50books_poc | Entries tagged with japan

Tender, playful, gripping, Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a mesmerizing tale about the importance of reaching out, confronting anxiety and embracing human connection.

Such an odd little book, at first. I had some trouble with the first half as it was a bit too slow-paced and the writing took some getting used to. It ended up being a lovely read, though!

Content warnings for: ( Read more... )

( Mini Review )

opusculasedfera

The Ink-Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan translated by Jane Hirshfield, with Mariko Aratani
I'm deeply unqualified to judge classical Japanese poetry, but this seems like a pretty decent translation. I happened to read this one because it's the one the library had, which did make me wonder rather about why these particular poems and why these two authors were put in one volume and that sort of thing, but the translation sounds good and I assume these are the major poems of these two authors, though again, there's almost no context provided except a brief biography of the two poets. I don't really know what other translations are out there and I wouldn't not recommend this one, except that I kept wanting context, though I suppose it's a sign of a good poet-style (as opposed to academic-style) translation that I didn't need it for the individual poems which are largely unfootnoted and don't need said footnotes to be understandable as poems.

Suki by Suniti Namjoshi
This is half a memoir of the author's late cat and half discussion of meditation and I have to say that I found the bits about the cat more interesting. It's slight and charming, but might be a bit twee if you find people talking to their cats and having the cats answer back in English to be twee. Her insights into meditation/the personal insights she derives from meditation do feel like genuine insights, and yet I feel like I know so little about Namjoshi/the narrator that I don't actually care very much about her meditations on the origins of her personality. Cute cat anecdotes though.

Intimate Apparel/Fabulation: Two Plays by Lynn Nottage
These are two plays that deal in different ways with African-American women and the ways in which men take advantage of their achievements. The first is about a early 20th century seamstress in New York who corresponds with a labourer in Panama and ends up marrying him, and the second is about a successful businesswoman whose life is falling down around her after her husband steals all her money and fucks off, and how she returns to her family of origin in her distress. I don't really know how to talk about them because I found them both (they are, in a sense, time-separated mirrors of each other and that's why they're published as a single volume) excellent and yet they're both awfully depressing. I don't know that I'd want to go to see either of them played, and yet they both struck me as powerful and portraying their subject in a very clean, important way.

China in Ten Words by Yu Hua, translated by Allan H. Barr
The blurb claims that this book explains China through the lens of ten culturally important words. It doesn't. But what it is is memoir-essays with single word titles, and those are excellent. Yu Hua lived through the Cultural Revolution and served as a barefoot dentist (his term) for a while before beginning to write novels. He does a fantastic job of showing the degree to which children can be both unknowing about and culpable in societal brutality: in his case, during the Revolution. He also writes about how China has changed since then. An interesting perspective.

opusculasedfera

I've been keeping up with the challenge, but very bad about posting it anywhere. Let's see if I can change that this year as people come back to dreamwidth, maybe? (Please?)

Brief reviews:

A Burst of Light and other essays by Audre Lorde
A reread of the always magnificent Audre Lorde. I needed her essay on the uses of anger in this extremely trying time.

The Occasional Vegetarian: 100 Delicious Dishes that Put Vegetables in the Center of the Plate by Elaine Louie
Some excellent sounding recipes, some mediocre sounding recipes. Billed to me by the library catalogue as containing more essay than recipe, it was definitely the other way around, but if you want something new to do with a vegetable, this has a broad approach and recipes from a wide variety of food traditions. Tends to ignore the fact that even vegetarians need PROTEIN and heartiness/substance is not the same thing, which always annoys me a bit.

Following Fish: One Man's Journey into the Food and Culture of the Indian Coast by Samanth Subramanian
One of those books where someone travels somewhere and eats something delicious and describes it well. A solid example of the genre. Contains some excellent descriptions of fish cookery and Indian scenery, and some parts of India I know very little about. I enjoyed it, and Subramanian is much more aware that he's describing a delicious fried fish, not a deep secret of politics/society/life than the title makes it sound, which keeps the book light and compelling. If anyone has any more recs in this genre, I would be delighted to receive them.

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani
An exploration of various historical antecedents to our current state of anything-goes political lies. Depressing as hell, but very good at the thing that it's doing.

Myth=Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology by Devdutt Pattanaik
An explanation of several Hindu myths as well as the personages/symbols within them. It took me months to finish this quite short volume so I kept getting the many, many names confused, but I don't think that was the author's fault. Does a good job with some myths at straightforwardly explaining how the same myth gets used to tell different lessons in different communities, but with other ones I was left feeling like there was a definite slant to the story and I was wondering whose story it was. On the other hand, it's not supposed to be a comprehensive guide, just a starting point, and I know that I'm not especially knowledgeable on the subject.

Tags: sri lanka, japan, african-american, india, china, food/cooking, mythology, politics, history, essay, non-fiction

yatima

My 11yo bought this on the strength of a blurb from Alison Bechdel (we all loved Fun Home.) After she finished it, she insisted that I read it. Kid knows the kind of thing I like. Tagame is known for his extremely kinky gay manga, but this is family fare: the tender story of a Canadian who visits his dead husband's brother and niece in Japan.

The point of view is that of the brother, Yaichi, who is burdened with a lot of unexamined homophobia. While a lot of the critical response to My Brother's Husband approaches this as a text that will help people unfamiliar with LGBTQ+ issues, it worked equally well to give my San Francisco-raised kid an insight into people whose daily lives aren't suffused with the gay! Tagame gives Yaichi space to wrestle with his preconceptions and doesn't judge him for his missteps. It's a sweetly sympathetic portrait that didn't raise my queer hackles: not an easy feat.

The art is my favorite aspect of this book. Mike, the Canadian widower, is a big beardie hairy man, and his body is presented as straightforwardly attractive. His growing rapport with his niece Kana and his kindness towards another young character are beautifully and movingly rendered. I can't wait for Volume 2.

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

I don't usually post manga reviews here because I don't count manga towards my goal as I read so much of it. But this is a special case. I really want to get the word out about this story.

I have been translating Nakamura Ching's Gunjo for the scanlation group Kotonoha for a while now and just last week finished the final chapter of the first volume (the series is still running, but it will be three vols. total, and the first vol. is more than double the length of a regular manga, so it's longer than it seems) and while the scanlations are only up through chapter five (plus a special unnumbered backstory chapter), I really, really recommend it.

When I first heard the summary, that it was about a lesbian who kills the husband of the woman she loves (who doesn't love her back, and in fact treats her like shit), and the two go on the run together, I was dubious. It sounded like it could be really skeevy, but omg it is so, so good.

When I say this woman is a lesbian, she really is. This is no "gay for you" story. She has been a lesbian since high school, dates other women besides the woman whose husband she kills, and there are other lesbian characters as well. And as the story goes on, you find out that things are a lot more complicated than they seem. This is not a story about evil lesbians. It is not a story about evil women of any sexual orientation. There is a reason for everything, and you will sympathise with both main characters (as well as the many minor characters who get their turn (all women, all of whom are more complicated than they seem on the surface)). It's a manga that really critiques society.

And while I can't see a very happy ending for two women on the run from the law, if they do end up dead at the end or something, it won't feel like a Dead Lesbian story because they are not the only queer people in it. They are dysfunctional, but there are other queer people living their lives and being happy (I won't give spoilers, but the final chapter of vol. 1 focuses on one of the minor characters and is awesome in that regard).

I really can't say enough good about it, and I don't want to get into particulars too much because I think it's really best read without spoilers (though it is definitely not a pleasant story and there is domestic abuse as well as sexual assault). It's also really well drawn. The art has this visceral, raw quality that is just perfect for the story it's telling.

Also, I wondered due to the content of the story if the author was queer herself, and according to this interview (in English), she is indeed:

Q5: What were your motivations for creating Gunjo?

I wanted to draw the keen loneliness of a lonely person. I wanted to turn our kindness and cruelty (the kinds of emotions that we can't control with our own wills) into a manga. And also, because I am gay. Living a life of hiding I was gay was unpleasant, so I wanted to give myself the chance to admit I was gay.

I would recommend it even to people who are not that into manga, because it is just an awesome story and a smart story. You can read in English online or download the first six chapters on Kotonoha's website.

You can also buy volume one and volume two (just released last month) off Amazon Japan.

veleda-k.livejournal.com

Last year I completed the

50books_poc challenge, but I reviewed only a fraction of the books I read. So this year I'm going to make an effort to keep up, in order not to become overwhelmed by how far behind I am.

#1: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (translated by Yuji Oniki)

( The reason why you're all here today is to kill each other )

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: Skeleton Man
Author: Joseph Bruchac
Number of Pages: 114 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Summary: When Molly's parents don't return after a trip, she is placed in the care of a mysterious "great uncle" who's appeared out of nowhere. Everyone else believes his story, but Molly knows something isn't right. Soon she becomes convinced that he is the Skeleton Man, a monster from one of the old Mohawk stories her dad used to tell her. With the help of a rabbit who guides her in her dreams, she begins to make plans to escape and rescue her parents.

Review: This is a super short book, but I really enjoyed it. The story is pretty creepy (both the retold tale of the Skeleton Man that Molly relates as well as what happens to her in the present) and I really liked Molly. I also liked how matter-of-factly Mohawk culture was treated.

Title: Shizuko's Daughter
Author: Kyoko Mori
Number of Pages: 214 pages
My Rating: 5/5

Jacket Summary: "Your mother would be very proud..." Yuki Okuda heard these words when she was achieving in school, excelling in sports, even when she became president of the student council. And she could always imagine the unexpressed thought that followed: "...if your mother hadn't killed herself." But Shizuko Okuda did commit suicide, and Yuki had to learn how to live with a father who didn't seem to love her and a stepmother who treated her badly. Most important, she had to learn how to live with herself: a twelve-year-old girl growing up alone, trying to make sense of a tragedy that made no sense at all...

Review: I liked this a lot. I kept feeling surprised at it for some reason and finally I realised why. It felt very normal in a way I am not sure I've ever seen in a book about Japan written in English (as in, not translated from Japanese). Even when the author isn't white, if they're writing for an English-speaking audience, there's often a tinge of exoticism (sometimes more than a tinge), but there wasn't any of that here at all. Sadly, the cover illustration tries to make up for that by showing a girl in kimono, despite the fact that the book is set in the '70s and the only people ever mentioned wearing kimono are Yuki's grandparents, and her father and stepmother at their wedding ceremony.

One thing that bugged me was that there was this chapter where she seems to totally have a crush on this girl and I thought that's where the story was going, especially since later she still has no interest in guys and this is pointed out several times. But then later it turns out that she was just ~damaged~ from her father's betrayal and didn't want to fall in love, and then she does and is happily heterosexual.

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

13. Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East

I love travel books, and this is a fantastic one. Iyer visits several Asian countries (including India, China, Tibet, Burma, the Philippines, Bali, Thailand, Hong Kong, and probably a few more I'm forgetting) with the goal of seeing how they've been affected by Western pop culture and tourism. Iyer is quite good at describing places, and seems to have really made the effort to get to know local people and include their viewpoints.

This book is a bit out-of-date now (it was written in the early 80s), but to me that just added to the appeal. This is a China and Tibet newly opened to Westerners, a Hong Kong which is still a colony, Burma before it was Myanmar. So many of the places he visits no longer exist- at least, not as they did at the time- that it makes for an intriguing historical snapshot.

Iyer uses the 'Modern, Masculine West meets Traditional, Feminine East! However Will They Understand One Another?' trope a bit too much for my tastes, but you could easily skim those parts and focus on the descriptions of places and people, which are quite well-written. Recommended, and I'd love recs for other travel books, if you have a favorite!

Current Mood: cheerful

cyphomandra.livejournal.com

Isabel Waiti-Mulholland, Inna Furey. The bit at the back of the book lists four more books in this series, but I’ve never seen any of them (this book came out in 2007) and Google suggests that it’s not just me. Which is a shame, because this book is largely set-up, and I’d like to know where the author was going with it.

A new, strange, girl – Inna Furey – starts at Leanne’s school. When Leanne meets Inna late one night in the reserve outside her house, she discovers Inna’s secret – she can transform into a giant bird (Haast’s eagle, the largest known raptor – now extinct). But, when she changes, she isn’t herself anymore, and whatever she transforms into is taking over more and more often…

( Isabel Waiti-Mulholland, Inna Furey. )

Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque. Two women working as prostitutes in Tokyo are murdered. Years earlier, they attended the same exclusive high school, along with the first, unnamed narrator, the older sister of one of those murdered (Yuriko). Yuriko was abnormally beautiful – a beauty described as grotesque – and the subsequent distortions this created for her and her sister reverberate through their lives.

( Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque. )

seabookmonger.livejournal.com

Japanese author Reiko Matsuura is traveling across the U.S. right now, reading from her 1993 novel, The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P , which was just translated into English. It's always a pleasure to meet the authors the Japan Foundation brings to the U.S. They're always prize winners, often edgy in both style and topic, and often female. If you're lucky enough to have the chance, go and hear what they have to say. If you can't meet them, meet them through their writing.

You may have heard that this is a novel about a woman who grows a penis out of her big toe. That's accurate, but it's just the jumping off point as I think this novel is about the desire for love and for connection. Matsuura has said (and I paraphrase a translation) that what happens in the heart during the sexual act has not been depicted in the many male/phallocentric depictions of sex in literature. And in literature, the act is often not depicted, but alluded to. And she wonders about what writers are not saying. What is being concealed in the core of sex? She has written about the interior and exterior aspects of sexual acts between a variety of men and women in this book but, as you come to understand, the penis is the least of it, though people are pretty focused on it. As you can imagine.

Current Location: Not Japan

puritybrown.livejournal.com

21: On Two Shores by Mutsuo Takahashi (English tr. Mistuko Ohno & Frank Sewell)

This is a bilingual edition of new and selected poems by Takahashi, a distinguished Japanese poet who uses both modern and traditional forms. I was especially interested in this volume because it's published by an Irish publisher, Dedalus, and some of the poems were inspired by the poet's visit to Ireland in 1999, where, according to the introduction (and the poem "Faith"), he rediscovered his faith in poetry and in the future.

As an Irish reader, I found the Ireland-inspired poems in this collection intensely moving -- I'm used to seeing the pictures of Ireland reflected through outsiders' eyes and not recognising it, whether the picture is positive or negative; but Takahashi's Ireland, an Ireland of poets and abandoned railway stations and urban foxes, is familiar to me, and strange at the same time, like a photograph taken from an atypical angle.

There are earlier poems in this collection too, and they show the same insight and the same gift at capturing a moment in an image as the Ireland poems; but they betray a sense of fear, and in particular a fear of time, as in "The Letter":

I am writing a letter
addressed to you.
But
as I write,
you who will read the letter
don't exist yet;
and when you read the letter,
I who wrote it
won't exist anymore.
A letter suspended
between someone who doesn't exist yet
and someone who doesn't exist anymore --
does it really exist?

(I have trouble writing about poetry; I always feel my words are too clumsy for it. I really liked this book.)

glinda-penguin.livejournal.com

Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

( The world was silent when they died )

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

( Things we lost in the flood )

Strangers by Taichi Yamada

( Tried to avoid spoilers through vagueness )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

36. Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.

A classic novel of Japanese literature, this book was cited as one of the reasons the author won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1968. The plot concerns a small hot-spring town in the mountains. A rich, lazy young man comes to visit several times over the course of a year or two, carrying on a relationship with a local geisha who is in love with him. The book has lots of very beautiful descriptions of landscapes- mountains in snow, fall leaves on the trees, bugs dying against a window in the summer; the translator even compares the novel to haiku- but not much plot. There are a lot of conversations where no one quite says what they mean, and most of the important developments take place in the subtext. That's interesting in some ways, but it's also very distancing, and I never felt very attached to the characters. On the other hand, this is a very short book, so if you want to try out a famous Japanese novel, it's definitely an easy read.

Current Mood: cold

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

An intricately plotted mystery with sf elements.

Two young women commit suicide under mysterious circumstances, but when a third dashes out into the path of a taxi, the driver is blamed for her death. The taxi driver’s nephew, teenage Mamoru, is living with the family after his father embezzled money and then disappeared. All of these elements and more intertwine as Mamoru investigates the deaths.

Like Miyabe’s other novels that I’ve read, this begins with a who-dun-it (or why- or how-) and spirals out into more primal mysteries about why people behave the way they do, how far they’ll go in pursuit of their desires, and what we really mean when we talk about morality and justice. There are also strong noir elements, in which people play out their desperate dramas within a larger society that couldn’t care less about any given individuals and whose impersonal forces can crush them like bugs and never even notice.

This novel is written in omniscient point of view, and the God’s-eye perspective works well with the complex structure, in which a web of connections and coincidences begins to seem like some greater power is at work behind the scenes. (God, fate, Miyabe— you decide.)

Engrossing, thoughtful, and well-characterized; dark but also humane and hopeful. Note that the most gruesome bit in the whole book is in the first few pages, so if you can get past that, you’re good to go.

View on Amazon: The Devil's Whisper

( Read more... )

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Massey, a biracial (Indian-German-American) woman, used her experience living in Japan and dealing with cross-cultural issues to create a series of mysteries featuring a biracial Japanese-American woman antique dealer living in Tokyo.

I read the first bunch years ago and was charmed by the vivid and down to earth depiction of Tokyo, which was very close to my own experience of the city. The novels themselves are fluffy mysteries with romantic elements, each focusing on a different aspect of Japanese culture, such as ikebana in The Flower Master. I recall them as fun but not terribly well-written, and may also be quite dated by now judging by my experience with the one I just read.

Bride's Kimono, The is mostly set in American, as Rei Shimura gets a job shepherding a set of valuable kimono from a museum in Tokyo to one in Washington DC; naturally, a kimono is stolen, someone is murdered, her ex-boyfriend appears, and she’s accused of being a prostitute (!) and must clear her name, find the kimono, pick a man, and solve the crime, all the while stumbling through culture clashes with both Japanese and American people.

The new setting took away a lot of the fun of the series for me, though I did enjoy the details about antique kimono. I was a little boggled that in a book written in 2001, Rei had never used a computer and didn’t know what a mouse was; this was presented as slightly eccentric but not bizarre.

Nothing special, but I was entertained.

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

This manga is an adaptation of the very long children’s fantasy of the same name by adult mystery author Miyabe. Her dark, psychological mysteries are well worth reading, but if this manga is representative of the novel, she’s yet another adult writer who fell on her face when she tried a children’s book.

Average junior high school boy Wataru loves video games. Other than that, he has no personality, and neither does anyone else. When he crosses paths with a mysterious transfer student, he is popped into a world which is a cross between a clichéd video game and a clichéd fantasy novel, full of clichéd monsters that he can kill and guarded by a clichéd bearded and robed wizard. The art is a cross between clichéd shounen and clichéd fantasy D&D illustration. The translation is annoyingly slangy.

I did not like this one little bit… until toward the end, when it took a sudden left turn into dark adult Miyabe territory, and introduced a possibly promising plot twist. I don’t think I’ll continue the manga in any event, but has anyone read the novel? Is it better?

View manga on Amazon: Brave Story Volume 1

View novel on Amazon: Brave Story

Some of Miyabe’s excellent mysteries: Shadow Family, All She Was Worth

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Popular schoolgirl Chiko finds a lost cell phone in a subway station, and answers it when it begins to ring. A mysterious voice tells her that someone is going to die in ten minutes in front of the train station, but if she can get there in time, she can save the person. Run!

Soon Chiko is tearing all over Tokyo, accompanied by her jaded classmate Bando, desperate to save even one person before their time runs out. But, like the somewhat similar and also very good X-Day, by Setona Mizushiro, what seems like the set-up for straight-up horror is actually a story about loneliness, connection, and community.

Despite some rather implausible moments, and I mean even given the premise, this manga tells a compelling and affecting story. The understatedly romantic nature of the connection between the two girls is enhanced with sensual pin-ups of the two of them between each chapter.

Complete in one volume. By the creator of Anne Freaks, which I haven’t read.

View on Amazon: Line

X-Day (Volumes 1 & 2)

Anne Freaks Volume 1 (v. 1)

b-writes.livejournal.com

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, was chosen as this year's "Vermont Reads" book, and I was very excited about it-- a book by a woman of color, set neither in Vermont nor in a rural community! But I found the book itself a disappointment. It's slim and the prose is elegant, but I only began engaging with the characters about midway through the novel, and then mostly with only one character-- the youngest boy in the family the book focuses on, a Japanese-American family split by the war and sent to two separate concentration camps. The family seems frustratingly passive, and even the signs of life in the camp-- a dance contest, the murder of a man who was likely only picking a flower-- happen offscreen. When the Emperor Was Divine attempts to illuminate through small details, but isn't always successful. It also probably suffered in contrast with Woman in the Dunes, which I read pretty soon afterward.

I'd heard of Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes as a novel that had been adapted into a famous cult movie, about a woman forced to shovel sand to protect her town and a hapless man kidnapped to help her. The premise always appeared faintly ludicrous, so I was pleased to realize when actually reading the book that things make a bit more sense in context. It's still more allegorical than realistic, but it's more believable than I'd thought. I am still not sure whether I was fortunate or unfortunate to read it so closely to When the Emperor Was Divine, because it drew my frustration with that book into sharp relief-- Abe does what Otsuka tries to do, only he makes it look elegant and effortless. Abe's protagonist is also angry, active, and sometimes self-destructive-- but at least he's clearly and brilliantly alive. A few paragraphs about sexuality brought the book to a bit of a screeching halt for me (and there is a certain amount of ingrained sexism in the lead character that might be difficult for some), but overall it was well worth the read.