Michelle Gunn! Michelle Gunn! Michelle Gunn!

In the witching hour

I picked up the first volume of xxxHOLiC by the manga collective Clamp. The series begins with a high-school student, Watanuki Kimihiro, who is plagued by spirits, and the witch who offers to help him for a price.

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Water world

I finally picked up a copy of Pink Box, Joan Sinclair’s photojournal of the Japanese sex industry. It is an exceptional achievement. It offers a glimpse into a side of the mizu shōbai (水商売, lit. water trade, the entertainment business) rarely seen by outsiders.

Sinclair shows us a world where all manner of fantasies are fulfilled: shaking train carriages with schoolgirls to grope, foot fetish bars, real doll clubs and yes, used panty sales. It is, in her words, full of ‘colour, kitsch, variety, and absurdity’. But first and foremost it is a staggering money spinner. Sex services in Japan are worth ¥2.37 trillion (Takashi Kadokura, 2001).

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Give me Moore.

I have been re-reading Alan Moore’s superlative comic book From Hell. Taking the unsolved case of Jack the Ripper as their starting point, Moore and illustrator Eddie Campbell delve into the underbelly of Victorian society and beyond.

It is a gripping story, full of inventive twists and brutally depicted in black ink. The comic is wonderfully dense, yet at the same time eminently readable. Moore has an exceptional gift for processing a large volume of source material into a taut narrative.

One thing I noticed this time was the attention to detail placed on the typeface. This in itself is not uncommon. Comic books often employ multiple fonts, making the text part of the graphic narrative. It closes the distance between picture and word.

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LOVE PAPER? 

Love Takeo & Winged Wheel.

It’s business time. Pull out your card. What’s it say?

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Aspergillus Oryzae: the Mifune Toshiro of microbes. The quintessential Japanese mould.

This prince amongst microbes is also the star of Ishikawa Masayuki’s (石川雅之) manga and anime Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture (making my Toshiro Mifune analogy a little less tenuous).

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LONDON.

I even felt relieved, though that was more to do with escaping the confines of a twelve hour flight. Most of me – the important parts at least – was still back in Japan.

Two years worth of memories were waiting to be dug up and flung across the web. Here’s hoping my Necronomicon is shipped over safely.

. . .

They have come back from the dead!! Ahhhh!