The information available on Japanese animation before 1950, at least in English, is limited at best and conflicting at worst. The actual animated films themselves as well as records of who created what and when has mostly been destroyed. This is due to 1923’s Great Kanto Earthquake and later the American invasion of the islands. Aside from that, animation was treated as disposable entertainment, as was most animation in the rest of the world at that time. Thus, little has survived.

Thankfully, most of the animated work that remains has been preserved digitally and is available online! It should be mentioned that most of the silent animation presented in this article is “incomplete” in that it lacks benshi narration. When film began to spread throughout Japan, rather than accepting it as an evolution of photography as the west did, it was viewed as an extension of theater. Since kabuki, noh, and bunraku theater traditions all had narrators, naturally film needed one as well. Enter the benshi, a narrator who not only read the aloud the onscreen intertitles, but also described the film’s events in real time and gave voice to each and every character. Two of the films embedded in this article benefit from recorded benshi narration. The rest are “incomplete”.

While I will be sprinkling bits of information I’ve uncovered regarding the roots of anime, make sure to give special attention to the cartoons themselves. What awaits you is a moving history of initially simplistic paper cut-outs giving way to experimental art, funny animal cartoons, sing along-songs, chalk animation, traditional folktales, and full-length feature films. And this is all before Tezuka. Welcome to an often overlooked world. Enjoy yourself.

The Three Fathers (1907-1923)

Film first hit Japan in 1896 and had flourished into burgeoning culture by the 1910s, complete with film criticism. Along with the initial wave of films from the west came Western animation. It was only a matter of time before Japan, with its rich visual culture, began experimenting with its own animated creations.

The earliest example (speculated to be the oldest surviving anime) is Katsudo Shashin (Moving Picture, 1907?-1918?).

The boy is writing the kanji for katsudo shashin which translates to “moving picture” in English. It seems that in these early years, both Japan and the west were amused enough with the novelty of an image in motion.

In the early 1900s, animators experimented with inexpensive ways to bring their visions to life. Katsudo Shashin and many others were drawn directly onto the strips of film from which they were projected, making these animations one of a kind. This and other early animation techniques were pioneered by Oten Shimokawa, a political cartoonist for Tokyo Puck magazine. His first animated work, Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki (The Story of the Concierge Mukuzo Imokawa, 1917) was long believed to be the first animated short made in Japan, though it is likely still the first short ever screened for a wide audience.

After creating only five shorts, chronic health problems forced Shimokawa into early retirement. His contribution, however, gives him the honor as one of the three fathers of early anime.

The second of the three fathers is Junichi Kouichi, who holds the honor of the oldest confirmed anime in existence (Katsudo Shashin could have been made as early as 1907, but there is no real proof as to its age). Namakura Gatana (Dull Sword, 1917) is a two minute short about a samurai attempting to test his newly purchased katana on innocent townspeople and failing miserably.

This film was thought to be lost until a copy was found in an Osaka antique shop in 2008. Kouichi animated this short using paper cut-outs laid out on a table which he moved and changed to create the characters’ movements. This was a technique that would later be taken to a level of artistic excellence by the Japanese animation directors of the 1930s.

Junichi Kouichi began creating political propaganda in 1924 and retired from animation in 1930.

The third father of this generation had arguably the most impact on the generation that followed him, mostly because he had the largest body of work and many animators of the 1930s were his students. Seitarou Kitayama created shorts focusing on Japanese folktales like Sarukani Gassen (Monkey-Crab Battle), Urashima Taro, and Momotarou. Aside from creating anime’s first commercials and documentary, Kitayama stood apart from his contemporaries as the only animator to found his own studio.

Kitayama Eiga Seisakujo opened in 1921 and gave jobs to a slew of talented individuals including Sanae Yamamoto. Sadly after only two years, most of Kitayama’s studio was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. He left Tokyo for a fresh start in Osaka the next year, but eventually abandoned animation completely for a career shooting newsreels.

Experimental Artists (1923-1939)

With the destruction of Kitayama’s studio, his team of animators struck out on their own to seek prosperity in personal ventures. But success did not come easily. Throughout the 20s, animation directors faced stiff foreign competition from larger, richer, and more impressive studios overseas. The imported cartoons had already made money in their home countries, so they were sold cheaply to theaters in Japan. Animation artists could not implement the expensive techniques used by Disney and still sell their cartoons at a competitive price. This made the paper cut-out methods introduced by Junichi Kouichi an absolute must. This limitation, however, led to some extremely innovative cut-out films by two men, Yasuji Murata and Noburo Ofuji.

Yasuji Murata began working at the Yokohama Cinema Shokai in 1923 creating the Japanese intertitle cards for imported western films. After seeing various western cartoons, he was inspired to create his own in 1927. He worked almost exclusively for the Yokohama Cinema Shokai throughout his career. His first work to get attention was Doubutsu Orimupikku Taikai (Animal Olympics, 1928) a cartoon about funny animals playing sports. However, one of the best examples of his range and artistic skill is Kobu Tori (The Stolen Lump, 1929).

Kobu Tori

Consider that Disney made Skeleton Dance this same year, and, though technically impressive, it is horrendously boring compared to Kobu Tori. In Kobu Tori, the contrast is moody, the characters are vibrant, the attention to detail more than makes up for the slightly limited movements, and most importantly it’s a story well told! Kobu Tori is a perfect example of what wonders Japanese animators could produce despite their lack of funding and resources.

Because foreign cartoons dominated movie theaters of the time, Japanese animation had difficulty finding a venue in which to be screened. A lot of anime from this period was screened in public shopping areas to generate interest. The Ministry of Education also encouraged Japanese animators to produce films that were educational or socially uplifting, thus allowing them to be screened in schools. This was the case with Yasuji Murata’s Taro-san no Kisha (Taro’s Train, 1929).

Taro’s Train

Taro-san no Kisha (Taro’s Train) is an interesting mix of live action and animation as well as a neat peek into the fashion and homes in 1920s Japan. Also, it teaches kids to not act like insane animals in public, which is a good lesson for children all over the world.

Murata’s film, Oira No Yakyu (Our Baseball, 1930) is a return to the sports setting he first utilized in Animal Olympics. This cartoon mixes the Western funny animal cartoon with Japanese elements, in this case the folktale Kachi Kachi Yama, a story of a fight between a tanuki and a rabbit. This particular YouTube video is a restoration of Oira no Yakyu by Digital Meme which includes benshi narration.

Oira no Yakyu

Oira no Sukii (Our Skiing Trip, 1930) is either a sequel or prequel to Oira no Yakyu, as they were both produced in 1930 and we don’t have exact dates for either. This film has a distinct advantage over its counterpart due to extensive magical transformations utilized by the tanuki and rabbits. Or at least, that’s what I think. This video also benefits from benshi narration.

Oira no Sukii

Murata was a master of cut-out animation with strengths in skill, quality, and consistency. Murata’s opposite was cut-out master, Noburo Ofuji, whose strengths were in innovation and the willingness to take creative risks.

Ofuji became the apprentice of Junichi Kouichi at age 18 and made his first film at age 24. His films are characterized by the use of chiyogami paper. Though this gives his films a distinct Japanese look, the choice to use chiyogami was more practical than artistic. Chiyogami was cheaper by far than drawing on expensive celluloid and made inexpensive paper cut-out animation even more affordable. Even after gaining success and resources, Ofuji continued to use chiyogami as his medium of choice.

Ofuji’s achievements went beyond his aesthetic superiority. He was also an innovator. Though films with synchronous soundtracks had been introduced in the United States and Europe in 1927, they had not yet reached Japan by 1929. This was largely due to opposition from benshi narrators who wanted to hold onto their star status. Though he lacked the resources to create a true “talkie”, Ofuji created the first “record talkie”, in which he put to film an animation that synced up perfectly with an existing jazz record. The venue simply had start the film and the record at the same time and the audience would see Japan’s first sound cartoon, Kuro Nyago (Black Cat, 1929).

Kuro Nyago

One of Ofuji’s most famous shorts is a prime example of the fun-loving spirit his chiyogami animations could create. Mura Matsuri (Village Festival, 1930) is a real treat. It takes the “follow the bouncing ball” sing-along motif and spins it in new directions. This idea was relatively new at the time, having only been introduced five years earlier by Fleischer studios. Ofuji makes his bouncing ball interact with the scenery, transform words into objects, and transform itself into character heads. The song in this film is one I gladly get stuck in my head on a regular basis.

Mura Matsuri

The following year, Ofuji released another sing-along, this time tinted pink and intended to teach children the importance of national symbols, namely sakura. It’s interesting to note that though Haru no Uta (Song of Spring, 1931) is very nationally-focused, the music is undeniably Western. The singer, Kikuko Inoue, was a singer from the Asakusa Opera, which was one of the major channels through which western music was introduced to Japan.

Song of Spring

Noburo Ofuji begins to stray a bit from happy sing-alongs and into more serious territory with Kokka Kimigayo (The National Anthem: Kimigayo, 1931). Made to play along with a record of the national anthem, this film begins to more closely mimic silhouette animation of German animator Lotte Reiniger. The silhouettes in Kokka Kimigayo are cut with amazing detail and the backgrounds are beautifully complex.

Kokka Kimigayo

HOORAY! Now we get into Ofuji’s cartoony stuff! Tengu Taiji (Tengu Extermination, 1934) is a great example of Noburo Ofuji’s foray into cel animation. It’s fascinating to see such familiar cartoon imagery repurposed for Japanese storytelling. This one is similar to a lot of 1930s cartoons, but has samurai, geisha, a cute doggy, and TENGU! I could say more, but you’re better off just watching it.

Tengu Extermination

Our final look at the work of Noburo Ofuji is the film that cemented him as a master of animation in the art world. Kujira (Whale, 1952) is a remake of his 1927 silent black-and-white film, Kujira (Whale, 1927). The 1952 version features cut-outs of colored cellophane arranged on a backlit multi-plane animation table. This allowed him to create intricate backgrounds and transitions. The story explores themes of greed, female suffering, forces of nature, and transformation. It’s a truly beautiful experience.

NOTE: The only upload of this film to the web at the time of writing is by a composer named Ufjar who has replaced the original soundtrack with his own score.

Kujira

Kujira was shown at Cannes in 1953 and gained significant praise from jury president Jean Cocteau and a certain member of the audience named Pablo Picasso. This began Ofuji’s wide acceptance in the international art world.

After Noburo Ofuji passed away in 1961, the Mainichi Film Awards named their prize for animation excellence the “Ofuji Noburo Award” in 1962. The first winner of the Ofuji Noburo Award was none other than Osamu Tezuka.

More From The Thirties!

The 30s produced a wide array of Japanese animation ranging from impressive works of art to weird crumminess. This section presents samples from all parts of that spectrum. In 1931, the first war cartoon Sora no Momotarou (Aerial Momotarou, 1931) was released, marking the beginning of a steady increase in war propaganda until it was serious propaganda time in 1939.

Chameko no Ichinichi (A Day in the Life of Chameko, 1931) was a record-talkie intended to play simultaneously with a phonograph of the same name. Chameko no Ichinichi was a popular song a year before it was animated. The animation is stiffer than Murata’s and much less charming than Ofuji’s, but it does feature the earliest example of product placement in anime. Watch for Chameko’s endorsement of Lion Toothpaste in the tooth brushing scene.

Chameko no Ichinichi

Kori no Tatehiki (Raccoon and Fox Trick Each Other, 1933) is another fun little romp. Certainly one of the best looking Japanese cartoons of the time, it borrows heavily from the style of Fleischer cartoons. It’s a tad more polished than Tengu Taiji and offers some fun gags as the tanuki and fox one-up each other with magic tricks and transformation.

Kori no Tatehiki

Yasuji Murata offers up another folktale in the same style as Kobu Tori with his film, Umi no Mizu wa Naze Karai (Why is Sea Water Salty?, 1935). Though this film hasn’t been preserved as well as Kobu Tori, you can clearly see how much more skillful Murata became in just a few years. The animation is incredibly refined and it’s nearly impossible to tell that it’s made using paper cut-outs. The entire film shines as a story clearly told by someone who has mastered the elements of visual storytelling.

Umi no Mizu wa Naze Karai

One of the first manga characters to gain widespread popularity was Norakuro. Created by Suihou Tagawa in 1931, the manga focused on a stray dog who joined the dog army, clearly an allusion to the Imperial Japanese Army. He began his army career as a bumbling private and eventually rose through the ranks to become a less-interesting sergeant. The manga, and the cartoons it spawned, did not start out as propaganda, but as the the war began and escalated, Norakuro became an obvious choice for propaganda-tainment. This particular anime adaptation, Norakuro Nitohei (Norakuro, Private Second Class, 1935) was directed by Mitsuyo Seo.

Norakuro Nitohei

Hecks yeah! Ninjustu Hinotama Kozo: Edo no Maki (Ninja Fireball Boy: An Episode in Edo, 1935) is a one minute adventure of ninja silliness. One source claims that it is a longer cartoon truncated for personal viewing, but we’ll never know for sure because this is the only copy in existence. Everything happens so fast, it’s hard to tell what’s taking place. It definitely involves a lot of ninja magic. Please leave your idea of what the heck is going on in the comments below.

Ninjutsu Hinotama Kozo: Edo no Maki

Obake no Taiji (Monster Hunt, 1936) is another dose of serious fun. It’s a tad crummier than Kori no Tatehiki, but what it lacks in technical presentation it makes up for in creativity. It’s rather reminiscent of Fleischer Studios’ 1930 Bimbo cartoon Swing You Sinners! in that it shows a lot of imagination in its setups, character transformations, and villains.

Obake no Taiji

Forgotten Artists

Toward the end of the 1930s, most cartoons began to lean in the direction of war propaganda. That, in itself, is an interesting study, especially since the quality of Japanese animation began to approach that of Disney. Furthermore, most all the anime from this period was directed by one man, Mitsuyo Seo. He directed the first feature-length anime, Momotarou Umi no Shimpei (Momotarou: Divine Sea Warriors, 1945), which was financed by the Japanese Navy.

In 1948, the Toei Animation studio was founded and began situating itself to become the Disney of the east. It produced a good number of interesting shorts and features which had a predominant Disney aesthetic. The 1950s were an interesting decade for Japanese animation because several creative forces were taking anime in different directions, and it’s fun to imagine what anime would look like today if something other than Tezuka had succeeded in capturing Japan’s collective consciousness. However, destiny chose Osamu Tezuka as the god of manga (and by extension, anime) and no one can say he doesn’t deserve that title. Anime’s characteristic big eyes came from Tezuka’s fascination with Disney’s Bambi, and its signature character movements came from Tezuka’s plan to temporarily limit animation to cut costs, a plan that eventually became permanent and was adopted by the entire industry.

There is a good reason that most retellings of anime’s history begin with Tezuka. What we know today as “anime” started with him. However, a history of Japanese animation is not complete without Kouichi, Kitayama, Murata, Ofuji, and many others. These artists are seldom remembered though they worked exceptionally hard to compete with well-funded foreign animation. All of them succeeded in creating Japanese art in an imported foreign medium, and a few of them succeeded in turning their practical limitations into artistic assets. These artists are mostly forgotten because the influence they have on our present is much less than the ongoing influence of Osamu Tezuka. But when you watch these early anime, try to imagine the affect it had on the people in the time it was made and how important it was for them to see samurai and tengu in the same medium as Mickey Mouse. Most entertainment and art we consume today will not be remembered in a hundred years, because people in that future time won’t understand our context. But that doesn’t make our art any less important. Nothing can devalue it for us. And nothing can change how important any piece of art was for people who saw it in days gone by.

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources:

• The Anime Encyclopedia by Jonathan Clements & Helen McCarthy
• Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt
• A Hundred Years of Japanese Film by Donald Richie
• Nishikata Film Review by Cathy Munroe Hotes
• AnimeVice.com Encyclopedia
• Antti Alanen: Film Diary
• Pioneer of Japanese Animation at PIFan by Jasper Sharp [Part 1] and [Part 2]
• Japanese Animation Filmography Project by Cathy Munroe Hotes

Of course, it helped that Sayuri’s saga was made up. There may not be enough information out there to write a book about Yuki without filling in the cracks with fiction, but there can be no doubt that she led an interesting life. Morgan Oyuki created scandal and captured the headlines throughout her life and, incredibly, her presence alone may have saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb.

The Cure for a Broken Heart: 40,000 Yen

It was 1902, and George Morgan had just had his heart broken. His fiancee had split, so he took a trip to Japan to get over his feelings. George’s father was a rich man named George Morgan, and his mother was the sister of a considerably richer man, the famous banker J.P. Morgan. Yes, you may find it a bit creepy that both of his parents were born with the last name Morgan, but they were apparently unrelated. I’m skeptical.

Anyway, George was looking for something to cure his broken heart, and he found it: A Gion district geisha named Yuki Kato. He courted her for years, seeing her and asking her to marry him and visiting Kyoto as often as he could. She constantly refused, and something of a love triangle developed between her, George, and Yuki’s young lover Kawamura. The newspapers picked up on the story, and the scandal began.

Eventually, Kawamura moved away (maybe to avoid being drawn further into a scandalous story) and Yuki agreed to marry George Morgan. At this point, 40,000 yen, a tremendous amount of money back then, changed hands, and different stories give different reasons. Some say Yuki asked for the money in return for marriage, an old-school bride price situation, and others say the money was spent to release Yuki from her geisha contract. Whatever it was, George paid 40,000 yen or more to marry Yuki Kato, and this scandalous piece of news kept the Japanese newspapers talking for decades. January 20th, the anniversary of George Morgan and Yuki Kato’s marriage, is “Marry Into Money Day” to this day in Japan. It’s not a public holiday or anything, but it’s real.

With this marriage, the “Japanese Cinderella” story was born, and Yuki Kato became Morgan Oyuki. She left Japan with George, and visited America with him for a while. They found that the United States wasn’t quite ready to accept George’s young, recently geisha wife, so they left for France, where they would stay for the next decade.

In 1915, George Morgan was trying to return to France from America, as he’d done dozens of times. Due to the onset of World War I, this was no longer a simple process. To stay safe from German submarines, he took a ship to Gibraltar at the south tip of Spain, then had to travel overland the rest of the way to France. He would never make it. He died of a heart attack, and Morgan Oyuki was now a widow.

Mixed Narratives

At this point, the narratives split. Some accounts say that Oyuki left for New York, where three decades of Madame Butterfly performances had apparently now made the upper class more amenable to having a former geisha around. Wikipedia even claims that it was the Morgans who brought her there, but it cites a book that’s talking about something entirely different.

What’s wrong with that story? Oyuki hadn’t been welcome in New York about ten years earlier, and she probably knew English about as well as I know Tagalog. She learned French and spoke French so often that she was only an awkward Japanese speaker when she returned to Kyoto decades later.

Using Yuki’s letters and journals, Japanese writer Sumi Kosakai discovered what is probably the real story: Yuki stayed in France, living with a French ex-legionnaire who had been sending her love letters for some time. He would die a few decades later, and she would finally decide to return home.

Regardless of which story you believe, Oyuki returned to Kyoto in 1938, where she’d remain until her death in 1963. The Japanese media still wasn’t tired of talking about her, and every couple of years another novel or play based on her life would start the whole conversation over again. A 1947 issue of TIME Magazine details a particularly successful book about Oyuki which had been serialized over 260 installments in three different newspapers. Mademoiselle Yuki had never spoken with the author and refused to see him. The author had simply decided to fill in the cracks with fiction.

Box Office, Bombs

A movie director by the name of Masahiro Makino had a theory about Yuki. He said that it was his father, Shouzou Makino, who originally advised Yuki Kato to ask for an enormous amount of money to be wed. Makino says his father also met Yuki in France later on and tried to arrange a meeting between her and her former lover Kawamura, only to have Kawamura die along the way.

Masahiro Makino theorized that the Morgan family knew that Yuki had returned to Kyoto, and so they had the city stricken from the shortlist of potential atomic bomb targets (yes, this list definitely existed, and yes, Kyoto was originally on it).

It’s not by any means impossible that the Morgan family called off the dogs on Kyoto. If Lieutenant General Leslie Groves’ book about his experience leading the Manhattan Project is to be believed, it was Secretary of War Henry Stimson who adamantly took Kyoto off the bombing targets list. There have been a number of rumors as to why Stimson did this: Some say he thought it would be against the rules of war to bomb such a historic city. Some sources say Stimson rejected Kyoto because he had honeymooned there (embarrassingly, this may be the most well-supported story out there in historical sources).

But, if you’re willing to delve a little further into conspiracy theory, Stimson had also been a partner and close friend of J.P. Morgan’s personal attorney Elihu Root, and he was certainly well-acquainted with the surviving Morgan family. If the Morgans were aware that Oyuki was in Kyoto, which they probably were, and the Morgans still had the ear of Stimson, which they probably did, then Makino’s atomic bomb theory isn’t the wildest theory you’ll ever hear. But, to my knowledge, there’s no documentation or proof of this justification for saving Kyoto, and there’s been plenty written on the subject, even if it is a little inconclusive.

Finally, An Eyewitness Account

Despite all the scandal, the hoopla, and the “Japanese Cinderella” name tag, there is at least one source which claims Morgan Oyuki lived her last few decades simply, without the money and the drama associated with her earlier years. In a letter to TIME Magazine, a man who’d met Oyuki wrote in to protest at their typically scandal-filled report of her life:

Sir:

Your article about Mrs. George Morgan [TIME, Dec. 22] and the accompanying cut is both conceived and written in extraordinarily poor taste. Your willingness to accept the evidence of a cheap Japanese novelist is right in keeping with the tradition of yellow journalism.

At the request of her niece, Mrs. Sarah Morgan Gardner of Princeton, I located Mrs. Morgan in Kyoto in May of 1946 while serving in Japan with the Marine Corps. I found her through the St. Francis Xavier Church missionaries in that city, men who willingly testified to her devotion to the church and to the hardships she had suffered in Japan as the widow of an American. Mrs. Morgan herself, a charming elderly lady, who seemed more Occidental than Japanese, was overjoyed to hear news of her American relations, who are all devoted to her and have made every effort to see that she is taken care of. Far from being a rich woman, as intimated in your article, all her income is frozen in the United States.

Articles such as yours can do little else than make life more uncomfortable for people who are unable to answer them.

ROBERT W. LOCKE Princeton, N.J.

The TIME editor shrugged off the complaint with a bit of snark:

TIME trusts that its other readers were not equally offended by this story of Madame-Butterfly-with-a-difference. — ED.

To be fair, with the exception of suggesting that Yuki was still rich, TIME didn’t say much that wasn’t true.

Yuki Kato’s story has continued to inspire talk and rumors and novels and plays. Just last year, a new play called “Morgan O-Yuki: The Geisha of the Gilded Age” was put on at Ventfort Hall in Massachusetts, a mansion built by George Morgan’s parents. Fictionalized or not, her “Japanese Cinderella” story keeps echoing on through the decades, and who’s to say it ever has to stop?

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources:

• TIME Magazine, the 12/22/1947, 1/19/1948, and 5/31/1963 issues.
• Women of the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer, pp. 186-192.
• The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient by Sheridan Prasso, pp. 48-9.
• Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project by Leslie Groves, pp. 275-6.
• History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II by Murray N. Rothbard, p. 422.
• “What Future For Japan?”: U.S. Wartime Planning for the Postwar Era, 1942-1945 by Rudolf V.A. Janssens, p. 317.
• http://blog.goo.ne.jp/amachan_001/e/7f27c0a4e762b5f8416f1b77310fa70d
• http://www.joho-kyoto.or.jp/~wazaden/english/hito/morgan_e.html
• http://www.yorozubp.com/2011/2011/07/post-9.html
• http://uncoveringjapan.com/2013/09/25/good-eats-gogyo-kyoto/
• http://boardingarea.com/pointsmilesandmartinis/2013/09/how-a-ho…
• http://www.kyozei.or.jp/news/93/93-3.html
• http://www.nnh.to/01/20.html

Japanese × Non Asian = 1/2 = Good looking”.

Not too long ago you read Loco’s guest post on what it’s like to be a “half child” in Japan. By reading that article you’ll learn it’s not always great to be a “half” child in Japan, sadly. However, many Japanese girls long for the appearance of a “half”; big eyes, long eye lashes, tall and sharp noses, etc… Since I married a Canadian, I bet you can guess the most common reaction I get from Japanese people.

“Oh, you married a Canadian (a white guy)? Then your child will be”half” and most likely be so cute. Jealous!”

Actually, whenever I talk to someone about my marriage for the first time, 90% or more of their reactions are the same. I personally think that it’s fairly ridiculous to say that your baby will be good looking before knowing other things, like if my husband is attractive or not, but it’s probably just a form of small-talk that people come up with.

“Half” Taking Over Television

This “half=cute” belief has probably been strengthened by those good looking idols on TV who are know to be “half”. I wouldn’t be going too far if I were to say that there has recently been a “half” baby-boom rippling across Japan. In fact, there have been so many “half” celebrities on TV over the passed few years that people often get confused who is who. Some of those celebrities even complain about how commonly it occurs. In fact, check out this “Half” special that was aired recently.

Not only TV viewers but also those who work in television sometimes believe that there are too many “half” girls and some are worried about losing their position to them. The famous comedian Hiroyuki Ariyoshi, who is known for flat-out-mean jokes, discussed this concern on his own radio program called SUNDAY NIGHT DREAMER and he said some nerd-comedians (“Nerd” because that is the actual style they attempt to portray) are losing their positions on television to these “half” girls.

The rise of cute “half” girls’ exposure is partly because there are more mixed-race kids in Japan than there used to be. According to this “List of Statistical Surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare”, the number of international marriages in Japan (Japanese with non-Japanese) in the 70’s was just 5,500, but it rapidly increased in the 80’s when the Japanese economy started bubbling up. Although it peeked in 2006 (nearly 45,000 couples), there were still 23,657 international marriages last year which is over 4 times that of the 70’s.

But, this doesn’t necessarily explain the disproportionate amount of “half” celebrities on television. Some of it probably comes from the number of “half” children out there, but I wonder if some of it comes from the multi-racial families that they come from. Japanese people are generally known to be fairly shy and timid, which isn’t very good for television. However, many non-Japanese ethnicities are known to be much more outgoing and “friendly”, which is good for television. The way that “half” children are raised probably makes more of them more outgoing than the average Japanese (as we saw in Loco’s article, mentioned above). So, not only are they especially “good looking” with their “half”-look, but they’re also more outgoing too. What a perfect combination for a television personality! Of course, this is only just me thinking out loud, but it seems fairly plausible in some situations.

Transformers

The more that pretty “half” girls are exposed, the more that Japanese girls will want to look like them. Although there may be some Japanese guys who pine for that “half” look, most of them don’t put makeup on themselves, so it’s harder for them to change their appearance (unless they want to be made fun of for wearing makeup).

Girls, on the other hand, are very makeup capable and some of them are very persistent in their quest look like “half” girls. Those wanna-be-half girls have created various ways to look like like they’re “half” or non-Japanese and keep posting how-to videos on Youtube, some being quite popular. I’d like to introduce some of their makeup methods today. It’s pretty impressive how drastically they can change their appearance!

God Make Ayano Saito’s “Half” Face Makeup

nuts×GODMakeup.

Naokoの秋のハーフ顔メイク！(Naoko’s “half” face makeup for fall)

“Half” face makeup

After watching these videos it’s clear that the features you have concentrate on are the eyebrows and the eyes. Since Asian faces are flatter compared to non-Asian people’s, it’s important to make your facial features more 3D. Here’s some things that they tend to do to achieve this:

• Drawing their eyebrows thicker.
• Make the space between their eyebrows and eyes narrower.
• Make the inside tip of the eyebrow a little thicker so that it looks less flat.
• Apply many grades of eye shadow, thickener.
• Create longer eye-lines.
• Apply highlight to their nose lines to make them appear taller.

In addition to “3D-ifying” their face, color contacts and fake eyelashes seem to be a staple of their tool kit. If you think about it, there’s nothing that says “half” or “not Japanese” like eyes that aren’t dark brown.

When Makeup Isn’t Enough

I’m not totally sure how much time they spend putting their makeup on, but it seems to be quite a lot. I don’t typically use makeup myself, except for special occasions, so I admire their passion for this and the time and effort they put forth. However, there are some people who want to look like a “half” but consider it too troublesome to spend so much time on makeup. For those people, there are many plastic surgeons who provide “half-looking” or “foreigner-looking” facial reconstructive surgeries. Takasu Clinic is one of them and you can see their ad for that kind of surgery.

But, paying for these surgeries can be expensive. It is surgery after all! This woman paid over $100,000 to look more Western. It turned out fairly well, but I find it hard to believe that there aren’t many problems or mistakes that get made along the way.

I’m really not sure if I can agree with doing this – you should enjoy how you look and be happy with what you’ve been given. But, I can’t pretend to know how people think, it is their bodies after all. I mean, there are some surgeries that make you look more “Western” but also have some practicality as well. For example, getting a surgery to change your eyelids to a double lid is fairly popular. This makes your eyes bigger which makes you look more Western. Plus, when you get older you’ll be able to see because your eyelids won’t be drooping so much as they start to sag.

Beyond things like that, though, it’s taking this craze a little too far, I think. What if one day you wake up and you’ve suddenly changed your mind? Or what if you go into surgery and they mess up completely? The negatives are just too great. Plus, you should be happy with how you look!

Giving It A Try

After getting all judgemental on you, it’s time to make a U-turn and try some of this myself. I don’t usually put makeup on (as I mentioned above), but we’ve just seen a lot of tips so I thought “why don’t I try one of them.”

There’s a problem, though… I don’t have any of those makeup staples, such as color contacts or fake eyelashes. Thankfully there is Photoshop, though, so I hit up my virtual makeup artist Aya. Are you ready? Here I go, I’m about to become “half”.

Here’s without makeup

Here’s a little makeup “added”

Now I look half?

Two thirds?

The first thing I did when I looked at the pictures above was to say “OMG!” and then laugh. I felt very strange to see myself looking like that. Well, I like the second one, but in the last two pictures where I put the color contacts in and dyed my hair….they looked kind of scary. I forwarded them to my parents and they laughed, too. This experiment turned out to be a great excuse for me to stick with black hair and brown eyes. I like being “natural”, after all.

The second picture also made me imagine our future daughter. I don’t have any kids now, but if I had a daughter, she might look kind of like her. Thank God my husband doesn’t have blue eyes or blond hair, so I guess she won’t look like the scary ones…as long as she doesn’t put this kind of make-up on!

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Not all that different from Fight Club, there’s an underground movement of people who just memorize things. Cards, words, stats, and… uh… sorry, I can’t quite remember the last thing I was going to say.

When you look at memory experts, though, there is one man I’d immediately put at the top of that memorization pedestal, and that man is Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer born in 1946. As you can probably guess from the title of this article, he also happens to be the person who recited pi to a cool 100,000 digits. Considering that I can recite pi to around… oh I’d say two digits (3.14)… 100,000 is no small feat. Is he some kind of super genius? Is there something special about him? Perhaps, but he says he was not a child prodigy or anything of that nature. He even has a memory of being forced out into the hall at school as a punishment because he couldn’t memorize the multiplication tables of one-digit numbers properly. That must be a fun memory for Haraguchi to look back on now.

So what made him undertake this (crazy) task? These two paragraphs from the Japan Times sum it up better than I could:

Interestingly, Haraguchi says his interest in pi has a lot to do with his lifelong quest for eternal truth. Since childhood, he has always wondered why some people — especially those with physical and mental disabilities — suffer. He consulted religion and philosophy books for answers, but in vain. Then he turned to nature, and realized, he said, that nothing in nature — be it leaves, trees or mountain scenery — is linear or square. “I realized that nature is not made of straight lines. . . . And I realized that all things in the universe . . . rotate. Rotation became a key concept for me.”

So when he learned that pi is an endless series of numbers with no pattern or repetition, it made perfect sense to him to take it as a symbol of life, he says — adding that he now calls pi memorization “the religion of the universe.”

From there he started memorizing. Between 2004 and 2006 he had four main “events” in his memorization life:

• September 2004: Recited Pi up to 54,000 digits.
• December 2004: Recited Pi up to 68,000 digits.
• July 2005: Recited Pi up to 83,431 digits.
• October 2006: Recited Pi up to 100,000 digits.

The 100,000 digit record was the height of his career and done at a Tokyo event where he spent 16.5 hours reciting number after number after number (stopping every few hours to eat delicious onigiri to keep his mind and body in shape). Despite the fact that three out of four of these recitations were done for witnesses, according to the “Pi Ranking List” Haraguchi doesn’t even exist. They’ve sent tapes too, but for some reason Guinness World Records have yet to accept any of them. Maybe they just forgot?

Here’s what the “official” Pi Ranking List looks like:

1. Lu, Chao (China) – 67,890 Digits
2. Chahal, Krishan (India) – 43,000
3. Goto, Hiroyuki (Japan) – 42,195
4. Tomoyori, Hideaki (Japan) – 40,000
5. Mahadevan, Rajan (India) – 31,8111
6. Tammet, Daniel (Great Britain) – 22,514
7. Thomas, David (Great Britain) – 22,500
8. Robinson, William (Great Britain) – 20,220
9. Carvello, Creigthon (Great Britain) – 20,013
10. Umile, Marc (USA) – 15,314

Like Pi itself, the list goes on and on, and if you’d like to see it you can do so here.

As you can see, nobody is even close to the 100,000 mark that Haraguchi achieved in 2006. Even his other three “unofficial” attempts either come in second or first place on this international list (54,000 digits in September 2004 is the only one that doesn’t lay the smackdown on everyone). Whether it shows up on this list or not, there’s something remarkable going on here.

Visual Mnemonics

Although the Japanese are known for their rote memorization in schools, memorizing 100,000 digits of pi probably isn’t the kind of thing a fairly “normal” guy like Haraguchi should be able to do. It turns out, as one might expect, that he’s using a mnemonic method that he developed in order to remember all these digits of pi. This is good news for you and me. It means that with practice we could memorize 100,000 digits of pi too. Well, maybe not 100,000, but 100 digits of pi wouldn’t take that much effort if you did it right. The word “right” is the key, though. We memorize things very inefficiently, most of the time. Our brains are pretty bad at remembering digits, times, lists, etc., On the flip side, our brains happen to be really good at memorization when it comes to something visual or sensory affecting. Ever notice how occasionally a random smell will be soooo nostalgic?

When it comes to memorization (and memorizing a lot of things), memory experts tend to focus on the visual. There’s a reason why people say “take a trip down memory lane,” after all. Here’s an example: Say you walk into an unfamiliar room. Maybe it’s your friend’s bedroom. You’re in there for only thirty seconds then leave. Three months later you come back. Chances are, you’ll remember a whole lot about that room. You’ll remember where the video game controllers are at, where the books are, where the chairs are, so on and so forth. You may not know every detail if you’re not looking super carefully, but I bet you would remember 100+ things about that room if you had to quantify what you remembered. If you think about it, that’s pretty incredible. It takes how many hours to memorize 50 Japanese vocabulary words? Yet, when you walk into a room you instantly memorize hundreds of details about it? That’s just how our brains work. We’re very visual about our memories.

There’s some data that shows the visual nature of our brains, too. In one experiment in the 1970s, researchers showed participants ten thousand different images in quick succession. Then, they were shown two pictures: One they had seen, and one they hadn’t seen. Their job was to point out the one they had seen. Amazingly, they were able to recognize 80% of the photos they had seen. In another study with only 2,500 photos, researchers tested participants by putting two very similar pictures next to each other. With this one they saw a 90% correct rate. If they gathered the participants up again a year later they would probably still have a pretty good recall rate, too.

So as you can see, mnemonics tend to be visual for a reason. On top of this, you’re also encouraged to use other senses as well. You’re supposed to smell the things in your stories. Touch them. Taste them. It’s a multi-sensory experience, and the more you get involved the more likely you’ll be able to remember something. That’s why there are various kanji learning methods that use stories to help you to remember the kanji’s meaning and reading. There’s a reason why people who use mnemonics tend to learn kanji a whole lot faster than those who do not. It gives you more triggers to pull the memory out of your head, because as we see with the picture experiment, we don’t have trouble putting things into our brain, we just have trouble pulling things out.

The Major Mnemonic System

Photo by Janet Ramsden

So Akira Haraguchi uses a mnemonic method to memorize pi. What could he possibly use that lets him memorize 100,000 digits?

First we have to understand that there are different mnemonic methods for different things. Haraguchi used a modified version of the “Major Method,” which Wikipedia explains the following way:

The system works by converting numbers into consonant sounds, then into words by adding vowels. The system works on the principle that images can be remembered more easily than numbers.

Just going down the numbers 0 through 9 we can see what consonants are associated with what number.

0 = s, z
1 = t, d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, sh, soft g, soft ch
7 = k, g
8 = f, v
9 = p, b
unassigned = vowels, w, h, y, x

The idea is that you take the number you want to learn (for example 701) and then apply the correct letters to it, spelling out a word. They don’t have to be the correct spelling, but they do have to have the correct pronunciation. With the example 701, you can use g + s + t. Put some vowels and other unassigned consonants in there and you have “ghost.” So instead of having to remember the numbers 701 you can just remember the idea, or even the image, of a “ghost” which is a whole lot easier to recall later on. Some more examples:

15 = TaiL
927 = PiNK

There are other more complicated mnemonic methods for learning numbers, but this is probably one of the most simple. For example, if you can associate two numbers at a time to something, you’re going to be able to learn digits twice as fast. Some people have expanded that up to three or four numbers (or more) at a time too. Alternatively, you can associate images (starfishes, beer, frogs, etc.) to numbers as well, then combine them to make stories. The ways in which you can memorize numbers goes on and on.

Akira Haraguchi’s Mnemonic Method

Of course, Akira Haraguchi had his own method for memorizing so many digits of Pi and it has a very Japanese spin. In fact, you’ll need to know hiragana to use his method and know quite a bit of Japanese as well, should you want to utilize it. I’d like to even think that the Japanese language is more suitable to learn digits just because the way it’s set up. With the major system, you have to add in vowels and other unassigned letters. With this Japanese version, pretty much all the “letters” have vowels already attached. That takes out a lot of the guess work and makes things much more straightforward.

For example:

０　→　 お、ら、り、る、れ、ろ、を、おん
１　→　あ、い、う、え、ひ、び、ぴ、あん、ひゃ、ひゃん、びゃ、びゃん

etc…

The list keeps going like this, and each number has a set of kana associated with it. In the beginning, I’m sure he had to just spend time memorizing what is associated with what, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what he ended up doing with it. With practice, he was able to come to a point where he “simultaneously interprets” these sounds into numbers, so what do the sounds do?

Remember how we talked about images and stories earlier? He takes each digit of pi and turns it into a story. Basically, he just has to choose sounds that will come together to make words that make sense. Then these words have to come together again to make a story. Our mind is much better at remembering stories compared to numbers, so by remembering the story (much easier) he is able to translate that into the digits of pi. One example on a Japan Times article revealed what the first 15 digits of pi were (3.14159265358979), aka…

妻子異国に婿さん怖くなかった。(_saishi ikokuni mukosan kowakunaku_)
“The wife and children have gone abroad; the husband is not scared.”

If you can memorize that sentence you can memorize the first 15 digits of pi. Of course, you have to put the work in to get your associations going, but with practice anyone could do it, even you.

Bonus Wallpapers!

[1280x800] ∙ [2560x1600]

Sources:

• Akira Haraguchi (Wikipedia)
• Japan Times: How can anyone remember 100,000 numbers?
• Pi World Ranking List
• BBC News: Japanese Breaks Pi Memory Record
• Moonwalking With Einstein, by Joshua Foer
• Akira Haraguchi’s Website
• Mnemonic Major System (Wikipedia)

1. Braves.
2. Whoever is playing the Nationals.
3. Any player I used to watch in the Japanese league, Nippon Professional Baseball, especially if they were a Yakult Swallow.

Like a helicopter mom with no day job, I try to watch these former NPB players whenever they come to the mound or the plate. My Google Calendar last year was just a list of projected Yu Darvish starts. Thankfully for me and whoever cashes the check for my MLB.TV subscription, there are even more Japanese players in America this season, and here’s what they’ll be up to in 2014.

The Big Names

Hiroki Kuroda – The “other” Japanese starting pitcher on the Yankees is now 39 years old and still doing this baseball stuff. Because he’s expected to mentor the new arrival Masahiro Tanaka in the ways of Major League Baseball, he’s been dubbed Kuroda-senpai by The New York Times. Next time I visit Yankee Stadium, I hope he notices me.

Masahiro Tanaka – The 175 million dollar man, and yet Yankees GM Brian Cashman says he’ll be the #3 starter this year. I wrote another big article about this fella, but there’s been an update since then! Tanaka said he’s “not necessarily a fan” of his wife Mai Satoda’s music! Be right back, I have to write a 2,000-word piece for the New York Post on how this factoid could affect his game.

Koji Uehara – With a World Series ring under his belt (that’s where rings go, right?), Koji is now the Red Sox’ starting closer. I wrote about him a while back, but now he’s trying to start throwing a Mariano Rivera-style cutter.

Junichi Tazawa – Tazawa has been completely overshadowed by Uehara in the Red Sox bullpen, but he’s still there and he’s still pretty good. Interesting note: Tazawa is only the third Japanese player ever to go straight to the MLB without spending time playing professional Japanese ball. He signed after impressing with the Nippon Oil company team.

Yu Darvish – Yu Darvish came 2nd in Cy Young voting last year, but now he’ll have to defend his title as best current Japanese player against Tanaka. If that doesn’t work out for him, he can, at least, still be the best half-Iranian player.

Hisashi Iwakuma – True to the city’s character, Seattle has the coolest, most underground, “you’ve probably never even heard of him” Japanese player. In-between rainstorms and bike trips to Ballard coffee shops, Mariners fans love to tell you that Iwakuma really deserved the Cy Young last year. Unfortunately for them, Iwakuma might miss the first week or two of the season because somehow he hurt his middle finger. What a hipster.

Norichika Aoki – In one of the offseason’s hardest-to-explain trades, the Brewers traded right fielder and former Yakult Swallow Norichika Aoki to the Royals in return for some guy named Will Smith. Will Smith is expected to join the Brewers bullpen, and Aoki will be starring in Men In Black 4 next summer.

The Old Guys

Ichiro Suzuki – The Yankees went a little crazy this offseason and got Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran, demoting future Hall of Famer Ichiro and sorta former Hiroshima Carp Alfonso Soriano (he only played nine games in Japan) to the bench. Rumors are starting to heat up that Ichiro may get traded to the Phillies. You’re too good for them, Ichi!

Tomokazu Ohka – Ohka has previously pitched for the Red Sox, Expos, Nationals, Brewers, Blue Jays, Indians, and the Yokohama BayStars, but he’s trying to make a comeback with the Blue Jays and a brand-new knuckeball. He’ll start the year in the minors. Years ago, Ohka was mentioned in The Simpsons, the joke being how obscure he was, so he has had that dubious pleasure.

Daisuke Matsuzaka – Dice-K was once a mega-famous import pitcher like Tanaka is today, but besides one great season, his career in the MLB never really satisfied expectations. He’s now aiming for a comeback with the New York Mets, and is considered a favorite to be their #5 starter when the season begins.

The Hopefuls

Munenori Kawasaki – Kawasaki, the man with the beautiful dance moves and the GIBBY award-winning “I am Japaneeeese” speech, is trying to play his way onto the Blue Jays roster. Unfortunately for him, he plays on the same team as Jose Reyes, so he’ll need some luck to get much playing time at shortstop.

Yoshinori Tateyama – A former high school teammate of Koji Uehara and NPB teammate of Yu Darvish, Tateyama is a sidearm pitcher trying to break his way into the Yankees bullpen.

Kensuke Tanaka – Kensuke Tanaka spent his whole career playing second base, so it was bittersweet when the San Francisco Giants gave him a one-day chance in the MLB last year… playing left field. He’s trying out with the Rangers this year, but looking likely to start the year in the minor leagues.

Kyuji Fujikawa – Kyuji will probably be in the Cubs bullpen this year, but he had Tommy John Surgery in May last year and won’t return until around June. Yes, his name really is 球児, meaning “ball child” or, to make it less weird-sounding, “baseball kid.” Kyuji’s father reportedly threw a no-hitter in an amateur game the day before his son was born, thus the name.

2014 Predictions

Now I don’t really have a clue how well these guys will play or what will happen this year, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because that’s how sportswriting works. Here are ten predictions for the season to come, sorted from most likely to least:

1. I will buy an Aoki Royals shirt and wear it in my Tofugu author profile picture, replacing my Aoki Brewers shirt.
2. Masahiro Tanaka will have the worst ERA among Yankees starters before the All-Star Break and the best ERA among Yankees starters after the All-Star Break.
3. Dice-K will have a bad year but still shutout the Braves twice just to annoy me.
4. The Yankees will inform Ichiro they have no more room for him on the roster, but offer him a position as batboy. He will proudly accept the role and become the greatest batboy of all time.
5. Hiroyasu Tanaka, Shuta Tanaka, and, uh, comedian Naoki Tanaka will all join the MLB, causing widespread confusion and chaos.
6. Yu Darvish will add a 15th pitch to his repertoire, a 75 MPH knuckleball.
7. Kawasaki will win another GIBBY award, this time for dancing.
8. Uehara and Tazawa will start a manzai comedy duo called Sokkusu, which American sportswriters will have to explain as being “sort of like Abbott and Costello.”
9. The Yankees will become unsatisfied with their current outfield of old guys who used to be amazing, so they’ll sign Sadaharu Oh.
10. I will conquer my nature and refrain from buying another $75 Japanese baseball video game.

Alright, I presume everybody’s interest in hige-man’s bento work has begun to ripen at this point. Let’s review his profile once again, to get the rice-ball rolling.

Stats:

Name: Keisuke Umeda
Age: 31
Occupation: Designer at a game company
Passion: Bento Art
Distinguishing Facial Feature: Majestic Mustache
Web page: Umeda no site

Q: Tell us about your bento art career.

I modestly began making bento about 2 years ago. I didn’t even realize that that my passion for bento art had been gradually escalating over that period of time.

In the summer in 2013, my bento art was selected to be shown on an NHK TV program called サラメシ (sarameshi). I held my bento art exhibition in the fall of that same year. I also published a book with a collection of my bento pieces that came out shortly before my exhibition.

I’m planning another exhibition this year, too.

Q: How long have you made bento art?

About 2 years. I make a bento box every day, except when I’m too busy, when I oversleep, or when I don’t have any ingredients for it.

Q: Why did you start making bento boxes?

I got sick of eating cafeteria food. I also wanted to brush up on my cooking skills. Moreover, after the Tohoku earthquake, I started taking food safety more seriously and gave more consideration to what I put in my body. Managing my food in this way is good for my health and helped me save money, too.

Q: Why did you start designing bento?

I’m not really good at cooking and don’t have much time either. On the other hand, I wanted to enjoy lunch time. I contemplated how to do it and I soon realized that I could be creative. I realized designing bento is a great way to enjoy it. I have some bento friends at work and it became something for us to talk about, as well. The more we enjoy our lunch time, the tastier the bento becomes – to me.

Q: What do you usually do after making it?

Naturally, I eat everything. Every grain of rice disappears. I’ve never had leftovers. If I made bento boxes like the ones I do and didn’t eat them, it would mean I’m just playing with food in a creative way. I’d rather treasure and respect the food and I show that respect by eating it.

This is MY LUNCH and if I don’t eat it, it means I don’t eat lunch.

There is a saying in Japan, “If you don’t finish your meal, your eyes will be crushed.”

Q: What kind of bento boxes do you make?

Pictures!

「クチビルべんとう」(Lips-bento)

「ヒゲべんとう」(Hige-bento)

「桃べんとう」(Peach-bento)

「サンマたちの横顔べんとう」(saury fish’ side faces bento)

「春風べんとう」(spring breeze bento)

「コンバットべんとう」(combat bento)

「ちりめんじゃこべんとう」(dried young sardines bento)

「フランクフルトべんとう」(Frankfurt sausage bento)

「フグべんとう」(Fugu bento)

「おでんべんとう」(Oden bento)

「金目カブト煮べんとう」(Beryx splendens helmet bento)

「松坂牛の、肉じゅうたんべんとう」(Matsuzaka beef carpet bento)

「コーンまっ黄っ黄べんとう」(Corn pitch yellow bento)

「タコウィンナーべんとう」(Octopus shaped wieners bento)

「生々しいべんとう」(fresh [flesh] bento)

「ひじき黒ゴマべんとう」(hijiki seaweed and black sesame bento)

「デッサンべんとう」(rough sketch bento)

「モンドリアンべんとう」( Piet Mondrian bento)

Q: What do you think of men who make their own bento boxes and how do other people react to it?

I think that’s good because they can be more careful about the food they eat.

People react interestingly every day and it’s fun to hear their inquiries; “Does it taste good?”, “Are you really eating that?”, “Is it hearty?”, “Why did you start making bento boxes like these?”, “What’s today’s bento?”, etc…

Q: What is your favorite bento you’ve created and why did you choose it?

“Hanasaka bento” (Translates to Flower Bloom bento)

A bento’s life is as short as a flower’s, but each one of them remains in the heart and it will stay alive as a part of our body.

Similar to the flavor of my tears, I will never forget the saltiness of the pickled radish and pickled Japanese plum as well as the welcomed tingle provided by the sansho pepper in this bento.

“That was the bento I made for the NHK TV program. It took me 2 hours”, he laughs.

Q: Have you made a big mistake before?

There are actually a lot of bad mistakes.

The most memorable one is Nanakusa Bento (the seven spring herbs bento).

In Japan, people eat rice porridge with seven different spring herbs on January 7. I used those herbs, just as they are found in nature, for my bento. It turned out to be just like eating grass. It was disgusting.

However, sometimes an interesting-looking bento box, albeit bad tasting, can become a popular topic of conversation at lunch time and is often even brought up again later on. In that sense, making a mistake is not all that bad.

Q: If someone told you they wanted to start designing bentos, what advice would you give them?

I would tell them that pickled Japanese plums have an antibacterial effect, so they preserve pretty well.

In my bento box, I often put them underneath the design.

Q: Could you tell us a bento story of yours that you haven’t told anyone yet?

It’s Kani bento (crab bento).

I couldn’t put the lid on the bento, so I ended up opening up the shell and started eating a little bit of it in the morning. It almost made me late for work. Furthermore, none of my bento friends showed up in the cafeteria during lunch time, so I ended up eating the luxury bento without anyone around to see it before it was eaten. It was pathetic.

Q: As for bento-making, is there anyone you respect?

My mother.

She made bento boxes everyday when I was a child. At the time I thought it was just a trifling thing, but now I know how hard it is to continue making bento everyday. Now I really appreciate what she did for me and I respect her even more.

Q: Is there anyone out there making bento that inspires you?

Actually, I get inspired by many things, not only by someone’s bento but also by anything from different cuisine to pictures to movies to scenery to my travels.

But I’m trying to find inspiration from the ingredients themselves.

Q: Is there one particular incident involving bento that has changed your life?

Bento has changed my lunch time, myself, and has made sight and gradual changes in my life and in a small way it has also changed the daily lives of the people around me.

For example, because of bento-making, I got to be on television, held an exhibition, and was even interviewed by Tofugu-san. It’s very fun and I believe bento will continue to make such changes in my life.

Q: Share with us what your favorite bento goods and tools are.

There you go!

The first one is bento goods that I design and sell. Please contact me via my website for more information.

This second one is my collection of some of the tools that I use or have used in the past.

Q: Do you think you could make a Tofugu bento? If you could, how much would it be?

I think I could, but it may be a very plain bento. The price is free because THAT’S MY LUNCH, YO!

A few days later, the picture arrived. Mecha Kawaii! Thank you Ume-chan!

Ingredients: Rice, a cherry tomato, 2 black beans, and seasoned ground meat called Soboro.

——At the end

Thank you for your interview. If you are interested in Hige-man Ume-chan’s bento art book, get in touch with him via his blog, http://www.k3.dion.ne.jp/~umetin/.