This Week in Magazines

• BRUTUS (617) features a look at “Rakugo x Musician,” by covering collaboration or mixes between the two fields (rakugo is a traditional Japanese comedic form). The insert is an entire rakugo comic, from the series “Classic Rakugo Comics,” as well as a CD of performances.
• PEN (199) offers up a very detailed guide to Kamakura, presenting it with a beautiful cover shot filled with bamboo trees. They also include a guide to Tokyo whiskey bars, and this issue’s designer profile is on the unit so+ba.
• TITLE (89) touts an issue devoted to “Department Store Paradise!” It’s a rather nice feature, with tours of various depa-chikas, a piece on the Matsuya Ginza branding by Kenya Hara, and a look at department stores from around the world. They also imagine a few new ones with their “My Dream Department Store” piece, in which they asked a few creators, including KDa and D-BROS, to imagine their dream store. The Napster column — that’s the name for their music column — has Kaji Hideki offering a guide to music from Glascow, mentioning the likes of Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian, and The Vaselines.
• The lastest issue of EASY TRAVELER (16) has design as a theme, which includes talking about various locales with more emphasis on the architecture. As always, EASY TRAVELER is fully bilingual (Japanese/English).
• PLANTED (4) has their “entertainment” issue, which kicks off with a “Disney Flower Hunt” (a guide to flowers at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneysea). They also have a piece on “Movies on Plants,” following it up with a guide to “20 Plant Movies.” They also cover the maintenance of grass in soccer stadiums, and then take a look at underwater plants (that last piece is illustrated by Shoji Kawashima).
• The main feature in this month’s MACPOWER (210) deals with environmentally friendly creativity. It also includes a nice article on typography, profiling a few designers and their works, and presents a gallery of photos from the gorgeous Tama Art University library.
• CASA BRUTUS (87) concerns itself with world heritage, with a cover feature appropriately entitled “All About World Heritage.” The insert for the issue does the same for Japan: “All About World Heritage in Japan.”

I picked up a few of these for the cafe, which you can see listed here.