Tokyo in music

Look at this music video. The band is the Killers (wow!) and the music title is "read my mind." Maybe they have an interest in some Japanese subculture. Gachapin is good idea, that was a good try. But for my part, Geisha is the usual ploy. I wrote this post "Japan in music." The UK band Kimono's "Japanese policeman" is the most intresting Japanese related movie for me. They really caught the old Japanese film essence very well. But their official site seems to be closed?? Maybe the worst unique one I have ever seen would be this "Made in Japan" of Hippies Films & Records. By the way, I wrote Geisha, Ninja, Mikado, Samurai are very far from real contemporary Japan sometimes. But if foreign countries・people like those images and expect Geisha, Samurai and Ninjya, we should cultivate of them -- really great Geisha, cool Samurai and super Ninjya. I rather like it. There are real Geisha san, but you know there are no Samurai and Ninja in this country! What do you think :-p.

I will pick this only for those who can read Japanese :-p :-p
Hot Pepper is a coupon magazine. Their TV ads are always crazy. I wrote before about the Shocker series. Their pattern is to use existing films and movies and change statements into funny, ironic ones. This time they use the Hokuto no Ken manga. It is very funny.

Comments

[mari]

Thanks Jonathan I sent anothre Japanese site wrote about Made in Tokyo

[Martin F]

http://www.kimono.is/video.php

Kimono is a band from Iceland! Not the UK.

They say they are working on the website at the moment because the old site was looking pretty ratty. The design has been getting worse and worse for months and the information is so old in some cases. If anyone knows how to make a nice site in PHP that can post news and all that, we'll pay you to do it. Not much mind you, but something. All interested web programmers please contact Alex.

[Marshdrifter]

I enjoy seeing more traditional aspects of other cultures, although I prefer to see them as living traditions (if they still exist as that) rather than as museum pieces. So I enjoy slightly modernized depictions of more traditional settings, such as in the anime Samurai Champloo (or other anime set in the Bakumatsu or Meiji periods). I like futuristic settings as well, but continuing traditions seem to add depth and historical connection for me.

I'm not sure if that's because I'm an American with few remaining cultural ties to my pre-immigrant European families or if it's because I'm an archaeologist. Probably both.

As an interesting note, the last cultural tradition to get dropped in the face of acculturation is typically the foods and methods of cooking.

[Jonathan Gottesmann]

Hello. Thank you for linking the "Made in Japan" videoclip to your blog. It is not our worse videoclip concerning foreign cultures, customs, traditions and other countries. Israel is a funny and ironically also tragically an impossible melting pot where
people think they take an active role in the world but know nothing about others cultures except for themselves. This whole videoclip contains Israeli known icons (most of them are pretty vintage), with a mixed salad of ideas and icons concerning Japan from an Israeli point of view. By the way, it does not speak about Japan or Japanese Culture, but as "us" in this nische of Alternative music in the Israeli Underground Pop-Scene.
Thanks again,

Jonathan Gottesmann,
at the Hippies Films & Records (HippieColor),
Tel-Aviv, Israel.

[Chris]

I love the Japanese Policeman video! I've never heard of Kimono before. I like the killers video too- I was surprised to see Gachapin.