The new Japanese book Karesen (AKA "Do You like Ojisan?") is the most fucked up shit I have seen in a long time. Tucked inside 141 pages is a wrinkle inducing celebration of ojisan culture of the "kindly old uncle" variety for the weird women, presumably of the fujoshi stripe, who can't get enough of the lonely old duffers.
I guess this is next logical step after the "Suit Danshi" and "Megane Danshi" craze, where photobooks were sold containing nothing but older men wearing suits and jackets radiating irresistible "intelligent" and "elite" vibes. But this book goes deeper by nearly doubling the age of the men involved profiling their lives like "hot" Ojisan like jazz pianist Kenji Tsuchiya (above)
...and running a helpful guide to easy-to-chew Ojisan food.
And if you, the savage foreigner need some help in clarifying just what exactly a smokin' hot ojisan is, the book concludes with a guide to "Ojisan of the World" and includes super-deformed tumbnails of Liam Neeson, Willem Defoe, and dreamy Morgan Freeman!
Nothing better in a minority-ignoring culture to utterly fetishize the one group who has always and will always hold all the power.
Posted by: marxy | May 21, 2008 at 09:38 PM
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, was MARXY!
Posted by: Patrick Macias | May 22, 2008 at 12:43 AM
Holy crap, it's A Gold Digger's Field Guide to Sugar Daddies.
I'm guessing that the upper leftmost image in the last photo is Tommy Lee Jones?
Posted by: THE THIRD RAIL!!! | May 22, 2008 at 03:46 PM
I guess there *is* a Country for Old Men after all!
Posted by: Karga | May 23, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Now, if they come out with a book of sumo oyakata in their dark blue zip jackets, I'm so there. (Yes, we all have our hot tears of shame.)
Posted by: Debbie-chan | May 26, 2008 at 02:15 PM
Let's be honest with ourselves; we've all had thoughts about Lesley Neilson at one point or another.
Huh? You said Liam Neeson? Well nevermind then.
Posted by: anonymous | May 26, 2008 at 11:36 PM
I, a single female in my 30s, visited Japan for the first time recently. I have never had the hots for older men, in general, and I was fully expecting to find older Japanese men unattractive and dislikeable (conservative, lacking in wit, sexist, fill-in-the-stereotype).
I was proven wrong. My interactions with older Japanese men were pleasant, sometimes exeedingly so. I was expecting to want to punch out a dinosaur or two (almost spoiling for a fight, you could say) but, instead, I was felled by that "karesen" charisma.
Weird, isn't it, how an older, intelligent, accomplished person can be so damn sexy?
The most disgusting male I had to deal with in Japan was a "career gaijin Engrish teacher". I'm pretty sure he'd find the idea of women appreciating "karesen" to be the "most fucked up shit ever" as well.
Posted by: rootabegarootabega | December 20, 2009 at 12:27 AM