Par Patrick Kéchichian au Monde (14.03.2007).
"Samuel Beckett", Centre Pompidou, place Georges-Pompidou,
Paris-4e, galerie 2, niveau 6. Mo Rambuteau. Du 14 mars au
25 juin, de 11 heures à 21 heures ; fermé mardi. De 8 € à 10
€.
Catalogue : Objet : Beckett, éd. Centre Pompidou/IMEC, 128
p., 39,90 €.
By Bradley Winterton at Taipei Times (24.12.2006). On Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan, Duke Univ. Press :
For the last 12 months, Ian Condry has been organizing a research project at MIT and Harvard on Cool Japan: Culture, Media, Technology. So on the surface he may appear to be one of those young academics who desperately wishes he was even younger, and seeks to redeem himself from the staid image university life often attracts by immersing himself in the culture of the markedly and trend-settingly young. But this would be to do him an injustice. This new book, his first, shows he has the merit of plowing his own furrow in research, of being able to read and speak Japanese fluently, and of being able to write clearly and forcefully about contemporary Asian life.
He spent 18 months on intensive research for the book between 1995 and 1997 and, on this and other visits to Tokyo and elsewhere, has probed pretty much every aspect of the Japanese popular music business. He's talked to rappers, DJs, record company executives and fans. He's even talked to Japanese rappers' parents, which must be something of a world first.
By Carlin Romano at Philly.com (21.12.2006). On Dan Bloom, Bubbie and Zadie Come to My House :
Bloom says such letters moved him to keep pestering publishers to reissue the book, drawing 30 turndowns, before he contacted Rudy Shur of Square One. Shur, it turned out, had never met his grandparents, who were executed in a Polish concentration camp. Though he'd never published a children's book, Shur signed it up at Bloom's requested modest price: $1,818, which Bloom says symbolizes "double chai."
Bloom concedes the new edition, with its eye-catching Chagall-like illustrations, brightens the eyes of more than kids. He's optioned the book to Yellow Cab Pictures in Los Angeles, and hopes to produce a holiday special.
Also see my entry. Shalom aleichem.
Rising Sun of Nihon has a very good entry on "Matsuri". I'd like to add one more festival to that list : Asakusa Sanja Matsuri.
The first three headings rom The Independent (16.12.2006) :
A
Agnostic Those who neither affirm nor deny the existence of a creator, a creative cause or an unseen world, believing them either unknown or unknowable. See also: Wanting all the options
Anti-theist An atheist in a rage.
B
Brights An American initiative that attempts to rebrand atheists by calling them "Brights" ("A Bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural and mystical elements... "), much the same way as the chinese gooseberry was rebranded as a "kiwi fruit". However, unlike kiwi fruit, "Bright" has yet to take on universally. Find out more at www.the-brights.net. See also: Spot an atheist, how to
C
Cathedrals Glorious cultural monuments; excellent acoustic chambers; unreliable places of refuge (viz Thomas à Becket); hospitable homes, especially during harvest festival, to mice and bats.
Conversions, spurious deathbed Stories are often circulated of atheists recanting their views before death, but these are just as often disputed. Charles Darwin (below) for example, was alleged by the Christian evangelist Lady Hope to have renounced his theories of evolution and called for Jesus; his daughter Henrietta, who was with him at the time, strongly denied this. "I believe he never even saw Lady Hope," she wrote in 1922.
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (17.12.2006). On the NHK program. 
By Caroline Corbitt at Harvart Independent (14.12.2006) :
We are reportedly living in a post-postmodernist world, presumably because nobody has bothered to come up with a new literary “-ism” for more than a hundred years. It’s time to set aside this “post” fetish, lest man in the next century find himself the post of a post of a post, and Post cereals take over the world. The continuation of some form of modernism seems to me to be proof positive of academia’s anti-religious bent, for there’s an obvious new philosophy in town, and it smacks of God’s love. That’s right, Nietzsche aficionados, studiers of hermeneutics, and Foucault-quoting loonies. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to Earth, pre-Rapture.
By Elaine Lies at Reuters.com (14.12.2006) :
MORIOKA, Japan (Reuters) - It has a history of over 2,000 years and is as much a part of Japan as sumo wrestling and sushi. But sake, traditional rice wine, is losing popularity at home as more and more people opt for wine, beer, and cocktails.
"This is the national alcohol of Japan, but Japanese people won't drink it," said Yuzo Kuji, whose family brewery is located deep in the heart of a prime sake-brewing region centred around Morioka, some 462 km northeast of Tokyo.
Sake's share of Japan's alcohol market is dropping by nearly 10 percent a year as drinks like cocktails gain.
Now a new generation of sake brewers and sellers is pushing premium brews and innovative campaigns that include marketing to young people and shipping more of the beverage overseas, where consumption is rising.
By Anthony Faiola at Washington Post (13.12.2006) :
KYOTO, Japan His fingers muscled from almost a century of weaving, Yasujiro Yamaguchi worked the humming loom in his private workshop. Patiently lacing golden threads through a warp of auburn silk, he fashioned a bolt of kimono fabric blooming with an autumn garden in shades of tea green, ginger and plum.
But Yamaguchi, like Japan's signature kimono, is slipping into winter. At 102, he is among the last master weavers of Nishijin, the country's most celebrated kimono district, and his pace has slowed. He rubbed the morning chill from his knuckles, fitted his hunched shoulders deeper inside his indigo jacket and resolutely pushed on.
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (10.12.2006). — "So what is it in the Japanese character that can serve to help Japanese people through this muddle both at home and beyond?"
From The NY Times (01.12.2006) :
George W. S. Trow, a writer and media critic known for his biting lamentations over what he saw as the twilight of culture in late-20th-century America, was found dead on Nov. 24 in his apartment in Naples, Italy. He was 63 and had lived in Naples for the last few years.
The Italian authorities ruled that Mr. Trow’s death was due to natural causes, said Rory Nugent, a writer and longtime friend.
His writings at The New Yorker.
By Sebastian Smee at The Australian (06.12.2006). "There are only artists." (Gombrich)
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (03.12.2006). On what's talking place against the funeral business.
By Judith Thurman at The New Yorker (04.12.2006 Issue). "Fashion meets architecture in Los Angeles" :
Most of the architects in “Skin + Bones” emerged at about the same time, the early nineteen-eighties—a period of experiments with “deconstruction.” Jacques Derrida coined the term in his writing on linguistics, and parallel essays in the show’s catalogue—on architecture, by Hodge, and on fashion, by Patricia Mears, of the Fashion Institute of Technology—treat that pliable theory as the show’s intellectual bridge. As Mears notes, references to “deconstructed” clothing appeared in fashion criticism in the early nineteen-nineties, to describe the next, and predominantly Belgian, wave of iconoclasm—in particular, Martin Margiela’s fusion of structure and ornament, and his mythical vestiary of mutant garments. Like Kawakubo, and, indeed, most of the participants in “Skin + Bones,” he dismantled, ruptured, fractured, or fragmented, then reconfigured, not only clothing or buildings but the traditional logic behind them, which suddenly ceased to seem inevitable.
By Julie Mollins at Reuters/Yahoo! News (22.11.2006) :
As a child, Daniel Bloom remembers feeling left out as other children wrote to Santa Claus with their wish lists each year.
So when he grew up he decided to give Jewish children their own version of Santa by creating a story about a mythical set of grandparents called Bubbie and Zadie and encouraged Jewish children to write to them through a letter-writing campaign.
Bloom, who backed up his letter-writing campaign with a book about Bubbie and Zadie, says he has received over 10,000 letters since the campaign started in 1981 -- and he expected to receive more letters than ever this year.
His 1985 book entitled "Bubbie and Zadie Come to My House" about the grandparents flying from house to house on the first night of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah singing songs and telling stories has just been republished after 13 years out of print.
Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.com. Also see Amazon Connect.
By Christopher Scanlon at The Age (16.11.2006) :
WRITING in 2000 after almost 10 years of fighting in the Balkans, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek noted that much of the commentary on the war revealed as much about the prejudices of the commentators as it did of the combatants. In particular, Zizek observed the barely concealed racism running throughout much of the commentary on the Balkan wars: the conflicts were portrayed as the latest in a long history of vicious melodramas among infantile peoples whose cultures remained mired in tribal barbarity.
Par Régis Poulet à La Revue des Ressources (06.11.2006) :
Si les premiers psychanalystes, à une époque où l’Inde bénéficiait d’une assez grande notoriété, n’en reçurent que la mythologie, le Viennois Silberer, un des principaux collaborateurs de Freud à ses débuts, s’intéressa de près à la pensée indienne. A en croire Christine Maillard, Silberer était familier des travaux indianistes de l’époque, de ceux de Paul Deussen sur les Upanisad et le Vedânta, de ceux de Richard Garbe sur le Sâmkhya ainsi que de la traduction par Leopold von Schröder de la Bhagavad-Gitâ. Son œuvre permet « de prendre la mesure de l’importance d’une référence à l’Orient dans le processus d’une réappropriation par l’Occident de sa propre tradition et pour l’interprétation des symboles sur lesquels celle-ci s’est construite » Car, s’écartant du modèle freudien, Herbert Silberer voulut intégrer à la réflexion psychanalytique les données de l’ésotérisme alchimique occidental. Pour ce faire il passa par l’Orient indien où, comme le traditionaliste René Guénon, les connaissances de cet ordre lui paraissaient plus vivantes qu’en Occident.
Son usage herméneutique des doctrines indiennes, où la libération de l’âme hors de ses déterminations existentielles est le sujet principal, devait lui assurer la compréhension d’éléments obscurs de la tradition occidentale.
Régis Poulet entretient avec Leung Ping-kwan at La Revue des Ressources (06.11.2006) :
LPK : Il est intéressant que vous parliez d’Orient et d’Occident. En fait, j’ai un recueil de poèmes intitulé « DongXi », et, comme vous savez, en chinois « dong » signifie « orient » et « xi » « occident », mais les deux caractères réunis peuvent signifier « choses », « objets », « matières ».
Cette fois-ci, les poèmes de l’exposition française et qui sont imprimés en un petit recueil font partie de cet ensemble qu’Annie Curien a traduit sous le titre très judicieux : « De ci de là des choses »
Comme vous, je ne crois pas que l’Orient ou l’Occident doivent être monolithiques. Même lorsque nous parlons d’hybridité, il en existe de nombreux genres. Différentes sortes de rencontres culturelles. La généralisation ne me plaît guère. Dans les œuvres d’art, nous apprécions celles qui sont vives et pleines de couleurs mais qui peuvent, à l’instar de la nourriture, mettre en évidence différents niveaux d’associations et de signification !
J’ai dit que Hong Kong est tout sauf romantique et qu’à Hong Kong on ne pouvait se payer le luxe d’être romantique. Mais les films de Wong Kar-wai le sont parfois, et je les aime assez. Face au cynisme et à l’esprit d’épicier omniprésent, une description moderne teintée de romantisme peut faire du bien. Ce que j’apprécie chez Wong Kar-wai est sa faculté à présenter la ville de Hong Kong sous un jour nouveau. « 2046 » a un air futuriste, mais c’est également un regard romantique porté sur le Hong Kong des années 1960. Peu de gens considèrent Hong Kong sous cet angle. Même lorsqu’il utilise les clichés du gangster, du kung fu, du dandy, des triades ou de la romance, Wong Kar-wai a toujours été capable dans ses films de renouveler ces clichés. Un jeune critique compara une fois « Paper Cut-outs » (1997), roman de mes débuts, à « Chungking Express » de Wong Kar-wai par sa façon de dépeindre la ville. En grandissant à Hong Kong nous avons tous remarqué que, depuis longtemps, la ville était représentée par toutes sortes de clichés politiques et culturels auxquels il est impossible d’échapper, auxquels vous ne pouvez que faire face et réfléchir pour les renouveler à votre propre usage.
Dans une de mes nouvelles récentes intitulée « Bruce Lee et moi », j’ai juxtaposé quelques fragments de l’histoire de sa vie et d’épisodes du petit écran avec des épisodes de la vie de quelqu’un de très différent de lui. Bien sûr, nous avons Bruce Lee, mais dans la réalité nous savons que nos amis ont des vies très différentes de celles de Bruce Lee ou Jackie Chan. C’est la coexistence de tous ces mondes qui rend Hong Kong intéressant selon moi.
From Asahi.com (07.11.2006) :
She is from New Zealand and he is French. They are not the most likely couple to make the 1,500-kilometer pilgrimage around the island of Shikoku, but that is exactly what they are doing--to compile a French and English guidebook to the island and spread the word about the magic of the Shin-Shikoku Mandara hallowed grounds.
Wearing sedge hats and armed with other symbols adopted by traditional Shikoku pilgrims, the couple plan to visit 88 locations over roughly two years.
They may come from further afield, but these days Joanna Hare, a 47-year-old associate professor at Kochi University, and Thomas Arifi, 45, live in Nankoku, Kochi Prefecture. They married in February.
Par Francis Moury à Excessif.com (01.11.2006) :
Le genre cinématographique japonais si remarquable des « Kaiju Eiga » ou, traduit littéralement, « films de monstres » est hélas mal distribué aujourd’hui en France. Certains films sortent épisodiquement en DVD, d’autres sont épisodiquement programmés – comme en ce moment ! - sur Ciné cinéma classique : c’est le haut d’un iceberg qu’il faudra bien un jour redécouvrir méthodiquement.
Dans cette attente, nous répertorions ici uniquement les films les plus importants historiquement sur lesquels nous avons pu avoir des informations à jour et à la source japonaise.
By Tara Weber at Native American Times (28.10.2006) :
Tara: In my research I came across a term, “story songs” used to describe your unique songwriting style. It seems the Indian ways, like the storytelling were a big part of your music.
Robbie: I feel very proud that I carried on. I feel like I can be a part of carrying that torch and passing things on to people like the storytelling and the music.
I am working on a Native American show that is a first of its kind. So some of the people I am working with on this decided that we want to do a show that goes from place to place. It will be performed in a big tent. We are talking about doing this on the grounds of some of the big casinos around the country. And to make it where the show will come to the people.
I am in the process of getting some of the greatest Native talent in all of North America together. We are trying to do something that really celebrates the Indian way, our culture and will bring great pride. So I am working very hard at writing the music for this. It is going to be like the ultimate pow wow.
Tara: When you brought up having pride, it made me think that a lot of our kids will never get the opportunity to see a variety of Native musicians perform. But if your show would come to them, they could actually see the success of Native people in the music world. I think that would be empowering to our kids especially those struggling on the reservations.
Robbie: I know. I know it is just a terrible thing that someone has to start in an unfair place and then try to make it in this very difficult journey. It is difficult even if you have a fair chance. It is completely unfair and heartbreaking to me. And so we are going to try and do what we can.
I have been a big supporter of the American Indian College Fund over the years. Because education as we know, it can help allot of things.
Alain Lorfèvre entretient avec Jirô Taniguchi (fr) at Lalibre.be (27.10.2006) :
La délicatesse de votre trait est-elle le reflet de votre caractère ?
(Il rit) On me dit souvent que je suis assez anxieux et nerveux. Et qu'on n'a pas spécialement envie de vivre dans mon entourage. Mes éditeurs qui m'ont parfois accompagné en repérages m'ont souvent dit : "c'est la dernière fois que je viens avec vous !"
Qu'est-ce que cela vous apporte de travailler avec des Européens ?
Cela m'apporte énormément de choses. Que ce soit au niveau de la vision de l'histoire elle-même, du découpage, ou de la façon de raconter une histoire. C'est très, très enrichissant. C'est un point de vue très différent de ce que je peux acquérir au Japon.
Votre livre "Quartier Lointain" va faire l'objet d'une adaptation cinématographique en Belgique par le réalisateur Sam Garbarski. Pourquoi avez-vous accepté le projet de Sam Garbarski en particulier et qu'éprouver à l'idée de voir une de vos oeuvres adaptées en Europe ?
Lorsqu'on m'a annoncé que quelqu'un s'intéressait à l'adaptation d'un de mes livres, j'ai été très honoré et j'ai tout de suite accepté. Pourquoi Sam Garbarski ? Parce qu'il me paraît être la personne qui a la sensibilité la plus forte pour faire le film. J'ai reçu une cassette de son premier film. Et même si je ne comprenais pas tout le contenu parce que ce n'était pas traduit, l'image et la manière dont c'était filmé m'ont séduit et j'ai pensé que son style s'accorderait bien à celui de "Quartier Lointain".
"His hair and nails are growing while the rest of him is rotting" by W. Averdung at Kenya Times (n.d.). Muses over the dead :
I work in a funeral home in Nairobi. At the end of my shift, the embalmed corpse in its open casket takes no notice of me when I turn out the lights in the “slumber room.” The corpse does not slumber; it cannot fall asleep any more than it can decay or die. Its decay has been temporarily halted by the chemical injection; its death is impossible because it has already died. Abandoned by death, brought scandalously near to life by the embalmer’s art, it is as if the corpse cannot stay in one place, neither in life nor in death. It does not even stay here in its “home” for long. The dead are not always where you think they are.
By Jean-Pierre Laurant at Eurozine (19.10.2006) :
La grande nouveauté portait sur la promotion de la raison devenue le recours ultime, à la place de Dieu, alors qu'à la Renaissance la distinction entre le Livre de la nature, domaine légitime de la science, et le Livre de la Révélation divine avait été soigneusement maintenue. Le secret transmis dans les sanctuaires depuis l'Egypte et la Grèce antiques portait sur le caractère rationnel de toute vérité, du message divin en particulier. Il appartenait au XIXe siècle d'opérer la synthèse finale entre foi et raison donnant à cette dernière sa dimension divine.
Stéphane Jarno's reportage at Télérama (21.10.2006). And a video Spirou en kimono, in which Hiroyuki Ooshima is interviewed.
"Opening address to the 18th European Meeting of Cultural Journals" by Orhan Pamuk at Eurozine (13.10.2006).
By Khalid al-Maaly at Sign and Sight (11.10.2006) :
During the 1980s, a friend of mine – a left-wing, secular-minded Syrian writer living in Paris at that time – surprised me by his open admiration for the newly organised Hizbullah. At first I thought his admiration was merely a passing fancy. But when Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, he and I finally collided. He could not disguise his delight at the "annexation" of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's troops, which made me regard his secular, leftist views as a joke. Yet his career led him ever deeper into the arena of the struggle for human rights. With European financial support, he issued a periodic newsletter on human rights, which for years had not a word to say about Saddam's crimes, nor about women's rights. Meanwhile his relations with Arab Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, deepened steadily.
Florent Pétoin's report at Le Figaro (10.10.2006). "À l'occasion du cinquantième anniversaire de sa disparition, sa ville natale lui rend hommage." Who cares about Mistinguett these days? (not ironically) Did you know her? Was she like Shizuko Kasagi in Japan?
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (08.10.2006) :
"Japan lost the war, and Bushido [the samurai spirit] perished. But then the human being was born for the first time in the womb of truth called decadence."
That is what radical novelist and essayist Ango Sakaguchi wrote in his famous essay in Shincho magazine in April 1946, titled "On Decadence." This month marks the centenary of his birth in northerly Niigata Prefecture, and it affords a good opportunity to crosscheck the wisdom of his words with today's Japanese reality.
"On Decadence" ("Daraku-ron") at Aozora Bunko (Japanese). Will anyone translate Ango in English or French?
By Yukari Iwatani Kane at WSJ (05.10.2006) :
Six years ago, a Japanese businessman went online to vent about his domineering wife. Blogging daily under the pen name "Kazuma," he detailed how she grabbed food from his plate, sent him shopping in a typhoon, and made him sleep in the living room when he caught a cold.
Now, his terrifying spouse is famous as Oni-yome, or "demon wife," the star of a book, a television drama, a comic-book serialization, a videogame and, coming soon, a movie.
By Guy Rundle at Arena Magazine (June/July 2006). — Many have been caught unawares by the re-assertion of Christian fundamentalism. Guy Rundle looks at the rise of a religious form uniquely suited to contemporary cultural mores.
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (01.10.2006). On "sento" (public bathhouse).
By Robert Whiting with an introduction by Jeff Kingston at Japan Focus (29.09.2006) :
The success of players like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui in the United States has once again demonstrated the power of sport in crossing national borders. With their stirring performances on America’s baseball diamonds, these imported players have helped to create vast new markets for Major League baseball in Japan, while teaching Americans that there is a new and very different way to approach their own national pastime. More importantly, the accomplishments of these athletes have served to influence the way many Americans and Japanese look at each other, and raised anew questions about the role of culture in sport.
By Christian Parenti at The Salon (23.09.2006) :
It was another quiet evening in the suburban Sunbelt -- Dallas to be exact, February 2006 -- and a short, puckish, middle-aged and middle-class father of four named Dave Rabbit was helping his youngest son, a senior in high school, do homework on the Vietnam War. Although Dave had spent most of his adult life managing a family-owned business that designed and manufactured custom T-shirts and caps, he knew about Vietnam, having served three tours there with the Air Force from 1968 to 1971. But that was 35 years ago and now almost a universe away. The decades since the war had been consumed by the simple pleasures and routine trials of being married, raising children, maintaining a summer house on the Gulf Coast and now watching two grandkids grow up.
Emmanuel Tellier entretiens avec Pavan K. Varma à Télérama (23.09.2006) :
Télérama : Dans l’avant-propos de votre essai, vous expliquez avoir voulu peindre un portrait de l’Inde aussi ressemblant et précis que possible. Est-ce vraiment réalisable à l’échelle du sous-continent ?
Pavan K. Varma : Une chose est sûre, l’Inde est trop vaste et trop diverse pour qu’on puisse la caractériser de manière globalisante, avec des grilles de lecture classiques. Plus d’un milliard d’habitants, une trentaine d’Etats immenses, des centaines de langues et de dialectes, toutes les religions, et une hiérarchie sociale qui reste marquée par le système des castes : tout cela rend l’Inde unique et complexe. Même pour un Indien ! C’est un pays d’autant plus compliqué à comprendre que la réalité y est à la fois transparente et opaque : un grand nombre de jeux sociaux y sont impossibles à capter pour l’œil non averti. Pour un étranger, la compréhension des choses est de surcroît parasitée par la persistance de mythes éculés, des clichés qui ont toujours cours en Occident mais pourraient se désamorcer en quelques secondes.
Le Défi indien, Pourquoi le XXIe siècle sera le siècle de l’Inde, de Pavan K.
Varma, éd. Actes Sud, 364 p., 23 €.
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (24.09.2006). On a properly Japanese custum (!), "hesokurigane" (bellybutton money).
Par Jean-Jacques Delfour à Sens Public (20.09.2006) :
Football et prostitution, en tant que pratiques, n'ont rien à faire ensemble. Le jeu de balle, comme mythe et comme symbole, est radicalement étranger à la réalité ordurière de la prostitution. De même, le supporter de football est aussi sportif que le consommateur de prostitué-e-s ou de vidéos pornographiques est amoureux. Mais leur conversion en spectacles et en marchandises produit une analogie psycho-politique instructive. Ces deux dispositifs spectatoriels ont, au-delà de leurs différences, des fonctionnements pulsionnels communs et des effets politiques complémentaires. Efficaces pour une fascisation douce et invisible des masses - du moins apparemment. Car ces dispositifs servent peut-être un but plus discret : assurer une domination iconique aussi universelle qu'invisible.
By Ryann Connell at WaiWai (21.09.2006) :
"You must be warned, though…air sex can be very dangerous," Sugisaku says. "Normally what happens with a display is that you perform the same way you normally would when having sex. I've seen guys who put on air sex shows that clearly display they're still virgins. I've also seen other guys perform such incredibly authentic fake fellatio that nobody has been left in any doubt that they could only be bisexual. Let me reiterate: Air sex can be dangerous."
Japan's reigning air sex world champion is a feller who goes by the name of Cobra. His theory for successful air sex is that it involves more than just blowing.
"On the day that I reached the top, the day I became world champion, I was thinking of my girlfriend. No, my ex-girlfriend. She'd just dumped me two days before the contest," Cobra tells Weekly Playboy. "The air sex display I put on that day was, in my mind at least, supposed to be the farewell fling I really wanted to have with my girlfriend. It was the best possible condition I could have been in going into the competition."
By Adolf Holl & Sudhir Kakar at Eurozine (18.09.2006) :
Austrian theorist of religion Adolf Holl talks to Indian psychoanalyst and author Sudhir Kakar on the publication of the Kakar's latest book The Indians. Portrait of a Society. Their conversation covers a range of topics from the boundaries of the ego in Western and Indian culture, the male and female principles in Christianity and Hinduism, globalization and religious fundamentalism in contemporary India, and the role of the psychoanalyst-astrologer in the two cultures.
La folie et le saint par Catherine Clément, Le Seuil, 1999.
By Tomoko Otake at The Japan Times (17.09.2006). Reports on "Shogaisha puroresu".
By Shelley Walia at Hindu.com (17.09.2006) :
TO be or not to be a theory specialist. That is the principle concern of a world ridden by problems of subjectivity, of degradation of human labour and an ever-growing chasm between the elite and the poor. One wonders if one can really reject the schools of post-structuralism or, for that matter, any of the "postist" ways of looking at the world, Western or the Third World. The rejection of totalisation, of objectivity, of the singular power of master narratives, has at least lent an impetus to students of cultural theory to face up to the problematic nature of geographical space, of capitalist strategies of hegemony and of the deconstruction of the human subject, not forgetting the underlying concepts of slippage or absence that enables a reader to grasp the importance of what remains unsaid more than what is said. Emancipatory politics, combined with the rejection of the notion of the "centre, origin or the end" initiated a revolutionary fervour in the minds of the students of cultural studies. But what seemed to be steeped in radical critique gave way to political apathy. The spark of theory slowly died out, only to be rekindled by those who saw the reality of a civilisation literally under fire and where the conspicuous return of the repressed demanded the politics of recognition.
Joan Waltemath interviews Sylvère Lotringer (!) at The Brooklyn Rail (September 2006) :
Rail: We first met at some point in the seventies when you had already started publishing. I have some great memories of those early Semiotext(e) parties. What was your impetus in getting the magazine off the ground?
Lotringer: I didn’t get Semiotext(e) off the ground, it’s Semiotext(e) that got me off mine. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was looking for a way out of academia. The magazine became the ticket. My education was a casualty of the war, you see. I got my Ph.D. as a way of postponing the draft. Algeria was our Vietnam, and I wasn’t exactly keen on being sent there. I already was in the States when the peace was finally signed in 1963 and I decided to move around the world, picking up teaching jobs here and there. I spent May ’68 in Sydney, Australia, so I finally arrived in New York in 1972 hoping to catch up with the student rebellion at Columbia. Little did I know, it was already business as usual. So after a while I thought, this isn’t exactly what I want to do with my life . The best I could do was create, with some young academics, a magazine claiming to found a “materialist” semiotics. Semiotics, the science of signs in society, had been established on a linguistic model, instead of non-verbal signs, as it should have been. The answer to our query was simpler than I thought: I eventually turned to the visual arts. It took me two or three years before I got the magazine off the academic ground and gradually moved it towards the art world. I was lucky enough to hit the art world in the mid-70s, when it was still doing art, not business. At that time, artists had a life, not just a career. Some of them got interested in our project, and together we did the first issue, “Schizo-Culture,” that really put us on the map.
The Japan Times (10.10.2006) features Confucius (孔子). Michael Hoffman publishes three essays on his wisdom and influence : "Confucius and his 'golden age'", "A man in the soul of Japan" & "East and West echo the sage: 'The ideal society is like a family'".
By Patrick Macias at The Japan Times (07.09.2006) :
Global interest in Japanese entertainment continues to heat up. Quite literally.
Hardcore manga fans around the world are taking their Japanese comics off the shelf and putting them into the microwave.
"They do that so the glue melts, which allows them to take apart the volume page by page so they can be scanned easily," explains Jonathan, 21, a journalism student at West Virginia University who did not want his last name published.
By Louis Menand at The New Yorker (04.09.2006 Issue). Reviews Bob Dylan : The Essential Interviews, Wenner :
The discrepancy between Dylan the interview subject and Dylan the musician is not an artifact of celebrity. It seems to have been part of the deal from the start, and it’s almost the first thing that people who knew him mention when they’re asked about their initial impression. “I wanted to meet the mind that created all those beautiful words,” Judy Collins told David Hajdu for “Positively 4th Street,” his delightful group biography of Dylan, Richard Fariña, and Joan and Mimi Baez. “We set something up, and we had coffee, and when it was over, I walked away, thinking, ‘The guy’s an idiot. He can’t make a coherent sentence.’ ” The first time Joan Baez heard Dylan sing one of his own songs—he played “With God on Our Side” for her—she was floored. “I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad,” she said. She proceeded to fall madly in love with him, and bought him a toothbrush.
I've listened to his new disk, Modern Times. Bobby is always Bobby, nothing else to say. 
By Iain Ellis at PopMatters (25.08.2006). Excerpt from his forthcoming book. With video, The Archies, "Sugar, Sugar". Wow!
By Richard Lloyd Parry at Times Online (24.08.2006).
"The flower and willow world" — Does it mean "Karyukai"?
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (20.08.2006).
By Marie-Noëlle Valles at Yahoo! Actualités (18.08.2006) :
MADRID (AFP) - Comme chaque année, l'anniversaire de l'assassinat du poète espagnol Federico Garcia Lorca par des franquistes va être célébré samedi au petit matin par des chanteurs andalous, au bord d'un ravin près de Grenade, où il fut exécuté en 1936.
Mais ce 70e anniversaire est marqué par un documentaire comportant des révélations sur les motivations de l'exécution de Lorca, tué près du village de Viznar en même temps qu'un maître d'école, Dioscoro Galindo, et deux toreros anarchistes, Francisco Galadi et Joaquin Arcollas.
From The Japan Times (19.08.2006) :
A young Japanese man's song about AIDS education has become a big hit in Malawi.
Kohei Yamada wrote the lyrics and sings the song, "Ndimakukonda," which means "I love you" in the Chewa language. The song is the result of the 26-year-old's stint in the southern African country, working for the Japan International Cooperation Agency until March.
"Michael Jackson and queer cultural desire" by Alisha Gaines at NSRS (n.d.).
By Adam Kirsch at The New Yorker (21.08.2006 Issue). On Walter Benjamin and Hashish.
Ken-san translates "Moe" into "infatuation", introducing Goo emoticon ranking, at What Japan Thinks (14.08.2006). "Moe" connotes pathetic, it seems.
By Todd Shimoda at The Asian Review of Books (13.08.2006). Reviews Amy Reigle Newland (ed.), The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, Hotei Publishing, January 2006 :
THE HOTEI ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS lives up to its encyclopedic intent in two volumes of 600 pages. Filled with descriptive oeuvre of the artists, historical narratives, social implications, and delightfully arcane details, the encyclopedia is fascinating for the collector of prints and those interested in Japanese art and society in general. Woodblock prints were intended for general public consumption, and as with most mass media, they offer a historical although often exaggerated or even fabricated view of contemporary society.
By Richard Llyod Parry at LRB (17.08.2006 Issue). Reviews Donald Richie, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004 (Stone Bridge).
"The Lost Interview with Kumi Mizuno" (November 2002) at Mr. Patrick Macias' own weblog (13.07.2006).
Kumi Mizuno is a Japanese actress, heroine in some of Toho "Kaiju" or "Tokusatshu" movies. Tomohiro Machiyama is a Japanese movie critic, editor of the "Eiga Hiho" magazine. Tamao Urayama is also a Japanese movie critic. Patrick Macias is an American writer, connoisseur of Japanese "otaku" culture.
Machiyama: I am part of the generation that was really traumatized by Godzilla Vs Monster Zero. Kumi Mizuno was one of the first actresses that I could recognize and paid attention to.
Yup. When I fell in love with Kumi-san, I was only eight. She was sexy and beautiful (still is) and "my heart went pop," I remember even now. First there's eroticism, right?
Mr. Machiyama's weblog (Japanese).
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (06.08.2006). More detailed investigation about Soshigaya, where he once lived. Very interesting.
From NPR (05.08.2006) | RM file (audio) :
Boston native Dan Bloom now lives in Chiayi, a small town in southern Taiwan. He has written a pop song to help Americans learn Japanese. Bloom gives Scott Simon a musical Japanese lesson.
"Do'itashimashite" (You're welcome) => "Don't touch my mustache."
Here is a song (RM file) for Japanese lesson. Will you try? "A-I-U-E-O, Ka-Ki-Ku-Ke-Ko,..."
By Roger Pulvers at The Japan Times (30.07.2006). On Japanese life in 1980s. Worth a read.
By Peter Harling et Mathieu Guidère at Le Monde Diplomatique (May 2006).
By AFP at Yahoo! France Actualités (25.07.2006) :
Une peinture murale représentant une créature ailée de la mythologie perse a été découverte sur les ruines des bouddhas de Bamiyan (Afghanistan), montrant l'influence de la civilisation perse sur le bouddhisme dans la région, a annoncé mardi un institut de recherche japonais.
Cette peinture datant du VIIe siècle, qui représente un Simurgh, fabuleuse créature ailée de la mythologie perse, a été mise au jour par des chercheurs nippons qui ravalaient les murs de la caverne, a précisé l'Institut national de recherche pour les biens culturels.
"C'est la première fois qu'une image aussi nette de cette créature est mise au jour", a affirmé à l'AFP un chercheur de l'institut.
"Cette découverte nous renseigne sur l'influence de la civilisation perse sur le bouddhisme de Bamiyan. Cela montre aussi l'influence du peuple Sogd (nord de l'Afghanistan)", dont le territoire s'étendait aux frontières des actuels Ouzbékistan et Tadjikistan, a-t-il ajouté.
日本の調査隊がバーミヤン遺跡で、７世紀ごろの絵画を発見。
"Freud aurait-il pu découvrir l'inconscient dans une autre langue que l'allemand ?" questions Monsieur Assouline at La République des livres (21.07.2006).
By Scott McLemee at The Boston Globe (16.07.2006). A lead :
Philip Rieff, who died this month at 83, was best known as the ex-husband of Susan Sontag. In her writing, at least, she never got over him.
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