Ged Carroll

Category: japan |日本 | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.

Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • American infrastructure + more things

    American infrastructure is critiqued in a Vice documentary. In order to make it fit for purpose there would cost $4 trillion. That’s the cost of a couple of Afghanistan conflicts. It is stunning how bad American infrastructure is. The video is well worth watching in a grimly fascinating kind of way.

    Before Vin Diesel was an actor, or a night club doorman, he was a dancer. He made an appearance in a video on how to breakdance. It is a symphony of old school Adidas.

    Mark Vincent aka Vin Diesel in How to Break Dance video

    The other week, Larry Tesler died. Tesler was a technologist that spanned Silicon Valley from Xerox PARC to Web 2.0. He is best known for non-modal computing. The move from modal to non-modal computing was Apple’s Lisa. The Lisa was an expensive workstation version on many of the concepts that went into the Apple Mac. It failed for a number of reasons. Part of which was cost and third party software support. Without the Lisa, Apple couldn’t have developed the Mac. John Couch and David Larson discuss the development period of the Apple Lisa.

    I am a huge fan of The Avalanches. So I was going to give We Will Always Love You a listen. It is interesting that they’ve gone with an iTunes / WinAmp visualisation for their video. Ten years back iTunes and WinAmp used to have custom visualisers made. Brands like Relentless energy drink did really interesting things with them. I’d love to see visualisers become an area of further innovation.

    The Avalanches – We will always love you

    nendo designs coffee beans gacha gacha capsule vending machines at self-serve cafe | Japan Trends – we can have the argument about the relative merits of capsule coffee. I am not a fan, but this self service cafe is beautiful.

  • Sega MegaDrive Akira game + more

    A gorgeous unreleased adaption of Akira for the Sega MegaDrive. I presume that these visuals are designed to move the game play from level to level.

    At the time the Sega MegaDrive was innovative. Both in terms of the Sega MegaDrive technology and the marketing that went to support the games console. Sega brought a huge heritage in arcade gaming to the Sega MegaDrive. The neon noir vibes of Akira was a perfect pairing for the console

    As technology has improved computer graphics has become more prosaic. You no longer see the kind of surreal computer graphics visuals that you enjoyed from the late 1970s to late 1990s. VintageCG has archived a lot of early CG demos on YouTube.

    The Witcher was the must watch show on Netflix at the end of last year. It was inevitable that the memeable power ballad Throw A Coin To The Witcher gets the inevitable remixes. Amongst the best is this remix by Whitestone.

    https://soundcloud.com/whiteestonee/the-witcher-toss-a-coin-to-your-witcher-whitestone-remix

    Donald Knuth features in Robert X Cringely’s history of computing from post-World War II to the rise of the personal computer. While Knuth never made a fortune, his ideas facilitated a lot of modern computing. Here’s a great interview with Knuth that will make you appreciate the computing power in the power of your hand today.

    Its hard to to appreciate today the great leaps forward that have been made in semi-conductors. Programmes were once written in 4KB of memory, an app icon might now be 130KB of memory.

    Strange Parts did an amazing video on how lithium polymer ion batteries are made during a recent trip to Shenzhen, China. What immediately becomes apparent for me is the challenge of doing this process in reverse to recycle these batteries once they have reached their end of life.

    Strange Parts at the Pisen Group battery factory

  • Things that made my day this week

    Mastertape volume six by The Reflex was on heavy rotation for me over the past few weeks. Mastertape volume six is up to The Reflex’s usual high quality.

    Valerie Plume’s ‘Undercover’ ad makes use of her CIA heritage in a political ad that breaks new ground. It feels like a high quality television trailer. Plume’s identity as a CIA officer was blown by the Bush regime in the run up to the Iraq war. Her husband who was a former diplomat expressed doubts over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear programme. State department official Richard Armitage, leaked her details to the New York Times. So Plume developed a career as an author and aspiring politician. There had been some controversy over anti-Semitic comments that have been attributed to her.

    https://youtu.be/ICW-dGD1M18

    Retail and food services at an architectural level often lack theatre and experience. Once you’ve looked past faux Edison bulbs and raw brick walls, there isn’t much difference between a WeWork office, a clothing boutique and a burger joint. So its nice to see innovation like this – a giant circular juice machine that turns discarded peels of squeezed oranges into 3D printed juice cups. The mix of form, function and theatre and kinetic sculpture is a winning one.

    The baked goods market in china by Daxue consulting – baked goods sales in China are interesting because of their direct link with middle class consumer style consumption. Trying to get good bread in China isn’t easy, even in top tier cities, particularly if you are looking for . More on FMCG related content here

    Keanu Reeves speaks Japanese to Cyberpunk 2077 fans at Tokyo Game Show【Video】 | SoraNews24 -Japan News- – can Keanu Reeves become even more legendary? Yes, because he’s Keanu Reeves. On a more serious note, it will be very hard for Cyberpunk 2077 to live up to the hype around the game. Even if it fails Cyberpunk 2077 has breathed new life into cyberpunk culture and sparked new interest into its canon of literature and film.

  • A fierce head cold & other aspects of my week

    My week had been truncated somewhat by a fierce head cold and am cranking this post out with less deliberation than normal due to a backlog of household chores that aren’t going to take care of themselves. Add to that a Lemsip induced haze to try and combat the fierce head cold and you see how the rest of this post will go

    Paul Armstrong shared this AR/VR example with me: Swedish creative agency Warpin posted a video of a H&M-commissioned experience for Magic Leap glasses. The concept looks like everything my cyberpunk fan brain would want; like being inside Max Headroom’s mind. I’d also imagine that it would be hellish for any length of time. More related content here.

    Warpin Media for H&M

    BBH came up with this campaign for Carabao energy drink. The ad is aimed at the Chinese market and asks the question ‘What fuels your fighting spirit?’. In western English – this would be closer to ‘what makes you resilient, or what gets you through?’. It’s pretty much the same question that any ad planner or creative in an agency has asked as they chug their energy drink of choice whilst working on a client pitch, or particularly tough creative brief.

    BBH Shanghai for Carabao

    ‘Dear young people don’t vote’ by Shokasonjuku is a great video highlighting the need for younger Japanese to get involved in the electoral process, if they want issues that they care about to be heard. Shokasonjuku is a production company set up by Nana Takamatsu – a Japanese comedian. Young people in Japan aren’t educated or engaged by the political process, something that Takamatsu wants to change.

    Shokasonjuku

    Martin Lindstrom on how data separates businesses from consumers and how ethnography can bridge the gap. It’s also interesting how he talks about small data; or what you and I would call qualitative data that leads to insight based on a human truth.

    Smart cart guides the visually-impaired around grocery stores | Trendwatching – so a beer brand comes up with a smart shopping cart, but is the marketing benefit to the beer brand anything other than ambient marketing? There’s nothing wrong in that of course, but the linkage that will be made with social purpose looks spurious at best. If you want to help people and you sell alcohol. Stop. Don’t enable drunk drivers, wife beaters and alcoholics.

  • Sohu returns + more news

    Can Chinese internet pioneer Sohu finally pull off a comeback after missing the mobile era? | SCMP.com – Sohu making a comeback has interesting parallels with Yahoo! in the west, but without the incompetent board and Carl Icahn. I suspect that the rejuvenation of Sohu will be a fruitless task as the internet doesn’t give second chances

    Anti-China Bonds Between Hong Kong and Taiwan Are Growing – The Atlantic – The year was 1984: China was in the early days of its economic rise and was experiencing one of its most politically free periods under Communist rule; Hong Kong was the booming financial hub and crown jewel of what remained of the British Empire; and then there was Taiwan, which was nearing the end of nearly four decades of brutal martial law. At the time, if you had wagered on which of those places would be the freest 35 years later, Taiwan would have had long odds…

    Huawei, the CSSA and beyond: “Latent networks” and Party influence within Chinese institutions – Asia Dialogue – well worth reading. It’s worthwhile treating United Front organisations and organisations like the CSSA as enemy agents. Not that all the members are hellbent on destruction of the west; but the Chinese government wields them in a similar way to the Soviet Union using trade unions and protest groups in the past

    WSJ City | Huawei dispute US cyber firms findings of flaws in its gear – but the findings mirror similar issues found by GCHQ that Huawei said could take years to correct

    Is Apple dead creatively? Campaign – I couldn’t have imagined Campaign asking this question even five years ago

    Mark Ritson: 5G is the latest hot topic on the bullsh*t roadshow | Marketing Week – yep that sounds about right (paywall)

    Music on the Move: Sony’s Walkman Turns 40 | Nippon.com – wonderful walk through Sony’s product history and cultural impact. More Sony related content here.