"Jacques Tati" who Tatsuo Hayashi was talking about the other day ・・・
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
I received this from Hiroshi Morinaga.
A man's life is a journey to realize their
boyhood longings.
The photo shows Tsuguharu Fujita holding a pencil under his arm like a miniature rocket, with a cigarette in his mouth. It is a ridiculous pose.
The photo also shows around 10 upper class white men and women with flamboyancy unlike that of a regular citizen. The heavy-set Japanese man on the far right wearing an expedition cap was Baron Satsuma, aka Jirohachi Satsuma. The obviously modern girl looking Japanese woman was Satsuma's wife.
This photo most excellently portrays the eccentricity of this rare artist who became a superstar in the world of art in Paris in the 1920's. Before Dali, Fujita was at the peak of eccentricity.
However, this photo was shrouded with mystery. Why is Fujita holding a massive pencil? Was it an art performance? Where was it taken?
I discovered the answer when I bought a book called "Tsuguharu Fujita --the life of a gentile" at an old book center in Shibuya.
He was a darling of Paris and there are many photos remaining of him.
In the photo is he seen walking Deauville Coast which was famous as a summer resort area, wearing a showy swimsuit with a playing card pattern, holding a giant pencil in his hand. Near him are laughing young women including Chanson singer Mistinguett. An American pencil company had invited the two stars to the coast in Paris for advertisement."
If you switch up the alphabet of FOU, it spells UFO. FOUFOU was almost like an alien. Not that that matters.
The photo that is mentioned here says FOU FOU was in a bathing suit, so it may be a different cut. The photo that I saw showed him wearing a gown. However, he is still holding a "massive pencil". So it's likely a photo at Deauville. Being that its was for advertisement still it was the 1920's, so the production is avant-garde.
The other photo shows Satsuma's second wife Toshiko, while visiting Tokushima where she lived for an interview, which decorated the cover of the 1980 August 1st publication of "BRUTUS" as an ambitious feature titled "Men who delight in life were all juvenile delinquents." Baron was already deceased at the time.
Jiro Kubota and I created the eyeball of this special edition
I wrote the "100 articles of a delinquent" to print at the beginning of the special edition. These 100 articles were plagiarized for a variety of advertisement copy, and Lowenbrau bought the entire copy and it even became a full page ad in the newspaper. My senior editor also told me that the poet Mutsuo Takahashi "praised it"
After the100 articles, Mr. Jiro's entry into the soul begun.
Mr. Jiro who was praised as "the last epicurean of the Showa era" by Akio Nosaka, wrote about Baron Satsuma who lived in the 1920's and 30's in Paris, the grand Epicurean of the century who spent 20 million of private assets on artistic prodigy.
I was charged with the editing or to help, and went together with people involved to the interviews, and photo taking for the image to decorate the front of the magazine.
Baron Satsuma generously supported many artists in paris and used his private assets to construct the Japan Pavilion to spread Japanese culture, and during the war, he risked his life hiding the resistance against the Nazi's
After the war, having spent all of his fortune and returned to Japan, he lived a secluded life together with Hitomi Akitsuki former dancer in Asakusa Rokku, (later to become Toshiko Satsuma after marriage) at her hometown Tokushima, and passed away unknown.
I went with Mr. Jiro to Tokushima and led by his widow, said prayers at Baron Satsuma's grave. Among the relics that Toshiko-san kept carefully, we found photos of Baron and FOUFOU.
I did this work when I was 31, and it was the first time I had done a interview and even visited the grave. There is one other person that I visited the grave of while doing an interview in Seattle and that person was Jimmy Hendrix. There we visited together with Jimmy Hendrix's step mother.
When this special edition was published, I heard that Mr Shimizu who was the chairman of the magazine house at the time wrote the editor in chief Ishikawa (Jiro) who was in Paris for the interview a message of appraisal saying "Well done!"
On a separate topic from this article, at the time the ads seen in mens magazines all expressed their own unique world view and added color to the magazine. I picked up a few to show.
Chiyo Satsuma-san is beautiful〜♪
However, Tsuguharu Fujita is really out there! (lol)
Makes me want to buy round glasses (lol)
He lived in the same era as Le Corbusier 〜
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
