Whatever Happened to Pink Tentacle?

by 23 Comments

To the uninitiated, “pink tentacle” might conjure up some gross images, but for those of us who love reading about Japan, it means something totally different.

As long as I can remember, Pink Tentacle has been one of my favorite Japan blogs out there, and is one of the few that I can recommend both to people who know a ton about Japan, and to people who’ve never even heard of sushi.

It sounds cheesy to describe the feel of a website, but there’s no better way to describe what Pink Tentacle is all about. Take some science fiction, mix it with a retro feel and a good heaping of art and design, and you basically have what Pink Tentacle is all about.

The site dives deep into whatever subject it takes on, finding obscure materials from decades ago. Pink Tentacle is the only place I know of where you can find an illustrated anatomy of Godzilla enemies, post-apocalyptic landscape illustrations of Tokyo, and vintage PSA posters from the Tokyo subway.

apocalyptic-shinjuku

After the horrific 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, Pink Tentacle understandably began shifting its content more and more about the aftermath of the disaster. Instead of the sort of coverage of 3/11 that was typical from major media outlets, Pink Tentacle covered 3/11 in a very Pink Tentacle-y way, with art and mythical history about the disaster.

Then, on April 19, 2011, Pink Tentacle went dark. After regularly updating for five years, the site, and all associated social media accounts just stopped updating.

As far as I can tell, nobody knows what happened. Why did Pink Tentacle stop updating? There are plenty of theories: something terrible happened to the author because of 3/11; the author took up another cause in the wake of 3/11; the person behind Pink Tentacle just lost interest.

But nobody knows for sure. We’re all equally clueless.

I’ve tried to get in touch with whomever is behind Pink Tentacle, but haven’t had any luck. I’ve tried emailing Pink Tentacle to no response, and it’s been hard to find any other ways of communication. The site’s whois information is obfuscated, meaning that it’s extremely difficult to find any identifying information about who registered the site.

I miss Pink Tentacle a lot, but I take some comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who misses Pink Tentacle, as evidenced by the numerous posts online begging for it to come back, and by the nearly 200 comments left on the last post on the site.

pink-tentacle-autocomplete

Pink Tentacle, where are you?

It’s heartwarming to see commenters on Pink Tentacle continue to leave messages for Pink Tentacle years after it went dark. On holidays, people wish Pink Tentacle a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The domain pinktentacle.com expires at the end of this year, on December 31st. It’ll be interesting to see whether the website expires and gets snatched up by a domain squatter, or if somebody, somewhere decides to renew the domain and let us all wonder for a while longer.

  • DAVIDPD

    Strange. Maybe it pulled an Elvis, and it’s not gone, it just went a away for awhile.

  • http://www.facebook.com/steven.joseph.horton Steven Horton

    If I can get it and preserve the content, I will. I own a few older domain names, and I keep the content up unless the original writers want it removed, which usually doesn’t happen.

  • Tiffany Harvey

    I loved that blog!

  • http://twitter.com/Cupucuups Hamyo

    OMG Hashi!! i was viewing pink tentacle only a few minutes ago, and then this article appear on tofugu daily update!! What a tentacle coincidence!! XD nice to see that you’re one of the loyal fans for that awesome blog, i always wondering when a new post from pink tentacle would coming, day after day, week after week, month after month, but yeah not a single progress after all. I miss you pink tentacle, we miss you!! please comeback! :(

  • pinktentaclefan

    I used to follow Pink Tentacle too! I’ve visited the site several times over the past two years, always wondering what happened….

  • Kenneth Hendricks

    I check in every week or so just to see if they’ve reappeared.

  • http://twitter.com/Cupucuups Hamyo

    another fans that still waiting for the comeback of that awesome blog, really glad to hear that. :D i’m not alone on this path :’) please comeback pink tentacle, use that magic tentacle to write something awesome about Japan again!! XD

  • Jon

    Sounds interesting. I hope you succeed in doing so.

  • http://twitter.com/redmaigo Red Maigo

    This is strange. About two weeks ago I also wasted an entire evening trying to
    find out what happened to Pink Tentacle. Of course I never found anything. I
    was wondering if the person(s) behind Pink Tentacle left Japan as a part
    of the Flyjin exodus after the Fukushima incident. That is, of course,
    if the people(s) behind Pink Tentacle were gaijin who lived in Japan.
    There
    used to be a site I once visited called beNippon where I was able to
    buy JP goods. They shut down for the above reason but at least they let
    their customers know first.
    It’s been two years later since Pink
    Tentacle went dark. Will the the abandoned Pink Tentacle site go down as
    an Internet Mystery never to be solved?
    Only time will tell.

  • Jon E.

    Please, do! I’ve never read it before, and am only just now checking it out thanks to this tofugu post. I’m enjoying it and want it preserved a little longer than just dec ’13.

  • http://www.facebook.com/gavinw1 Gavin Williams

    Asides from Pink Tentacle, what do people think are the top blogs on Japan?

  • http://zoomingjapan.com/ zoomingjapan

    I discovered that blog just recently. I think in 2012, but never bookmarked it, because I saw that it wasn’t updated anymore.
    If it had happened right after the earthquake / tsunami I think we can all imagine what happened, but if they disappeared in April 2011, that’s another story.
    Even if – like somebody else said – they left Japan as “Flyjin” they could update their page from anywhere in the world and let their readers know.

    And just leaving Japan doesn’t mean you have to shut down your blog. I know that I won’t.

    I really hope nothing happened to the person / people who ran the blog, but it is really strange.

  • http://gakuranman.com Gakuranman

    I loved Pink Tentacle myself. I emailed Ed once back in December 2008. He was a freelance translator who worked in Tokyo updating Pink Tentacle in his spare time. Since he posted in the days after the quake I think it’s safe to say that he himself wasn’t a victim of a horrible accident, but the Flyjin hypothesis doesn’t really seem all that sound to me either. Why cut off all contact just due to the earthquake, even if he did leave Japan? It would certainly explain his lack of new posts (because a lot of Pink Tentacle’s content was sourced from old books found in Japanese libraries), but his silence is a big mystery…

    Another possibility is that the site was sold to a 3rd party. Even now it remains a popular site monetised by Google Adsense with a lot of valuable backlinks.

  • simplyshiny

    I have not heard of this! It’s always sad when blogs fall away….one of my favorite sports blogs took a “few months” off due to family issues….3 or 4 years ago… Hyperbole and a Half was one of my favorite blogs….She was going to write a book then disappeared for a long time…she actually posted again and said she was going through some real awful depression, but hasn’t posted since…makes me worried about her.

  • Roentgen Del Mundo

    been a fan too, ever since Japan was hit by the earthquake the site has been inactive. I just hope nothing bad happened to the site owner.

  • gullevek

    I really miss Pink tentacle. So much awesome content there, I found so many awesome things I would have never found out, wouldn’t it have been for pink tentacle. Miss that page. a lot.

  • jo

    HTTrack Website Copier allows you to back up online media. good luck

  • http://twitter.com/Reavyn Richard King

    Like everyone else here, I too miss Pink Tentacle. I’ve always had a hard time finding good blogs about Japan, so when I found Pink Tentacle I was so happy. I found myself enjoying every single post they made.

    After no one had heard anything from the owner for about a year I decided to try and find out what happened. I knew it was a long shot but I asked two people who lived in Japan if they knew anything about the person. One was a blogger/journalist for a gaming website and the other was a blogger that has a site a little similar to Pink Tentacle but it doesn’t update very much at all. Sadly, neither one knew anything about the person at all.

    I really wish I knew how to speak and read Japanese so I could investigate more.

  • http://twitter.com/Zborsmack Zborsmack

    Please, please do preserve the content! I teach introductory Japanese to adults in New York and am constantly recommending Pink Tentacle to my students. It’s such a wonderful site and an incredible resource for new Japanese students, so it’d really be a shame to lose it.

  • pipokun

    one of the best sites for sure!

  • tako

    There are many copies at the Internet Archive:

    http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.pinktentacle.com/archives/

    but please come back Pink Tentacle.

  • Dr. Sargasso

    Unfortunately, Pink Tentacle’s lovely proprietor was arrested by the United States State Department (like all beautiful souls eventually are) and is awaiting his fate in at the Anvil mountain prison in Nome, Alaska. …… for reasons I cannot disclose.

  • Ramone

    Wait–for real?