Japanese Literature Challenge 2

Attention!

2009-06-27T11:12:00.006-05:00

This blog was for the Japanese Literature Challenge 2 which ran from July 30, 2008 until January 30, 2009.

If you would like to join, or follow, the Japanese Literature Challenge 3 you're just in time. It begins July 30th, 2009. As soon as the challenge begins, I will post the new review site here as well as on my regular blog.

Until then, you can begin choosing some books you'd like to read listed here.

Let Us Not Say, "Good-bye..."

2009-02-08T19:27:00.002-06:00

let us say, "Until we meet again."

The Japanese literature challenge 2 has officially ended. However, please feel free to continue to write posts for any more Japanese literature you have read.

Feel free to peruse this blog for ideas to read further in this genre.

Feel free to join in the next time it comes around: July, 2009.

Prizes Announced!

2009-02-04T18:36:00.001-06:00

"Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass." (Japanese proverb)

"Life without endeavor is like entering a jewel-mine and coming out with empty hands." (Japanese proverb)

"An accomplishment sticks to a person," (Japanese proverb) and so without further ado:

Prize #1: Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto (donated by Terri B.) goes to Nymeth!

Prize #2: Coin Locker Babies goes to Chris at Stuff as Dreams Are Made On!

Prize #3: "The Wave" notebook, set of cards, and froggie origami goes to Iliana!

Prize #4: two CDs of Japanese music go to Tanabata!

Prize #5: All She Was Worth and Crossfire go to Dream Queen!

Prize #6: Hear The Wind Sing, and a matching button, go to The Holistic Knitter!

Prize #7: the Japanese cookbook, and a dish with a Japanese Maple leaf, go to Terri B!

Prize #8: The DHC catalogue, with accompanying samples and olive soap, go to Madeleine!

Prize #9: Tanabata's lovely Japanese calendar goes to Raidergirl 3!

and that leaves us with Carl V., Mee, and 3M who, as yet prize-less during the challenge, will be rewarded with a small token of my appreciation.

If all of you will email me your address at: bellezza.mjs@gmail.com, I will send your prizes off in the next week. Thank you, thank you for joining me in the Japanese Literature Challenge 2.

And, for the rest of you, mark your calendars for the JLC3 beginning this July!

Congrats!

2009-02-01T23:30:00.001-06:00

Congratulations to all of you who completed the challenge this time around.

I, unfortunately, am not one of them. I just couldn't get on track for a couple of my challenges, which has led me to shy away from challenges this year. But, Bellezza, if and when you do JLC3, I'll give it another shot because I still have these wonderful books that I truly want to read!

Again, congratulations to you all!

cjh

Challenge Complete!

2009-02-01T23:19:00.001-06:00

Bellezza was a wonderful host (thank you!) for this second Japanese literature challenge, and I enjoyed this one as much as I did the first challenge.

My favorites were The Housekeeper and the Professor and Fear and Trembling. Fear and Trembling was not technically Japanese, but it was set in Japan and had a lot to say about Japanese culture. I loved both of these books! I also read two mangas, a Japanese vampire book, and a book by a Nobel laureate. I'm very happy with the books I read, and I continue to be very much interested in both Japanese books and movies. Thanks, Bellezza, and I look forward to the next challenge as well!

Books I read:

X-Kai by Asami Tohjoh
Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Thousand Cranes by Kawabata
X-Kai- Vol. 2 by Asami Tohjoh

Of interest:

Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb (originally in French but set in Japan)

Japanese movies I watched:

After Life - A
Last Life in the Universe - B+
Fear and Trembling - A (in both French and Japanese)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

2009-01-31T15:03:00.004-06:00

by Haruki Murakami

This is the story of a man who’s wife leaves him and his efforts to get her back. At the beginning of the novel Toru or Mr. Wind-up Bird, has quit his job at a law firm and putters around the house cooking and looking for their lost cat while his wife supports them. One day his wife goes to work and simply doesn’t come back. Because this is Murakami it does not involve any navel gazing about the what could have gone wrong in the marriage or any action by the man to go out and get a job to impress her and win her back. Instead Toru drifts along letting fate take him where it will and in this case it takes him on some very interesting adventures. In his wife’s absence Toru meets Malta Kano, a psychic helping him look for his lost cat and her sister, Creta Kano, a prostitute of the mind. He crosses paths with his evil brother in law, Noboru a pragmatic politician who defiled Creta Kano years ago and may have something to do with his wife’s absence. He meets Lt. Mamiya who tells him about war atrocities in Outer Mongolia and Manchuria. He runs into a mother and son team that he calls Nutmeg and Cinnamon and joins up with them to psychically heal wealthy women. Toru also makes friends with a teenage girl down the street, May Kasahara , and spends quite a bit of time sitting in a dry well where he has some unusual experiences.

What I really love about Murakami is his writing. This is how he described a smile: “The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter in delight.” Most authors would just call it a smile but Murakami draws a vivid picture. I also love the crazy characters and the way you never know exactly what is going to happen because reality as we know it does not apply in a Murakami novel (the New York Times review called the novel Kafkaesque). I have read some reviews that said they didn’t like the ambiguous ending but I like to be left guessing about what happens after the novel ends. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. While I like Kafka on the Shore better because I liked the main character more, this was a great read and I will certainly continue to read Murakami.

Japanese literature giveaway

2009-01-31T11:04:00.004-06:00

To celebrate my blog's 3rd anniversary, I'm having a giveaway and this is what you could win.

For more information and to enter, please visit my blog here.

Journey

2009-01-31T06:22:00.003-06:00

Blanketed in snow
fields, trees and travelers
share winter’s journey.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

2009-01-29T14:08:00.001-06:00

Asleep is a collection of three short novellas, all of which focus on some aspect of death and also a sleeping, either literal or psychic, born of trauma.

Night and Night's Travelers
"Night and Night's Travelers" is a tale of the literal death of one and the resulting temporary emotional death of another. The narrator is Shibami and she tells the story of her "vibrantly charismatic" brother Yoshihiro and her dreamy cousin Mari. Yoshihiro and Mari are not only cousins, but lovers. After Yoshihiro's death, Mari withdraws and enters a year of dreamlike fog and sleepwalking.

Love Songs
"Love Songs" tells of the haunting of one woman by another. Fumi has found herself at the end of an affair and drinking to excess. She often hears a "soothing voice singing." This voice belongs to Haru, a dead woman with whom Fumi once shared her ex-lover. Fumi is drawn to this voice from the beyond and, through consultation with a midget psychic, is able to meet with Haru. In life, the two women were in a relationship of bitter resentment and jealousy, yet in this meeting of life and afterlife they find peace and friendship.

Asleep
"Asleep" is the story of Terako who shares the deep sleep of her lover's comatose wife. Mr. Iwanaga has an unusual effect on women ... he puts them to sleep. His wife is in a coma and his lover, Terako, becomes increasingly sleepy. As Terako separates herself from Mr. Iwanaga and creates her own life, she finds a new energy.

Supernatural occurrences seem natural throughout the stories in Asleep. The language is sparse, creating silences and the stories lack any attempt to draw the reader in emotionally. Yoshimoto's writing style reminded me of minimalist Japanese decor. The setting is sparse, but what is there is beautiful. The writing often seems like a prose version of haiku:

Late at night the trees in my garden seemed to shine.
Awash in light from the street, the quiet glittering green of the
leaves and the deep brown of the trunk seemed startlingly vivid.

Those looking for an exciting read will not find it in Asleep. What the reader will find is a quiet and beautiful collection of stories that take the vicissitudes of life in stride.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Artists

2009-01-28T06:56:00.004-06:00

In the back garden
where no one can see them, four
women are painting.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse

2009-01-27T08:17:00.000-06:00

Black Rain is set both several years after the end of WW2 and in the days following the bombing of Hiroshima. Shigematsu Shizuma’s niece, Yasuko, is not yet married, and rumours that she was hit by poisonous black rain after the Hiroshima bombing, and is now suffering from radiation sickness, lower her chances of finding someone. When someone makes inquires about her, her uncle decides to copy his diary of the days after the bombing so that he can set the record straight about what the family went through. Black Rain alternates between long passages from his diary and episodes set in the character's present.

Confession: I mooched and began to read Black Rain completely convinced that this was in fact The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock (a book about one of the scientists involved in the making of the atomic bomb meeting one of the survivors from Hiroshima). I’m not sure how I got the books mixed up. I guess there’s the fact that they’re both about Hiroshima, of course, and also that I first heard of both at tanabata’s blog. But anyway, I spend the first chapter of Black Rain being confused and waiting for the scientists to be mentioned. Then I realized my mistake, felt stupid, and began to read the book I actually had in my hands rather than the book I thought I did.

Black Rain is not about the political or social implications of nuclear warfare. Rather, it’s about its everyday consequence, its direct impact on people’s lives. A lot of the story deals with the practical consequences of the war. What did people eat? How did they treat their burns after the bombing? How did they react to seeing large chunks of their skin fall off? A lot of it is not for the faint of heart, but the writing style is as undramatic and subdued as it could possibly be. And I think this matter-of-factness made it even sadder.

The sections set in the present deal in part with long-term consequences of radiation, and with how the lives of so many people were permanently changed. There was a part I found particularly interesting, about how these people’s treatment clashes with their traditional way of life:

There had been a dozen or more people suffering from radiation sickness in the village, but now only three survives – mild cases, of which Shigematsu was one. All three had checked the progress of the disease by taking care to always get plenty of food and rest. Where the rest was concerned, however, it was not enough—nor was it tolerable for the patient himself—simply to lie in bed all day. The doctor had suggested doing light jobs about the place, supplemented by “walks”. Unfortunately, it was out of the question for the head of the family, to all appearances in the best of health, to stroll idly through the village. For someone to “go for a walk”, in fact, was quite unheard of. A “walk” was unthinkable in terms of traditional custom, and this unthinkable in principle.

Black Rain is a very moving book, but like I was saying it’s written in a very quiet, restrained tone. This is something I actually associate with Japan. Normally I shy away from making generalizations of this kind about entire nations or cultures, but from what I know of Japanese literature and art in general (admittedly not very much at all), I do get the impression that emotions tend to be expressed in more subtle ways than in the West.

Black Rain is actually not a depressing book. There are a lot of horrific things happening, but there are also moments of humour and beauty. I’ll leave you with this great passage from the introduction by the translator, John Bester:

Black Rain is a portrait of a group of human beings; of the death of a great city; of a nation crumbling into defeat. It is a picture of the Japanese mind that tells more than many sociological studies. Yet more than this, it is a statement of a philosophy. Although that philosophy, in its essence, is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, it seems to be life-affirming. Dealing with the grimmest of subjects, the work is not, in the end, depressing, for the author is ultimately concerned with life rather than with death, and with an overall beauty and transcends ugliness of detail.

Day's End

2009-01-26T20:44:00.003-06:00

Merchants plod homeward
after long day at market,
full moon shining bright.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2009-01-25T15:35:00.002-06:00

Everything is metaphor. Nothing is metaphor. Metaphor is reality. Murakami takes the reader on a surreal trip that will leave you breathless while also leaving you to wonder what you missed.

Kafka on the Shore is, in part, a quest. Fifteen year old Kafka Tamura runs from home in order to pursue his past, to find his mother and sister who haven't been seen since he was a little boy, and to find out who he is apart from his father. His quest begins as he seeks for answers to his past, but at some point in the journey he realizes the futility of this and turns to pursue his future instead. The story alternates between Kafka and an elderly gentleman by the name of Mr. Nakata. Nakata wants to find the half of himself that was lost when he was a young boy during World War II. A mysterious event left Nakata unable to read, and in his own words, "not very bright." As he journeys, Nakata is not sure where he is going or what he is looking for, but intuits that he will know it when he sees it.

The mysterious event of World War II, which took a part of Mr. Nakata, remains a blurry element of the novel. It is never looked at directly, but is something that is seen in the "peripheral vision" and is similar to those things that, in the darkness, are better seen when looked at indirectly. Mr. Nakata can not remember what happened and suffers an amnesia that might be metaphor for a national amnesia surrounding the events of World War II. I am aware of the concept of national amnesia, but am hardly an expert in this area and so will leave this thought to be pursued by those better qualified.

Murakami is known for his use of magical realism, and Kafka on the Shore has plenty of opportunity for the reader to suspend his or her disbelief. Talking cats, fish raining from the sky, and appearances by Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders should not surprise Murakami's readers. If this isn't enough to confuse many of us, Murakami also takes occasional jaunts into the metaphysical realm.

The novel is often confusing and requires the reader to simply follow where Murakami leads. The ending is ambiguous, but somehow the book makes sense without a coherent resolution. Murakami has written a novel that is hopeful and speaks of the human capacity to go forward and reach for that "brand-new world" that is constantly before us.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Japanese Literature Challenge 2: Prizes are Coming!

2009-01-19T11:04:00.006-06:00

A catalogue from DHC with fourteen samples, including one full size bar of Extra Mild Olive soap,

a Japanese cookbook and a little black dish made with a real Japanese Maple leaf,

a spiral notebook featuring The Wave, a box of 10 notecards, and a package of Froggie Origami,

2 CDs of Japanese music: The Very Best of Japanese Music and Vista (contemporary koto),

two paperback books of Miyuke Miyabe's: All She Was Worth and Crossfire,

an extremely hard to find copy of Haurki Murakami's book Hear The Wind Sing which was written when he was in college, along with two buttons.

So, are you ready to throw your name into the pot? If you've read three Japanese works, please leave a comment below. You have until January 30 to finish the Challenge; I can't wait to hear from you!

Evening

2009-01-19T07:51:00.006-06:00

A summer’s evening—
villagers stroll through the gate
to greet the darkness.

Fruit

2009-01-12T07:22:00.004-06:00

Succulent apples
waiting for the harvesters—
dark mountains brooding.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Travelers

2009-01-11T09:03:00.003-06:00

Rootless travelers
scurrying from here to there—
where are you going?

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

2009-01-10T16:39:00.004-06:00

This is the third and final book I'll be blogging about for this great Japanese Literature Challenge. Thanks again to Bellezza for organizing this! I've gotten some great ideas for future reads here.

Fumiko Enchi (1905-86) was and is still considered one of the most important female writers of Japan. As the daughter of one of Japan's most pre-eminent scholars and a sickly child educated at home, she was widely read and incredibly learned - the latter of which is quite obvious in Masks, which manages to be both a fantastic story and a sort of treatise combining literary criticism, mythology, and history.

Enchi's reputation is, in my view, well deserved for Masks is a really, really good book. Enchi was clearly influenced by Junichiro Tanizaki at his best (i.e., not Naomi) but her authorial voice was entirely her own too. I loved the way she was able to blur the lines between physical and intellectual obsessions and passions. Many writers see these as antithetical but Enchi really explored the disturbing things that can occur when research into mythology, spirit possession, and Noh theatre get mixed up with physical lust and emotional desire.

And the writing was fantastic. Thank all good things for talented translators.

Central to the book's look at the complicated relationships between the widow Yasuko, her mother-in-law Mieko and Yasuko's two suitors Ibuki and Mikame is the ethereal magic of the masks used in Noh drama. The masks are made with static impressions but the way actors position their heads and pose their bodies appear to change the masks' expressions according to the needs of the plays performed.

Mieko is deeply interested in Noh masks and she is both directly and obliquely compared to an actor manipulating a mask to establish certain "dramatic" ends known entirely only to her.

When it was finally revealed what her ends were, I was both incredibly disturbed and somewhat disappointed; I'm not certain how to reconcile such contradictory feelings. But my confusion over the book's conclusion is minor. Masks is an absolutely beautiful book and I recommend it whole-heartedly.

The Dance

2009-01-10T08:15:00.001-06:00

Swirling in her silks
young maiden sways to music
she alone can hear.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Longing

2009-01-07T10:09:00.003-06:00

She wonders how soon
her samurai will come back,
claim her as his own.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Seaside

2009-01-06T07:47:00.003-06:00

Travelers ignore
ocean’s gray susurration
but pine trees draw near.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Fujisan

2009-01-05T07:12:00.007-06:00

Two pilgrims journey
over snow-covered bridges
toward sacred mountain.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Threnody

2009-01-04T07:48:00.005-06:00

Even sparrows weep
as somber violinist
stumbles on the notes.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Cherry Blossoms

2009-01-03T07:48:00.003-06:00

Ah, cherry blossoms
perfume the air, while people
saunter here and there.

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Waiting

2009-01-02T07:39:00.005-06:00

unopened journal
calligraphy brush in hand
waiting for the muse

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

New Year

2009-01-01T07:18:00.005-06:00

Greeting the new year—
do we hold hope in our hearts
or grey lumps of dread?

© 2009 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Downpour

2008-12-31T10:36:00.003-06:00

Scurry, travelers!
Bridge offers you no shelter
from sudden downpour.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Snow Walk

2008-12-30T07:14:00.003-06:00

parasol dangling
carelessly from her shoulder
woman walks through snow

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Sovereign

2008-12-29T07:30:00.004-06:00

Rising at midnight
to survey my dominions—
good, the moon still shines.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Hunger

2008-12-28T09:11:00.006-06:00

three ravenous cranes
pecking diligently for
scattered grains of rice

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Winter

2008-12-27T06:57:00.005-06:00

No one seems to mind
that snow drapes tree and stone or
blue lake lies frozen.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Reading

2008-12-26T18:31:00.004-06:00

Picking up a book
on a cold winter’s morning—
great comfort, great joy.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T07:25:00.002-06:00

What cry rises from
frozen lake to starry sky?
Ah, season’s greetings!

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Joy

2008-12-24T07:27:00.003-06:00

Spirit of Christmas,
skipping through snowy streets, shout
tidings of great joy!

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Snowfall

2008-12-23T08:09:00.003-06:00

The women ponder
how they will make love again
after the snowfall.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Cranes

2008-12-22T08:23:00.003-06:00

Bemused by snowfall
cranes remember warm breezes
and white plum blossoms.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Triptych

2008-12-21T07:09:00.006-06:00

crow on snowy branch
longing for summer skies and
clouds of plum blossoms

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

The Struggle

2008-12-20T07:31:00.007-06:00

Like fierce animals

struggling to be free, wild kites
tug at their restraints.

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Mt. Fuji

2008-12-19T11:24:00.004-06:00

Do you remember
when you were but a hillock
stretching toward the clouds?

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Longing

2008-12-18T07:37:00.002-06:00

calligraphy brush
lying beside blue ink pot
longing for paper

© 2008 by CaliforniaTeacherGuy

Five Women Who Loved Love by Ihara Saikaku

2008-12-03T17:37:00.003-06:00

I actually read Ihara Saikaku's Five Women Who Loved Love about a month ago and I blogged about it then on my personal site. I didn't have the energy at the time to post about it here, and as time went on I put it off because I felt this book deserved more thought and serious attention than I could then give it.

So, this is my second review for this great Japanese Literature challenge, and I chose Five Women Who Loved Love for two reasons. The first was that I believe this is the first Floating World book to be discussed here. The Floating World (浮世) refers to the excesses, dangers, and beauties of urban Japan during the Edo Period (1600-1867).

More, from Wikipedia, which actually kind of got it right:

Ideas of the Floating World were "centered on Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo). The area's brothels, teahouses and kabuki theaters were frequented by Japan's growing middle class. This particular Floating World culture also arose in other cities such as Osaka and Kyoto.

It is also an ironic allusion to the homophone 'Sorrowful World' (憂き世), the earthly plane of death and rebirth from which Buddhists sought release."

Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) is considered the creator of Floating World literature for the ways in which he evoked the energy and inclinations of pleasure-seeking urbanites while also remaining focused on Buddhist concerns of letting go of this world. This is a difficult balance to maintain indeed, for these books were widely read and considered what we would now call best-sellers. Attraction and repulsion seem to have been of equal importance in Saikaku's works and I think that must have been part of what contributed to his books being so widely read.

The other reason I chose this book is that I'd previously read Saikaku's The Life of an Amorous Man and very much enjoyed it. I didn't initially enjoy Five Women Who Loved Love as much but as time passes, I find myself remembering it more and more positively. At the time, all I wanted were some good yarns but now I find myself returning mentally again and again to the beautiful melancholy underlying all of the young characters' attempts to hold on to things which must be lost, sooner or later: the life of the body and heart, and all their extremes of pleasure and pain.

As an introduction to Floating World literature, I would definitely recommend both Five Women Who Loved Love and The Life of An Amorous Man.

My Challenge Completed

2008-11-28T18:30:00.001-06:00

I've read 4 books for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 2, and since I'm getting ready to dive into some new challenges, I thought I would post a wrap-up of this very enjoyable one. This is my second time reading Japanese literature with Bellezza, and I enjoyed it again very much! Her challenges are elegantly done, and I always look forward to them. Thanks, Bellezza for hosting another fascinating challenge!

Books read:

After the Quake, Haruki Murakami
Twenty-Four Eyes, by Sakae Tsuboi
Tales of Moonlight and Rain, by Akinari Ueda
Knit Kimono, by Vicki Square

I liked all four books, but the sentimental Twenty-Four Eyes was my favorite.

Goodbye, Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

2008-11-25T10:55:00.002-06:00

“From the time she was born Tsugumi was ridiculously frail, and she had a whole slew of ailments and defects. Her doctors announced that she would die young, and her family began preparing for the worst. Of course everyone around her spoiler her like you wouldn’t believe. Her mother carted her around to hospitals all across Japan, not sparing any effort, offering up every ounce of her strength to try and extend Tsugumi’s life even just a little. And so as Tsugumi toddled her unsteady way towards adulthood, she developed a personality that was just as pushy and insolent as it could be.”

The narrator of this story is Maria, Tsugumi’s cousin. Despite Tsugumi’s unpleasant personality, the two grow to be very close friends. Goodbye, Tsugumi is the story of the last summer they spend at the seaside town where they were born and grew up. Maria returns after having moved to Tokyo with her family, and Tsugumi is stoon to leave because her parents are going to sell their inn and open a pension in the mountains.

It’s not surprising, given the title, that this story is about saying goodbye in several different ways. Goodbye, Tsugumi is filled with bittersweet nostalgia and with a deep awareness of the passage of time. Look at this passage, for example:

Summer was coming. Yes, summer was about to begin. A season that would come and go only once, and never return again. All of us understood that very well, and yet we would probably just pass our days the way we always had. And this made the tickling of time feel slightly more tense than in the old days, infused it with a hint of distress. We could all feel this as we sat there that evening, together. We could feel it so clearly that it made us sad, and yet at the same time we were extremely happy.

But there are, of course, issues other than the summer coming to an end at stake in this story. There’s growing up, and becoming distant from people who once filled your whole life. And there’s mortality, as Tsugumi’s frail health makes her, and those who surround her, deeply aware of death, and constantly unsure of whether each passing day will be her last.

So what Goodbye, Tsugumi is is a lovely book about vulnerability and change. And despite the fact that one of the main characters is a teenager who might not live to see another year, the result is not nearly as bleak as you’d expect. But worry not, it’s also not artificially optimistic or cheerful – the tone is absolutely perfect.

I think my favourite thing about Goodbye, Tsugumi was the narrator’s voice. Maria sounds so intimate and nostalgic. Sometimes she’s funny, sometimes she sounds sad, and she’s always so insightful and sincere. There isn’t all that much of a plot to this book, but unlike what can sometime happen with more character-oriented novels, this one isn't slow-going in the least. I read it for the read-a-thon and I think it was a perfect choice. The focus of the story is the characters, their relationships and how they change, but it’s told in a way that keeps you eagerly turning the pages until the end.

This might sound odd, but the tone of Goodbye, Tsugumi reminded me a little of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books. And I mean this as a compliment, of course. Reading this book made me forget all about my previous disappointing experience with Banana Yoshimoto. So Kitchen, here I come.

One more memorable passage:

Right around the time when the hustle and bustle of preparations for the festival take a hold of the town, all of a sudden you find yourself noticing that autumn had begun to weave itself into the rhythm of your days. The sun is still just as strong as before, but the breeze blowing in off the sea has turned just the tiniest bit softer, and the sand has cooled. Now the rain that quietly drenches the boats ranges along the beach carries the damp, misty smell of a cloudy sky. You realize that summer has turned its back on you.

This is my third book read for the challenge, so officially I've completed it. But since there's still plenty of time, I want to see if I manage to read another book or two. I'm enjoying myself too much to stop :)

Woo Hoo!

2008-11-24T18:30:00.005-06:00

For those of you who are Words of Affirmation people (like me), look at the rating we just received from blogged! Way to go, all of you Japanese literature reviewers!!! You make me proud.

After the Quake

2008-11-16T17:09:00.002-06:00

Many of my blogging friends are reading and enjoying the books of Haruki Murakami, so I was very interested in reading something by him for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 2. I chose his book, After the Quake, a collection of six short stories, each one connected indirectly with the 1995 Kobe Earthquake in Japan.
Another reason I chose this book was because I live in "earthquake country" and have personally experienced an earthquake and some of the emotional after-effects that inevitably follow such an event. In 2001, the Nisqually quake shook Western Washington. It did not have the destructive power of the Kobe quake, but there was significant damage to structures in the area and to everyone's sense of well-being. Even though I'd felt earthquakes before, on that day I felt the earth's crust ripple beneath my feet and I will never be the same. The earth simply doesn't feel as solid to me as it did before that experience.

"Strange and mysterious things, though, aren't they -- earthquakes?" the man says. "We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and stationary. But suddenly one day . . . the earth, the boulders, that are supposed to be so solid, all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid."

Murakami, in these six short stories, writes about the emotional upheavals and after-effects that follow a major disaster. Lives are changed in little and in big ways, and he writes about individuals that are searching for themselves and for meaning in a world changed by disaster. And I liked this comment from an unofficial, but very interesting, Murakami web site:

But the most compelling character of all is the earthquake itself--slipping into and out of view almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless reaching deep into the lives of these forlorn citizens of the apocalypse. The terrible damage visible all around is, in fact, less extreme than the inconsolable howl of a nation indelibly scarred--an experience in which Murakami discovers many truths about compassion, courage, and the nature of human suffering.

After the Quake was well-written and powerful. I will definitely read more of Murakami's books.

Crossfire

2008-11-11T09:26:00.001-06:00

Junko Aoki has the gift of pyrokinesis: she can set anything on fire with her energy. When she retreats to an abandoned factory to displace some of her energy into a huge pool of water there she inadvertently witnesses a murder.

The Asaba gang has kidnapped a woman and killed her date; they are trying to throw his body into the pool of water so that it won't be detected.

Junko is so incensed at what she sees that she kills three of the gang members by burning them, and as the leader escapes she promises herself that she will seek to destroy him as well.

A parallel part of the story tells of Chikako Ishizu, the only woman in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, who seeks the person who is setting these fires as well as burning criminals.

A third strand tells of the Guardians, a special group which made me think of the Mob in a way: they have taken it upon themselves to "deliver justice" and formed a band of members with special abilities who also try to do away with criminals. The Guardians woo Junko into their midst, luring her with gifts and the promise of love from one of its members.

There are several fascinating aspects to this story:

the whole idea of pyrokinesis (and other abilities such as telekinesis)
the loneliness of those who are set apart by their gifts or hidden talents
the way families are effected by those with such gifts
the question of justice

When we discover that the crossfire is between the victim and the criminal, between the law and those who have taken it upon themselves to deliver justice, we're faced with two critical questions:

Does anyone have the right to kill another?

Is there ever a right reason to take a life?

I found this book profound on many levels, not only as a mystery/thriller, but also a treatise on ethics. It was excellent.

Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

2008-11-10T17:00:00.002-06:00

Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

This is a beautiful book, first published in 1906.

'Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday life' p3

The book describes the history of tea, it's origination's in China and it's adoption in Japan with the rise of the Japanese Tea Houses.
How in the 4th & 5th centuries CE 'leaves were steamed, crushed ina mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes even onions.' p23
In those days you had the choice of this teacake, powdered tea, or seeped leaves, the latter being todays prefered method of choice!

The book goes onto tell us how the Japanese Tea Ceremony arose from Zen Buddhist rituals, and describes the art and beauty associated with the ceremony.

A lovely book. Beautifully written. Simple and delightful as a well made cup of tea itself.
Recommended.

Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro

2008-11-08T20:40:00.004-06:00

Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishguro is a unique novel in that I read the first few chapters thinking that I knew what the story was about then realized there was much more to the story than I first thought . The story is narrated by Kathy a student from an elite boarding school somewhere in Britain and she remembers growing up there and tells of the special bond between her friends Ruth,Tommy and herself. It asks questions that really made me wonder about value of life. I liked this book and I also found it hard at times. It would be easy to give away too much info in a review,read the book before reading more reviews or you will lose the edge of learning each new twist and turn. Never Let Me Go is a Man Booker finalist.

about the author

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, and moved to Britain around the age of five or six. He attended the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of East Anglia where he studied creative writing. He is the author of The Remains of the Day, an international best-seller that won the Booker Prize and was adapted into an award-winning film, as well as A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Unconsoled. In fact, Ishiguro has received many honors and awards including an Order of the British Empire for service to literature in 1995, and in 1998 was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. His work is known internationally and has been translated into 28 languages. He currently lives in London with his wife and daughter. ~http://www.onetimesone.com/zine/words/authors/i/ishigurokazuo.php

Tales of Moonlight and Rain

2008-10-28T08:17:00.000-05:00

First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan's finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque...   The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon.
--Columbia University Press

Tales of Moonlight and Rain, by Ueda Akinari, is a great book to read on a dark and stormy night during Halloween week, or if you are just in the mood for ghost stories.

This book is a scholarly work, so each story comes after quite a bit of historical background and cultural explanations. I decided to read the stories first and then read the background information, which worked well for me.

Of the nine stories in the book, my favorites was "The Reed Choked House" which is the story of man who leaves his wife behind when he goes to the city in hopes of making lots of money. He tells her to wait for him, that he will return in the Fall. Circumstances prevent his return for seven years! When he finally does arrive home, he finds the house overgrown and choked in reeds and in decay. He is astonished to find his wife waiting for him there. However, by the light of morning, the sad truth is revealed.

This story was also combined with another in the book and made into the 1953 award-winning movie "Ugetsu," which is a beautifully haunting classic film by director, Kenji Mizoguchi.

Read two other excellent reviews of this book were written by Dolce Bellezza and by Moo.

Grotesque

2008-10-28T00:28:00.002-05:00

by Natsuo Kirino
Translated from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland
Fiction/Crime, 2003 (Japan), 2007 (English translation)
Vintage UK, trade pb, 466 p.
WINNER - Izumi Kyoka Literary Award, 2003

Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo.
Twenty years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them.
But in a world of dark desire and vicious ambition, for both women, prostitution meant power. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women’s secret lives in modern day Japan.

It felt like it took me forever to read this! Thank goodness for the Read-a-thon or who knows, it may have taken me the whole month! I really enjoyed her first book to be translated into English, Out, so I had high hopes for this, her second work to appear in English. Unfortunately, for me, it just doesn’t compare. I simply found the pace too slow and the narrative a bit long-winded. It did pick up a bit when the narration changed for awhile part-way through, but it slowed down again once it returned to the main narrator. The majority of the story revolves around her remembering years past when she went to school with both of the women who later became the two prostitutes that were murdered. There is a hint of a mystery but the murders are really just the context for the reminiscing and the framework for analysing the role of women in modern-day Japan.

Professor Kijima wrote about the intensification of the individual’s sense of self and the changes in the shape of life-forms and such, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Mitsuru and Yuriko and Kazue didn’t mutate; they simply decayed. A biology professor certainly ought to be able to recognize the signs of fermentation and decay. Isn’t he the one who taught us all about these processes in organisms? In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water. (p. 318)

I also never came to like any of the characters, which isn’t a requirement for me to enjoy a book, but I also didn’t care enough for there to be any sense of drama about their lives or demise either. The reasons, or perhaps the social pressures that led them to follow the paths they chose, are real enough but oh so depressing. A week after finishing it and the characters are haunting me a little, but thinking about them just leaves me feeling blue. I realise Kirino seems to be making a statement about the inequality of the social hierarchy in Japan but it didn’t make for a very thrilling or enjoyable read.

As for the translation of Grotesque, there were a few times, due to the way she chose to describe something, that I was very aware that I was reading a translation but overall it wasn't too bad. The copyright page says “Originally published in a somewhat different form in Japan…” though which makes me wonder how and why it was changed and whether that has contributed to my lukewarm enjoyment of the novel.

I’m still curious about her most recent book to be translated, Real World, and perhaps I’ll like it more since I know not to expect much suspense next time. And there seems to be a fourth book that has been translated, What Remains, and that was supposed to be released this year but doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. The topic is pretty dark and disturbing, about a kidnapped child held captive for a year, but it sounds intriguing too. Like something Joyce Carol Oates would write about. I hope it reappears at some point. I also found that Kirino has apparently written an installment for the Canongate Myth Series, to come out next year, which I’d be interested in reading. So even though I wasn’t crazy about this one, I do want to try again. Out really was that good!

Author's website
Review in The New York Times
Review at Mystery Ink

My Rating: 2.5/5
*originally posted at In Spring it is the Dawn

Geisha, A Life

2008-10-23T11:43:00.011-05:00

Written by Mineko Iwasaki, Geisha, A Life is a detail-filled account of one woman's journey from girlhood into young womanhood as a geisha, or, geiko. I found it interesting, but sad. Interesting because it was all true - what this young girl experienced! She was introduced to her future life as a geisha at the age of three; quite literally she was 'chosen' to be a Very Important Person in the world of 'geisha-dom.' For 26 years Mineko Iwasaki lived a life of beauty, entertainment, and non-stop excitement, as well as a life of (at times) feeling isolated and depressed. (That's the sad part that I mentioned earlier.)
I actually read this book a couple of months ago, but had not been able to wrap my brain around what this young girl went through mentally as well as physically enough to write a review. I still can't. Yes, she led a glamorous life, and made a lot of money. But she basically lost her childhood as a result.
I understand that in Japanese culture it is an honor to be so revered and admired. What I don't understand is the willingness for her family to give her up at such an early age, and that she just accepted it and resigned herself to the geisha life. But, then again, I am not Japanese!

Knit Kimono

2008-10-19T10:58:00.000-05:00

KnitKimono, by Vicki Square, is an unusual book for me to review on my blog, but I love to knit and recently discovered this book in the knitting section of the bookstore. I stood there transfixed by the gorgeous photographs and projects in this book, and had the overwhelming urge to head straight to the knitting store to buy some yarn. I haven't gone there yet, but I bought the book and have been enjoying it in the evenings when I'm too tired to actually knit. It's not a matter of self-control that kept me from heading straight to the knitting store, but my indecision over which of these absolutely beautiful projects to choose first!

The book has the instructions for 18 different designs/kimono, but it's more than a pattern book. I am fascinated by the background of the kimono as described by the author.

In a traditional sense, the particular color, cut, and design of a kimono conveys social messages: gender, life/death, season, age, formality or occasion, or propriety.

She explains kimono basics: Kimono are generally constructed from rectangular pieces of fabric in standard widths. A bolt of cloth, called a tan, is cut into seven straight pieces: two long body panels, two sleeves, two overlaps, and a neckband.

And she also includes a brief, but very interesting, history of the kimono that describes changes during different periods of time from ancient Japan to the present.

All of this makes this a very interesting read, but it's the creativity and artistry of the author/designer that deserve accolades. This is a beautiful book, full of beautifully designed projects! And it was very nice addition to the books I've read for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

2008-10-15T18:32:00.003-05:00

Published in 1924, Naomi is one of Junichiro Tanizaki's earliest novels. I picked this book for my first blog post on this group because in my past reading experience, Tanizaki has been a constant winner - I can't recommend enough books such as Quicksand, The Gourmet Club, and The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.

Tanizaki's fiction is known for its sensuality and dreaminess, both drawn in terms that evoke simultaneously the sublime and the seedy underbelly of excessive and improper desire. Beautiful and disturbing (but not in the "loud" and sensationalist vein of Ryu Murakami or even, it could be argued, Yukio Mishima), Tanizaki always treads one step away from the complete destruction of the recognizably human. Indeed, even as his characters engage in dissipation of all kinds, they usually remain sympathetic to some degree because they remain comprehensible and familiar-seeming.

I have to say that, unfortunately, the fine edge of Tanizaki's pen was not yet so finely honed when we wrote Naomi. The sensuality and depravity are certainly present in his story of Joji (an upstanding salary man in his late 20s) and his obsession with Naomi (a 15-year old of dubious background whom he meets and rescues from working in a cafe of sorts).

Joji's obsession is intense and masochistic...but somehow neither terrifying, compelling, nor (as the back cover copy suggests) hilarious - at least not to me. I found the characters to be rather more in the realm of caricature and Joji's submission to Naomi just plain pathetic and therefore intensely irritating. This is likely because I found his need for Naomi neither believable nor his reasons for it comprehensible, and so felt that I was wasting my time reading about it.

In spite of all this, I don't believe that my negative response to this book should put anyone off Tanizaki or even Naomi. Rather, I think Tanizaki is an author who really should be read chronologically. Starting with his most brilliant works can only invite negative comparisons to less mature efforts such as this one.

All She Was Worth

2008-10-09T21:51:00.001-05:00

Title: All She Was Worth

Author: Miyuki Miyabe

Publisher: Mariner

Number of pages: 296

Genre: Crime Fiction/Mystery

Awards: Best Novel of the Year and Best Mystery for 1992 in Japan

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

When police inspector, Honma, is asked by his nephew (Jun) to investigate the disappearance of Jun's fiance, he has no idea that he will be enmeshed in an enormous tangle of deception and woe.

Apparently, the fiance has had her identity stolen by a beautiful girl who must escape a life of desperation which is brought upon her by enormous financial distress.

I found it terribly ironic to read such a novel considering the economic struggles America is currently suffering:

"Honma could well imagine the vicious circle the Shinjo family had been caught up in. A small down payment and a large loan. Then, when things got tight, a second loan, for a smaller amount, this time from a loan shark. That set the pinball rolling, picking up speed, than going too fast for anybody to stop. Finally, they came up against one of those operations that charge ten percent interest every ten days, a front for the yakuza-all the debts had fallen into their hands, apparently." (p. 231)

Every country has people who want the best, and want it now, regardless of their ability to pay for it. Credit card debt, mortgages much higher than the property is worth given to families who cannot afford them...these very issues are raised in this novel which not only examines a murder mystery but Japan's contemporary life. Which is not so very different from America's.

With this important exception: in Japan, the creditors hunt you down. Until the hunted become the hunters as they are in this crime thriller.

The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters

2008-10-08T13:03:00.001-05:00

When I picked up this book, after reading several synopses of it, I expected a collection of stories about mother-children relationships in postwar Japan. True, there were several of them, but I wouldn't say that this is what the book is "about." In the stories about fathers and in the absence of children, I tried to find that thread of thinking; I tried to look for the "hidden" meaning of a mother-child relationship. In some cases, it was completely absent.

Instead, I believe this collection is more a meditation on the effects of Westernization in Japan on those who remember what it was like before rationing, before the bombs dropped, and before their children came home with candies given to them by soldiers. It's about waking up and realizing how old you are, how much you've lived through, and seeing before you all the changes in the world since your birth. It's about recognizing clearly the differences between Japan then and Japan now, and not necessarily appreciating those changes.

The characters have all lost something, whether it be family, traditions, land, food, friendships, or sanity. What they haven't lost is the memory of the war and how it caused these things to be taken from them. They also haven't lost love; these characters understand that an unbreakable bond comes with love, even past death and pain. Though some marriages were arranged, as they were in the "old days," there is still a kind of love between partners, who sometimes feel as though they are worlds away from one another. There is also evidence that they haven't lost life, or the will to live. In all of these stories, something beautiful comes out of loss, whether it be an old man's lasting understanding of his wife, a son's outward love for his father, or the memory of a child who entertained a group of soldiers. The stories are sad, yet they remind us of something a character says: "Isn't life a resilient force, turning the worst of its disasters into something like this."

Each story is a photograph of a life, with some threads commonly running through (a TV show that explains health issues, old religions dying out in favor of Western ones), but all of which describe moments based in the structure of relationships. A mother whose favorite daughter dies, who instead of turning that favor to her second daughter, finds more beauty in her granddaughter. A son who, as he's growing older, loves his father more and more, but doesn't know what to say as the old man is dying. A daughter who never finds a husband but wants nothing more than children in her life. And in all cases, they always feel the pressure of the war, whether the war ended yesterday or twenty years ago.

These graceful tales pave the way through a culture of men, women, and children who have felt devastating results of World War II in Japan. It is a beautifully written, touching meditation on human spirit and familial relations. Enter the thoughts of eleven Japanese people and learn just what the laws of evening are.

Winners Announced For The Basho Book Contest

2008-10-03T22:25:00.011-05:00

These are the lovely haiku submitted for the chance to win "Basho: The Complete Haiku" sent to me by Kodansha International:

violent downpour

quickly replaced by the sun

rain in the desert

~Terri B

leaves gently falling

a crisp coolness to the air

fall is here again

~3M

the nights are cooler

the leaves have lost their lustre

autumn is coming

and

chilly autumn rain

curled up with a good book

adventure beckons

~Tanabata

letters on a door

two hearts forever entwined

by cobwebs and dust

~Robin

Because I am entranced by each I have decided to award each submission a prize. By random drawing, the copy of Basho goes to...

Terri B!

A magnetic poetry kit goes to...

Tanabata!

Two cranes that I folded, because they are an international symbol of peace and love, go to...

Robin and...

3M!

So, ladies, please send me your addresses at bellezza.mjs@gmail.com, and I will send you your prizes. Thanks for playing!

The Diving Pool By Yoko Ogawa

2008-09-30T10:41:00.002-05:00

From The Washington Post
These three quiet novellas, composing the first of Yoko Ogawa's books to be translated into English, share an eerie quality of nightmare, the precarious sense that beauty and distress are equally possible at any moment. Ogawa's fiction reflects like a funhouse mirror, skewing conventional responses, juxtaposing images weirdly. Depending on the viewer, it can induce wonder or a vague nausea

My review pending

Tales of Moonlight and Rain

2008-09-27T12:55:00.003-05:00

by Ueda Akinari

“First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this collection are Japan’s finest and most celebrated examples of the literature of the occult. They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period’s fascination with the strange and the grotesque.” Quote from the front flap of the book.

These nine tales of ghosts, demons and spirits range from the mild ghost stories involving civil conversations with entities that just happen to be ghosts to the truly horrific involving tenacious demons and cannibalism. In general my favorite stories in this collection were the more sensational ones but I also really enjoyed one that wasn’t scary at all.

The Carp of My Dreams was simply a lovely story with a hint of the supernatural. A monk likes to paint carp and spends many hours studying them in the lake and painting them. He becomes ill and in his delirium dreams that he is a carp swimming in the lake, or is it a dream? He recovers from that illness and lives a full life. When he knows the end is near he takes all the carp paintings to the lake and releases the carp which swim off the paper and into the lake. It reminded me of something Borges could have written. I didn’t find anything gothic about it but I certainly enjoyed it.

I also really enjoyed the Reed-Choked House about a peasant that goes off to the capital to attempt to become a merchant but cannot return home because of civil unrest. Six years later he finally returns home and finds his home unchanged and his wife dutifully waiting for him. He awakes the next morning. “Feeling something cold dripping on his face, he opened his eyes, thinking that rain was seeping in: the roof had been torn off by the wind, and he could see the waning moon lingering dimly in the sky. The house had lost its shutters. Reeds and plumed grasses grew tall through gaps in the decaying floorboards, and the morning dew dripped from them, saturating his sleeves. The walls were draped with ivy and arrowroot; the garden buried in creepers - even though fall had not come yet, the house was a wild autumn moor.” He finally realizes that his wife is long dead.

In two other stories the women are not such benign ghosts. In the Kibitsu Cauldron a husband runs off with a prostitute. Instead of waiting for him to return the wife becomes an angry spirit, kills the prostitute and gets revenge on her husband. In A Serpent’s Lust a handsome young man is seduced by a beautiful serpent demon. Although he eventually catches on that she is not a young lady all his attempts to escape her and live a normal life are to no avail. These are two of my favorite stories in the collection but make me wonder a little about the author’s relationship with women.

In the Blue Hood an abbot at a monastery becomes infatuated with a beautiful young servant boy. When the boy becomes ill and dies the abbot is driven mad, becomes a demon and terrorizes the nearby village by digging up graves and eating the corpses. A traveling priest is able to help the village and the abbot attain peace. These are just my favorite tales but I did enjoy all of the them.

The book itself has a lengthy introduction and each story has its own introduction and contains numerous footnotes and endnotes. I found that what worked best for me was to read each story straight through without all the additional material as a simple gothic tale. I don’t think it is necessary to read anything but the tales themselves to enjoy them as stories. Simply because I was interested, I then went back and read it again with all the supplemental information which certainly added another dimension to the work. The supplemental information was exhaustive and while much of it was way more information then a casual reader would need, much of it was really fascinating. For example, the homosexual overtones of the Chrysanthemum Vow totally escaped me until I read the supplemental material. As it has been a long time since I took Japanese history classes in college I had forgotten how important a role Chinese culture played in the development of Japanese culture. I found the comparisons to No theater interesting. I enjoyed the supplemental material but if you want to simply read it as a collection of gothic tales that works too.

The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters

2008-09-27T04:50:00.001-05:00

The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters

'In the wake of World War Two, a generation of Japanese women found itself frozen, as if in amber - the last representatives of an exquisite, ancient culture slowly being crushed between the realisation of its own brutality and the coming American Century' Amazon synopsis

This is a lovely collection of tales, exploring different generations of women during and after WW2.
In an ever changing society their hopes, dreams and recollections are explored in this extraordinary collection of stories.

Recommended

THE TOKAIDO ROAD by Lucia St. Clair Robson

2008-09-25T10:38:00.002-05:00

I have added this book to the Japanese Literature Challenge, it will be read while taking my time, in between my other reads.

Go to my blog to see more regarding this historic fiction:

http://thebooksihaveloved.blogspot.com/

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology by Hiroaki Sato

2008-09-24T12:01:00.005-05:00

Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology by Hiroaki Sato

This is a great anthology pf women's poetry, from early songs to present day poems.
There are over 100 poems, covering all verse forms, on a variety of differnet themes>
I particularly like the early poems in the sections 'Poems from the Man'yoshu' and 'The Age of Tanka' which are very beautiful.

A couple of my favourite poems from the anthology are posted on my blog here

Basho: The Complete Haiku and Giveaway

2008-09-20T14:20:00.006-05:00

It seems hard to believe that a little less than one year ago, I had never heard of Basho. The Basho, touted as the most famous Japanese writer of all time.

In November of 2007 I went on a walk while the colors in Illinois were changing, took photographs of them, and then searched for poetry to express their beauty. I found haiku by Basho, and the post ended up looking like this.

Again this summer, I posed a few beautiful photographs with Basho's haiku accompanying them, and then I received a delightful surprise.I was contacted by Kodansha America, Inc. to review an anthology of Basho which was released this July.

The minute I opened the book I was entranced. It is a beautiful hard cover book of approximately 400 pages of the creamiest paper you ever saw. They are illustrated with original sumi-e ink drawings by Shiro Ysujimura; each poem suspended on the page as an entity of itself.

Basho: The Complete Haiku is the first ever complete collection of the poet's work in English. It was translated with an introduction, biography and notes by renowned American haiku poet and translator Jane Reichhold, and includes Basho's 1,012 haiku as well as a detailed study of his methods.

I found this paragraph in the introduction particularly infomative: "Long before Gertrude Stein was espousing the importance of using the exact word in poetry or any writing, the Japanese had based their writing on creating images of actual things. Instead of telling the reader what to think or feel, words describing images were used as signposts. The placement of these signposts moved from one image to another, with one word and then another, the reader created the journey to the unspoken conclusion of the poem. This process of making the reader see or imagine parts of the poem has, on one hand, made it harder for people to learn to read haiku. Still this miracle of involving the reader in the creation of the poem has expanded our own definition and concept of poetry. No longer is poetry what someone tells us. It is the mental and emotional journey the author gives the reader.

This technique of juxtaposing images so the reader's mind must find a way from one image to another has greatly influenced how we perceive simile and metaphor. Metaphors were and are one of the cornerstones of poetry, and for years scholars told us that Japanese poets did not use them. They did. They simply made their metaphor in a different way. Instead of saying "autumn dusk settles around us like a crow landing on a bare branch," Basho would write:

on a bare branch
a crow settled down
autumn evening

The simplicity and economy of the words demand that the reader goes into his mind and experiences to explore the darkness of bird and night, autumn and bareness, and even how a branch could move as the dark weight of a crow pressed it down. The reader is writing the rest of the verse and making it poetry."

Understanding poetry does not come naturally to me. I must read these haiku, ponder them, and not be tricked by their simplicity into missing an important concept the poet is trying to convey. I like their brevity. I like the mental imagery. I like reading the works from a masterful poet who lived three hundred years before I was born.

I leave you with a few of my favorites for Fall...

as autumn draws near
our hearts feel closer
to this small tearoom

how pleasurable
sleeping late in autumn
as if master of the house

already autumn
even sprinkles of rain
in the moon's shape

and this promise of a prize:

Write a haiku for us (five syllables, seven syllables, five again) in the comments, and your name will be entered to win a copy of this book for your own shelf. Or, if you'd prefer, email me with your entry.

Contest ends September 30, 2008.

A Geisha's Journey

2008-09-07T00:10:00.003-05:00

by Komomo
Photographs by Naoyuki Ogino
Non-Fiction/Auto-biography/Photography, 2008
Kodansha International, hardback, 139 p.

This is the story of a contemporary Japanese teenager who, in a search for an identity, became fascinated with the world of geiko-as Kyoto's geisha are known-and discovered in herself the will and the commitment to overcome the many years of apprenticeship necessary to become one.

It is a story related by a young Japanese photographer who grew up overseas, and who also was captivated by the lives led by these women who choose to dedicate their lives to their art. He began following and documenting the life of the teenager, Komomo, as she studied and grew into her role.

The photographs are accompanied by autobiographical text and captions by Komomo, as she shares her thoughts and emotions, and describes the life of a Kyoto apprentice. It is an illuminating view of seven years in the life of a very unique young woman.

Given my fascination with traditional Japanese arts and my interest in photography, when I came across this book in the bookstore earlier this year, I knew that it had to come home with me!
The focus of the book is certainly the beautiful photographs, so the text is a bit sparse, but we still get an idea of the girl who became the geiko, Komomo, and the journey that took her there. I’ve read some other books on geisha, like Liza Dalby’s Geisha, or Geisha of Gion (Geisha: A Life, US title) by Mineko Iwasaki, but it was interesting to get a modern look at the hanamachi (geisha district) through the eyes of a “twenty-first century geisha”. And I’m sure I’ll return to it often to admire the gorgeous photos. Recommended.

Short interview with Komomo
Naoyuki Ogino's online photo gallery
More photos from the book can be seen here.

My Rating: 4/5
*cross-posted on my blog.

Out

2008-09-06T10:35:00.001-05:00

by Natsuo Kirino

This is my first read for this Challenge and apparently it is quite popular! As the other reviews have explained, this story opens with four women working the night shift in a factory making boxed lunches. When one of them murders her abusive husband the others assist with the disposal of the body. In typical noir fashion, things go from bad to worse as these four desperate and broken women try to cope with the police investigation, a loan shark and another murderer. I don’t normally read crime fiction but I generally like dark stories and boy is this dark, sadistic, brutal and shocking. Although I enjoyed it, it is not for the faint of heart.

I thought it was very well written (and translated) and that the author really captured both her characters and settings very well. It really transported me to the outskirts of Tokyo to the lunch box factory, the night club or the characters' homes. Even though not a single one of the characters is likeable and all have committed despicable acts they were so incredibly real that I cared about them and wanted to find out what happened in their story. You could really feel the desperation that each of these characters experienced. There is certainly an undercurrent of gender conflict in the novel but it never becomes preachy or obtrusive.

The only criticism I have is that the ending was a little odd. The ultimate showdown is told twice from two different perspectives. Although it was interesting to get the two perspectives of the same battle, I think this could have been achieved a little more artfully without a complete second retelling which I felt disrupted the flow of the story. I would also warn that the ending was incredibly brutal and disturbing and I can think of many friends that would not be comfortable reading it.

What Utensil Are You?

2008-09-05T20:12:00.003-05:00

You Are Chopsticks

People see you as exotic, unusual, and even a bit intimidating.

You are a difficult person to figure out.

In truth, you try to live a very simple life.

But most people are too frenzied to recognize the beauty of your simplicity.

What Utensil Are You?

Not a post on Japanese literature, I understand.

But, it is no wonder that I am the host of this challenge, being classified as a set of chopsticks for goodness' sake.

What utensil are you?

A Geisha's Journey

2008-08-29T19:37:00.003-05:00

My second choice for the Japanese reading challenge - I was drawn to the lovely cover and the fact that the book itself is peppered with essays and multiple photos and illustrations.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Komomo was a 12-year-old school girl living with her expat parents in China when she stumbled over a web site run by a former geisha. Three years later, she left home to enter the exclusive world of a geisha in training. In 2006, she fulfilled her dream and became the Geisha Komomo.

This is the first book to follow photographically over a number of years the life of a young woman from normal teenager to the rarified world of the Kyoto geiko, as geisha are called in that city.

This is a very visual book, largely photographs with extended captions and a few longer essays. Over 130 photographs will illustrate her growth, from her pre-Kyoto days in Beijing onward. A few of the photographs have been published in the English-language edition of Katei Gaho (which turned out to be the magazine's largest selling issue), but most have them have been seen nowhere else.

I'm going to start delving into this tonight in bed.

Out by Natsuo Kirino

2008-08-29T16:48:00.001-05:00

Just when you think it can't get any worse ... it does. This novel is a great example of noir literature. It has the usual noir elements of darkness, despair, hopelessness and betrayal. Layered on top of this noir novel is a very black comedy of gender warfare.

A young mother, living in the Tokyo suburbs and working the night shift at a boxed lunch factory, wants out of her miserable marriage to a philandering and abusive husband. Her solution? Strangle him. Unfortunately, this solution creates a new problem ... a dead body that needs to disappear. Fortunately, this young mother has empathetic lady friends who are equally desperate to get "out" of their own miserable circumstances and are therefore willing to help dispose of the body.

Unfortunately for these ladies, they find that the nightmare has just begun and this one act has pulled them into the "violent underbelly of Japanese society." In usual noir-ish fashion, all does not end well and no solutions are offered to resolve the hostilities between the sexes.

This is not my favorite type of reading, but I thought the story was well done and was an excellent example of noir and black comedy. The translation, by Stephen Snyder, seemed extraordinarily good to me; I never once thought about the fact that I was reading the book in translation.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara

2008-08-23T04:46:00.006-05:00

Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara

I picked up this book to read thanks to Madeleine's review previously, and I'm glad I did.

Snakes and Earrings, although a short novel (the authors first), has become a Japanese cult classic.
The story follows a young girl who has left home and her exploration of pain and pleasure through body modifications and violent sexual activities.
At times painful to read, at times beautiful. This is definitely one to read for an glimpse of modern Japanese alternative culture.
Recommended.

This is my third book read for the challenge...so technically I'm finished.
However, I still have a number of books I'd like to read on my list, so will keep on reading....!
Currently reading Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology by Hiroaki Sato. A collection of poems by women from the earliest folk songs to modern poets. Will review when read more of the poems.

Out by Natsuo Kirino

2008-08-19T05:24:00.006-05:00

Out by Natsuo Kirino

I loved this book.

It's the story of four women who work in the suburbs of Tokyo on the night shift at a boxed lunch factory. They all have different backgrounds and stories, but they are all discontented with life...and all need to get 'out'.
Inevitably one of them snaps and strangles her abusive husband. The others then slowly become involved in disposing of the body...dismembering it and disposing of it in garbage bags around the city...
As the police investigate, suspicion falls on a local nightclub owner with a dark murderous past of his own. Released from jail he seeks revenge on the women he suspects of commiting the crime...

This book is not only gruesome and terrifying in places, but is also poignant and heartbreaking.
The lives of these women, trapped by circumstance and convention, is moving.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Grenadine for reviewing Grotesque ...as a result I ordered Out from the library and I'm waiting for Grotesque.

Strangers and When the Emperor was Divine

2008-08-18T17:41:00.003-05:00

I finished my first two books for the challenge: Strangers by Taichi Yamada and When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka.

I don't think I could have loved When the Emperor was Divine any more. It tells the story of a nameless Japanese-American family that is sent to an internment camp during World War II, and it's a sad, subtle and very moving book. The writing is absolutely perfect. Julie Otsuka managed to convey powerful emotions while remaining gentle and restrained. You can read my full review here.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Strangers. A ghost story set in modern Tokyo, Strangers is very haunting and atmospheric. I loved it until the last few chapters, but I was somewhat taken aback by the twist at the end. My review can be found here.

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

2008-08-15T06:16:00.002-05:00

Snow Country is the story of Shimamura, a business man who visits a hot-spring resort in the snow covered mountains of North Japan
There he meets and becomes infatuated with the heroine Komako, a young geisha who falls in love with him.
Doomed to failure, the story tells of their initial relationship, and his return a few years later when she is older and things have changed.
There is sensuality and beauty in the story, but the reality is that nothing can really happen between them as he is married.

I've mixed feelings about this novel. Perhaps because I find it so depressing. While it's definitely beautifully written, the story leaves you feeling lonely. As lonely and isolated as the snow mountains themselves perhaps.

I'd love to hear other readers views on this novel.

Snakes and Earrings

2008-08-14T12:45:00.004-05:00

Synopsis
An underground world.A murder.An international phenomenon.
Eighteen-year-old Liu runs away from home to live on the streets and answer to no one. She befriends Ama, a boy whose red mohawk, forked tongue, and multiple piercings seduce her, and Shiba, a tattoo artist whose cold eyes give no hint of the secrets he may be harboring. When their reckless behavior breeds dangerous consequences, Liu finds herself forced to choose between good and evil, life and death, love and hate.

I just started to read this novel, will comment on it when finished. Tanabata also read this book a while ago.

First book : Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

2008-08-11T04:41:00.004-05:00

Firstly, thank you to Bellezza for letting me join the challenge a couple of days too late. You're a star!

My first book and I'm about 100 pages in is Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. I've read Out years before and finished it in a day, it was both very dark and thrilling and one of the first Japanese literature I've read so now I'm hooked.

Synopsis of Grotesque from goodreads:

Natsuo Kirino made a spectacular fiction debut on these shores with the publication of Edgar Award-nominated Out "Daring and disturbing . . . Prepared to push the limits of this world . . . Remarkable"--Los Angeles Times). Unanimously lauded for her unique, psychologically complex, darkly compelling vision and voice, she garnered a multitude of enthusiastic fans eager for more.

In her riveting new novel Grotesque, Kirino once again depicts a barely known Japan. This is the story of three Japanese women and the interconnectedness of beauty and cruelty, sex and violence, ugliness and ambition in their lives. Tokyo prostitutes Yuriko and Kazue have been brutally murdered, their deaths leaving a wake of unanswered questions about who they were, who their murderer is, and how their lives came to this end. As their stories unfurl in an ingeniously layered narrative, coolly mediated by Yuriko's older sister, we are taken back to their time in a prestigious girls' high school--where a strict social hierarchy decided their fates—and follow them through the years as they struggle against rigid societal conventions.

Shedding light on the most hidden precincts of Japanese society today, Grotesque is both a psychological investigation into the female psyche and a classic work of noir fiction. It is a stunning novel, a book that confirms Natsuo Kirino's electrifying gifts.

Kafka On The Shore by Huruki Murikami

2008-08-09T08:17:00.003-05:00

From the inside front flap:

"This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War Ii, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle-yet this, along with everything else is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own."

My review can be found here.

Lizard, by Banana Yoshimoto

2008-08-07T15:27:00.004-05:00

I finished Lizard, a collecton of six short stories, about a week ago, and have been trying to digest the contents ever since. My thoughts? Scrambled! If I thought I was going to sit down with a few cute, easily read stories, then I was mistaken. They were thought provoking; so much so, that I had to go back and re-read certain parts to clarify my thoughts as to the meanings of some things.

As I think back, I have read a couple of Japanese short stories before, and as I remember, they were mildly depressing. A lot of mention of unhappy childhoods, fears, loss, ghosts, bizarre sex lives, and pain. Certainly each story in the Lizard collection has some of that going on. Fortunately much of the unhappiness is in the past, and although some of the story pertains to the lasting pain & fear, the characters are able to resolve a good deal of their particular poison memories and fears by the end of the story.

Banana Yoshimoto adds a little 'postscript' at the end of the collection, explaining to the reader her inspirations and purpose in writing these stories. She ends by saying she hopes to continue writing interesting stories. And she does write interesting stories!

Twenty-Four Eyes

2008-08-05T10:21:00.000-05:00

Twenty-Four Eyes, by Sakae Tsuboi, is a gentle book about a young teacher and her first group of students. The story spans 20 years, or "one generation," from 1927 to 1947 in a small village in Japan, and it is a tender view of the teacher and her students throughout that turbulent period of time.

The teacher, Mrs. Oishi, was a tiny woman with a huge heart, and her students loved her. In the beginning, however, she had to prove herself to the children and their parents, and struggled with all the issues facing a young teacher. You get to know about the lives of Mrs. Oishi and of each of the 12 children, and learn what happens to them over the course of those years, and of how the war impacts each of their lives.

This is an honest and nostalgic look at life during a period of great change. It is considered an anti-war book, but is not vociferous. It is a gentle story of joy and sadness, growth and change, and of the devastating effects of war on a small group of children and their teacher.

Being a teacher, I loved this book because it honestly portrayed the relationships a teacher has with her students. It touches the heart in a kind and gentle way, and leaves you feeling tenderhearted long after you finish the book.

This is my first book for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge.

Favorite Japanese Films

2008-08-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, our local PBS station ran a "Japanese Film Festival" and showed a different Japanese film classic every Saturday night. My husband and I had never seen any of these films so it was an amazing experience for us and we became devoted fans of these old classics.

To mark the beginning of Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge, and to celebrate all things Japanese, I thought I'd post a list of our favorite classic Japanese films, with the descriptions borrowed from Netflix. So perhaps along with your reading for this challenge, you might also enjoy some amazing Japanese films!

Ikiru
When a stoic government official in post-war Japan learns he has terminal cancer, he realizes he has squandered his life on meaningless red tape and has no close family or friendships to lean on. He resolves to use his remaining time to usher an insignificant but popular civic project, a children's playground, through the bureaucracy he knows so well. The acclaimed Akira Kurosawa directs.

Ugetsu
With 16th century Japan's feudal wars as a backdrop, director Kenji Mizoguchi's lyrical masterpiece delivers a profound message about the ephemeral nature of human life. Despite the conflict raging around them, a potter (Masayuki Mori) and a farmer (Saka Ozawa) -- two peasants with visions of grandeur -- journey to the city seeking wealth and glory. But their blind ambition ultimately takes its toll … on the families they left behind.

Woman in the Dunes
Hiroshi Teshigahara's award-winning drama centers on a bug expert, (Eiji Okada) conducting research, who's captured by locals. Held captive in a sandpit with a young widow, he struggles with his imprisonment -- and his growing attraction to the woman (Kyôko Kishida). Based on Kobo Abe's novel, the provocatively erotic allegorical film earned the Cannes Special Jury Prize and two Oscar nominations.

The Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa's heroic tale of honor and duty begins with master samurai Kambei (Takashi Shimura) posing as a monk to save a kidnapped child. Impressed by his bravery, a group of farmers begs him to defend their village from encroaching bandits. Kambei agrees and assembles a group of six other samurai, and together they build a militia with the villagers while the bandits loom nearby. Soon the raids begin, culminating in a bloody battle.

Yojimbo
Masterless samurai Sanjuro Kuwabatake (Toshirô Mifune) finds himself in a feud-torn Japanese village in legendary director Akira Kurosawa's darkly comic film. After pretending to work for merchants on both sides of the feud, Kuwabatake is imprisoned for treachery. He escapes in time to watch the two warring factions destroy each other, just as he had intended. Yojimbo served as the prototype for Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars.

Thone of Blood
Director Akira Kurosawa's magnificent rumination on Shakespeare's tragic "Macbeth" is a dark samurai drama set in feudal Japan. Two soldiers -- Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) and Miki (Minoru Chiaki) find themselves lost in a dense forest during a powerful thunderstorm. There, they encounter a ghostly old woman who predicts that Washizu will soon rise to power. Indeed, Washizu embarks on a murderously ambitious path and quickly fulfills the prophecy.

Ran
Legendary Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa retells Shakespeare's classic tragedy "King Lear" against a samurai backdrop. Tatsuya Nakadia is a warlord who transfers his kingdom to his eldest son. A power struggle ensues, incited by his two disinherited younger sons. Kurosawa is a master storyteller (almost on par with The Bard himself), and Ran ranks among the maestro's most compelling films.

Harakiri
Winner of the Cannes Special Jury Prize, Masaki Kobayashi's drama centers on samurai Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai). A new political climate finds the once-powerful samurais wandering the country begging estate owners to allow them to commit suicide on their property, when what they really want is a handout. Hanshiro arrives at a lavish manor and asks to commit hara-kiri on the grounds, but the vengeful warrior is harboring a secret.

Hidden Fortress
A general and a princess must dodge enemy clans while smuggling the royal treasure out of hostile territory with two bumbling, conniving peasants at their sides; it's a spirited adventure that only Akira Kurosawa could create.

Picture Bride

(This film is not from the Japanese film festival, but is a beautiful film by Kayo Hatta and a sentimental favorite of ours because it is the story of the Japanese "picture brides" sent to Hawaii in the early 1900s -- my husband's grandmother was one of them!)

Following her parents' deaths, Riyo, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, becomes a "picture bride" for Matsuji, a Hawaiian sugarcane worker who, as is the custom, willingly enters into the arranged marriage. But after Riyo arrives in Hawaii, she discovers that her fiancé has deceived her with an old photo and that Matsuji is really 43. Despite the lie, and with few other options, she marries him -- but won't sleep with him.

And We're Off!

2008-07-30T07:42:00.005-05:00

First, we must determine a winner for the treats in Prize Package One.

The names of all the participants are written on a strip of paper.
The strips are subsequently folded into equal sized pieces. (I don't teach third grade for nothing!)

The winner is Trish of Trish's Reading Nook! Congratulations, Trish!

I have several more prizes to be given away during the challenge: music, books, origami, things to delight and amaze so don't be sad if you didn't win today.

Of course, today marks the beginning of the Japanese Literature Challenge 2. I have yet to determine exactly which books I'll be reading, but I'm certain it will be more than three. I'm also certain that we are going to have a wonderful adventure together.

Thanks for joining.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

2008-07-29T16:26:00.003-05:00

I purposely put off picking a book up from the library before today because I was a afraid I wouldn't be able to resist jumping in and reading early..ha ha.
My first choice for my JLC2 is...drum roll please....Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto! It is a collection of six short stories, published originally in 1993, with English version being published in 1995. I thought reading a few short stories might ease me into the Japanese genre. Also, although I saw Yoshimoto mentioned in the suggested reading lists, I actually 'found' her myself while browsing the shelves at the library for Japanese authors.

East Meets West on A Saturday Night

2008-07-27T11:56:00.001-05:00

Last night I went to a koto concert at the Morton Arboretum. There we listened to koto music for two and half hours, an instrument I knew next to nothing about. The koto is a 13-stringed zither which was introduced to Japan from China in the 7th century. It was very popular among the merchant classes of the Edo period (1600-1867).

We were told that the koto resembles an imaginary dragon with the coils of string at one end being his tail, and the flat face at the other end being his head. It is made of paulownia wood ("kiri" in Japanese), and the bridges (looking like white teeth to me) can be moved according to the tuning required for the piece being played.

The man is Curtis Patterson, born and raised in my home town, who moved to Japan in 1986 to study koto.

The woman is Ryuko Mizutani, a graduate of the NHK Japanese national broadcasting company's school for traditional Japanese music. She appears on a number of recordings, including her solo album "Vista" which I bought to give away as one of the prizes for this challenge.

If you have a chance to listen to koto music, perhaps while you're reading, I would strongly encourage it for a beautiful environment.

Interesting Booklists

2008-07-24T09:50:00.003-05:00

Sam Houston, (Book Chase) wrote a post the other day about the "Top 10" booklists published by The Guardian. If you haven't completed your list of books to read for Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge, or are just curious to see which books on or about Japan might be on these lists, click on the links below:

Top 10 Books Set in Japan

Top 10 Asian Crime Fiction (there are at least 4 Japanese authors listed)

Top 10 Japanese Novels

Prize Package One

2008-07-20T17:09:00.000-05:00

This package of treats will be given away July 30 to one of the participants. Thanks for joining!

(p.s. If you joined the challenge, you should be listed under "Participants." If you want to write posts for the review site please send me your email address at bellezza.mjs@gmail.com so that I can invite you to be a blog contributor.)

Faithful Elephants

2008-07-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

Some of the most powerful anti-war messages in the world come from Japanese literature, and from stories written for young people about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- books such as Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Hiroshima No Pika, and Shin's Tricycle.

I reread this little book (another very powerful plea for No More Wars!) the other day as I was organizing some materials from a recent summer class for teachers, and decided to share some of this information before we all begin our reading for Bellezza's upcoming Japanese Literature Challenge.

Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War, by Yukio Tsuchiya, is a heartbreaking story. It's in picturebook format, with beautiful watercolor illustrations, and is written in simple language for young people. However, the subject matter is powerfully disturbing, and it would be important for an adult discuss these grim realities of war with the young people reading it.

It is a powerful and painful introduction to the horrors of war, in particular the horror of the deaths of the zoo animals at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during WWII. Most of the animals were euthanized during the bombing of Tokyo. Their attempts to euthanize the three performing elephants, however, failed. The elephants were too smart and wouldn't eat the poisoned food, and their skin was too tough for the lethal injections, so their deaths were slow and grim.

Of all the anti-war books I've read, this is one of the most powerful and haunting.

From Chieko Akiyama (Radio and Television commentator and critic, Tokyo, 1988):

Building a world without wars has been the greatest human ideal throughout history. Unfortunately, it has never been accomplished.

Politicians, diplomats, and military men possess the keys to achieving peace. The responsibility should not, however, be left entirely to them when the threat of nuclear war is as great as it is today.

I believe it is absolutely necessary for each human being to work toward the prevention of war and establishment of peace. The power of the individual is small, yet we believe in the strength of the collective human energy, just as we know a drop of water is the source of a great river.

For the past 22 years, one of the things I have done is to read on television and radio, and to include in my lectures, the story of the Faithful Elephants, written thirty-seven years ago by Yukio Tsuchiya.

During the last stage of World War II, Tokyo was often attacked from the air. At the city zoo, the keepers, with tears in their eyes, had to kill many of the animals for fear that they would run amuck in the town if the zoo was bombed directly. Faithful Elephants describes how three elephants died at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo at that time.

My act of reading this story seems trivial. However, twenty-two years of tenacious and continuing sowing of the seeds of peace and the prevention of war are now bearing fruit. Strongholds of peace have been built in the hearts of adults and children when they realize the sorrow, misery, horror, and foolishness of war.

The biggest gift adults can give children is to make public the complete history of and the different viewpoints about war, and to help them consider how we can realize the human ideal.

I hope this book will be read throughout the world and that the seeds of peace and war prevention will be sown. I hope that those seeds will soon bud, bloom and bear fine fruit.

Are You Interested in Writing Haiku?

2008-07-17T13:47:00.000-05:00

A comment, left on Dolce Bellezza, leads me to make this announcement about a blog called One Single Impression.

One Single Impression is a community of poets writing and sharing haiku and other poetic forms. Each week we will offer up a new prompt that we hope will inspire your writing. We invite participants to share ideas for prompts, too.

It sounds exciting to me; I may give the writing of poetry a try.

But, for those of you who are already outstanding poets (California Teacher Guy), I encourage you to visit this sight ASAP.

Reading Japan

2008-07-17T08:59:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed the first Japanese Literature Challenge and I'm trying to read more Japanese literature as a long-term personal project so of course I wouldn't miss round 2! Thanks Bellezza!
This may be a bit presumptuous, but if anyone is looking for suggestions on what to read for the challenge, here is a link to books, by Japanese authors or by non-Japanese authors but about or set in Japan, that I've read since starting my blog 2 years ago, and here is a link to the books that are currently languishing in my TBR piles. Of course there are plenty more but it's a starting point. If you've already read anything on my either list, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. And I'm looking forward to hearing about and discovering more books during the challenge.
Happy reading!

A Trip to the Library

2008-07-14T11:15:00.000-05:00

So I go to the library this morning and begin looking for the Japanese authors on my list. I found about half of the ones I had listed, and read the synopses on the book flaps or covers of many of the author's books. I ended up not taking any thing out yet; I found at least three potentials, but still want to explore all my options. Who knows, I may read even more than 3. This challenge is proving to be veerrry interesting and I haven't even read a single book yet.
I had a blast! That is, I was having a blast until I got a hormonal/overheated/overexcited flash ( blast is good; flash is not )which resulted in an aura in my eye which signals Danger! Danger!* migraine coming..take cover! Oh, great; in the middle of the library!!!??? I got out of there, and with the help of caffeine and Tylenol I was able to nip it in the bud, and disaster was averted.

* or in keeping with the spirit of the challenge, perhaps I should say Tora! Tora! Tora!

Hello!

2008-07-13T18:51:00.000-05:00

Hi, Caitlin here to say hello, and that I'm hot on the trail of some 'good reads' for the JLC2. I am presently exploring my options; not in any rush since we have a while to complete the assignment. I posted a little something on my regular blog about my struggle today also.
Now let me ask a question. Does the author need to be Japanese, or can the books just be themed around/about Japan? Whichever, there are plenty to choose from. I've just never been looking for them before!

Farewell to Manzanar

2008-07-12T06:23:00.000-05:00

Recently I spent several hours at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, where over 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. The site is now managed by the U.S. National Park Service. In an isolated area at the far western side of the center stands an obelisk, marking the burial places of several internees:

My senryu came closer to the truth than I knew when I wrote it. Just yesterday I was reading Farewell to Manzanar, and stumbled upon this paragraph:

Near [the obelisk] a dozen graves were outlined in the sand with small stones, and a barbed-wire fence surrounded them to keep back the cattle and the tumbleweed. The black Japanese script cut into the white face of the obelisk read simply, “A Memorial to the Dead.”

Farewell to Manzanar is itself a poignant memorial to both the living and the dead, who endured the hardships and indignities of internment simply because of their Japanese ancestry.

Welcome

2008-07-11T23:39:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the second Japanese Literature Challenge!

Please feel free to write a post that:

reviews a book you've read, or
poses a question you have, or
reflects a thought you're pondering, or
links to a review in your own blog.

I greatly anticipate sharing what we discover as we start to uncover the world of Japanese Literature.

~Bellezza