Reiwa

Eiko Time Surgery; or: A Repudiation of the Last Five Years of Japan

by Justin Isis

"Have you sunk into so deep a stupor that you are happy only in your unhappiness? If that is the case, let us fly to countries that are the counterfeits of Death.”
— Baudelaire, “Anywhere Out of the World” (1857)

“Posterity is a form of speculation involving artistic capital. We advise against investing in posterity, given the inevitable persistence of Neo-Passéism. It is better to deliberately go artistically bankrupt in real time: ideas do not exist to be hoarded.”
— Against Neo-Passéism (2020)

Reiwa (2019 – 20μ英1)

The Reiwa Period (令和時代) was declared on May 1st, 2019, following the abdication of Heisei Emperor Akihito and the ascension of his son, Naruhito. 令, the first character, denotes order and auspiciousness, while the second, 和, denotes peace and harmony. The impression, somewhere between “beautiful harmony” and “ordered peace,” reminds us of the sterile calm of an extremely urban cemetery.

Future-Passéism

“Given that Neo-Passéist tendencies are likely to continue into the future, we do not advocate a linear view of aesthetic time, but conceive of it as transpiring in various loops and spirals, flipping between past, present and future. Passéism, Neo-Passéism and the inevitable Future-Passéism also exist in dialogue with each other, and it would not be inaccurate to speak of future trends retroactively influencing the current phase of existence. For example, we can say with reasonable accuracy that the most publicly applauded fictional work of 2070 will be a worthless period piece. Situated in 2020, we preemptively mock its ‘timeliness;’ its ‘relevance’ and ‘resonance’ with its audience. The short-sighted present, used to reviewing only the past, must look forward to the oncoming tide of mediocrity and limitation. It is essential to review the future before it occurs.”
— Against Neo-Passéism (2020)

“It has been noted that the second wave of any movement (literary, artistic, musical) is often the best. This is because the advances of the first wave provide a structuring framework which a new generation of creators can expand and build upon with fresh innovations. The third wave, by contrast, is often tedious and explicitly derivative. Given the positioning of Neo-Decadence in the 2020s, creators operating in 2050 – 2070 will thus be at this sort of ‘third wave’ disadvantage. The prevailingly flaccid, reactive, reverential state of art in 2050 – 2070 requires a pre-emptive dismissal, particularly when it will seek to engage with Neo-Decadence. Most of these Future-Passéists have not yet been born, but this does not make them immune to Neo-Decadent scrutiny in the present. The future has a tendency to regard itself as being capable of integrating the advances of the past while also becoming superior to it morally and artistically. We see no reason to think the 2050 – 2070 period will be any different. Therefore, we intend to demoralise Future-Passéists before they exist.”
— Tokyo Black Lodge Industrial Review, Vol. 1 Issue 3 (2022)

Responsibility for Reiwa

Reiwa was ritually named by Midori Miyazaki, professor of Chiba University of Commerce; Itsuro Terada, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Japan; Shinya Yamanaka, Nobel Prize-winning stem cell scientist and professor at Kyoto University; Mariko Hayashi, screenwriter and novelist; Sadayuki Sakakibara, former chairman of the Japan Business Federation; Kaoru Kamata, trustee and president of Waseda University; Kojiro Shiraishi, president of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association; Ryoichi Ueda, president of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation; and Yoshio Okubo, president of Nippon Television Holdings.

The Reiwa (令和) characters are a quotation from the Manyoshu (万葉集) anthology of classical poetry, chosen by Susumu Nakanishi (中西進), a scholar of Japanese literature. In an attempt to avoid blame, Nakanishi has disclaimed his act, remarking that「元号は中西進という世俗の人間が決めるようなものではなく、天の声で決まるもの。考案者なんているはずがない」, or in other words, “The name of an era is not something decided by a secular person such as Susumu Nakanishi, but by the voice of heaven. There can be no such inventor [of Reiwa].”

We interpret Nakanishi’s statement in the strictly literal sense. A commentator, composed only of quotations, is no such inventor: is not a poet, the voice of heaven, nor an author of the Manyoshu.

We agree with Nakanishi that a secular individual may not name an era, or in other words, a four dimensional unfolding of heaven; a term in the life of the sun; a new licence for heaven’s faddish caprice: the rejuvenescence of vital, trivial novelty which once belonged to the ancients and now resides with us.

We declare that poets must name time and name the gods; these are poets’ proper duties.

Conservative Apocalypse

An apocalyptic mood, the term literally meaning “revelation,” is a good sign that no such final disclosure—or change of any kind—will be forthcoming. Apocalypses were always spells designed to bring about static outcomes, states in which change is no longer possible. The desire to end the world is always a desire to freeze the present, which is why the notion is so attractive to religions, corporations and other reactionary entities.

Apocalypse is business as usual, which means that all dystopian scenarios are eventually folded into the present. Neo-Passéism must end the world so that it can continue to make money; this is the ultimate “sustainability strategy.” If the world inconveniently continued to change, it would be difficult to anticipate the demands of the market. But if the future can no longer be imagined, then the past can be recreated endlessly. The consumers know what to expect, and are rewarded for paying close attention to trivial details.

We have no desire to live in a curated world of constrained nostalgia. This pertains as much to our mental scenery as it does to the trappings of our everyday lives. Neo-Passéist notions limit thought, feeling and sensation, which means true luxury consists in abandoning them and allowing the garden of our faculties to grow as it may, spreading and efflorescing as its nature dictates.

As awareness of underlying chronotopological forces increases, we are forced into the position of considering multiple simultaneous outcomes and overlapping futures. In an infinitely imaginable number of these, the world does not end, and the human race continues indefinitely for millions, billions, etc. of years. While this allows us to dispense with the apocalypse, it leaves us with the problem of Future-Passéists.

Future-Passéists are the descendants of the current professional-managerial class which is currently carrying out the neoliberal corporatisation of art, writing, fashion, and values, and who will come of age in the 2040s, 2050s, etc. Numerous individuals of your acquaintance may be conceiving Future-Passéists as you read this text. Can you simply abort them or otherwise prevent them from coming into being? Although a mass Herod-style action is tempting, it seems clear that most hypothetical futures will contain them.

The Future-Passéists are self-absorbed “content creators,” functioning freely with the financial safety of inherited wealth. As members of the same social class, the shared experiences of their youth have allowed them to quickly arrive at consensus values. Instant, thoughtless, automated access to the archives of Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and other platforms has allowed them to comprehensively survey the previous decades for stylistic trends to revive. They love the various inbred strains of punk, goth, emo, lolita, visual-kei, jirai-kei and the rest. Others have reconstituted the style profiles of more sophisticated brands and designers from the 2010s, 2020s, 2030s. Still others have continued the endless crystallisation of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: retreating, just as their parents did, to the furthest edges of the capitalist time hole and its event horizon of style.

Their psychological profiles contain guilt, hesitation, self-contradiction. Morally terrified of giving offence, they aim to do things “the right way” and are capable of jumping through any hoops required to realise their goals.

Like a blindfolded Christ being led in circles around a vast, ouroboric Via Crucis, the Future-Passéists sincerely and “authentically” suffer the pangs of “identity” as they propagate the milky, moralistic, craft-based formula art of the past and present. They are credulous morons lacking any innate aesthetic sense, bred into a global slave caste and sustained by the sentimental sacraments of the Great Nostalgist, the False Artificer or Revivalist, cut off from the incinerating and ruthless novelty of the true sun and the raptures of the gods derived therefrom.

Nakanishi’s Quotation

The Reiwa designation derives from the fifth book of the Manyoshu. The relevant section in the original kanbun text is as follows:

天平二年正月十三日，萃于帥老大伴旅人之宅，申宴會也。于時，初春令月，氣淑風和。梅披鏡前之粉，蘭薰珮後之香。加以，曙嶺移雲，松掛羅而傾蓋，夕岫結霧，鳥封穀而迷林。庭舞新蝶，空歸故鴈。於是，蓋天坐地，促膝飛觴。忘言一室之裏，開衿煙霞之外。淡然自放，快然自足。若非翰苑，何以攄情。請紀落梅之篇，古今夫何異矣。宜賦園梅，聊成短詠.

Nakanishi’s quotation derives from the passage:

于時，初春令月，氣淑風和。梅披鏡前之粉，蘭薰珮後之香。

Which can be taken as:

“In the time of new spring in a fair month, when the air was clear and a gentle breeze was blowing, the plum blossoms bloomed like white powder on the face of a beautiful woman standing before a mirror, perfumed by the fragrance of orchids.”

It can be seen that Nakanishi has combined the 令 from 令月 with the 和 from 風和 to arrive at his 令和 or Reiwa.

The plum blossom (梅花) poems of the passage in question were composed by officials gathered at the home of Otomo no Tabito (大伴旅人), governor-general of Dazaifu, on the thirteenth day of the first lunar month of the second year of the Tenpyo Period, or 730 A.D.

We wish to draw attention to a later poem of the section:

若非翰苑，何以攄情。請紀落梅之篇，古今夫何異矣。

Which can be taken as:

“Without poetry, how could we express our feelings? In the collections of Chinese writing, there were poems that described the falling plum blossoms. What difference could there be between past and present?”

The passage ends with an injunction to compose further short poems on the plum blossom theme. Whether the 翰苑 mentioned in the passage is taken to refer specifically to Zhang Chujin’s anthology, still held at Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, or collections of Chinese poetry in general, the line of derivation is clear.

We also note that plum trees are not native to Japan, and in the Tenpyo Period they were a comparative novelty, imported from the Tang Dynasty.

In focusing on Nakanishi and his quotation, we do not wish to give the impression that we are being unduly lenient to the authors of the Manyoshu. If we transposed the provincial poet-governors to the present, it is possible to imagine them lip-synching their Sinopoetic karaoke renditions at a drunken after-hours party at a Shidax chain in a suburban station. Their waka (和歌) productions are secondhand renditions, full of false notes and over-projection.

What difference could there be between past and present? None, the Neo-Passéist insists. The classics never go out of style, the Nostalgist and Revivalist add.

Thirteen hundred years later, we find it difficult to take the word “plum” itself seriously, and the 梅 character—a marriage of the radicals for “tree” (木) and “every” (毎), suggesting a sort of arboreal everyman or flowering commoner—fares little better, whether it is pronounced in Chinese or Japanese. The plum in nature is a dull percussive plod, a bungled bass drum bump, thick as medicated cough syrup. Its branches do not so much “gracefully fall” as pantomime themselves to the ground with all the “plumminess” of a performer in a coastal resort comedy show, amusing only to the inebriated. The radially symmetric blossoms of pink and white—their false composure made clownish by the yellowly anemonic splay of little lackadaisical stamens—have grown overfamiliar. We admit that the tree and its fruit were once vital and unsuspected, and it would not do to take them for granted, even in their dotage, but we do not wish to subside in an era snowed over by their stagy senescence.

Whatever their merit as “historical documents,” the superficial imitations of the Dazaifu garden party poets and their remarks on foreign trees become doubly strained by Nakanishi’s inauspicious quotation. Reiwa’s ordered, harmonious, peaceful plum blossoms leave us with a tinselly tang. Particularly when it is remembered that 令 can be taken to imply a command, the reactionary implications become clear.

Contemporary Chinese responses to Reiwa have not been positive, given that a number of ill-omened puns present themselves in the characters. Apart from the tone, 令 is reminiscent of 零, or the number zero. 令和 or Reiwa, with the “wa” meaning peace, can be taken to imply “zero peace,”; a further reading of 零和 implies “zero sum.” Sina Weibo and other Chinese social media sites are full of further dissections of Nakanishi’s unfortunate quotation and the generally derivative nature of the fifth book of the Manyoshu.

What difference could there be between past and present? To take the Manyoshu seriously, it would be necessary to accept it in entirely contemporary terms, or to accept that no serious distance separates it from the poetic concerns of the present. We therefore accept the Chinese criticism of not only Nakanishi’s quotation, but of the superficial imitations of provincial poet-governors in general. We do not wish to suggest, though, that “cultural appropriation” is a negative phenomenon. On the contrary, it is clear that the waka poems of the Manyoshu do not thoroughly appropriate—or integrate—their source material ENOUGH, which would imply adapting or even violently defacing it in service of native poetic needs.

A poet such as Kenji Siratori (ケンジ・シラトリ), though he frequently dispenses with the Japanese language altogether, does not resort to quotation or superficial imitation. The allegedly “posthuman” quality of much of his writing can be taken as merely an unfiltered reaction to an encounter with spontaneous human circumstances (in contrast, the poet-governors with their plum blossoms have placed humanity aside in favour of mere reference). Siratori’s work can be taken as something like an organic rhetorical response to the prevailing conditions of Hokkaido, expressed without any undue formality or intertextual dependence. The poets of the Eiko Period (英弘時代), which this document endeavours to bring into being, have similarly placed imitation aside to encounter their surroundings nakedly, even when beauty seems indistinguishable from terror, and the passing seasons only an industrially-poisoned dance of death.

The Paradox of Aesthetic Time

Part of the anxiety of the Neo-Passéist comes from the sense that more and more is happening, at greater and greater speed, to the extent that it becomes impossible for the journalist-artist and commercial designer to keep up. But is this really the case? Where is this busy and relevant world actually transpiring? Corporate channels and social media platforms are only words and images, agents of “representation.” So what exactly are they representing?

The paradox of aesthetic time is that, even as the Neo-Passéist perceives an acceleration of events, less and less is actually happening in any appreciable sense. Fashion remains frozen in models of the past century, while films are content to repeat the manga and anime fantasies of thirty years earlier. The capitalist time hole has trapped the Neo-Passéist: we might think of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History caught in a temporal whirlpool, turning in masturbatory circles. This is the maelstrom producing so much anxiety in the earnest Neo-Passéist.

It may be asked to what extent the Neo-Passéist occupies aesthetic time at all. The journalistic adherence to “reality” and the genuflection to “authenticity” mean that the Neo-Passéist is less an artist, poet or designer than a transcriber or clerk, constantly struggling to stay relevant and “accurate.” This forces them into a reactive stance. Terrified of making a mistake, the Neo-Passéist desperately struggles to avoid any scandalous “inaccuracy” or “inauthenticity.”

The ultimate aim of Neo-Passéist art is to achieve an uplifting “empathy”—that smeary balm of sloppy, leper colony communism: the comforting contagion of the lowest common denominator. And what better way to achieve this than by replicating or restaging the works of the past, given that their assured existence allows so many opportunities for detailed transcription? The clerk function is here engaged to the fullest. All that needs to be done is to “correct” or “update” existing material in light of current slants and biases.

Although a great fuss is usually made of picking over the flaws of the dead and holding them up to be “problematic,” the truth is that Neo-Passéist art and style is thoroughly indebted to and completely dependent upon the art and style of the past; most major fashion magazines and literary journals are preoccupied with endlessly restaging the funerals and eulogies of the designers and writers of the last century; scarcely a month passes without another exhaustive retrospective. Early deaths and closed bodies of work are immensely appealing to the clerklike Neo-Passéist.

It can be seen that the Neo-Passéist’s anxiety derives from several contradictory and self-defeating drives:

1. A fear of “falling behind” in a “reality” perceived to be fast paced; a desire to be “relevant.”

2. A desire to be “accurate” and “authentic” while avoiding any possible offence.

3. A desire to endlessly revisit and restage the works of the past, prompted by the capitalist time hole and the desire for absolute clerklike “accuracy” achieved through near-plagiaristic fidelity to existing styles.

4. Exaggerated awe and indebtedness to the artists and designers of the past rather than a desire to transcend them. At best, the desire to Bowdlerise or “update” them to be more palatable to current sensibilities.

It is not difficult to see how these four drives and their interactions can produce only deeper and deeper stasis conditions as each new iteration becomes shallower than the last.

Without recourse to the past, the academics, the clerks, the funeral attendants, would be forced into examining their own inaction, their own failure. Did they perhaps not want to produce anything as much as they had hoped or thought? Were they not perhaps more comfortable with domesticity than they had let on? Perhaps they felt things most strongly in their youth, and less so after that. Maybe they were not able to follow through on their early promise. It is always easier to retreat into clerkery. At least everyone can marinate in “empathy” together.

Disasters of Reiwa

Countless political, economic, social, and sartorial disasters have followed in the wake of Reiwa. The Covid-19 pandemic occurred less than a year into the new era, causing nearly 75,000 deaths in Japan. National lockdowns worsened the already poor economy, resulting in recession. The yen is weaker than it has been for nearly forty years.

The 2020 Olympics were delayed by a year, eventually being staged as a sort of “zombie Olympics” in which events were held behind closed doors, with no audience, wasting most of the resources poured into the construction of new stadiums and other venues. The “zombie Olympics” of 2021 did not even reach the usual level of empty spectacle, despite being the most expensive to date, and utterly failed to achieve the aims of the organisers.

On July 8, 2022, former prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated while delivering a campaign speech at an event outside Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara. The total failure of security, and the ease with which the assassin achieved his aim, were a conspicuous national embarrassment.

It would be tedious to record here concrete parochial details of government corruption, political scandals, mismanagement of public funds, and other routine events, except to note that the frequency with which they have been coming to light has exceeded even the most cynical expectations. The architects of Reiwa have demonstrated no concern for the future of the nation and, in fact, no concern for anything beyond their immediate personal enrichment.

The Japanese population continues to decline, and is expected to drop from 125 million in 2022 to 63 million in 2100. The social security system’s long-term sustainability is in considerable doubt.

During the preceding Heisei Period, the nationwide number of deaths by suicide had been declining each year. Since Reiwa’s inception in 2019, this trend has conspicuously reversed, with each succeeding year marking a higher number of deaths than the last; clearly there is no shortage of unenthusiastic consumers desperate to escape this pretentiously-named and incompetently-administered era.

The more garish, internationally recognised disasters and their associated statistics, though indicative of its underlying nature, still fail to give a sense of the era at ground level: its collapsed hopes, its spiritual miserliness, its failure to ban the more appalling class of Angloid tourist. In Reiwa, jirai-kei fashion (地雷系) manufactures boredom in real time. Music decays like a bog-dumped corpse: a progressive softening and liquefaction. The literary Neo-Passéism of Mieko Kawakami (川上未映子) and others is platformed and acclaimed. The predatory entertainment plexus, which tacitly endorsed the abuse of Johnny’s boy idols and the harassment-unto-death of Terrace Housemate Hana Kimura (木村花), expands unimpeded. Chain restaurants multiply as their quality declines, while local businesses are forced out by rising rents. Everywhere low quality drugs proliferate; the unkempt and homeless teenage prostitutes of Kabukicho’s Toyoko Plaza (トー横キッズ) are forced to rely on over-the-counter pain medications with irritatingly low levels of codeine to attain even a mild numbing relief from the insistent awareness of their surroundings.

Contemporary flâneurs exploring the urban centres of Shinsaibashi in Osaka, or Shin-Okubo in Tokyo, are entitled to a certain level of cosmetic surgery in the surrounding populace, to distract from the general gracelessness of GU and UNIQLO-wearing consumers and their retrograde aesthetics. And yet, despite its increased popularity, the art of plastic surgery has declined, in conjunction with the rise of Korean-style clinics disproportionately producing assembly-line looks with an overreliance on bridge-straightening rhinoplasties and jawline contouring: an endless output of pinched, angular, V-shaped faces, pumped full of excessive dermal fillers.

The A Clinic chain, whose Shinjuku branch has obsequiously and disgustingly chosen to follow us on Instagram despite our constant public criticism of its “professional” work, is to be censured for its poor standard of cosmetic dermatology, performed by Director Katagiri and his barely competent technicians; we note particularly their dependence on the thread lift technique, in which dissolving fibres are inserted subcutaneously from the temples, then pulled up to lift the skin. In the less than skilled hands of Director Katagiri and his technicians, this attempt at facial slimming and the flattening of nasolabial folds is instead liable to produce excessive tightening and even something like intermittent facial paralysis…the predictable frozen narrowness of expression so commonly visible in the lineaments of recent Ginza and Kabukicho hostesses.

As for Omotesando’s Elm Clinic, it would be a gross understatement to say that Dr. Shirozu has not succeeded in raising the standard of calf botox injections for lower leg slimming. Ginza’s BB Clinic may be the most derivative of them all, but a list of its offences would be beyond the scope of our present survey.

The Hallyu or K-wave, besides contributing to the homogenisation of surgical procedures, has done little to improve fashion, and has produced, in the likes of such idol groups as NIZIU, Ballistik Boyz from Exile Tribe, and Hinatazaka46, nothing but superficial musical imitations and directly copied dance moves. The resulting stylistic blandness, seeping down to the streets, has created disconcerting sights around stations such as Ikebukuro and Takadanobaba. The contemporary flâneur, hoping to behold a novel development of native stylistic tendencies, instead encounters yet another imitator of Korean style with pale makeup and straight black hair; monotones and pastels are often present; the nasal bridge surgery does little to inspire interest. The Confucian-Christian-Capitalist cleanliness of the South Korean puppet state—which in its native context inflicts military virginity on teenagers who would otherwise be healthy, slovenly and often gravid examples of the benign ethnonationalism that is indistinguishable from a drunken old man at a rural festival urinating into a wheat field, or the pawing hands of a filthy toddler contaminating merchandise at a local auction—sterilises the subcultural productivity of the Heisei Period and its Galápagosization of avant-stylistics.

In Reiwa, UNIQLO expands its market share, reaching 14.2% in 2023 and posting sales of 2.77 trillion yen. The overrated fleece jackets and generic outerwear options have become ubiquitous. Although a handful of other obvious candidates come to mind, it would be difficult to think of a billionaire more pleased with himself for his own aesthetic and ethical depredations than UNIQLO founder Tadashi Yanai (柳井正) and his fast fashion company. As the richest Japanese citizen currently living, we feel that Yanai has unavoidably exposed himself to comment: we thus reiterate that his company is sweatshop-dependent FAST FASHION of the most unsound kind; that its “normcore” image and market dominance have contributed to the decline of grassroots creativity and organic subcultural trends; and that its cheap, disposable clothing, churned out at scale using unsustainable materials and production processes while violating local labour laws—particularly evident in the case of Uyghur workers in China’s Xinjiang province—is not just fundamentally exploitative, but vastly ugly and boring.

Although Yanai dishonestly discounts the fast fashion label, his protestations lack even the charm of American cigarette company executives disclaiming knowledge of carcinogenic effects. While countless honest smokers continue with full knowledge of the potential damage to their health, many consumers in Japan and abroad are still under the naive impression that UNIQLO is harmless in any sense.

It is usually difficult to discern these Reiwa ghost units as their reckless anonymity has a way of blending them into their surroundings so that they become little more than cheap human wallpaper. It takes a moment for the eyes to adjust and the UNIQLO-wearing creatures to rise resistantly into view: one is then reminded of pale woodlice larvae and other inconsequential things scurrying to avoid scrutiny. The naive enthusiasm for UNIQLO is one of the most laughable convulsions to afflict the allegedly civilised nations in recent years, symptomatic of the political and economic disasters of Reiwa. A vigorous populace would see it at once for what it is; as it stands, the popularity of UNIQLO is an opportunistic infection taking advantage of an already-weakened spiritual immune system.

“I just want to wear something cheap and comfortable. Simple is best!” the spiritually-impoverished consumer insists. But UNIQLO is not comfortable. The itchiness of their garments has become infamous. Now, whether comfort or even quality should be the prime motive of fashion is questionable, but as it stands, UNIQLO fails even on this front: their featureless sweaters and the associated GU jeans are utter refuse garments, easily stained, fraying, worthless.

Stylistically, UNIQLO’s corporate “creative department” is one of the prime Neo-Passéist concept factories of contemporary Japan: a machine regurgitating secondhand images for the terminally unimaginative, mining “content creators” for endless “collaborations” to produce drab pop cultural cerements. In this antiquated childhood without children, Ghibli and Disney characters alike preside over ageing consumers dressed in T-shirts printed with the 20th century dregs of the UNIQLO image-repertoire: Charlie Brown and Snoopy; the Rolling Stones logo; Andy Warhol’s banana; insipid quotes from elderly, Jay Rubin-translated Japanese novelists incapable of winning even the exponentially-depreciating Nobel Prize; anime characters of the kind more often seen promoting shaving razors, pachinko parlours, and purposeless plastic trinkets; dross beyond dross.

Seeking refuge from nightmares, you awaken from a dream of death into a dream of death, the cemetery harmony of an age of prudence.

Eiko (20μ英1 – 20μ英32)

“But while the universe as a whole, if indeed there is a whole universe, tends to run down, there are local enclaves whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for fashion to improve. Life finds its home in some of these enclaves. It is with this point of view at its core that the new science of time surgery began its development.”
— Norbert Wiener, Principia Chronotopologica (19μĀ17)

“Ageing eras have a tendency towards looseness, causing them to rattle around and agitate their surrounding continua. This characteristic ‘era rattle’ is usually felt as an ambient psychic dissatisfaction or hypersensitivity to the usual progression, with subjects experiencing either protracted sensations of ‘stagnation,’ or else a desire to re-engage with ephemera from the liminal period before the era achieved aesthetic coherence. The principal chronochirurgical activity consists in accelerating this loosening in preparation for the eventual extraction and replacement implantation. A chronochirurgeon learns their trade through extemporaneous xenopoetry, pataphorical neologomancy, and the deliberate juxtaposition of anachronisms. The sartorial field provides an obvious focal point.”
— Intransitionalist Technics in Theory and Practice (19μĀ94)

Reiwa was chosen from among several other proposed era names. Of these, few are worth mentioning; candidates such as Banna (万和, or “Encompassing Peace/Harmony”) and Banpo (万保, or “Encompassing Safety”) have the same reactionary ring as Reiwa (which itself could more accurately be interpreted as “Managed Decline.”)

The candidate we are concerned with here is Eiko (英弘)—the only one whose official, intended pronunciation and reading have been leaked. The characters derive from the preface of the Kojiki (古事記), or “Records of Ancient Matters,” usually considered the oldest extant Japanese literary work. It is worth noting here that the Kojiki is a religious text, principally a theogony, describing the descent of the gods and the formation of the Japanese islands. The relevant passage describes the providence of the Emperor Tenmu:

道軼軒后、德跨周王、握乾符而摠六合、得天統而包八荒、乘二氣之正、齊五行之序、設神理以奬俗、敷英風以弘國。

The phrase in question can be taken as:

“And disseminating superior divine understanding, he magnified the extent of our lands.”

The first character, 英, is a commonly used one with multiple meanings, all of them positive: “outstanding,” “glorious,” and “flowering” (it is used, for example, in 英語, the term for the English language, and 英霊, the spirits of the heroic dead who sacrificed themselves for the nation). The second character, 弘, denotes “enlarge,” “expand,” “wide,” and “vast.” When combined, the impression created is an audacious contrast to the geriatric connotations of the other candidates: Eiko means “vast glory.”

This era is our alternative to the one of controlled peace, of managed decline. Our objective is to banish Reiwa and achieve Eiko.

Lest we be accused of encouraging would-be assassins and/or inciting domestic terrorism, violent political revolution, or any other obvious means of inducing imperial succession, we stress that our methods of entry to Eiko do not require these lines of action. But neither should we be accused of simply seeking to “rename” the current era. Instead, we state clearly that Reiwa and Eiko occur, for the most part, “at the same time,” yet do not overlap. They are coterminous but not contiguous.

It may be asked how Reiwa Emperor Naruhito and Eiko Emperor Naruhito can be the same person. The obvious point of comparison here is the alternation of night and day on Earth. However tempting it may be to ascribe this phenomenon to changes in the sun itself, it is in fact the case that the same sun either illuminates our surroundings or does not, depending on our location—with extreme northern regions experiencing extended periods without sunrise or sunset (which can be likened to sustained eras). Similar to the rotation of the Earth, our own personal “motions” of cause and effect take us from Reiwa to Eiko (although these “motions” must not be thought of as strictly physical). None of our personal experience since 2019 makes sense in light of Reiwa, but if events from 2019 to the present are considered in light of Eiko, their underlying logic becomes clear.

The initial rites for perceiving Eiko will not be described in detail here and are to some extent arbitrary. A deliberate period of homelessness, or else a peripatetic existence—in which constant daily uncertainty sharpens awareness—would not go amiss. Standard methods of trespass and entry to certain shrines, parks, rooftops and other “auspicious” sites will also yield insight. Enough information has already been provided here for the aspirant to determine at least five or six well-known, obviously relevant sites within the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area.

When withdrawing to the inner mansions, which are only the outer mansions in compressed form—the architecture of the subtle planes—it becomes possible to perceive what has been termed the causal transept, a series of causes and effects unfolding transversely to consensus experience. These transepts or orthogonal elaborations, while often being finite in individual duration, are infinite in number—the term transfinite comes to mind—and knowledge of them has been explored through media existing at the fringes of “real time” (always an imprecise phrase). The Eiko Period lies along one such transept, which we term the 英-transept. In technical terms, the period can be expressed as μ英1 – μ英32. We emphasise again that not all occurrences of Reiwa and Eiko are the same, even though they occupy the same period of “real time”; for example, when Emperor Naruhito expires in 20μ英32 (Eiko 32), this is not the same year as 2050, even if the calendar would seem to say otherwise.

We will indulge here in a further technical digression, which may aid the aspirant if studied carefully. The transepts and their “μ-lines” should not be considered too rigidly in the sense of the architectural metaphors from which they derive, nor in the sense of an “arrow of time” or any other image of temporal extension. This would give the erroneous sense of a “progression,” various “alternate timelines” and other popular, amusing, yet basically misleading conceptions.

The reality is closer to a timeless refashioning, calling to mind a small girl who has become lost in a vast adult wardrobe and decides to assemble a different outfit every few minutes. If we consider the girl to be immortal and the “minutes” to be, from our perspective, the veritable eternity of the life of the sun (considered at all levels, from the grossly material to the spiritually exalted), we will have some understanding of the situation. In its tireless, functionally deathless way, the sun exhausts its interest in some possibilities and immediately plunges with excitement into others; these may seem to us to be dynastic—or even geological—eras, yet they are only momentary enthusiasms, storms of interest, impossible to properly divide; the idea of distinct “eras” is a strained metaphor at best. There is only one sun, which, with the aid of the consultants it has created for this office, embraces continuous change.

Our first glimpses of the 英-transept came mostly in dreams and meditations. The communal notebook recording them runs to over a hundred pages. Several examples include:

• A university cafeteria. The girl with acne scars and steep impossible boots.

• Basement store, strategy guides in boxes at the back. Colourful, unusual consoles wrapped in plastic. Posters of strange (music) idols cover the walls.

• Old man smoking Golden Bat cigarettes. Insects swarm around the dull light of the vending machine.

• Reunited with M: vast glory. In karaoke, time ends. Eternal life belongs to the living.

• 幽玄, signature of the fox whores and grave forests: trees thick with hungry ghosts. At play in the fields of evil, finally free. Dusk.

• Odaiba waterfront. Enormous statues of cultural heroes blotting out the skyline.

• Club Atom in Dogenzaka. Unknown year. White powder in the bathroom.

• Shibuya 109. An upper floor, with only shop staff present. Everything they wear is unrecognisable, and their expressions are remote.

• Autumn rain on the bridge across the pond in Inokashira Park.

• Smoke from cheap Hope cigarettes fills the arcade. You hammer buttons on the machines as you lose again and again to the teenagers. Impossible to remember what floor you are on now. Endless escalators visible to the side, descending forever. Peace.

Sometimes—though rarely, at first—an extended sequence would present itself, and we would attempt to retrieve as much detail from it as possible upon returning to our usual states of mind. When unfamiliar objects appeared in the background, as they often did, we would force ourselves to determine what they most likely were and what chain of events had led to their existence. By “reverse-engineering” our memories in this way and taking a nearly archaeological approach to their reconstruction, we were able to make sense of the era.

It should be noted that real progress did not come until our daily solar adorations achieved routine consistency. While focusing on solar-vaginal energy, we received impressions of the contours of the transept, as if it were the silhouette of a beautiful woman draped across the urban landscape at dawn, with much concealed, but given to gentle stirrings and shimmerings that conveyed a sense of its true, full figure. After sleeping on rooftops in Shinjuku and Kamiyama-cho, we would rise before dawn and, greeting the pink light on the horizon, intone:

Chaos of the sun,
Vast glory of the morn;
Reiwa is receding,
Eiko is born.

Reiwa Revival

“Reiwa can be characterised as a reduction in hue, shape, and form. Heisei Era maximalism has been violently hewed into a feeble, inelegant minimalism. Just as the iPhone annihilated the brightly-coloured non-rectangular cell phones of the early digital era (thus globally instating a Californian discourse of digital consumption and aesthetics), so too has the K-wave contributed to a truncation of Japanese dimensions of expression. Ghastly pastels hang off quiet patterns and boring checks, uninspired bags, post-Instagram neurosis smoothed over with TikTok makeup trends. Silhouettes borrow from Chanel and Louis, but only to suggest a vertical status and to embrace the aesthetic of the mistress. These tragic ensembles shambling down Dogenzaka seem overly precise yet desperately self-conscious. All victims of refinement culture. Whatever the Gyaru or V-kei represented has been chunked off in the flax-thresher. The fibres glitter in the sun but all the nutrition is gone.”
— Will Pelletier, “Is Reiwa the Worst-Dressed Era?” (2024)

In the mundane course of events following 2019 and eventually arriving, after many years of tedium, at Reiwa’s end, it is inevitable that those who come of age during the era will continue to age after it concludes. This will have the unfortunate effect of creating “Reiwa Nostalgia” and, eventually, a “Reiwa Revival.” Those individuals who will take an active role in conceiving and propagating this resurrection of Reiwa trends and influences are those we term Future-Passéists.

The Japanese Future-Passéists and those who follow them are excited to discover “vintage” brands like A Bathing Ape (BAPE) and UNIQLO, and the various Vivienne Westwood derivations of Ura-Harajuku. These revivalists imagine Reiwa inaccurately: a few crucial events and styles are stitched together, while entire moods and subperiods are collapsed into each other. The resulting “nostalgia cosplay” has a threadbare quality, yet the Future-Passéists care as little for accuracy as they do for innovation.

“These comfortable, hip clothes from the first few decades of the 21st century appeal to my need to not shallowly focus too much on fashion,” they think. “As I get older, sheer wearability becomes more important. My daily life is rather repetitive and it’s hard for me to recall those things I used to care about such as camping outside the cave of the sun and burying my mouth between the sleeping sun’s legs. I’ve gotten in touch with some old friends from high school recently and I no longer feel the need to send erotic images of myself to vulnerable-looking constellations as I stopped following that stellar scene with all its violent reconfigurations and illuminated murder. I haven’t gotten around to the katabasis although I guess I can do that when I reach retirement age. I probably won’t bother with fulfilling the Ancestral Task, but maybe my family will be able to afford a small vacation next year. I spend a lot of time watching amusing short-form video content.”

Participating in the Reiwa Revival is a bit like submerging your face in the crushed wet trash at the bottom of a garbage bin, soiling your senses with filthy juice, the obscene runoff of mulched and melting refuse: a stinking distillate of waste compressed to a poison crystal of the stylistic consciousness; a sort of misfolding, like a prion: the inorganic reproduction of toxic error.

We are not interested in experiencing the Reiwa Revival of the mid-21st century. It is necessary to sidestep it and remain in Eiko instead.

To Enter Eiko

“Time grafts are placed along the Mu lines (無/μ) of the desired transept. The implanted chronotopological premises do not interfere with the linearity of the affected era, but expand orthogonally, following their own lines of development. Close packing of grafts in sequence can be used to produce a ‘moment to moment alterity’ effect of causal elaboration. In experiential terms, this has been likened to a series of linked poems in which a single word or character is repeated, sometimes functioning as the opening term, then shifting position to adjectivally pad a newly introduced figure, then eventually sounding a valedictory note. Fresh figures introduced in each poem then follow their own courses of displacement and digression.”
— Intransitionalist Technics in Theory and Practice (19μĀ94)

1. You, the operator, must assemble the required materials yourself and undertake all necessary preparations. You will need at least one co-operator, preferably a trusted confidant/confidante who understands the import of the operation. Recourse to prostitutes, なんでも屋-style hired help, etc. has been reported, but is not advised.

2. Secure a ritual space and purify it appropriately. Prepare there a circle and a triangle of art.

3. Acquire a writing brush (this can be bought from Tokyu Hands or even Don Quijote/ドンキ), several slips of paper used for making 紙札 (it is possible to substitute a supply of Chinese “amulet paper” of the kind used for inscribing 符籙; we suggest consulting with Taoist practitioners in the Yokohama-Chukagai area if pursuing this course), and two 300 ml Ozeki OneCup sake jars (these must be bought from the Daily Yamazaki or MiniStop convenience stores, NOT Lawson, 7/11, or any other convenience store brand).

4. Catch and kill a rat in Shibuya. Setting a ネズミ捕り trap of any kind in an obscure alley in Dogenzaka is likely the easiest method.

5. Mix cinnabar and rooster blood to produce a reddish ink, or acquire a prepared equivalent (we suggest ordering online from China). If at a total loss, any sort of ink containing an animal blood product will do. Inscribe Nakanishi’s Reiwa quotation on a piece of amulet paper. The quotation, once more, is:

于時，初春令月，氣淑風和。梅披鏡前之粉，蘭薰珮後之香。

Having done this, affix the amulet paper to the dead rat. Place it within the triangle of art.

6. Compose an original xenopoem containing the characters for Eiko. These, again, are 英 and 弘. Ideally it should express your aspirations for life, light and freedom in the new era. For those with little knowledge of Chinese and Japanese poetry, we point out that large sections of the Kojiki itself are tortured exercises in “literary Chinese,” executed seemingly to demonstrate courtly rhetorical skill for its own sake, and that the work is full of countless obscure expressions and contorted phrasings. And, as we have said, the Manyoshu is a tissue of surface level imitations. Given the nature of Eiko, a period of freedom and fresh experimentation, you are under no obligation to conform to standard grammatical and poetic conventions. We also encourage you to make full use of machine translation services, multilingual friends, etc.

7. Perform a standard banishing. The Western LBRP/Star Ruby forms are acceptable, as well as the rites of the Maoshan sect, or Shinto/Onmyodo-style purification-exorcisms.

8. Extract a portion of your blood and use it to inscribe your poem on the nude body of the co-operator. The co-operator should then enter the circle and await your entry.

9. Enter the circle. From the moment you step inside, begin reciting your Eiko poem out loud and continue this recitation for the remainder of the operation. Commence relations with the co-operator. While building towards climax, keep your gaze focused on the poem text inscribed on the co-operator’s body. At the moment of climax, your focus should be entirely on the text of the poem.

10. Drink the entirety of one 300 ml Ozeki OneCup. Give the other to the co-operator.

11. Conclude with silent prayer to the sun.

12. Leave the ritual space and go outside. You will now be in Eiko and not Reiwa, and will, to an extent, be invisible to inhabitants of Reiwa. Correspondingly, other inhabitants of Eiko will recognize you at once.

Eiko Fashion

“Time and space died a long time ago, leaving behind fossilised remains ripe for excavation and creative reassembly. Fashion strata of the past must yield fanciful chimaeras, with entire time periods sampled in light of each other, suggesting new relationships appropriate to our novel sensibilities (if necessary, grist garments may be renamed, the better to remove their tired cultural baggage. Clothes, like words, are filthy with associative detritus: to reinstate spontaneity demands some surgical measure of sartorial neologism). The outline of an Edwardian golfing costume may find itself accented with a head scarf and assorted plastic raver accessories, while a bridal train heavy with beads may be repurposed for use on the subway. Kimono-hijab hybrids in bright primary colours may be printed with the texts of entire poems and stories. A humble soutane, recolored a poisonous cobalt yellow and ornamented with metallic spikes and pauldrons, would present appropriate morning wear for a young woman heading to work, suggesting a faithful, predatory centipede lured by the light of the sun rising through polluted clouds; the evocations of youthful vigour, plasmic haze and indescribably beautiful envenomed fangs would all create a unified impression in the mind of an admiring observer.”
— Neo-Decadent Manifesto of Women’s Fashion (2019)

“A typical strategy: recuperation of speculative subcultures. The 1960s Tiki-Mod craze of Outer Mongolia, though unknown to our universe, provides us with the imaginative materials needed to extract garments from Ulaanbaatar death boys with rum mugs, volcano gloves and synthetic suede boots. Now rotate this trend through the Prussian military culture of the 1870s and a new crispness will emerge: the desperate revelry of imminent death, presided over by dapper, drunken tribal gods of the steppe. We can envision a Europe depopulated by the Black Death not in the Middle Ages, but in the 1970s; the tide of Islamic invaders would raid empty discotheques for sequined jumpsuits and flares. As the clothes produced become further estranged from their originating conceits, fashion will be cleansed, and real style will make itself known.”
— Neo-Decadent Manifesto of Men’s Fashion (2020)

"We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of adults wearing UNIQLO and H&M...in this, our main obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system...it is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been dressed appropriately in public. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having dressed correctly for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us. This is no defeatism...the declaration of our own nature and the attempt to build up an enclave of the correctly-dressed in the face of society’s overwhelming tendency to fast fashion is an insolence against the corporations and the iron necessity that they impose. Here lies tragedy, but here lies glory too. All this represents the manner in which I believe I have been able to add something positive to the pessimism of the Y2K revivalists. I have not replaced the gloom of existence by a philosophy which is optimistic in any Pollyanna sense, but...with a positive attitude toward mocking the wearers of fast fashion and embracing alternative styles while drinking Ozeki OneCups from Daily Yamazaki.”
— Norbert Wiener, Principia Chronotopologica (19μĀ17)

In Eiko, pockets of culture that were left out in the countryside to rot at the end of the Heisei Period have made their way back to the city centres, and are undergoing new periods of growth and mutation (it should be remembered that the Heisei that leads to Eiko is not strictly the same as the one that leads to Reiwa; signs are present of earlier points of divergence).

Due to advanced quarantine procedures, Covid-19 never made an impact beyond the first few months. Lockdowns and the era of “self-restraint” did not take place, and the economy was largely unaffected. The yen is strong.

Japanese mobile providers like Docomo and Softbank have kept pace with Apple and Samsung, developing their own netphones (ネトケイー), which are more widely used than their competitors’ smartphones, even as they retain compatible features and comparable processing power. In appearance, netphones resemble the chunky plastic clamshell phones of the garakei (ガラケー) period; bright colours and transparent plastic are common. Netphone design is much more baroque than the streamlined surfaces of overseas models.

Mixi, the indigenous Japanese social media service from the MySpace era, outcompetes Instagram. Japanese users are disinclined to compare themselves to the influencers of the Anglosphere or anywhere else. Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画) is more widely viewed than YouTube.

Hip-hop has chosen to focus on sophisticated Japanese lyricism rather than accept any influence from Atlanta trap or other foreign scenes. Rappers wear elaborate tailored suits more often than streetwear.

Esoteric Shintoism and Onmyodo have undergone a period of intense popularity, spurred by manga and anime works on the theme; these are Miko no Jijo (巫女の事情), about the adventures of a shrine maiden, and a work whose name we have not yet been able to obtain but which concerns the Heian Period court astrologer and magician Abe no Seimei (安倍晴明). Western-style marriage ceremonies with ersatz Christian iconography have almost entirely vanished; young couples look forward to their Shinto-style weddings.

Daily Yamazaki and MiniStop are the most popular convenience stores, known respectively for their excellent bakery section and excellent dessert options.

The proliferation of subcultural scenes has, in the first year or two of Eiko, exceeded the entire first decade of Reiwa. Pressing in on central Tokyo from the outskirts of Chiba and Saitama are a group of young men who have combined the influences of オラオラ系 and business casual: muscular and well-fed teenagers in black displaying a “young debt collector” look, with skinny ties, rolled-up dress shirt sleeves and tightly-cropped haircuts.

The trend towards exclusively white clothing and makeup seems to be an extension of the 白塗り look pioneered by the artist known as Minori. While Minori is an obvious singularity, the 白爆弾 or “White Bomb” style is associated with a younger crowd whose look is cleaner, closer to an angular Futurist minimalism, albeit one bearing traces of its decadent, gothic past. The trend is associated with a violent form of music similar to what in Reiwa is called hyperpop (or perhaps electropop taken to extremes), relying on aural glitching and frequent breakdowns. Scene-specific cafes and club rooms have sprung up with all-white decor and furnishings, and groups of White Bomb girls and boys can be seen outside major stations. They seem uninterested in anyone who is not part of their circle, and will ignore or coldly refuse photo requests.

Around Omotesando we have observed groups of “Art Nouveau Gyaru” who appear to have been designed by Arthur Rackham: intricate, flowing dresses; lightly tanned skin; chestnut-coloured hair with elaborate jewelled headbands and complex, braided extensions. Their ensembles convey something Californian or Hawaiian, very New Age, as if certain intersections of 1970s fashion had combined with 1920s inspirations; we imagine they all have their own Tarot decks.

Coordinated pair looks have reached elaborate extremes, with couples wearing clothes that connect to each other through a system of latches, leashes, laces and Velcro straps; they can be seen strolling down Takeshita Street thus conjoined, moving at a deliberately slow pace, showing off their physical and emotional connections to admiring observers.

All these phenomena are only shallow waves on the shores of Eiko, and we estimate them to occur within the first few years of the era. What the depths contain remains to be explored.

A Midsummer Evening in Eiko

You are removed, for now, from the vast deaths of the machine people and their quotations and quotation machines.

The impression is of a festival in the environs of a mid-tier station deep in Saitama. Mosquitoes hover above the railway tracks, while young couples with children linger in the parking lots, dragging folding chairs and picnic gear from car trunks.

A loose ring of food stalls encircles the shallow valley of the park. Paper lanterns are visible everywhere, though it is not quite dark enough yet to light them. The park itself is crowded but not excessively so; there is enough room to wander, pleasantly drunk, or to lay down with your back flat on the grass, staring at the sky.

You notice a girl with dreadlocks reading Takamoto’s 19th century treatise The Aesthetic of Chogen (蝶玄美学) while eating a chocolate-covered banana; it would appear to be Rumi Kimura (木村瑠美), the Neo-Decadent hairdresser from Tachikawa.

It is still light now, but the sun is beginning to set. Later, there will be fireworks in the night sky.

You look up and recognize an artist you remember seeing perform a set at a small club in Koenji; they are androgynous, ambiguous, almost buried beneath an oversized silver yukata/sari hybrid trailing a silk train. You think of making eye contact or even greeting them, but there is no pressing need. Everything will happen in its proper time.

You become aware that countless luminaries of obscurity are gathered here, many of them no doubt aware of each other’s presence, but disinclined, for now, to attempt anything like a self-conscious reunion. These outlying festivals have a habit of gathering the right people, even if nothing much comes of it. Later, there will be photos and diary updates on Mixi, but now scarcely a netphone is visible; most people are drinking beers and highballs as they sit on the grass, waiting for their friends and partners to return with yakitori and fried squid from the stalls.

As the sun sinks to the horizon, its brilliance increases. A steady warmth spreads through the grass.

There is only one sun, you recall, one star in the company of stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return. Our Lord who rules in peace, prince of the shining sky, above the prospering palace…summer comes and goes, dispatched by an immemorial heaven, and like the seasons, may your rounds continue forever.

The swift feet of the sun pad softly on damp moss…across the parking lots of Eiko…in the vast dusk green of a station deep in Saitama.

art by Aaron Lange