Today mibliodyssey.blogspot.com has a Toying With Japan post that shows the Late 19th, early 20th century Japanese toy designs from Akita Prefectural Library.

via Boingboing.net

Continuing with yesterday’s theme of JFW TYO LOFL….

With a Japanese-English name like “Gut’s Dynamite Cabarets/” how could this fashion house go wrong with 2008 Autumn/Winter Fashion Show during this Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo?

See the official website of Gut’s Dynamite Cabarets for more info.

In the best example of kulture in modern Japan, check these winners from JFW TYO (aka Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo 2008).
Here are a couple of fashion victims that captured my attention (which is of course the whole point of these fun-filled fashions).

First is Mr. I’msomesexy decked out in fur-lined jockstrap and jacket for next fall as part of the Under Castle collection.

Much more fun is these models for “bicycle-wear” on the runway for the 2008 Autumn/Winter collection for io yukomura”Ta.

Update…

The Tokyo Tiki-God invasion of Japan continues and is joined by a stoned Cyclops!

A man walks past a giant sculpture on a downtown Tokyo street, in Japan, news.yahoo.com (AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa)

In the previous report, ‘Borat turning Japanesey and Moai-Tiki gods concur’, you might have been wondering why there a fake Easter Island Moai tiki god statue in hyper-trendy Shibya, Tokyo.

Me too.

I’ve been bumping into Moai statues and wondering about these fake Tokyo Tiki gods for many years now. Besides the famous Shibuya Moai (above left & below right), I have several Moai by my Ota Ward Office (below left).

Actually, the Ota Ward Office and Kamata Station area of Tokyo has a full alien invasion of Moai statues and I have taken the photos below of just a few of them.

All these Moai statues seem to be rather out of place in Tokyo. Finally, a few days ago I stumbled across the very “Japanese” reason for all of them.

It seems that back in 1988 the Tokyo island of Nijima gave all these Moai statues to Tokyo to commemorate 100 years of being under Tokyo’s administrative supervision. The only industry of Nijima Island is tourism and quarrying Koga (rhyolite) stone, which is mostly used to make “moyai art.” In this case, public works to give jobs to the otherwise unemployed in the off-season Nijima folks by making hundreds of Moai heads that are given as public art “gifts” all over Japan.

The Japanese blog, rasberyfarm featured the castle of the Lord of Mask, Mr. Okada. The Honorable Lord’s present mental state has allowed Him to make about 20,000 masks for display on his royal castle as you can see here on the right and the other photos, ha, ha.

His Lord runs an art school for masks every weekend at his castle in Nasu, Japan. As the blog explains in Japanese, the students like Her Lady of Mask pictured above, “inhale Mask Power from a world of a different dimension.”

His Lord runs Saturday classes for free, and for travel, “guidance to the ‘God-of-super-good-place-known-to-few-people’ spot” inquire at the nearby lodging/pension, Raspberry Farm in Nasu-gun, Tochigi Prefecture in northern Japan.

Ain’t That a… Shamisen?
WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: February 13, 2008 (MP3s)…In not-so-ancient Japan, the inferior status of women and the disabled…you can only imagine the island nation’s treatment of its unsighted females. Cast out by a disdainful society, these doubly afflicted souls nevertheless crafted for themselves a new identity as wandering musicians, spreading news and social commentary while eking out a threadbare existence of alms……Known as goze, blind women shamisen players have been traveling and performing a circuit of remote villages dating back to the early 17th century…

With their shamisen, fretless 3-string banjos, blind female singer/story-tellers would wander old Japan in small troops of two or three with a partially sighted leader. Singing the blues was the only way they could feed themselves if their family couldn’t. Listen to and download the goze girls’ MP3s that public radio station, WFMU, has posted.

Yuri scene

Speaking from the heart
–Flowers once used to convey particular virtue, message or thought –
Deseret Morning News | Monday, Feb. 11, 2008…
…This language of flowers, in which flowers and floral arrangements were used to send particular messages…. Floriography, as it is called, was also practiced in Japan, where it is known as “hanakotoba.” ….
…Of course, you can never go wrong with red roses [which represent true love] …Secret admirers might want to consider peonies —they stand for bashfulness and will let your valentine know you will reveal yourself in time…more….

As you see in the above scan of the cover of the manga named “Hanakotoba”, the heroine is wielding a lily. The word yuri , literally meaning “lily”, is a relatively common female name: However, here it refers to term “yuri-zoku” (”lily tribe”) aka lesbians. Actually yuri-zoku was derived from the “flower-language” term Bara-zoku (”rose tribe”), which was first used for the name of a Japanese magazine for gay men of the 1970s and later was Bara-zoku generalized to gay males.

Read more on hanakotoba“flower-language” on Wikipedia.

Yesterday I reported on GUNDAM, 28 Years After so I thought I would also mention the Gundam-esque “The Four Cutie Fighters“ exhibition of photographs by the “LAYER Project” that was held at Tokyo’s ritzy Aoyama Gallery.

A rough translation of the artists’ Introduction webpage shows the purpose of this project was to create, “an expression of new eroticism as a refined art.”

The artist, Hiroyuki Hayashida, writes that he is, “groping for a new eroticism that is sensitive to the changes to Japanese society.” His LAYER Project’s theme in this exhibition is “transformation,” a process in which, “four female high school students disguise themselves as a squadron of heroines.”
Ri-i-ight, whatever.

This Japaneseque video is what YouTube was made for!

Marvel in wonder at this frolicking Japanese man wearing a horse mask and a slingshot mankini as he brews up a batch of Amanita muscaria aka Sacred Soma magic mushrooms. –2008/Jan/28

UPDATE!
It has taken more than a week for Boing Boing to discover my Horsehead Freak is, “a performance artist from Japan that goes by the name of WOTAKEN” whose website is at http://katura.is.land.to (funky machine translation).

The background music is from Final Fantasy VI complete with the Kefka laugh while he frolics around making his own special Final Fantasy Potion.

Since its Mardi Gras right now, why not enjoy some Japanese masks?
Every Japanese matsuri/street fair has rows of plastic toy masks for sale like these.

Besides traditional Japanese characters like the oni/devil, most of these masks feature commercial characters like Hello Kitty and Pikachu to delight kids at street fairs.

With the Japanimation boom throughout the world, these masks and Japanese faux-festivals have spread in popularity. However, this resulted in some funny reinterpretations and knock-off masks of Japanese characters in foreign markets. The Japanese blog, INTER News, recently ran a headline, “Astonished! Evangelion’s faces abroad are very popular!” about markets in Thailand selling these bizarre Evangelion masks. INTER News writes, “Although I want a Japanimation boom to continue from now on, I want blue-haired Rei Ayanami to stop with the gapping ‘O’ mouth.”

Astonished! Evangelion’s faces abroad are very popular!
2008.02.01 (Fri), INTERNews.jp

And here are a few more “traditional” Matsuri Gras masks just for fun from Japan.

Available via JList