11.15.04
Disturbing oddities from the Design Festa

What a week. November must be vacation month for English teachers, because I'm being assigned to substitute-teach all their classes. I'll be glad to have the extra money on my next paycheck, but at the moment, as I struggle with double—on some days triple—my usual workload, I find myself wondering, "I quit Nova for this?"

My remaining evenings I've been channeling into more 3D-modeling work, except for the last four, which I spent making last-minute changes to a screenplay of mine for entry into the Fade In awards, a screenwriting competition for new writers. I have no chance at the Grand Prize, but even 3rd Place (in one of six categories) wins $250 and a free script analysis, so that's worth something.

What tiny shreds of free time I have leftover after that, I've been spending with random Japanese people. Basically, my policy is, whatever one of my students invites me to do, I do. This is how I find myself committed to going salsa dancing in Roppongi next weekend, even though I hate Roppongi and don't know anything about dancing.

This entry concerns the events of last Sunday, which I spent at the semiannual Tokyo Design Festa, a giant convention of amateur art. Anyone can rent a booth, and judging from what I saw, there don't appear to be any restrictions on what you can sell. Basically, try to imagine Burning Man reinvented as a comic-book convention, and populated by Japanese people. Now try to somehow get that image out of your head.

This was all Kumiko's idea. Despite Japan's reputation as a gray, conformist mega-bureaucracy of corporate enslavement, which is completely true, the people of Japan take their hobbies seriously. Almost all my students spend at least some of their time doing calligraphy, flower arrangement, oil painting, or even opera. Others, apparently, spend their free time creating unsettling sculptures. Kumiko, one of my newer students, very kindly offered to take me to the latest Festa, which she attends every year to look for peculiar jewelry.


On the left: Kumiko, our guide for the day, who I refuse to believe is 36. On the right: a giant bee.

The offerings were indeed very peculiar. I saw athletic jackets sewn from old kimonos, a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton made entirely out of blown glass, schoolgirl pinup books (being sold by the schoolgirl herself!), handbags shaped like jellyfish. But what I'll mainly remember are the dolls.

Oh, the dolls! Booth after booth of spooky, pale-skinned waifs with sad oversized eyes and real human hair. Apparently they're something of a cliché in Japan. I'm sure my description doesn't sound disturbing to you, because you're probably thinking of a doll from the Hot Topic store down at the mall. This is nothing like the Hot Topic store down at the mall. These dolls are lovingly crafted by hand by deeply obsessed people.

In fact, as you look at the works of art in these photos, I think you'll be struck by a common theme, namely, that all of them require a very, very, very high level of dedication. I expect you'll find them to be impressively enchanting/creepy.

Be sure to thank Kumiko.

April 6, 2005  //  09:42 PM
1
Comment

Posted by rach:

those photos are going to give me nightmares! :-)

November 17, 2004  //  12:20 PM
!
Post a Comment