The Vanishing City.

A Band Planet (1991).

-TATEISHI Tiger was born in Fukuoka in 1941.
-In 1963, he submitted a large collage to the 15th Yomiuri Independent Exhibition, which received much attention. Subsequently he went on to be heavily influenced by Pop Art, which he aptly converted to address aspects of Japanese everyday life as well as the country’s current issues.
-From the mid 60ﾕs, he gradually began to draw cartoons.
-In 1969 he moved to Italy, where he worked for Olivetti typewriters as a designer, while finding time to exhibit his paintings at such places as Alexander Iolas gallery.
-From the mid 80’s his work began to feature epitomizing motifs of Japan, such as Mt. Fuji.
-In 1998, he passed away in Chiba prefecture.

From his inception as an artist in 1962, until 1967, TATEISHI Tiger was known by his birth name of TATEISHI Kouichi. But from 1968 until mid 1990, he developed, for its convenient catchiness, the moniker Tiger TATEISHI, which was not only written in ‘kana’, the phonetic notation reserved for non-Japanese words, but the order of first and last name was switched to mimic the Western manner. Although he continues to be remembered posthumously by the same moniker, the ‘kana’ has been converted to Chinese characters and the order of first and last name has been reverted to the original Japanese manner.

Via the essential Giornale Nuovo.

“When I wrote JAPROCKSAMPLER, so little had been published in English on the subject that I was forced to create first my own miniature encyclopedia of information, gradually building up the picture from millions of tiny bits of information. Of course, when the book was finished, I was left with such a colossal repository of information that I have decided to bequeath it to all fans of Japanese rock across the world in the form of these ‘Artist A-Z’ and ‘Group Sounds A-Z’ sections. Hopefully, by employing these biographies as the bedrock, japrocksampler.com will eventually become an essential resource for all future Japanese music research.

JULIAN (September 2007CE)”

Flower Travellin’ Band 1971: (L-R) Hideki Ishema/guitar), Jun Kosugi/bass, George Wada/drums, Joe Yamanaka/vocals

Taj Mahal Travellers with leader Takehisa Kosugi on violin at far left

Far East Family Band c. 1974 deploy their entire arsenal for the cameras

‘Redacted’ stuns Venice

Brian De Palma’s film about the rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers leaves festival-goers in tears.

From Reuters
August 31, 2007

VENICE — A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

“Redacted”, by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice’s main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose “Casualties of War” in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film’s images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

“The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people,” he told reporters after a press screening.

“The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war,” he said.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped, killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Her parents and younger daughter were also killed.

Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.

Halfway between documentary and fiction, “Redacted” draws on soldiers’ home-made war videos, blogs and journals and footage posted on YouTube, reflecting changes in the way the media cover the war.

“In Vietnam, when we saw the images and the sorrow of the people we were traumatizing and killing, we saw the soldiers wounded and brought back in body bags. We see none of that in this war,” De Palma said.

“It’s all out there on the Internet, you can find it if you look for it, but it’s not in the major media. The media is now really part of the corporate establishment,” he said.

The film’s title refers to how, according to De Palma, mainstream American newspapers and television channels are failing to tell the true story of the war by keeping the most graphic images of the conflict away from public opinion.

“When I went out to find the pictures, I said (to the media) give me the pictures you can’t publish,” he said, adding that because of legal dangers he too had to “edit” the material.

“Everything that is in the movie is based on something I found that actually happened. But once I had put it in the script I would get a note from a lawyer saying you can’t use that because it’s real and we may get sued,” De Palma said.

“So I was forced to fictionalize things that were actually real.”

The film, shot in Jordan with a little known cast, ends with a series of photographs of Iraqi civilians killed and their faces blacked out for legal reasons.

“I think that’s terrible because now we have not even given the dignity of faces to this suffering people,” De Palma said.

“The great irony about Redacted is that it was redacted.”

Distributor Magnolia has planned a limited U.S. release for later this year, and the film may be easier to sell to European audiences rather than to the American public.

“This is a harrowing experience you put the audience through. It is not something you want to go to on a delightful Saturday evening but this message must be put forward and hopefully the public will respond,” De Palma said.