Long time no see!

Actually, I've half-started at least 8 entries that I was unable to concentrate on or complete, so they'll all probably be done around the same time and I'll get to posting them eventually.  But I put the work on them aside because I wanted to take a bit to just tell everyone what I've been up to, and some things I've been doing and thinking about.  I don't talk about myself too often because I'm completely boring, but I did actually take part in something pretty neat, so here's an update on my life and some information about a Japanese holiday you may not be familiar with.

( In Which the Limits to My Traditional Enthusiasm Are Evidenced )

Finally we arrive at our third and final installment of my look into the Yoshitoshi prints used in Isshi's last photoshoot for Kagrra,.  I'd like to thank everyone for being so patient with this update, as well as to sutafairu for letting me use her scans of the photoset.  If you missed Part I, please read it here, and Part II can be found here.  Today's photo is the one that made me want to write these interpretations of the shoot.  I think it's really quite fantastic.



So let's interpret that one right in the middle, possibly the most famous of all three.

( In Which Another Demonic Pilgrimage Reaches Its End )

Part II of my reviews on Isshi's last Kagrra, pamphlet, featuring the art of Yoshitoshi from "New Forms of 36 Ghosts".  If you missed Part I, please be sure to read it here.



Today, let's take a look at the photo on the right.

( Sakura Maichiru Ano Oka De )

Thank you to sutafairu for providing the pamphlet scans, and please look forward for Part III, the final part, very soon!

This entry marks the 100th edition of my journal!  While it is 100 entries, and not 100 years, perhaps it feels that way, and my journal will become a tsukumogami with a mind of its own, continuing to update by itself at random with wanton disregard for its readers and its own sanity.  As if it doesn't do that already.  But I've managed to time this special 100th entry with the very first entry for the New Year, all the more reason for my journal to start being more productive.  Even though I'm going to be very busy with college, I will need to write to relieve stress and focus myself that much harder, and the New Year is a time for new beginnings.

Originally, I was working on this entry last July when the calamity happened.  And I've held onto it in favour of more traditional but non-Kagrra, related posts since then.  But with the New Year I want to work harder to keeping with my main purpose of this journal, and that is spreading as much traditional Japanese information as I can.  I think my first entry of 2012 and my 100th entry in this journal, awful and stupid as some of them are, may as well be a continuation of this philosophy; I want to write about some things that only Kagrra, can manage to bring up and make some vague sense out of in order for me to discuss it.

For the most part, besides this introduction, I've kept the entry just as it was while I was originally writing it.  I still plan to joke about Isshi's dumb ideas and purposefully difficult over-traditional themes, because I am still a fan of that music and motif, and I will always remember fondly his obsessive personality and traditional leanings, as I see myself developing them further as well.  I also keep all mention of him in the present tense; partly out of laziness, but mostly because now I've decided there's no use to make it seem so dour.  Kagrra,'s music and words and pictures and stories will always be with us; and here on the internet we can always find much more information about it, new fan or old, that everything remains present and relevant.  Isshi's beliefs will never really be gone, or over, or finished, so it's not like I can just stop all entries related to that.  I will always find something new from something old, and songs about old things wrapped in twelve layers of Heian kimono and mysteries will always plague each and every one of us Kagrra, fans. 

So I'd like to pick up just where I left off and tell you about a popular old folk character, traditional Japan, and Isshi.

( Writing This Entry Was Hell )

Ah, this took me so long.  But the next installment will hopefully come much sooner, and be considerably shorter.  I must thank Isshi for, among other things, selecting prints with very interesting stories that keep me sane and grounded amidst the chaos of my heavy schedule. Thank you also to sutafairu for sharing the scans. All of the pamphlet images belong to them. Please look for Part II coming soon!

This is the official request page for my journal.  If you have anything you'd like me to do an entry on, this is the place to do it.  Here's how it works:

Please leave a comment requesting something you want me to write about.  Each comment will be screened until I have completed the entry, at which point I will reply to it publicly with a link to the completed work.

Make sure you only request one subject per comment.

You can request as many different things as you like, and you can do so anonymously, too.

Below, please find some guidelines for what I can write about, but of course feel free to request anything you like!  You never know what mood will strike me, and your strange request may be just the something I want to write.

- Traditional Japan: any questions you have or motifs you're interested in

- Art: ukiyo-e, kabuki, Noh theatre, or traditional crafts and hobbies you'd like explained

- History:  samurai, daimyo, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, pick a battle!

- Yōkai, yuurei, ghost stories, folk tales, monsters, and other legendary creatures and beings of Japan

- Kagrra,: anything you don't understand or would like to hear more about, I'm more than happy to do my best to answer

- Movies: I like samurai, traditional, horror, martial arts, B-movies, anything!  I'm most partial to really campy and low-budget films, but I'm not averse to any sort of movie you think I should do a review on

- Music:  Obviously I have a lot of fun mocking Jrock and its many incarnations, but if there is a band that has put out something (CD, album, PV, photoset, etc.) that is either really awful or really amazing, please feel free to share it with me... I like music from all over the world

So,
Let the requests begin!!

So after that whole debacle of my previous entry, I decided I'll do one more Jrock reviewing entry to round out this mini-series (which will of course make a triumphant return as often as I feel like it).  Since I started looking back on Jrock and Visual Kei and remembering all of the things I absolutely hated about the fandom and the quality of music and how shitty it is nowadays, it hit me... what the hell am I doing?  Looking up new bands to review for awful PVs and thinking "Oh, this sure is cool, I should check them out later."  Really, me?  It's cool?  Ah well.

And I'm reminded of the rag-tag accumulation of bizarre vocalists and low-budget music videos from the late 90's B-grade musicians known as those affiliated with Key Party Records.  Oh, how terrible they all are.  Oh, how embarrassing their outlandish get-ups and cheap attempts to garner fame and popularity.  It's the same feeling I get when I watch the old 80's hair metal bands, sitting there trying to figure out what the world must have been like back when that music was OK, and what life decisions were necessary to be part of a band like that, or worse, enjoy them.

Oh yeah, I totally love 80's hair metal.  And I'm looking at the very first rock magazine I ever purchased and being smacked over the head repeatedly with suggestions that I purchase Key Party Records CDs and attend their concerts and check out their newest bands.  And, just like all those ads, the realisation smacks me over the head, too:

Oh shit, I totally love Key Party Records.

( Why I Like Visual Kei )

Thank you for reading that, if you did.  I like to reminisce, since now my life is just so traditional that all of my friends call me "Little Grandfather".  We grandfathers enjoy thinking about the past.

But now I'd like to look back at that brief, confusing time when Key Party perhaps reigned supreme.  Those of you who have been Jrock fans since then, do you remember them at all?  Or is this another of my retrospective ideas that actually has no basis in how things really were at the time?  Regardless, I will now proceed to view and listen to a song and PV or two from each band on my KEY PARTY DUAL SHOCK HOLD YOUR KEY PARTY KEY PARTY compilation records, and give you my opinions on them.

( Hold Your Key )

Well, I had a really great time writing all of that.  I'll be back with another entry before New Year, but I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season!!

I just learned that there is a fat guy in Super Junior.  One of Super Junior's many unnecessary members is a fat guy.  But no time for that!  I got PVs to review.

As you'll recall in my last entry, I said I would take some time to look back on PVs from Visual Kei's past, as well as Visual Kei's present.  Basically, any Visual Kei PV that marks either:

A) a specific time and subgenre of the subgenre that was popular;
B) a more recent PV that showcases the downfall of Visual Kei as a credible form of musical expression; or,
C) a completely random and baffling video that makes absolutely no sense and dates itself totally while also managing to alienate its fans in addition to itself.

Today's PV is a mixture of A and C.

( My Mask... Is A Sad Mask )

What's the worst PV you've ever seen?  The worst Visual Kei singer you've ever heard?  Who's to blame for the reason you stopped listening?  Give me some suggestions, and I might review them in an upcoming entry!

Just so you know, the next PV up will make me take back every nice thing I ever said about Visual Kei.  In fact, it's enough to put us all off of music forever.  You've been warned.

Wow, I've been very serious and traditional recently, huh?  Well you guys know that's only one side of me.  And it's been a really, really long time, but I feel the need to return to my roots.  Yeah, you asked for it, and you got it:

! A RANT !

I've gotten several requests to rant about Kpop.  Actually, I've talked a little about Kpop before, here and here.  Buuut, I'm hesitant.  To be honest, I really don't listen to Kpop (obviously?).  I don't know much about it at all.  And since the sheer amount of time I listen to Jrock just isn't good enough for some people, so what the hell could I say about Kpop that wouldn't alienate and offend basically everyone?



Oh, that's right.  Kpop sucks and I don't care.

Kpop and its fanbase is a ghastly thing.  The music is kitschy and redundant, and all of the little groups that break onto the Japanese music scene like so many pimples across the face of a Kpop fan are interchangeable and pointless, and after a while, completely indistinguishable from one another.  Much like Jpop!  I don't listen to much pop music at all, actually.  So how can I fault Kpop for sounding like the exact reason I don't listen to pop music from any country?  I simply don't listen to it or involve myself in the "scene" at all, and I'm generally happy in life.  If I still kept up with that sort of fan-based community, I'm sure I'd have a lot of absolutely terrible things to say about the stupid things Kpop fans do.  However, even though I live my life in relative seclusion, I still get assaulted by Kpop: on the Oricon charts, on Fuji TV, on Youtube's front page, on Hulu's front page, and fat girls at my local Asian grocery who no longer think I look like Gackt, but.... shit, who's a popular Kpop star?  Kim Eui-Tae?  JaeJoong.  They're all still JaeJoong to me.  (I don't even vaguely resemble either, thank you very much.)

So let me talk about what I do know.

( Annyong! )

日曜日
nichiyoubi
Sunday

So, we've arrived on the final day of Japanese Ghost Story Week.  Thank you so much for reading!  I hope you've been enjoying them.  I've had a ton of fun writing this week.  As always, if you want to read the rest of the stories, please find them here.  And if you have a blogspot and would like to follow me there, find me at dr-yokai.blogspot.com.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and all of the spirits and nefarious creatures will roam the world.  There won't be any Trick-or-Treating in Japan; Halloween isn't really a well-known American holiday there like Christmas and Thanksgiving, though it is celebrated with relish by lovers of horror nationwide.  There even used to be a monthly horror manga magazine called Halloween.  But whether people know it or not, it's Halloween in Japan now.  All these things I've been talking about still come out... there are just so many yōkai and yūrei in Japan, they'll come out whether it's a holiday or not.  And if you like, some of them are so well-known and prevalent that, if you know where to look, you can go and see them.

Which brings us to today's story.

As you learned in the very first folktale I shared, 日 means, not only day, but Sun.  However, there aren't very many scary or evil things associated with the Sun.  Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, and the kanji for the country itself means Sun's-Origin, and the Sun Goddess Amaterasu is one of the most revered gods in Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan.  I could tell the story of the Sun, but that simply wouldn't seem right to be associated with the motley crew of ghosts I've paraded out all this week.

So instead, I think I'll tell a story that comes from the Land of the Rising Sun.  It is not the most famous ghost story in Japan; that one would require a long-winded dissertation from me, and I've been trying to keep these entries on the shorter side.  So I'll tell... the second most famous ghost story in Japan.  And let's see if my free-association doesn't bring us back around to the sun and tie this week up quite neatly in time for Halloween. 

Shall we begin?

( Mukashi Mukashi... )

Happy Halloween!!