Old Kyoto
Title: Old Kyoto
Author: Diane Durston
Photographs: Lucy Birmingham
Publication Year: 1986 (originally), 2005 (revised edition)
Pages: 244
Though I am in Kyoto
I miss Kyoto…
Cry of the cuckoo
This poem by Bashō begins the “Afterward” to Diane Durston’s guidebook to the ancient capital city of Kyoto. I believe it’s a fitting epigraph, as this book obviously wasn’t written for tourists. Even though it occasionally attempts to make provisions for day trippers or overnight guests who only speak a small amount of Japanese, I wouldn’t recommend this book to a casual traveler. To those of you who have lived in Kyoto but have since returned home, I would offer another epigraph: Ignorance is bliss.
I spent a year in Kyoto three years ago, and for me this book doesn’t evoke nostalgia as much as it inspires regret. The sembe store right next to the Starbucks. The bamboo weaver’s studio on the way to McDonald’s. The famous ramen stand right next to the movie theater. All the secrets and culture and history that I just didn’t see. If you still live in Kyoto, or if you’re planning on living in Kyoto, or if you’re never, ever going to even visit Kyoto, this is a wonderful book. If you’ve had your chance and can’t go back, or can only spend a day or two, I’d think twice before tempting yourself with Old Kyoto.
One of the nice things about this book, however, is that it’s not simply a travel guide. Durston has divided the book into sections of the city (central, east, north, west, and south) and divided each section into shop, restaurant, and ryokan listings. Each listing is fairly long (three pages), so Durston has plenty of space to explain what’s interesting about the particular location. If a certain ryokan is one of the most exclusive hotels in all of Japan, Durston is going to tell you what’s so amazing about it. If the owner of a particular restaurant has a strong personality, she’s going to tell you about what a character he is. If a craftsman’s shop has been in business for hundreds of years, she’s going to tell you about the shop’s history. If a ceramic dealer specializes in tanuki statues, she’s going to tell you all about the tanuki culture in Japan. Durston is supremely knowledgeable, yet always humble and engaging. Moreover, I think she has written a wonderful essay on the history of Kyoto, which serves as an introduction to the book.
Old Kyoto is so interesting and so well-written that I believe it’s something that should be read cover to cover. The numerous photographs that accompany each entry, although printed in black and white, are a lovely bonus. For anyone who enjoys reading about Japan, or for anyone who enjoys reading good travel writing, I highly recommend this book. Get it before it goes out of print again!
Keritai Senaka
Title: 蹴りたい背中
English Title: “The Back I’d Like To Kick”
Author: 綿矢りさ (Wataya Risa)
Publication Year: 2003 (Japan)
Pages: 140
Wataya Risa made waves in 2001 when she became the youngest writer to win the Bungei Prize (文藝賞), a prestigious award managed by the literary magazine Bungei. She won the award for her debut novel Install (インストール), written while she was a senior in high school. After graduating from high school, Wataya entered Waseda University and began work on her second novel, Keritai Senaka. This novel would win her the Akutagawa Prize (芥川賞), the single most prestigious literary award in Japan. At the age of nineteen, Wataya became the youngest author ever to receive this award.
So, what’s all the fuss about? In a market dominated by pop fad writers like Yoshimoto Banana and Yamada Amy, it’s easy to be skeptical. You’ll have to take my word for it, though, when I say that Wataya is the real deal. Her prose reflects the background and personality of her high school aged narrator while still managing to maintain a definite literary tone. Her descriptions of people and places are vivid and artistic, and her introspective examination of memory and interpersonal dynamics are sure to resonate with anyone who’s old and yet young enough to be able to look back on high school with both bitterness and nostalgia.
The novel’s plot centers around the lone wolf narrator Hachi, her changing relationship with her best friend Kinuyo, and her developing relationship with a strange boy named Ninagawa. Hachi and Kinuyo have just graduated from middle school, and Hachi is disappointed that Kinuyo has become popular with a new group of friends in high school. Left to her own devices, Hachi is drawn to Ninagawa, a fellow outcast who steadfastly refuses to have anything to do with other people. When Hachi mentions that she’s met the fashion model with whom Ninagawa is obsessed, he latches on to her, and she finds herself introduced to his strange otaku fantasy world, which ultimately provides a means for her to re-affirm her relationship with Kinuyo.
Although it’s debatable whose back Hachi wants to kick, the back that she does kick (twice) belongs to Ninagawa. Don’t let yourself think for one second, however, that this book is about a high school romance between the two. The somewhat twisted relationship between the them is exquisitely complicated and yet imminently understandable, even if you can’t quite put your finger on why. One of the main appeals of this novel, in fact, is the challenge of decoding Hachi’s feelings towards Ninagawa. Perhaps the other main appeal is trying to understand one’s own feelings, as the reader, concerning Hachi (and, by extension, oneself at her age).
Unfortunately, this novel has yet to be translated. For those of you studying Japanese, however, you will be pleased to find that Wataya’s prose is very accessible. The book can easily be finished in three or four sittings. If you’ve been looking for a book to serve as a gateway into Japanese literature, please allow me to recommend Keritai Senaka.
The Commoner
Title: The Commoner
Author: John Burnham Schwartz
Publication Year: 2008 (America)
Pages: 351
Let me be honest with you. I generally hate books intended for a popular audience written by gaijin (foreigners, or non-Japanese). Bruce Feiler’s Learning to Bow (2004), Peter Carey’s Wrong About Japan (2006), and Michael Zielenziger’s Shutting Out the Sun (2007) spring immediately to mind. My complaints concerning books of this kind are myriad, but they basically boil down to a few specific points. Namely, the authors have never formally studied Japan, they’ve never spent any significant length of time in Japan, and they don’t speak Japanese. As a result, their theories are based on misinformation and mistaken assumptions, if not on pure ethnocentrism. “Wrong about Japan,” indeed.
I am excited to tell you that this book is different. Not only is it meticulously well researched, detailed, and accurate to a point at which I would not have doubted a Japanese name on the cover, but it is also perhaps the most outstanding work of English language fiction that I have read this year. Schwartz’s novel brought me, a literary cynic, to tears on more than one occasion, and its emotional impact stayed with me long after I had closed the book for the final time.
The Commoner is a fictionalized account of the life of Michiko, the current Empress of Japan, and the entrance of the current Crown Princess, Masako, into the royal family. Schwartz has renamed Michiko “Haruko” and Masako “Keiko,” but the parallels between his fictional princesses and the lives of the two real-life princesses cannot be mistaken. Even though the various triumphs and tragedies of these two women has been well publicized by the media, the Japanese imperial institution has put up an iron wall of silence behind the moats of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, preventing the thoughts and stories of its residents from ever reaching the public. Schwartz’s novel is an attempt to understand the lives and emotions of the Empress and the Crown Princess lying dormant underneath their carefully-managed public facade.
I’m not going to spoil the plot, but I have to let you know that the ending of this book is amazing. If the beautiful prose and delicate characterizations, evident from the first page and only building in intensity, weren’t enough to hook you, the novel’s climax definitely makes The Commoner well worth the read.
69
Title: 69
Japanese Title: 69 (シクスティナイン)
Author: Ryu Murakami (村上龍; Murakami Ryū)
Translator: Ralph F. McCarthy
Publication Year: 1993 (America); 1987 (Japan)
Pages: 191
Who wrote Holden Caulfield? The truth is, many aspiring young writers have given it a shot, and the infamous literary bad boy Murakami Ryū is not exempt from their numbers. Murakami’s early novels, such as Almost Transparent Blue (限りなく透明に近いブルー) and Coin Locker Babies (コインロッカー・ベイビーズ) are filled with dissatisfied young men violently striving to bring meaning into their lives, so what makes 69 special?
For one thing, it might have actually happened. The plot concerns nothing more than the vitally important matter of the protagonist’s budding attraction for the lovely “Lady Jane,” a member of his high school’s prestigious English Drama Club. For a high school student living in the boondocks of Japan, the means at his disposal at first seem to be limited. The year is 1969, however, and anything can happen. Considering Murakami’s well-publicized admission of the autobiographical nature of this work, some of it more than likely did happen. The nature of this work as being well-grounded in reality not only gives it an interesting historical flavor but also exacerbates the outrageousness of the lengths to which the protagonist will go to get laid. Simply put, this book is hilarious.
Translator Ralph McCarthy renders the narrator’s young yet jaded voice into perfect English idiom, and the translated slang doesn’t feel dated in the least. My favorite aspect of the translation is the way that McCarthy chose to emphasize some of the novel’s key phrases in huge bold print. For example:
It’s also a fact, however, that in 1969 there was a convenient tendency to describe people who studied for college entrance exams as capitalist lackeys.
“Look, you fucking asshole, we’re here on a sacred mission, and you want to peek in the girls’ changing room? If that’s where your head’s at, man, the whole thing’s a failure before we’ve even started.”
Although 69 seems somewhat juvenile and inane compared to Murakami’s later work, such as In the Miso Soup (インザ・ミソスープ), I feel that it’s almost required reading for anyone interested the background behind the insane and disturbing world of Murakami Ryū.
Neko Nabe
Title: ねこ鍋：みちのく猫ものがたり
English Title: “Neko Nabe: A Tale of Cats in the Northern Provinces”
Author (and Photographer): 奥森すがり (Okumori Sugari)
Publication Year: 2007 (Japan)
Pages: 96
Neko Nabe is a photography book chronicling author Okumori Sugari’s attempts to raise a litter of stray kittens in a traditional farmhouse in the north of Honshū, an area traditionally referred to as “michinoku.” To scholars of pre-modern Japanese literature, this area will be familiar as the setting of Bashō’s famous haiku collection Oku no Hosomichi (“Journey to the Far North”). Scholars of contemporary Japan will recognize Neko Nabe itself as a major phenomenon in bookstores and on the internet.
As her kittens (neko) grow older, Okumori finds that they have a habit of sleeping curled up in Japanese cooking dishes called nabe, which are used in the winter for making potluck stews called nabemono. Pictures of kittens sleeping in nabe abound, but this book has quite a bit more content to offer, especially as the photographs and text detail life in a pleasantly rural part of a country that is often perceived as overwhelmingly urban.
Another joy of this book is that it is written in the local dialect. Because Okumori’s Japanese is fairly simple to understand, a student of the language should have no trouble picking out and deciphering the instances of northern dialect. For example, 先ず becomes まんず, 私 becomes おらほ, and the speech of Okumori’s father and grandmother becomes quite colorful indeed.
Neko Nabe, filled with amusing anecdotes and charmingly amateurish photography, is a short, easy, and oddly engrossing read for Japanese students interested in a depiction of life outside of Tokyo. Even when the dialect gets too heavy to be comprehensible, the cats are still cute, so there’s no way to lose.
Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan
Title: Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan
Editors: Stephen Snyder and Philip Gabriel
Essays: 12, with an Introduction by the editors
Publication Year: 1999 (America)
Pages: 317
This book, while undeniably academic, is perhaps the most important resource for students of contemporary Japanese literature. Included in this book are twelve essays by prominent scholars on the biggest names in post-war Japanese literature. There are essays on political writers like Ōe Kenzaburō and Nakagami Kenji, feminist writers like Ohba Minako and Takahashi Takako, and contemporary popular writers like Murakami Haruki and Banana Yoshimoto. Each of these essays aims to look at the writer as a whole, considering his or her major works and themes, while at the same time attempting to evaluate his or her place in the larger body of modern and postmodern Japanese literature. Every essay is a sound piece of scholarly work, and none of the analyses rely on theory unfamiliar to a college graduate.
Because these essays are so general and yet so rigorous in their approach, I would like to recommend the collection to general readers, as well as specialists, who have cultivated an interest in a particular writer. You won’t be disappointed by what you find. The short introductory essay is also a wonderful introduction to the state of Japanese literature at the turn on the 21st century.
Here is a list of the writers treated by the essays, as well as the authors of the essays themselves. An astute observer (such as myself, haha) will notice that many of the essayists are their subjects’ primary translators, a fact which attests to their close relationship with the authors and their works.
1. Ōe Kenzaburō (Susan Napier)
2. Endō Shūsaku (Van C. Gessel)
3. Hayashi Kyōko (Davinder L. Bhowmick)
4. Ohba Minako (Adrienne Hurley)
5. Takahashi Takako (Mark Williams)
6. Nakagami Kenji (Eve Zimmerman)
7. Kurahashi Yumiko (Atsuko Sakaki)
8. Murakami Haruki (Jay Rubin)
9. Murakami Ryū (Stephen Synder)
10. Shimada Masahiko (Philip Gabriel)
11. Kanai Mieko (Sharalyn Orbaugh)
12. Yoshimoto Banana (Ann Sheif)
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Title: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Japanese Title: 掌の小説
Author: Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成; Kawabata Yasunari)
Translators: Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman
Publication Year: 1988 (America)
Pages: 259
This book gathers Nobel Prize winning author Kawabata’s famous short shorts, or “palm of the hand (tenohira) stories.” These stories average about two and a half pages each, although some are a little longer, and some are much shorter. Most of these stories deal with the intricacies of male-female relationships, dreams, and fragmented memories of childhood. Even though some of the stories have a bittersweet sentimentality, Kawabata’s style is mainly realistic, especially in his portrayal of relationships crippled by words left unsaid and small, but meaningful, actions.
Some of Kawabata’s short stories are lyrical in their depictions of time, place, and nature, but many strike the reader as small mysteries to be pondered and unlocked. Who said what to whom? What significance did that have? Why would this person do that? What exactly is the relationship between these characters? The extreme brevity of these stories boils down life stories into a few irreversible moments and leaves the reader to read between the lines. This aspects of the works is rewarding but can be occasionally frustrating.
These stories were written over a period spanning between 1923 and 1972. Read individually, they can be unsatisfying; but, if the reader reads one story after another in a smooth, unbroken stream, the major themes and concerns of Kawabata’s career begin to gain a greater clarity, and the stories meld seamlessly into a greater whole.
I have read several of these stories in Japanese, as they are quite famous, and I have found that the translations are not only accurate but successfully convey the tone of the originals. The stories translated by Lane Dunlop (Shiga Naoya’s The Paper Door and Other Stories) tend to be a bit dry, but they are balanced nicely by Holman’s more experimental style.
