Japan Style

Nakagawa and Paphooo have been hosting a project called Gattai Animal Design, in which people submit ideas for mascot characters that combine animals with various objects. Rareko chose one character, Nabesan Design's Onigiri Neko (literally, "rice-ball cat"), as the inspiration for an anime video. In turn, Nakagawa wrote a song called "Makka na Atashi" (Scarlet Me) based on Onigiri Neko, and the female rock band Guruguru composed the music. Former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman produced the song and performed some guitar work. During the Paphooo Festival 2009 event, Nakagawa and Friedman performed the song live while Rareko's anime video played on the screen behind them. A short clip from the anime video can be seen in the first video on the Gattai Animal Design website.

Nakagawa has another character called Sukashi Kashipan Man ("Sand Dollar/Sweet Bun Man") which she said will be made into a live-action project in the America. Rareko is best known for creating the Flash anime Yawaraka Sensha about a soft, fragile battle tank on the Livedoor Net Anime website. Friedman made a cameo with his frequent drumming collaborator Jeremy Colson and Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons in last year's live-action film adaptation of Kiminori Wakasugi's Detroit Metal City comedy manga.

Police had traced Sakai's mobile phone signal to the central Japanese prefecture of Yamanashi before the signal stopped on Tuesday night. Officials found the couple's son in the care of an acquaintance of Sakai on Thursday.

In addition to her mainstream singing and acting career, Sakai performed the theme songs in Gunbuster, Video Girl Ai, and Anime Sanjushi. She also played roles in the live-action Juon: The Grudge 2 film and the Soreike! Anpanman: Gomira no Hoshi anime, and narrated the Pikachu and Pichu short.

Thank you to dormcat for the news tip.

Source: Sankei Sports

Samurai (侍?) is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: “In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean “those who serve in close attendance to the nobility,” the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai.” According to Wilson, an early reference to the word Samurai appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905-914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the tenth century.

By the end of the 12th century, samurai became synonymous with bushi (武士) almost entirely and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of written rules called the Bushidō . Samurai teachings can still be found today in modern day society with the martial art Kendo, meaning the way of the sword.

Most samurai were bound by a code of honor and were expected to set an example for those below them. A notable part of their code is seppuku (切腹, seppuku?), which allowed a disgraced samurai to regain his honor by passing into death, where samurai were still beholden to social rules. Whilst there are many romanticised characterisations of samurai behaviour such as the writing of Bushido (武士道, Bushidō?) in 1905, studies of Kobudo and traditional Budo indicate that the samurai were as practical on the battlefield as were any other warrior.

Despite the rampant romanticism of the 20th century, samurai could be disloyal and treacherous (e.g., Akechi Mitsuhide), cowardly, brave, or overly loyal (e.g., Kusunoki Masashige). Samurai were usually loyal to their immediate superiors, who in turn allied themselves with higher lords. These loyalties to the higher lords often shifted; for example, the high lords allied under Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) were served by loyal samurai, but the feudal lords under them could shift their support to Tokugawa, taking their samurai with them. There were, however, also notable instances where samurai would be disloyal to their lord or daimyo, when loyalty to the emperor was seen to have supremacy.