From milk to eternity
Dec. 29th, 2007 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusMilk is the fluid produced by female mammals to nurture their offspring: this much we know. It's also the name of a French magazine about children's fashion. This spring MilK (the mix of lower case and caps is part of the magazine's logo, as it is in FRUiTS) launched a sister edition in Japan. MilK Japon published its fourth issue earlier this month. The cover is rather lovely; a photograph by Koomi Kim of idol-turned-actress-turned-mother Isshiki Sae, heavily pregnant.
"Maternity is eternity" is MilK Japon 4's theme. To understand the symbolism of the cover, you have to know that Isshiki Sae, now 30, shot to fame in 1992 at the age of just 15 when she became "that girl in the Pocari Sweat commercials".
I remember that summer well. For me, too, Japan in 1992 tastes of Pocari Sweat. In June I flew there with my band (Douglas, Damian, Neill and Tour Manager Tammy) for the first time. My immediate impression was of the intensely humid Pacific heat, the tropical sun beating down on the Narita tarmac. Toshi from Creative Man Productions led us straight to a vending machine and bought all five of us cans of Pocari Sweat. We'd never heard of it before; I remember we laughed at the name. Toshi told us it was a beverage launched with the idea that it should be "a drip feed you can drink". We opened the slim blue cans with their Coke swoosh-like logos, swigged the fluid inside. Not bad. Refreshing, anyway, and not too sweet. The semi-translucent fluid had a faint zing of distant grapefruit suspended in a chalky, alkaline body. "My life water," Isshiki Sae calls it in the 1992 commercial:
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Half way through the commercial Sae tweaks her swimsuit open a chink and looks down at her flat breasts as if to say either "Nope, nothing there yet" or perhaps "Something stirring". Perhaps there's a memory of that forlorn, hopeful gesture in Koomi Kim's image for MilK. Here, the 30 year-old Sae has milk-ready breasts and her belly bulges with new life. Twice the age (and twice the size) she was in her 1992 commercial, Sae is a grown woman. She's replaced the cute anxiety of that chest-glimpse with an expression of Mona Lisa-like serenity, a quiet belly-pride. Clearly, she's discovered a different kind of "life water" -- one that connects her body, through sweat and pleasure, milk and maternity, to eternity.
It's a beautiful image of fertility, and -- in the life cycle of Japan -- it comes not a moment too soon (and perhaps a moment or two too late). Because in 2005 Japanese deaths per thousand overtook Japanese births per thousand. More people are dying now in Japan than being born. Sae is keeping ahead of the replacement rate (the new baby is her third child or possibly even her fourth), but Japan isn't doing quite as well. And, while maternity may be one route to eternity, death is forever too.
"Maternity is eternity" is MilK Japon 4's theme. To understand the symbolism of the cover, you have to know that Isshiki Sae, now 30, shot to fame in 1992 at the age of just 15 when she became "that girl in the Pocari Sweat commercials".
I remember that summer well. For me, too, Japan in 1992 tastes of Pocari Sweat. In June I flew there with my band (Douglas, Damian, Neill and Tour Manager Tammy) for the first time. My immediate impression was of the intensely humid Pacific heat, the tropical sun beating down on the Narita tarmac. Toshi from Creative Man Productions led us straight to a vending machine and bought all five of us cans of Pocari Sweat. We'd never heard of it before; I remember we laughed at the name. Toshi told us it was a beverage launched with the idea that it should be "a drip feed you can drink". We opened the slim blue cans with their Coke swoosh-like logos, swigged the fluid inside. Not bad. Refreshing, anyway, and not too sweet. The semi-translucent fluid had a faint zing of distant grapefruit suspended in a chalky, alkaline body. "My life water," Isshiki Sae calls it in the 1992 commercial:
[Error: unknown template video]
Half way through the commercial Sae tweaks her swimsuit open a chink and looks down at her flat breasts as if to say either "Nope, nothing there yet" or perhaps "Something stirring". Perhaps there's a memory of that forlorn, hopeful gesture in Koomi Kim's image for MilK. Here, the 30 year-old Sae has milk-ready breasts and her belly bulges with new life. Twice the age (and twice the size) she was in her 1992 commercial, Sae is a grown woman. She's replaced the cute anxiety of that chest-glimpse with an expression of Mona Lisa-like serenity, a quiet belly-pride. Clearly, she's discovered a different kind of "life water" -- one that connects her body, through sweat and pleasure, milk and maternity, to eternity.
It's a beautiful image of fertility, and -- in the life cycle of Japan -- it comes not a moment too soon (and perhaps a moment or two too late). Because in 2005 Japanese deaths per thousand overtook Japanese births per thousand. More people are dying now in Japan than being born. Sae is keeping ahead of the replacement rate (the new baby is her third child or possibly even her fourth), but Japan isn't doing quite as well. And, while maternity may be one route to eternity, death is forever too.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 02:32 am (UTC)but i think the interesting thing about the milk image is that sae precisely seems *not* to have gone through the 'development' that you suggest. she looks as young as before, her body as slim and youthful, her breasts small... it seems as though, once she's given birth she'll be able seamlessly to go back to climbing palm trees, cartwheeling, etc. .. to be as supremely 'mobile' as she was with 'pocari sweat' ...
the only thing that seems different is the ring...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 02:38 am (UTC)Though not featuring the fecundity of Japanese idol, it does, I can say with some pride, feature my daughter, Sophia on the debut issue
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 04:53 am (UTC)maternity may be one route to eternity, death is forever too.
Date: 2007-12-29 05:26 am (UTC)Post Modern Nihon aesthetics have reproduction on the zero setting. Examples being movies like Dragonhead, Battle Royale, that questions genetic programing. TV soaps I've seen and liked left the the hot to trot on the line with the wash.
It is all MOEEEE to me!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 09:17 am (UTC)i
seegoogle, he's actually worked with mark borthwick(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 09:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 10:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 11:00 am (UTC)Pay attention at the back!
field studies
Date: 2007-12-29 03:29 pm (UTC)Re: field studies
Date: 2007-12-29 04:42 pm (UTC)water - sweat - sperm - milk
femininity - fertility - reproduction - eternity
My original version of this piece made much more elaborate symbolic connections between Pocari Sweat and semen, but Hisae didn't agree -- she said Calpis is like semen, but Pocari Sweat is basically in a sweat / water / sports / drip area in terms of its associations. Even the sexual imagery in the 1992 commercial, combined with the lines about "my life water", didn't convince her. So I toned the imagery down.
the banishment of that wistfulness. Milk is the connection.
Date: 2007-12-29 06:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 11:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 12:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-30 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 01:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 06:34 pm (UTC)too little thanky, too little pay, day out, day in, slaving, just big big joke for you, masa, of course me get tired! worn to a shrinp, worn to a sliver slipper, masa.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:51 pm (UTC)THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS THANK YOU MOMUS
is that enough for you?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 10:55 pm (UTC)GET TO IT OR I´LL NEVER EMAIL YOU THE PICS I DID DROOLING MILK FOR MOMUS_LOLZ, EVER.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-30 11:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 06:59 pm (UTC)and this begs the all so familiar question...never mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-29 07:40 pm (UTC)Milk
Date: 2007-12-30 10:18 pm (UTC)