Computers read our brain waves! Humans under constant observation! Computer mainframes record the thoughts of every human on the planet! Hopeless cries for the destruction of machines echo throughout the city!
Computers synthesize human beings! Natural reproduction outlawed! After computers take over, human life becomes redundant! Only a small number of computer technicians are spared! Their replacements manufactured by machines!
Computers plot humanity's end! Mankind decreed to be unnecessary! Computers produce high-performance rockets which spread deadly gas across the land!
After humanity is wiped out, computers create new, hyper-intelligent race of super-beings!
Rushing to get your lady chocolates at the last minute? Relax, Japanese scientists have you covered. All you need is a small mammal and nail polish, and BAM! Spontaneous chocolatization!
This method works on large mammals too. Not that I would condone such a thing. You'd give yourself diabetes trying to dispose of the body.
The scientific breakthroughs witnessed today were made possible by the men and women of SRI (Science Research Institute). Look forward to more mind-boggling research in the future.
Title: The Defiler Monk (女犯坊) Serialized in: Erotopia (1974-1976) Artist: Fukushima Mashima Writer: Kai Takizawa Genre: Historic flesh bomb
“If the stalk of a man is the root of life and the valley of a women the origin of the cosmos, than anything barring their union is an abomination in the eyes of the Buddha”
Thus spoke Ryusui, protagonist of Nyohanboh, Masami Fukushima’s Buddhist sexual adventure manga from the mid 70’s, . A Nyohanboh is a monk who has broken his precepts and slept with a women, a title that Ryusui wears with pride. The defiler monk travels the land spreading his doctrine of free love while crushing non-believers and the Shogun’s many lap dogs. Mighty and stoic, our virile hero laid the groundwork for the muscle-bound solitary wanderers who came later, such as Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star and Guts from Berserk. Yet while other heroes have martial arts or brute strength to rely on, Ryusui brings his foes to their knees with nothing more than throbbing sutras and inexhaustible potency.
1796 was a bad year for deviant monks. On August 16th, the Edo government cast a dragnet to snatch monks slinking home from brothels in the early morning hours. Altogether 67 monks were apprehended, fettered, and placed on display for three days on Nihon-Bashi for public humiliation. This punishment was merely a symbolic precursor to their excommunication and the shame of being caught.
Nyohanboh begins its fiction with this documented fact. Many of Ryusui’s escapades are taken from the lurid pages of Japan’s history. The manga is a time capsule preserving the most heinous laws and punishments that the nation would rather forget. Which is precisely the reason I’m sharing them with you!
National law barred monks from indulging in meat, alcohol, or women—especially women. Not because these things cloud the mind with earthly desires, the very thing which Buddhism seeks to expunge, but because they are impure. If this strikes you as misogynistic, you’ll rejoice in Ryusui's exploits that spit in the face of institutionalized conventions by reinserting sexual freedom back into the faith, one nun at a time.
Such prohibitions against women were not limited to intercourse. They were barred entry from temples for fear that they would distract the monks, but also because their menstrual blood was said to defile the holy inner sanctum. Koya-Ji, a major temple in the Shingon sect, maintained this restriction until 1872. The seven trails leading up the mountain were each barricaded by a Nyonin-Do, or women’s temple, which served to intercept those who would desecrate the demarcated ground. Let’s see what Ryusui has to say about this nonsense!
During his wanderings, he encounters a mother with her son attempting to climb Mount Koya to reunite with her husband, a monk who has fled beyond her reach into the depths of the temple. Ryusui’s initial attempts to indoctrinate the woman are cut short when he realizes she is suffering from late stage tuberculosis. In his infinite pity he decides to fulfill her dying wish. He delivers the boy to his father, and, in delicious Dante-esque irony, drowns him in a bucket of his wife’s coughed-up blood while his gay lover watches on in impotent horror. Perhaps they were right about the menstrual thing after all.
If bureaucracy exists as the most efficient way to pass the buck, than the Shima Nagashi, or Island Banishment system, is the most efficient way to pass the executioner’s axe. On paper, Shima Nagashi is reserved for crimes too minor for the death penalty but too weighty for jail time, such as larceny and aggravated assault. In reality, the system allowed politicians a means to do away with undesirables without getting their hands dirty. The hopelessly destitute living hand to mouth, the familyless drifters adopted by the Yakuza, those who failed to contribute to the group—These were the people who, lacking the social influence and wealth to buy the courts, found themselves swept under the rug and shipped off to remote islands to live out the rest of their days.
Similarly, no one wants the weight of a dead monk on their conscious, even an impious one. Nyohanboh of high social standing were sent to the most distant of locales as an example to the rest of the clergy. But the logistics of ferrying prisoners across unforgiving seas hide the sinister truth. One in three boats sent to the far isles capsized along the way, meaning that those sentenced to Shima Nagashi were essentially given a death penalty with a 66% chance of error. Heaven forbid you be later pardoned for your crimes and invited to tempt fate once more in returning to the mainland. Off the record, this was a convenient way to deal with political enemies.
Ryusui’s transgressions hardly went unnoticed, and he found himself exiled to Sado Island, renowned as most brutal of all Shima Nagashi destinations. I’m sure you’re wondering, “How did he get captured if he’s such a bad ass?” Let me set the record straight—He wasn’t captured so much as he willfully volunteered to subject himself to Hell on Earth for the sake of aesthetic training. Ryusui found himself surrounded by absolute squalor. Food scarcity had driven many to cannibalism, with aborted fetus as the hour ‘devours. The souls of the living were beyond saving. Instead, he opted to liberate those whom had died, binding their remains into a raft of bones upon which he sailed back to the mainland where the deceased could finally rest, vindicated.
In reality conditions in exile were livable, if not pleasant. Individuals were free to spend their time as they saw fit, so long as they acted within the law. Those who had grown up in poverty experienced many positive firsts. Convicts received their own field to tend to, and with it a means to finally contribute to the group. Ironically they were allowed to participate in society only after being torn away from it.
Sado Island was an exceptional case, however. The discovery of gold deposits transformed the prison colony to an off-shore labor camp, and not all those sent to mine the mountains came back to tell of it.
The island was also once home to Nichiren, who was exiled in 1272 for his radical teachings that challenged established doctrine and the government. Like Ryusui, he was vocal in his view that Buddhist doctrine had been corrupted by those in power to further tighten their control over the populace. In hindsight, his precepts went on to be misappropriated by Sokka Gakkai, so perhaps his temporary exile wasn’t entirely unwarranted.
More severe acts called for more severe punishment. If intercourse alone was enough to get you exiled, then adultery and rape were grounds for death. Gokumon was the favored method of execution by the Shogunate. The guilty were decapitated in a public execution, than had their head spiked onto a special stand to be displayed for three days and two nights, usually in front of a castle or jail.
In the manga, Ryusui conspires with his loyal hunchback assistant, Iwamatsu, to usurp power from his temple’s high monk who enforces punishment for Nyohanboh. Ryusui slips a home-milled aphrodisiac into the abbot’s tea, sending into a frenzy that results in him raping a girl paying respects at her ancestors’ gravesite. The executioner’s sword is swift to respond.
Ryusui's rise to power has begun.
We still have much to learn from the defiler monk.
For those of us that spent our formative years in the 80's, a certain part of our brain is now dedicated to the bips and bleeps that filled the pizza parlors and lazy days of our youth . These neurons are forever wasted, ruined by Saturday mornings spent digesting mechanized musical loops and sugared cereals. For those of us that were there, this 3-channel sound has become a comfort food of sorts. As much as we'd like to go back to this carefree time, things will never be the same. Our tastes have grown up, wittingly or otherwise. The magic that filled these old consoles has literally turned to dust.
Events like Famimode are there to make our memories palatable once more.
Meteor sponsors this annual all-night party that brings together musicians, performing artists, and vendors of the 8-bit persuasion. Meteor itself is what would happen if Beams opened a Famicon store—trendy, subdued, and overpriced. Reliving your childhood comes at a price, but you’ve got to pay your dues to be part of the club, right? Sexy-synthesizer
The Famicon only represents one of many possible flavors of game music, so it was nice to get things started with a sampling of the greatest hits of our gneration, from the Atari to a live vocal version of Katamari Damashi. While I dug the Player 1/Player 2 themed hoodies, there’s only so much two DJs can do simultaneously when you’re not actually spinning records. At one point they broke out a Super Famicon and had P2 playing Chrono Trigger while the other one keyed in sound effects and mixed loops. Nothing makes the kids shuffle furiously back and forth like Frog’s theme, let me tell you.
Choose between either The 80's or pitch correction, you can't have both at once!
Their pre-programmed hooks struck the perfect balance between feeling like they could be from any number of classic titles, while stopping short of being so derivative as to actually be recognizable. And that’s the beauty of it. KPLECRAFT best personified the underlying theme of the night—Taking something old and familiar as a base to build upon layers of creativity. In this clip they’re messing around with a saxophone and hand drums, but at the show they also had an electric mandolin and didgeridoo that totally sealed the deal.
Kirby's Dreamland or Naked Lunch? You be the judge.
Sporting slick full motion video and eight hundred dollar track jackets, Consumers made the other performer look like chumps. And yeah, they’re pretty awesome, until the front man opens his mouth and starts rapping like a salary-man version of B-Dash. Naturally the crowd ate it up. At an event dedicated to all things pixel, being square is the best thing you could do.
This song's pretty alright because the doofus with the mike keeps his mouth shut.
Never underestimate the Game Boy. The original Brick lived for nearly 10 years despite the fact that its electronic guts were already rotten at the time of it’s launch. Nintendo is now being forced to create upgrades for the DS after accidentally selling a copy to every man, women, child, and grandparent in Japan. People are drawn to the glow of its LED screen like our ancestors were to the stars.
Omodaka is well aware of the mysterious power the device holds over people. He opens his set with the familiar echoing ping of the DS. Unwittingly you react—oh my God, he’s making music on the Game Boy! The trap is set, here comes the net. Suddenly his chip tunes are replaced with electric folk songs and avante guard spoken word skits. But by now you’re enjoying yourself too much to care that you’ve been duped into watching genre-bending performance art.
Kayo-Kyoku, skeletons, and Game Genie noise. Everything I've ever wanted out of life in one place.
Omodaka’s subservient performance belongs more in one of Shoji Terayama’s sideshows than a dance club, and I love him for that. For his final song, he spoke through a voice changer, inciting the crowd shout their hearts out on the 4th beat. Are you ready? An on-stage television counted down with the music. 4-3-2-1-SCREAM!
Silence.
The text on the television responded on cue,
“The despair deepens”
That says more about video gaming than most would like to admit.
But wait, isn’t this supposed to be a feel-good event? At this rate I’m going to start contemplating what would have happened if I had better spend my childhood learning an instrument, or getting to know my grandparents better, or volunteering in the community. I need to cleanse my palette. I need something like… Famicon Big Battle!
The Playoffs
Qualifiers were held off to the side throughout the night were entrants vied for top scores and clear times in fairly standard fare, such as Super Mario Brothers and Clu Clu Land. Once the dust cleared, the 8 players left standing were called to the stage to bring the knowledge in a head-to-head showdown.
The top 4 qualifier was Olympic games. Players hunkered down, their free hand braced on the side of the table, poised as if they meant to out-press Takahashi Meijin himself. It was like Over the Top meets The Wizard, with veins popping and sweat flying and people pulling every secret maneuver in the book.
The Final Four
And then there were 4. Their challenge: Get the highest score in the first three stages of Arakanoid using a stupidly sensitive trackball controller. This dude with the McDonald's track jacket and matching lucha mask was last year's champion, but his meaty hands lacked the finesse needed to caress his way to the final round. Better luck next year buddy.
FUN FACT: Doraemon’s original voice actress, Nobuyo Ohyama, is the #2 Arakanoid player in the world. Whenever she visits another country, she makes it her mission to blast all the high scores of whatever machine she finds.
The Championship
It all came down to who could be the biggest dick in Ice Climbers. I’m glad my parents never bought this for me as a kid or my siblings would have lynched me with the controller cord. Things are cold on Icicle Mountain and only one man comes back down alive.
The guy on the left ended up winning. For his contributions to humanity he was crowned Grand Poobah of hipster gamers 2010, a title he will surely be back to defend next year.
And make no mistake, the people backing this event are dyed-in-the-flannel hipsters. I say that with begrudging respect. Unlike most subculture clubs in Japanese, these guys are trying to break free of the limits imposed on their genre and do something innovative. Perhaps it's because the fan base is so varied, or because the basic recipe is so simple, but the acts tonight all moved in different directions while maintaining a cohesive vibe.
I can respect them for that. Though I don't necessarily buy into it.
Though I do regret not picking up Omodaka's album.
Computers read our brain waves! Humans under constant observation! Computer mainframes record the thoughts of every human on the planet! Hopeless cries for the destruction of machines echo throughout the city!
Computers synthesize human beings! Natural reproduction outlawed! After computers take over, human life becomes redundant! Only a small number of computer technicians are spared! Their replacements manufactured by machines!
Computers plot humanity's end! Mankind decreed to be unnecessary! Computers produce high-performance rockets which spread deadly gas across the land!
After humanity is wiped out, computers create new, hyper-intelligent race of super-beings! 
