Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 12, 2001

'Model' family vs. maternal love: a nation judges

Last week, the Japan Office of the Nevada Center for Reproductive Medicine announced that a 60-year-old Japanese woman gave birth to a healthy baby at Jikei University Hospital in Tokyo. Though the woman's identity and the child's gender were not revealed, the mother released a statement through the Japanese representative of the center. The statement was notable more for its tone than its content; it read in part, "It is wrong if [a couple] cannot have a child simply because the woman is older."

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 8, 2001

David Mead: 'Mine and Yours'

David Mead's songs are invariably described as "lush and sophisticated," adjectives that are normally a good indication something is boring. As a performer and songwriter, he's often compared to Paul Simon, probably because he's from New York and exercises a tendency toward complex phrasing. Further proof, perhaps, that should you encounter his albums at your local record store you would be advised to move right in the opposite direction.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 5, 2001

'It's a complicated story,' pleads a battered press

The press has taken quite a beating over its coverage of the murders at Ikeda Elementary School. Even before the funerals, letters to the editor columns were filled with missives from enraged readers lam basting the media's lack of either common decency or common sense. Most complaints concerned interviews with children as they were leaving the school after the murders. "As a parent, I was speechless," one correspondent wrote to the Asahi Shimbun, "I never imagined the press could be so cruel."

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 29, 2001

Talking about the weather is no longer so boring

We tend to take weather forecasts with a grain of salt. Some people leave their umbrellas at home unless the probability of precipitation is over, say, 40 percent, while others keep a collapsible in their bag at all times because they don't know what to believe. We know it's raining because we are getting wet, and we know it's hot because we are sweating, but almost everything else about the weather is up for grabs.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 25, 2001

The Avalanches: 'Since I Left You'

According to the credits on their debut album, "Since I Left You," The Avalanches are six young men, only two of whom play instruments (guitar and piano/percussion). The rest are listed as "mixers," which makes sense when you consider that the record contains no less than 900 samples. Surprisingly, no attorney is listed.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 22, 2001

It's not always easy to see yourself as others do

On the face of it, the current controversy over Japanese history textbooks is just one more example of Japan not facing up to its militaristic past. On a deeper level, however, Korea's decision to forgo further liberalization of Japanese cultural imports until the offending texts are revised underscores the unique emotional relationship that exists between the two countries.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 18, 2001

Edith Frost: 'Wonder Wonder'

As an artistic reference point, the music of Will Oldham -- he of the deathly pale complexion, tubercular Appalachian croak and sex-unto-death lyrics -- might teach you something valuable about mood and atmosphere, but you'd have to be crazy to copy his execution. Even Oldham himself has managed a few good stylistic jokes at his own expense in the course of his ongoing Palace project, but budding indie singer-songwriters looking for an influence to plunder had better stick to the more corporeal Elliott Smith.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 15, 2001

A spoonful of Koizumi helps the medicine go down

The continuance of Junichiro Koizumi's administration beyond the summer seems like a sure bet: Support for his Cabinet is over 80 percent, his e-mail magazine is being read by hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and every time the opposition questions one of his pronouncements, they are deluged with calls from angry citizens.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 11, 2001

'Discosis': Bran Van 3000

Bran Van 3000's 1998 debut, "Glee," was a clever and confusing patchwork of hip-hop, disco and pop-rock signifiers. The album produced one underground hit, "Drinking in L.A.," whose sardonic take on the snarky side of the music biz endeared the mysterious Montreal consortium of artists and musicians to college-radio programmers.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 8, 2001

Money for nothing, but only if you spend it first

Television is often blamed for conditioning its audience in undesirable ways: We want things faster, easier, in bite-size pieces that don't require a lot of chewing. And everything must have a kicker, a dramatic endpoint that will justify our time in front of the box.

CULTURE / Film

Jul 4, 2001

Love: The final frontier

In science fiction, technological progress is often portrayed as bringing humankind ever closer to God in terms of understanding and exploiting the universe. At the beginning of Steven Spielberg's "A.I.," a scientist with the interesting name of Dr. Hobby (William Hurt) expounds before a group of underlings on the need to cross that last frontier of artificial intelligence: love. An employee wonders out loud if programming machines to love isn't morally objectionable. "Didn't God create Adam so that he might love Him?" responds Hobby, rhetorically, not realizing that he just answered the employee's question with a resounding "yes."

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 1, 2001

Innovative strategies that get the message across

The pointlessness of election campaigns in Japan is dramatically exemplified by the sound trucks screaming the names of their respective candidates over and over. The stupidity of election campaigns in Japan is audaciously exemplified by something that happened in my own neighborhood last week prior to the Tokyo assembly vote. One candidate, whose name happened to be same as that of the ward in which I live, kept screeching, "You write your address all the time, so just write it again when you go to vote."

CULTURE / Music

Jul 1, 2001

The gospel according to Beyonce

A little-discussed truism of R&B is that female vocalists benefited more from Michael Jackson than male vocalists did, and none more than Karyn White. Only gays and black teenage girls seemed to appreciate White's potential as a revolutionary force in black dance music, someone whose natural gift for melody and a rocker's instincts pushed the mediocre material that characterized late '80s R&B over the top.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 27, 2001

Maria Muldaur

Maria Muldaur's 1973 debut album remains, for better or worse, the template for all those eclectic SoCal songbird collections by people like Linda Ronstadt and Valerie Carter; albums that included a little jazz, a little blues, one or two country songs (written by Dolly Parton, usually) and a familiar rocker, preferably one from the '50s or '60s.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 24, 2001

Natural urban chaos in the worst-case scenario

Last Sunday night I settled down to watch one of my favorite TV shows, "Tokumei Research 200X" (NTV, 7:58 p.m.), quite unprepared for what I was about to learn. If you've never seen this particular information program, it is built around the fictional Far East Research Center, a shiny mission control for designer-suited computer nerds who conduct in-depth research into any subject the TV audience requests through a special Web site set up by the producer.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 20, 2001

'Miss E . . . So Addictive': Missy Misdemeanor Elliott

Picking up on the drug reference in the title of the former Hefty Bag Queen's third album, we can easily wonder if Missy Misdemeanor Elliott hasn't lately been feeding her head as much as she'd previously fed every other part of her body. "I looked down at my stomach," she deadpans in the liner noters, "and said nope, no 6-pack for me." Then again, such an admission could be interpreted as a commitment to keeping those pounds off.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 17, 2001

Take me out to the big league

As U.S. President George W. Bush makes the rounds in Europe, taking flak and talking trash, it seems like a good opportunity to address what his father would refer to as the "cultural hegemony thing." South Korea and France deal with it by subsidizing their movie industries. China screens everything entering the country that doesn't look like Mickey Mouse. Scandinavia invents death metal.

CULTURE / Music

Jun 17, 2001

Flying postpunk first class

Time is the nemesis of originality. The greater the number of artists who explore a particular discipline over time, the less likely it is that one of them will come up with something fresh.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 13, 2001

'Poses': Rufus Wainwright

'Everything I like is a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me." So croons Rufus Wainwright on "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," the opening cut from his new album, "Poses."

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 10, 2001

There's a fine line between parody and larceny

There is an unspoken belief among music critics that had George Harrison not been a Beatle, he wouldn't have lasted more than a minute in the pop business. This belief has nothing to do with Harrison's talent and everything to do with his professional judgment. First, he released all his good songs on one three-record set right off the bat, thus rendering him an immediate has-been as a solo artist. Second, when he was sued for ripping off the melody of the Chiffons' 1963 hit "He's So Fine" for his 1970 hit "My Sweet Lord," he professed that he had done so "unknowingly." Perhaps the judge was a closet Stones fan, but in any case he didn't gently weep over the ex-Moptop's naivete but forced him to hand over the royalties.

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