Tag: Jonathan Clements

April 30, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “When I was in third grade, I spent September and October researching square things.” It is a typical statement from Aoyama, the super-serious pre-teen narrator of Tomihiko Morimi’s Penguin Highway.  It is a comment of simple truth, but hints at statistical obsessions, an eidetic memory, and an inadvertent hint of recursive SF, […]

April 19, 2019 · 0 comments

Kazuo Koike, who died on 17th April, was a man of many names. Born Yuzuru Tawaraya in what is now Daisen, Akita Prefecture, he died as Seishu Tawaraya, a Buddhist name, and wrote song lyrics as Fumihiko Azuma. But as a writer, it is the Koike pen-name that found him the greatest fame, in a […]

April 17, 2019 · 0 comments

Kazuhiko Kato, who died on 11th April, always had the air about him of a man who had won the lottery. Born in Hokkaido in 1937, his knack for cartooning soon caused him to drop out of electrical engineering college and move to Tokyo, where he moonlighted as an artist, at first in the below-the-line […]

April 13, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Jaqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike and Fusami Ogi’s new edited collection, Shojo Across Media: Exploring ‘Girl’ Practices in Contemporary Japan is another welcome addition to the expanding shelf of books specifically about Japanese popular culture aimed at female consumers. Among the high points, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada looks at girls in anime, specifically magical girls, […]

April 4, 2019 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. He knew that there would be trouble when the 10,000 giveaway posters ran out. The crowd was already way too large to fit into the Shochiku Cinema, and risked spilling out into the street to block the traffic near Shinjuku station. One misplaced surge, thought Yoshiyuki Tomino, and the press would be […]