The projection of a Billy Viola artwork has always been a real wow. However, seeing a giant and slightly creepy kitty cat on a Shinjuku billboard on a large building has a force of fear, awareness, and the power of the commercial advertising world. I’m not even sure if this billboard is selling anything except the concept of an image. The cat lives in this billboard throughout the day, but the volume is turned off at 1 A.M. I wasn’t aware of this spectacle until I reached the East entrance/exit of the Shinjuku station. I noticed the crowd looking up, so I moved my head in that direction. My first thought is, why didn’t they use a 3D version of Godzilla? But then again, there is something cat-like in Japanese culture. There is the feeling that at any moment, this cat will jump down and onto the crowd.
As I headed towards Nakano Broadway, the capital of nerdy manga love, I walked around the neighborhood. I have been coming here for ten years, and there was a square not far off from the arcade that leads into Nakano Broadway. There are these bars, which are still open and very much part of the Nakano nightlife experience. But among these bars is a ruin of a building once a hotel called World Kaikan. There are stories I have read that there is a ghost here who welcomes visitors who break into the abandoned building. Since I’m a scary cat, I never did go inside the building, but I have a memory of walking up the stairs about some years back. At that time, it was deserted, but you can see the direction this structure was going toward - a complete removal. For whatever reason, the building still exists. It’s a beautiful 1970s (that’s ancient in today’s Tokyo) four-story hotel. There was also a record store that had an outstanding stock of used classical albums, but now gone. Only the bars exist.
If I was a painter, and I’m not, I would move to Tokyo just for the images in front of me. Tokyo is chaotic but designed so, unlike Kyoto, which is very north to south and west to east streets. A hyperactive child developed Tokyo, or it seems that is the case. But I love the messy streets, and there are so many visual delights as one walks around without a map. I came upon a bar/cafe that had vintage (1970?) images of models, more likely from old Vogue magazines that are pasted up on their walls. Gary Cooper from High Noon is among the female models, and why he’s there is unclear, but in a Tokyo sense, it fits perfectly well.
The manga world is vast, and one can’t say that one comic figure is it because that is not true. It covers every lifestyle, and from romance to horror to the experimental, it is of great interest. Sadly, the manga we get in the United States tends to be one-of-a-kind, and one doesn’t get the more experimental or pornographic works. I came upon a manga cover of a man feeding his date his food from a chopstick, and she does the same to him. I fixated on that image, and I got off on the relationship between the two characters as they are portrayed here on the magazine cover.
There are many anthologies of Mighty Atom known in the English world as Astro Boy, which is the wrong title for this character since he is not a figure made from outer space but a robot created by a grief-stricken scientist. He made Mighty Atom as an image of his deceased son, who died in a car accident. He realizes there is no way to replace his son with a robot, so he abandons Mighty Atom. That is the basis for the series, which is moving and brilliantly put together by the great Osamu Tezuka—the Walt Disney of Japan, but for me, a much better illustrator and writer.
Nevertheless, Walt Disney, like the rest of the world, has Japan on its corporate mind. There is a Disneyland in Japan, as well as the Disney Store in Shibuya. But the collectibles that somehow landed in Tokyo are simply unique and special. I feel like I’m in a Kenneth Anger film, Mouse Heaven. One of the things I admire about the Japanese is their attention to detail and the history of an object. They collect information like a scientist in a laboratory. Nakano Broadway is a great way to spend an afternoon. They have an excellent record store, Shop Mecano, devoted to techno-pop music of the 70s and 80s, but also electronic New Wave music. It is one of the record stores that have a sizable presence for Jun Togawa-related albums, as well as YMO, of course.
I’ll be leaving Japan in a few days, but the general plan is to spend an equal amount of time here and in Los Angeles, another city I love. What I don’t love is the return of the previous President, and therefore, I may move here to Tokyo.
Maybe he will become a felon. The wheels of justice are moving so slow.