Sorry I’ve been absent the last couple of days - my day job’s been kicking my ass the last week or so, but I felt the need to comment on the recent passing of Japanese actor Ken Ogata.
The first time I remember seeing Ogata was in Paul Schraeder’s flat-out-amazing biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Despite the fact that he didn’t really look like Yukio Mishima, Ogata projected his presence in a way that I’d rarely seen in biographical film. Unfortunately, Ogata was never very well-known in the West, which is truly a shame.
A murderous firebug torched a so-called ‘video hotel’ stocked with manga, dirty movies, and salarymen in Osaka, killing 15 patrons. These Japanese killing sprees just get more and more weird, don’t they? I’m sure if you set an American hotel on fire, all you’d destroy would be a bunch of Gideon Bibles and bedbugs.
Police identified the alleged arsonist as Kazuhiro Ogawa, who appears to have selected the location to inflict maximum loss of life: like so many of the “manga kissa” comic libraries and adult-video viewing parlours dotted around Japanese cities, the down-market Cats video house doubled as an ultra-cheap hotel and its 32 cramped cubicles were nearly always full.
The apparent use of fire to kill so many people has severely shaken Japan in what has already been an unsettling year of indiscriminate murders: seven people died in June when the central Tokyo shopping district of Akihabara was turned into a bloodbath by a lone knifeman.
Mr Ogawa allegedly set fire to a bag of newspapers in his room in the small hours of Wednesday morning. Investigators believe that he would have almost certainly known that most of the other rooms were occupied and that nearly all of the customers were fast asleep.
Manila-born director and producer Cirio Santiago died of lung cancer on Friday. Santiago directed and produced dozens of films both here and in his native Philippines. Among his efforts were T.N.T. Jackson, Bloodfist 1 and 2 (starring Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson’) and the drive-in classic She-Devils in Chains. Not surprisingly, Quentin Tarantino counted Santiago among his many influences.
The power’s back on at chez Musashi, but Time Warner is being a little slow in getting all our utilities back up and running - meaning no phone, cable, or internet. So again, light posting until I’m no longer living in the 19th century.
…posting (at least on my end) will be a little light for the next few days. Cincinnati got some of Ike’s leftovers, and supposedly 70% of the city will be without electricity for several days. Unfortunately, I happen to be part of that 70% - updates as I get ‘em.
(I did take some pretty cool video of the storm, though, so I may YouTube it and link it here…)
Say it slowly - ‘diarrhea morbidity‘. That should help that steak ‘n egg breakfast go down nicely…
As a Filipino-American with two toddlers at home, this disturbs me on a number of levels - the World Health Organization announced today that the Philippines ranks second only to China in the number of children under 5 that succumb to fatal diarrhea. The cause? A lack of proper sanitation related to poor access to clean water and facilities….aaaand parents not telling their kids to wash their fucking hands.
Dr. Yolanda Oliveros, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control (NCDPC), said the National Government has also launched its own analysis for the year 2000 on handwashing practice among adults and children.
Among adults, 90 percent have said they wash their hands before eating but less than 50 percent of children below 12 years old adhere to the practice.
She said the study also indicated that only 20 percent of children below five years old, 37 percent among adolescents, 44 percent of adults, and 50 percent of older people wash their hands after they use the toilet.
Yeah, there are some serious problems back in the land of my forebears.
Looks like all the fearmongering regarding the operation of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has finally borne fruit. Inspired by numerous reports that the ginormous particle accelerator could potentially jump-start black holes which would then consume the planet, 16-year-old Chayya Lal took an overdose of medication to avoid dying in the ensuing cataclysm.
Chayya’s parents said she had spoken of her fears about the “Big Bang” experiment.
“Chayya had asked me a number of times whether the world would end as they were saying on television,” her father Bihari told the Hindustan Times.
“We tried to divert her attention and told her not to worry about any great disaster,” the Mail Today quoted him as saying.
The Mail said the local police inspector had raised doubts about the reasons for Chayya’s death and had vowed to investigate.
As sad as this is, I have to amusedly wonder what one has to lose if the world is going to end anyway? Why kill yourself when you’re convinced the entire world is going to be swallowed whole by a black hole? Dead is dead, ain’t it? And why choose certain-death over maybe-death?
Boing Boing notes that Japanese artist Nagi Noda, who directed the video for Yuki’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ (embedded below) died earlier this week. Noda apparently suffered ongoing complications from a car accident some time ago, but it’s not clear whether the accident was ultimately responsible for her demise.
A rash of underage suicides has moved a Shanghai bookstore to ban the comic believed to be the source of inspiration. ‘The Rabbit Who Wanted to Kill Itself‘ (shouldn’t that be ‘The Rabbit Which Wanted to Kill Itself‘, since ‘itself’ implies non-personhood? Sorry…) reportedly prompted a slew of teen suicides, as well as a sales surge in psychological self-help and suicide-prevention tomes.
“The comic used to be popular among young readers,” said Zhu Bin, public relations officer at the book city.
In the story, the rabbit comes up with various ways of killing itself, including pouring sulfuric acid to its head, jumping off a building and sticking its head into a revolving door.
Zhu also said that since last Wednesday, the sales of books on teenage psychological guidance have soared, as parents are becoming more concerned about the mental health of their children.
“In the past, reference and exercise books were parents’ favorites. However, last weekend, the first weekend after the new semester started, there was a sales rush on psychology-related books,” he said. “Some even sold out.”
Announcing his resignation following an emergency meeting, Mr Toshimitsu said: ” I have troubled the Sumo Association and its fans so I have resigned. I must reflect deeply by myself.”
The ancient sport, which dates back 2,000 years, has long required its wrestlers to adhere to a strict moral code and lead an ascetic life of abstinence and hard training.
The drug scandal first came to light last month when a Russian wrestler known as Wakanoho was arrested for possession of marijuana, prompting the association to take the unprecedented step of expelling him.
In order to restore public faith in the troubled sport, sumo chiefs ordered random drug tests for the first time in its history among the nation’s 69 top ranking wrestlers.
Sorry I’ve been absent the last couple of days - my day job’s been kicking my ass the last week or so, but I felt the need to comment on the recent passing of Japanese actor Ken Ogata.
Say it slowly - ‘
Golly gee willikers!
