Tools
The last scene of this documentary about the post-crash (but pre-earthquake) experimental music scene in Tokyo will blow your mind. It happens in an abandoned warehouse. Dead televisions, computer screens, routers, and wireless phones are on the floor, and sitting on a folding chair is cellist Hiromichi Sakamoto, playing a piece of music (part electronic, part classical) that concentrates the deepest feelings of a civilization that no longer grows and whose greatness, whose moment in the sun, is now entirely frozen in the past. Once called the "Empire of Signs" by the French semiotician Roland Barthes, Japan has now been reduced to the sign of an empire that no longer exists.
Indeed, it was recently reported that the number of diapers sold for adults in Japan has surpassed the number sold for babies. The country has become much like the infertile world of Children of Men. Sex is meaningless, the last pleasure is shopping, the population is getting older, and the economy has been flat for 20 years. As one of the musicians interviewed in We Don't Care About Music Anyway points out, people have stopped believing that the recession is going to end. It is here to stay. So what's left? The noise art of decline, the futureless pop of abandoned places, the broken beats of dusty but digital consumer electronics. In one scene, Sakamoto shoots the plastic pellets of a toy gun at his bruised cello. Each hit is echoed by a mixer wired to the instrument's hollow core. Sometimes the toy gun jams. But Sakamoto keeps pulling the trigger until the clog clears, pellets are fired, and the sad dub returns. This is how the world ends. Grand Illusion, Feb 8–14. 
but, i love Japanese prog-noise, and The Grand Illusion so i read this "review."
TL;DR = FUCK YOU CHARLES!
or
god, i hate you. you don't review films, you talk to yourself.
you know nothing of Japan, except tidbits and anecdotes from the news. i actually live in Japan. while some of the things you mention are true - they don't matter. we are moving forward as a country.
we have population deflation, which you would see as a good thing if you didn't want to poke fun at it. our cities are very dense and people there quite often choose not to have children (your utopia!), but here in the countryside (Japan is mostly rural from geography standpoints) every body has kids. our town has only one of all the basic services (health clinic, post office, grocery store, bank, restaurant, library, etc. - and also only one cop), but it has 3 schools and a number of private tutors.
and Japan is still on the cutting edge of technologies - solar electricity for houses is actually a viable option for both new construction and refits of older homes. we have more plug in cars and hybrids than you guys and our fuel efficiency makes a mockery of the way the u.s. drives.
in other words, the world isn't ending - it's CHANGING. you're supposed to like change, but if you can make fun of it while riding the bus and typing on your smartphone, then you will do it. and then you will go write something else where you call yourself a better person than the rest of us because we're stuck in the past and you're so smart and forward thinking.
so again, yeah, FUCK YOU.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM IS? YOU READ MY WORDS AND YOU DON'T READ THE SPACES!
RSS
Twitter
Comments (2) RSS