Friday, November 23, 2007

JUNJI ITO interview clip from BBC3's Japanorama

This clip features a short interview with Junji Ito, conducted by British japanophile Christopher Jonathan Ross. I've heard of his show Japanorama previously when he interviewed Junko Mizuno, but I've never seen it. Despite being sort of lamely "ISN'T JAPAN STRANGE AND UNUSUAL!?" in tone, the show (over its three series to date) covers pretty interesting stuff, usually before it's become played out in western media.

This interview comes from the Kaidan episode (which also features an interview with Takashi Shimizu)and was posted on YouTube earlier this year. Ito's pretty taciturn but it's still a rare chance to see a video of one of my absolute favorites online. Check it out!



And since we're on the subject, here is a picture from a year or two ago of Junji Ito's wedding! I can't remember her name, but his wife (right) is a manga artist too, I hear.


[via Daul]

UPDATE! Here is the Junko Mizuno interview, from an earlier episode of Japanorama:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's Jonathan Ross, not Christopher!
:-)

Love the blog, btw. Many thanks for what you are doing!

Ryan said...

Whoops! I think I put Christopher because the dude looks like Christopher Hitchens, haha.

Glad you dig the site :)

Anonymous said...

Sorry if I sounded like a pedant.
I'm just some Englishwoman, and Mr Ross is a fixture of tv in Britain. ;-)
Had to Google image Mr Hitchens: it's the floppy hair, isn't it? :-P

Watching Japanoram - and this piece - was the first time I heard of Junji Ito. I was immediately interested - and of course I found out how wonderfuk Ito's work is.
And that somehow led me to Same Hat.
Hurrah!

Karen.

substrom said...

"Despite being sort of lamely "ISN'T JAPAN STRANGE AND UNUSUAL!?""

and in the previous post

"And you thought Kazuo Umezu Chuck Taylors were STRANGE"

pot kettle black

Ryan S said...

@mark...well, SNAP. haha. But then again-- my take is that Converse All-Stars covered with Makoto-chan's snotty face ARE strange, while completely treating THE NATION OF JAPAN and ITS PEOPLES as a mysteriously, uniquely-inscrutable bag of oddness are two different things.

"Hey check out these ill and goofy shoes!" vs. "Hey check out this weird and strange country". But you tell me :)

Anonymous said...

Japanorama is still one of the best western TV shows about Japan, I've seen al seasons and all episodes, some more than once...