The popular Enka singer passed away in 2023 New Century Records released Wasurenaide — meaning “Don’t forget me” — a collection of songs by the late Enka artist Aki Yashiro Yet rather than just focusing on her music including popular tracks such as “Funauta” and “Ame no Bojo,” the Kagoshima-based company decided to try to boost sales by including two fully nude photographs of the singer when she was in her mid-20s The pictures were shot by an individual she was living with at the time all female artists will work in fear of the possibility of their dignity being trampled upon after their death.”  President Hiroshi Hayakawa said the company bought the master recording rights to several of Yashiro’s songs along with her public and private photographs around a quarter of a century ago. “There is also a purchase agreement,” he said “It’s just business.”  in 1950 and took her stage name from her hometown. After working as a bus tour guide she eventually fulfilled her dream of becoming a singer “Namida Goi,” was released two years later She was the first female Enka singer to have seven top 10 singles on the main Oricon chart Yashiro died in 2023 at the age of 73.   While addressing rising demand for animal protein in the country Yuki Yashiro is also looking beyond to a vision of his own: a world free from poverty Yuki Yashiro: Joined Mitsui after graduating in 2011 Handled investment and management of gas and oil assets in Thailand After acquiring experience as an overseas trainee in Dubai was put in charge of developing new business in the US shale gas area he went to France to study French for one year; he was then charged with assessing a possible investment in Moroccan poultry integrator Zalar Holding S.A he transferred to the Food Business Unit after his return to Japan in 2019 After several years learning the poultry farming business at Mitsui subsidiary Prifoods He is currently focused on growing the business through the Japanese culture of continuous improvement I work in the poultry-production business in Morocco I’ve been here for just over two-and-a-half years now There are worries about a future possible “protein crisis,” when the supply of animal protein is no longer able to keep up with the rapid increase of the human population Poultry production represents one of the solutions to that problem Low environmental impact and fewer religious restrictions are what make chicken special Given that Muslims are forbidden from eating pork and Hindus from eating beef Zalar is the biggest integrated poultry producer in the country; Mitsui has a stake in it Zalar does everything from grain trading and making animal feed to hatchery Zalar itself is a holding company with around 10 subsidiaries spread across its five businesses I spend a lot of my time on the road visiting the company’s different facilities I look for places where there is room for improvement and share the data on animal-feed production slaughtering and processing with my counterparts in Japan I also scour Mitsui’s network to find new partners who can collaborate with Zalar on developing solutions I act as a sort of hub for Mitsui’s efforts to help upgrade every aspect of the business What was my hardest and what was my happiest experience in this job I think my answer to both questions is probably the same The hardest and happiest thing for me is something I’m working on right now I was keen to create and market a new frozen product—Japanese-style fried chicken My aim was to make a high value-added product that other companies in Morocco couldn’t copy Getting there has been anything but straightforward Since Zalar doesn’t have its own frozen-food production equipment the first thing I had to do was to find a partner when I brought up karaage with potential partners Finding someone to work with us was a challenge both because the product itself was unfamiliar and because the firms we approached were worried about possible contamination of their production facilities with foreign material The approach I took was to start off with something familiar—frozen chicken nuggets—and then take it from there Now you may think there’s not much difference between chicken nuggets and karaage chicken ground-up chicken meat and are all the same shape Karaage is chopped pieces of meat of all different shapes and sizes It was important for me to respect their perspective while also slowly earning their trust and understanding The route I took to making karaage was slightly roundabout I can’t tell you how happy I felt when my counterparts who had all been rather skeptical at the start of the project tasted the prototype karaage and declared it to be delicious We’re now in the very final stages of commercialization I took a year off to work at a Nairobi orphanage where I taught math and looked after the kids I’d always dreamed of working for the UN; then in junior high I read a book which really inspired me with the idea of a poverty-free world I wanted to see if the idea was feasible and what I personally could do to make a contribution I had two life-changing experiences during my stay The first was to discover that not even the brightest and best-qualified young people in Kenya could find “real” jobs I was friends with quite a few people from the country’s top universities it was difficult for them to find the kind of jobs they wanted and they ended up choosing to work for international NGOs more through a process of elimination than anything else there weren’t many avenues for them to put their skills and knowledge to use for the benefit of their country That’s why there’s a 'brain drain' in Kenya My takeaway was that aid alone isn’t good enough; you’ve got to create real businesses that create jobs My second life-changing experience was getting mugged this gang of six or seven kids came up behind me and attacked me feeling quite pleased with myself about what I was supposedly “doing for Kenya,” and now the country seemed to have rebuffed me It felt like a repudiation of everything I was thinking and trying to do The fact that the kids who mugged me were my age only made the shock worse But as time passed and I calmed down a little I started asking myself whether those kids and I were so different after all I might well have done the same thing myself people are forced to make hard choices just to stay alive could do to give kids like the ones who mugged me more life choices launching a business with them and creating jobs That was the thinking that led me to join Mitsui I think my university self would be proud to see that I’m now being of some practical use to Moroccan society as a member of the Zalar team my first goal is to make the karaage project a success and I can’t wait to see Japanese fried chicken on the store shelves we are hoping to start exporting chicken to West Africa Geographical proximity to all these places is one of Morocco’s advantages When it comes to building up export markets Mitsui’s network should play a significant role I have my own goals: one is to create employment opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa via the poultry-farming business There’s nothing I’d like to do more than expand the business there and help bring down poverty levels by creating jobs I also have a dream of one day helping to alleviate poverty in Kenya through the business I’m involved in Doing so would bring my experiences from when I was a university student full circle I know there are poorer countries in Africa The Kenyan capital Nairobi is home to Kibera I’ve always dreamed about being part of a business big enough to help consign the word slum to the dictionary of dead words for all of Africa Lots of things—my world view when I was a junior high school student the harsh realities I had to deal with while at university—made me the person I am today I want to hold on to those old original attitudes and emotions I always try to remember where I came from COPYRIGHT © 1996-2025 MITSUI & CO. To the list of composers whose music I’ve come across too late in life I must add the name Akio Yashiro he trained in France with Nadia Boulanger (as hundreds of composers did in the mid-20th century) and Olivier Messiaen from whom he clearly inherited a fondness for sweet But Messiaen was just one of many influences evident in the British premiere of Yashiro’s Symphony quiet passages followed by melodramatic outbursts suggested a good knowledge of Stravinsky’s ballet scores perpetual-motion allegros sounded almost South American in their rhythmic exuberance ABEMA's "Anime LIVE Channel" aired #2 of "Say You To Yo Asobi Wednesday" on April 23rd (Wednesday) at 10 PM.In the previous broadcast "A mask was better than a paper bag," and true to his words Though he expressed doubts about his appearance saying it's tense," the studio was immediately filled with laughter Enjoy a Bath Together in “Newlywed Roleplay”! Takamine-san” Episode 6 Synopsis & Preview Images Released Anime "From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman" Episode 5 Synopsis & Advance Cut Released "Machi★Asobi" Talk Event and Retrospective Screening Details Announced Anime 'From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman' Episode 4 Synopsis and Preview Still Released Episode 1 Free Limited-Time Release on YouTube 【Setlist Included】 MyGO!!!!!×Ave Mujica Joint Live "Wakaremichi no Sonosakie" Performance Report 'The Apothecary Diaries' and 'Re:ZERO' Lead in Views and Comments Final Winter 2025 Anime Rankings Announced "A bag came out of the bag!" Shotaro Morikubo & Nobuhiko Okamoto go all out in commenting on Masaya Fukunishi's "too gyaru" private life Synopsis and Preview Images of Episode 1 of the New Anime "The Young Lady with the Gorilla's Blessing" Released Voice Actor and Artist Active in 'Love Live!' Mao Fujita(Sony Classical)Fujita’s attention to detail serves the Scriabin miniatures well Yashiro album review – Fujita’s no-frills approach brings care and clarityThis article is more than 7 months oldMao Fujita(Sony Classical)Fujita’s attention to detail serves the Scriabin miniatures well and which Fujita has recorded for the first time This article includes content hosted on embed.music.apple.com. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Your Ads Privacy ChoicesIMDb, an Amazon company© 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc. Volume 18 - 2024 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2024.1387393 The visual system can compute summary statistics of several visual elements at a glance Numerous studies have shown that an ensemble of different visual features can be perceived over 50–200 ms; however the time point at which the visual system forms an accurate ensemble representation associated with an individual’s perception remains unclear This is mainly because most previous studies have not fully addressed time-resolved neural representations that occur during ensemble perception particularly lacking quantification of the representational strength of ensembles and their correlation with behavior we conducted orientation ensemble discrimination tasks and electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to decode orientation representations over time while human observers discriminated an average of multiple orientations We modeled EEG signals as a linear sum of hypothetical orientation channel responses and inverted this model to quantify the representational strength of orientation ensemble Our analysis using this inverted encoding model revealed stronger representations of the average orientation over 400–700 ms We also correlated the orientation representation estimated from EEG signals with the perceived average orientation reported in the ensemble discrimination task with adjustment methods We found that the estimated orientation at approximately 600–700 ms significantly correlated with the individual differences in perceived average orientation These results suggest that although ensembles can be quickly and roughly computed the visual system may gradually compute an orientation ensemble over several hundred milliseconds to achieve a more accurate ensemble representation although the visual system can quickly estimate an ensemble through a feedforward sweep from low to high visual areas it is reasonable to assume that such crude ensemble representation evolves into a more refined ensemble representation (corresponding to observers’ perception) by processing multiple visual elements through feedforward-feedback loops over a longer period This idea raises the following questions: when is ensemble perception fully formed in the brain How does visual representation change over time leading to the refined ensemble representation successful binary classification of different stimulus sets at one-time point does not necessarily mean that ensemble representation is fully formed at that time it is possible that non-ensemble processing such as sampling of different individual elements within each set may result in the difference in overall EEG patterns across these stimulus sets thereby leading to significant binary classification we argue that another approach is needed to address the questions mentioned earlier: (1) estimating temporal changes in the representational strength of individual elements and ensembles from EEG signals during ensemble perception of those elements and (2) understanding when the representation corresponding to an observer’s ensemble perception strongly emerges we identified time points when correlation became high between the orientation representation estimated from the inverted encoding model and the perceived ensemble orientation measured with adjustment methods This analysis allowed us to precisely understand the timing of the representation corresponding to an observer’s ensemble perception We found that the strong representation of orientation ensembles emerged over 400–700 ms after stimulus onset the orientation estimated from inverted encoding models correlated with individual differences in perceived average orientation at approximately 600–700 ms These results suggest that although ensembles can be quickly and roughly estimated the visual system may gradually compute an orientation ensemble over several hundred milliseconds to achieve a refined ensemble representation All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision All experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Tokyo and conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki Written informed consent was obtained from all participants Six Gabor patterns with a diameter of 4.8 deg. (spatial frequency: 2.0 c/deg.; Michelson contrast: 0.99) were presented against a gray background with an average luminance of 109.1 cd/m2 (Figure 1) The orientation of the Gabor patterns was determined according to the aim of each experiment and each Gabor had a random phase on each trial The center of the six Gabor patterns was located at a circle 5.8 deg away from the fixation point The stimulus was presented on a 24-inch LCD monitor (BenQ GW2480B) at a viewing distance of 100 cm Schematic of the psychophysical experiments six Gabor patterns presented in a circle were used The task was to report the tilt of the patterns (Experiment 1) and the average orientation (Experiment 2A and 2B) the perceived average orientation was directly measured using adjustment methods rather than the 2AFC task Two types of experiments (Experiments 1 and 2) were conducted. Experiment 1 comprised of an EEG experiment with Gabor patterns of a single uniform orientation. Participants were presented with six Gabor patterns for 500 ms (Figure 1 After a blank period of 500–800 ms the participants were asked to judge whether the patterns were tilted clockwise or counterclockwise relative to the vertical by pressing one of two buttons The next trial was initiated 1,500 ms after the response which was randomly determined in each trial from six orientations ranging between −75° to 75° in 30° increments with 0° corresponding to the vertical The response keys were randomly alternated between blocks Participants completed 8 blocks of 120 trials apart from one participant who only completed 6 blocks due to time constraints Experiment 2 consisted of EEG and behavioral experiments (Experiments 2A and 2B, respectively) with Gabor patterns with multiple orientations. In both Experiments 2A and 2B, participants were presented with a stimulus set of six Gabor patterns with different orientations (Figure 1, top center and right panels, Table 1: four stimulus sets used in the experiment) Two stimulus sets had an average orientation of 45° while the others possessed an orientation of −45° As we were interested in how the decoding of the average orientation (45° or −45°) is affected by the presence of 45° or −45° patterns in the set we created stimulus sets with and without elements corresponding to the average (w and w/o respectively) for each average orientation participants were randomly presented with one of the sets for 500 ms The position of each element in the set varied randomly between trials In Experiment 2A, the participants’ task was to indicate with a button whether the average orientation of the set was tilted clockwise or counterclockwise relative to the vertical (Figure 1 we instructed participants not to attend to only a subset of the six patterns but to the entire display to ensure that participants did not explicitly change their strategy depending on the task the two EEG experiments (Experiments 1 and 2A) were conducted on the same day These facts ensure the validity of our cross-decoding analysis (see below) The components of the dummy stimuli are as follows: (−5° The trials in which the dummy stimuli were presented or the sign of the response was opposite to that of the true average (e.g. a trial with a response of −20° when the set had an average of 45°) were excluded from the following analyses Experiment 2B was conducted on an average of 21 days after the EEG experiments Participants completed 4 blocks of 120 trials in Experiments 2A and 2B except for one participant who only completed 2 blocks in Experiment 2A due to time constraints the EEG signals were recorded at a sampling rate of 1,000 Hz from 32 electrodes (BrainVision Recorder An electrode located between Fz and Cz served as a reference The impedance of all electrodes was kept below 5 kΩ throughout the experiments Components with an estimated probability of more than 50% being artifacts (i.e. resulting in an average of 21 ± 2.5 (mean ± SD) components across all participants and experiments Epochs were baseline corrected with respect to the pre-stimulus period from −300 to 0 ms This procedure resulted in 922 ± 136 (mean ± SD Experiment 1) and 444 ± 150 (mean ± SD Experiment 2A) trials for further analyses The raw EEG data from Experiment 1 was divided into five sets for each orientation (i.e. −15°) and averaged within each set (up to 40 trials) to increase the signal-to-noise ratio Using the four sets of averaged EEG patterns for each orientation within a 100 ms time window for each orientation which was tested on the held-out one set of averaged EEG patterns (one for each orientation) from Experiment 1 to obtain accuracy for decoding the 3-class orientation Multiple decoders were constructed independently for each time window The time course of decoding accuracy was obtained after repeating this procedure for the five cross-validation splits and with 20 different assignments of the raw EEG data to the five sets All these analyses were performed individually for each participant Orientation was reliably decoded from 174 to 828 ms after stimulus onset The chance level (33%) is shown as a dashed line The shaded area shows the standard error across participants The horizontal line below the graph indicates time points that achieve significant decoding accuracy (revealed by a cluster-based permutation test with cluster-defining threshold p < 0.05 and cluster threshold p < 0.05) (B) Posterior probabilities of the presented orientations in Experiment 1 These values were computed by using the output of the decoders (see Methods for more details) Each panel shows the time course of the probability for each stimulus set with uniform orientations (shown above the panel) The solid lines correspond to the results for the presented orientation The probabilities for the other two orientations (e.g. 45° and 15° when 75° was presented) are shown as thin lines The probability of the presented orientation was higher for all stimulus sets after stimulus onset This confirms that all presented orientations were reliably decoded After we confirmed that EEG signals contained orientation information, we adopted a reasonable computational model to estimate when ensemble representations emerge during an ensemble judgment task based on previous studies (Oh et al., 2019). Specifically, we constructed inverted encoding models (Brouwer and Heeger, 2009, 2011; Sprague et al., 2015) to decode orientation representations at each time point This model is based on a biologically plausible assumption that EEG signals can be modeled as a linear weighted sum of population responses of multiple orientation-selective neurons in the brain. Following previous studies (Oh et al., 2019; Tark et al., 2021) we assumed an equal number of orientation channels as orientations used in the experiments each tuned to a specific orientation (i.e. The response of each channel is described as: (B) The channel response matrix is illustrated as a grayscale map in the dashed box Each column has response values of the channels to the stimulus set (single orientation) These response values are determined by the response functions of the channels (top) that were set based on the response property of orientation-selective neurons in the visual cortex This procedure was repeated 100 times with random data partition for each participant and the estimated response matrices were averaged across all folds and repetitions As the estimated response matrix reveals the response strength for each hypothetical channel to each stimulus set we can use this matrix to quantify the representational strength of each orientation Repeating this procedure for all time points yields the time courses of the representational strength of each orientation for each stimulus set To quantify the strength of representations corresponding to the average orientation, we extracted a representative value, referred to as orientation sensitivity, from the estimated responses of each channel, following the approach adopted in previous studies (Oh et al., 2019; Sutterer et al., 2019) we first circularly shifted the responses of orientation channels along the rows such that the responses of the channel tuned to the average orientation aligned at the center (fourth row of the matrix) we averaged the response of orientation channels along the columns (within the stimulus set) which yielded two vectors of six elements for each stimulus set type (w and w/o) Each vector had the central (fourth) value representing the strength of the representation corresponding to the average orientation of the stimulus set and the adjacent values representing the strength of representations corresponding to orientations ±30° and −90° away from the average orientation we performed linear regression on these six channel response values disregarding the sign of orientation (fitting a line to the response values for −90° We defined the slope of the fitted line as orientation sensitivity Positive orientation sensitivity indicates the presence of a peak in the channel responses suggesting strong representations corresponding to the average orientation for Experiment 2; in contrast zero sensitivity indicates no representations corresponding to the average orientation We assessed the statistical significance of orientation decoding accuracy using a cluster-based permutation test The orientation labels for the EEG data were permuted and the orientation decoding accuracy was recalculated according to the procedure described above After repeating this procedure 1,000 times null distributions of decoding accuracy were generated for each time window from which the p-values for the actual decoding accuracy were calculated The original decoding accuracy curve was thus transformed into a time course of p-values Clusters were defined as neighboring time points at which all p-values were below a significance level and deemed significant if their size exceeded the calculated threshold from a null distribution of cluster size The same procedure was used to assess the statistical significance of sensitivity in the estimated orientation channel responses Regarding the correlation coefficients between the perceived average orientation and the estimated orientation representation we again permuted the orientation labels for the EEG data and constructed inverted encoding models to estimate the weight matrices for each participant These matrices allowed us to obtain orientation channel responses and estimated orientation at each time window as described above We computed the correlation coefficient between the estimated orientations and perceived average orientations that participants reported Repeating this procedure 1,000 times resulted in null distributions of the correlation coefficients for each time window We again performed a cluster-based permutation test to assess the statistical significance of the observed correlation coefficients for each stimulus set We aimed to estimate the time when accurate ensemble representations were formed in the brain. To this end, we conducted EEG recordings and psychophysical experiments to decode the dynamics in the representational strength of multiple orientations while human observers judged their average orientation. Figure 1 shows an overview of our psychophysical experiments Eleven adults participated in all experiments in which six Gabor patterns were presented around a fixation point for 500 ms We recorded EEG signals while participants discriminated Gabor patterns comprising uniform orientations (Experiment 1) and discriminated the average orientation of Gabor patterns with different orientations (Experiment 2A) We also asked participants to report the perceived average orientation on a continuous scale by rotating a bar in another experiment (Experiment 2B) To test whether all six orientations were reliably decodable, the posterior probabilities of each orientation were calculated for each stimulus set by using the output of the decoder (see Methods). As can be seen in Figure 3B we obtained the highest probability for the presented orientation throughout the stimulus presentation (e.g. the probability of 75° was higher than that of 45° and 15° when 75° was presented) ensuring that all six orientations were reliably decoded with and without elements corresponding to the average (w and w/o) were created to see whether the temporal dynamics of the representational strength of each orientation were affected by the presence of the average orientation pattern in the set Participants were asked to indicate whether the average orientation was tilted clockwise or counterclockwise relative to the vertical with a binary response these responses can be considered as the representational strength of each orientation at a given time point We repeated this procedure for all time points and participants to investigate how orientation representation evolves over time during orientation ensemble perception We hypothesized that if ensemble representation is explicitly formed in the brain at a specific time point a significantly high response of the hypothetical orientation channel tuned to the average orientation (45° or −45°) would be observed at that time allowing us to estimate the exact time the ensemble perception was formed and 374–442 ms and 512–672 ms for set w/o indicating the emergence of ensemble representation at later time points These findings reveal that ensemble representation emerges at 400–500 ms during the perception of orientation ensembles and is sustained till approximately 700 ms after stimulus onset regardless of the presence of the average orientation in the stimulus set (A) Estimated channel responses in the inverted encoding models over time for Experiment 2A The channel responses were circularly shifted such that the channel response to the average orientation of each set aligned at the center in the ordinate we have duplicated the top row of the color map and added it as the seventh row The red center cells and the blue neighboring cells at approximately 400–700 ms indicate a clear peak in the channel response profile; that is the representational strength of the average orientation of the stimulus set was higher than that of the other orientations (B) A value referred to as sensitivity was computed from the channel response profile at each time point to quantitatively assess the representational strength of the average orientation relative to the other orientations The horizontal lines below the plots indicate time points that achieve significant sensitivity (significantly higher representational strength of the average orientation) revealed by a permutation test with cluster-defining threshold p < 0.05 and cluster threshold p < 0.05 The perceived orientations varied from participant to participant; however they were mostly close to the true average indicating that participants perceived the average orientation quite well Perceived average orientations in Experiment 2B The left bars show the mean perceived orientation of the participants Each circle in the right panels represents the perceived orientation for each participant The error bars indicate the standard error across all trials The true average is shown as a dashed line Most participants perceived the average orientation correctly with errors mostly within ±10° Furthermore, we computed the correlation between the participants’ average orientations in Experiment 2B and orientation decoded from the estimated hypothetical channel responses at each time point (see Methods for further details). Figure 7 shows the time courses of the correlations Despite unstable correlation coefficients observed in the earlier period which are likely due to the relatively small number of participants a cluster-based permutation test revealed significant correlations at 568–668 ms for set w and slightly later time points (640–698 and 722–766 ms) for set w/o These results suggest that ensemble representation corresponding to the individual perception is fully formed at 600–700 ms after stimulus onset Correlations between the perceived average orientation in Experiment 2B and orientation decoded from the estimated orientation channel responses The horizontal lines below the plots indicate time points that achieve significant correlation Although the time courses show transient fluctuations (presumably due to the relatively small sample size) a cluster-based permutation test revealed that correlations remained significant in the time range of 568–668 ms for set w and 640–698 and 722–766 ms for set w/o (cluster-defining threshold p < 0.1 and cluster threshold p < 0.1) suggesting that orientation ensemble representation corresponding to the individual ensemble perception emerged over 600–700 ms after stimulus onset We investigated the temporal dynamics of orientation ensemble perception using psychophysical experiments and time-resolved orientation decoding analysis from EEG signals One of the keys was using inverted encoding models for each time point across the experiments (single and ensemble orientation discrimination task; Experiment 1 and 2A) to quantify the representational strength of individual and ensemble orientations Another key was that the neural orientation representations predicted from the inverted encoding models were directly correlated with the perceived average orientations in the task with adjustment methods The time course of the correlation allowed us to accurately estimate when ensemble representations associated with individual perception are fully formed in the brain which would otherwise not have been possible for behavioral paradigms with discrete responses used in most studies of ensemble perception (member identification task or 2AFC task) consistent with the present results given the delay associated with the motor response ensembles can be roughly extracted within 50–200 ms; however the visual system could gradually form ensemble perception over several hundred milliseconds to achieve a more accurate ensemble representation The stimulus duration also differed between these two studies (100 ms and 500 ms in the previous study and our study which may allow participants in our study to spend more time sampling orientation information to form an orientation ensemble representation future studies need to use stimuli with various settings and from different domains to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the temporal dynamics of ensemble perception we provide additional discussion regarding why the different pattern of results was observed between the two analyses) such a binary classification would not be sufficient to distinguish between ensemble and non-ensemble processing processing a subset of elements instead of forming an ensemble representation from all the elements could potentially lead to significant classification accuracy for the two sets we argue that conducting cross-decoding analysis and correlating the estimated orientation representations with perceived average orientations are essential to determining the exact timing of ensemble perception would effectively corroborate the gradual emergence of accurate ensemble representation associated with ensemble perception The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors upon reasonable request The studies involving humans were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Tokyo The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research This study was supported by JST SPRING Grant Number JPMJSP2108 and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 23KJ0477 to RY The content of the manuscript has previously appeared as a preprint in bioaxiv The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher The Supplementary material for this article can be 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Text | Google Scholar Efficiencies for the statistics of size discrimination PubMed Abstract | Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar Inverted encoding models assay population-level stimulus representations The importance of considering model choices when interpreting results in computational neuroimaging Visual attention mitigates information loss in small- and large-scale neural codes Item-specific delay activity demonstrates concurrent storage of multiple active neural representations in working memory Neural representations of ensemble coding in the occipital and parietal cortices The functional role of spatial anisotropies in ensemble perception Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar Yamanashi Leib Fast ensemble representations for abstract visual impressions Sawayama M and Amano K (2024) Decoding time-resolved neural representations of orientation ensemble perception Received: 17 February 2024; Accepted: 15 July 2024; Published: 01 August 2024 Copyright © 2024 Yashiro, Sawayama and Amano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Ryuto Yashiro, cnl1dG8ueWFzaGlyb0BnbWFpbC5jb20= Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish Asahi Shimbun‘s March 29 report revealed a conversation between Yusuke Nakagawa and Yohei Yashiro of Sony Music Entertainment Yashiro shared that YOASOBI is actually losing money on overseas performances but explained the benefits of continuing to do them regardless ALSO READ:McDonald’s Launches New Collab With Ado, YOASOBI, and Hoshimachi Suisei for ‘Tirori Mix’ Music Campaign “Performing live in a place they’ve never seen before and receiving applause is a great input for an artist,” Yashiro said “That experience creates a virtuous cycle for creating something new eventually you’ll find yourself in a slump.“Yashiro added we have a history of working hard for decades It is important to run as YOASOBI with the baton we’ve received and pass it on to the next That is why I am running with the sense of taking the prize for winning our own leg of this relay race.“ In an interview with The First Times “When I go to Little Tokyo and see the lines that form at stores that sell Japanese culture we need to approach it from the Japanese side I think we need to break down the barriers that Japanese listeners and musicians have felt too strongly toward the rest of the world as well as events.““There has certainly been a point in the past where people thought that overseas music was the supreme existence but I think we need to dispel that feeling from the Japanese side I think it is truly wonderful that a festival has been launched to bring the entirety of Japanese festivals to the world.“YOASOBI vocalist Ikura added we saw how Japanese pop music can make the world go crazy,” adding that she and her labelmates wanted to “come together and share the message that ‘the J-Pop we’re making is cool.’“ ALSO READ:LiSA’s Another Great Day Tour Heads to North AmericaSomeone else making the case for overseas expansion is Takuya Chigira, the manager of global sensation Ado he said that Japan had a distorted view of its popularity overseas compared to reality compared to the scale of mainstream entertainment such as music and sports on a global scale anime is still a niche form of entertainment when compared to Japanese music’s global market share you can achieve results beyond the normal level.““However considering the size of the market that music originally has the ceiling for anime is very low at the moment,” he explained adding that he expects that with Ado’s trajectory she’ll soon be able to compete for a Grammy Overseas fans can look ahead to YOASOBI’s performances at Primavera Sound Barcelona 2025 (June 5) and Wembley Stadium, London (June 8, June 9).Source: Asahi ShimbunFeatured Image ©Aka Akasaka x Mengo Yokoyari/Shueisha A record company has come under fire for planning to sell a late singer’s nude photos the upcoming sale could “fall under the category of revenge porn and may be illegal.” Yashiro Aki Yashiro Aki (also known as Yashiro) was a famous Japanese enka singer and painter at the age of 73 after being hospitalized for interstitial lung disease and a bout with anti-MDA5 dermatomyositis she became known as “the queen of enka.” announced–and doubled down on–its plans to sell a CD that features two fully nude photos of Yashiro The photos were taken by Yashiro’s live-in partner when she was in her 20s According to New Century Records president Hayakawa Hiroshi the company purchased these photos of Yashiro from a person associated with her former agency along with the master recording rights to some of her songs Hayakawa said the CD’s upcoming release “is just business,” and that New Century Records isn’t breaking any laws The upcoming release has been condemned by Yashiro’s fans who have started a petition (“Protect Aki Yashiro’s dignity and stop revenge porn” on Change.org) to halt the release This situation is more than just about entertainment; it is a violation of the rights and dignity of the deceased all women artists will be working in fear of the possibility that their dignity will be trampled upon after their death The president of Yashiro Music and Gallery Inc has also slammed the release Yashiro established the company to manage her portrait rights and copyrights This is an extremely distasteful event and one that we can never condone A government official has also spoken up on behalf of the deceased Yashiro and her bereaved family be respected who is the pride of the people of the prefecture who specializes in sexual violence victimization cases feels that it is unlikely that Yashiro consented to the sale of her nude photos given that she didn’t disclose them before her death If (the photos) are released posthumously without the person’s permission it would be trampling on the dignity of the deceased If there is a complaint by the bereaved family there is a good chance that it will become a criminal case a distribution company has refused to distribute the CD the product in question cannot be ordered at this time Groom Elopes With Mother-In-Law Before His Wedding, Devastating The Bride Divorced Actress Reveals How She Met Her Rumored New Boyfriend Korean Bus Driver Saves Foreign Student’s Life, Goes Viral In Two Countries A Fan Who Allegedly Turned To Sex Work To Support An Idol Was Found Guilty Of Burying Her Baby View All (2010) A Japanese record label has released an album commemorating the late singer promoting that he offers nude photos taken in his 20s as a privilege President Makoto Ono of Aki Yashiro's agency "Million Plan" announced on his official website the previous day that he would "take all legal measures regardless of civil or criminal" and "will never forgive him." "New Century Records" announced the release of Yashiro's memorial album which is scheduled to be released on the 21st "Yashiro will provide two full nude photos taken with a polaroid camera at the age of 24-25 as a special benefit," and promoting it as "Yashiro's first nude photo." debuted in 1971 with "Love Is Dead" and was called the "Queen of Enka" for decades his health deteriorated and he stopped working he died of interstitial pneumonia at the age of 73 New Century Records is known to have music sources for about 250 of Yashiro's songs The release of the memorial album drew criticism online over the label's marketing with inappropriate photos and phrases an online signature campaign was launched to block the release of the album "We identified such a problem in the middle of last month," and added "We have been discussing it with internal officials we sent a notice to New Century Records on the 27th of last month asking for the suspension of the use of photographs but we did not receive a response from the other side until this day," he added "We are preparing to proceed with all legal proceedings regardless of criminal or civil," he warned "We will take issue with defamation of the deceased obscene distribution of 'full nude' photos and tax law issues caused by business activities." ※ This service is provided by machine translation tool Please view the main text area of the page by skipping the main menu. The page may not be displayed properly if the JavaScript is deactivated on your browser Japanese version Your browser does not support JavaScript, or it is disabled．Please check the site policy for more information National Report A record company in Kagoshima city has been castigated as engaging in “revenge porn” with its plan to sell a CD featuring nude photos of singer Aki Yashiro An online petition has spread to halt the sale while music companies are distancing themselves from the CD Legal experts and even a governor have voiced their disapproval and disgust with the plan New Century Records announced on its website that the new CD will be released on April 21 and include Yashiro’s hit song “Funauta.” The site also said the CD package will feature “two full nude photos” taken by Yashiro’s live-in partner when she was in her 20s said in a telephone interview that his company about 25 years ago bought the master recording rights to some of Yashiro’s songs along with public and private photographs of her The pictures came from a person associated with a record company that Yashiro used to belong to before it went bankrupt “There is also a purchase agreement,” Hayakawa said He insisted the purpose of releasing the CD with the photos “is just business.” Yashiro established a company in Tokyo called Yashiro Music and Gallery Inc to manage the copyrights and portrait rights inherited from an agency she belonged to released a statement on April 14 about the CD sale “This is an extremely distasteful event and one that we can never condone,” the statement said A petition titled “Protect Aki Yashiro’s dignity and stop revenge porn” has been gaining support on the online site Change.org to prevent the release of the CD The petition states: “This situation is more than just about entertainment; it is a violation of the rights and dignity of the deceased all women artists will be working in fear of the possibility that their dignity will be trampled upon after their death.” about 5,500 people had signed the petition The singer was born in Kumamoto Prefecture and used the stage name Yashiro after her hometown She became known as the “queen of enka” (Japanese ballads) with her distinctive husky and deep voice and inimitable seductive style the Kumamoto prefectural citizens’ honor award was presented to Yashiro in honor of her achievements an unveiling ceremony was held to display a relief of Yashiro in the lobby of the prefectural government office Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said at a news conference on April 16: “If true after the prefecture suffered enormous damage from torrential rain Kimura asked Yashiro to visit temporary housing facilities to comfort the evacuees The governor said Yashiro must not have had any intention to publicize personal photos of herself a lawyer specializing in sexual violence victimization said sales of CDs with nude photos could “fall under the category of revenge porn and may be illegal.” The law for the prevention of revenge porn punishes those who “provide private and sexual images to an unspecified person or many people through a telecommunication line in a way that allows a third party to identify the person who is the subject of the image.” The law also applies to people who “provide such images to an unspecified person or many people or display them publicly.” “If (the photos) are released posthumously without the person’s permission it would be trampling on the dignity of the deceased,” Ito said “If there is a complaint by the bereaved family there is a good chance that it will become a criminal case.” also raised legal concerns about the planned sale “If the photos were taken in a personal relationship and not for work the common wisdom is that it is difficult to believe that (Yashiro) would have consented to showing them to a third party,” he said “The fact that she didn’t disclose (the photos) before her death makes it unlikely that she consented to it after the fact.” Hattori said the public has taken notice of the issue and criticism is growing about the “ethically unacceptable” sale and it is important that concerned parties and lawyers address this issue with wisdom,” he said The CD industry has scrambled to respond to the situation on April 10 stopped accepting orders for the CD so that it could check the contents of the special offer after a distribution company informed Tower Records that it would no longer be handling the CD the music company took down the order page for the CD Tower Records said it has no plans to sell the CD in the future and customers who already ordered the CD have been notified by email that the product is no longer being sold “We are refraining from giving the reason” for discontinuing sales of the CD which is in charge of CD and DVD transactions at Rakuten Group Inc. the product in question cannot be ordered at this time,” Rakuten Books told The Asahi Shimbun adding that it had canceled already-placed orders of customers (This article was written by Junki Watanabe deepfake porn wrecks women’s lives and deepens gender conflict Reports to police of ‘revenge porn’ reached a new high in 2020 Traders in child porn admit guilt after police bust site based abroad Yamanakako hosts exhibition on Japan’s first opera singer Information on the latest cherry blossom conditions Please right click to use your browser’s translation function.) A series based on diplomatic documents declassified by Japan’s Foreign Ministry Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life A series about Japanese-Americans and their memories of World War II In-house News and Messages No reproduction or republication without written permission Posted in: Comics, Current News, Manga | Tagged: , , , Tank Chair is a new manga by Manabu Yashiro launching in Kodansha's September 2024 solicits and solicitations Tank Chair is a new manga by Manabu Yashiro launching in Kodansha's September 2024 solicits and solicitations about a cyber-enhanced assassin in the most dangerous city in the universe Here's a full listing as well as their Vertical manga solicits for the same month "Cocoa" has made three best friends in her monthly meetup group where girls get together every month to quell their sweet tooths by meeting up at the cutest and trendiest new dessert cafes Cocoa is in it for the sweets-really!-but she's also harboring a few secrets: Not only does Cocoa have a crush on another one of the girls in the group but she's actually a guy named Satoshi who's been cross-dressing in order to attend the all-girl group things come to a head when Opera discovers that Cocoa is cross-dressing-and to Cocoa's surprise But Cocoa realizes that his attraction to Opera is more than clothing-deep they'll learn more about each other-and their own selves they could have ever imagined Includes volumes 1 and 2 of the Japanese edition Vox Populi Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun a small shrine on the grounds of Shimogamo Jinja Shrine in Kyoto is known to have a “god of matchmaking” as its guardian deity numerous “ema” (small wooden votive plaques) were hung featuring written prayers for happy outcomes in romance “Please let us stay happily together,” and another “Please let us bring forth a family that’s filled with happiness.” But there were not many plaques with readily legible prayers many were hidden under scarlet privacy stickers “The Law on the Protection of Personal Information has raised the public’s awareness for privacy and this has rapidly increased the number of visitors using the privacy stickers.” The shrine first introduced the stickers about 15 years ago after a priest and other shrine officials witnessed a high school student on a school trip being teased mercilessly by classmates who saw the student’s ardently romantic prayer on an ema This became the cue for the shrine to order custom privacy stickers and leave them on the counter where visitors wrote their messages on ema the stickers came to be used in a whopping 90 percent of cases hardly anyone bothers with privacy protection if their prayers are for passing school entrance exams or being cured of some illness “For an overwhelming majority of sticker users it’s invariably about marriage or romance,” he explained “And we reassure them that even though their prayers cannot be seen on their ema (because of the stickers) the ema goes back to the Nara Period (710-794) It spread from Shinto shrines to Buddhist temples and was quite popular during the Edo Period (1603-1867) some supplicants apparently wished to remain anonymous There still remain pieces inscribed simply with the supplicant’s year of birth according to the Chinese zodiac and their gender After completing my reporting assignment at Aioi-no-Yashiro I decided to take advantage of this perfect opportunity to write my prayer on an ema: “May all wars disappear from Earth.” and tied my ema tightly to the display shelf Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture Plague-fighting prayer tablets offered at Kasuga Taisha shrine People put faith in Tokyo shrine as concert tickets hard to come by grandpa go wild as Nootbaar plays ‘Cinderella’ (This is part one in a three-part series on how one short conversation between two salarymen led to the creation of the global pop superstars.) a two-member unit who creates their works in the concept of "turning novels into music" is now a global sensation 1 on the Billboard Global charts excluding the United States in 2023 It was the first Japanese track to achieve the feat The duo came into being after two employees of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc had a brief conversation by accident in January 2019 Yohei Yashiro and Shuya Yamamoto already knew each other before a drinking party in January 2019 with some 20 colleagues Despite joining Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) the same year being in different divisions meant opportunities to chat were rare Seven years went by with Yashiro working directly under the company while Yamamoto handled artists at a Sony-owned label The actual conversation that led to Yoasobi's formation didn’t even happen during the party but afterward when the two found themselves alone and headed the same way home Both felt the tug of a potential collaboration during the brief exchange and promised to get together soon It was this small moment that ignited the series of events building up to Yoasobi’s explosive success with Yashiro and Yamamoto being lauded as “creators” of one of the most recognizable J-pop units in the world Although they were at a point in their careers where they had begun playing leading roles in their projects Monogatary.com is a public novel submission site he set up in 2017 designed to earn revenue from any resulting books or anime adaptations of selected works Yashiro toyed with the idea of taking those chosen submissions and crafting music instead of books by drawing on SME’s dominance in the music industry he met Yamamoto not too long after the party at a cafe in the same building as SME in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district “I am thinking of setting up a prize to award an excellent work and create a song and music video based on it,” he told Yamamoto and implored the other to help him find an artist it is a challenge to get a sufficient amount of money for promotional campaigns when we are marketing upcoming artists and making music videos,” Yamamoto recalled thinking if there is already a budget set aside for the award I figured that we may be able to create good music.”  The new partners decided to put together a two-member unit and began searching for a composer composed and arranged songs by himself with Vocaloid singing-synthesizer software and uploaded his creations to his YouTube channel His subscriber count was only in the hundreds but Yamamoto was convinced Ayase was the right choice and an offer was sent Ayase’s original videos now live alongside Yoasobi’s music videos on the same channel that has just shy of 6.8 million subscribers “His works were rich in variety,” said Yamamoto “Ayase was obviously deft at creating music of so many different patterns It seemed he would be the best fit for our project because it is about adapting novels into music.” a budding singer-songwriter with a clear and soulful voice who had previously taken part in SME’s program for new artists “Her voice quality was so distinctive and unlike any other singers,” Yamamoto said Around nine months after that first conversation Yoasobi officially came together in October 2019 Its heavy lyrics set to a devastatingly upbeat melody are based on the short story “Thanatos no Yuwaku” (“An Invitation from Thanatos”) by Mayo Hoshino that was chosen from Monogatary.com submissions Yamamoto and Yashiro initially planned to consider paid distribution if the single reached 1 million views It hit that milestone sooner than anticipated closing in on the target less than a month after going live While using a major label such as SME was an option music distribution company is a Sony Group subsidiary and at the time was looking for a track that would appeal to the Japanese market; no one could have predicted how true this would be Love for J-pop blooms in South Korea thanks to young fans Kishida cracks jokes and invokes ‘Star Trek’ as he and Biden toast U.S.-Japan alliance at state dinner Synthesized singing sensation Hatsune Miku turns sweet 16 the grand dame of Japanese "enka" ballads who had many big hits during her career spanning five decades who debuted in 1971 after working as a singer at a nightclub in Tokyo's upmarket Ginza district had suspended her musical activities after announcing in September that she would focus on treatment of a connective tissue illness She had developed anti-MDA5 antibody-positive dermatomyositis and died of rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease her biggest hits included "Funauta" (boat song) in 1979 and "Ameno Bojo" (yearning in the rain) in 1980 who took her stage name from her home city Yatsushiro in Kumamoto Prefecture performed at national broadcaster NHK's popular "Kohaku Uta Gassen" live music show on New Year's Eve 23 times "Yoruno Arubamu" (Songs Around Midnight) in 2012 and sang at the famed Birdland jazz club in New York the following year She was a regular visitor to women's prisons and juvenile detention centers throughout her life her paintings have been accepted many times at exhibitions including by the prestigious Le Salon in France "As a hit song is born due to everyone buying one record after another I want to share that feeling of happiness and joy," Yashiro told Kyodo News in an interview last year "My goal from now on is to die while exchanging thankyous," said Yashiro Celebrated Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama dies aged 83 Japan anime giant Miyazaki's latest fantasy wins Golden Globe Yoshiki's handprint unveiled at Hollywood special ceremony To have the latest news and stories delivered to your inbox Simply enter your email address below and an email will be sent through which to complete your subscription Please check your inbox for a confirmation email Thank you for reaching out to us.We will get back to you as soon as possible On ABEMA's "Anime LIVE Channel," the first episode of "Say You To Yo Asobi Wednesday" will air at 10 PM on April 16th (Wednesday) unveiling the hosts for the 2025 season.In 2025 the hosts for each day will be revealed during the first broadcast of each day The new hosts for Wednesday are Taku Yashiro and a mysterious figure wearing a paper bag.. (This is part two in a three-part series on how one short conversation between two salarymen led to the creation of global pop superstars.) Masako Masuda remembers thinking this after hearing Yoasobi’s debut single “Yoru ni Kakeru” (“Into the Night”) back in November 2019 “I was instantly convinced that this would sell,” she said Masuda held dual roles as part of corporate planning at Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc music distribution company that provides media to streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music the song had already exceeded its producers’ expectations; Yohei Yashiro and Shuya Yamamoto were mulling over paid distribution options after “Yoru ni Kakeru” achieved a million views on YouTube which was founded in 1997 and acquired by Sony Group in 2015 It was also new to the Japanese market—its Japan office opened in August 2019 and the company was on the hunt for marquee-worthy talent On top of Yoasobi being an in-house project at SME Masuda was already acquainted with Yashiro Both Yashiro and Yamamoto jumped at her offer They recognized that speed was crucial to channeling the song’s unexpected momentum into actual revenue and a smaller label such as The Orchard meant fewer hurdles in their race to paid distribution The risk of going through a major label was the implication of a costly promotional campaign that would require waiting for management to sign off on the campaign and budget the in-house team's fire would likely dwindle before everything was officially approved The Orchard also had two additional strengths A staff spread out across 50 locations internationally gave it extensive reach in different markets Even sexier was the guarantee of data analytics that showed which tracks were selling in a specified country in real time Once “Yoru ni Kakeru” made it to streaming services in December 2019 1 on Indonesia’s J-pop chart at the beginning of 2020 and The Orchard's data showed numerous plays in Taiwan and other parts of Asia that spring and summer As Ayase and ikura focused on music and interviews The three doubled down on pitching Yoasobi to multiple overseas markets They prepared presentation materials in English to send to The Orchard’s operations in Asia in time for the distribution of Yoasobi’s fourth single “Tabun” (localized as “Haven’t”) in the summer of 2020 Thailand and Singapore to also bolster efforts to pitch the new track Whenever Yoasobi’s tracks saw a spike in streaming somewhere abroad the local office was immediately asked to find the cause and the three explored ways to boost plays even more Their lightning response times to The Orchard’s data made it possible for calculated growth in an age where CDs and records had solidly given way to borderless streaming It is also an age where even the best of artists can fizzle out without effective marketing office believed the unit had a shot at breaking into the American market and suggested Yoasobi record English versions of their songs Ikura did not have much trouble singing in English having lived with her family in Chicago until she was 3 the pair produced English renditions of eight of their nine tracks over the course of about five months This culminated in “E-side,” the first of their currently three English EPs “Those months were when we made every effort possible to get international media outlets and audiences to recognize Yoasobi as artists with global appeal,” Masuda said Behind the idols: The story of the duo who ‘created’ Yoasobi Copyright © The Asahi Shimbun Company. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission. The award-winning 25-year-old pianist gives intimate performances of Chopin's set of 24 miniatures themselves inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier alongside Scriabin's own contribution to the genre Tokyo-born composer Aiko Yashiro began his set of 24 Preludes in 1945 when he was just 15 years old “He used Japanese elements including the pentatonic scale – you can hear that from the very first Prelude,” Fujita says how many cultures and how many states of mind are explored in this set – different meanings “If the Chopin and the Scriabin are the and the rice the Yashiro is the wasabi," Fujita says and with that special kick to create something delicious.” TO Books revealed on Wednesday that Yashiro's Shiro Buta Kizoku desu ga Zense no Kioku ga Haeta node Hiyoko na Otōto Sodatemasu (I'm a White Pig Aristocrat But I Regained My Memoried from My Previous Life So I'm Raising a Younger Brother) light novel series will get a television anime adaptation a five-year-old obese child and the eldest son of a count in a corrupt but powerful country Ageha was born with his memories of his previous life as a Japanese intact and discovers that he will grow up to kill him over the right to inherit the title Ageha accepts his future and decides to raise his younger brother Yashiro launched the ongoing light novel series on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website in August 2018. TO Books published the novels' first volume with illustration by keepout in January 2020 TO Books will release the 12th volume on Saturday Yokowake launched the light novels' manga adaptation on TO Books' Comic Corona manga website in September 2020 TO Books published the manga's first compiled book volume in March 2021 Source: TO Books' X/Twitter account Art therapy is said to help heal the psychological scars of not only the creator And that is precisely the philosophy behind an intriguing exhibition now under way in Tokyo by a group of artists who all at one time or other attempted suicide They are graduates of Tokyo-based Aurora Co. One of the artists represented is Sachiko Yashiro who is 40 years old and as a teenager never expected to live this long She ended up in hospital after she fasted for two weeks straight She wanted to die because her daily existence was a nightmare Violence was a way of life among those close to her and she feared it would only escalate as she grew older Yashiro figured she had found a way out after she came across a library book packed with nutritional information She memorized the calories for various foods and gradually reduced the amount she ate While the symptoms of her anorexia receded after hospitalization The hospital meals were not enough so she scavenged for leftovers from other patients She ate everything she could at home and vomited into a bucket Yashiro majored in fashion in senior high school She forgot about her problems when she was drawing sketches But they returned after she began working following graduation from a vocational school She became downcast when thoughts of dying returned A turning point came when Yashiro was 25 and she read about Tokyo-based Aurora online It was holding courses to train art therapists On the day she first visited the Aurora office and slowly her thoughts of self-reproach began to ebb The time Yashiro spent at Aurora was not all pleasant because drawing forced her to face up to the weak points of her personality But she continued to visit Aurora and began to heal was drawn 15 years ago when her life seemed very dark she was totally absorbed in the process but also felt she was drowning The images that stared back at her seemed to be asking Yashiro has now overcome her eating disorders and is active as an artist She credits her well-being to having thrown all her anxiety and suffering into her paintings I want to be of some help to those who are now suffering,” Yashiro said Art therapy uses art in counseling by looking into the psychological aspects of a work of art Working on a piece of art is said to have the effect of venting and purifying repressed emotions 1 is being held to mark the 35th anniversary of Aurora’s founding Six people between the ages of 20 and 80 who have moved on in life because of the help they received from Aurora are displaying works She still has a picture of an ogre she drew to represent someone who was bullying her “They were all created while the artist was suffering and during the process of recovery repeatedly engaged in self-harm as a college student because she felt a huge gap in awareness with those around her and found it difficult to go on living The works she submitted for display were drawn with a single black ballpoint pen titled “Ningen wo Yameta Hi” (The day I stopped being a human) depicts an individual extending a long tongue with an eyeball attached to it “Bannin” (Guard) depicts an expressionless human crossing large hands in front of its body The self-harm gradually receded after Hiratsu realized that drawing provided an outlet for her negative emotions Ibuki Higashiyama is only 21 but has had a harried life: a drug overdose and three suicide attempts He is displaying a work drawn in senior high school based on a hallucination he had of a young girl wearing a white dress in the work she is drawn with a strange green face and yellow eyes It made Higashiyama realize the young girl was a scary force drawing him toward his death Having seen many people overcome their dark past through art in Aurora “I want to pass on through the artworks the fact that no one needs to die and that living is really incredible.” The exhibition is being held at the Chuwa Gallery in Nihonbashi-honcho of Tokyo’s Chuo Ward Chiropractor who took up art at 71 finds fame here and abroad Abusive father’s ex-colleague sets out to help other abused children beloved as the “queen of enka” (Japanese ballads) died of rapidly progressive interstitial pneumonia on Dec she sang melancholy songs about romantic relationships in her inimitable seductive style Yashiro was battling anti-MDA5 (melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5) antibody-positive dermatomyositis She publicly disclosed her disease in September and took a break from her activities to recuperate she was discovered while singing at a club in the Ginza district She made her debut as an enka singer in 1971 with “Ai wa Shindemo” (Even if love dies) Her signature songs include “Ame no Bojo” (Yearning in love) “Funauta” (A boatman’s song) and “Ai no Shuchakueki” (Terminal station of love).” Yashiro’s activities were not limited to enka She also released jazz albums and performed as a jazz singer in New York She held exhibitions and her works won prizes in a public competition in France Music critic Masakazu Kitanaka said Yashiro opened up a new realm of enka “She could sing pop-like enka because she sang jazz before her debut and had a background in Western music,” Kitanaka said “Her songs gave a cool and urban impression which had the flavor of traditional popular songs VOX POPULI: Shedding some tears for the man behind melody of handkerchief hit masterful stylist of American musical standards Scorsese and more friends and admirers of Tony Bennett react to his death Taiwan celebrates linguistic diversity at annual music awards Yashiro first made his debut in The King of Fighters '97 He hasn't been playable in a King of Fighters title since The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match so seeing his return in King of Fighters 15 is quite the treat During one of the King of Fighters tournaments He then dutifully worked to gather the energy from fighters in an attempt to resurrect Orochi Yashiro and Shermie ended up committing suicide to transfer his energy into Chris Iori and Chizuru — then worked together to re-seal Orochi Verse's defeat in King of Fighters 14 has apparently caused many characters This provides a possible explanation as to why Chizuru has returned as a playable character in King of Fighters and why Kyo and Iori are now working together on Team Sacred Treasures Check out Yashiro Nanakase's gameplay trailer that has him exclusively beating up Iori in the video below: please disable the ad blocking feature and reload the page This website uses cookies to collect information about your visit for purposes such as showing you personalized ads and content By clicking “Accept all,” you will allow the use of these cookies Users accessing this site from EEA countries and UK are unable to view this site without your consent Japanese enka ballad singer Aki Yashiro known for such hit songs as “Funauta” and “Ame no Bojo,” died on Dec She had been recuperating from rapid progressive interstitial pneumonia since autumn she took a job as a bus tour guide but quit to fulfill her dream of becoming a singer She worked her way up through the ranks singing at local cabarets and nightclubs in Tokyo’s Ginza district Yashiro made her debut in 1971 at the age of 21 “Namida Goi” became her first big hit in 1973 Her trademark husky voice expressed a woman’s sadness and sentiments of tragic love and “Ame no Bojo” won the Japan Record Award in 1980 she had dabbled in jazz and blues and sang at rock festival Yashiro was also known for her skill in oil painting and was chosen to feature her works at Le Salon art exhibition in France for five consecutive years from 1998 In the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake she visited the afflicted areas to deliver tatami mats — a specialty of her hometown — to evacuation centers She also visited evacuation centers at the time of the Kumamoto Earthquake in 2016 Our weekly ePaper presents the most noteworthy recent topics in an exciting © 2025 The Japan News - by The Yomiuri Shimbun A farewell ceremony for enka ballad singer Aki Yashiro About 3,000 fans and singers including Hiroshi Itsuki and Sachiko Kobayashi attended the ceremony Attendees listened to a message from the late Yashiro generated by voice synthesizing technology based on data of the singer’s voice that was left before her death the curtain was brought down on my long career as a singer late last year I was heartened by your words of support in times of pain and in times of joy.” To realize her wish to return to the stage a live band performed more than 20 of Yashiro’s songs “Funauta,” making the ceremony like a concert Singer Naoko Ken who made her debut in 1971 ‘Thank you for everything you did.’ I think she’s singing and enjoying painting up there.” Takuro Ueno ｜2023/10/31 15:00 著者をフォローする 無料のメールマガジン会員に登録すると、すべての記事が制限なく閲覧でき、記事の保存機能などがご利用いただけます。 今すぐ登録 会員の方はログイン English Unit: Edit by Patrick Balfe / Translation by Yukie Liao Teramachi 「旅は自分へのご褒美」今市隆二が語る、デビュー15周年イヤーへの思いと新幹線での過ごし方 YOASOBI and Bring Me The Horizon discuss keeping l .. The Orchard Japan VP on YOASOBI and Helping Artist .. Rolling Stone Japan: Recommended Music Bars Revealing the Untold Story of the Grandest Reissue .. 著者をフォロー済み 著者をフォローする A sci-fi tale of the queens that ditched males But them being functionally different from the versions of them already present in the launch roster doesn't really answer the important question I've put a decent amount of time into understanding all three characters to answer this question to the best of my ability so let's have a look at what Orochi Shermie Orochi Chris and Orochi Yashiro have to offer players all three characters retain their normals and don't have much different to offer in their basic buttons from their regular counterparts and where they truly carve out their own identity is with how their new specials reshape their kit Orochi Shermie takes a quite big departure from her regular self going from a up-close and nasty grappler to something more of a zoner though she still has some good up-close pressure as well with her Raijin no Tsue airborne special Her Yatanagi no Muchi is a pretty strong fireball and can be used to counter-zone quite well since she can use the first hit on the Heavy or EX versions to dispel the opponent's projectile and then fire her own afterwards The EX version is also quite fast so if you're willing to spend bar it can be a pretty scary projectile to deal with given the average high speed in King of Fighters and that skilled players will be very used to dealing with the projectile game in a number of ways Orochi Shermie doesn't really threaten notably with it compared to characters like Athena and King who are much more adept at keeping their zoning up while also forcing the opponent out when they try to approach Mugetsu no Raiun is a move where Orochi Shermie places a lightning ball on the screen and is employed mainly in oki opportunities or just generally from a far distance to force the opponent into a mixup or juggle situation but the drawback is that unless you use the EX version it disappears quite quickly meaning you need to spend bar to give this move much value While Orochi Shermie has some interesting tools to her name they just don't feel like they stick out when matched against characters of similar archetypes but I had a hard time seeing why I would use her over someone like Athena who does similar things but in a more solid way Based on the fact that she needs meter to use some of her best tools I'd consider Orochi Shermie's best position if you were to use her to be the anchor position It's unclear how her matchup would be against most other anchor characters but without meter you won't truly get the character to shine so to me it seems essential to put her in a spot where she has a lot of bar at her disposal It's difficult to directly compare Orochi Shermie with her normal counterpart since they have vastly different playstyles inherent to them but my impression is that her Orochi self is weaker than normal Shermie which is unfortunate for fans who were looking forward to the return of Miss lightning rod Orochi Chris takes the young face of the evildoer rock band and revamps him from a pressure rushdown character into something more of a shoto-esque straightforward character who is more well-rounded While that may sound like his offense has been toned down it hasn't really and even his high mobility still feels in place although he isn't quite as mixup-heavy as the normal Chris is What's most notable when you sit down and try out Orochi Chris is just how high conversion value the character has Stray hits can lead into high damage and in something that isn't unique to Orochi Chris he can convert very well even after landing supers with special move followups This high level of expression makes him a very rewarding character to use and you'll feel like there's always a lot of things you can do with him Because of how his Supers and Specials synergize with each other it also means that he has another big strength — a high level of meter expression Orochi Chris is adept at going for different routes and maximizing his damage depending on how much meter is at his disposal and this versatility brings very high value to the character since it means they don't have to be locked to a certain position giving players much more freedom in how they want to build their team if they include Orochi Chris since he can sort of be slotted in anywhere Another aspect of Orochi Chris which has to be mentioned is his Taiyou O Iru Honoo which is a series of projectiles that explode on the screen The furthest projectile gives him the best frame advantage so to be used efficiently in offense it needs to be spaced quite particularly making it a strange move to use when trying to attack given how the move works it's actually amazing at dealing with opposing projectiles which makes it a fantastic anti-zoning tool meaning that Orochi Chris should have a much easier time at approaching opponents that are trying to keep him out than many other all-rounder characters do my impression of Orochi Chris is that he's a stronger version of himself than Original Chris due in no small part to his high versatility allowing him to have more freedom in matchups than the somewhat streamlined plan of original Chris permits The character I've spent the most time looking at and trying stuff out with of the three is definitely Orochi Yashiro a character who probably has the most similarity in gameplan between his normal counterpart and Orochi version While normal Yashiro is a bit of a brawler who powers his way through with armored moves and big combo conversions off of strong hits Orochi Yashiro plays a different but similarly oppressive offensive game where he's a grappler with an array of annoying command grab mixups can be an annoying tool to deal with simply because he can go for tickgrab situations well from it and since only the light version is actually a command grab if you do the heavy version you might catch opponents pre-jump frames if they're trying to jump out expecting the grab While this is inherently a risk since Yashiro might end up picking the wrong version it's definitely a layer of annoyance the opponent has to consistently deal with he comes equipped with the standard King of Fighters' grappler fare which is a one-frame command grab in Musebu Daichi and a strike/throw invincible command grab in Niragu Daichi These options obviously make him a lot scarier both on offense and defense since he always has something fast or invincible to threaten with and Niragu Daichi is scarier than ever since he can follow it up to get better damage and corner carry and off of the EX version get a super combo with low scaling making it a massive threat may not have that much firepower but it makes up for it in sheer utility It can land on opponents as an OTG and even snatch them out of the air for combo purposes The heavy version is specifically made to be an anti-air tool and it's a very good one at that giving Orochi Yashiro a very good tool to deal with airborne offense against him Having meter of course enhances Orochi Yashiro the same way it does any character but for his general gameplan to work he doesn't really need it which makes me consider him most efficient as a point character He's tricky to deal with and having a playstyle which forces the opponent into uncomfortable guessing games on their very first character is a boon so it really plays to Orochi Yashiro's strength to have him as your lead Considering the high level of power that normal Yashiro has it'd be a hard sell to call Orochi Yashiro stronger than him but I genuinely do think they're about the same in terms of how good they are Their roles in teams are vastly different since one is quite meter-hungry and the other one can do just fine without so if you're a big Yashiro fan you should easily be able to incorporate both in your team if you wish to do so Although the Orochi team was the DLC addition I was least excited about going into this first year of post-game support for King of Fighters 15 after spending some time with the three of them I definitely think there's value to their inclusion although I might not end up adding any of them to my own arsenal (okay These three characters have a lot of fans for both of their different versions and if you've been waiting for their return for all of these years King of Fighters 15 does feel like it does the Awakened Orochi team justice if you're an inherent fan of the characters I think it probably is by virtue of having a team-based DLC structure it gets a lot more difficult to justify the purchase if you're only interested in one of the pack even though they have their own distinct playstyles separate from their original counterparts they are definitely less engaging than the previous teams of Team Garou and Team South Town Their gameplay does set them apart enough from the original trio but I still can't help but feel that this team should have probably been discounted compared to the others simply because they are still the same characters and do share the same normals of their originals Whether it's worth the money or not is up to you but I think it's fair to say that this is the worst deal we've seen for King of Fighters 15's paid DLC so far **CURRENTLY OFFLINE ** - Based on a beloved children's story from Japan Takeshi Yashiro brings this tale of a mischievous orphaned Fox to screen in glorious stop-motion Described by director Takeshi Yashiro as a “sad story” but one that also shows “how the world is in fact full of warmth” The Little Fox blends traditional fairytale storytelling with meticulous stop-motion animation there’s a timeless feeling to this short that means both young and old will enjoy its classical feel written at the tender age of 18 by renowned Japanese author Nankichi Niimi The Little Fox follows its titular character on a journey of atonement after he feels guilty for the part he believes he played in the death of a young villager’s mother this is a tale about miscommunication and understanding with Yashiro hoping his film will prompt viewers to take the opportunity to “pull down the walls” and accept others Featuring intricate wood carved characters detailed prop design and authentic feeling backgrounds there’s a natural feel to Yashiro’s craft that feels perfectly suited to Niimi’s narrative Everything in the film feels so carefully considered from the scenery to the playful way GON switches from walking on two legs to four you can tell bringing this classic story to screen was a real labour of love for the animator/director the type we often claim is more suited to the festival setting the craft in Yashiro’s work is so stunning and the characters so endearing it’s hard not to fall in love with his film – even if the ending will break your heart a little Not only is his return a big deal in and of itself but also because of the implications that come with it let's have a look at why Yashiro has even been absent for such a long time As part of the New Faces Team back in King of Fighters '97 Yashiro was a new character in the game alongside his teammates Chris and Shermie This team proved to be very popular with fans but unfortunately these characters died in their very first appearance Since SNK are quite the sticklers about their lore (for the most part) they actually stuck to their guns on this decision and kept the beloved trio out of future games outside of the non-canon dream match titles like '98 and 2002 So while Yashiro and his companions would appear on occasion during special circumstances their canon status remained "dead as three doornails" This is where we get to the foreshadowing of their return though — SNK has actually been fairly candid about their intention of bringing these characters back the final boss of the game Verse inadvertently revived many dead souls from past King of Fighters titles suggesting that the status of dead characters was no longer set in stone The main reason on SNK's part for doing this was likely two-fold one was to bring back the highly popular Ash Crimson who sacrificed himself during the events of King of Fighters 13 to overcome that game's final boss Saiki while the other was so they could finally bring back the New Faces Team in canon titles This was further elaborated upon in the spin-off title SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy where Shermie was brought in as a roster member this game is actually considered to be canon to the King of Fighters series (if you're wondering how Terry grew breasts and then de-grew them for King of Fighters 15 it's because the majority of the game takes place within dream sequences — the canon-to-reality parts are largely the character endings) Shermie's inclusion in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy confirmed that for all intents and purposes Chris and Yashiro both featured in her ending so it was also clear that she wasn't the only one who had returned to the canon timeline If you've got a keen eye (or even if you don't really) you should be able to spot Chris' arm and Shermie's hair to Yashiro's sides SNK aren't even trying to hide what Yashiro's team is going to be — and honestly They're fully aware that this is what fans have been clamoring for going on 24 years at this point What's important to note about their return as well is that Orochi the catalyst of their death in their original appearance was also revived but swiftly dealt with by Kyo Iori and Chizuru in one of King of Fighters 14's endings With Orochi vanquished, it's entirely possible that Yashiro and his allies won't be focused on reviving the old deity anymore, something that's been somewhat alluded to when looking at animation comparisons for older games due to Yashiro looking much more friendly and less savage this time around suggesting he may not be as vicious anymore Given the high amount of time and care SNK tend to put in their games in order to make fans feel right at home with classic throwbacks and animations it's a telling sign that many of Yashiro's motions are filled with nostalgia but he doesn't look nearly as angry while doing them It's hard to imagine this being anything but an intentional decision on the developer's part We also see Yashiro interact with Iori in the trailer which is likely a callback to the bad blood between them in the past Shermie and Chris' band had a gig cancelled in favor or Iori's jazz band leading to them holding a grudge against "the red-haired man" Yashiro seems to be fairly friendly towards him further suggesting that he's not quite as infused with Orochi energy as when we last saw him If we're indeed seeing a somewhat more peaceful Yashiro Shermie and Chris will be focusing on their musical activities (as they have a band together) and may be around for the long haul With no Orochi bloodline to push them into doing the bidding of higher powers they may just be joining the King of Fighters family as mainstay characters from now on The only real question to me at this point is what will become of their Orochi forms Each of the three has an Orochi variation to themselves where they're imbued with Orochi's power and have completely different movesets Given that the movesets aren't at all the same as their regular versions there could definitely be value in bringing these back as well While Yashiro in the trailer is clearly not Orochi Yashiro but instead the regular version it's possible we'd see alternate versions of the characters more as easter eggs than anything else or maybe there's more to Orochi's supposed demise than meets the eye Iori and Chizuru are officially teaming up this game as the Sacred Treasures Team a union which is synonymous with sealing away Orochi from our world It's hard to say when we don't exactly know what SNK's plans are for the story of King of Fighters 15 yet but an easy solution to keep the New Faces trio around for fans but also placate the people who preferred their Orochi-fied movesets would be to simply include their Orochi variations as non-canon DLC everyone would get what they want without having to form the entire story around it and retread old ground While there's definitely a lot of nostalgia to be had for the old games it's telling that the Hero Team still focuses on Shun'ei and Meitenkun meaning we're likely going to be hitting new beats rather than just revisit nostalgia hits just because dead characters have returned to the surface world with Yashiro now part of the roster and looking absolutely fantastic I know a lot of fans will be waiting with bated breath to see Chris and Shermie in all of their 3D glory (although the latter we already got a sneak peek of back in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy) Don't be surprised if they fake us out by revealing Yuri's teammate next More on Rook and how he’s meant to be viewed and acted “The name of the cards is interesting and I’m attached to what I like and love I think the interactions between the cast is also interesting where we’ve made it multi-layered so kids and adults can both enjoy it.” Source NeoArkadia is the 2nd Number of "The Organization" and a primary article writer. They are also an administrator for the forum Neo Ark Cradle I don't really feel happy reviewing this episode. I've been enjoying this show, enjoying it a lot - after Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū and Grimgar it's represented the final top-tier pillar of the season for me It's sometimes gone over the top in its thriller theatrics but its execution has been generally excellent and it seemed like it was building towards some compelling points about community and trust it is a show about the ways isolation and distrust hurt both a community at large and all of its individual members In spite of living in a world that values discreteness and propriety Yashiro stood as a reflection of how there are still good people After a half-episode spent trailing first Aya Nakanishi and then his classmate Misato Satoru finds himself sitting next to Yashiro in a borrowed car having recruited his teacher to help ensure Misato's safety The show isn't subtle in the ways it frames Yashiro as ominous here Yashiro has to force Satoru's seatbelt closed and then he goes off into a villainous monologue about how both good and bad deeds are “based in a desire to get over a defect in yourself.” Shots sit below Yashiro's eyeline in a line that may well echo in hack writing history Basically every line and image that follows feels like it features invisible italics and maybe even bold and underline for good measure Yashiro opens with an evil smile worthy of the most melodramatic scenery-chewers before going the full villain distance and explaining his evil plan “This is my true form” he literally actually says to Satoru detailing his evil schemes and dastardly motives with all the moral complexity of a Scooby Doo villain It's a scene that directly attacks the show's most compelling thematic vein all for the sake of cheap thriller shock value a betrayal of any possible moral complexity and an embracing of the show's clumsiest instincts he goes on to murder the idea of graceful writing itself literally saying “it's like you've seen the future.” I half-expected this scene to end with him saying “and now it's time for you to be… ERASED.” egregiously written single sequence - it was a betrayal of the show's overall narrative that makes the entire show far weaker I wasn't sure exactly how the show was going to end I had reasonable hopes it would arrive at some kind of graceful conclusion and a vindication of any doubts fostered by tricks like the blood-red eyes This episode was the narrative version of those blood-red eyes a sophomoric piece of shock-value thriller histrionics that did as much damage to its show's emotional and thematic integrity as any episode possibly could From the actual dialogue to the visual framing and underlying narrative implications this episode was a staggering disappointment Much like Chizuru, however, Yashiro Nanakase doesn't have that luxury since the last game he was included in was almost 20 years ago so there's a more compelling comparison to see how he's been adapted from his former life as a 2d sprite Luckily, we don't need to use our imagination to see what's new or mostly the same, as Orpheus is back with another side-by-side comparison video for Yashiro taking a look at his King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match incarnation SNK seems to have done a fairly impressive job recreating the head of Team New Faces considering most of what was shown off in the trailer matches up closely on just about every normal and special is his Final Impact Super and pretty much anything that used a big uppercut before is seemingly no longer here in KOF15 Yashiro's demeanor may be the biggest thing about him that's changed — outside of gaining an extra dimension — as he seems to be having a lot more fun in battles now that he's not under the control of Orochi This is reflected in many of Yashiro's attacks appearing less maniacal and harsh which can be seen in his facial expressions and hand positions most noticeably.