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Full deck of awesome Japanese monster playing cards
12.15.2016
09:50 am
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1. Vampire Kyuradorosu.  2. Pollution monster Kashuasu.
 
File under: “things I wish I’d have known in school.”

This pack of Japanese playing cards features a selection of pachimon kaiju or “imitation monsters” lifted from various hit TV shows and movies. These monsters range from fire-breathing gorillas to flying creatures from outer space and giant electrocuting humanoids. The set was apparently manufactured as a promotional pack for kids by a Japanese brand of mayonnaise called Kewpie.

I’d have surely eaten my egg-mayo sandwiches without complaint if I’d been dealt a hand of these fun little beauties.
 
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3. Ice monster Gohoho.  4. Creature form outer space Altamegaro.
 
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5. Pesticide monster Deredoron.  6. Ancient dinosaur Tapikurosaurus.
 
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7. Elekipurosu—a giant electrocuting humanoid.  8. Meji—an extraterrestrial wolf who can fly.
 
See the whole monstrous deck, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.15.2016
09:50 am
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The erotic horror art of Toshio Saeki
08.25.2015
09:22 am
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It might not be entirely accurate to describe Toshio Saeki’s work as proper “porn,” but his nightmarish prints (created using a modernized version of a traditional Japanese woodcut technique) are certainly erotica. Saeki actually quit his job at a Tokyo ad agency at the age of 24 and started working at men’s magazines. His art developed a following during the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and by the time his horror erotica was first published in 1970, older genres of Japanese pulp—like Ero Guro Nansensu (“erotic, grotesque, nonsense”)—were getting popular again. Saeki explained his philosophy in a 2013 interview with Dazed:

Let me put it this way: leave other people to draw seemingly beautiful flowers that bloom within a nice, pleasant-looking scenery. I try instead to capture the vivid flowers that sometimes hide and sometimes grow within a shameless, immoral and horrifying dream.

Often referred to as “the godfather of Japanese erotica.” Saeki is a septuagenarian today, still living and working in rural Japan, pleased to see his art embraced by new generations of fans.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Amber Frost
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08.25.2015
09:22 am
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A Japanese ‘young lovers’ sex guide from the ‘60s
01.04.2012
01:59 pm
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Hello Damage posted this rather odd Japanese sex-tip book from the 60s online. Now, I can’t read Japanese, so I don’t know if Hello Damage is pulling non-Japansese speakers legs with the translations or not? You decide. And if you haven’t figured it out by the title already, it’s probably NSFW.
 
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(via reddit)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.04.2012
01:59 pm
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Lovely vintage Japanese postcards
01.26.2011
08:05 pm
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A colorful assortment of antique cute postcards in Japan from the book Antique Cute Postcards in Japan (Nippon no kawaii ehagaki) by Hiroki Hayashi. The ones with Betty Boop are my favorite.

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See more postcards after the jump…

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.26.2011
08:05 pm
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Mega Freaky Japanese Children’s Book Art By Gojin Ishihara
07.30.2010
02:11 am
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These wild illustrations by Gojin Ishihara are from Japanese children’s books published in the 1970s.

The illustrations are from the Illustrated Book Of Japanese Monsters and various educational and entertainment-oriented publications for children.

 
More wildness after the jump…

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Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.30.2010
02:11 am
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July 26, 1943: Los Angeles Invaded by Smog!

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Smog makes it hard to see the Los Angeles Civic Center on Jan. 5, 1948. Photo: Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive/UCLA Library
 
In this age of climate-change consciousness, we’ve been thinking of pollution in epic-scale terms for so many decades that it’s become difficult to perceive it locally or episodically. On Wired.com’s This Day in Tech blog, Jess McNally notes  that on this day 67 years ago, residents of Los Angeles initially suspected that the unseasonable eye-stinging haze descending on their city was a Japanese chemical attack:

As residents would later find out, the fog was not from an outside attacker, but from their own vehicles and factories. Massive wartime immigration to a city built for cars had made L.A. the largest car market the industry had ever seen. But the influx of cars and industry, combined with a geography that traps fumes like a big bowl, had caught up with Angelenos.

 
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Susan Morrow (left) and Linda Hawkins wipe tears from their eyes on a downtown street during a smoggy day in October 1964. Photo: Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive/UCLA Library
 
It took Arie Jan Haagen-Smit, a Dutch scientist working at the California Institute of Technology, to point that out, but that wasn’t until the early ‘50s. Although the term smog—a portmanteau of smoke and fog—was coined in the early 20th century, L.A. made it truly famous.

Check out Wired’s fascinating selection of photos from the UCLA Library depicting the Southland’s struggle against smog from the 1940s through the 1960s.

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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07.26.2010
11:32 pm
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