Hausu is an interesting film from 1970s Japan directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. This film is beyond bizarre with a flying lamp shade that kills and a piano that devours it's prey. I had the chance to watch this with a group of friends when it aired on IFC in April and we had a blast. The movie almost makes no sense, but is a great experience. From what I've heard, the director got the idea from a dream his daughter had, which makes sense. The effects in the film are actually pretty cool for the time period.
Apparently, among the many specialized Japanese fetishes is a fascination with "buruma," the Japanification of "bloomers". These gym shorts for females can look like panties or hotpants. But they can also look like surprisingly unsexy old-lady underwear, as seen to the right. (Well, relatively unsexy, compared to other versions.)
For a galley of buruma images, most definitely NSFW, visit this site. You will probably have to click on the button labeled TOGGLE VISIBILITY OF MATURE CONTENT.
I posted last week about how Aokigahara Forest in Japan was a popular destination for those wishing to commit suicide. Another suicide fad in Japan is "Detergent Suicide," which involves gassing yourself by mixing common household chemicals:
At least 500 Japanese men, women and children took their lives in the first half of 2008 by following instructions posted on Japanese websites, which describe how to mix bath sulfur with toilet bowl cleaner to create a poisonous gas. One site includes an application to calculate the correct portions of each ingredient based on room volume, along with a PDF download of a ready-made warning sign to alert neighbors and emergency workers to the deadly hazard.
A few cases of Detergent Suicide in the US have experts concerned that the fad may be catching on over here.
An interesting article by sociologist Kayoko Ueno argues that suicide is actually one of the defining features of Japanese society (think of hara-kiri and kamikaze) and one of its major cultural exports:
We, Japanese, are living in an affluent society geographically far away from the Middle East and Russian turmoil, and many of us view the suicide bombing news as an alien event, or something out of a computer game VR (virtual reality). On the other hand, there are some Japanese, especially from the wartime generation, who see the news differently, tracing the suicide bombers’ prototype to Japan’s “Kamikaze”, the suicide air attack squad at the end of World War II. In fact, one of my senior colleagues the other day came to me, pointed at one more such item in the news, and whispered melancholically, “that’s Japan’s invention.”
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.