes Mamoru Oshii. “When you’re young, there’s so many things you want to do, so many mountains to climb…. Then, it was like I woke up. Suddenly, I’m the adult on the production, and the staff are all younger than me. I thought, very deeply, very strongly, that this film had something to say to the young people of today.”
The first issue of 
Andrei Borisov’s epic film 
With a gruelling shoot that spanned April 2007 to September 2008 after its leading man’s injury on set, filmed in the sub-tropical heat of Japan’s idyllic Ryukyu island chain, 
The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog 