In preparation for the start of the jury system–and jury duty–in Japan in 2009, the Ministry of Justice has been doing a little grass-roots campaigning. Given that Japan is a country where every one-horse town, product and movement has a character symbol, and even the “weak” (緩い) and the lame characters are embraced, the ministry thought it a good idea to secure the cooperation of its very own leader, the Minister of Justice, in spreading the word. Here is Hatayama Kunio strutting the Saiban-inko (サイバンインコ) costume, cutting edge-wear in participatory democracy. “Saiban” is trial, and “saiban-in” is a jury member. “Inko” is a parakeet:
In keeping with the pleasure principal of popular culture, I would like to suggest a few new pairings of characters with the jobs we have found them to cozy into, warm and fuzzy-like.
Vice-President Dick Cheney as King of Ghidorah
Sporting two legs, three heads, and bat-wings, this monster is known for its ability to withstand nearly anything, due to armored scales. The 3 heads allow for easy multi-tasking, as each emits a different shriek. Known to be easily mind-controlled, his wing lightning, developed in-house and field tested in desert conditions (see below), is especially useful for ‘enhanced interrogation.’
You’re not really big in Japan until Godzilla stomps you. All the smog and particulate of this week’s fires has put me in a rather kaijû state of mind.
The 1954 version is one of my all-time favorites, a one-size-fits-all pirate crate of postwar Japan. From the opening eyeball (from a later film in the series, actually), it’s looking right at you, all bloodshot and googly, saying “well, now what?” A procession of puzzled answers emerges. It’s got curmudgeonly old men who grumble about losing tradition and issue dire warnings about human hubris, angry housewives (the chief instigators of the real-life peace movement, after the Bikini Atoll bombings and the Lucky Dragon incident, in which fishermen were nuked by ash fallout from US testing) demanding their right to know, mustachio’d scientists giving testimony with gadgets and footprint measurer, and nosy reporters from the mainland snooping around southern islands to report back to mainland news organizations. Also, Emiko, an ingénue with a heart of gold who is the daughter of an élite scientist, as well as the mad crush of a certain mad scientist with an eyepatch, though she will later run off with a lowly garbage-man, on her own romp wreaking postwar havoc, with class-crossing true love as her means of destruction. The scientist with a murky R&D background of wartime research, Serizawa, invents a device, the oxygen destroyer. This gadget is reputed to be the last hope for saving Japan from the wrath of the radioactive one. At the fatal hour on the high seas, poised to let loose with the destroyer in scuba gear, a broken-hearted Serizawa dives underwater and commits mad-scientist harakiri–he cuts his lifeline and sacrifices himself for the good even greater than true love, doing in the monster and saving the country’s skin.
The last (and only) roar you hear after the BOC song is one sample of the musique concrète style of Ikufube Akira’s amazing tape score for the film.
Posted by thesecretingredientiswater 
Posted by thesecretingredientiswater 
