Random Japan

Nintendo celebrates its roots with traditional art of their most famous characters

Cara Clegg

With global phenomenon like the Mario and Pokemon franchises under their belts, it’s easy to forget about Nintendo’s humble beginnings as a producer of traditional Japanese playing cards. This year the company goes back to their roots in their 2014 company brochure with beautiful artwork that celebrates both the old and the new.


How fancy is Nintendo’s latest company brochure?! Below is the hardcover book that Nintendo is distributing to students looking to work for their company. The contents are updated every year, and they’re always coming up with new ideas for it. This year it features vibrant full-page spreads of Nintendo’s iconic products from across the years, all strikingly worked in a bold and traditional art style. Judging by the Twitter comments it seems that there are people who apply every year just to get their hands on these annual brochures, and we can understand why: this one is so beautiful it looks like a collector’s item.

stats

• 75Percent of Japanese people who say the rise in the consumption tax rate has created an “added burden” in their lives, according to a newspaper survey
• 62Percent of people who say they’ve been spending the same amount of money or more since the tax hike went into effect last month, according to the poll
• 1Career saves for New York Mets pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who threw a 1-2-3 ninth inning to preserve a 4–1 victory over the St Louis Cardinals at Citi Field on April 25

C’MON IN

• One year after waiving visa requirements for travelers from Thailand and Malaysia, Japanese immigration authorities are planning to do the same for Indonesians, Filipinos and Vietnamese.
• The cabinet held its first meeting to discuss the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and members vowed to “increase barrier-free public facilities and prepare to receive visitors from abroad.”
• Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of respondents to a TMG survey said the best way for Japanese people to facilitate communication with foreigners is to inform them of the differences between the “traditions and habits of Japan [and those] in their home countries.”
• Google Japan is being blamed for a server error that allowed an environment ministry mailing list to be publicly viewable last year.

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Temple offers Buddhist enlightenment through manga exhibition

May 10, 2014

By LOUIS TEMPLADO/ AJW Staff Writer

Religion has been called the opiate of the people, but in Japan perhaps manga should carry that title. With that in mind, the popular art form is being used to visualize aspects of Buddhism at Zojoji temple, located in Shiba-koen park in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.

“Hotoke no sekai” (Exhibition of Buddha Illustration by Manga Artists), which runs until May 13, features works by nearly 50 manga artists, past and present, including Osamu Tezuka, Fujio Akatsuka and Takao Saito.

“Manga has become this country’s representative art form, so we asked artists from all over Japan to contribute to this exhibition,” says Keiichi Wada, an organizer of the exhibition. “We asked them to bring their own touch to depicting the Buddha. Many had never done the topic before, so it became an exploration.”