I was very impressed by the Miyako Odori Geisha dance when I was in Kyoto last year. The music was fascinating because of its expressiveness and sophistication, broken purposefully by exclamations that added to the feeling of restrained eloquence. It gave me the idea to post few videos of Japanese music, here they are!
The soundtrack of Akira (1988) had also parts of classical Japanese music…
There are great Japanese music concerts in Europe, I attended to one few months after my trip to Japan at the Japanese Culture Institute of Cologne (it was played then by Kikuchi Naoko and Carin Levine). There seems to be a well established practice of playing the koto in disruptive ways…
Walt Disney Studios in Paris opened last year a new section called “Toy Story Playland”, which will also be launched soon in Disneyland Hong Kong. The area features a series of rides designed for children and based on the characters of the Toy Story franchise: RC Racer, Slinky Dog ZigZag Spin and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. Why choosing Toy Story for a new section of a theme park instead of the many other Disney franchises? There are many good reasons to pick it up, such as its popularity and the obvious merchandising opportunities of its toys. I would like to speculate here one more reason that might have led to that choice. Disney did consciously or not a very subtle cultural exercise in promoting cars, consumerism and the American army, in a politically correct way of course.
Play Time (1967) by Jacques Tati is a relatively unknown movie. It is a more than two hours long and highly sophisticated visual comedy with nearly no dialogues, which probably explains why it wasn’t a big success in the box office. The film is however the best criticism of modern society that I have ever seen, and is still very relevant today. It is also a sharp criticism on modern architecture, both capturing the ideals of modernism and pointing at its delusiveness.
Here is an interesting text that I’ve read at the Kaj Franck exhibition being held at the Design Museum of Helsinki:
In the mid sixties, the idea of anonymity with functional objects inspired a lively debate. In 1965, the Nuutajärvi Glasssworks announced that it would cease using designer’s names in cunjonction wth mass-produced commodities. This was based on the idea that the designer was putting his or her name to products for which he or she could not solely claim the credit or, in negative cases, be blamed. Artist director Kaj Franck: “A serial production design should not be one of which people grow tired. it should be so relevant that it ‘lasts’ for years and decades, and so unobstrusive that the user doesn’t start to wonder who designed it. The factory’s mark should suffice as the producer’s name”. (Kaunis Koti magazine)
