One night after infiltrating the Tokyo Book Fair, I found myself in a small bar in Shinjuku with a much smaller but infinitely more exciting group of people.
But let's take a step back and start from the beginning, i.e. when still-unknown (at least to me) Aussie zinester Jeremy Staples mailed me and other Japan-based zine-makers out of the blue announcing his coming. A little scared by his huge beard, wild look and strange zines, I wasn't really sure I wanted to meet him in person, but good Jeremy turned out to be a mellow guy and great conversationalist.
When, on July 30th, I arrived at our meeting place, I found Irregular Rhythm Asylum's Kei-san, Wasabi Distro's Andrea Hope and lilmag's Momo Nonaka (together in the picture below)
Tattoed Jeremy (sporting a less intimidating beard) was sitting next to Ian Lynam, a veteran zinester from US who now lives in Tokyo.
I'd never heard of Ian until a couple of days before when for a strange coincidence I read an interesting interview to him in the latest issue of Xerography Debt.
We were later joined by Takurock, who's running a library to document the history of Japanese zines
a bunch of Japanese zinesters and, last but not least, the omnipresent Jennie Hinchcliff hot from the Book Fair.
All in all it was a fun night of zine trading, free-wheeling chatting and plotting for future actions and publications. I'll keep you posted on future developements.
Jeremy Staples: http://beardedhobo.com/index.html
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5 comments:
This is deeply interesting!
Too bad that I've already finished writing my research article about Japanese zines (which is in translation process right now, so I'm very reluctant to adding new material), thought I've hurried to add the "Café Lavandería" adress to the zine adress listing that is going to appear in the same issue...
Yet it's true that this is true zinedom, as opossed to Zine's Mate (where did they got their name from?). However, I've spoke a little bit about them in my article. I'll keep you updated at the rentrée (that's september for us frenchmen).
Ciao! Teknad
Thanks so much for documenting this awesome get-together! It was super to meet up with everyone in Tokyo; hopefully we can make something like this happen again!
Also thanks to Kei-san, Momo, Wiccan, Jeremy, and Taku, and everyone who made it out to Cafe Lavanderia: I enjoyed talking with each of you!
--JH
Wow, I see a Basque Country flag in the first photo on the left. Just new here, I need some days to read it all. Pere.
Myself and Moira Clunie (who used to run Moon Rocket Distro out of New Zealand, and now we co-run http://www.alphabetcity.org.nz) are headed to Tokyo next week. We'd love to be clued in on any book arts or zine stuff to check out. Any spaces particularly interesting? Have no itinerary other than to see amazing things
estetik Thanks for writing in such an encouraging post. I had a glimpse of it and couldn’t stop reading till I finished. I have already bookmarked you.
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