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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Mar 1, 2006

Samurai Girl

Samurai Girl

Francesco, and editor for Hobby Media in Italy, sends me word of a new book he’s co-edited for an art book publisher there (Drago) called SAMURAI GIRL, covering the photography of Julie Watai, who you might have seen as an idol in the group Pikapika or in the pages of SMARTGIRL.

S-Style strikes again! S as in Style, Symbol, Street, Speed, Sex, Super Star. S like SAMURAI GIRL. Hello Kitty meets Cat Woman. SAMURAI GIRL is the Japanese Lolita for the new millennium, the girlie face of a new Japanese underground that will style the world. SAMURAI GIRL is a psychedelic collection of images by Tokyo-based fashion photographer and Asia’s former teenage Pop Idol, Julie. A 25 year old descendent of an ancient samurai family, Julie re-mixes Japanese (sub)cultural photos with manga and video game graphics. Collaborating with some of the most influential style leaders of the Otaku Scene, Julie’s photos and designs have gained cult status in Tokyo. The ‘Samurai’ girls in Julie’s photography capture the contemporary aesthetic for real-life Barbie dolls, cosmic superstars, video game superheroes, super sexy pop idols, and Godzilla school girls. SAMURAI GIRL combines Japanese youth fashion fantasy with radical trends, club culture chic and Manga design. Over 100 photos and graphics re-interpret the Kawaii (cute) wave.

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PauseTalk

PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition is March 5.

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.
PechaKucha Global Cities Week

Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

Neojaponisme

He serves as editor-at-large at Néojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx.

He also writes a monthly column covering Japanese product design for The Japan Times, called "On Design." It appears on the last Tuesday of every month, in both the print edition and online.

Colophon

The "Jean Snow" logo is written using the free Kirimomi Swash typeface. The "M31" logo is by Ian Lynam, and is part of a series of 31 unique designs. The site's design is based on the Grid Focus WordPress theme by Derek Punsalan.

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