And now for something completely different (as they say)…

Hitotoki: a narrative map of Tokyo.

From Mainichi:

Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine has found itself with an unexpected hit on its hands — a rap song dedicated to kamikaze pilots and using lyrics from their farewell letters written immediately before their suicide missions,

More the Roppongi Hills Gang than the Sugarhill Gang, it’s hardly ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party)’.

Still, those swords can be considered ‘bling’, can’t they?

Just don’t mention the Wu-Tang Clan to them.

Listen to an Arei Raise rap track here.

Well, as the previous music item’s comments section seemed to veer off in a Guitar Wolf direction, would only be fair to put this up.

While we’re waxing nostalgic about Japanese music, crazed rocker Julian Cope has recently published his Japrocksampler (to compliment his earlier but now out of print Krautrocksampler), which, according to the British New Statesman, details the time when:

Tokyo, 1969. The Spiders, the Mops and myriad other identically suited “Group Sound” beat combos making post-Beatles guitar pop are on the decline, as politicised foku geira (folk guerrilla) figures such as the camouflage-clad Dr Acid Seven gain popularity. The city’s Shinjuku district becomes Tokyo’s Haight-Ashbury, filled with young people following the futen ideal – a uniquely Japanese take on the west’s drop-outs, hippies and psychedelic wanderers.

Spotted on a trip to Paris recently…

China is sending out two virtual police officers to patrol the Internet to combat online pornography and other “illicit activity”, state media said on Wednesday.

The virtual officers, a man and a woman, “will appear either on motorcycles, in a car or on foot, at the bottom of users’ computer screens every 30 minutes to remind them of Internet security,” the China Daily said.

But more importantly, has the repressive state apparatus in China gone kawaii?

The X Factor can be a big deal in the UK, being the country that invented the format.

However, the Japanese community in the UK is apparently up in arms about one contestant, “Totoshko’s, claim to have come to audition all the way from Japan (“She’s so Chinese!” I was told), claiming she is in fact a fake.

What do you reckon?

The Scotsman is reporting an invasion of Japanese fans for a music festival featuring 1980s and 1990s British indie acts.

The author Dennis Cooper has something of a Japanese porn extravaganza going on, over at his blog.

Japanese magician Princess Tenko has been seriously injured in a sword trick that went wrong.

The illusionist was trapped in a box by ten metal swords during a show in the Japanese city of Sabae, breaking several ribs and her right cheek.

BBC News

Seriously though, I hope she recovers soon.