The solitude of ravens

The British Journal of Photography has named Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s 1986 Karasu (Ravens) as the best photobook of the past 25 years*. According to the BJP:

The book is a mournful reflection on Fukase’s past relationship, but has also been interpreted as an allegorical critique of modern industrialised society.

Through dark, grainy images of karasu, Fukase chronicles a lonesome trip to his hometown in Hokkaido in the late 70s while deep in the throes of divorce from his wife/former muse.

Fukase is said to have first become engrossed by the brooding karasu as he sat aboard the train from Tokyo, not knowing his collection would one day be hailed an obscure masterpiece by British critics. Despite three sold-out editions and a revised, slightly more impressionistic name (The Solitude of Ravens), Fukase’s work has remained largely unknown until this recent accolade.

Karasu are plentiful in Japan, particularly in the cities where special anti-karasu nets are used to protect domestic rubbish from being strewn about the streets. In Japanese mythology, they are said to represent foreboding and dangerous times ahead. I had always translated the word karasu as simply crow, rather than the more mysterious raven, but the Japanese word can apparently mean both black birds. It will take someone far more ornithological than me to know which is actually represented in Fukase’s book.

On a melancholy note**, Fukase has remained in a coma since the early 1990s. He is said to have fallen down stairs while drunk, which merely adds another level of sadness and solitude to his work.

*The Guardian subeditors may have been skeptical about the BJP’s choice of Kurasu. Their article by Sean O’Hagan, Masahisa Fukase’s Raavens: the best photobook of the past 25 years? is a pretty clear example of poorly-chosen punctuation, considering the overall positive tone of the piece.

**On a totally geeky linguistic note, did you know the collective noun for ravens is an unkindness? I did not, until I heard The Unkindness of Ravens, a cool little London two-piece who tend to hang out in Camden.

Images from The Guardian and Mass Observer.

Horse for hire

Uma Thurman’s going to need the modelling work as her latest film, Motherhood, took just £9 on the first Sunday of its release. That’s one ticket.  With adults paying £13 here in the UK, it must have been a lonely senior citizen or a confused child given the wrong ticket.

*uma is Japanese for horse. (Zing!)

Ed norton + glen hansard do dylan

Apart from being an incredible actor, NY marathon runner, friend of the Maasai warriors and all-round nice guy who speaks Japanese, Ed Norton is also a Dylan fan – and a terrible guitarist.

He recently helped his Irish buddy Glen Hansard* throw a benefit concert in LA to raise funds to buy the Maasai a US$70,000 truck. Hansard played a selection of songs, including Dylan’s Drive All Night, with Norton trying to strum along. After an initial attempt, he then sits back and enjoys the show. Rather awkwardly, actually.

So until Leaves of Grass gets a UK release date and we get double the Norton for our buck pound, I’m going to re-watch him serenading that poor junkie girl in Woody Allen’s musical masterpiece, Everyone Says I Love You.

*Hansard’s pretty cool but his vocals occasionally grate. Oh, what am I saying, Once was a total tear-jerker and his overall niceness (& accent) makes up for all the scratchy singing.

Megadeth’s mr heavy metal

Blimey, who knew former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman left the band as didn’t suit his refined taste in music? He told Ultimate Guitar mag:

I didn’t think Megadeth were aggressive enough! It was getting to the point where everything was kind of mid-tempo, old school metal. And there was so much cooler nu metal happening at the time, that I really felt we needed to get modern because this shit that we were doing was not aggressive enough. And our pop stuff was not pop enough.

He now lives in Tokyo, the land of pop, where he’s fluent in Japanese and known as Mr Heavy Metal.

In this Heavy Metal Major League clip, a dude in full Kiss regalia tells Mr Heavy Metal ‘you’re awesome!’ before announcing to Paul Gilbert (aka Mr Big), ‘you suck!’. The host then selects balls painted with alphabet letters from a box and the two axemen must ‘play ball’ by playing a riff from an artist starting with that letter*.

TV in the UK is all The F Word this and X-Factor that. If only the producers would look to Japan…or listen to more heavy metal.

*Gilbert’s first choice of Yngwie Malmsteen for ‘y’ is pretty impressive…but perhaps I just don’t know enough metal guitarists?