This interview with Nobuyoshi Araki was conducted on October 28, 2010, in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan by Hyewon Yi, as part of her research on participant/observer photography. Yuko Teshima Fujii assisted with interpretation during the interview and translation of the transcript. Kikuko Tanaka also assisted with translation of the transcript. The interviewer thanks Mashiyama Takayuki of Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, for arranging the interview, reviewing the transcript, expediting permission to publish the accompanying photographs, and countless other courtesies. Warning: The interview contains sexually explicit language.
Usually reviews of NobuyoshiAraki’s work start by pointing out the contradictions “monster,” “genius,” “pornographer,” “artist,” etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo’sancient past or Tokyo’s modern sexual underworld.
But this kind of moralistic approach doesn’t quite fit a subject like Araki, who is more a force of nature, existing, in some Nietzschean space beyond good and evil, or at least “good and evil” as defined by middle-class Western journalists like Adrian Searle in The Guardian. In a review of the show “Nobuyoshi Araki: Self, Life, Death,” at London’s Barbican last year, Searle slyly hinted that Araki’s depictions ofwomen placed him beyond the pale of some liberal leftwing acceptability, before trying to find some level on which he could be “redeemed.’‘
Irvine Welsh races through Ryu Murakami's psychosexual thriller
Irvine Welsh Saturday 17 January 2009
The dustjacket of Ryu Murakami's latest novel, Audition, somewhat pompously describes the author as a "renaissance man for the modern age". This contention is amusingly backed up by citing his previous incarnations as drummer in a rock band and TV chatshow host. Clearly, someone at either Bloomsbury or the original publisher in Japan does irony in spades.
The bestselling writer, known as Japan’s enfant terrible, explored the dark underbelly of Japanese society in more than 40 works of subversive fiction including Audition, later made into a landmark indie horror movie
There’s always been some kind of allure of reading the classics. Take for instance Rory Gilmore curled up with the book or Maeve Wiley casually dropping sharp references to Virginia Woolf. They inspired the whole Lit Girl aesthetic, attracting viewers by their intellect, depth, and wit.
Art Spiegelman: ‘Banning books never works. It ignites interest in the forbidden’
The cartoonist speaks to EL PAÍS about the recent controversy sparked in Tennessee over his masterpiece ‘Maus,’ attributing the episode to ‘a cultural trend in America’
Iker Seisdedos
February 15, 2022
Art Spiegelman, 73, describes himself as a “First Amendment fundamentalist,” alluding to freedom of expression and religion. “Just like those religious fundamentalists in Tennessee.” The famous cartoonist is talking about members of a local school board in McMinn County, Tennessee who recently decided to remove his masterpiece, Maus, from the middle school curriculum. The acclaimed graphic novel about the Holocaust is based on the memories of Spiegelman’s father, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Would you like to own a luxury mansion for $2,400? Head to the metaverse
The sale of virtual properties and residences has taken off and is on track to exceed $990 million this year
SANDRA LÓPEZ LETÓN
Madrid - MAR 26, 2022 - 23:01 COT
The real estate world is making itself at home in the metaverse, that digital kingdom in which thousands of intangible properties are sold for millions of dollars every day, and where someone can also become the owner of a stunning mansion for no more than $2,400 – provided you can pay in the cryptocurrency the platform requires.
The Old Guard 2 review – Charlize Theron’s delayed Netflix sequel is an incomplete mess
Five years after the first film came out, a misshapen action fantasy follow-up arrives with a baffling cliffhanger ending
Even with our thick-of-Covid desperation for anything that felt big at a time when life felt too small, there was more to The Old Guard than the average churned out Netflix mockbuster. Released in the hell of July 2020, it came with the requisite boxes ticked (big star, international locations, franchisable setup) but felt closer to the real thing than most, proving to be a hit for those eager for escapism, scoring one of the streamer’s biggest launches to date.
Exposed loneliness … Moss's protagonist is sent to sleep in the attic, 'vulnerable as a wounded animal'. Illustration: Clifford Harper for the Guardia
Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss review – 'a hard-working novel about hard-working women'
Historical detail comes to the fore in this story of familial violence and female emancipation in Victorian Manchester
Alexandra Harris Sat 19 Apr 2014 09.00 BST
I
f you are following the career of Sarah Moss, this is an exciting moment. Her third novel confirms the richness of her concerns (remoteness, maternity, how we make life hard for each other) and it sharpens our sense of her steely, no-nonsense voice. It suggests that, though her books are closely linked, she has much more to write and will never produce the same thing twice.
Shipping container homes in Fredericia, Denmark.JUMPING ROCKS ( EDUCATION IMAGES/ UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/ GETTY IMAGES) (JUMPING ROCKS/EDUCATION IMAGES)
The trend of living in houses made with shipping containers
The demand for this type of housing is growing, due to their affordable prices and their short assembly times. But some still associate them with a lack of comfort
SANDRA LÓPEZ LETÓN
Madrid - JUL 30, 2023 - 17:13 COT
Stadium 974, in Doha, Qatar, designed by the Spanish studio Fenwick Iribarren Architects for last year’s World Cup, was built using standard shipping containers and modular steel elements. Eight years ago, Amsterdam was home to the largest shipping container neighborhood in the world, Keetwonen. The United States is one of the pioneering countries in the construction of houses with these units, particularly in urban areas where there is an urgent need for affordable housing. Australia and the United Kingdom, among others, have also embraced this construction method, which is cheaper and much faster than the traditional one; it has been tested for years in different countries and it is in tune with the global trend to increase the use of recycled materials and promote a circular economy.
Casa Malaparte on the Italian island of Capri was a house conceived in lockdown. Built in the late 1930s, its first occupant, Curzio Malaparte — an Italian-German poet, novelist, war correspondent, editor, fascist, communist and finally Maoist — had turned himself into an architect during time spent in exile. But only in his head.
Inside story … detail from Richard Hamilton's collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? showing at the Tate Modern retrospective Feb-May 2014. Photograph: Tate Images
The top 10 books about houses
From fiction to memoir to social history, author Ben Highmore selects books that open up the most intimate spaces of our lives
Ben Highmore Wed 15 Jan 2014 15.08 GMT
The Great Indoors explores changes in domestic life over the last hundred years or so, and it does so room by room (starting in the hallway and ending in the attic). I was interested in how these "living" rooms have been used, what they have been filled with and what they felt like across the 20th century and into the 21st.
The trials of immortality … sketch of Circe by John William Waterhouse.
Top 10 goddesses in fiction
In ancient myth – and novels by authors from Neil Gaiman to Toni Morrison – these ambiguous figures are sometimes repressive, sometimes inspiring
E Foley and B Coates Wednesday 9 September 2020
What springs to mind when you think of the word “goddess”? Divine feminine energy? Mother Earth? Ancient Greek women wafting around in white dresses causing mischief? “Domestic goddesses” or “sex goddesses”? Or even Anastasia Steele’s exuberant “inner goddess” who spends a lot of Fifty Shades of Grey salsa-ing and pole-vaulting in excitement about her romantic escapades? (Each to her own.)
Commanding presence … God, as depicted on the dome fresco by Johann Michael Rottmayr at Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) in Vienna. Photograph: Fred de Noyelle
Top 10 novels about God
He doesn’t appear very often in fiction, but in these books – by authors ranging from Fyodor Dostoevsky to John Updike – his impact is almighty
Neil Griffiths
Wednesday 6 December 2017
God seldom features in fiction. Having been dispensed with by Enlightenment philosophes around the time the first novels were emerging, he must have seemed irrelevant. The novel was new and God was old. Even clergy, who were facing an existential crisis of great literary potential, seemed infra dig to most novelists. There were new professions to explore: revolutionary, businessman, detective.
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Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki’s work start by pointing out the contradictions “monster,” “genius,” “pornographer,” “artist,” etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo’s ancient past or Tokyo’s modern sexual underworld.
