Boro means, quite literally, rags. This style of patchwork originated at the end of the 19th century in “snow country” Tohoku – at the north end of Japan – where not only was it too cold to cultivate cotton but, to make matters worse, the samurai class had forbidden the commoners from wearing it altogether. So the peasants had to weave their clothes and bed covers out of coarse hemp. When the prohibition ended, at the end of the Edo period (1600-1868), cotton slowly found its way up from the south. To the destitute farmers, it was so precious that they would carefully save and reuse any little scrap of textile, at times even re-looming the threads with hemp. They called the resulting quilted cloth Saki-ori: tear-woven… It was their most prized possession and often the only dowry a young woman would have when she married.

I am hard-pressed to articulate why Boro resonates so strongly with me. Part of it is its unassuming Mingei beauty. Part is the pain, the life of hardship that permeates through the fabric. Part is its historic relevance.

Perhaps even more importantly, Boro is the purest expression I have found of Wabi-Sabi. In Japanese aesthetics, Wabi-Sabi is said to be a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.

Boro is undeniably Wabi-Sabi.

Interestingly, one could touch all the pieces at the exhibition. Any self-respecting westerner curator would scream in horror at the thought of hundreds of hands groping the fragile, century old sashiko kimonos! But in this case it seems to me that touching the textile is not only necessary to emotionally connect with it, it is also in tune with core tenets of Wabi-Sabi:

Corrosion and contamination make its expression richer. It solicits the expansion of sensory information. It understands that to everything, there is a season.

Nothing ever lasts…

(With many thanks to Leonard Koren for his most excellent book on the subject)

Sounds like the pitch for a bad cyberpunk novel, right?

Except the story is true. The big corporation is Yamaha and the software – known as Vocaloid – is licensed to smaller corporations who then sell it as “voice packs”, complete with a name and a face such as Hatsune Miku – from Hatsu (初, first), Ne (音, sound), and Miku (未来, future) thus meaning “the first sound to the future.”

Listen to her launch single (warning: J-Pop inside!), or her greatest accidental hit the “Levan Polkka” (fan made) or even the theme song from Mario Bros or Tetris.

Decent singing for a computer – it holds a lot of promise for the future indeed – but nothing really earth shattering yet…
So all of this would only be mildly interesting if it were not for this surprising fact: Miku is a huge hit here in Japan!

It really dawned on me while walking around Akihabara (the otaku district in Tokyo) this evening. Around 08:00pm, after work, grown men and women waiting in a queue to play the recently released “Project Diva Arcade”…

…look closely: these are not kids nor crazed teenagers. They are well behaved, twenty to thirty, salary men and women…

…who just desperately want to play the arcade version of a PSP game featuring Miku Hatsune and her songs!
In fact she’s all over the place. In the streets, in the stores, from the anime shops to the UFO catchers:

It’s Miku everywhere!

But I don’t really understand why… As a singer she’s barely decent, as an anime character she’s nothing out of the ordinary and the game is just an average rhythm game. So why? If anyone reading is well versed in otaku culture, I would love to hear a coherent explanation for this surprising popularity.

So far the only theory I could come up with is that her success is largely due to the fact that people can make her sing whatever they want. Fans can create their own songs with her voice and share it all over the internet. This gives them a sense of ownership over their idol that might justify her meteoric rise.

Hatsune Miku, future of the music industry and first UGC star?

EDIT (11/10/10) – This story keeps getting better: Miku now goes on live tours!

Like my love,
the sakura blossom
dies too soon.

Last month I spent an extended weekend on the tiny island of Naoshima, in the Seto inland sea. Naoshima became a well known cultural spot in Japan after the Benesse corporation (owner of the Berlitz language schools) had Tadao Ando design and build two museums for contemporary art. I usually dislike museums because they feel more like mausoleums than anything else. However the Benesse House – as the first one is called – is an interesting place not just for the art it holds but because you can sleep there: the museum also serves as a small hotel. Art pieces are on display everywhere, from your bedside to the surrounding outdoors and even on the beach. Art becomes part of your messy life, as it should be – it isn’t sterilized and sanctified ready-for-worship. Getting out of your room late at night and wandering through the deserted museum is quite an experience! I would go so far as to say it completely changes your relation to the pieces. Now, if only they would let me sleep in le Louvre…

Awatama, of course!

Thanks to all the good people at Interchannel who truly did an amazing job publishing Soul Bubbles in Japan. The booklet is gorgeous and the box art is great (not just from comparing with the awful western version!). We changed the main character because the western one didn’t quite cut it for the locals (something I had personally observed many times). Apparently baldness is un-kawaii or something. (^-^)

Needless to say, after being raised on Japanese video games, I feel incredibly honored and proud to have our little bubbles floating around in Nintendo land.

A couple of weekends ago I was still in Japan, visiting Yakushima: a small island south of Japan.
Dylan of Q-Games had kindly remarked that “there’s nothing there” and I should head to Kyoto instead (where there’s a lot more bars, obviously). He was right as there is not much more to see than a forest. But what a forest! Yakushima is not only a UNESCO world heritage site, its primeval forest was also the inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki’s Mononoke Hime. With its deers roaming peacefully between millenarian cedar trees and moss covered rocks, it’s quite easy to understand why.

On the way out of Yakushima, I was also treated to one of those delightful Japanese idiosyncrasies: apparently, harassing attendants while drunk has become such a problem that it warrants the third spot on the poster about forbidden behaviors in flight.

Spent a few days in Kyoto.
Had never seen it in autumn.
Felt like sharing the beauty.

I also spent a little time at the local museum but mostly walked around Kasuga-Taisha, a Shinto shrine dedicated to a goddess who is said to have arrived riding a deer. Deers have therefore been declared sacred and roam the premises freely, in search of treats from the passerby. Also, lanterns can be seen everywhere as the shrine is host to Mantoro, a bi-yearly festival where three thousand lanterns are lit.

About half an hour ago, northern Japan was hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. There were a few casualties. I was woken up by a loud squeaking noise coming from the windows. At first, I thought it was the window cleaning guys. But then the squeaking got even louder and the whole building started to sway gently. Then harder. I was on the 29th floor of the Southern Century tower in Shinjuku and it felt like I was on a rocking boat. The drawers were opening and stuff falling out of place in the room…

A-MA-ZING!

Only in Japan can you go to the Village Vanguard in Shimokitazawa and buy a whole picture book on sea slugs (umiushi as they are called here). And it’s a beautiful book, too!

Only in Japan can you have sushi like you’ll have at Kyubei.

Only in Japan do you see girls like those at the Harajuku bridge.