Barefoot Gen is a Japanese manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa’s own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen lives with his family. After Hiroshima is destroyed by atomic bombing, Gen and other survivors are left to deal with the aftermath. [from Wikipedia]
Today marks the 67th anniversary of the tragedy. Around 140,000 people were killed.
Gojin Ishihara (1972)
Aokigahara is a forest that lies at the north west base of Mount Fuji in Japan. It is the second most popular suicide destination in the world (San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge being the first) and over 100 bodies are discovered in the forest each year. VICE made an incredibly interesting short documentary on the forest which follows a park worker on suicide patrol. The documentary is only 20 minutes long and is well produced and fascinating. I couldn’t get the the video to embed, but I highly recommend clicking the link and watching it:
Sorry for the delay, guys! I try to post at least once a week, but was on vacation for the last month. Here is a story I’d planned on posting for a long time, but only recently found this short documentary on it. – elgrayso
On the afternoon of June 13, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the outskirts of Paris, carrying two suitcases. The contents of those suitcases, to the lament of a nearby jogger, was the dismembered body of a fellow student – a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt, whom Sagawa had shot three days prior and had spent the days since eating various parts of her body.
He was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered, “I killed her to eat her flesh,” when they raided his home, whereupon they found bits of Renne still in his fridge.
Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial and was institutionalized in Paris. His incarceration was to be short, however, as the French public soon grew weary of their hard-earned francs going to support this evil woman-eater, and Issei was promptly deported. Herein followed a bizarre and seemingly too convenient set of legal loopholes and psychiatric reports that led doctors in Japan declaring him “sane, but evil.”
On August 12, 1986, Sagawa checked himself out of Tokyo’s Matsuzawa Psychiatric hospital, and has been a free man ever since.
This is where the real story begins. VBS met up with him to find out what he’s been up to in the 30 years since. [from VICE]
VICE has made a great, short little documentary on Sagawa which you can view here.
(also if you know how to embed the video please tell me how!)
Kayabuki
the footage of a restaurant called Kayabuki in Japan. The restaurant is apparently known for it’s dressed up monkey waiters (and waitresses). For more information, visit this blog.
