I don't read Japanese, but I smell DadWagon's influence...
— Dadwagon (@dadwagon) October 1, 2012
Smells like Dadwagon spirit? Right generation, wrong genre. ECD is Yoshinori Ishida, one of the pioneers of underground Japanese-language rap. That's him up top [51], in his underwear, sacked out next to his two young daughters, on the cover of the blog-turned-book published last year by his photographer wife Ichiko Uemoto [27, cue golf clap].
From as far back as the late 80s ECD has pursued an old school, Bronx-influenced, authentically homebrewed J-Rap style in opposition to the parodic, poppy minstrel show fluff of the Japanese corporate music industry.
image via ichikouemoto's fotolife
Which offers less [way less] Snoop buying a bus with a stripper pole for his kid's pee-wee football team, and more [way more] of near-Ozzy Osbourne levels of amusingly boring lifestyle reportage. In 2009, ECD and Uemoto co-authored Homesick a book about their surreally mundane life as new parents. Which seems to have spawned the blogs, where Uemoto takes photos of her OG husband riding the kids around on his mamachari.
Which in turn seems to have generated another book. I think the Hatarake ECD translates as a command, "Work, ECD!" And though the book's subtitle promises an "account of the chaos of childrearing," from the blog, at least, it all seems pretty normal. If you're not a J-Rap aficionado attuned to the projected incongruities, then their life, and their blog account of it, seems just as interesting [i.e. boring] as anyone else's.
Or maybe not. On ECD's SoundCloud, there are a couple of versions of ベビーカーとプラカード, [Strollers & Placards], a song about the parents who show up for regular anti-nuclear demonstrations.
And this track from ECD's YouTube channel, "Mada, Yume no Naka," [Still In A Dream] is all about being a dad: becoming a parent at 50, taking stock of his own childhood vs his kids', etc.
Hatarake ECD: the blog [exblog.jp]
Ichiko Uemoto's fotolife stream [hatena.ne.jp]
Try to buy Hatarake ECD/ 働けECD わたしの育児混沌記, in Japanese, obv., from Amazon JP [amazon.co.jp]
Oh wait, actually, ECD's been publishing diaries for years now. [amazon.co.jp]
All this started from dadwagon's tweet of gurafiku's book cover post [dadwagon, gurafiku]
PS: it's Hah-tah-rah-keh, not hate-a-rake.
Really cute pictures! Cute kids!