3:AM Magazine

» Tokyo Vice: Jake Adelstein

The yakuza always have had a few politicians in their pocket. For a time, the Zengeiren, the national association of promoters of foreign entertainers, functioned as a human trafficking lobby, as did Kokusai Kogyo 21, an NPO, pressuring the LDP not to criminalize human trafficking. The Zengeiren used to hold meetings at LDP headquarters, up until 2006 or so. However, international pressure made Japan clean up its act, the LDP cut ties, and the number of foreigners trafficking into Japan as sex slaves has really dropped. However, there still remains in place a very dubious intern system which seems to allow for unchecked exploitation and virtual enslavement of foreign workers. Obviously, there are a few politicians getting kickbacks from it, and labor exploitation is a yakuza field of expertise.

Andrew Stevens talks to Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein about police, porn and politicians.

» Capitalist Realism

I guess I’d argue that there is a radicality and a weirdness about these cultural objects any way, especially in current conditions. I’m interested in what I’ve called popular modernism – the way that avant-garde ideas can be recirculated through popular culture. I’d argue that high modernism was retrospectively justified by its filtering through into popular culture via paperbacks, pop and television. This kind of filtering didn’t have to involve any kind of dilution; there was often a condensation which intensified things.

Joe Kennedy interviews Mark Fisher about Capitalist Realism.

» It’s an Uphill Climb to the Bottom

We were the first mod-skinhead group. The Who weren’t, their management said: look at your audience, you’ve got to dress like them. They were all greasers originally. The Neat Change were from the audience for The Who, that’s why I say we were the first, because no one told us to dress like skinheads. We were the audience members who got up on stage and played. Bands like The Action and The Creation were more naturally mod than The Who, but we stood out by becoming skinheads. Steve and Brian in our group looked at these American servicemen and what they were wearing, and there weren’t many skinheads at all in the mid-sixties, about 10 in the whole of London and two of them were in The Neat Change. They just looked at what the black American GIs who were going to the jazz clubs were wearing and dressed the same. Sta-Prest, fell boots, Harringtons. The reason they had crops was that when they fought no one could grab their hair.

Stewart Home interviews Jimmy Edwards who spent 20 years of his life as rock’s next big thing.

» Stuck Inn X

The film Boogie Woogie drops the hyphen in the title and is set in London. Richard Clayton in the Sunday Times, recorded the observations of Johnnie Shand Kydd, photographer of the YBAs, that there were “a few people a wee bit nervous about how they were going to be presented” and that “You can sort of see people being vaguely recognisable”. Art adviser Nathalie Hambro found “they were hardly disguised.” Duncan Ward, the film’s director, let slip the characters were “a collage of a number of artists”. An anonymous collector opined that Spindle’s black framed glasses, identical to those worn by Jay Jopling, were “a bit of a giveaway.” An equally anonymous “art-world source” pointed instead to the dealer, Anthony d’Offay.

Charles Thomson dissects the Boogie Woogie franchise.

» A Shout in the Street

This book captures two sides of the city: the social dimension, and the solitary experience of the urban flanêur. Cotner and Fitch render urban conversational wandering extremely well, a mode of experiencing the city where one wanders the streets, talking excitedly as one goes; where the surroundings provide an atmospheric backdrop to the main event, so to speak: the conversation. The conversational sections of the book are expansive and gesture towards the philosophical, but these movements towards a higher knowledge come from and return to reality, through reference to the everyday world.

Karl Whitney on Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks.

» Wish You Were Here?

To the dismay of many existing residents, obscure coastal backwaters became places of economic and cultural significance. Locations for recovery and indulgence, of difference and sameness, and of virtue alongside vice. With a splattering of seamen to salt things up a bit. Many of the cultural shifts of the past century also found their unique expression, and sometimes even their inception, at the seaside. The rise of the teenager and the tabloid obsession with out-of-control youths peaked with the coverage of the Mods-v-Rockers “battles”. And a remarkable number of other cultural conflicts, between conservatism and modernity in art, architecture and attitudes to gender and sexuality have been played out at the seaside, albeit often in code.

John P. Houghton on Travis Elborough’s Wish You Were Here: England on Sea.

» Excerpt: A Rocket in My Pocket

Rockabilly was so well-established in Britain by 1981 as one of the country’s recognised youth movements that London Weekend Television devoted an entire programme in their 20th Century Box series to explaining its distinguishing features to their viewers. By this stage it was clear that many old-school Teds had little time for the largely younger rockabilly fans, and the feeling was sometimes mutual. Whereas the classic Teddy Boy clothing was based around an Edwardian drape jacket, and the Teds themselves pre-dated the arrival of rock’n’roll in England by roughly half a decade, the new rockabilly crowd tended to dress more like the original Memphis rockers themselves, often wearing vintage fifties US clothing bought at Flip in Covent Garden, who’d been importing huge amounts of it since 1978.

Max Décharné’s A Rocket in My Pocket: The Hipster’s Guide to Rockabilly Music, exclusive to 3:AM.

» A Day in the Life of Spencer McCormick 6

Spencer McCormick is the Regional Head of Human Resources for a multinational corporation (the name of which we cannot disclose for legal reasons). He drives to work, he wears a suit, he works nine to five, thinks that he pays too much tax and watches Dancing with the Stars. In all this he is just like many other men. Recently, however, he has begun to sense that he doesn’t quite fit in. He has had strange dreams of running wild and naked through the streets. Strange compulsions have begun which he must keep secret from his fellow office workers. “Who am I really?” asks Spencer as he stares in the mirror. And why does my wife make me eat from the floor? Daily, his estrangement grows.

Spencer McCormick is back!

» Japanamerica: Create & Play, Anime Avatars in the USA

Imagine Second Life with avatars that look like anime characters, giving American and other English-speaking fans a chance to cosplay, to create their own anime-inspired avatars anytime they want, rather than waiting for the next area anime convention. Amid the dissonance of declining anime DVD and manga book sales abroad and at home and the escalating numbers of overseas fans attending conventions and expos, entrepreneurs are beginning to see an opportunity: reach the fans via new networks of accessibility, and you might just survive.

By Roland Kelts.

» The White Hart

It was raining inside. It was pelting it down. I was immediately struck by a flurry of hard wet drops, so raising my hands like a wigwam above my eyes, I peered about in a search for dry shelter, but there was none. My hair and eyebrows were quickly drenched, and my mouth was like a plughole in a bath, surrounded by the wet wispy hairs of my silly little beard. Resigning myself to the elements, I ran like a person with a limp in both legs towards the large central bar, which lay just a short distance ahead, past some outlying tables and chairs. The barmaid was in good spirits despite everything, and the bucketing water gave her the distinct appearance of an Afghan Hound beneath the ocean.

By the mighty Paul Ewen.

» f stop

Cynthia weren’t no pervert, but had been perverted right and proper and was content of that proclivity. Thus she found dirty old Doctor Gläser to be a handsome beast. Check his hands. Cynthia always checked men’s hands. In case her red light turned to green and she permitted manhandling. The doctor’s hands had the pulchritude of a Renaissance piéta sculpted from ivory. With dirty fingernails. She wanted to put his long fingers in her mouth, suck the filth from under the nails. Cynthia say doctor one handsome beast. Most folk wouldn’t say so. Seedy, they would spit.

By Michael Loughrey.

» What Happened to the Horse

I don’t think I could have, in her place. But she was that kind of woman. Yes, she was that kind of woman. She had to see it through. Bloody minded. Or, not the sort to shirk responsibility, Bill always said. Not that she they saw Charlie as a responsibility after a while. Nobody did. Oh he was a sweet thing. They all loved him so much. He was such a sweetheart. I don’t think they ever regretted it. In spite of… Well she had a career and… The thing I always remember is they had this sculpture by Gourain. A great big heavy thing. About as big as this table in front of us. It was lovely smooth, dark, metal and Charlie just adored it. And because he adored it, he used to lick it. I know. I know! It was worth at least six figures. But he didn’t care about that, did he?

By Sam Jordison.

» Forget the Fucking Swans

“I don’t think you understood me,” said Ben’s father. “I wish I could have showed you those swans.” “You don’t even know that about the swans,” said Ben, all in a rush. “How do you know their Dad has gone? You don’t know anything about the swans. You’re making it up. But you’re wrong. Their Dad is still with them, I bet. You’re just making it up and I hate you.” “The swans aren’t the important thing,” said his father. “Forget the fucking swans.”

By Sam Jordison.

» An American Flag

‘I’m an American. My flag is American. My body is American.’

Brad’s jaw squared up, his pecks ribbed and tucked, whilst his legs made scissors through the waves.

All the time Miranda watched and absent-mindedly rubbed almond oil over her hide; her booty crack filling and spilling warm granules of sand onto her toes.

Funeral Dave stayed supine; his cool undertaker’s body bringing his heart beat down below 40; his mind imagining the sun as a seaweed tangled fanny box.

By Alan McCormick & Jonny Voss.

» Two Drunks

Jim Wilson continued his rant on all things wholesome. “And after you come inside her, boy you’re in the shit. You got little snot mouths to feed. “ I took it the old codger was Catholic. He lived in a different era. One that was untouched by the post modernistic bullshit. One were men had no choice. It was fight in the war or become a bum. Jim had chosen the latter. I moved a few bar stools closer to him. “Hey Tom, how’s it going?” “Fine.” “I read your story in the paper last week. It was awful.” For all of Mr. Wilson’s senile ways, he had good taste in literature. “You call yourself a writer. You couldn’t type your way out of a paper bag.” “Thanks Jim.” I ordered myself another drink and one for the old timer.

By Thom Young.

» Maintenant #21: Marco Kunz

Every reality and every detail of life has a potential significance not just for the person experiencing it, but also for itself and every other person that might learn to perceive the others experience in the function of poetry. To see the big things and questions in little things of everyday life is what I like most in poetry. One poem of mine starts ‘Was Sinn macht, ist am Ende vielleicht nur das Banale’ (‘What makes sense in the end, maybe it’s just the banal’)… If you are classical poet or writing novels about Humboldt, poems about the old Greeks, or just purely experimental and writing poems that nobody really understands with more allusions than lines, or just pop-literature, then it’s okay, you will find success, or if I was fifteen years old and writing about taking weird drugs and exercising bizarre sexual practices, then again, I would be a saleable success. I am happy to be something that doesn’t fit in these drawers.

For the 21st in the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the German poet Marco Kunz.

» Three Poems

in the end, maybe
it’s just the trivial -
rain-wet tarmac
smelled in may – one point of
time, just lived and
inhaled, what more
do you seek, what
more do you long for?

The great ambitions, bleak
and awful, just
fuel for burning,
travelling on

By Marco Kunz.

» Maintenant #20: Adam Zdrodowski

There is quite a heavy weight and a strong pressure on young poets – about what poetry should or shouldn’t be like, a pressure connected with the Polish tradition. Fortunately, I didn’t do Polish studies and so I managed to distance myself from all these futile discussions. On the other hand, there are more and more options for young poets, there’s a growing interest in the writing of Polish authors who have been somewhat neglected, there are lots of literary magazines and publishers. So, even though the dominant tradition is still quite strong (in school curricula, in the media), there are numerous options for those who want to do something else…

In the twentieth in his Maintenant series SJ Fowler interviews the Polish poet and translator Adam Zdrodowski.