Notebooks of beautiful life
Jan. 13th, 2008 05:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
Maybe I'm a big old lady's blouse, but my favourite Japanese magazine has become Ku:nel, the Slow Lifestyle bi-monthly from Magazine House. Sitting in the kitchen of a friend's house last night, I found myself genuinely excited to see the first Ku:nel of 2008.Flipping through its pages, constructing my own narratives for the sequences of pictures, I tried to pin down what this immaculately art-directed publication is all about. LOHAS, of course. Wabi sabi and patina. Postmaterialism. A kind of good-heartedness, some sentimentalisation of the very old, the very young, and the countryside. Kitchens, modesty, practicality, with a few touches of elegant Mid-Century Modern thrown in (this is, after all, a sister to Magazine House's Modernism-crazy Brutus Casa, rather too glib and bling for my taste). If I had to sum the whole thing up, I'd say "Think Shakers, think nuns, think Buckminster Fuller".
Those are rather personal associations, perhaps. I happen to have a Ken Burns documentary about the Shakers on loan at the moment. And something about the Ku:nel photography style (very sepia-colour, warm and retro) and all the images of cute old ladies makes me think of Tacita Dean's 2005 film about nuns, Presentation Sisters, also suffused with tenderness, worn patina and warm colours. Have a gander at this big spread of layouts from the current issue, though, and you'll see that there's a Bucky Fuller-meets-the-Eameses thing going on in the feature about the widow of a dead Modernist architect -- including an amazing beehive window framed with bright orange curtains. Patina this may be, but it's experimental Modernist patina. Imagine the Shakers on Mars.
Ku:nel launched in 2002 as a one-shot accompanying Anan magazine. It went bi-monthly in 2003, and currently has a print run of 150,000, which is pretty solid. One of the reasons I like it is that, in a sense, Ku:nel has swallowed some of the spirit of its recently-deceased sister, Relax. It's a less funky and more feminine Relax, aimed at serious young women in their 20s and 30s. But some Relax hallmarks are visible -- first of all, the generally relaxing feel (after all, the "nel" in Ku:nel's title comes from the verb neru, to sleep). Secondly, the photography. It really looks like Masafumi Sanai's work, and some of it probably is. Sanai uses a 6x7 format camera, capturing contre jour natural light with delicate, sun-faded colorations. He prints by hand. This is Slow Photography, with a very distinctive look. Sanai's regular "Girl Like You" slot in Relax captured fresh young girls "as if crossed by chance in a vegetable market or some neglected, crumbly arcade full of plants, bicycles and tiny, cute old ladies." In Ku:nel, the fresh young girls have gone, replaced by cute old ladies, children, and kitchens.
There's a precedent in Japanese magazine history for Ku:nel -- a magazine founded in 1948 with the lyrical title Notebook of Beautiful Life (later shortened to Notebook of Life). Kurashi No Techo is still around, a bi-monthly magazine, just like Ku:nel. It sells 160,000 copies -- almost the same circulation. Notebook of Life is a magazine full of the same diffuse good-heartedness and rustic practicality you find in Ku:nel, as this biography of its founder, Yasuji Hanamori, spells out. Remarkably, Notebook's founder decided to accept no advertising for the magazine; he didn't want his consumer testing to be influenced by ad sales. 
"In the beginning [editor Hanamori] tested such things as rice, soy sauce, soap, towels, pens and pots -- items indispensable to all. Determining the points to be tested is a difficult and important part of the work, he points out, and must be based upon normal use conditions. Taking the simple example or a bar of soap, testing should determine if it washes well, is harmful to the skin, dissolves and suds easily and continues to do so throughout its life span, its cost per gram and its efficiency per gram.""In some ways Hanamori is a paradox," continues the biography. "He has a rational mind combined with a warm, concerned heart. He is old-fashioned with high moral standards, yet anti-establishment and an original thinker. Hanamori's philosophy of life is simple: work hard, do what you believe in and work for others, especially the "nameless people"."
The look and feel of the two magazines brings them texturally as well as thematically close -- this Notebook picture of a magic practitioner in Lithuania, for instance (one of the "nameless people" the magazine celebrates, perhaps?) looks like something from the latest Ku:nel. A page from another notebook of beautiful life.
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スローライフ
Date: 2008-01-13 06:14 am (UTC)I hope not, I was doing slow life entries (http://kumakouji.blogspot.com/search/label/slow%20life) in my blog last month.
"Brutus Casa - rather too glib and bling for my taste"
In Japanese, they have a term called "スローアーキテクチャー"(Slow Architecture (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/スローアーキテクチャー)), and Casa BRUTUS is linked to the Slow Architecture wikipedia page. Seems odd you don't like casa BRUTUS seeing as they seem to be linked to the slow architecture movement.
I don't find casa BRUTUS anywhere near as offensive as you do, but you're right in a sense -- it's a little too "ikea" and not enough "patina".
I really love the "slow" movement, and I think ku:nel sums it up very well.
Re: スローライフ
Date: 2008-01-13 09:53 pm (UTC)The Kenji Quonset-structures very postwar displaying urban Tokyo rebellion of Slow Life Movement.
http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/538/feature.asp
I'm surprised how upscale it sells the subtle houseboat on land dream adventure in the Nippon tradition if that is Kenji's dwelling via Ku:nel.
I'd live there in a heart beat!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 09:25 am (UTC)Don't get me started on hand processing film. Don't even get me started.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 08:12 am (UTC)And film is wonderfully analog. I love it, myself. I take better photos with my old Pentax K camera than pros do with their D3's. Nothing beats the beauty of film, just as nothing beats the convenience of digital.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 08:22 am (UTC)I've had the fortune (or misfortune, however you want to view it) of working with and retouching images that my boss took on a 100+ megapixel camera (OH, THE WAIT FOR THEM TO LOAD!), and the detail and color range was amazing. Now, if only that kind of technology was cheaper, then we would have something to talk about re: film vs. digital.
With the 100+ megapixel camera aside, I think that film is better than digital.
flim
Date: 2008-01-16 03:40 am (UTC)http://standardgreyeditions.blogspot.com/2008/01/3000111.html
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 09:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 09:56 am (UTC)Japanese hippies are cool and combine tradition with anti-establishment thinking correctly, Western hippies are lazy conservative has-beens, unless they are young and beautiful and hang out in Manhattan and do drum circles.
That last shot of the Lithuanian is interesting. I like the emphasis on "nameless people", a resistance to celebrity. Is that a conservatism? Would you give up being momus and fade into the nameless hordes, all the ordinary people with their beautiful lives (apparently only outside the anglosphere)? Build your own wooden geodesic dome house somewhere and become just another white "conservative" hippie eying the behemoth of global capital with trepidation (like most of us)? And yet all that hedge fund money behind the art market, where does it come from?
Its the struggle between folk culture and high culture ... art made for the individual and his/her close community (sometimes with nature worship/religious symbolism) vs conceptual ironic art shown in galleries, a kind of indie-youth culture tied to fashion and the general party/entertainment industry. And its an old story in the West, hand in hand with the rise of industrialisation, the pillaging of style from folk culture, the retournement of "authentic" signifiers. We've lost our sense of tribe, and we gaze in wonder at those (Japanese/Lithuanian) who still retain a hold on group identity, perhaps.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 02:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 03:58 pm (UTC)I meant avant garde, of course, but since Mekas has something of the garden gnome about him, let it stand.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 06:25 pm (UTC)So lets just say this is the kind of anti-modernism you like, whereas neoclassical postmodern pastiches leave you cold. Lets not muddy the waters with terms like conservative, or traditional for that matter. Traditional is the new radical, after all.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 06:51 pm (UTC)BRUTUS (632) goes green with its “Botanical Being” issue, first with a tour of botanical gardens from around the world, and then with various pieces that cover all things organic. They do stray a bit, and interestingly, with one article that looks at glass architecture — as in I.M. Pei’s Pyramide du Louvre — that has been inspired by botanical garden glass structures.
(- citing from the nice Japanese magazine review category on jeansnow.net (http://jeansnow.net/category/media/magazines/))
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 07:55 pm (UTC)Jean Snow's magazine reviews are a good source of info on new magazine issues, but I have to say I was peeved by the peevishness of his coverage of the faltering Relax. Here's a range of his comments on the magazine:
Apologies, but I just don’t really feel like saying anything about the latest issue of RELAX (115). It’s about sleeping. Yawn.
I’ve just learned that the magazine will soon cease publication. Can’t say that I’m really surprised (or saddened) by the news.
Well, it’s official, RELAX is in love with all things green, with the new issue (112) being their third in a row to feature some sort of eco-related cover topic. This time, it’s “Born in the Forest,” with a guide to some of the nicest forests in the world.
RELAX (111) continues with its recent trend of covering all things spiritual with their “Relax and Spiritual Geographic!” feature. Honestly, I didn’t quite get the whole point of it, as they highlight what they call “power spots” in various locales (like Hawaii and Hong Kong), mixed in with fashion shoots.
The new issue of RELAX (110) sets us up on a “Meeting with Asian Beauty Masters,” which translates to a look at various Asian health practices — think yoga, kung-fu, and kampo. They also point out places in Japan where you can take classes. I liked the “Suits Style Sampling” piece, which is basically a fashion portfolio of famous people in suits. I think I liked it because I’ve been thinking this year that it might be nice to vary my wardrobe a bit, and try to get a bit classy — I pretty much only wear t-shirts and clothes from Muji.
So Jean appears to have liked Relax when it offered him a selection of suits to wear, but not when it asked him to get green or spiritual or LOHAS. Not, in other words, when it asked him to consider consuming less. While this is entirely understandable -- design commentators obviously have an investment in consumerism -- it's important to say that anti-consumerism, or rather a trend to more ethical consumption and production, is still an important theme in Japan, still endorsed by publishers like Magazine House, and won't go away any time soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 02:33 am (UTC)Also, I don't want to be too cynical, but I don't think Magazine House would run KU:NEL if it didn't have a solid consumer demographic to sell to advertisers. They got rid of RELAX when it had no readers and they couldn't sell ads anymore.
Magazine House's magazines all belong to an upper middle class taste culture (Popeye, Boao, Brutus), and it's good that environmentalism has definitely become a part of that - mostly for women who have moved past their prime consumer years. However, an average post-materialist, non-consumerist young Japanese though would probably buy zero magazines rather than a magazine that speaks to his/her tastes. Maybe they'll read KU:NEL while waiting for their food at Freshness Burger, though.
I think Japanese youth are generally becoming less materialist, but we are seeing this split into two groups: those that aestheticize their non-consumption and those who don't. Seems like only the first group read KU:NEL and Sotokoto etc.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 04:52 am (UTC)Basically, I have so much to say about this that I think I'll run with it for Monday's topic. I started answering here, but it wouldn't fit into the box!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 11:26 pm (UTC)kids wear
Date: 2008-01-13 10:49 am (UTC)Kidswear in India
Date: 2008-01-13 02:39 pm (UTC)Re: Kidswear in India
Date: 2008-01-13 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 01:18 pm (UTC)I also like the photography. I know we are seeing it secondhand here but it reminds me of the muted, warm, painterly colours and textures rendered by seventies film emulsions - again very much at odds with the pristine, perfectly-lit, glacial imagery that is the standard of Western mags.
How actually do these pictures convey the text, I wonder? There seems to be much of a make-and-do philosophy being propagated through the photographs.
Thomas S.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 02:11 pm (UTC)I love all your stuff on slow life, so inspiring.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 02:54 pm (UTC)A good blog for this kind of sensibility is This is Naive (http://thisisnaive.com/), by Heng Huiting, a Singaporean girl based in London. She managed to find Ku:nel in the city somewhere, because she has snaps of it in a November entry (http://thisisnaive.com/?m=200710).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 10:13 pm (UTC)Tommy
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 11:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-15 02:38 pm (UTC)T
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 02:55 pm (UTC)I note, from the Ku:neI website that they seem to be about to publish a book (magazine?) on "My everyday lunch." Celebrating the everyday seems a very good thing to me, contrasting as it does with modern capitalist society's addiction to sensationalism and spectacle.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 03:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 07:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 04:24 pm (UTC)More shots here (http://www.acetate-ed.net/bookdata/008/008.html#yoyaku).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 04:32 pm (UTC)Kawai assisted Tange, drawing up technical plans. He built his own house in 1966 in Aichi prefecture, Toyohashi City. It was designed to be completely self-sufficient. Kawai was also an inventor, making new types of freezer and electricity generator.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 07:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-13 11:23 pm (UTC)It reminds me of the rocket garden at Cape Canaveral, or those science fiction plots where the survivors of a spaceship crash turn the wreck into a dwelling.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-14 02:09 am (UTC)of course
Date: 2009-03-28 08:54 pm (UTC)