Originally published on Thu January 31, 2013 12:03 pm
There are three phrases that are almost always bad news for a piece of cultural writing.
They are:
1. "The masses."
2. "Middle America."
3. "The lowest common denominator."
All three are ways to separate the writer and her sensibility — which are presumed to be congruent with the reader and her sensibility — from invisible and undefined others, for whom bad cultural content is produced and by whom it is unquestioningly gobbled up.
It used to be a truism among critics of British poetry that Keats and most of his fellow Romantic poets worked in the shadow of John Milton. I'm not making a perfect analogy when I suggest that most contemporary Japanese writers seem to be working under the shadow of Haruki Murakami, but I hope it highlights the spirit of the situation.
Originally published on Thu February 7, 2013 1:44 pm
"What are those?" I asked my mom, suspiciously eyeing the little cardboard tub with its cellophane cover. It held a heap of pale, miniature cabbages. "They're Brussels sprouts," she said. "They're supposed to be good for you," she added, sealing my doom.
At dinnertime, the mystery vegetable reappeared, steaming hot and greenish-yellow but otherwise unaltered. It gave off a sulfurous stench. I recoiled, but I knew my job. I took a bite.
Hannari Tofu is a character who shows up on a range of plush merchandise.
Credit yoppy/Flickr
Food imitates art imitating food: a pancake shaped to resemble Anpanman's sweet roll head.
Credit St Stev/Flickr
Two of the heroes from the anime series Go! Anpanman. The head of Shokupanman (left) is made out of white bread. Anpanman (right) is named after a Japanese sweet roll stuffed with red bean paste.
Credit StreetFly JZ/Flickr
To-fu Oyako is a soybean-curd-inspired line of products, including bags, planners and pillows.
Credit Saotin/Flickr
A kyaraben, or character bento, inspired by characters from the anime Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san.
From an early age, Japanese kids are taught to "eat with your eyes," and this emphasis on the visual delights of food can be found in many aspects of Japan's vaunted culture of cute.
Take children's television, for example. Some of the most beloved cartoon characters in Japan are based on food items.
Originally published on Wed January 30, 2013 10:20 am
Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, an improvising musician who pioneered a system of ensemble interaction he called Conduction, has died at a hospital in New York City, his publicist confirmed. He had lung cancer, which was diagnosed last August. He was 65.
In a new book, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, journalist and author Fred Kaplan tackles the career of David H. Petraeus and follows the four-star general from Bosnia to his commands in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Central to the story are ideas of counterinsurgency. Kaplan says that while counterinsurgency is not a new kind of warfare, it's a kind of war that Americans do not like to fight.
Take a look at this remarkable graph — is it the stock market? Home sales?
Nope. Click on the blue box in the lower right-hand corner and you'll see that the blue line tracks the number of chicken wings that Americans bought at grocery stores over the last year. See that mighty surge of wing-buying in early February? Apparently, you just cannot have a Super Bowl party without chicken wings — millions and millions of chicken wings.
