Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
Title: Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
Japanese Title: 精霊の守り人
Author: Uehashi Nahoko (上橋菜穂子)
Illustrations: Yuko Shimizu
Translator: Cathy Hirano
Publication Year: 2008 (America); 1996 (Japan)
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine
Pages: 260
To hold the book Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit in my hands is something of a nostalgic experience. This may be because the book is published by the Arthur A. Levine imprint of Scholastic, which is also responsible for the beautiful hardcover editions of the Harry Potter books. Like its famous cousins, Moribito features beautiful binding and page design, as well as detailed and dynamic illustrations provided by the chic young illustrator Yuko Shimizu. At the end of the book is a list of characters, a list of places and terms, and a short yet intriguing note from the author. In other words, in terms of sheer physical beauty and craftsmanship, Moribito is a pleasure to read.
Thankfully, the actual content of the book is just as appealing, both to younger and to more mature readers. There is action, adventure, magic, intrigue, and a touch of romance with none of the pandering to adult sensibilities of what children should and shouldn’t read that generally clouds the narratives of Western children’s literature. Equally refreshing is the change of scenery from a whimsical fantasyland inspired by Western folklore to a fictional yet strangely believable setting drawn from East Asian (especially Japanese) geography, history, and mythology. Gone are the kings and knights of Western fantasy; in their place are the emperors and scholars of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese tradition.
One of the reasons why I personally like this book, however, is its strong female characters. The plot revolves around a young prince, Chagum, who is being hunted by his father, the Emperor of New Yogo, because he carries the seed of the land’s destruction within him in the form of a magical egg from Nayugu, a realm of spirits that overlaps the physical realm of humans. In order to save her son, Chagum’s mother enlists the services of Balsa, a spear-wielding bodyguard with three decades of fighting and hardship behind her. Aiding Balsa in her mission to protect the prince and discover the secret of the egg are Torogai, an old woman well-versed in lore and shamanistic magic, and Tanda, an herbalist and childhood friend of Balsa who heals her when she is injured in battle. Both Torogai and Balsa are extraordinary characters who have lived extraordinary lives, and they easily qualify as two of the most realistic yet appealing female characters I have encountered in literature. They are nothing if not the equals of the men they encounter, and it is their actions that drive the majority of the plot. This is not to say that the male characters are downplayed in any way; rather, the female characters are not driven into any stereotypically “female” behavior vis-à-vis their male counterparts.
Uehashi’s Moribito is courageous not just in its portrayal of female characters but also in its questioning of the Japanese myths of national founding and the imperial system. Even more than fifty years after Hirohito proclaimed that the Japanese emperor is not a god but rather the symbol of a nation, a great deal of controversy still surrounds the imperial institution in Japan. By uncovering the surprising reality behind the myths surrounding the creation of New Yogo, Uehashi indirectly encourages a more critical attitude towards Japan’s own national mythology.
Both children looking for entertainment and adults looking for something more will heartily enjoy every page of this book. And, should the reader decide that he or she wants more, there is a 26 episode, beautiful anime series (released in America by Media Blasters) that follows the events of the novel, as well as several other volumes in the series, the second of which is slated to be released in an English translation on May 1, 2009.
Yokai Attack!
Title: Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide
Authors: Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt
Illustrations: Morino Tatsuya (森野達弥)
Publication Year: 2008 (America)
Publisher: Kodansha International
Pages: 191
I was absolutely certain that I was not going to like Yokai Attack. I had fully expected it to be a boring and poorly organized mishmash of folklore, citations, and half-baked interpretation along the lines of Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings. But the illustrations for this book were commissioned from Morino Tatsuya, a famous apprentice of Mizuki Shigeru (a manga-ka known especially for his manga Hakaba no Kitarō, which was adapted into multiple versions of the anime franchise Ge Ge Ge no Kitarō), so I decided to give it a shot, despite the silly cover.
To my immense surprise, I fell in love with Yokai Attack right from the book’s dedication to Lafcadio Hearn and his wife, which I found apt and also quite touching. It is clear from the first few paragraphs of the preface that the authors have done their research and are extremely knowledgeable on the subject matter. In fact, the “Yokai Resources” section at the end of the book, with its extensive bibliography, is almost worth the price of the entire book itself for people interested in yōkai. Alt and Yoda draw on wide range of materials, from Nō plays to Edo-period collections of woodblock prints to Yoda’s memories of the ghost stories she heard as a child, to bring together about thirty-five detailed, four-page profiles of Japanese ghosts and goblins.
The joy of this book is not its wealth of information, however, but rather the lucid and witty style in which the information is presented. Alt and Toda obviously enjoy what they do, and they make sure their readers are just as amused as they are. I don’t mean to say that Yokai Attack is condescending or facetious; rather, the writing is exuberant and filled with small, good-natured jokes that make it a pleasure to read. The format and organization of the book are reader-friendly as well, and the captions, panels, and side notes are enjoyable and not distracting.
Yokai Attack seems to be targeted towards an audience of all ages, with perhaps a movie rating of “PG.” Although instances of people (or other strange and inappropriate things) getting eaten are directly referenced with much glee, all mention of grotesque violence and sexual activity has been struck from the text. This is something of a shame, as I’m sure the writers ran across enough upsetting and salacious material to fill another couple of books, but I suppose it’s for the best, as it will allow this gem of a book to reach a wider audience.
The one qualm I have with Yokai has nothing to do with the authors but rather with the publisher. Kodansha International, true to its Japanese origins, is known for going out of its way to publish beautiful books. It seems that it has shortchanged Alt, Yoda, and especially Morino by being only half full-color. Although the first two pages of each yōkai entry are full-color, the second two are not, and the publisher seemed to give up around page 145, when the full-color pages end. Since this book is beautifully formatted and filled with interesting images, I can’t even begin to imagine why Kodansha would cut corners like this. I am so disappointed in them! Such a fine book deserves better.
Another thing that bothers me is that I have not seen this book in bookstores anywhere – not even Kinokuniya in New York. Kodansha should get on the PR train and market Yokai Attack as a manga, so that it will be shelved with manga and reach its target audience. I kind of want to go to Kodansha and throw something at them for being so willfully ignorant.
But three cheers for Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt! Yokai Attack is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Japan in any capacity whatsoever.
Masks
Title: Masks
Japanese Title: 女面
Author: Enchi Fumiko (円地文子)
Translator: Juliet Winters Carpenter
Publication Year: 1983 (America); 1958 (Japan)
Pages: 141
If there is such a thing as the perfect Japanese novel, Masks is it. First of all, it has been translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, one of the most prolific and eloquent translators of Japanese literature alive today. Carpenter has translated everything from Tawara Machi’s groundbreaking collection of tanka poetry, Salad Anniversary (Sarada Kinenbi 1987) to Asa Nonami’s hard-boiled police thriller The Hunter (Kohoeru Kiba 1996). My advice to all lovers of Japanese literature would be: if Juliet Winters Carpenter has translated it, you need to read it!
As for the author herself, Enchi Fumiko is a well-regarded writer of literary fiction in Japan. Her father was a scholar of classical Japanese literature, and she grew up reading the books in his library. In fact, her given name, Fumiko, means “child of letters” or “child of literature.” When she grew up, she undertook the translation of many of the Japanese classics, including the monumental Heian period romance novel The Tale of Genji. She is famous for incorporating her classical background into her own fiction, which was highly praised by writers like Tanizaki Junichirō and Mishima Yukio.
I myself am a big fan of Enchi’s work because of her tightly-woven yet highly allusive plots and masterful use of symbolism. An Enchi novel is like a structuralist literary critic’s dream come true. There is so much, so much packed within each of her novels and stories, and no single interpretation that can be given to any of them. Enchi is an intellectual author of the highest magnitude, yet also possesses the ability to imbue her fiction with great emotional weight. Not only will Enchi’s novels make you think, but they will also make you laugh in desperation and pump your fist with a sense of well-deserved victory.
Although Enchi is primarily known in Japan for her 1971 novel Onnazaka, for which she won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize (this novel has been translated into English by John Bester under the title “The Waiting Years”), I tend to prefer Masks. Although its title refers to the masks of Noh drama, particularly the “madwoman” masks, which lend their names to the novel’s chapter titles, the novel draws the majority of its themes and allusions from the aforementioned Tale of Genji. The parallels Enchi draws between The Tale of Genji and the world of her novel are numerous and quite interesting. Not only does she draw distinct parallels between her characters and the characters of the Heian romance, but she also makes use of such classic “Genji” themes as spirit possession and substitution to subvert the patriarchal and misogynistic society that holds sway in the worlds of both novels.
Although Masks is primarily narrated from the point of view of a male college professor named Ibuki, who is cast in the role of Genji, its true hero is an older woman named Mieko, a powerful Lady Rokujō-like figure with a painful past and mysterious intentions. As Mieko’s protégée, Yasuko, explains to Ibuki,
“Believe me, she is a woman of far greater complexity than you – or anyone – realize. The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume. Oh, she has extraordinary charm. Next to that secret charm of hers, her talent as a poet is really only a sort of costume.”
The novel centers around Mieko’s attempt to use this “secret charm” of hers in order to set into motion a deep and complex scheme of revenge, creation, and rebirth. I don’t want to give away the ending, but everything about Mieko and her plan is beautiful, terrible, and thought-provoking. I would say that this novel is perhaps the best introduction to Japanese literature, and more specifically Japanese women’s literature, ever published. If you can find a copy of this novel, buy it! No matter where your literary interests lie, this is a novel you need to read.
The Story of a Single Woman
Title: The Story of a Single Woman
Japanese Title: 或る一人の女の話
Author: Uno Chiyo (宇野千代)
Translator: Rebecca Copeland
Publication Year: 1992 (America); 1971 (Japan)
Pages: 132
Translator Rebecca Copeland aptly remarks in her introduction to The Story of a Single Woman that this novella “is the Uno Chiyo story, the story she has told countless times before in earlier works.” Indeed, this semi-confessional narrative of love pursued against overwhelming societal resistance runs not just through Uno’s oeuvre but through the work of pre-bubble women writers in general, at least as it is portrayed in anthologies like Noriko Mizuta Lippet and Kyoko Iriye Selden’s Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction. What is special about The Story of a Single Woman, however, is how Uno is able to recount her narrative in a dashing and gallant narrative voice with a minimum of self-pity.
The novella’s heroine, Kazue, is born and grows up in a tiny mountain village named Takamori (not to be confused with the city on the island of Kyūshū) in the early twentieth century. Her mother dies when she is still an infant, and her father, a sake brewer of some renown, quickly remarries himself to a young woman. Oddly enough, it is not Kazue’s stepmother who harasses the child, but rather her father, who controls the family with an iron will and forces everyone to behave with perfect decorum, even as his fortunes decline. At the behest of her father, Kazue is married off to one of her cousins while still in her early teens; but, because her young husband is not yet interested in girls, Kazue walks back home and never looks back. When her father dies, she takes a job as a teacher in a larger town. Perhaps her newfound independence goes to her head, because she soon starts visiting a young male teacher at his residence, unchaperoned. The malicious gossip created by this affair forces Kazue to resign her job. She retaliates by moving to the newly colonized state of Korea to launch a career as a journalist.
This is merely the start of Kazue’s amorous adventures. Throughout the novel, she is brave and cheerful and never defeated, even though her many lovers, who also must yield to the social constraints of the time, abandon her one after the other. Scattered throughout the account of Kazue’s attempts to establish herself as a serious author while following her heart from one relationship to the next are vivid and lovely descriptions of life in the Japanese countryside and cities that would be forever shattered by the Pacific War and its legacy.
Overall, The Story of a Single Woman is a quick and enjoyable read. Even though its tone carries the somewhat Victorian literary flavor of the immediate postwar period, it manages to be quite erotic at times. Very occasionally, it’s also laugh-out-loud funny. What I found interesting about this book is that, although the real-life Uno Chiyo is infamous as a femme fatale, her literary avatar Kazue comes across mainly as a brave young woman who cannot help but suffer from her insistence on playing a man’s game in a man’s world. Although this story doesn’t have a happy ending (although I should add that it doesn’t have a sad ending, either), it is remarkably true to life and even a little uplifting in its honesty.
Kateigaho
Kateigaho has been a guilty secret of mine for several years now. It’s an “Arts & Culture” magazine that published its first issue in the summer of 2003 and has been putting out a new issue four times a year since then. The magazine is large format and generally has around 170 full color, glossy pages. Since it’s published in and distributed from Japan, it also has that nice, Japanese magazine smell.
Unlike other English language magazines about Japan, such as Metropolis, Tokyo Journal, and Kansai Time Out, Kateigaho is as professional as professional can be. As the full title of the magazine (Kateigaho International Edition) suggests, it’s the international edition of a famous Japanese lifestyle magazine, Kateigahō (家庭画報), a catchy title that might translate as something like “Home Art Information,” implying that art can be enjoyed within the home (via the magazine), that art can be enjoyed by the entire family, and that the home itself can be a site for art. In any event, the magazine’s target audience, both in English and in Japanese, are wealthy men and women who are interested in the finer points of Japanese life. The adds sparsely scattered throughout the magazine are not for seedy escort services or English teaching positions but rather for Mikimoto, Clinique, and Louis Vuitton.
It’s true that most people will be able to afford very few of the pleasures extolled by the magazine: hotels that cost hundreds of dollars per person per night, exquisite dining at the top of skyscrapers, the unique works of master artists and craftsmen. Just because the lifestyle is out of your price range, however, doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the magazine. The photographs are absolutely amazing and perhaps Kateigaho’s main selling point. The writing, although translated, is not the least bit unnatural, and every once in awhile there will be an original article by someone like Alex Kerr or Tom Mes. The magazine contains all sorts of detailed information about traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, lifestyle, and the performing and visual arts.
I’m mentioning Kateigaho now because the new issue will be on sale today (June 1). If you’re in Japan, you can pick up a copy at all major bookstores (like Maruzen or Yūrindō). In America, you can find the magazine at most Japanese language bookstores, like the Kinokuniya chain. If you’re interested in back issues, the easiest way to obtain them is through Amazon.co.jp, which is surprisingly easy to use, even if you can’t read Japanese.
Check out Kateigaho International’s website, too!
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!
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.
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.
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.
