The slow days of winter are upon us, making an evening on the couch with a good book or tune more enticing than the sweaty confines of a live house or club. As folks slowly stream back into town from the New Year's holidays, there isn't a lot happening in the first few weeks of January anyway, so kick back and try dosing on these missives from Tokyo's steamy underground.
* * * For a long time Japanese comics, film and music were in the realm of the obsessive connoisseur, and the only information available was either through abstruse film textbooks or ranting fanzines. With the publishing of Steve McClure's "Nippon Pop," and Mark Schilling's "Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture," however, the ins and outs of Johnny's Jimusho and "wide shows" have been made a little clearer to the average foreign reader. As Pokemon conquers television sets and playgrounds worldwide, mainstream Japanese pop culture has truly gone above ground.
"Japan Edge: The Insider's Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture" (Cadence Books) sets out to do the same for the underground as well. The book's team of writers tackles cinema, manga and music, culminating with a roundtable discussion that highlights some of the overlaps among these various scenes.