Ugly Legend

(DISCLAIMER: The following is the English approximation of an article which was originally published in the November 10th issue of Spa! Direct your disgust towards them. The only thing we're guilty of is not bringing it to you sooner!)

Weekly men’s entertainment magazine Spa! enlists the help of science to put an end to the age-old question: Why do so many white guys date fugly Japanese girls? Beginning with Yoko Ono, Westerners have continued to show a preference for women outside of the spectrum of beauty accepted by Japanese society as a whole. You know the type—Long, straight black hair, squinty eyes, flat face. Or maybe, as recent research suggests, you don’t know, hence the problem.
Ever wake up next to this?

Obviously there must be something wrong with the Gaijin brain that keeps them from being able to tell the difference between girls that look like living woodblock prints and CanCan models, so scientists ran two white dudes infamous for their questionable taste in women through an MRI-scan to check for loose wiring. The results? Our friendly foreigners showed lower brain activity than 70 year-old women!

"Journey inside the brains of the white men who love gross girls!"

Let's meet tonight's guinea pigs. Zidi from France is new to Japan and infamous in his circle of friends for picking up slags in Roppongi. We also have Phillip from England, who during his seven years in the country has grown out of the "so long as it's breathing" phase that seems to affect many foreigners. The MRIs will be conducted by PhD Hideo Nakajima.

The lack of activity in the occipital lobe, which controls visual processing and thus face recognition, would suggest that the two men’s brains lack the processing power to differentiate between butter faces and beautiful babies.

"His big honkey nose almost gets caught on the machine!"

Stepping off the plane for the first time, all Japanese look the same. The traditional image of Orientals with black hair and narrow eyes has been planted deep into the Western psyche by movies and other media. Men come to Japan with a permanent set of beer goggles, and the problem is intensified by this inexplicable sense of familiarity.

“Hey, I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before…”

The part of the lobe that handles facial recognition is extremely active while we are young children but slows down as we age. Therefore we can conclude that Zidi, who dates ugly girls, has low brain activity because this region has yet to kick in, while Philip, who has since refined his taste in women, has low brain activity because it has been trained over the years and can now differentiate faces even from a state of rest.

Dr. Nakajima explains. “Monkeys all look the same at first, but after careful observation you can begin to see the small differences between them.” The aesthetic eye can be trained. There’s still hope! Your days of being ridiculed as “Beast Master” may soon be at an end.

He concludes, “It takes courage to walk outside with a skank on your arm. I’d like to do further research to see if the men’s brains are releasing serotonin—they’d have to be doped up to stay with these butter faces. But then again, if the find these girls pleasant enough company to release serotonin, then their brains must truly be broken.”

Torture Porn



Tired of the same old boring history museums filled with stone arrowheads and clay statues? The basement of Meiji University features a permanent exhibit which sheds light on the dark side of anthropology: Legalized and regulated methods of torture.

Decapitation by Saw(鋸挽き)


Legend has it that the most despicable of criminals were buried in the ground up to their neck, then decapitated with saws made of bamboo. It would take many blows to work through the bone, and the bound criminal faced excruciating pain as their flesh was slowly chipped away.





The tradition lived on in a fashion through the Edo period, though the actual execution was humanitarian by comparison. Criminals would be contained from the neck-down in a wheeled box and left in the middle of the town for two days for public mocking. On the third day they would be carted throughout the town for a final parade of jeers, followed by their subsequent crucifixion and death.

Head Spikes (獄門首台木) and Crucifixion Pillar (磔柱)

During the Edo Period there was no act more despicable than inflicting harm or death upon your parents, master, or teacher. Such heinous criminals were tied to crucifixes and stabbed to death with spears. As a warning to others, their corpse was decapitated and their head was set on display for three days at the dungeon’s front gate.










Burned at the Stake


One stray ember could raze a village, and arsonists were dealt with by ironic severity that would make Dante proud. Firebugs were tied to a wooden stake with bamboo rings and literally buried in firewood before being roasted alive.





Fumi-E (踏み絵)

The Tokugawa Shogunate were always on the lookout for hidden Christians to murder and torture, and the fumi-e became their bog standard psychological litmus test. Can you trample upon an image of Christ? If yes, you go home. If not, well, you get to join him on the cross. Interesting that practicing Christianity was once considered as vile as murder.



Stone Press Torture (石抱き責め)

Victims were forced to kneel with 50 kilogram stone blocks laid across their thighs. They would be tied up straight to a wooden beam to restrict their movement while they endured the crushing agony coupled with the sting of the jailer's club. This seems like the best method to totally wreck someone for life without actually killing them.





Iron Maiden

Something cool I never knew about iron maidens: They’re rigged for their bottom to drop out upon re-opening, dumping the gore and mutilated corpse into a pit located beneath the device. Highly practical.



Hanging Pillar (絞首柱)

The condemned were strangled using a system of two counter weights. Death was slow and painful. The system had other problems as well and was repealed just three years after its introduction in 1870.



In 1873, Japan joined the rest of civilized world with their upgrade to traditional gallows. Revised hanging laws ensured that the process became more efficient and humane. Note the face towelette, just like in Japanese beauty salons!



Chastity Belt

Purportedly fashioned to keep women faithful to their husbands, in practice it was simply another way to keep women oppressed. While theories on the belt's purpose deviate, most historians agree that the cute heart and flower designs were precursors to modern lingerie sensibilities.



If you need further motivation to visit, remember that Meiji University is a quick jaunt away from Jinbocho, the used book capital of Tokyo. Happy hunting.

Criminal torture devices

Drifting Classroom 8-bit BGM























Beep City has the BGM to The Drifting Classroom, the greatest game that never existed, free for download on their site! The composer, Moldilox, did an outstanding job conveying the atmosphere of the comic with the use of layered drones, drums that sound like the pitter-patter of little kids' feet as they run for their lives and what has to be an 8-bit theremin. Download it here!

Everything else on their site is worth checking out as well, my favorites being Inseguitore Della Via(Street Stalker) and Mastars of the Universe.

Thanks to Scott Green for the heads up on this.

Hammer Head


Skeletons from the closet of every corrupt politician and smack-addicted celeb litter the back streets of Nakano, waiting to be found by those who know how to ask the right questions. Interested parties should take their inquiries past the steel door and up the stairs to Hammerhead, a depository of Japan’s living urban legends.

Mogi, the proprietor, knows everything worth knowing. If he can't answer your questions about true crime and depravity he can point you towards someone who can. Working in the the import figure business helped him make truly bizarre connections. He's been waist-deep in horror since before most of us even threw down for our first vinyl figure. He was there when Nakano Broadway was built and saw firsthand Mandarake grow from a single shoebox of a store to the ubiquitous Masters of Time that they are today. He's run with Bosozoku legends like Black Emperor and his old acquaintances have brought him more juicy stories on VIPs than all the gossip rags combined.



The décor is everything you’d expect from a guy who made his livelihood from running horror memorabilia in the 80’s. Mogi knows his stuff and each item reflects his personal taste, which in my book counts a hundred times more than cluttering your joint with all kinds of unrelated trinkets for the sake of mass appeal.

If you’re reading this blog then you obviously want to know what kind of filth is growing underneath Japan’s toenails, so you have no excuse not to make a pit stop on the way home from Nakano Broadway and grill the master for information. Just remember—Some things are kept secret for a reason.

Gwash!! Umezu Kazuo Desu Advanced Tickets

With our (delayed) upcoming interview with Umezu-sensei, Dr. Senbei's sweet new job at a 3D animation studio, nasty colds and my countless unfinished art projects to deal with right now, posts have really slowed down the last couple of weeks. Just remember, the best things come to those who wait.

Here is what the Gwash!! Umezu Kazuo Desu advanced tickets look, along with the limited photo that Tsutaya in Shibuya is giving out with each ticket sold. According to Kazz's twitter advanced tickets purchased at the theater, Tollywood, come with a different picture. If I find one, I'll post it later.
































For what it's worth, the picture is an actual print, not a paper flyer.

"Minna Tomodachi" Yokai Mural

Once again proving that Asakusa has more to offer than Kaminari-mon and Sensouji, I found this mural on the ruins of an old back alley apartment building on my way to a tattoo exhibit.

His name is MASAGON

Fortune here, back from my TSB Tokyo expedition and reporting from the heart of Kansai- Osaka!

Never thought you would see a Tokyo Scum report from a luxury hotel, did you? After seeing the flyer, I couldn't resist checking out local artist Masagon at Hyatt Regency's gallery in Nankou. I found him in the studio-like gallery at the bottom of a marble corkscrew staircase, sitting there in his red beret. What an unusual place he chose to display his art! However, the laid-back atmosphere soon made me forget I was in the basement of a gigantic five-star hotel.





Masagon is a handicraft sculptor; he creates various kinds of sculptures mostly from clothes, shoes, and stuffed toys; but he describes himself as a graffiti artist. "I am strongly influenced by graffiti and street art. It is just that I use clothes and yarns instead of spray cans." Surely, if you see his work, you will feel like you are in Amerika-mura (American Village), the funkiest district in the city where you can find a mess of graffiti and street wear stores. My first impressions was that this dude is Ame-mura personified. "I travel overseas, but in Japan I've never moved out of Osaka. I just can't stop loving the city."





The turning point in his career was when an artist friend in the UK asked him to join an exhibit in France. One day, walking down a street of Paris in his custom Gundam-studded leather jacket, "A Parisienne hit on me out of nowhere. She said "Kawaii!" in Japanese. I was so surprised!"


Best way to recycle SD Gundam erasers!

The exhibit in France was a huge unexpected success, and he has since been featured in 'The Face'(UK), 'VOGUE'(Japan), 'SHOWStudio'(France) and various other media related to fashion and art. In recent years, he even joined an art show by DIESEL and worked with American artist Mark Jenkins on street installations.

All this and yet what surprises me the most is that this guy never learned to sew or knit! "I liked vintage clothes originally, so I just thought it would be interesting to create monsters, heroes and other figures out of them. I don't really know how to sew. I just looked at some embroidery and started imitating it."

If you are in Osaka, peep his show at Kitsutsuki in Tamatsukuri. It runs through November 13th.
Meet this pop art madman while the meeting is good!



Click here for more Masagon pics!
masagon