I and practically everybody I know has been excited for Daft Punk’s upcoming album, Random Access Memories, and for good reason—Daft Punk has been one of the biggest names in dance music for almost 20 years.

Daft Punk is obviously extremely popular around the world, but I think that it owes a thing or two to Japan in particular. Besides Japanese animation company Toei creating Daft Punk’s anime OVA (yes, Daft Punk has an official anime), Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, there’s one Japanese man whom Daft Punk seems to owe a lot.

Last time Daft Punk went on tour, they performed on a giant, illuminated pyramid, towering over crowds of thousands across the world. The similarity wasn’t lost on me when I found out that Japanese electronic musician Isao Tomita did more or less the same thing in the 80′s.

Even though Tomita’s music was much, much different than Daft Punk’s (Tomita did mainly electronic covers of classical music), Tomita’s 1984 performance known as “Mind of the Universe” bears a striking resemblance to Daft Punk’s modern-day pyramid of light.

Left: Isao Tomita’s “Mind of the Universe.” Right: Daft Punk’s “Alive 2007” tour.

Mind of the Universe was performed at a music festival in Linz, Austria, and Tomita went balls to the walls for this performance. One blog notes that in addition to the pyramid of light from which Tomita directed the whole show, he also

employed 13 channels of sound, including one from a helicopter 1500 feet above the river, multichannels sound systems on either side of the river, and on a ship that also carried musicians and a chorus of 100 Austrian singers.

Tomita’s music definitely isn’t the kind you’ll hear a DJ spinning at a rave, but you can’t help but admire the sheer spectacle of it all. Here’s some video from the legendary 1984 performance:

Besides his epic Mind of the Universe, Tomita did a ton of incredible work. He also did a massive performance at the Statue of Liberty called “Back To Earth,” and did a show for Australia’s bicentennial that was part of a $7 million gift from Japan.

He also composed music for a Japanese Olympic team, and for the movie that The Lion King ripped off, Kimba the White Lion. Nowadays, Tomita is doing more mundane work (music for Disney theme parks), but is still keeping quite busy, considering he’s been active for more than half a century.

Tomita is definitely more Switched-On Bach than Random Access Memories, but that doesn’t mean that he’s irrelevant.

He directly laid the groundwork for some early Japanese electronic musicians like Yellow Magic Orchestra (a member of which was his assistant) and, far in the future, current Japanese electronic musicians. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that vocaloid superstar Hatsune Miku has a bit of Tomita DNA in her.

In fact, last year Hatsune Miku and Isao Tomita came together to create a symphony performed in Tokyo. When it comes to old school meets new school, it’s hard to top Tomita x Miku.

So when Daft Punk’s new album comes out an people are going hysterical out in the streets, remember that somewhere, Isao Tomita paved the way. Especially that giant pyramid of light part.

Quick, who’s the man who started the golden age of arcade video games? Who created gaming’s first killer app? Who created a new genre of games, and inspired the Mario-making Miyamoto and Konami’s Kojima? Do you give up, or did your eyes just skim ahead to the next sentence, inadvertently ruining the surprise? Tomohiro Nishikado is his name, and industry changing is his game. How’d he manage this achievement, this gold trophy of gaming? I’ll give you two dramatic, single word sentences. Space. Invaders.

The Early Years: Back in My Day, We Had Pong!

But let’s back up to the proverbial top of the screen. Tomohiro Nishikado graduated from Tokyo Denki University in 1968 with a degree in engineering. The following year, he joined up with Taito Corporation (known as Taito Trading Company at the time), and worked on the company’s electro-mechanical games, the precursor to arcade video games. By 1972 he was working on video games, starting with Elepong, a serious contender for the titles of both Japan’s First Video Game and Most Honest Pong Clone. Other early games include Davis Cup, a Pong-clone with four paddles, and Soccer, a Pong-clone with four paddles and a green background.

1974 saw the release of Speed Race, a personal favorite of Nishikado’s, which, after being licensed by Midway, went on to become the first Japanese game released in America. This relationship continued with Nishikado’s next game, Western Gun. When Midway released the game in America, it was adapted to use a microprocessor, a first for video games, giving it better graphics and smoother animation. Although preferring his original version, Nishikado was so impressed with the technological upgrade that he decided to use microprocessors for all of his future games.

Space: The Next Frontier

Next, we’ll fast forward, or for those using DVD, mash the next chapter button to 1977. Nishikado was inspired by the gameplay of Atari’s Breakout, but, realizing that Taito wouldn’t be making a Breakout clone until 1986’s Arkanoid, set out to make a game with a similar feel. He originally designed the game around shooting planes and tanks, but felt that moving sideways was decidedly un-plane-and-tank-like. Plus, Taito forbade him from using human targets, leaving him with pretty much nothing on Earth to use.

Luckily, Nishikado heard about an American movie coming out (a mostly unknown knock-off of Message From Space, that goes by the name of “Star Wars”), and decided on a sci-fi theme. The enemy aliens were based off of the invaders from War of the Worlds, which presumably means that at least one person has mistaken them for actual invading aliens. The foundation for one of the most influential games of all time had been laid. Nishikado called it Space Monsters. And then Taito renamed it Space Invaders.

I Accidentally an Entirely New Gameplay Concept

Unfortunately, the hardware running games at the time wasn’t quite up to par with the technology of the game’s sci-fi influences. Nishikado would have to create his own hardware for the game to run on, along with the tools to develop it. This would end up being the longest part of development, taking a grueling six months to complete. In contrast, the actual game only took three months to complete, making it one of those rare times when the easiest part of single-handedly creating an entire video game was single-handedly creating an entire video game.

Even with custom hardware, the game was too demanding. There were too many enemies on screen for the processor to handle, and they couldn’t move at the speed Nishikado wanted them to. But, while testing the game, he noticed that as the player destroys the enemies, they would speed up, as there were less of them for the processor to render. He decided to keep it that way, creating the concept of the difficulty curve that is now standard in nearly every game in existence. At any rate, Nishikado pressed on, and in 1978, Japan got their first taste of Space Invaders. And we all know how that went.

Poorly. It went poorly. The game flopped. At least, for the first three months, anyways. The success of Space Invaders began to turn around thanks to word of mouth, and possibly an 80’s training montage (it was ahead of its time, after all). People soon fell in love the little space crabs for the innovative gameplay and competitive value, being the first game that saved player’s high scores. By the end of the year, there were over 100,000 Space Invaders machines in Japan alone.

Space Sushi Crosses Pond, Invades People’s Hearts

In 1979, it was released in America, which was already in its second year of the video game crash of ’77, with the country burned out on years of Pong clones. The space crab invaders from Japan would turn out to be the industry’s saviors, and helped propel gaming into the mainstream. The game was so successful that the cost of buying a Space Invaders cabinet was offset within a month. The 1980 Atari 2600 release quadrupled the sales of the system, and the game, not content with being the first home console game to sell one million copies, would go on to sell over two million.

Space Invaders would go on to inspire the entire genre of shoot ’em ups, and is the game that got both Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima interested in making games. The video game that was inspired by Star Wars had become the Star Wars of video games.

But what happened to Nishikado? Well, not a whole lot, really. He continued working for Taito until 1996, when he left to form his own game company, Dreams. The company occasionally does development on Taito titles, and Nishikado oversaw development of Space Invaders Revolution for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. He was also credited in the most recent Space Invaders game, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, published by Square Enix, Taito’s current owner. Whatever he does, we’ll always remember him for his contribution that helped shape an industry. Who knows where it would be without him. Pong with six paddles?

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Sources:
http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=space-invaders&page=detail&id=2537
http://www.1up.com/features/ten-space-invaders
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2009/05/66479041/1#.UVZxjVcZsoL

Note: Tofugu and its staff are not responsible for any changes to the fabric of time that may directly or indirectly negatively affect you or someone you know. All time travel was done without malice and for research purposes only. Some names have been left out to prevent time-travel-related problems in the future. Please refer to clause 43.5a of the case “Time Versus The Supreme Court.” This document will be made available in your local supreme court office on February 22, 2094.

As I jumped into my time travel device yesterday (or was it tomorrow, this time travel thing really muddles with your brain), I remember going through my list of potential jumps thinking that too many of them were in the past. All of them, actually. Battle of Sekigahara? Too many arrows. The arrival of Perry and his black ships? Check. Done. Badaboom. The Mongols being wiped out by the Kamikaze? A breeze. Stephen’s party? I had to pass on that one, too many things to do, and had nothing to do with Japan or the Japanese language.

I figured it was time to jump in my time machine and travel to the future instead. Sure, there are still opportunities to change said future and alter what it was I saw, but in general I don’t see a lot changing due to my actions. No, I wanted to continue the theme of Japanese baseball posts just for one more week. That’s why I decided to travel to the future to learn what happened to this great American Japanese pastime. I’d like to present to you the future of Japanese baseball, as it stands today, so long as none of you muck it up and cause our line to jump to another reality. Butterflies will just need to stop flapping their wings, please.

A Major Move To The MLB (2013-)

It’s 2013 (this year!). The big story is Yu Darvish, the Japanese pitcher from Japan who made his MLB debut in 2012. After a strong first season, it’s his second season that really wows the MLB. After going 21-4 for the Texas Rangers with 6 complete games, 204 strikeouts, and and one no-hitter, he wins the first of two career Cy Young Award just beating out Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez, who come in second and third respectively.

Our illustrator loves Yu

But this is just the start of things. I won’t tell you who wins the World Series (boy is it a good one!), though there is one Japanese player who does particularly well. It will help to open the MLB’s mind (if it wasn’t already open) to pulling more Japanese players over stateside at a much higher rate. In order to stay competitive, MLB teams would draft Japanese players out of high school and college, getting them before they have a chance to sign with a team in Japan, thus circumventing the posting system and getting young Japanese talent in the majors early on. The Oakland Athletics do particularly well at this, and by 2017 six of twenty-five members of the roster are from Japan, an MLB record at the time (it is broken three years later by the Baltimore Orioles, who have 8 Japanese players on their roster).

Superstars will begin to make their way to America as well. Shouhei Otani, illustrated above (by our illustrator Aya in present time, which I think is 2013), comes to America in 2015. Originally he planned to come to America straight out of highschool, but intense pressures on him by Japanese teams, coaches, and his parents cause him to being the first few years of baseball in Japan. He grows to regret this decision and comes stateside, debuting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the beginning of the 2015 season. The fireballer throws 100 mph and has a wicked splitter, going on to win the Rookie of the Year award as well as joining the limelight along with Darvish as well as Tomoyuki Sugano, who makes the jump to the majors a year later.

But this barely scratches the surface. More and more Japanese players move to America, and it happens earlier and earlier. As more Japanese baseball players get experience abroad they transmit the positive experiences to younger baseball stars in Japan. They become less reluctant to come to America, and soon a trickle turns into a landslide.

Sadaharu Oh No Someone Broke The Homerun Record (2019)

You may remember the past articles we wrote about Sadaharu Oh, and things haven’t changed much since then… well, except for how his home run record has been broken, with asterisks, however. In 1964 he banged out 55 home runs for the record. In 2017 a relatively unknown non-Japanese player would break the record with 59 home runs. In 2018 he would do it again, though an “accident” where he would fall down the stairs ended his promising (Japanese) career early. In 2019, a Japanese player would break the record much to the relief of many nationalist baseball fans.

Controversy would stir when the non-Japanese player that beat Sadaharu Oh’s record got an asterisk next to his name saying “non-Japanese player.” It angered both sides of the table. One side claimed it made Japanese baseball look weak. The other side just said it was racist and unnecessary. Either way, the Japanese seemed to work harder than ever before due to this which led to a Japanese player breaking the record with 60 home runs, hitting the last one on the last day of the season. To be fair, it was also in 2019 that they added five games to the season raising it from 144 games to 149 games.

The fact that a Japanese player could hit 60 home runs was no accident, though. Advances in training technology, diet, and baseball skill as a whole had increased rapidly during the last decade. Japanese baseball players were just becoming really good, on par with the rest of the baseball world (South America, Central America, and America-America).

Still, the MLB was the place to play baseball. All of this talent continued to move to Japan. Even the Japanese home run record holder came to the NY Yankees a year after knocking those 60 home runs. While he didn’t hit 60 home runs ever again in his career, he batted a career .279, averaged 30+ home runs a year, and made three All Star teams. He wouldn’t be the only one, either. The Japanese baseball league began to get worried about losing all their players, and rightly so.

A Closed Nippon Professional League (2020)

In 2020, the Nippon Professional League decides to close the doors to MLB teams trying to snipe their top talent. By this time, the NPL feels almost like another AAA league for the MLB. Japanese players train for a couple of years as “pro” players in the NPL or non-Japanese players come over to get some extra practice in before heading to the Bigs. The NPL is tired of this, and they implement the Foreign Transfer Act of 2020.

The Foreign Transfer Act states that “no player of Japanese descent will sign with a non-Japanese team for the first 10 years of his career.” While by law they could not technically keep any Japanese player from moving to the US to join an MLB team, there were steep penalties for those who did. Anyone who broke this rule would be banned, for life, from the NPL, and while this may not seem like a big deal if your goal is the Majors, it did put a lot of pressure on younger players. If they failed in the MLB, they had nowhere to go. Some players thought it better to join a Japanese team and have a safe job for those first ten years.

Japanese newspapers, who owned many of the Japanese teams at this time, highlighted the failed attempts at skipping the NPL to join the majors in their newspapers. Others would publish articles going over the negatives of baseball life in America. While the propaganda was strong, the Foreign Transfer Act of 2020 was abolished a year later in 2021 due to negative publicity as a whole.

It was clear that Japanese people wanted to see their Japanese players play in the MLB. TV ratings for the MLB in Japan continued to climb while the NPL games on TV declined.

Is That A Cyborg On First? (2036)

Fast forward 16 years later. The NPL is on a sharp decline with hardly the popularity it used to have. Many Japanese players go straight to the Majors (especially the good ones), and the NPL is diluted with mediocrity and MLB has-beens. As a baseball fan, this saddened me to see happen, but it’s all part of evolution. If you’re backed into a corner you have to make changes. Although it happened nearly by accident, the NPL discovered something that would change baseball around the world.

Keisuke Andoh, a first baseman for the Honda Hawks (Honda now owns the Hawks, thanks to the huge piles of money they got via forays in robot and cyborg technology), is the first baseball player to receive a cyborg implant. Partly because of the ownership, but mostly due to a career-ending crash at home plate in the previous season, Andoh and the team management bet on a new Honda technology to replace both of his knees with robotic implants. At the time, no rules were in place regarding machinery that would increase your speed or skill in baseball. By the time the NPL could come up with something Andoh was batting .455, got 193 stolen bases, and was an overnight Japanese star. Oh, and did I mention he was under contract with the Hawks for the next 10 years? Honda would milk this one out for as long as they could. Their new speedster wasn’t going anywhere.

Many other players were getting upset. Fans were getting upset too. But, as more people followed in Andoh’s footsteps, mostly with small improvements at first, popularity in Japanese baseball increased as well. Not only did it increase in Japan, but the rest of Asia and America as well. The NPL was on the up and up, and money came before purity, so the NPL let cyborgization continue.

The Cyborg Era (2037-2050)

There were some rules that had to come with cyborg enhancements, however. Otherwise things would be unfair.

• Arm-swing enhancements must remain under 100cc
• Running speeds must stay under 20mph (32kph)
• Jumping enhancements must not allow the player to jump more than 1 meter into the air.
• Throwing enhancements must remain under 200cc
• No more than one enhancement per player

Once the rules were in place, teams got to work. Being the leader in robotic technology, Honda had the distinct advantage, though the cyborg-augmentation draft, which allowed additional enhancements to the worst teams, helped even the playing field in 2042.

Popularity in Japanese baseball grew 10x in the same amount of years. America, which still believed in the purity of the sport, banned cyborgization altogether, no exceptions. This only fueled MLB players to come to Japan in greater numbers. Great players with season-ending injuries came to Japan. Young players came to Japan. Everyone wanted to play baseball in Japan. Things had evolved and gotten a lot more exciting. Some changes included:

• Much larger fields and ballparks (good for strength augmentations as well as fitting all the fans who wanted to watch the games now).
• 120 mph pitches.
• Players regularly hitting 40+ home runs (until pitching augmentations caught up to hitting ones).
• Increased season length, going from 149 to 225 games played in Japan per year. The MLB was still 162 games per year.

Some would call this cheating, others would call this advancement. Whatever it was, it was popular, and it spread all throughout Asia and beyond.

Asia League Baseball (2050)

During the age of cyborgization in baseball (as well as with regular, rich, people), Asia as a whole gets better at baseball (as long as your definition of “better” means “more cyborgs”). Due to this advancement, as well as the general level of baseball in Asia increasing, we start to see that not just Japan is good at baseball, but Korea (all one country at this point), China, India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Russia all are quite good as well.

In 2050, Japan, Korea, and China come together to form the Asia League Baseball, a direct competitor to the now waning MLB, consisting of three leagues, nine divisions, and forty-two teams all across Asia. In 2052, India would add four teams. 2053 saw the Middle East join in, bringing the team total to forty-eight. Russia and Hawaii would only join five years after that, but they would bring ten teams to the table, making it by far the largest and best baseball section of the world.

For the first ten years, it is Japan and Korea that dominate, with Japan winning 6 of 10, Korea winning 3, and China winning the last. Baseball comes down to the level of technology that you can produce for your players to use. Japan and Korea tend to be at the forefront in this regard. China also does well, but still has the problem where they need to play catch-up in quality (putting a lot of strong players on the disabled list for repairs). After the first ten years, however, Asia League Championships seem to be all over the board. By this time the draft has helped the weaker teams, and technology has evened out as well.

Now it would be the MLB that had to try to keep their players from defecting to the other league. Asian baseball was hitting on all cylinders here.

The Jackie Robinson Of Robot Baseball (2064)

Not “Taro” pictured above. Due to time travel restrictions any photo from the future may not be shown in the past

While cyborged up people were commonplace now in the ALB, robots were not. Although some robots had turned sentient years previous due to some amazing(ly dangerous) robot brain technology created by Dr. Nakamats Junior (a clone version of the great Dr. Nakamats), it wasn’t until 2064 that we see one of them attempt to play baseball. Just as there was “technically” no rule against African Americans playing baseball when Jackie Robinson joined the MLB, there was “technically” no rule against full on robots either.

And boy was the first one hated. Joining the Nippon-ham Fighters, ASI-43099b aka “Taro,” he was booed by the fans right from the start, even before taking an at bat. It was clear that Taro would have a hard time in the Asia League due to the venomous feelings towards sentient robots that Asia as a whole had. Despite doing well his first and only year for the Nippon-ham Fighters, he was a robot with feelings, so he packed up his bags and moved to the MLB, which was surprisingly more receptive to the idea of robots playing baseball.

By now even the MLB was allowing some forms of cyborgization, but they knew they needed to do something to keep baseball alive in America. 2065 saw not only Taro, but six other robots make their career debut as well to varying success. The ALB eventually warmed up to “The Sentients” coming back to the Asia League, but by then it was too late. The MLB had regained much of its popularity in the same way that cyborgization popularized the Asian leagues. The MLB and the ALB were on fairly even footing, which could only mean good things for baseball as a whole.

World League Baseball (2099)

It’s nearly a new century and advances in travel technology have made it possible to travel across the world in mere hours (hint: we travel in tubes now). It’s fairly unclear which league is greater: The MLB or the ALB? Also, by now the All Europe League, The African League, and the Australian / Southeast Asia Leagues were getting stronger too. South America would join the MLB, doubling the number of teams, but as you can see baseball has reached a “professional” level by the year 2099.

It is appropriate then that in this year, the MLB and the ALB agree to inter-league play. Each team would play thirty games a season against the other league. In the following decade the other leagues would join in (except for the All Europe League and Southeast Asia League, which were still at too low of a level to join), forming the first truly worldwide League.

At the end of it all? Well, of course there was a World Series. A real one this time, not one that’s only in North America. Finally, there is no need to fight outside the baseball diamond. The world is united in terms of baseball, and a lot of it is thanks to Japan. While some still hate Japan’s contribution to the world baseball stage, others would never have known baseball in the first place if it wasn’t for the robots and cyborgs that people take for granted today.

While I don’t want to comment on this for fear of changing the future, I will say that it is entertaining to watch. I don’t know if it’s good or bad (or rather, I won’t say if it is or not), but it is different, and it is where baseball will head… that is, unless one of you mucks up the future somehow, at which point this article will have been rendered useless and you only have yourself to blame.

One more thing: GO KENYAN PANDAS! (don’t ask about the name… the team moved from China to Kenya and never changed the name…) I love their chances at winning it all this year.

If you have any questions about the future of (Japanese) baseball, feel free to ask. While I don’t know everything, I did spend a lot of time watching games all over the world, reading up on the stats, and just enjoying a lot of future baseball culture. I’ll answer whatever I can so long as I don’t think it will alter events and create a future where we are ruled by Neo Nazis (aka the Nazi baseball team is not something you are allowed to ask about).

P.S. Have yourself a full sized header illustration to support your favorite future team, the Honda Hawks!

There’s no arguing that a lot of what we consider stereotypically Japanese actually came from elsewhere.

Japan has China to thank for the Japanese language, which is also where ramen is from. Tempura, konpeito, and castella cake came by way of the Portuguese; likewise, curry was introduced by the British. The gakuran and the sailor uniform were modeled after European military and naval uniforms, and radio calisthenics is from the good old US of A.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found out the reverse has also happened: fortune cookies, that staple of Chinese restaurants in the US, is almost certainly Japanese.

Japanese Fortune Cookies…

In Japan, fortune cookies go by the names tsujiura senbei, o-mikuji senbei, and suzu senbei. They’re slightly bigger, and the addition of miso and sesame makes them browner and savory instead of sweet. Otherwise, though, Japanese fortune cookies are pretty much identical to the mass-produced stuff.

Left: Japanese fortune cookies; Right: “Chinese” fortune cookies, made in Hong Kong, from a Korean grocery store down the road

If old tales are anything to go by, Japanese fortune cookies have been around since at least the 19th century. The following illustration, for example, was found in a book of stories that dates all the way back to 1878. Check out the unmistakable C-shaped cookies on the grill – and even more tellingly, the noren at the top that reads tsujiura senbei.

The sign is really old school; read it from right to left.

The other name for fortune cookies, o-mikuji senbei, is also a clue. Those little paper fortunes that you can get for a small fee at shrines and temples? Yep, they’re called o-mikuji. Kyoto literally has thousands of shrines and temples – one of the more famous being the Fushimi Inari shrine. Now is it mere coincidence that there are several shops in the area that still make fortune cookies by hand? I think not.

Spooning batter into the mold, lifting out the cookie, tucking in the fortune, and folding up the still-warm cookie.

But this is only half the story.

… and How They Became “Chinese”

The person who invented the “Chinese” fortune cookie is up for debate. Several people have put their hand up, but I reckon only two claims are worth serious consideration: some people believe it was Kito Seiichi of the Fugetsu-do shop in LA, and others believe it was Hagiwara Makoto of SF’s Japanese Tea Garden.

Both men were Japanese immigrants and likely knew about fortune cookies and how to make them – but my money’s on Hagiwara Makoto. As the story goes, he first made and served it alongside green tea in 1914. This modified, sweetened version was so popular that Hagiwara decided to get them made on a commercial scale. In 1918, Benkyodo stepped in to become the Japanese Tea Garden’s exclusive supplier of fortune cookies. Descendants on both sides corroborate the other’s story, which I think is as good as it’ll get in terms of evidence.

Left: the tea house at the Japanese Tea Garden; Right: Benkyodo Candy Factory

Soon, several other bakeries began to make and sell fortune cookies; Umeya, for example, supplied them to both Japanese- and Chinese-owned restaurants. The bombing of Pearl Harbor really put a spanner in the works though. Japanese-Americans were sent away to internment camps, which basically meant the end of many Japanese businesses.

Now that the competition had been taken out, Chinese businesses experienced a huge boom. Chinese restaurants still served fortune cookies, of course, and people just began to think of them as a Chinese thing. There was a strong anti-Japanese sentiment at the time, so I really don’t blame the Chinese for keeping mum and letting their customers believe what they wanted to believe.

In any case, although several Japanese bakeries did make a comeback after WWII, by that point fortune cookies were irrevocably Chinese. They were still as popular as ever, though: it was only a matter of time before it spread all over the US, and then all over the globe. Well, except for China, anyway. “Too American,” apparently.

Oh delicious irony.

Fortune Cookies Remixed

Nowadays there really aren’t any rules when it comes to fortune cookies. Just look at some of the varieties I found:

Purists, look away.

Well… not my thing to be honest, although I suppose there must be a market for them.

So, did you already know that fortune cookies are actually Japanese? Have you tried both Japanese and “Chinese” fortune cookies? Which did you prefer? What was the last fortune you got? Let us know in the comments!

Square Enix has been kind of lousy for a while now, but finally the company’s CEO Yoichi Wada is stepping down. He’s been steering the company for over a decade, and in my opinion Square/Square Enix was much better off with Hironobu Sakaguchi back in the day, but things change, and Square Enix is in trouble. So what brought about this sudden resignation and what are Final Fantasy X fans so excited about?

Is there Hope for Square Enix?

So the main reason that Yoichi Wada is resigning is because Square Enix has had a really crappy time this generation. Their previous fiscal year was reported as an extraordinary loss. That’s bad.

Final Fantasy XIV was a massive failure, FFXIII sold well but had a generally mixed to poor reception, and the same goes for XIII’s sequel. Even my last hope for the company, Dragon Quest, is starting to crap out with DQX which is a MMO for NO RAISIN. FFXI and FFXIV were lousy! Square Enix! Stop making MMOs! You’re not good at it!

To be fair, it was announced in 2012 that FFXI had become the most profitable title in the Final Fantasy series. While that may be true given that monthly subscriptions really add up fast, it doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t like the game and view it as the depressing turning point for the series.

Needless to say, the company’s long overdue for a major change. They’ve lost much if not all of their former glory. Instead of releasing great titles and classics like the old Final Fantasy games, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, etc – they’re dribbling out poorly selling games like Sleeping Dogs, XIII-2, and Hitman: Absolution.

Sure, some games of theirs end up being highly rated and doing well, but I just feel like Square Enix has lost their identity somewhere along the way. Sure, the latest Tomb Raider looks like a cool game and seems to be doing well so far, but that game is only under the Square Enix name because they acquired Eidos, the company that originally published Tomb Raider. Square Enix was even responsible for publishing Call of Duty: Black Ops II in Japan (what?). I know, I was surprised too. This company is all over the place.

Anyway, they need to overhaul the company and refocus and reprioritize and all that other good business stuff. Synergy. Good news is that they are doing just that. Only bad part is that by making all of these restructure changes they’ll be losing about 10 billion yen (over $107 million). That’s a lot of cash.

To make matters worse, Japanese RPG developers in general have been catching some flak for not keeping up with the times and modernizing for a worldwide audience. Stuff like this is part of the reasons that Japanese RPGs don’t make it to America like they used to. Games such as Dark Souls and Monster Hunter are exceptions to the rule here, but on the whole JRPGs are not received as they once were.

You’ve Changed, Final Fantasy… You’ve Changed

“I never realized… how bad of a game we are…”

The Final Fantasy series in particular has taken a plunge. The games are selling less and less copies and Square Enix has been having trouble getting them out in a timely manner. FF Versus XIII was unveiled over 6 years ago and there’s not even a demo yet. FF Type-0 was released in Japan about a year and a half ago but still has yet to see an international release.

For some unknown reason, Square Enix plans to relaunch FFXIV as Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn. JUST LET THE GAME DIE, SQUARE ENIX. Seriously. I’m tired of it clinging to what little life it has. They’re also coming out with another FFXIII sequel called Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13. Again, I have no idea why. The other FFXIII sequel was pretty mediocre, why continue down that road? Not enough people like these games for them to keep releasing sequels and spinoffs.

New CEO = New Hope?

Needless to say, the new CEO, Yosuke Matsuda has his work cut out for him. I know next to nothing about him other than he was the company’s representative director before, but hopefully he’s up to the task. He’s got a long hard road ahead of him.

In my opinion, Square/Square Enix started to crap out around the time Hironobu Sakaguchi left the company and around the time Wada became CEO. How much blame should go where and all that is anyone’s guess. Is Wada solely responsible for Square Enix’s troubles? Probably not, but he was the figurehead and he’d lost face as the leader.

Final Fantasy X was the last FF game that I really, truly enjoyed. It was the last FF game released under the Square name before they became Square Enix, and I choose that game as the last reminder of Hironobu Sakaguchi in an attempt to forget that he was mainly responsible for FFXI being a MMO *shudder*

So why are FFX fans rejoicing as I mentioned in the title? Well, some might be holding out hope that with the CEO stepping down, Square Enix might return to the glory days it enjoyed leading up to FFX – but there is another reason FFX fans are happy. FFX is getting an HD makeover.

Aw Yiss, FFX in HD

Since most of this post has been kind of a depressing rant (sorry), I thought I’d leave you with some much happier news. Final Fantasy X is getting a rework. While not everyone likes FFX, I know I do, and I am definitely looking forward to playing it again with some smoothed up visuals.

FFX was the first Final Fantasy on the PS2, the first with significant amounts of voice acting, and also the first to warrant a direct sequel, even if the sequel wasn’t all that impressive (FFX-2 is getting a rework too btw). The HD remaster will be released on both PS3 and PS Vita, many thinking it will come out around June or so. I for one can’t wait to get my hands on it.

So tell me, are you excited for an HD remaster of FFX/X-2? What do you think about Square Enix’s current situation and Yoichi Wada stepping down? Do you see a bright future ahead for the company? Let us know in the comments!

I’ve never understood architecture. Like fine art, architecture seems like one of those subjects that requires years of training and study to be able to really, fully appreciate. But to plebes like myself, it remains a mysterious topic, out of reach and beyond my comprehension.

Despite my ignorance, there’s something about Japanese architecture that stops me dead in my tracks. I don’t always understand the history, engineering, theory, or artistry behind it all, but I’m always fascinated by Japanese architecture.

If you’ve read Tofugu for a while, you probably already knew that. I’ve written a lot of posts about architecture, mostly as an excuse to post pictures of these really, really cool places.

Tadao Ando’s Hundred Step Garden

Obviously, I’m not the only one who’s in love with Japanese architecture. For hundreds and hundreds of years, Japanese architects have received global recognition for their very distinctive work.

And as recently as just last month, Japan has captured the world’s attention. This year, Japanese architect Toyo Ito was awarded architecture’s greatest prize. Ito the sixth in a line of celebrated Japanese architects to win the Pritzker Prize, more than any other country except for the United States.

Toyo Ito’s Sumika Pavilion

As I heard more and more about Japanese architects and spent hours scrolling through Google image searches, I began to wonder: why are Japanese architects so revered, so distinctive?

What separates the Frank Lloyd Wrights from the Toyo Itos of the world?

The Japanese Aesthetic

The Japanese aesthetic—the qualities that Japanese culture values in art—has always sort of been a mystery for the rest of the world. Westerners usually see it as yet another aspect of the mystical Orient they don’t understand.

In reality though, the Japanese aesthetic makes a lot of sense. A lot of the Japanese aesthetic, like a lot of Japanese culture, has its roots in religion. Shinto and Buddhism are the two biggies in Japan, and once you understand that, it begins to click into place.

Shinto is a set of beliefs that puts a lot of emphasis on nature. Probably the thing that most people know about Shinto is that it believes that spirits, or kami, live in everything. That tree? He’s got a little spirit inside it. Yeah, just like those Miyazaki movies you like so much.

Ito has gotten a lot of attention in recent years in part because of his work on the Sendai Mediatheque, a library in Sendai. Located in the middle of the city that bore the brunt of the 3/11 earthquake, the Mediatheque came away from the disaster practically unscathed.

Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque

The Sendai Mediatheque is essentially a huge glass cube, which makes it look very, very fragile. If you looked at the Mediatheque and imagined one of the largest earthquakes in history hitting it, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the building shattering into pieces.

But the Mediatheque held steady. The structure of the building allowed it to brave the storm; or as one architecture critic put it: “The Mediatheque has these tubular-like things that look like trees, or look like waving grasses in the wind . . . They allowed the building to move with the earthquake and survive.”

Like trees or grass. Ito’s often says that some of his biggest inspirations are in nature — usually air, wind, and water. He doesn’t explicitly talk about Shinto, but it’s not so far-fetched to make that connection.

A lot of other architects use nature much more explicitly in their work. Another Pritzker winner, Ryue Nishizawa, created a very unique house in Tokyo aptly named “Garden & House.”

While the elements of nature aren’t built directly into the structure of Garden & House, all of the flora lining the house make it leaps and bounds more attuned to nature than the concrete and brick buildings surrounding it.

Ryue Nishizawa’s Garden & Home

Again, it’s not that these buildings are explicitly Shinto shrines or anything, although many buildings — like the Tokyo Skytree — are blessed by Shinto clergy. But I think that this fusion of nature and architecture goes to show how deeply ingrained Shinto beliefs are into the Japanese aesthetic.

Zen and the Art of Japanese Architecture

Buddhism too has a role to play in shaping the Japanese aesthetic. A lot of Japanese Buddhist dogma, the kind of things that have made “Zen” a household word around the world, influences Japanese architecture.

Even if you’re not a Buddhist scholar, you’re still probably able to look at something and tell if it’s very “Zen.” You know the look—very spartan, simple, and even empty.

Those elements that are emphasized and valued in some forms Japanese Buddhism are written all over the Japanese aesthetic. They’re especially easy to spot in places like rock gardens and other traditional locales.

Most Japanese rock gardens are raked and arranged to look like water or waves or some sort of movement. But a lot of gardens have just a lot of blank, flat space. Even though the trees and patterns often stand out a lot more, that blankness, that stillness, is just as crucial.

Lots of Japanese architects incorporate these elements in their own work. You’ll see spaces with large, intentionally blank areas. It might look like the architect forgot or overlooked something, but it’s usually deliberate.

I’ve noticed that Pritzker winner Tadao Ando (who I covered a bit here) is a big fan of big, blank spaces. In Ando’s work, you’ll see concrete walls stretching wide lengths and spanning great heights.

Tadao Ando’s Chichu Art Museum

I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the immense amount of concrete used in works like this. I understand where those people are coming from; concrete is a boring, industrial material, and makes you think more of sidewalks than of a rock garden.

But I also understand Ando’s intent. The dull surfaces make the more interesting features stand out and shine, the monotony can actually serve as a feature, rather than a nuisance.

Rejecting the Japanese Aesthetic

Simplicity. Beauty. Naturalism. These are elements of the Japanese aesthetic that you will see define Japanese architecture.

But then there are people who throw all of those concepts out the window, the people who understand the Japanese aesthetic so well that they intentionally choose to work around the fundamental principles that other architects follow so closely.

Somebody who definitely never won the Pritzker was an architect by the name of Arakawa. He and his partner, Madeline Gins, worked as artists and architects for over forty years, creating structures and places that will never, ever be honored by traditional architecture organizations.

Reversible Destiny lofts

You might have already seen one of their projects on TofuguTV — Yoro Park, the Site of Reversible Destiny. When traditional architects create a public park, they consider things like comfort, safety, and beauty.

Yoro Park doesn’t.

Yoro Park is less of a public park and more of an excercise in creating the most outrageous, impractical space imaginable.

For Arakawa and Gins, Yoro Park was only one piece of their lifelong work. More recently, the duo condensed all of the features of Yoro Park into a single house.

Called the Bioscleave House, it cost millions to build, and is as much of a safety hazard as Yoro Park. Children are actually banned from entering the house, and adults must sign a waiver.

Everything in the Bioscleave House is mildly dangerous. The floors are bumpy and irregular, there are poles placed randomly throughout the house, and the whole house is painted in a variety of bright, disorienting colors.

Why all of the danger? A New York Times writer summarized Arakawa and Gin’s philosophy nicely:

All of it is meant to keep the occupants on guard. Comfort, the thinking goes, is a precursor to death; the house is meant to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.

Extending your lifespan using dangerous architecture doesn’t quite fit in with the Japanese aesthetic; I don’t know of any Shinto or Buddhist teachings that advocate an adversarial relationship with your surroundings.

But there’s space in Japanese architecture for both of these approaches. Unorthodox styles pushes the medium forward; the Japanese aesthetic anchors practices in tradition.

Both guarantee that Japanese architecture will remain a fascination for me for years to come.

Read More:

• 10 Principles of the Japanese Aesthetic (a list by Japanese architect Ryushi Kojima)
• Wikipedia: Japanese aesthetics

Header image by mario lopez

It’s not easy to write about art.

Art is highly subjective after all, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete plebeian when it comes to art. But someone much wiser than I once said that art is supposed to make the viewer feel something – and I certainly had a lot of feels when I discovered Katsuyo Aoki’s porcelain skulls.

Aoki is a Tokyo native, and completed an MFA in Ceramic Art from the prestigious Tama Art University in 2000. Since then, she has showcased her porcelain work in solo and group exhibitions all over the world – and she shows no signs of slowing down just yet.

Aoki’s Predictive Dream Series

Here are some of the porcelain skulls I mentioned earlier. Personally I think they’re quite disturbing; they remind me of the skulls of bone cancer patients. Despite that, they are highly detailed and even quite beautiful, and if nothing else I think Aoki’s skill in creating them is nothing short of impressive.

There are a few that seem to have been inspired by pointy helmets like the Pickelhaube. Check out the side-by-side comparison below, between one of her skulls and a photo of Otto von Bismark.

Likewise, other skulls seem to have been inspired by crowns. Have a look at the following skull. Don’t you think that central, oval-shaped jewel looks kind of like the centerpiece of the Russian Imperial Crown?

Some of Aoki’s skulls sprout curling, ram-like horns, like the ones below.

I don’t quite know what to make of the rest of her skulls. One, for example, seems almost cat-like. Another looks like the skull’s face is melting off – but that’s impossible, right, it hasn’t any flesh to melt off in the first place! Well, they still look pretty neat in any case.

Then there’s this one. I can’t help but think Aoki was just having a laugh when she made it. Is that a faceless kewpie doll standing at attention?

Aoki’s Other Works

Aoki’s quite prolific and she’s produced other porcelain pieces as well. If you liked her skulls and are raring for more with the same sort of flavor, check out her site. Notable mentions include her disembodied horse’s legs, or the strangely titled “Chicken Poet.”

So what do you guys think? Is it art? Would you consider having some of her skulls at home? Let us know in the comments!

Images of porcelain sculptures are from Katsuyo Aoki’s site.