I rencently saw Sisterhood (english name name for the 2007 movie Chikyû de tatta futari aka Two Girls On The Earth in France) from director Eiji Uchida at the occasion of a Japanese festival in my town. Never heard about Uchida before but really loved the movie and being a japanese movie fan, I’ve been trying to learn more about him.

It led me to his 2008 movie Topless (Toppuresu).

This film explores the topic of homosexuality, more promptly lesbianism, but also deals with young love in a more general way and each character’s struggle to make peace with herself/himself.
The different subplots are all linked by the story of the ever-lively and upbeat girl Natsuko and her broken heart. She recently broke up with her female lover Tomomi who’s about to marry a man. Meanwhile Nastuko’s male and straight roommate Koji is grappling with his own feelings for her and a young schoolgirl Kana comes to Tokyo in order to find her mother who left her for a female lover a long time ago. Kana has garnered a strong distaste for lesbians and ironicly finds a friend in Natsuko who will help her in her search.
Uchida carefully avoids clichés so often associated when exploring such a controversial subject and tackles the issues that many Japanese lesbians face today, like the need to marry men solely based on the economic dependence and the will to have kids. Topless gives us several views on such subjects, each characters actually has her/his own view, which makes the movie so interesting.
Surprisingly, the movie is almost completely devoid of any nudity. Metaphorically, the film’s title is seemingly more appropriate to deal with the characters exposing themselves emotionally towards each other.

Tags: Eiji Uchida, japan, love, sisterhood, tokyo, topless.

LAZYgunsBRISKY is a Japanese female punky-rocknroll band from Tokyo.
Saw them live a couple days ago. Cool gig ! Cute, fun and full of energy !

Visit LAZYgunsBRISKY’s myspace !

Tags: band, brisky, girls, guns, japan, lazy, music, tokyo.

Here is a cool compilation of japanese ads featuring one of the best electronic-pop band of the late 70s to nowadays ; YMO. Some of them feature music from the band and the members play in some others.

Fore those who don’t know about Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) let’s just say it is actually the best Japanese band I know. The work of Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboardist), Yukihiro Takahashi (drummer and lead singer) and Haruomi Hosono (bass player) both with their solo carreers and with YMO makes them stand as first-class, worldwide-known, electro-pop pioneers alongside bands such as Krafwerk.

They quite developped the use of synthetizers, vocoders, sampling in pop music and the art of making great rising-sun melodies.

Ryuichi Sakamoto also played in some great movies and did some of the best movie soundtracks I know. Be sure to watch “Furyo” (English title “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”), starring Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano. How could it be better ?

Tags: commercial, japan, magic, music, orchestra, Ryuichi, Sakamoto, TV, yellow, YMO.