ARTICLES BY KAZ
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 ARMAGEDDON PARTY
As if there were ever any cause for doubt, Japan’s absolute cultural superiority over America is by 1994 a total given. Our bathroom technology makes it look like you’re still shitting in cave holes, our rockabillies’ hair is on average four to five centimeters higher than yours, and our recession is thoroughly kicking your recession’s ass (in recession terms). Even our religious nuts are...
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  HOCK TALK
As a staunchly working-class suburb, Collingwood has had its fair share of shitty times. Smith Street, the main drag, has served as a popular place to score smack and gamble illegally for decades. Often these two activities cause people to lose money very quickly, so Collingwood is as natural a place as any for a neighborhood pawnshop. Paul...
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 A BRAZILIAN IN... TOKYO & NEW YORK
Manuela Hiromi Kondo
Vice: Which part of Brazil are you from?
Manuela: I was born to an Italian-Brazilian-Portuguese mother and a Japanese father in Piracicaba, a small city in the southeast countryside of Brazil...
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 A TWITCH IN TIME
Daito Manabe's Electrified FaceDaito Manabe is a Japanese video artist who sticks half a dozen electrodes onto his face, synchs them all up to a blippy homemade soundtrack, and proceeds to electrocute himself into a choreography of grimaces and twitches...
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 HAIR HATS
Shinji Konishi Flips WigsWhen the Japanese hairstylist Shinji Konishi first molded wigs into the likenesses of assorted animals for a gallery show in Tokyo in 2008, he hoped repulsion would trump all else. "I wanted something poisonous," says Konishi. "I'm interested in things that make people look away." Well, then you'd b...
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 YOU DO HAVE TO LIVE LIKE A REFUGEE
Japan's New Breed of Web-Savvy HomelessIn that age-old contest, that heroic battle of champions to decide which country has the world's premier internet cafés, none can truly compete with Japan and its facilities. In Nippon, the web-browsing establishments are composed of personal rooms, each furnished with a computer, a TV, and a reclin...
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 WHO'S HUNGRY?
An Interview With Issei Sagawa, CannibalOn the afternoon of June 12, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked into the woods in Bois de Boulogne, France, carrying two suitcases. The postgraduate student at the Sorbonne had shot and killed a female exchange student, a classmate of his, the day before. After eating portions of her bod...
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 COMFORT FOOD
The Warm Embrace of the Japanese Chubby Maid CaféDieting is, sadly, an important ritual for girls all over the world. But as with everything else they do, the girls in Japan take it just that little bit too far, right up to the point where it’s basically obsessive-compulsive disorder. “Eat and lose weight!” diet fads are big here now. There are al...
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 SHOHEI IS A ONE-NAMED JAPANESE MAN...
Vice: I hear you only draw with ballpoint pens and permanent markers.
Shohei: Yes, because I like to draw in black. At first I was using pencils, but I didn't like the way that the pencil lines shone silver. Then I realized that ballpoints are cheap, so I've been using them for a while ...
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 A 74-YEAR-OLD JAPANESE PORN STAR
How long into his life can a man keep fucking? Here in Japan, there is one brave grandpa who is using his own body to answer that question. His name is Shigeo Tokuda and he is a 74-year-old porn performer. He often stars in movies staged in old-age homes—like, as in "gramps fucks his hot little nurs...
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 AN OLD JAPANESE DOCTOR WHO SURVIVED HIROSHIMA
Japan is still (as of press time on this issue) the only country in the world that has been a victim of the atomic bomb. Since the demons dropped onto the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 63 years ago this past August, the country has continued to quietly suffer from the repercussions...
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 NOBUYOSHI ARAKI
There lives in Japan a relentless monster who has released 450 photo books-and still continues to take photographs every day. His name is Nobuyoshi Araki. Those of you who don't know much about him might, after a cursory glance, see nothing more than a horny old man. And yes, sure, at times his them...
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 A MEXICAN IN... TOKYO
Jesús Salinas
Vice: Mexico is on the other side of the globe from Japan. What did you think of Tokyo when you first came?
Jesús: The biggest shock was how safe Japan is. Tokyo is the only place that...
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 PUSS IN BOOTS
Cat Prin Clothes Are Dictated by the CosmosYou've probably seen Cat Prin: The Tailor of a Cat. It's a Japanese web-store that sells the most ridiculously adorable cat outfits with names like "Frog Transformation Set," "Young Lady Blouse," and "Shawl of a Rabbit." The site has tons of photos of two little Scottish Folds wearing all these funn...
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 HONK HONK!
Masaru Tatsuki Photographs Trucks With Crazy Shit All Over ThemLong-haul trucks covered in elaborate, eye-popping neon lights and colorful airbrushed murals of fantasy creatures and religious figures are known as "decotora" in Japan. Decotora trucks initially cropped up all over the nation after a film called Torakku Yaro (that means "Truck guy") featuri...
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 SHINTARO KAGO TURNS SHIT INTO GOLD
The Vice InterviewMillions of tons of manga, in all shapes, forms, and colors, have been flying out of Japan every day forever. Are we getting really tired of it all even though we were once excited by it? Yep. And are we now even bored with hentai, the porno-snuff-scat-death-puke subgenre of manga? Pretty much, beli...
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