パリのマレで、Sabine Pigalleは芸者の写真お展示します。

Until April 5th, in Le Marais area (Paris), the photographer Sabine Pigalle offers an exhibition called "Geishas", inspired by Eros and Thanatos, with a lot of irony. The girls are half naked, as white as snow, like ghosts. They remind us Middle-ages mortuary sculptures, but also refer to the cosmetic industry and racial stereotypes. The most striking photo of this spicy exhibition could be "Suicide with Botox overdose".

Jusqu'au 5 avril, dans le Marais, la photographe Sabine Pigalle expose ses "Geishas" inspirées par Eros et Thanatos, avec une bonne dose d'ironie. Les demoiselles sont nues jusqu'à la taille, blanches comme neige, fantômatiques. Elles rappellent les statues mortuaires médiévales, tout en faisant référence à l'industrie de la beauté et à l'instrumentalisation des stereotypes raciaux.

On retient particulièrement le "Suicide par overdose de Botox", l'oeuvre la plus représentative de cette exposition divertissante et provocante.

Sabine Pigalle, Geishas
Galerie Brasilia,
10 rue Charlemagne
75 004 Paris

上田の写真が大好きです。しずかな世界を見せます。かれの瞳でしぜんや人を見たいです。

Les photos de Shoji Ueda ont l'art de tout magnifier. Les choses banales irradient soudain une indiscutable beauté - non pas la beauté bizarre baudelairienne, mais une beauté de blanc et de noir, lunaire, une beauté contemplative, délicate, qui s'approche beaucoup de ma vision du Japon.

Ueda-san est né à l'Ouest, dans le Tattori, en 1913 - il a donc vécu dans son intégralité ce siècle si désenchanteur et si coloré, ce qui fait de son oeuvre celle du contrepied absolu.
Sa région natale a inspiré ses plus beaux clichés, ceux du "théâtre de dunes", où se détachent des silhouettes atemporelles... L'arrière-plan est simplifié au maximum, pour mieux valoriser les sujets qui en ressortent toujours teintés d'onirisme.

Ce qui est curieux, c'est que les clichés de Shoji Ueda en terre européenne sont beaucoup moins remarquables que ceux inspirés par sa terre natale. On reste le produit de son sol...

Deux ans avant sa mort,  Ueda a reçu le titre de Trésor National. Sa façon de voir le monde reste quant à elle un trésor tout court.

Shoji Ueda's pictures make the world gorgeous. Daily little things immediatly reaveal their deepest beauty - not a weird beauty as described by Baudelaire, but a black-and-white, lunar, delicate and passive beauty, which is very close to my own vision of Japan.

Ueda was born in the Tattori aera, Western Japan, in 1913. His works are totally at the opposite of this colourful and misenchanted century. His native region inspired to him his most amazing photos, such as "Dune theatre", where you can see timelessfigures... Backgrounds are always pure, in order to promote the poetry of subjects of the pics themselves.

It is strange to notice that Ueda's pictures in Europe are not so good. Native ground matters...

The artist received the title of National Treasure two years before dying. His way to look at the world is still a pure treasure.

フランスは漫画が大好き !
日本の後で、漫画を読むのが好きな国はフランスです。びっくりしないで !

French people read over 13 million manga every year (2006 survey). We are the first manga-readers in the world after their mother-country, Japan; France alone reads more manga than the USA as a whole.
In addition, French manga/anime/j-pop culture festivals are more popular, numerous and thrilling every year, appealling to people all over Europe, like "Japan Expo" (every July in Paris).

There are many reasons for the French public to love and support the spread of Japanese manga, despite of the estrangement of our nations and historic cultures.

First, the comic strips culture is very developped in France, as a result of a long tradition of written and painted caricatures ; we share this culture with Belgium through the use of French language and various associations between French and Belgian authors of what we call "bande-dessinee franco-belge". The famous Festival of Bande Dessinee at Angouleme, every year, reveals our comittement in this art. Probably, our BD opened the way for the success of Japanese manga in France.

Then, it seems that the French have always been fascinated by the Japanese pictures since they discover it. Manga are just the continuation of our esthetic coup-de-foudre for the Japanese pictural arts, when we fell in love with Japanese paintings which inspired the movement of "Japonisme" around 1880 in France.

Finally, for the current generation of young adults like me, the esthetic of mange is deeply nostalgic because our childhood has been striken by Japanese anime which were broadcasted on TV when we were kids. While our parents, and the media in general, warmly criticized the unusual graphic style (thougher than round, sweet pictures made in Disney studios) and the violence of a few anime (not originally devised for kids in Japan...), my generation discovered with new eyes a whole little world, definitely exotic despite of the poor French version, where students wore uniforms, were driven by their passion, ate rice with shopsticks, lived in funny little town full of stairs and hot springs and always, always wore slippers at home. Growing up, we learnt that the little world of anime was a representation of a true and far-away country called Japan, and we naturally wanted to learn more about it.
This is how the kids born in the 70's and the 80's became the first fans of Japanese manga in the world. My former classmates' older brothers and sisters created the French manga boom and transmited their passion to their own kids.

 

As a result, the general public's raise of awareness about manga began in the 1990's, with the publication of Akira (K. Otomo) by Glenat Editions. The same company then published the original manga of the anime that the French watched on TV when they were children, such as City Hunter, Dragon Ball, Ranma 1/2... And the French public could finally discover the true names of the protagonists, which had been turned into American names in the French versions of anime (for instance, City Hunter's Ryu is well-known as Nicky Larson in France, which is now considered as deeply ridiculous). Finally other Edition groups such as Dargaud (Kana collection) or Casterman developped their offer of manga, focusing on high-quality authors as J. Taniguchi. In 1995, two specialized companies were born to distribute manga only : Samourai Editions and Tonkam, which quickly became our first manga provider, and which had the good idea to keep the Japanese way of reading. Actually, the conversion into European way of reading was very expensive and disturbing for the readers, because some pages were very difficult to change (heart always has to be in the left side for example).

In 1996, the great magazine Animeland appeared in France, proposing news about the publications in France and in Japan, cultural articles about j-pop cultures, information about manga, anime, video games...  Later,  Coyote  mag offered original manga-style pages including the very famous Sentai School by Cardona & Torta, a comic parody of the Japanese students-heroes stories, with many hidden (or not) references to the manga culture. The French manga hit in 2007 was Naruto, with 220 000 manga sold.

In opposite with Japan, we don't have any prepublication system so we buy manga directly. The main inconvenient is that fans have to wait the next book a long time. Nevertheless, it also let us free to judge a manga for the content itself and not for the category it is supposed to target ; so, in France, many boys read shojo as well as shonen style, and many girls are attracted by shonen manga too.
 
Though, you should know that the same manga costs 3,50€ in Japan, and at least 6 or 7€ in France... so our interest could increase again with better politics of distribution ! ;)

As you can see, manga is going to be part of the French culture too. Our main problem is to know if it is better to say "le manga" ou "la manga"... boy or girl ? Please, Japanese people, help us to find the gender of manga !

She is a silent, fragile beauty who drives trucks. She is quiet, innocent, but the movement of her hips make the men go mad when she dances. She is a incarnation of the best of Japan, of humanity ; she learnt the magic of dance from a US GI when she was a kid, and she is ready to go across seas and lands just to tell him how wonderful it was. She doesn't care about the danger, about the diseases of the modern world, even the pain doesn't stop her. She just needs to say thank you to a dying lonely man. They were and still are foreigners to each other, but she understands him better than anyone. On the way, her presence brings light and hope to every single person.

Kyoko is very far from Murakami's usual style, and it is an exception in his work if we consider the story itself. The United States - the world- are sick, dying ; but Kyoko is a little fairy who makes it ok. The author is not used to give us a window in his novels. The message may be : there is still a chance to be enchanted, and hope is something people can transmit to each other. Follow sweet Kyoko through the United States and let her show you how she dances !

Murakami Ryu, "Kyoko"

It was one of the most popular manga ever published in Japan. It became a popular TV show in Taiwan with the Chinese title "Meteor Garden", and a drama in Korea ("Boys before Flowers"). It was turned into a TV anime, a drama, two movies, and now the Western world is a fan too.  In France, the last manga was published in January 2009 by Glenat Editions and totally conquered the public. If you still don't know the orginal and crazy Tsukushi Makino, just go to your bookshop right now and buy the full serie of Hana Yori Dango !

Hana yori dango is a Japanese expression which means "sweets over flowers" : popular and tasty dango are better than beautiful-but-useless delicate flowers ! But there is another hidden pun : the title in Japanese (花より男子),  uses the kanji of "man" (男, otoko) to write "dango". So, it also means : true men please, instead of flowers !

Actually, the title of the manga refers to the male protagonists of the story, the sophisticated members of the "Flower 4" club : despising wealthy-family heirs who impose their own rules to everyone in the high school where no-name, simple but determined Tsukushi tries to survive among rich and dry-hearted selfish kids. Eitoku High School, for Tsukushi,  is just like hell : both students and teachers are scared by the powerful Flower 4, except the few ones who try to date them desperately to walk in their light. With humour, the author never tries to make  Tsukushi a new Cinderella, but emphasizes her strong character and her revolution spirit. Because she is warm, because she is friendly and definitely not stereotyped, Tsukushi will succeed in bringing some changes in F4 empire without losing her identity. Be yourself, be proud of your origins, never care about your public image, resist until death : this is how Tsukushi captures F4 hearts !

The manga proposes many protagnists and stories-inside-story through a 36 books serie originally published in the girl magazine Margaret. Graphic style is not gorgeous, but very dynamic and humoristic. Funny scenes are the best, because Kamio's style is especially effective to draw SD (super deformed) faces. Money and social hierarchy are naturaly caricatured - CCC, Tsukushi's friend, is a "new rich" with a bling-bling car ; Tsukushi's parents develop insane strategies to make Tsukushi marry one of the rich guys... but we can also find more serious topics, such as the crazy influence of powerful families in the Japanese society, which are at the fring of criminality to reach their goals ; and the manipulation of the heirs by the parents who lose their humanity while building their empire. Industry giants, tea caremony art masters or even yakuza, the surrounding of F4 let the boys at the same time free to destroy "lower" people's lives and unable to build their ones as they wish. Finally, girls are the true heroes of Hana Yori Dango's world : Tsukushi first, but also Shizuka, who abandons guarantee of love, magazines' first pages and girly glory to become a lawyer in far-away France ; Tsubaki, who defends true love against reasonable wedding strategies and agains her own family ; Sakurako, who assumes her cold ambition and her love of power... Being a man is no good when you need to find your destiny !

The best pillar of the manga is the exagerate personality of the two main protagonists, Tsukushi Makino and Doumyouji, the leader of F4. Money-less Tsukushi developed survival abilities to fight against her surroundings ; while lonely Doumyouji has been encouraged to make use of violence without consequences in order to make him forget that his future is bounded by advance. As a result, their meeting is not exactly peaceful...

To conclude, if you look for a funny shojo, you cannot avoid Hana Yori Dango ! Have fun...

I read  "Umibe no Kahuka" in French ("Kafka sur le rivage"), and after that my heart can not choose between the two Murakami, between Ryuu's fascinating violence and Haruki's bewitching hypnose.
Be prepared, in Murakami's novels, you keep looking for, and you never find. The meaning of life, dreams, nightmares, fate are not revealed, never, even when the protagonists finally accept their destiny. It is a neverending quest of undetermined things. Sometimes you sink into nightmare scenes (following a mysterious cat murderer - after reading you will never look at a Johnny Walker's bottle in the same way), sometimes you just stay at the fringe of daily reality in subtile mono no aware ( the melancholy of things). Love is always the memory of love, the dream of a memory of love, the projection of a dream of a memory of love - and finally, love is always something lost or not happened yet, something you can't live for itself, right now.

The story itself is the one of a young man, Kafka Tamura , a new version of Œdipe who is convinced (thinks? knows? wants?) he is going to kill his father and sleep with his sister and mother. To escape to his destiny, he leaves home and goes across Japan, surviving. His trip is full of little considerations about how to find his way, how to save money, how to know who is really unknow in this world where strangers always seem to be the brother, the sister you should have had. At the same time, we follow another protagonist : lonely, old and handicaped Nakata, who has the unexpected power to talk to cats. A strange, dark and bloody event in his childhood left him outside the true world. Because Nakata has been cursed in the past, because Tamura is walking to meet his own curse, and because time has windows between past and future, we have the feeling that their lives are linked by a dark secret which absolutely has to be highlighted - but don't hope too much.
And you swim into this fantastic world, with ghosts, angels, Japanese and over-seas references ; and you don't mind if you don't understand, because it is so pure, so original, so close to your own dreams. Athmosphere is definitely the most striking component of this novel, in the way of Lynch's Mullohand Drive. Every single page, even in foreign version, is a piece of dream.

Interested in loosing your steps, have a walk with Kafka on the shore.

Murakami Haruki, Umibe no Kahuka

Very moving CM by Tryo : for the ones who can't understand French, the song deals with all the bad news which reach you on the morning, and all day long : wars, unemployement, contamination, all these huge issues you have no idea how to fix it, this reality in front of which you feel poor, weak, lonely, and still angry. But, "toi et moi", the two of us, we never appear on the TV news, we are just here together, we love each other, it is so simple, so far from all this. We, all life long, surrounded by our family, it is another world, another reality.

Ce n'est pas trop dans mes moyens (480 euros...), mais je salue l'initiative des éditions Diane de Selliers qui proposent depuis cet hiver une véritable merveille : une version illustrée du Genji Monogatari - le Dit du Genji, la perle de la littérature classique japonaise... les dessins et peintures (réalisés entre le 12ème et le 17ème siècles), traqués par Estelle Leggeri-Bauer pendant sept ans, devraient souligner la beauté plastique du "premier roman de l'humanité" qu j'ai moi même découvert traduit en français par René Sieffert. Cette démarche tombe sous le sens quand on a lu le Genji Monogatari : l'auteur, Dame Murasaki, y dépeint une Cour de Kyoto où le verbe et l'image forment un prisme unique dans lequel se perdent les êtres, aux prises avec les deux grandes tendances du Destin : Magnificence et Impermanence... On est définitivement sur le terrain de la représentation, entre reflet, mémoire, et dilemne de l'interprétation.

Dès les prémices du récit, on comprend le rôle de l'évanescence dans l'oeuvre de Dame Murasaki ; une femme follement aimée de l'Empereur met au monde un prince beau comme le jour. Mais, d'extraction trop modeste pour ne pas attiser la rancoeur des autres captives du Palais impérial, elle succombe aux jalousies de ses rivales, aux intrigues de paravents et à la cruauté feutrée des beautés délaissées par le dieu vivant. Ecarté de la succession, le nouveau-né sera Genji, un prince destiné à fonder sa propre lignée ; sa vie sera celle de l'aveu d'impuissance à garder l'être aimé. Les beautés irréelles appartiennent au monde des songes et y retournent toujours trop vite. Toute sa vie, le Genji se perd dans la quête de la femme idéale, et la perd sitôt qu'il l'a trouvée.

Murasaki Shikibu a écrit le Genji Monogatari aux alentours de l'an 1000, en faisant allusion à l'époque Heian, un moment de paix immobile dans l'histoire de l'Ancien Japon où la guerre des clans fut momentanément suspendu par la main mise de la légendaire famille Fujiwara, qui s'assurait la Régence par le jeu des mariages. Les héritiers impériaux ne règnent pas et se consacent entièrement à la contemplation de leurs errances sentimentales. Il reste la vision douce-amère d'une dynastie disparue, la prémonition de la fin de l'âge d'or, le constat de la vie qui ne fait pas vraiment sens... et s'achève dans l'inachèvement, comme le roman lui-même.

Longue vie au Dit du Genji !

On January 1st, 2009, at 5 am (Japan Time), I was at the top of Roppongi Hills to wait for the first sunrise of the year.

I definitely felt the meaning of  "Sunrise country", Nihon : I couldn't have imagined such a beauty, nor the enthousiasm of Japanese people around me who were totally bursting in love with this first sun despite of the early hour.

二千九一月一日　六本木ヒルスから今年の一つめの日光　を　待って見ました。
本当に日本のいみですね。
すばらしくきれいで　びっくりでした。とても早く来ましたでも　そばにいる人は元気に太陽をかっさりしました。

Happy New Year　- Heureuse année 2009 - 新年あけましておめでとうございます

Djeff color's 2009
envoyé par dekalko