Wednesday Afternoon Picnic

Best of 2011

2011-12-29T11:37:00.002-05:00

Well, there's no particular reason for me to write a Best of 2011 list, except for the fact that it's the end of the year and EVERYONE is doing it. Then again, there's no reason NOT for me to do it either.

Though honestly, I read a lot of great books this year. Actually, in general, I just read a lot. I have no records before this year, but I started using Goodreads in January of this year, and I love using it, so I've been very diligent about adding everything I read (to an embarrassing degree, too, since everyone can tell when I totally give up on a book too). As of writing this post, I read 43 books this year, and it'll probably be an even 45 by January 1st—though I know that those two won't end up on this list in the end so I don't mind waiting to write about my Best Of now.

So yes. I've narrowed it down to a top 5, but I also will highlight some honorable mentions as well after. I'll even do a little countdown, because I am a dork. The top 5 all actually came out in 2011, and the honorable mentions will primarily be other great books I read this year but didn't actually come out in 2011. And without further ado:

Will's Best Literature of 2011:

5. Funeral For a Dog
by Thomas Pletzinger
Translated by Ross Benjamin

I read this for a class in Literary Translation right before I graduated, but it's stuck with me for the rest of the year. It's a debut novel, and I think you can tell when you read it. It has a messy, shaggy dog type quality to the prose as well as the construction of the work itself, but it is such a strong voice, and it is amazingly effective.

Basically, it's about a journalist who's sent by his editor/girlfriend to interview a reclusive children's book author. There's a story in a story here too—the journalist discovers a manuscript while staying at the author's lakeside home that tells the story of a love triangle that spans across the globe, and the way these two plot elements dovetail is nothing short of beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. There's even a little real-life Easter Egg that you can discover, but I'll let you find it for yourself. So yes, three words to describe this book: messy, heartbreaking, beautiful. Just like life, you say? Just like love, you say?

It also reads beautiful (i.e. the translation is amazing) possibly due in part the level of collaboration between the author (who does speak English) and the translator (they're like best friends now). Insider knowledge!

4. Stone Upon Stone
by Wiesław Myśliwski
Translated By Bill Johnston

If anyone from the aforementioned translation class reads this blog (I'm pretty sure they don't), they are sure to yell at me, because I was the only person in class who had anything slightly negative to say about this book when we were reading it.

But let the record show that I declare that I was slightly too hard on it, though I still believe some of my minor criticisms are valid. I was on hard on this book because I had to read this 500+ page monstrosity in about four days, which might have made me a little extra sensitive or cranky.

Though truly, it was not the worst four days I've ever spent (though very tiring). Stone Upon Stone follows a man, building his grave, as he reflects upon his life in rural Poland. But this dude was a boisterous Zorba type fellow—a heavy drinker, a fighter, a lover, a coward, a soldier, a pesky brat. It chronicles both his entire life—elliptically, and in pieces—but it also shows the way Poland modernized starting from around World War II until almost the present day (present when it was written, I believe, which was the mid-1980s).

Look, invisible classmates who aren't here, the main character is awesome. He is hilarious, and his life was very entertaining. However, sometimes I don't appreciate ten pages of solid text when some minor character who won't appear again talks in one large existential monologue about life or farming or whatever, when I still have three hundred pages to read in 48 hours on top of everything else I have to do.

But seriously, this is the kind of ambitious, all-encompassing, total novel that only comes like once a decade, if that. I know absolutely nothing of Polish or Eastern European literature, but I know that this is an "important" novel. It's the kind of greatness that every writer aspires to. And it is like 85% entertaining, which for it's page length is an impressive feat. Stone Upon Stone absolutely needs to be read by anyone who loves serious fiction.

3. There But For The
by Ali Smith

Thinking about this novel right novel, I'm still amazed by the linguistic acrobatics and witticisms. And how moved I was when I reached the end.

The basic plot (there's no such thing, and I keep saying this, and I know in the end I'm going to talk about how much more to it there is than that summary but I can't help myself) is that a quiet man Miles is invited to a dinner party, then locks himself in the guest room and doesn't come out. However, the novel is never told from Miles' POV, but from four other characters that barely know the man in question, like someone who went on a high school trip with him, or the precocious daughter of the family who invited Miles to the dinner. They all only know a little bit about him, and yet Miles becomes this strange but powerful symbol to them all, and they all rally behind him to make sure that he doesn't starve in the room, for instance.

But Ali Smith brings such life to her words, and each of the four characters is so different from each other and linguistically different. And on top of that, each chapter uses a word in the title as it's theme. You'd think it would be hard to write a story using the word "the" as the theme that ties it all together, but Ali Smith not only accomplishes this feat, she freaking excels at it. Mind = still blown.

2. How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
by Charles Yu

Ok, so I'm cheating a little bit. TECHNICALLY the hardcover of this book came out last year, but the paperback DID come out this year, and that's what I actually read (though I've been wanting to read it since before the paperback came out. I just got lucky I waited long enough that it did). But frankly, this book was so amazing I couldn't not let it on this list.

I'm not sure this book is as technically or stylistically as brilliant as some of the other books on this list, but this one was by far the most entertaining, in a page-turner kind of way. I think it's literary merits are still very high though. It just happens to weave themes like "fiction" vs "reality," the complicated relationships between family, determinism and fate, and the nature of love, with a gripping science-fictional hook.

Again, another novel that has a shaggy dog appeal. The beginning, in particular, has a slightly patchwork quality of little vignettes of what it's like to be a "time travel machine repair man," but when the ball gets rolling it really gets rolling. In that way it reminds me of early Murakami, particularly A Wild Sheep Chase and Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World. A Wild Sheep Chase evokes a mood before the plot gets started almost a hundred pages in, a quality this book definitely shares, and it also has HWatEotW's science-fictional/meta-physical plot bent. I fell for this book so hard, like I haven't in a long time. It's messiness keeps it from being a truly great novel, but it's entertainment and thought value brings it way up my list, and I cannot wait to read everything by Charles Yu I can get my hands on.

1. The Private Lives of Trees
by Alejandro Zambra
Translated by Megan McDowell

I had to justify choosing this as my best book of the year for a while.

Not because I don't believe it is truly, truly great. But it is a novella. It's only 90-ish pages. How can I compare this slight little thing with the ambition and scope of Stone Upon Stone or the linguistic games of There But For The or the philosophical/entertainment value of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe?

Well, I will admit that I love short novels and novellas. I love tight writing. I want every word to be important and perfectly used. And I think this is the closest thing I've ever read to that ideal. Not a single goddamn word is wasted in this thing. And it is so freaking beautiful and moving and resonant. I have never been so affected by the words on a page.

The Private Lives of Trees is about a guy who's telling a bedtime story to his daughter as they wait for her mother to come home. The question is, the guy realizes, is whether the mother ever will come home. And so he thinks. And writes. And tells a story.

In 90 odd pages, we see an entire relationship grow. In 90 pages we get a fully realized father-daughter relationship. We see an entire life in less pages than that. And Zambra has so much style. Brimming with language that just is so evocative. I've never read a writer quite like him.

You can read this in an afternoon. In one sitting. And if you're like me, you'll want to. You'll need to. This novella is amazing. I think everyone should read this.

I'm sure this novella has its critics. In fact, after reading Bonsai, I can see how similar the two works are. So who knows if Zambra has another story in him. But at least we have this one.

Phew. Just thinking about that book makes me want to read it right this second.

Anyway: some honorable mentions, in no particular order:

From 2011:
An Empty Room, by Mu Xin
The Illumination, by Kevin Brockmeier

Not from 2011:
Oblivion, by David Foster Wallace
Bonsai, by Alejandro Zambra
The Literary Conference, by Cesar Aira
Where Europe Ends, by Yoko Tawada

What great books did you all read?

Recently Read Round-up, October 2011

2011-11-12T13:20:00.000-05:00

Hello again. Sorry it's been quiet around here. You do know about my new website right? It's pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I know I've learned an insane amount of authors and cool books in Japan right now. So check it out. junbungaku.wordpress.com

Pretty soon I'm going to have a Review section on the new site, but I'm only going to do Japanese fiction there. But what about other books I'm reading? I have to express myself somehow! So Recently Read Round-Up isn't going anywhere. And luckily, I read some awesome books in October.

I Am a Japanese Writer
by Dany Laferriere
Translated by David Homel

4 out of 5 stars

Metafiction + Noir + Race/Identity = I am a Japanese Writer. A very gripping yet thought-provoking novel that's part inquiry on the construction of race and part almost noir mystery. In it, the narrator, a black writer living in Montreal (I should note that Dany Laferriere is in fact a black writer who lives in Montreal) needs the next book for his publisher and sells it to them on the title alone: I am a Japanese Writer. He never actually writes it, but word gets out and soon it becomes an international sensation. At the same time, the narrator befriends a Japanese pop star and her entourage, one of whom, when visiting his apartment, decides to commit suicide. The cops think he's the culprit, and try to intimidate him. While all this is happening, members of the Japanese embassy are trying to get the narrator to learn about Japan so he writes an appropriately Japanese book.

The postmodern aspects of the novel make it engaging on a visceral level, not just a mental one. It's got a very dark tone at times, but it also has a great sense of humor. A lot to chew on (in the best way possible). I'd like to try reading more Laferriere in the future. Be sure to look out for a full review of the title on Three Percent. Should be online pretty soon.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
by Ben Loory.

4 out of 5 stars

I had been meaning to read this since basically the day it came out. I remember very clearly seeing it on display under the new releases at my local bookstore. I read a couple of the stories and knew it was something I had to read. Unfortunately, I had no money, and I put it off until just a few weeks ago, when I got lucky and found a used copy in the same bookstore. It was a very happy day.

Anyway, I thought this was just great. Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day sounds exactly like what it is: a very enjoyable collection of adult slash slightly post-modern "fables" and "fairy tales." What I liked about it was that it could be delightfully weird, then touching, and then nightmarish, depending on the story. My only complaint was that too many of the stories fell back on to a generic "Character X had a weird dream" or "Character X couldn't sleep because of Event Y" moment for my taste. Still, as a whole, I enjoyed this immensely.

The Perpetual Motion Machine
by Paul Scheerbart
Translated by Andrew Joron

3.5 out of 5 stars

An interesting cross between novella, essay, memoir, and how-to manual, The Perpetual Motion Machine is ostensibly Scheerbart's attempts to create, against all scientific reasoning and evidence, a perpetual motion machine.

What's the most interesting is when he goes into speculative fiction mode, wondering about the implications of his great, "sure to be made" invention. Those moments are definitely the highlight of the book, as he imagines both the good and the bad, about how his "perpet" will change society. The parts where he describes the various changes to his invention (which inevitably fail)? Not so interesting. Still, overall it's a fascinating book about a relatively unknown, but pretty cool sounding dude. This is another book that I'm reviewing for Three Percent, so hopefully that one will also be online soon. I'll let you know of course when it does.

There But For The
by Ali Smith

4.5 out of 5 stars

I really loved Stories For Nighttime and Some for the Day, but I really really loved There But For The. But I do think There But For The wins out because it is one total story, and a really well constructed one at that (no offense to short stories, but there were enough of them that I weren't impressed with to take my enthusiasm to the next level).

Told from four different perspectives, There But For The is about a dinner party, and how one person decides to lock himself in the hosts' spare bedroom. The problem is, nobody really knows this guy that well, so they don't know what's going on.

I wasn't sure how much I'd like it at first and then as it went on I fell harder and harder for it. I can see some thinking the style is too "clever" (one of the themes in the novel) but I found it very witty, and thought-provoking, and also extremely moving. My sole complaint is the way the narratives are divided up. I'd get really attached to one narrator only to be suddenly jerked to another. Small complaint in the end though really. Quite excellent. I definitely plan on reading more Ali Smith.

I've Started a New(s) Site

2011-10-11T17:59:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody.

So don't get me wrong, I love it here at Wednesday Afternoon Picnic. I fully intend to keep posting here. But I got this crazy idea that I would start a site where you could find the latest information about Japanese literary news. And I just couldn't get it out of my head. And I liked what I had going here so I didn't want to change it into something else. So I actually started a new site.

junbungaku.wordpress.com

That is going to be the news site. I want to do this seriously. Like I said, this is going to stay my personal blog. I'll still be posting little translations when I feel like it, doing little speculative analysis and reviews of books that I've read, all that sort of stuff. So don't worry. I'm not going anywhere.

Definitely check out the new site. I hope you'll find it super informative and interesting and you will love it and then everyone in the world will love it and I'll be super famous and fly around in jet planes all the time because I can. (Just kidding on that last part. That will never happen.)

Thanks for hanging around here! You'll still be hearing from me. But also, seriously, check out Junbungaku. I think it's going to be something really great.

Japanese FICTION Bestsellers of 2011 (So Far), Part 2

2011-10-10T21:16:00.002-04:00

Our coverage of Japan's bestseller list continues in our penultimate post with a look at bunkobon, or mass market paperbacks. And if you haven't, be sure to check out the list of overall bestsellers and bestsellers for tankoubon fiction.

Tohan doesn't divide the bunkobon sales by genre like it does for tankoubon, so it's theoretically possible to see a non-fiction title on this list, but it's all fiction here, baby. Also, because these are mass market paperbacks, these books aren't new in the sense that trade paperbacks in the US don't often come out for a year or more after the hardcover, depending on sales. I don't think there's anything else I need to introduce so let's dive right to it! Tohan says:

1) 八日目の蝉 (The Eighth Day)
by Kakuta Mitsuyo
2) ダイイング・アイ ("Dying Eye")
by Higashino Keigo
3) プリンセス・トヨトミ ("Princess Toyotomi")
by Makime Manabu
4) 流星の絆 ("The Bonds of the Meteor")
by Higashino Keigo
5) ゴールデンスランバー ("Golden Slumbers," translated into English as Remote Control)
by Isaka Kotaro
6) あの頃の誰か ("Someone From Those Days")
by Higashino Keigo
7) 涼宮ハルヒの驚愕　初回限定版 ("The Astonishment of Haruhi Suzumiya" First Print Limited Edition)
by Tanigawa Nagaru
8) 阪急電車 ("The Hankyuu Train")
Arikawa Hiro
9) 図書館戦争/ 図書館内乱 ("Library Wars"/"Library Revolution")
by Arikawa Hiro
10) いっちばん ("Numbah One”...?)
畠中恵 by Hatakenaka Megumi

1) The Eighth Day, as you can see if you click on the link above or here, has already been translated into English by Kodansha. It's got an interesting premise too: A woman suddenly kidnaps her married lover's six-month old baby and raises it as her own in an all female-religious commune. The novel is also told from the perspective of the kidnapper and the kidnapped which is an interesting choice. It sounds like this novel might have some interesting things about the nature of motherhood and family. I might check it out sometime.

There is a movie version too.

2) The first of Higashino's THREE works on the bestseller list is about a man who loses a portion of his memory after a traffic accident. BUT IS EVERYTHING AS IT SEEMS???

3) Princess Toyotomi took a lot of research for me to figure out the plot since it was kind of nonsensical (at the very least, I had a hard time understanding what I was reading). Luckily there's a movie version, and trailers on Youtube. As it turns out, it's kind of like a Japanese version of the movie National Treasure . It's about three accountants who discover some sort of hundreds of years old secret that basically amounts to Osaka having the right to declare itself an independent nation. I think. Conspiracies!!

(As a side note, I want to point out the cover of the book clearly depicts one of the main three to be a fatty but he got totally sexified in the movie.)

4) In Higashino's second novel, three siblings seek revenge (they vow it on a meteor flying in the sky) for their murdered parents. BUT IS EVERYTHING AS IT SEEMS? NO! For the biggest miscalculation of their scheme is that the sister falls in love with the murderer's son!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was turned into a disconcertingly happy looking TV drama.

I also like that Higashino points out that "It was not me who wrote this novel. It is a work of the characters." YAWN. Isn't that, like, every novel ever? Mind NOT blown, sir.

5) "Golden Slumbers" was also translated into English as Remote Control. In fact, I reviewed it for Three Percent! It's another thriller (though I will admit I enjoyed it). This one was also turned into a movie.

6) In Higashino's final work in the bestseller list, main character's boyfriend dies in his home. He spells out the letter A...in BLOOD. IS EVERYTHING AS IT SEEMS? (OK I'm all done I swear. No more.)

Almost unbelievably there's no film or TV version...yet.

7) is the latest in the Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series. If you're into anime even a little you've probably heard of it. If not, the series, the parts that I've read and seen in anime form, is a lot of fun, and is self-aware enough to poke fun at the conventions and cliches of anime culture. The novels have slowly been coming out in English translations too, if you want to check it out yourself, though the translations of course are not nearly as far as the series proper.

8 and 9) We talked a bit about Arikawa Hiro yesterday. In fact, we talked about how she's famous in anime circles as the creator of the Library Wars series. "The Hankyuu Train" however sounds very generic. A collection of love stories that sort of uses a train line as a nexus point. Of course, there is a movie version.

10) And bringing up the rear is the latest in the Shabake series, a historical fantasy and mystery series that follows a boy who is protected by some sort of spirit or ghost pal. It has a TV version, but I can't find a particularly useful clip for it.

And there you have it. I think the lesson to be learned is that if you are a novel that is popular for long enough, you will someday get a movie/TV show/anime adaptation. There is literally one thing on this list that hasn't been adapted yet, and I almost guarantee you that it will get one in the next year or so.

My apologies for the extreme levels of snark in this blog post. I don't know what happened.

In our final look at bestsellers, we're going to look at what is selling like hotcakes now. Yes! Right now! See you soon!

Recently Read Round-Up, August & September 2011

2011-10-07T12:06:00.000-04:00

We're going to take a quick break from our bestsellers coverage and look at what I've been reading. I was going to do this every month, but as it turns out, I only read one book in August. Oops. But I bounced back in September, and here we are now. And I read some great books, you guys. (There is a Japanese book in this selection too, for what it's worth.)

The Illumination
by Kevin Brockmeier

4 out of 5 stars

I'm a big Kevin Brockmeier fan. I started off reading his short stories for my creative writing class (which he visited; he was a very nice, very thoughtful, very fun to talk to guy), then read The Brief History of the Dead, then read more of his short stories, and then I got here, to his newest, which was just published in February.

I like Brockmeier's work because of the way it just straddles the line between literary fiction and genre or speculative fiction. Like Murakami, he introduces fantastic or un-realistic elements to otherwise straightforward stories, and part of the fun of exploring their narrative worlds is how these little "weird" elements affect an otherwise realistic world. The difference between Brockmeier and Murakami is their sense of "touch." If Murakami's writing style is "cool" like jazz, then Brockmeier's is delicate, like a whisper (or if we have to stick to musical metaphors, an artist like Eliot Smith or Sufjan Stevens).

The premise of The Illumination is that one day, bodily pain is manifested as light. But the focus of the story isn't really that fact. It's more of a catalyst to how their characters start to perceive themselves and those around them (and each others' physical and emotional pain). It's quite beautiful, even though it might sound a little twee or, to dust off an old slangy chestnut, "emo." It's also less of a novel than a collage of character studies, but definitely worth a read, I think.

Pastoralia
by George Saunders

4 out of 5 stars

I read the title novella for a class, and had been meaning to going back and reading the rest of the short stories in this collection. Totally worth it. If you have any passing interest in contemporary American writers, you have to be reading Saunders. Just a hilarious, heart-wrenching, brilliant satirist and yarn-spinner. "Pastoralia," "Winky," "Sea Oak," "The Barber's Unhappiness" are the highlights that come to mind.

Where Europe Begins
by Yoko Tawada

4 out of 5 stars

This is the second collection of Tawada's that I've read. I read The Bridegroom was a Dog a while back, liked the second story a lot, the title story some, and I honestly can't remember the third story now. I've had this on my shelf for a long time but it hasn't been a priority to read. Then one day, when I didn't have any books on hand that I wanted to read, I saw it and pulled it out.

And I forgot who freakin' weird Tawada is.

In a good way, mind you. These are some great surrealist tales. As I wrote in my Goodreads review, "A collection of awesomely fucked up fever dreams and fairy tales". The best part of Tawada's surrealism is that it really can be either a nightmare of something extremely beautiful, and she often can switch between the two in the blink of an eye. And what's even more amazing is that this collection is made up of stories that were originally written in Japanese and German. She has mastery of two languages y'all! If I were to be a little nitpicky I thought the translations from German were slightly better than the ones from Japanese, but maybe her style is just slightly different when she writes in the different languages (though it's tricky to say since we're dealing with two different translators as well). Still, definitely a big recommendation if you're looking for something strange.

Bonsai
by Alejandro Zambra

5 out of 5 stars

You guys, I've fallen hard for this Zambra fellow. Of course, now I've read the only two things he's published so far since he's so young, and now I have to wait for more. Very saddening.

I can't emphasize how much I've loved reading this and The Private Lives of Trees. My one caveat I guess is that Zambra is more of a stylist than a plot-ist. This novella especially has the barest of bare plots (and one of the most cliched, the break-up story) but it was just so good to read. The translation is gorgeous (I'm sure the original Spanish is too). Zambra is just a great writer, in that he knows how to select, arrange, use words. Beautiful, beautiful. There's not much else I can add. This was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award, and I'm surprised it didn't win. Give it a shot. It might not be your thing, but if it is, I think you're not just going to enjoy it—you're going to love it. If you need a more in-depth review, I would check out this one at the Quarterly Conversation.

The Sleepwalker
by Margarita Karapanou

2.5 out of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I remember reading about it before actually reading it, and thought it sounded great. The first chapter is great. The ending approaches great. But the middle is just...ugh. I hate to be so harsh on it, because I feel like my problem was a matter of unmatched expectations, not the book itself.

The book starts by talking about God and how frustrated he is with the world he created as a young Creator. So to fix the world, he vomits up a new messiah.

What a great premise! Too bad it's largely forgotten after that for most of the novel. Instead, the book becomes sexually ambiguous hipster murder mystery time, and that may sound kind of awesome, but it is most assuredly not. One chapter about the character Alfredo is a bright spot, and then nothing interesting happens until a trash plague cum heat wave threatens the island the novel it takes place on to extinction.

The problem, I found, is that the novel is so heavy with symbolism (all the characters are different nationalities, making the whole island a kind of Babel, for instance) that it forgets about having interesting, three-dimensional characters. Basically, they're all artists, but they all can't or won't make art, so instead they all get drunk, have sex with each other, occasionally rape children and get murdered. I could only distinguish three characters to you right now if you asked, and that's because one of them is the murderer, one of them rapes a child, and one of them has writer's block. Those are literally the only distinguishing characteristics about them. If you could somehow read only the 20% of the novel that is good, I would recommend it, but there's so much I didn't enjoy that I can't really recommend this book.

And that's what I've read in the last two months. Look forward to part three of the bestseller analysis soon.

Japanese FICTION Bestsellers of 2011 (So Far), Part 1

2011-10-04T20:00:00.003-04:00

Our coverage of Japan's bestseller lists continues with a look at the fiction bestsellers of the first half of 2011.

I'm almost tempted to go full car-salesman and just start saying "October is Bestseller Month at Wednesday Afternoon Picnic!!!" but I don't think coverage will quite last that long. Anyway, today we'll be looking at just fiction bestsellers.

Japanese vocabulary time!

Tohan divides up the sales numbers between tankoubon and bunkobon. Now, these do not stand for hardcover and paperback, the way we list our bestsellers (although they are, weirdly, similar, but we'll get to that in a second). They don't even describe the same qualities or standards of comparison.

Tankoubon (単行本）just means a collected or independent volume; it is a complete work. Of course, this word is also illogically used to refer to a single volume in a manga series, believe it or not, to make it extra confusing.

The word bunkobon（文庫本） refers to the size of the book itself, which is similar to our mass-market pocket-sized paperbacks. They are designed, like our mass-market paperbacks, to be super cheap and portable, though they are generally nicer—they get their own dust jackets and everything.

As mentioned above, tankoubon does not refer to the quality of the book itself; however, if you look at the size of any novel on Amazon that's listed as tankoubon, you'll notice the size is usually somewhere around 19cm by 14cm. Which is in fact, just about the size of all the Japanese novels that I own that are indeed, hardcover books. So while it's not necessarily true, today, for all intents and purposes, we can think of tankoubon as the hardcovers and bunkobon as the paperbacks.

Today we look at the tankoubon bestsellers for fiction, according to Tohan:

1) 謎解きはディナーのあとで ("The Riddle Will Be Solved After Dinner")
by Higashigawa Tokuya
2 )ＫＡＧＥＲＯＵ
by Satohiro Saito
3) くじけないで ("Don't Be Discouraged")
by Shibata Toyo
4) 麒麟の翼 ("Wings of the Qilin")
by Higashino Keigo
5) 放課後はミステリーとともに ("After School Will Be With Mysteries")
by Higashigawa Tokuya
6) 傾物語 ("Twisted Tales")
by Nishio Isin
7) 花物語 ("Flower Tales")
by Nishio Isin
8) 江　姫たちの戦国（"The Bay: The Princess' Warring States")
by Tabuchi Kumiko
9) 苦役列車　("Train of Suffering")
by Nishimura Kenta
10) 県庁おもてなし課 ("The Prefectural Hospitality Division")
by Arikawa Hiro

The first three on the list should be familiar from last time, so I won't go into any more detail about them. Some comments about the rest of the list:

4) Higashino Keigo is way more popular than he has any right to be. He's like the James Patterson of Japan—anything he writes seems to turn to gold (though thankfully he is not so prolific). I read MOST of Naoko which was put out by Vertical because I thought it had a great sounding premise, but couldn't finish it because it was such garbage...at least in my opinion. Your mileage may vary. You can also try reading The Devotion of Suspect X which was put out by Minotaur. "Wings of the Qilin" (qilin is the Chinese unicorn, way more bad-ass than the Western unicorn) is another murder mystery. Amazon's description is very generic. That's all I have to say.

5) Another mystery story by the author of the number one bestseller "The Riddle Will Be Solved After Dinner." There's a school, and they have a detective club, and for some reason there are a lot of crimes for them to solve. This has also been turned into a movie (although it looks like it was a web series that then had a special in-movie-theaters showing).

6 and 7) Nisio Isin (not spelled the standard Ishin because his name is a palindrome) is a very popular light novel (basically young adult fiction with some illustrations, kind of a compromise between manga and literature) author. These two books are the latest installments of his "Monogatari" series. The series, under the name Bakemonogatari, has recently become a fairly popular anime series.

8) Again, it's because of a TV adaptation that this series (it's actually in three parts) seems to be on the list. It's the latest Taiga drama to be broadcasted on NHK. It's historical fiction. If you're interested in a summary, you can check out the big long Wikipedia article about it. (Sidenote: it stars Nodame Cantabile's live-action Nodame, Ueno Juri, so I imagine as an actress this is a pretty big deal for her and her fans).

9) I recognized this title as a book recommended in the last issue of Japan Book News. Unfortunately, I did not mention it in my write-up of said issue because I thought it looked mega-boring. It might be on the bestseller list because it did win the last Akutagawa Prize, which is a pretty big deal...though the description on Japan Book News can't help but be surprised that this work is a bestseller either. But plotwise...

Written in the form of an I-novel (basically a confessional, thinly-veiled autobiographical work written in the first person), it's about a guy who drops out of school, has some shitty backbreaking jobs, the money of which he squanders on booze and prostitutes... I don't know why I'm so cynical about this work (or rather, the idea of it, I guess). I'm deeply suspicious of any work that uses such bleakness as shock value in lieu of deeper thematic content. And that might not be the case for this novel. But guilty until proven innocent, for me.

10) Arikawa Hiro is another wildly successful light novelist. If you're an anime fan, you might be familiar with her work through the anime adaptation of Toshokan Sensou ("Library Wars"). It's supposedly about a young government worker struggling between bureaucratic red tape and the will of the private citizen as they start their new job assisting a popular local writer...but it's also a story that simultaneously is, you know, interesting to teenagers.

Some parallels are starting to emerge regarding Japanese and American reading habits. I think what we can all take home is that both cultures love:

1) Mysteries and thrillers (and a general darkness in content and tone).

2) Books that are "inspiring" and more about the person behind the book than the book itself (in the case of 100-year old Toyo Shibata and her poetry), see books like this or this.

3) Serialized young adult fiction that easily adapts to non-book entertainment.

Next time, mass-market paperback fiction (bunkobun)!

Japanese Bestsellers of 2011 (So Far)

2011-10-01T18:39:00.001-04:00

Besides being a depository for my various attempts at translation, one of the aims of this blog has been to report the going-ons of contemporary Japanese literary culture. I get to do this occasionally by reporting on Japanese literature from the perspective of what is happening, or might be happening, here in the United States—potential releases, book reviews, American publishing companies and their translations, etc. But I fear I don't do it that often with what's going on directly in Japan. Every now and then I do, but I realized I've been missing (perhaps ignoring) the most obvious indicator of literary trends: the bestseller lists.

The reason I parenthetically say ignoring is because when I do think to check the bestseller lists, I find it kind of boring—or worse, depressing. Bestselling does not always indicate quality. This week's New York Times Bestseller list, for example, includes eight interchangeable thrillers in the top ten. And The Help. Not to be snooty about my reading habits, but no thank you.

But, I am genuinely curious to see what the Japanese are reading, even if it won't be my literary cup of tea, and luckily, Tohan has data for the top selling books of the first half of 2011.

Let us take a look-see:

In the everything-list, which has both fiction and non-fiction titles put together, there are only three novels in the top ten books, however, they are at least, the very top three.

In first place is 謎解きはディナーのあとで, "The Riddle Will Be Solved After Dinner," by Higashigawa Tokuya. It won the Bookseller's Prize (chosen by people who work at bookstores, but it's basically a popularity prize), and it's described as a collection of six mysteries solved by a lady detective and her "sharp-tongued butler." Ooooh.

If you check out the novel's Amazon listing, it, amazingly, awesomely, has a 2 out of 5 star rating, with a sizable majority of 156 people giving it only one star. Choice review quotes: "A disappointment," and "It's a mystery why this garbage sells so well."

But of course, it's still so popular it's going to become a TV show.

In second place is the non-stop stales behemoth もし高校野球の女子マネージャーがドラッカーの『マネジメント』を読んだら, "What if a High School Baseball Club's Girl Manager Read 'Management' by Drucker?" by Iwasaki Natsumi. (Yes, this is a novel.) This was already a bestseller when I was in Japan a year and a half ago. For more information about this one, check out my friend hopeful in nagoya's write up about the book, and the anime and movie it spawned, as the most strangely-titled yet wildly successful pop culture juggernaut in recent memory.

In third place is KAGEROU, which means both "may-fly" and "ephemera," by Satohiro Saito, also known as Hiro Mizushima, a relatively famous TV actor. This is another one that somehow has both an award, this time the Poplar Fiction Prize, and a terrible Amazon ranking, this time a 2.5 out of 5. It's about a deeply in debt dude who gets downsized and tries to kill himself, only to be stopped by a man in a black suit, who offers him an escape from his money troubles by working for his underground organ donation "company." BUT IS EVERYTHING AS GOOD AS IT SEEMS?

Finally, in bonus fifth place, is granny Toyo Shibata's collection of poetry くじけないで, which we've totally talked about you guys!

Just so you know, three of the remaining five spots are occupied by various Monster Hunter guides (positions 6, 7, and 10). 4th place is 老いの才覚, "A Plan for the Elderly," about what to do with the huge elderly population of Japan, 8th place is a self-help book (do you really care about the title? Fine, it's 心を整える。勝利をたぐり寄せるための５６の習慣, "Re-Arrange Your Heart: 56 Habits to Reel In Success") and 9th place is 救世の法: 信仰と未来社会, "The Law of Salvation: Faith and Our Future Society." I imagine the content is self-explanatory.

Next time, I'll take a look at the actual fiction hardcover and paperback bestseller lists for the first half of this year. Then, in the next week or so, I'll take a look at that current week's bestsellers.

Interesting Author Spotlight: 円城塔 (Enjoe Toh)

2011-09-26T21:17:00.002-04:00

I came across this author by chance. I was looking through the Shinchou literary magazine's Twitter feed and noticed it mentioning a book that I thought had a very interesting title:

「これはペンです」
"This is a Pen"

I'm not going to lie—I'm a sucker for titles. The description on Amazon is interesting though:

"Uncle is a letter. Literally. A man who invented an automatic sentence generator and his brother who has vivid memories of a town that doesn't exist. A tale of twins that illuminates the origins of reading and writing."

Definitely sounds like something I would want to read. I did a little more research, and found out that "This is a Pen" was a finalist in the Akutagawa Prize earlier this year.

Then shit got real! In a strange instance of serendipity/coincidence/it's-a-small-world-after-all-ism, I actually own two pieces by Enjoe Toh. In the January 2011 issue of Bungakukai, he has a short story called "Magnitude," and he has a story (novella, perhaps, it's very long) in the Best Sci-Fi of 2007 collection "Imaginary Engines," the same collection that contained the 2010 Kurodahan Translation Prize piece "忠告."

Anyway, he sounds like an interesting author. He graduated from Tohoku University studying physics, and then went to Tokyo University for graduate school. Wikipedia doesn't specify him as anything besides a novelist, but he definitely seems to have a sci-fi bent. For instance, another short story title: "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire."

He's had other pieces nominated for the Akutagawa, but he has yet to win it. However he has won the Noma Literary Prize and the Bungakukai New Writer's Prize, and has been nominated for the Gunzo New Writer's Prize and the Yukio Mishima Prize.

I started reading "Magnitude," but it's...confusing. I'm not even sure I can explain it. It starts by explaining some sort of weird number theory. Here's a very short, probably poor translation of the very beginning:

"9

In twenty years, we learn the world approaches ten.

Now is still nine. They say a hundred years ago was eight. China and India, nine. The entire planet, nine. Only Japan is eight. Next, they say, decline will begin, and in time, it might be seven. It was seven a hundred years ago.

I am 0..."

It goes on to explain a very strange theory about zero and it's relationship to other numbers, and how zero is also known as, you guessed it, "magnitude."

I...don't even know. I plan on spending some more time fighting my way through this story, but I'm not sure what I'm going to get out of it. "Palimpsest" is quite long, but since I have it, I might as well take a look.

If you want to try reading some Enjoe Toh for yourself, he has a serialized Twitter novel at the username @EnJoe140, separate from his own Twitter account @EnJoeToh. I think it's all done; it hasn't been updated since September 17th.

You can also pick up Kurodahan Press's Speculative Japan 2, which has a translation of Enjoe's story "Freud" (haven't read it, but of course, now I want to).

Enjoe Toh might be a name to look out for in the future.

September 2011 Japan Book News

2011-09-17T13:06:00.001-04:00

Fall has (basically) arrived and with the changing of the seasons comes a new issue of Japan Book News.

If you don't know, Japan Book News is published quarterly by the Japan Foundation. It's full of articles and news about the current Japanese literary culture, as well as a list of notable new releases. It's a great resource for finding out what books are making a stir in the Japanese literary community.

Volume 69 is now up, but unfortunately, the link to downloading the full PDF of the issue is broken, so you can't read the news and articles just now. They do have links to the summaries of the new releases though, and they've highlighted a couple very interesting seeming books. Here's a look at what I'd be interested in getting my hands on:

(Unfortunately, they use Javascript to link to all their internal pages, so as much as I'd like to, I can't give you a direct link to everything they're talking about. You'll have to go the main page, and click your way through to the index for Volume 69 to see more information about these titles. All links are to Amazon Japan product listings.)

1)雪の練習生 ("The Apprentices of Snow," their translation not mine)
by Yoko Tawada

Yoko Tawada has a number of works out in English. I read The Bridegroom was a Dog a while back, but I just read the short story collection Where Europe Begins put out by New Directions, and now I've become a huge fan. Tawada is so surreal and inventive, and she can manipulate these qualities into something either extremely beautiful or extremely disturbing, sometimes practically instantaneously. She writes in both German and Japanese (Where Europe Begins was mostly her German work), but I'm assuming that she wrote this one in Japanese.

Anyway, it's about polar bears. Not just about polar bears, narrated by polar bears. And not just any polar bears. A polar bear trained for the circus who writes a memoir and becomes a famous writer, for one.

Writing from the point of view of a personified animal seems to be in vogue right now in Japan. Belka, Why Don't You Bark? by Hideo Furukawa follows dogs (I think it's narrated by the dogs but I'm not sure), and Kenshin by Rieko Kawakami is about a woman who is turned into a dog. Either way, interesting premise, great writer—I'd love to see this come out by New Directions, who has published a lot of Tawada in the past.

2) 生首　("Severed Heads")
by Henmi Yo

There's a pretty robust poetry scene in Japan, some of which gets across the Pacific Ocean. The Best Translated Book Award has always had at least one Japanese poet on their shortlist save their inaugural year. I'm not familiar with Henmi Yo really, but I don't think Japan Book News highlights a lot of poetry, and I do like the little excerpt they put in their description:

One evening in early autumn
Across the darkening blue of the western skies
I watched a severed head fly across the heavens.

Not a lot to go on, but worth checking out I think.

3) 日本語ほど面白いものはない　(Nothing is as Fun as Japanese)
by Naoki Yanase

I can't imagine anything like this would EVER get published in English, but it sounds interesting to me all the same. It's based on a series of lectures given by Yanase to a sixth grade class on why Japanese is a cool language. The reason why it's interesting to me is Yanase himself, who did Japanese translations of Roald Dahl and Lewis Carrol, as well as James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Finnegans fucking Wake! I would LOVE to learn more about this guy.

Hey, and maybe since it's written for sixth graders, it would be pretty easy to read, and it might make a good supplementary textbook for American high school or college students learning Japanese. Maybe there's a market for this book after all.

4)　日本の刺青と英国王室　("Japanese Tattoos and the British Royal Family")
by Noboru Koyama

Title sort of explains it all. About British Princes in the late 19th century that did some tourism and got some badass tattoos, and then more about the history of Japanese tattooing. I don't read a lot of history books, but this sounds pretty fascinating.

5)　文豪の食卓　(Great Writers at the Dinner Table)
by Tokuzo Miyamoto

OK, this one might appeal to me only. I love food, and I love to read about famous people talking about food. So from what I understand of the description of this book, it's part profiles of famous writers through their documented experiences with food and part exposé about regional Japanese food. It seems like it profiles a lot of French and American writers (though there must be something about Japanese writers). I love this kind of stuff, though I can't imagine it ever being published in translation.

6)近代日本奇想小説史：明治編　(A History of the Japanese Imaginative Novel: Meiji Era)
by Jun'ya Yokota

Another history book, but this one about science fiction, speculative fiction, and other genre fare of the Meiji Era. It's 1200 pages though—I'd never get through it. I'd rather read about the neat stuff No-sword digs up.

There's also a new book by Yuko Tsushima, who I was never a fan of, and a history of Japanese mystery novels, which they hilariously call "much-neglected," cause seriously, what is being translated in America besides mystery/crime/thrillers and Murakami?

Anyway, good selection of cool stuff. Check it out, especially you publishing types if you're out there—let's get some cool stuff translated into English!

1Q84, Murakami, and His English Translations

2011-09-09T17:54:00.002-04:00

Greetings again. I've come back from the void that was the summer with some (hopefully) more regular posting.

So the big news in the Japanese literature world, of course, is Haruki Murakami's forthcoming English translation of 1Q84, coming out October 25th. And if you're impatient, there's all sorts of stuff out there to get a little amuse bouche before the 900-page smorgasbord arrives.

A few months ago The Millions had the first paragraph, but that was usurped just a few days ago by Murakami's Facebook page, which now has the entire first chapter for you to read (the only caveat being you have to first "Like" Haruki Murakami's page to gain access). There's also a nice standalone excerpt in the latest New Yorker called "Town of Cats."

If you're interested in reviews, you can see The Literary Saloon's extremely favorable review of the first two books (scroll down), Publisher's Weekly's starred review, The Japan Time's reviews for parts 1 and 2 and then 3, and even fellow bloggers How to Japonese's less than favorable reaction and subsequent review at Neojaponisme and Nihon Distraction's (the lucky sun of a gun who got an advanced review copy) take on book 1.

I haven't actually read any of these, because for some reason I've started feeling very spoiler-averse to the point where I don't really want to know any more about the plot than the little I already do. The only thing I know is pretty much everyone (with the lone, possibly lonely, exception of Daniel from How To Japonese) loves it.

There's also a book trailer, but it's pretty lame.

The English translation has been long-coming. The Germans for example have had a translation out for like a year now, and the French are beating us by a month or so. If you didn't know, the English translation is being done by two people: Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. Jay Rubin started on books 1 and 2 before it was clear that there was going to be a book 3 coming out, where they hired Gabriel to speed up the process and to facilitate a one gigantic volume release. (I speculated about the implications about this a long time ago at Three Percent. Almost two years ago actually: notice how they initially planned on publishing the translations in two separate volumes).

This is all a relatively long and pointless segue leading to something I found regarding Murakami and his thoughts on his English translations. In「そうだ、村上さんに聞いてみよう」("Hey Yeah, Let's Ask Murakami!"), the collection of Q&As Murakami hosted on his website where you could ask such pressing questions as "Do you like Nicolas Cage?", one reader asks about Murakami's feelings towards his English translations. Keep in mind that this is from 1997. Translation follows:

---
Pressing Question #46
Thoughts on Your English Translated Works?
At 12:46 AM 1997.08.09

I live in New York. Since I've been in Japan I've read almost all of your works. After I came here I tried reading them in English. Have you ever read your novels in English translation and thought anything like, "Hmm, that's not quite right"? There's a lot of problems with my English comprehension skills, so I feel pretty lucky I can read your novels in Japanese. (TV Director, 33 years old).

Hello. For me, translation is all-around approximation. And filling that ditch of approximation is a matter of love of devotion. If you have love and devotion, you can overcome just about everything. What I mean by this is that I trust my translators, and I think that's the most important thing. At least to a certain degree, of course.
As a rule, I don't reread what I've written, so even when I flip through the pages of the English translation, I completely forget what even the original was, so I skim through it going, "Hahaha, isn't that interesting?" I think that's better for my health.

From 「そうだ、村上さんに聞いてみよう」と世間の人々が村上春樹にとりあえずぶっつける282の大疑問に果たして村上さんはちゃんと答えられるのか?, Asahi, 2000, p. 43.

Recently Read Round-Up, July 2011

2011-08-06T23:39:00.002-04:00

I think I'm going to try making the RRR a monthly thing. I get to highlight a number of interesting books, without the undertaking being too large that I end up putting it off indefinitely. I'm saying this entry is for "July" but in truth it also covers the last third or so of June. If I get good at these round-ups and more ambitious I won't lean so heavily on what I've already written on Goodreads, and make it more of a capsule review type thing. The headline still includes "literature" underneath Wednesday Afternoon Picnic, so I hope the expansion into non-Japanese literature reviews will still be welcome to you all.

Again, you can find me on Goodreads here, to follow in real-time (Oh my gosh so exciting!) what I'm reading.

Seventeen and J: Two Novels, Kenzaburo Oe
Translated by Luk Van Haute

2 out of 5 stars

Although Oe often uses these themes in his body of work, the two novels (said designation being extremely generous; they're novellas, really) gathered here are connected by the themes of politics and sexual perversion. And I'm sure at the time, when Oe was young and with not a lot of work to his name, these two pieces were quite extraordinary in a Ooh-look-at-this-literary-wunderkind-so-much-talent-for-his-age kind of way. But now that we know what Oe's work would become with time and practice, the novellas here are quite lackluster, frankly. Oe at his best uses extreme elements with a light touch, grace, nuance, what have you. Nuance is the last thing on display in these novellas.

Seventeen is about a masturbating (seriously, the narrator is constantly talking about and/or doing it), self-loathing teenager who becomes a member of the youth nationalist movement. It's a straw-man argument, basically, associating this totally hateful, pitiful character with conservative politics, and Oe's fiercely leftist tendencies are so obvious and hamfisted he got death threats and harassment from said right party for Seventeen and it's sequel (which, as noted in this book's introduction, Oe refuses to have translated out of legitimate fear from the response he got publishing it in the first place). J is almost two completely separate stories linked by one character, the first about J's wife shooting her art film with a bunch of their mutual friends/sexual conquests, and the next taking place sometime in the future and follows J as he helps induct a young ward in the ways of being a chikan, men who sexually harass women on the train.

Both deal with some heavy, twisted stuff but Oe doesn't know how to handle them really—it feels like he's writing purely for shock value, to illustrate/tie thematically to whatever he wants to complain about in the state of affairs of Japan. Oe is an unbridled idealist in these works, and they exist purely to pummel you into a conceptual submission. Seventeen and J are interesting from a historical perspective, seeing evolution in Oe's writing and the effects these incendiary works would have on the public, and then back to him, but they're not the best literature. Oe is capable of much better.

Mist, Miguel de Unamuno
Translated by Warner Fite

4 out of 5 stars

The original nivolla (you'll understand this term if you read the book). This book was recommended to me by a translator/student friend who workshopped a translation she did of Unamuno. I loved the short story she translated, and she suggested I read this novel for more.

Mist has a whisper-thin plot—man falls in love with a woman who's in love with someone else sort of deal. But plot isn't really quite the point of the novel. It's a thoroughly post-modern/meta-fictional book, though it came out well before either of those terms existed. I don't really want to spoil the surprises in store, but I will be frank, you might find it kind of boring in the beginning (at least I did). The whole thing starts to unravel, so to speak, in the second half, but if you like meta-fictional games in your books, read Mist, one of the earliest. I might have to reread it, in case there are things to catch in the beginning that I couldn't appreciate not knowing the end.

The Art of Fiction, John Gardner

4 out of 5 stars

I'll confess: I have literary aspirations besides those of translating. I wouldn't say I'm any good, but I enjoy it doing it, and getting feedback and seeing how I can improve, and I certainly love the idea of being a novelist... The goal for me now is to start practicing regularly now that I'm not taking classes in the subject. We'll see if I ever get anywhere with it.

So I picked up this of the many guides, because one, John Gardner, and two, my own creative writing teacher mentioned in passing as one of the good ones.

Gardner is hilariously judgmental in this book, and has almost impossibly high/old-fashioned standards of literature, but the information and lessons here are undeniably useful and easy to grasp. I wouldn't agree with everything Gardner says about the art of writing literary fiction (though who am I to argue against him) but his thoughts are so well laid out that reading this book would be helpful for anyone, if only to figure out where s/he stands. At the very least an interesting read if you're into this kind of thing.

After Dark, Haruki Murakami
Translated by Jay Rubin

3 out of 5 stars (maybe 2.5 out of 5)

This is technically a reread, since I read After Dark immediately after it came out the first time.

You know what? After Dark is not that great. I feel like everyone was on a Kafka on the Shore high when After Dark came out in America, because the reviews are generally pretty positive. It's definitely my least favorite Murakami novel now, which is funny because the previous loser, South of the Border, West of the Sun got way better on my second read-through last summer.

Sure, After Dark has got some great atmosphere; it's real nice and tense, and it's got some interesting characters. The problem is that we don't "know" them like we know characters from other works, and After Dark is not as clearly "about" something as his other works. And Murakami explores duality and "this side/other side" themes more clearly and eloquently, I think, in other works, like Sputnik Sweetheart. I don't know. On the whole I came away a little disappointed. Not bad, per se, but I feel now like it's a little overrated.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu

4 out of 5 stars

I fell hard for this book. I wanted to give it 5 stars. Or if Goodreads did half stars, 4.5. It was by far the most fun I've had reading in a long time (I fell hard for Lev Grossman's The Magicians in a similar way).

I suppose it's because I don't read a lot of genre fiction anymore, and while this definitely has a sci-fi bent, it is still very literary. So the sci-fi elements made for a really good novel on a plot-level, but the thematic and emotional resonance made it a story that stuck with me in a way that only good to great literature does.

Plot-wise, a basic synopsis would be that the narrator is a sort of time-travel machine repairman, adrift and lonely, the only child of a time-travel obsessed father and a put-upon mother. Eventually he sees his future self and accidentally/impusively kills him, causing himself to be stuck in a time loop.

The novel reminded me of a number of different things. It reminded me of Murakami in a couple different ways, partially because of Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World's sci-fi bent, but also Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973's fragmented style and depressed, adrift loner first person narrator. And it also reminded me of A Wild Sheep Chase in that it starts off sort of not about anything but then all of a sudden, much later than you might expect it to, gets very plot-heavy. But it also reminded me of George Saunders, particularly in his novella Pastoralia, in that it deals with a absurd, weird, almost fantastical job that's presented as if it were the most banal thing in the world. A very potent combination, and Yu has some hilarious one liners, and also some of the most emotionally wrenching passages too.

The only drawback is that time travel stories are basically impossible to be fully satisfying. They almost always end in some sort of weird way, whether totally confusing or illogical or by some deux ex machina, which is sort of a necessity, because otherwise, well, the whole infinite loop thing. But this book was SO much fun, that I would recommend this book to just about anybody. I am very much looking forward to reading more of Yu's work.

The Private Lives of Trees, Alejandro Zambra
Translated by Megan McDowell

4 out of 5 stars

This was another book that I was kind of surprised how blown away by how good it was. It's quietly powerful, especially given that it is so short—only 90 odd pages.

It starts off with Julian telling a bedtime story to Daniella, the daughter of his wife Veronica, about trees who basically just sort of chat with other. But the narrative digresses to Julian's romantic past, how he met Veronica, Daniella's potential future life, etc. The narrator states clearly early on that the novel will end when Veronica comes home, but as the novella goes on, it becomes increasingly unclear whether she will come back at all.

I can't help but make another Murakami comparison; in this case, it reminds me of the short story "Honey Pie" from after the quake. The similarities are pretty intriguing, though in all likelihood completely coincidental. They both follow failed/struggling writers (Julian wants to write but seems to have writer's block of some kind; Junpei can only write short stories but not a novel; also I just noticed their names start with J) and both stories start with the telling of a bedtime story about anthropomorphized non-humans (bears in "Honey Pie," trees here) to a girl that is not biologically theirs. They also, at least to some extent, have to deal with the hardships of new, makeshift families. Tonally they are quite different; "Honey Pie" overall is a happy story, with a touch of melancholy, Trees has sort of the opposite proportions. Trees is incredibly moving however, made all the better that it's a story that you can finish in one sitting, while at the same time deeper and more satisfying than just a short story. I highly recommend it, and I super want to read Zambra's Bonsai now too.

And that's what I've read this past July (and some of June). I also started David Foster Wallace's Girl With Curious Hair, though I have many more stories to read, and am halfway through Kevin Brockmeier's latest novel The Illumination. Look forward to reviews of these in roughly a month's time.

Genichiro Takahashi, Essayist

2011-07-25T21:37:00.003-04:00

Genichiro Takahashi, author of the amazingly great novel Sayonara, Gangsters, a book anyone with an interest in Japanese contemporary/post-modern/metafiction should read immediately, is also a prolific literary critic and essayist.

This seems to be a common thing in Japan, when you achieve a certain level of notoriety. Murakami, for instance, has collection after collection after collection of all the various essays, commentaries, and fluff pieces he's contributed to magazines, newspapers, etc. Certainly American authors are somewhat active outside of their respective fiction writings, but I think it is less common than in Japan—especially for publishers to bother republishing them in a collection. (I can only think of the highest tiered American authors having these sorts of essay collections, but this is a personal, not fully informed observation. Please let me know in the comments if I am mistaken about either country.)

I do think Genichiro Takahashi deserves special mention for his literary criticism and essays though, because by his own admission he finds himself to be better known to the public as a critic than as a novelist. He even writes serialized essays on his twitter account, called "Midnight Novel Radio."

I have three of Takahashi's non-fiction collections that I have browsed briefly through with the intention of diving in more thoroughly soon: 一億三千万人のための小説教室　("Novel Writing Class for the 130 Million People of Japan"), 文学王 ("The King of Literary" is the official subtitle), and 平凡王 ("The King of Ordinary"). "Novel Writing Class" is the one I've looked at the most, and is hilarious, and "The King of Literary" has essays on his favorite novels (Natsume Soseki's unfinished 明暗, "Light and Darkness" is one) among various other things.

He also has been quite outspoken after the March tsunami and earthquake, including two articles in the Asahi Newspaper (English versions available here and here) and another in the New York Times.

Finally, Takahashi maintains a semi-regularly updated column at MAMMO.TV. (Totally off-topic, but check out this other columnist Takano Masanori—he looks like a Japanese Charlie Sheen.) The topics run all over the place: many on the quake recently, but also on less weighty matters, like the shamelessness of Trading Card Games that force kids to constantly be spending more money on them."Battle Spirits" is what his son is obsessed with, and if you watch the link, it looks EXACTLY like Yu-Gi-Oh. Exactly. (I personally, back in the day, blew all my money on Magic: The Gathering...)

For today's post, I translated his first column at mammo.tv for your enjoyment.

ー
"My Friend's Bookshelf"

It was in the fall of my first year of middle school when I entered a private school in Kobe. That would be about 40 years ago now. The me then (and I think this was only natural for my age) was a normal middle schooler who of course had no interest in literature, but liked manga instead.

It was after I entered my second year of middle school that I became acquainted with T. The school was part of an integrated middle and high school system, but you still had to take exams to get in, so while all the students were convinced they had to be studying all the time, T was a bit different from everyone else. T was always reading books. Literature, ideology—those kinds of "deep," "difficult" books. The people around T respected him for it, and students with similar interests gathered around him. And then somehow I started puttering around them too. That's when I noticed that something was going on. I quietly listened to T and everyone gathered around him. They brought up all these names of authors, poets, jazz musicians, and film directors in their conversations. And I didn't know a single one!

Before I knew it, I became one of the people who hung around T too. I would memorize the titles of the books they all talked about, go to the bookstore, buy said book, and go home to read them (though I didn't understand them at all).

One day, I and a couple of other friends were invited to T's house, where we went into his room. The guys who had been there before started talking with T immediately. I, on the other hand, gazed hungrily at T's bookshelf. The bookshelf, which covered an entire wall, was crammed pull of those "deep," "difficult books that I didn't know. I wondered if I could become a great, fully-fledged adult by reading all these books. Impossible right?

No way, not in a million years.

After that, until I graduated high school I would go to T's house and copy down the names of his books (as I didn't feel like I could borrow them). And when copying down these titles was too embarrassing, I memorized them. Then, stretching far beyond my own capabilities, I read them— even though I didn't get them at all, to the point it made me dizzy. All I could think about how nice it would be if I could catch up with T. T and I graduated high school, and then we went to different universities, and after that took up different jobs: T a journalist, and I a novelist. No matter how I think about it, I feel like it should've been the opposite.

One month ago, I received a notice from the newspaper that T disappeared. T, who was in Malaysia on vacation, told his wife that he was going to go swim at the beach by their hotel, went out into the shoals, and just like that, never came back. And now my chance to thank T for his bookshelf is lost forever.

Kurodahan Press Translation Prize 2011

2011-07-11T13:29:00.000-04:00

And we're back! Two and a half weeks go by fast, don't they? If only this blog could be my job! (Then I wouldn't be so broke or stressed out...)

Anyway, no time for stress! It's summer! Why don't we use the time not spent at the beach (or applying to jobs) with a little translating?

Yes, it's that time again: Kurodahan Press has announced it's 2011 Translation Prize and is now accepting submissions.

It's a 30,000 yen cash prize, publication in a forthcoming collection by Kurodahan Press, with additional compensation on publication. Deadline is September 30, 2011, and the results are announced at the end of the year. Mid-December, as I recall: I was right in the middle of writing one of my finals when I got the email.

We covered this contest last year here. Last year's piece was an interesting bit of flash fiction and saying anymore about it would sort of ruin the story's big surprise, but you can read all the entries at the Kurodahan Press website, if you scroll almost all the way to the bottom. The entries are anonymous, so you'll never know which one was my somewhat embarrassingly low-scoring submission...

This year's piece is 蝶の断片 by a certain 加門七海. I haven't read the piece yet, but I'm betting that it's a ghost story, since the author seems to be famous for/interested in them.

The Prize will be judged by three translators, though they've only announced two: Juliet Winters Carpenter, who judged last year and has translated Kobo Abe among others, and Nancy Ross, who won the 2008 Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, as well as the Distinguished Translation Award in the 4th Shizuoka International Translation Competition in 2003, an unfortunately now defunct prize.

You can download the PDF of the translation materials, as well as get all the contest details and rules, here.

Happy translating!

"The Great Moon's Song" by Yoshio Toyoshima

2011-06-24T18:36:00.004-04:00

"The Great Moon's Song" by Yoshio Toyoshima

In the Great Moon
Lives a Tailless Bird
With Gold Rings in its Mouth
Oh, Oh, It's Falling!
Oh, Oh, Look Out!

1.

Once upon a time, when the forests were still teeming with small, cute wood elves, there was a prince of a certain kingdom, who was raised with much love, as he was the only child of the king. The prince was extremely kind, and had a great and compassionate heart.

Ever since the prince was small, for some reason, he loved above all to look at the moon. He often climbed the towers of the castle, or entered the expansive gardens to watch the moon until late at night. When he looked at the moon, he felt like he was looking at his mother who had passed away. The prince's mother died when he was three years old, and so he could not remember her face. But no matter how much he thought about it, it always seemed to him that his mother had ascended to the moon. Because of this, when he looked at the moon, he would think about his mother.

One night, when the prince was eight years old, like always, he went out to the garden to look at the moon by himself, when, a man, only twelve inches tall and wearing a Roger's flower on his head, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Then, just as suddenly, he bowed his head to the prince.

The prince was surprised, for he had never seen nor heard of such a tiny man before. However, the prince, the lovely boy with a gentle heart, also had great courage, for he would someday be the king. And so, in a calm voice, he asked the one foot-monk:

"Who are you?"

The one foot monk replied, in a sing-song voice:

"A wood elf I am! A wood elf from the forest behind the castle!"

The prince smiled and asked:

"Why have you come?"

"To bring greetings to the prince," the one-foot monk replied. "I am a messenger of Princess Chigusa, and I need you to come with me, if ya' please!"

Having said this, the wood elf turned around and started walking away. The prince was delighted, and followed after him. When they reached the back gate, it opened immediately, and when the prince and wood elf passed through to the other side, it was closed again, just like before, without a sound.

Directly behind the castle was a large forest called "The Bamboo Oak Forest." The wood elf went directly into the forest, and the prince too followed after him silently. However, when they arrived at the center of the forest, he suddenly could no longer see the wood elf. Surprised, the prince looked all around, and saw before him a wide clearing, with a lush green lawn, with many different flowers blooming in the middle. In the center of the clearing stood a woman, wearing a silk robe of red and yellow and white, and a crown made of lily flowers. She looked at the prince and smiled, and beckoned him closer. Seeing this, the prince felt somehow like he was looking at his long lost mother, and fearlessly approached her.

"My, you found us easily!" the woman said. "I am Chigusa, queen of this forest. Now let us watch some entertainment."

Then Princess Chigusa raised her voice and said:

"Come out everyone, and dance for the prince's entertainment!"

Whereupon, from out of nowhere, the wood elf from earlier appeared above the clearing, wearing a single rose on his head. Then, spinning round and round, he sang this song:

Oneee one
Spin round and come out!
And a wood elf wearing a chrysanthemum appeared. The two danced and sang once more:

Twooo two
Spinny-spin round and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a peony appeared.

Threee three
Round and spin and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a plum blossom appeared.

Fourrr four
Round and round and round and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a cherry blossom appeared.

Fiveee five
Everyone together burst forth!
To entertain the prince
Here and there and everywhere
Go round and round and round and round and round!

Then the clearing before him became full of wood elves, each one wearing a grass or tree flower on their heads. Then, linking hands, they formed a circle and sang a riveting song and danced a riveting dance.

The prince watched all this and felt like he was in a dream. The wood elves' dance continued on for an eternity. It was an amazing dance that he never grew tired of, no matter how long it continued.

"It's time, it's time! The palace is now closing!" a voice from far away suddenly called out. The wood elves who had had been dancing up this point looked like they all jumped high in the air, but when they fell back to the earth they had disappeared.

The prince was surprised, and looked all around, while Princess Chigusa stood smiling. Then she said to the prince:

"It is late now, so that shall be all for tonight. We will come with greetings again, so please come back at that time."

The prince wanted to stay longer, but because of what the Princess said, there was nothing to do but go home. Before he knew it, the wood elf wearing a Roger's flower appeared, and he lead the prince back to the castle gardens.

2.

After that night, on evenings when the moon shone bright, the Prince would go to the Bamboo Oak Forest and play with the wood elves. In addition, he learned many things from Princess Chigusa. Like how the wood elves originally lived in the fields, but the fields were opened up and turned into rice paddies, and so the elves hid themselves in the forests, and became wood elves. And that Princess Chigusa is the queen of both the new wood elves and the original wood elves. And how the Princess knew all about how the old fields were going to become rice paddies beforehand, and how there was going to be a draft this coming summer, and floods in the fall. When the prince heard these things, he told each one to his father the king. The king would laugh, but because the prince pressed him so many times, in the end, he set up some precautions as a test.

And even though there was indeed a drought that summer, they took water down from the springs in the mountains, and the farmers were not affected at all. And even though there were floods at the beginning of autumn, they built high embankments along the river, and the rice paddies were left unharmed. Because each of the prince's pronouncements were correct, the king, and then all the people of the palace, were completely astonished. Before long, word spread throughout the kingdom how "the prince had been transformed into a god." They asked how the prince how he knew these things before they happened, but because the prince was sworn to a strict secrecy by Princess Chigusa, he said nothing. Eventually even the king began to wonder if his son had become a god.

But to the prince, there was only one thing to start thinking about. And that was the fact that the moon didn't come out every night. If the moon didn't shine at night, the princess would not send for the prince.

When the moon did shine in the early hours of the night, the wood elf who wore a Roger's leaf would come to the palace gardens. The prince would go to Princess Chigusa, and a little before 10 o'clock when the palace gates closed, the prince would return home.

However, one night, when the prince had gone to the clearing in the Bamboo Oak Forest like usual, Princess Chigusa stood there looking terribly sad. Not one of the wood elves appeared that night. With a wildly beating heart, the prince asked the princess:

"Did something happen tonight?"

"Something sad is going to occur very soon," Princess Chigusa replied. The prince asked many things, but the princess would not say anything more. She only replied, "Soon you will understand."

The prince and princess sat silently in the clearing. The moonlight spread over the ground, making the grass and flower petals and leaves sparkle. Finally, Princess Chigusa sighed deeply and said:

"I don't know if we shall meet again."

Hearing this, the Prince became terribly sad.

"It's time, it's time, the palace is now closing!" a voice called from behind them.

He saw that the Roger's leaf wearing wood elf was standing behind him. Even so, the prince did not start going home. But the princess comforted him, and made him go home.

The prince couldn't understand why he couldn't see Princess Chigusa anymore. He suddenly wondered if Princess Chigusa was perhaps his long-long mother after all. But when he turned around to ask her, Princess Chigusa was no longer there.

Standing in the palace gardens, the prince was resolved: he had to meet with Princess Chigusa again.

3.

So the prince continued to go to the garden on moon-lit nights to wait for the wood elf. But the wood elf never came for him. The prince gazed sadly at the castle back gates. Those iron gates were shut so tight, there was no way the prince could open them in the evenings.

After turning it over in his mind many times, the prince discussed with his nanny, an old woman, on how she could help him go to the Bamboo Oak forest. The old woman pitied the prince, and then they came up with a good idea.

One day, while the king was strolling in the gardens, the prince and the old woman went out to meet him, and the old woman said to the king:

"This garden is beautiful on moonlit nights, but it is much too lonesome by oneself. Just once we should open the castle gates and let the townspeople come in, to dance and have fun while we do some moon gazing."

And the prince piped in and added:

"That would be so much fun. Father, can't we do it please?"

And because the two encouraged it so much, the king finally acquiesced. Immediately, he told his retainers to begin the preparations.

It was a big commotion that night. The king took to his stage, and held a banquet with a huge number of his servants. From front to back the castle gates were opened, and almost all the townspeople came. Everyone dressed up, and danced in the castle gardens, and played many songs. The moon shone in the clear night sky. Not even torches were allowed to to be lit. It was like the people of the castle surged with moonlight and music and dance and delicious smells.

The prince, with his nanny, quietly escaped from the back gates. Then, the old woman waited at the entrance to the Bamboo Oak forest, and the prince entered the forest alone.

However, when he reached the same clearing as always, there was no one there.

Along the sides of the clearing, moonlight silently trickled through the top of the tall trees. The bustling commotion from the castle resounded weakly from far away.

The prince waited a long time. Tears accumulating in his eyes, he called out "Princess Chigusa, it's me!" But he did not catch a glimpse of either the princess or the wood elves.

Finally, wiping away his tears, the prince gave up and returned to the castle. Even though the old woman who waited for him at the entrance asked him many questions, the prince, looking sad, completely ignored her.

The prince thought to himself: Why didn't Princess Chigusa come out for him? What did she mean when she said that something sad was going to happen? He felt like the princess was his dead mother, but was that really so? Why didn't she tell him anything?

Eventually, something sad did happen. The rich people of the castle wanted to chop down the Bamboo Oak Forest trees to turn them into lumber, and in the remains of the forest start new fields for crops. The people around the castle were multiplying, and they needed lots of wood for new houses, and more land to grow wheat, rice, and other grains. There was no one to oppose them, and the king granted the rich peoples' requests to cut down the forest.

When the prince heard this he was shocked, and begged the king to stop, but he had already permitted it, and he would not grant the prince's wishes.

The prince was devastated, and locked himself in his room everyday. But while he did that, little by little, day by day, the bamboo oak forest was disappearing.

The only strange thing was, every time one of the large trees of the forest was cut down, many voices could be heard from all around. ———bird, bird, red ———bird, bird, blue ——— bird, bird, violet ——— bird, bird, green ———bird, bird, white———And each time, one by one, white and blue and violet and white and black and yellow and many other colored birds flew from the trees. The prince stood at the edge of the forest, gazing sadly at the birds flying away.

However, the lumberjacks could not hear those voices at all, and didn't suspect much of anything when they saw the many birds fly away. The trees of the forest were rapidly disappearing.

When the trees started disappearing closer and closer to the clearing inside the forest, the prince could no longer just stare at what was going on. That night, the light from the full moon shined beautifully.

The prince, all alone, creeped away to the back gates of the castle, but the gates were shut tight. The prince, with tears of frustration flowing down his cheeks, resolved to spend the whole night there, until someone opened the gate for him.

But then, strangely, the gate opened all by itself. The prince, feeling like he was in a dream, escaped from the castle and ran off.

4.

The remains of the tree-less forest were like a graveyard. The stumps looked like gravestones and pagodas. The prince ran to the forest's center. He went to the clearing that still had a few trees left and stood there, relieved. He saw that there was no one there. "Princess Chigusa!" the prince called. There was no reply.

After a while, he heard a gentle voice near him.

"Prince!"

The prince was surprised, and when he lifted his head that until now had been hanging down, he saw Princess Chigusa standing there. The prince ran to hug her.

"You came here often for me. But now is the time to say our farewells," the princess said.

The prince, neither happy or sad, could not even move his mouth, but after a time, he had many things to say to her.

"Why must we say goodbye? Why didn't you come to get me? Why didn't you meet me, even when I came here on a night when the moon was out? Aren't you my mother? Tell me. Let me hear it. I won't leave your side. I won't go back to the castle!"

Princess Chigusa didn't say anything in response. Then she took the prince's hand, and sat him down on the lawn. "I am not your mother. But it's not a bad thing for me to seem like a mother either. For we are the elves of the earth who give birth to all. The only sad thing is that someday the land we call our home will someday disappear. We are not particularly bitter about this, but the way it's going now, unfortunately, you humans are going to be all alone soon."

Hearing these words, the prince became unbearably sad and lonely. For a long time the two were silent, lost in their unhappy thoughts. The moon was rising, little by little, until it was finally right above them.

At that moment, Princess Chigusa suddenly raised her head and looked at the moon. "The time has come for us to say goodbye. Please take this, to remember me by."

As she said this, Princess Chigusa took off the bracelets on her hands and gave them to the prince.

Just then, out of nowhere, a many colored bird came and flew around Princess Chigusa. The prince gazed surprised at this little bird.

"With this, we say farewell."

When the Prince heard this, he turned to look at the princess, but he could no longer see her. Instead standing there was a huge, black bird. In its beak were Princess Chigusa's bracelets, and its feathers were shaped like lily petals.

Though the prince thought that this bird was bowing its head to him, it was already spreading its wings to fly away. The prince, with all his might, grabbed onto its tail, but the tail fell off, and the prince was left with just the tail in his hands. The other little bird stood there chirping sadly, because the wood elves were already becoming birds themselves, but the prince did not understand the meaning of its cries.

The prince stood there in a daze, when the Roger's leaf wearing wood elf suddenly appeared, who lead the Prince, holding the bracelets and the black bird's tail in his hands, back to the castle.

After, when the Bamboo Oak forest was completely cut down and turned to fields, the land around the castle became a fine town. However, for some reason, the moon was always cloudy, every single night. Then, amongst the children of the town came the following song:

In the Great Moon
Lives a Tailless Bird
With Gold Bracelets in its Mouth
Oh, Oh, It's Falling!
Oh, Oh, Look Out!
And because the light of the moon never came out, the crops in the fields of the kingdom would not grow. For dew and moonlight are important for plants to grow tall. The kingdom became poor, and the people were in despair. Because of it, the king grew extremely troubled, and handed his crown over to the prince.

The prince planted trees in the remains of the Bamboo Oak Forest and made a small new forest, and inside it built a shrine, where he enshrined the Princess Chigusa's bracelets and the bird's tail. Then, suddenly, the moon cleared up, the crops ripened, and the people of the kingdom were overjoyed. Then, on nights with a full moon, the castle gates were opened and the townspeople were invited to attend a moon-gazing party.

Even now the shrine and forest remain, and in that forest live many different colored birds. This is a story told by the old woman who sells food for the birds in front of the shrine. When the old woman tells this story, she always finishes by singing, in a quiet voice, "The Great Moon's Song."

Yoshio Toyoshima's "The Great Moon's Song" Part 4

2011-06-24T12:39:00.000-04:00

[The final installment of a Japanese children's story from 1919 by noted translator/not-noted novelist Yoshio Toyoshima. Intro and Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.]

The remains of the tree-less forest were like a graveyard. The stumps looked like gravestones and pagodas. The prince ran to the forest's center. He went to the clearing that still had a few trees left and stood there, relieved. He saw that there was no one there. "Princess Chigusa!" the prince called. There was no reply.

After a while, he heard a gentle voice near him.

"Prince!"

The prince was surprised, and when he lifted his head that until now had been hanging down, he saw Princess Chigusa standing there. The prince ran to hug her.

"You came here often for me. But now is the time to say our farewells," the princess said.

The prince, neither happy or sad, could not even move his mouth, but after a time, he had many things to say to her.

"Why must we say goodbye? Why didn't you come to get me? Why didn't you meet me, even when I came here on a night when the moon was out? Aren't you my mother? Tell me. Let me hear it. I won't leave your side. I won't go back to the castle!"

Princess Chigusa didn't say anything in response. Then she took the prince's hand, and sat him down on the lawn. "I am not your mother. But it's not a bad thing for me to seem like a mother either. For we are the elves of the earth who give birth to all. The only sad thing is that someday the land we call our home will someday disappear. We are not particularly bitter about this, but the way it's going now, unfortunately, you humans are going to be all alone soon."

Hearing these words, the prince became unbearably sad and lonely. For a long time the two were silent, lost in their unhappy thoughts. The moon was rising, little by little, until it was finally right above them.

At that moment, Princess Chigusa suddenly raised her head and looked at the moon. "The time has come for us to say goodbye. Please take this, to remember me by."

As she said this, Princess Chigusa took off the bracelets on her hands and gave them to the prince.

Just then, out of nowhere, a many colored bird came and flew around Princess Chigusa. The prince gazed surprisedly at this little bird.

"With this, we say farewell."

When the Prince heard this, he turned to look at the princess, but he could no longer see her. Instead standing there was a huge, black bird. In its beak were Princess Chigusa's bracelets, and its feathers were shaped like lilly petals.

Though the prince thought that this bird was bowing its head to him, it was already spreading its wings to fly away. The prince, with all his might, grabbed onto its tail, but the tail fell off, and the prince was left with just the tail in his hands. The other little bird stood there chirping sadly, because the wood elves were already becoming birds themselves, but the prince did not understand the meaning of its cries.

The prince stood there in a daze, when the Roger's leaf wearing wood elf suddenly appeared, who lead the Prince, holding the bracelets and the black bird's tail in his hands, back to the castle.

After, when the Bamboo Oak forest was completely cut down and turned to fields, the land around the castle became a fine town. However, for some reason, the moon was always cloudy, every single night. Then, amongst the children of the town came the following song:
In the Great Moon
Lives a Tailless Bird
With Gold Bracelets in its Mouth
Oh, Oh, It's Falling!
Oh, Oh, Look Out!

And because the light of the moon never came out, the crops in the fields of the kingdom would not grow. For dew and moonlight are important for plants to grow tall. The kingdom became poor, and the people were in despair. Because of it, the king grew extremely troubled, and handed his crown over to the prince.

The prince planted trees in the remains of the Bamboo Oak Forest and made a small new forest, and inside it built a shrine, where he enshrined the Princess Chigusa's bracelets and the bird's tail. Then, suddenly, the moon cleared up, the crops ripened, and the people of the kingdom were overjoyed. Then, on nights with a full moon, the castle gates were opened and the townspeople were invited to attend a moon-gazing party.

Even now the shrine and forest remain, and in that forest live many different colored birds. This is a story told by the old woman who sells food for the birds in front of the shrine. When the old woman tells this story, she always finishes by singing, in a quiet voice, "The Great Moon's Song."

Yoshio Toyoshima's "The Great Moon's Song" Part 3

2011-06-23T14:01:00.000-04:00

[Part 3 of 4 in an ongoing translation of a Japanese children's story first published in 1919 by Yoshio Toyoshima. You can read an intro and part one here, and part two here.]

So the prince continued to go to the garden on moon-lit nights to wait for the wood elf. But the wood elf never came for him. The prince gazed sadly at the castle back gates. Those iron gates were shut so tight, there was no way the prince could open them in the evenings.

After turning it over in his mind many times, the prince discussed with his nanny, an old woman, on how she could help him go to the Bamboo Oak forest. The old woman pitied the prince, and then they came up with a good idea.

One day, while the king was strolling in the gardens, the prince and the old woman went out to meet him, and the old woman said to the king:

"This garden is beautiful on moonlit nights, but it is much too lonesome by oneself. Just once we should open the castle gates and let the townspeople come in, to dance and have fun while we do some moon gazing."

And the prince piped in and added:

"That would be so much fun. Father, can't we do it please?"

And because the two encouraged it so much, the king finally acquiesced. Immediately, he told his retainers to begin the preparations.

It was a big commotion that night. The king took to his stage, and held a banquet with a huge number of his servants. From front to back the castle gates were opened, and almost all the townspeople came. Everyone dressed up, and danced in the castle gardens, and played many songs. The moon shone in the clear night sky. Not even torches were allowed to to be lit. It was like the people of the castle surged with moonlight and music and dance and delicious smells.

The prince, with his nanny, quietly escaped from the back gates. Then, the old woman waited at the entrance to the Bamboo Oak forest, and the prince entered the forest alone.

However, when he reached the same clearing as always, there was no one there.

Along the sides of the clearing, moonlight silently trickled through the top of the tall trees. The bustling commotion from the castle resounded weakly from far away.

The prince waited a long time. Tears accumulating in his eyes, he called out "Princess Chigusa, it's me!" But he did not catch a glimpse of either the princess or the wood elves.

Finally, wiping away his tears, the prince gave up and returned to the castle. Even though the old woman who waited for him at the entrance asked him many questions, the prince, looking sad, completely ignored her.

The prince thought to himself: Why didn't Princess Chigusa come out for him? What did she mean when she said that something sad was going to happen? He felt like the princess was his dead mother, but was that really so? Why didn't she tell him anything?

Eventually, something sad did happen. The rich people of the castle wanted to chop down the Bamboo Oak Forest trees to turn them into lumber, and in the remains of the forest start new fields for crops. The people around the castle were multiplying, and they needed lots of wood for new houses, and more land to grow wheat, rice, and other grains. There was no one to oppose them, and the king granted the rich peoples' requests to cut down the forest.

When the prince heard this he was shocked, and begged the king to stop, but he had already permitted it, and he would not grant the prince's wishes.

The prince was devastated, and locked himself in his room everyday. But while he did that, little by little, day by day, the bamboo oak forest was disappearing.

The only strange thing was, every time one of the large trees of the forest was cut down, many voices could be heard from all around. ———bird, bird, red ———bird, bird, blue ——— bird, bird, violet ——— bird, bird, green ———bird, bird, white———And each time, one by one, white and blue and violet and white and black and yellow and many other colored birds flew from the trees. The prince stood at the edge of the forest, gazing sadly at the birds flying away.

However, the lumberjacks could not hear those voices at all, and didn't suspect much of anything when they saw the many birds fly away. The trees of the forest were rapidly disappearing.

When the trees started disappearing closer and closer to the clearing inside the forest, the prince could no longer just stare at what was going on. That night, the light from the full moon shined beautifully.

The prince, all alone, creeped away to the back gates of the castle, but the gates were shut tight. The prince, with tears of frustration flowing down his cheeks, resolved to spend the whole night there, until someone opened the gate for him.

But then, strangely, the gate opened all by itself. The prince, feeling like he was in a dream, escaped from the castle and ran off.

Yoshio Toyoshima's "The Great Moon's Song" Part 2

2011-06-22T13:30:00.002-04:00

[Part 2 of 4 in an ongoing translation of a Japanese fairy tale from 1919. You can read Part 1, and a brief intro to the author, here.]

After that night, on evenings when the moon shone bright, the Prince would go to the Bamboo Oak Forest and play with the wood elves. In addition, he learned many things from Princess Chigusa. Like how the wood elves originally lived in the fields, but the fields were opened up and turned into rice paddies, and so the elves hid themselves in the forests, and became wood elves. And that Princess Chigusa is the queen of both the new wood elves and the original wood elves. And how the Princess knew all about how the old fields were going to become rice paddies beforehand, and how there was going to be a draft this coming summer, and floods in the fall. When the prince heard these things, he told each one to his father the king. The king would laugh, but because the prince pressed him so many times, in the end, he set up some precautions as a test.

And even though there was indeed a drought that summer, they took water down from the springs in the mountains, and the farmers were not affected at all. And even though there were floods at the beginning of autumn, they built high embankments along the river, and the rice paddies were left unharmed. Because each of the prince's pronouncements were correct, the king, and then all the people of the palace, were completely astonished. Before long, word spread throughout the kingdom how "the prince had been transformed into a god." They asked how the prince how he knew these things before they happened, but because the prince was sworn to a strict secrecy by Princess Chigusa, he said nothing. Eventually even the king began to wonder if his son had become a god.

But to the prince, there was only one thing to start thinking about. And that was the fact that the moon didn't come out every night. If the moon didn't shine at night, the princess would not send for the prince.

When the moon did shine in the early hours of the night, the wood elf who wore a Roger's leaf would come to the palace gardens. The prince would go to Princess Chigusa, and a little before 10 o'clock when the palace gates closed, the prince would return home.

However, one night, when the prince had gone to the clearing in the Bamboo Oak Forest like usual, Princess Chigusa stood there looking terribly sad. Not one of the wood elves appeared that night. With a wildly beating heart, the prince asked the princess:

"Did something happen tonight?"

"Something sad is going to occur very soon," Princess Chigusa replied. The prince asked many things, but the princess would not say anything more. She only replied, "Soon you will understand."

The prince and princess sat silently in the clearing. The moonlight spread over the ground, making the grass and flower petals and leaves sparkle. Finally, Princess Chigusa sighed deeply and said:

"I don't know if we shall meet again."

Hearing this, the Prince became terribly sad.

"It's time, it's time, the palace is now closing!" a voice called from behind them.

He saw that the Roger's leaf wearing wood elf was standing behind him. Even so, the prince did not start going home. But the princess comforted him, and made him go home.

The prince couldn't understand why he couldn't see Princess Chigusa anymore. He suddenly wondered if Princess Chigusa was perhaps his long-long mother after all. But when he turned around to ask her, Princess Chigusa was no longer there.

Standing in the palace gardens, the prince was resolved: he had to meet with Princess Chigusa again.

New Review: Banana Yoshimoto's "The Lake"

2011-06-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

Yes indeed, as it was prophesied just last week, I have another review on Three Percent, the blog run by Open Letter Books, for the beautiful novel The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto and translated by Michael Emmerich.

As for future reviews, I am very excited about the next review I'll be doing for Three Percent, but I'm going to keep it to myself until further notice.

Stay tuned for the next installment of "The Great Moon's Song," which will be up before too long.

Yoshio Toyoshima's "The Great Moon's Song," Part 1

2011-06-20T16:52:00.005-04:00

I'm always looking for ways to practice reading Japanese. The thing is, all writers write in a certain way, and I don't want to be stuck reading Japanese in a certain way, and consequently understanding Japanese in a certain way (at least, this is my fear). The vast majority of the raw Japanese that I read is Murakami and Genichiro Takahashi, and so lately I've been looking at new sources to practice Japanese and expand my Japanese reading skills. I especially feel that I need to practice reading non-contemporary Japanese. Even in English, I want to get better acquainted with the modern Japanese literary masters, who I am not as familiar with as I would like.

Which is why Aozora Bunko is awesome. It's the Project Gutenberg of Japan, i.e., free e-versions of public domain literature.

I found the following story by accident. Literally—I was using the more iPhone friendly version of the Aozora Bunko site, searched おつ randomly, and started reading お月様の唄, which I am going to share with you in a quickie translation over the next few days, cause it's a very cute little fairy tale.

The author of this tale is Yoshio Toyoshima, who, Wikipedia (kind of sadly) notes, was not famous at all for his novels, but did have great acclaim as a translator. He was born in 1890, and died in 1955. He was a novelist, translator, French literary scholar, and children's book author. He was professor emeritus at Hosei University and also taught at Meiji University. He had his literary debut as a college student, published in the third issue of Shinchishou alongside the great Akutagawa and Kikuchi Kan. He is most famous for his translations of Les Miserables and Jean-Christophe, which were bestsellers.

Anyway, without further ado, here is part one of お月様の唄, which I am (tentatively) calling "The Great Moon's Song." You can read the original, if you like, here.

---------------

"The Great Moon's Song"

In the Great Moon
Lives a Tailless Bird
With Gold Rings in its Mouth
Oh, Oh, It's Falling!
Oh, Oh, Look Out!

Once upon a time, when the forests were still teeming with small, cute wood elves, there was a prince of a certain kingdom, who was raised with much love, as he was the only child of the king. The prince was extremely kind, and had a great and compassionate heart.

Ever since the prince was small, for some reason, he loved above all to look at the moon. He often climbed the towers of the castle, or entered the expansive gardens to watch the moon until late at night. When he looked at the moon, he felt like he was looking at his mother who had passed away. The prince's mother died when he was three years old, and so he could not remember her face. But no matter how much he thought about it, it always seemed to him that his mother had ascended to the moon. Because of this, when he looked at the moon, he would think about his mother.

One night, when the prince was eight years old, like always, he went out to the garden to look at the moon by himself, when, a man, only twelve inches tall and wearing a Roger's flower on his head, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Then, just as suddenly, he bowed his head to the prince.

The prince was surprised, for he had never seen nor heard of such a tiny man before. However, the prince, the lovely boy with a gentle heart, also had great courage, for he would someday be the king. And so, in a calm voice, he asked the one foot-monk:

"Who are you?"

The one foot monk replied, in a sing-song voice:

"A wood elf I am! A wood elf from the forest behind the castle!"

The prince smiled and asked:

"Why have you come?"

"To bring greetings to the prince," the one-foot monk replied. "I am a messenger of Princess Chigusa, and I need you to come with me, if ya' please!"

Having said this, the wood elf turned around and started walking away. The prince was delighted, and followed after him. When they reached the back gate, it opened immediately, and when the prince and wood elf passed through to the other side, it was closed again, just like before, without a sound.

Directly behind the castle was a large forest called "The Bamboo Oak Forest." The wood elf went directly into the forest, and the prince too followed after him silently. However, when they arrived at the center of the forest, he suddenly could no longer see the wood elf. Surprised, the prince looked all around, and saw before him a wide clearing, with a lush green lawn, with many different flowers blooming in the middle. In the center of the clearing stood a woman, wearing a silk robe of red and yellow and white, and a crown made of lily flowers. She looked at the prince and smiled, and beckoned him closer. Seeing this, the prince felt somehow like he was looking at his long lost mother, and fearlessly approached her.

"My, you found us easily!" the woman said. "I am Chigusa, queen of this forest. Now let us watch some entertainment."

Then Princess Chigusa raised her voice and said:

"Come out everyone, and dance for the prince's entertainment!"

Whereupon, from out of nowhere, the wood elf from earlier appeared above the clearing, wearing a single rose on his head. Then, spinning round and round, he sang this song:

Oneee one
Spin round and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a chrysanthemum appeared. The two danced and sang once more:

Twooo two
Spinny-spin round and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a peony appeared.

Threee three
Round and spin and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a plum blossom appeared.

Fourrr four
Round and round and round and come out!

And a wood elf wearing a cherry blossom appeared.

Fiveee five
Everyone together burst forth!
To entertain the prince
Here and there and everywhere
Go round and round and round and round and round!

Then the clearing before him became full of wood elves, each one wearing a grass or tree flower on their heads. Then, linking hands, they formed a circle and sang a riveting song and danced a riveting dance.

The prince watched all this and felt like he was in a dream. The wood elves' dance continued on for an eternity. It was an amazing dance that he never grew tired of, no matter how long it continued.

"It's time, it's time! The palace is now closing!" a voice from far away suddenly called out. The wood elves who had had been dancing up this point looked like they all jumped high in the air, but when they fell back to the earth they had disappeared.

The prince was surprised, and looked all around, while Princess Chigusa stood smiling. Then she said to the prince:

"It is late now, so that shall be all for tonight. We will come with greetings again, so please come back at that time."

The prince wanted to stay longer, but because of what the Princess said, there was nothing to do but go home. Before he knew it, the wood elf wearing a Roger's flower appeared, and he lead the prince back to the castle gardens.

New Review: Mu Xin's "An Empty Room: Stories"

2011-06-17T12:42:00.000-04:00

I have a new review up at Open Letter Books' Three Percent blog. It's for Chinese writer Mu Xin's collection An Empty Room: Stories.

I loved the collection, and I hope to read more of Xin in the future.

It's hilarious to me that it was posted today, after I just talked about how a review for it was coming soon in the Recently Read Round-up post that I finished writing about 45 minutes ago. So if you didn't get a chance to read that yet, just scroll down for thoughts on some other books I've read (though they are not as in-depth or likely eloquent as the review at Three Percent...).

Recently Read Round-up

2011-06-17T12:00:00.001-04:00

I have a lot of free time at the moment. I'm job hunting. It's pretty stressful, and I'm generally an anxious person about these kinds of things anyway. So I've been doing a lot of reading to pass the time and get my mind off things. When I first started doing this blog I did a Recently Read Round-up, and I liked it, so I'm going to do it again. I love sharing books, and I love recommendations as well. You'll see below that I didn't love all the following books, but I'm going to write about them anyway.

Incidentally, another reason I'm doing the Recently Read Round-up posts is because it's very easy to keep track of what I read because I now use Goodreads to catalog my reading exploits. If you're a list-maker or compulsive-grader of things you experience like I am, you might like it too. And if you want to follow me, I'll probably follow you too. Like I said, I love recommendations.

I'm going to start with what I wrote on the Goodreads site, and follow it up with any feelings I've had after digesting it a little bit, since I write my reviews almost immediately after I finish reading it.

The Lake, Banana Yoshimoto
Translated by Michael Emmerich

Goodreads score: 4 out of 5 stars
I wrote:

It's been some time since I finished a whole book in one day (and just two sittings).

One of the big mysteries of the book is revealed on the back cover (like the first sentence) so avoid reading the description. Seriously you're not supposed to know til almost the very end.

I can see why they did it - it's not quite the most central aspect of the book, though I'd argue it is somewhat important and would've been fascinating to have the reveal unspoiled.

Still, a very sweet, powerful story about being on the cusp of growing up and loving someone in spite of their (sometimes very heavy) baggage. Yoshimoto has a great, uncomplicated, direct style that is anything but "simple."

I still feel generally positive about this book, though I get the sense, after reading around a bit, that this is BY's sort of go-to plot template - people in transition and/or tragedy, so maybe I'd feel differently if I had a better understanding of the rest of her work. Still, it really is a very pleasant read, and I should be having an official review for it on the Three Percent blog in the next few weeks (I submitted it, but I got to wait my turn in the queue.)

An Empty Room: Stories, Mu Xin
Translated by Toming Jun Liu

Goodreads score: 4 (4.5) out of 5 stars
I wrote:

Wish there were half stars - I'd be tempted to give it 4.5 out of 5. Some really mesmerizing stuff here! Beautiful - particularly at it's best when dealing with melancholy memories etc. It's a collection of stories that don't always feel like stories - some are hard to think of as anything but a straight up retelling of a personal anecdote, and some that feel like an essay that doesn't really have a structure - a topic that meanders and digresses in a more or less agreeable way. I guess this comes from the Chinese literary form sanwen, which is deliberately a mix of fiction, memory, essay, prose, and poetry, according to the translator's afterword. Similar to the Japanese "I"-novel, perhaps, but in a much more abridged form.

In general skillfully translated, though the tone occasionally verges on the pompous (which might not be the fault of the translator, really). The one exception is "Quiet Afternoon Tea", which does not read well at all and is especially awkward in the characters' speech - all of which is (kind of) ironic, since it's one of the only story that ostensibly takes place in England with only British characters speaking in English. Maybe it was translated separately, first, a long time ago with little editing?

More to say in the future in a proper book review on Three Percent.

Like I wrote, another official review coming soon. These stories really are excellent, but I have some (read: a lot of complicated) things to say about the translation that is going to warrant it's own post when the review comes up.

The Jokers, Albert Cossery
Translated by Anna Moschovakis

Goodreads Score: 4 out of 5 stars
I wrote:

Amusing, breezy, almost absurdist tale. Charming and humorous, political in its anti-political way, it felt like a sort of mix between Martin Amis "How I Became Stupid" and Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf". Particularly great ending.

This book was written in the Sixties by a French born, Egypt living writer, but it is still surprisingly resonant in today's American political climate - especially when thinking about the Bush era. Thought-provoking but not dense, and not a shrill screed - a perfect (and fun) combo.

It is a little thin, admittedly; I think that is it's one flaw. But it's about guys pranking a public figure. It's pretty great.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, Young-ha Kim
Translated by Chi-Young Kim

Goodreads score: 3 (2.5) out of 5 stars
I wrote:

Maybe 2.5 stars. I realized that the only part of the story I really didn't like was part 2 - I found C and K and Judith to be such annoying characters. The narrator was fascinating- I wish the story was more about him. C at least got a little more interesting when we find about his art, but K never gets developed. I just didn't care about their love triangle at all. It's not that I don't like dark books, but books like this or Hotel Iris don't move me when the characters are so underdeveloped- I don't feel their pain, and their depressions and nihilistic attitudes just seem weak and like "Oh woe is me" narcissism. Just seems like a cheap way to pile on tragedy. Not willing to write off Kim yet though- his other book seems interesting and I might yet check it out.

A lot of this book felt like a bad version of Murakami. Like taking some of Murakami's distinctive elements, ramping them up, and then messing up all the proportions into something inferior. The aloof protagonists become cooler-than-thou pricks, the Western culture name-dropping becomes snobby, the sex becomes dirty and overly gritty... I don't know, this just wasn't for me.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Robert Coover

Goodreads score: 3 out of 5 stars
I wrote:

Some interesting stuff here, but your enjoyment does depend how much you enjoy reading about baseball games. Henry's an interesting character, and the last chapter adds a surprising layer to the rest of the work. But although I liked in general I was not inspired to pick it up and read it, so it took me a while to finish it.

Honestly, I read this because I read somewhere that Genichiro Takahashi's 優雅で感傷的な日本野球 was similar to this book. From what I read, it's not, really, except that it is kind of post-modern and has to do with baseball. It's about a guy who develops this table-top dice baseball game, that gets more and more complicated and takes over more and more of this guy Henry's life. It's very interesting, but if you don't at least enjoy baseball on some level, it'll be hard to read, since it gets very detailed in the goings on of each game.

Oblivion: Stories, David Foster Wallace

Goodreads score: 5 out of 5 stars
I wrote:

I think I loved every story but one, although that one story I was rather lukewarm to. But there's so much craft and intelligence and wit and raw emotion...Reading Wallace can occasionally be taxing, but worth it. He was truly a genius, in my opinion. Running out of short stories though...going to have to plunge into the almost bottomless pit that is that behemoth Infinite Jest soon.

Seriously you guys, David Foster Wallace is a genius. You have to give him a try if you haven't yet—at the very least a short story collection (even those can get long, but certainly less of a commitment than Infinite Jest). After Murakami, DFW is probably my favorite author.

The 2011 Kenzaburo Oe Prize - 俺俺

2011-06-11T10:47:00.002-04:00

Anyone with a passing interest in Japanese literature probably knows who Kenzaburo Oe is, if only by virtue of being one of only two Japanese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature back in 1994. That doesn't mean you've read him of course; for instance, I only got around to reading him about two years ago. If you haven't, A Personal Matter is quite good, as is The Changeling. The Silent Cry is another book that is cited among his best, though I haven't read that one yet.

Oe is an intensely personal, intensely intellectual, intensely political writer. He's a big issues kind of writer, even when the plot points seem to echo exactly events in his own life. So it's not surprising that the Academy was drawn to Oe as a candidate for the Nobel Prize, since, coincidentally or not, many of the winners are deeply political writers or individuals. So it's also not surprising that in Japan, he has a literary award in his honor. I mean, how much more internationally renowned can you get as a non-English writing author than winning the Nobel Prize?

I found out about the Kenzaburo Oe Award when I was exploring Gunzo a few months ago, since they made the announcement for the 2011 winner in their May issue. (Gunzo reporting it because both Gunzo and the award are run/sponsored by Kodansha.) It was established in honor of both the 100th anniversary of Kodansha being a company and the 50th "writing anniversary" of Kenzaburo Oe (which by the way, how much more perfect could that timing have been??).

Oe alone chooses the winner—the best novel of the past year.

The Kenzaburo Oe Prize winner is supposed to represent the best of the young generation's "literary intellectuals." It has no cash prize, but the work is to be translated into foreign languages for international publication. In the five years this prize has been acted, I don't think a single work has hit American or British bookshelves. Which I suppose isn't too surprising. I don't know the details about who gets to translates it or when or how, but even if it does get translated, I'm sure very few American publishers want to publish heady, "intellectual" novels from Japan. Just manga, sci-fi/fantasy/light novels, Murakami, and crime fiction please!

Partially inspired by Hopeful in Nagoya's recent diving into of Japanese book reviewing, I decided to try and learn more about this latest winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize.

The work is called 俺俺 by 星野智幸, or, Ore Ore by Tomoyuki Hoshino. This title would be hard to translate - it's a repetition of the word "I" or "me," used by dominant, confident, or familiar males, but the title refers to おれおれ詐欺, which is the term for a kind of phone scam. Basically, the perp calls an elderly person and pretends that they are their son or grandson, in order to get them to transfer them money from their bank accounts—basically, they say "Hey, it's me!" and trick their victims into thinking they're family.

Which is the basic premise of this story—a guy, only referred to as 俺, or I, goes to a McDonald's, steals his neighbor's cell phone, and commits a phone scam on this strangers' parents. But it gets stranger. According to the summary on Amazon Japan:

When I took the cell phone of the guy sitting next to me at McDonalds, I ended up committing a phone scam. But then I noticed that I was becoming a different I. The I for my bosses and parents, the I who isn't I, the I who is not I, the we that is I-I [literally: the 俺たち俺俺] So many I's that I don't know what is what anymore. Power off, off. Destroy. Before long, my fellow I's, going this way and that, increasing without end, until… A work that makes the reader ask: What is it, to trust another man, in this age of loneliness and despair?

Weird huh? But vague. So I took a look at the book review from the Asahi newspaper. It begins by repeating the basics of the Amazon summary: "I" goes to a McDonald's, on a whim steals a stranger's cell phone, and tricks the stranger's mother into thinking he was her son, and commits bank transfer fraud. Before he knows it, he starts to became that guy. And gradually, he begins to multiply into other "I"s.

The narrator "I" works at a large electronics store called "Megaton." (Kind of like a Best Buy I assume, perhaps in Akihabara). He seems to feel alienated by his job—even if he took over someone else's duties within the store, his day-to-day affairs wouldn't change. He believes his very existence is "weak", and easily replaceable by someone else. His boss is a mean person "incapable of being understood". The pressure to conform, to not stick out for fear of being made fun of, is overwhelming, and he and his fellow coworkers can barely get by working there. His sense of fitting in at work gets worse and worse, until he organizes a community (perhaps a literal place, like a commune) of "I"s, calling themselves (or the place) "I-Mountain" (俺山):

"At "I Mountain", everyone is I… "I Mountain" is a society without conflict with others. All the hearts of the "I"s are connected" - a transparent community where everyone can be understood. In a place like that, I, as a meaningful existence, is coming to an end. I am becoming no more than a part of a larger self, and the I's always living for each other. That experience is what sustains me."

Suffice it to say that as "I Mountain" starts to get larger, some major problems ensue.

The reviewer starts his/her review simply by calling it a "masterpiece" (傑作). The reviewer says the end took them completely be surprise, and even brought them to tears. The reviewer calls it a "monumental work" of contemporary literature, addressing the problems of identity in modern society.

Although the review seems almost a bit hyperbolic, 「俺俺」 sounds complicated, but awesome. In a strange way, it sort of reminds me of Fight Club, probably due to the weird nameless commune aspects, but it sounds like a fascinating work, one whose message would resonate beyond just Japan but throughout the world. When I have some extra cash I might try to pick it up sometime (it can be ordered from the Kinokuniya website if you live in the US). It's also probably worth checking out the other winners of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, which you can find a list of, in English, on the Prize's Wikipedia page.

More on Japanese Literary Journals

2011-06-09T13:34:00.000-04:00

A couple months ago I was really getting into the literary journal scene in Japan. It was really only because I got my hands on some recent issues of Bungakukai, but I started looking into Gunzo as well. I did some research, and if you want to stay afloat on the Japanese literary scene but not in Japan yourself, here are some possible means to do so.

I found out you can order Bungakukai through Amazon, which is pretty freaking awesome. The only problem is that it costs $224 for a year's subscription, or twelve issues. A little over 18 bucks an issue, which is not an impossible price (though certainly out of my price range right now), and it is a lot of content—roughly 3600 pages of fiction, poetry, author interviews, and essays.

Even better (though for not nearly as much content) is that I found out that Gunzo has an iPhone/iTouch/iPad "preview" app. It's a best of collection, that includes whole short stories, the first chapters in serialized novels and essays (including one about Murakami in America), poetry, and best of all, it's completely free. Obviously this is only useful for those with an iWhatever, but, it's kind of cool to offer it all for free.

Gunzo and Bungakukai are also on Twitter, where they often announce who is going to be what issue, who has won their big prizes, and retweets people's (favorable) responses to whatever they just published.

It goes without saying that all of these are only useful if you can read Japanese...

[In the next post, I'm going to look at a literary award (and one of it's recipients) that hasn't been mentioned in English yet because it is fairly new and none of the pieces have been translated yet into English - The Kenzaburo Oe Prize.]

"K"

2011-06-02T18:49:00.003-04:00

"K" by Haruki Murakami

K… the 11th letter of the alphabet.

(Example: One morning, K woke up to find he had transformed into a doormat.)

One morning, K woke up to find he had transformed into a doormat.

"Well that's just great," K thought to himself. "Of all things, a doormat!"

The first person to find K the doormat was a friend who worked for the local government. "Hey, quit fooling around," he said. "You practicing for some sort of New Year's party entertainment or something?"

"Nope, this seriously happened," K said.

"Huh, well I guess you're okay like that… incidentally, did you do your transformation registration?

"Transformation registration?"

"The rates for your income tax are going to change now. For doormat transformations, it‘s just short of a 10 percent deduction."

"No way," K said.

"Really. It's too bad—if you were an iron it would've only been about 3 percent."

The next person to find K was a friend who was a literary critic.

”It would seem, at first glance, that you are a doormat," he said.

"100% a doormat," K said.

"Can you prove it?"

"Wipe your feet on me."

The friend wiped his feet. And then he knew that K was truly a doormat. "And again—why a doormat?"

"It's not my fault."

"It's not my fault?" he repeated. "That sort of remark is less Kafka and rather more Camus, don't you think?"

The next person to come see K was his girlfriend who worked in publishing. She tripped on K the doormat and hit her head on the mailbox.

"Oops, sorry. I was up all night chasing Harahashi around, and then out of nowhere he tells me to replace the table of contents, which was just… Hey, by the way, why did you turn into a doormat?"

"Escapism," K said.

"Poor thing," she said. "Is there anything I can do for you? Like I kiss you and you turn back into a human?"

"That kind of thinking ended in the 19th century," K said. "But I'd be very grateful if you could place me at the entrance of a girl's dormitory or something."

"No problem. That's all well and good, but the way you are now, you don't need your cassette player anymore right? Sooo—could I have it?"

"Sure thing."

"And you don't need your Boz Scaggs and Paul Davis records either right?

"Nope."

"I also really like that groovy Hawaiian shirt of yours."

"It's all yours."

"And can I borrow your car?"

"Just be sure to change the oil every now and then. And check the clutch for me. It's making a weird noise."

"You got it."

So K lived happily ever after at the entrance to a girl's dormitory, without any local government officials, literary critics, or publishers to bother him. So if you really think about it, being a doormat wouldn't be so bad, would it?

[From the collaborative collection 夢で会いましょう , 1986, Kodansha.]

Murakami Takes on Kafka

2011-06-02T16:14:00.002-04:00

One more small Murakami translation, and then I'll look at some other things to translate, OK guys? (Actually, I imagine the majority of you only want Murakami translations, am I right?)

This is from the collection 夢で会いましょう (yume de aimashou), Let's Meet in a Dream that Murakami did with Shigesato Itoi, essayist and creator of the SNES game Earthbound (or the Mother series if you're a real fanboy). It's a collection of short fictions and pseudo-essays and other miscellany, collected in "alphabetical" (what do you call it when we're talking about the hiragana syllabary? Hiragan-ical?) order. We've looked briefly at this collection in the post "Murakami the Poet", where Murakami flexed his poetic chops with the Yakult Swallows Poetry Anthology - which you can see some more examples of in this blog post from Yomuka.

For this post I wanted to do a small translation from Shigesato and not Murakami, but I ran into this little story and I just couldn't resist. I assume the K stands for Kafka here, who even gets a quick mention, as the premise is basically just a sillier version of the Metamorphosis. But there's no denying K is a letter of some fascination with Murakami, since it appears often in his work - most notably in Sputnik Sweetheart with K the narrator.

----

"K"

K… the 11th letter of the alphabet.

(Example: One morning, K woke up to find he had transformed into a doormat.)

One morning, K woke up to find he had transformed into a doormat.

"Well that's just great," K thought to himself. "Of all things, a doormat!"

The first person to find K the doormat was a friend who worked for the local government. "Hey, quit fooling around," he said. "You practicing for some sort of New Year's party entertainment or something?"

"Nope, this seriously happened," K said.

"Huh, well I guess you're okay like that… incidentally, did you do your transformation registration?

"Transformation registration?"

"The rates for your income tax are going to change now. For doormat transformations, it‘s just short of a 10 percent deduction."

"No way," K said.

"Really. It's too bad—if you were an iron it would've only been about 3 percent."

The next person to find K was a friend who was a literary critic.

”It would seem, at first glance, that you are a doormat," he said.

"100% a doormat," K said.

"Can you prove it?"

"Wipe your feet on me."

The friend wiped his feet. And then he knew that K was truly a doormat. "And again—why a doormat?"

"It's not my fault."

"It's not my fault?" he repeated. "That sort of remark is less Kafka and rather more Camus, don't you think?"

The next person to come see K was his girlfriend who worked in publishing. She tripped on K the doormat and hit her head on the mailbox.

"Oops, sorry. I was up all night chasing Harahashi around, and then out of nowhere he tells me to replace the table of contents, which was just… Hey, by the way, why did you turn into a doormat?"

"Escapism," K said.

"Poor thing," she said. "Is there anything I can do for you? Like I kiss you and you turn back into a human?"

"That kind of thinking ended in the 19th century," K said. "But I'd be very grateful if you could place me at the entrance of a girl's dormitory or something."

"No problem. That's all well and good, but the way you are now, you don't need your cassette player anymore right? Sooo—could I have it?"

"Sure thing."

"And you don't need your Boz Scaggs and Paul Davis records either right?

"Nope."

"I also really like that groovy Hawaiian shirt of yours."

"It's all yours."

"And can I borrow your car?"

"Just be sure to change the oil every now and then. And check the clutch for me. It's making a weird noise."

"You got it."

So K lived happily ever after at the entrance to a girl's dormitory, without any local government officials, literary critics, or publishers to bother him. So if you really think about it, being a doormat wouldn't be so bad, would it?

"On the Death of My Cat"

2011-05-28T19:00:00.002-04:00

"On the Death of My Cat" by Haruki Murakami

My cat died the other day. It was an Abyssinian I got from Ryu Murakami and her name was Kirin. Because she was Ryu Murakami's cat, the name "Kirin" comes from the mythical Chinese unicorn- no relation to the beer.

She was four years old, which in human years would have put her in her late twenties, maybe 30, so it was an early death. She was prone to getting kidney stones in her urinary tract, had had surgery already, her meal regimen comprised solely of diet cat food (which is something that exists in this wide world), but in the end, it was complications in her urinary tract that took her life. We had her cremated, put her tiny bones in an urn, and placed her in our household shrine. The house I live in now is an old Japanese style house, so it's very convenient to have a household shrine at times like these. It seems to me that it would be hard to find a place to put your cat's bones in a brand new two bedroom apartment. It just doesn't seem right to put it on top of the refrigerator, you know?

Besides Kirin I also have an eleven year old female Siamese cat named Muse. The name comes from a character from the famous shoujou manga Glass Castle. Before that I had two male cats named Butch and Sundance, the classic duo from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When you have a lot of cats it gets annoying coming up with name after name after name, so I do some extremely easy naming. I've had a mackerel cat named Mackerel, and a calico cat named Calico. When I had a Scottish fold I named him "Scotty". I'm sure you can derive from this pattern that I've also had a black cat named "Black" before too.

If we organize the fates of the various cats that have come and gone in the fifteen years I've lived in this house, we get:

A) Dead cats: 1) Kirin 2) Butch 3) Sundance 4) Mackerel 5) Scotty

B) Cats I've given away: 1) Calico 2) Peter

C) Cats who suddenly disappeared: 1) Black 2) Tobimaru

D) Cats I still have left: 1) Muse

Thinking about it, there's only been a two month period in these last fifteen years when there wasn't a single cat in my house.

This is kind of an obvious statement, but cats have lots of different personalities, and their behavioral patterns, as well as the way they think, differ from cat to cat. The Siamese I have now is that kind of unusual cat that can't give birth unless I hold her hand. When the labor pains start up, this cat immediately jumps up from my lap onto the floor and sets herself down heavily, grunting like an old lady, onto a floor cushion. I take both of her hands tightly, and out comes one kitten after another. It's pretty fun, watching this cat give birth.

For whatever reason, Kirin loved the rustling noise that plastic wrap makes when she rolled around in it, and if someone crumpled up an empty cigarette box, she'd burst out of nowhere to pull it out of the garbage and play with it by herself for fifteen minutes or so. As to what circumstances led to this one cat's habits, vices, and tastes to be formed is a total mystery to me. This cat - this strange, energetic, solidly built, vigorous appetite-having cat - is the complete opposite of Ryu Murakami. She was a real free spirit, and was popular with anyone who came over my house. When her urinary tract got worse she became less energetic, but even until the day before her death, it didn't seem like she was going to die like she did. I brought her to the nearby vet, who let out all the blocked-up urine and gave her medicine to dissolve the kidney stones, but as the night came to an end, she crouched down onto the kitchen floor, her eyes opened wide, and grew cold. Cats are creatures that always die rather easily. Her face was too pretty in death–you might've thought that if you placed her out in the sun, she would thaw out and come back to life.

In the afternoon pet specialists from a burial service company came in a minivan to pick her up. They were dressed just like the people in the movie The Funeral, and they even said their condolences like they were supposed to, but, you can just think of their remarks as a suitably simplified version of the condolences you would say for humans. Then it became a matter of money. The course from cremation to urn, along with the urn itself, came to 23000 yen. In the trunk of the van we could also see the figure of a German shepherd in a plastic storage bin. Maybe Kirin's going to be cremated along with that German shepherd.

After Kirin was carried off in that minivan, my house quickly started to feel empty, and neither me, nor my wife, nor Muse could settle down. Family – even if that includes cats too – is a living thing that has a certain balance, and when one corner of it falls apart, it doesn't take long before everything subtly breaks down. Unable to go about my work at home, I thought I'd go hang out in Yokohama, so I walked to the train station in a soft, drizzling rain. But even that somehow didn't seem worth the trouble, and halfway there I turned back and went home.

**Right now I'm taking care of Muse and a cat named Croquette. There's probably already a lot of cats named Michael and Kotetsu.

[From the collection 村上朝日堂の逆襲, 1989, Kodansha.]

Murakami the Cat Lover

2011-05-28T13:04:00.002-04:00

First of all, my apologies for taking such a long absence from this blog. As you may have seen from my Twitter feed on the right of this page, I recently graduated from college. (Woohoo!) So in the last few weeks, I have been somewhat overwhelmed with life-related things, first with finals, then with graduation stuff, then with moving back home stuff, then with job hunting, etc. Just busy busy busy.

But now I'm back, and hopefully I'll be updating as regularly as I can, though I am still trying to get my life in order.

Anyway, I've been wanting to do another small translation for this blog for a long time, but I've had my hands full with a big translation project for school, and it was hard to justify working on a different translation when I was pretty much behind schedule the whole time. (D'oh.) But, I got it done, and now there is no more school work at all for the near future. As for today's post:

A few weeks ago I saw this blog post linked on Twitter, about authors and their various feline companions. There's a lot of good stuff here (I especially love that Jean-Paul Sartre named his cat Nothing), but if you scroll down, you'll find Haruki Murakami and his cat Kafka somewhere in the middle.

This reminded me of an essay/editorial Murakami wrote for the Asahi Newspaper that was later collected in Murakami Asahidou no Gyakushuu about the death of one of his cats. Interestingly, these articles were written in the mid '80s, and as you'll see in the essay, he talks about a fifteen-year period of living with cats, and none of them were named Kafka (at least according to this very short essay). Murakami looks pretty young in the photo, so I wonder where that photo (and the source of the cat name) comes from.

No matter, really. Enjoy.

----

On the Death of My Cat

My cat died the other day. It was an Abyssinian I got from Ryu Murakami and her name was Kirin. Because she was Ryu Murakami's cat, the name "Kirin" comes from the mythical Chinese unicorn- no relation to the beer.

She was four years old, which in human years would have put her in her late twenties, maybe 30, so it was an early death. She was prone to getting kidney stones in her urinary tract, had had surgery already, her meal regimen comprised solely of diet cat food (which is something that exists in this wide world), but in the end, it was complications in her urinary tract that took her life. We had her cremated, put her tiny bones in an urn, and placed her in our household shrine. The house I live in now is an old Japanese style house, so it's very convenient to have a household shrine at times like these. It seems to me that it would be hard to find a place to put your cat's bones in a brand new two bedroom apartment. It just doesn't seem right to put it on top of the refrigerator, you know?

Besides Kirin I also have an eleven year old female Siamese cat named Muse. The name comes from a character from the famous shoujou manga Glass Castle. Before that I had two male cats named Butch and Sundance, the classic duo from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When you have a lot of cats it gets annoying coming up with name after name after name, so I do some extremely easy naming. I've had a mackerel cat named Mackerel, and a calico cat named Calico. When I had a Scottish fold I named him "Scotty". I'm sure you can derive from this pattern that I've also had a black cat named "Black" before too.

If we organize the fates of the various cats that have come and gone in the fifteen years I've lived in this house, we get:

A) Dead cats: 1) Kirin 2) Butch 3) Sundance 4) Mackerel 5) Scotty

B) Cats I've given away: 1) Calico 2) Peter

C) Cats who suddenly disappeared: 1) Black 2) Tobimaru

D) Cats I still have left: 1) Muse

Thinking about it, there's only been a two month period in these last fifteen years when there wasn't a single cat in my house.

This is kind of an obvious statement, but cats have lots of different personalities, and their behavioral patterns, as well as the way they think, differ from cat to cat. The Siamese I have now is that kind of unusual cat that can't give birth unless I hold her hand. When the labor pains start up, this cat immediately jumps up from my lap onto the floor and sets herself down heavily, grunting like an old lady, onto a floor cushion. I take both of her hands tightly, and out comes one kitten after another. It's pretty fun, watching this cat give birth.

For whatever reason, Kirin loved the rustling noise that plastic wrap makes when she rolled around in it, and if someone crumpled up an empty cigarette box, she'd burst out of nowhere to pull it out of the garbage and play with it by herself for fifteen minutes or so. As to what circumstances led to this one cat's habits, vices, and tastes to be formed is a total mystery to me. This cat - this strange, energetic, solidly built, vigorous appetite-having cat - is the complete opposite of Ryu Murakami. She was a real free spirit, and was popular with anyone who came over my house. When her urinary tract got worse she became less energetic, but even until the day before her death, it didn't seem like she was going to die like she did. I brought her to the nearby vet, who let out all the blocked-up urine and gave her medicine to dissolve the kidney stones, but as the night came to an end, she crouched down onto the kitchen floor, her eyes opened wide, and grew cold. Cats are creatures that always die rather easily. Her face was too pretty in death–you might've thought that if you placed her out in the sun, she would thaw out and come back to life.

In the afternoon pet specialists from a burial service company came in a minivan to pick her up. They were dressed just like the people in the movie The Funeral, and they even said their condolences like they were supposed to, but, you can just think of their remarks as a suitably simplified version of the condolences you would say for humans. Then it became a matter of money. The course from cremation to urn, along with the urn itself, came to 23000 yen. In the trunk of the van we could also see the figure of a German shepherd in a plastic storage bin. Maybe Kirin's going to be cremated along with that German shepherd.

After Kirin was carried off in that minivan, my house quickly started to feel empty, and neither me, nor my wife, nor Muse could settle down. Family – even if that includes cats too – is a living thing that has a certain balance, and when one corner of it falls apart, it doesn't take long before everything subtly breaks down. Unable to go about my work at home, I thought I'd go hang out in Yokohama, so I walked to the train station in a soft, drizzling rain. But even that somehow didn't seem worth the trouble, and halfway there I turned back and went home.

**Right now I'm taking care of Muse and a cat named Croquette. There's probably already a lot of cats named Michael and Kotetsu.

Monkey Business: A New Japan-based Literary Journal

2011-04-25T17:09:00.003-04:00

Good news, everyone!

Actually, better than that: pretty awesome news.

The literary journal A Public Space is producing an American version of the Japanese literary journal Monkey Business which will highlight contemporary Japanese literature in English translation!

Holy shit! That's great!

[This is all via Three Percent, by the way.]

It's being edited and put together by Motoyuki Shibata, an English translator of contemporary authors like Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster, and founder of the original Japanese journal Monkey Business, Ted Goosen, a Japanese translator, and Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica.

And the selection looks amazing. Some highlights include:

Monsters, a short story by Hideo Furukawa (remember how we were talking about Belka, Why Don't You Bark last week?)
translated by Michael Emmerich

People from My Neighborhood: a collection of vignettes by Hiromi Kawakami (author of the recent Manazuru, which I should have a review of up on Three Percent in the next couple weeks)
translated by Ted Goossen

The Tale of the House of Physics: a short story by Yoko Ogawa (author of The Housekeeper and the Professor and Hotel Iris)
translated by Ted Goossen

Pursuing “Growth”: an interview with Haruki Murakami by Hideo Furukawa (Oh how I want to read this...)
translated by Ted Goossen

And tons more, including a lot of poetry, and a manga version of Kafka. You can see the whole table of contents at the A Public Space website.

Not only that, as far as I can tell, this isn't a one time thing. This is just the first issue—although it will only be coming out once a year.

Still, though, I'm extremely pumped. An entire literary journal devoted to Japanese literature? That will come out regularly? Yes and yes. You can order it here, like I already have.

Possibly Forthcoming JLPP Books, Part 4

2011-04-23T11:16:00.000-04:00

The list continues! [Explanation on the JLPP and this journey here.]

Although I'll admit I didn't fully plan it this way, last week I focused on the top three books that I was most excited about seeing possibly published into English. I took a little break, and afterward I realized that although there were some books that I was curious about reading, for whatever reason, they didn't have me as excited as those three.

So it's fitting that I'm starting another round after taking a break to talk about the Fukko Shoten, because I can think of this as the 2nd round of the draft. They also have the potential to be interesting, but my excitement is a bit more tempered than my 1st round draft. (Please forgive me of my tenuous use of a sports metaphor. Talking about sports is not my strong suit, surprising as that may be coming from someone who writes a literature in translation blog.) As such, in addition to the Why I'm Excited column I'm going to add a Why I'm Hesitant column too this round.

(Also, this will probably be my last round of books. Since this series of posts is called "Possibly Forthcoming JLPP Books I'm Excited About," I'm not going to bother listing all the other books that look like they are boring, crappy, or otherwise not my thing, which there are quite a few.)

Anyway, off we go!

The Downfall of Matias Guili
Natsuki Ikezawa
Translated by Alfred Birnbaum

Why I'm Excited: First of all, like Michael Emmerich re: Belka, Why Don't You Bark?, I trust Alfred Birnbaum as a translator: he brought Haruki Murakami to English speakers. How can I not swear allegiance? Because translators don't always get to work on projects they like? (Shh, let's not complicate matters.)

Actually, despite that parenthetical aside, he hasn't done that many translations: as far as I can tell, besides Murakami he worked on some of the translations in Monkey Brain Sushi, Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth and Natsuki Ikezawa (a.k.a. the guy we're talking about right now, you guys!)'s A Burden of Flowers. So it could very well be a passion project.

Speaking of Ikezawa himself, he has a surprising (it's sad, really, but it's true) two novels already in English translation: the aforementioned A Burden of Flowers and Still Lives, which was translated by Dennis Keene. The reviews on Goodreads are good, especially for Still Lives (4 stars), though I haven't read either.

The Downfall of Matias Guili itself is described by the JLPP as a "magical realist epic" in the vein of Garcia Marquez set in a fictional island in the South Pacific that is constantly being taken over by foreign countries, until it finally achieves independence. The new President Matias Guili is a "Japanophile" who, through some mysterious turns of events, becomes suspicious of a guerrilla uprising against him. It's won the Tanizaki prize and considered Ikezawa's "crowning achievement" of his first decade of fiction writing.

Why I'm Hesitant: Frankly, I hate Garcia Marquez. I remember vaguely liking his short story "Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" in high school, but I barely made it through Love in the Time of Cholera and could only get through thirty pages of Chronicle of a Death Foretold before I just put it down. So for me, that's a terrible association to make. Of course, everyone else in the world loves Marquez, so maybe I'm just wrong on this one.

Words Without Borders has an excerpt of The Downfall of Matias Guili in their June 2005 issue (somewhat hilariously, it's called "The A Team"). I read it, and found it kind of boring. The style was amusing, as was its portrayal of bureaucracy (needlessly complicated) and international relations (toothless), but I just didn't have particularly strong feelings about it. The excerpt is called "a lost chapter" of the book, so I don't know how it fits into the novel at all, or even if it will be in the final product. But it didn't get me hooked.

It's supposed to be a very political novel. Like with Marquez, that's not an inherently bad thing, but for me, I hope it brings something more to the table in the way of characters or style than just being some sort of manifesto-as-fiction on international diplomacy or the treatment of third world countries, which is the sense that I get from the descriptions about it. But again, that's just my personal taste talking here.

One more matter is troubling. The Downfall of Matias Guili is also from the JLPP's 2nd draft of picks. The excerpt from World Without Borders is from 2005, and the fine print says that the novel was going to come out in 2006. What happened? Did this book have a publisher who ended up backing out? Why hasn't anyone been willing to publish it since? My fear is that the book is actually terrible, and that's why no one wants it.

My feelings for this book are definitely more complicated than the others I've talked about so far, but I would still definitely try reading it if it does (eventually) come out.

Revival And Survival: A New Online Bookstore for Quake Victims

2011-04-19T10:44:00.001-04:00

[As reported by friend Nihon Distractions and the Mainichi News.]

Masahiko Shimada (who we were just talking about recently) has started a new online bookstore to raise money for the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake of last March called the Fukko Shoten. Any books bought from this store will be signed by the author and the proceeds will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross.

It's only been up and running for about a day but there are many books for sale, and it also includes a section called "Words & Bonds" which is being edited and run by author Shinji Ishii, who I'm going to talk about in a few days in the Upcoming JLPP Books series, but you can get a preview of Ishii's work by reading an excerpt from his novel Once Upon a Swing at Words Without Borders.

So far, Yoshimoto Banana and Nobuko Takagi have contributed stories (or maybe they're just op-ed pieces/essays - truth be told I haven't read them yet). Beyond that, over 130 authors are offering their books in the bookstore, including Kotaro Isaka and the authors mentioned already.

I doubt the Fukko Shoten can ship to America, but if you want to help out on this side of the Pacific, you can buy the #QuakeBook, which was put together through Twitter and run by @ourmaninabiko, with pieces contributed by the likes of William Gibson and Yoko Ono.

[Yes! Literature making a difference, you guys.]

Possibly Forthcoming JLPP Books, Part 3

2011-04-15T18:57:00.003-04:00

Hello friends. In case you're new here, this week I'm taking a look at books selected by the JLPP for translation that I think will be a fun read, whenever it happens to come out. [Please see Part 1 in this series to see how the JLPP works, etc.]

I don't really have any other comments to make before getting to the meat of the piece like I did last time, so let's just get right to it!

So today we have...

Belka, Why Don't You Bark?
Hideo Furukawa
Translated by Michael Emmerich

Why I'm Excited: This one's a bit easier to explain, because before I read about this book, I hadn't even heard of the author, much less this particular title.

I know, I know - I'm not inspiring much confidence so far. But I think the presence of Michael Emmerich as translator is excitement enough.

I've been lucky enough to talk with Emmerich twice now, most recently a few weeks ago. One of the things he said was that as a translator he's been very lucky, since with very few exceptions, he's been able to select the projects he works on, and he said that all the works he's worked on, even if it wasn't his idea initially to translate a particular piece, he's found that every work he's translated has had something interesting about it.

And if you look at what he's translated, you'll see he's got a great track record and a man of pretty great taste: Yasunari Kawabata, Banana Yoshimoto, Rieko Matsuura, Hiromi Kawakami (his translation of Manazuru won the "Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature"; though my feelings to that book are mixed), and, of course, my current literary obsession, Genichiro Takahashi. So I can't say I've loved everything he's done (another example: I respect Matsuura's The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P, but I wouldn't want to read it again any time soon), but he's an incredibly intelligent guy and a great translator.

But Belka, Why Don't You Bark truly does, in its own right, look interesting. According to the J-Lit organization, Hideo Furukawa is "a literary powerhouse" and described by many literary critics as "ushering in a new 'post Haruki Murakami' era in Japanese fiction." Obviously the J-Lit Organization is going to try and make their authors sound good, but I think it's very interesting that they'd describe him as "post-Murakami," which to me implies a replacement of Murakami, as if we don't need him anymore because we've found someone better. A bit of hyperbole, probably, but, damn if I'm not intrigued.

In fact, according to his Wikipedia page, he's a Murakami super-fan - including writing a "tribute" of Murakami's short story "A Slow Boat to China," first called "A Slow Boat to China RMX" and then retitled "Slow Boat 2002." I don't know what the contents of the story are so I don't know what a "tribute" means, but I sure wish I could read it for myself. Maybe it's Furukawa's list of the first Chinese people HE met.

Also, Furukawa sounds like a cool dude (like Ko Machida) because since 2006 he's been jamming with Mukai Shutoku, leader of the seminal indie rock bands Number Girl and Zazen Boys (whose experimental math rock style I like a little better than the more straightforward 90s alt-rock of Number Girl).

Belka, Why Don't You Bark? is kind of a history novel starting from WWII, then the Korean War, and the Space Race, but by following a pair of dogs and their many offspring and their roles in these major world events. At the same time, though, it also has another narrative about a KGB dog breeder who kidnaps a yakuza's daughter, and these two narrative threads eventually merge.

I'll admit the first plot line sounds more interesting than the second one, but I still think it's a really neat idea. I also like the way the JLPP describes it as a cross between "pure literature" and "entertainment literature" - which is basically how the literary circles describe Haruki Murakami. Not too dry or pretentiousness and not pure fluff either. And again, if it caught Michael Emmerich's attention, I'll definitely give it a shot.

Possibly Forthcoming JLPP Books, Part 2

2011-04-13T00:05:00.002-04:00

Over the next few days I'm going to highlight some of the newest books selected by the JLPP that may be published soon(*) and that I'm particularly excited to read. (See my recent post to catch up on the whole spiel, as well as the reasons why I'm excited about Masahiko Shimada's Death Penalty.)

(*)As I was doing my research, I saw something that made me profoundly disappointed. Most of the books on the list they have for publishers have been around a long time now. Masahiko Shimada's Death Penalty wasn't even part of the 5th round of drafts, it was in the 4th. The book I'm going to talk about below (along with many others) was discussed in this post from the Three Percent blog last May. The Downfall of Matias Guili by Natsuki Ikezawa, another book I think sounds fascinating and want to talk about soon, was from the 2nd round(!) of selected books.

Why aren't publishers picking up these books?? It's really too bad. I certainly wouldn't defend the literary merit of every book on the JLPP list (since some of them seem like rather questionable choices to me, not to name names...), but some of them are moderately to really good contemporary work (The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P and Manazuru) while others are undisputed classics or from important authors (Botchan, The Glass Slipper and Other Stories, etc.).

I guess I just wonder if (and which) publishers have read which works, and why they disliked them or found them to be so severely unprofitable. I know it takes time to publish books, but some of these books have been on the market forever - not only that, but fully translated and ready to go.

[So I guess I'm just going to pretend me talking about them will drum up interest somehow and publishers will suddenly decide to publish the books.]

[Also, on the up side, if they announced round 5 so long ago, maybe round 6 will be coming up soon and we get a whole new round of books to look forward to...]

Sigh. Anyway...

Punk Samurai and the Cult
Ko Machida
Translated by Wayne P. Lammers

Why I'm Excited: Ko Machida is like Haruki Murakami in a way - his initial aims in life had nothing to do with literature. He was first famous in the critically acclaimed punk band INU, and then many other acts, in the 80s, and then dabbled in acting, including a starring role in the sci-fi/punk rock musical movie Burst City. (I've never seen the movie but this trailer looks insane in an awesome way:)

In the early 90s he started writing poetry, and then fiction, and he's won a bunch of the big awards, including the Akutagawa and the Tanizaki.

The JLPP describes Punk Samurai and the Cult as a "fabulously preposterous historical novel." The plot revolves around one samurai witnessing another samurai suddenly murdering a seemingly harmless old man and his daughter, but it turns out the old man was a member of the secret religious cult "The Belly Shaking Party" and the samurai did not want the religion to spread. The samurai witness goes to talk to his boss, and his boss then joins up with the killer samurai (in a classic buddy-cop opposite people style: the first samurai is an academic but terrible at swordplay, the second samurai a master swordsman but dumb as a rock) to take down this cult.

The genre tag for Punk Samurai and the Cult given by the JLPP is "Fantasy/Surreal/Horror," but it also sounds like it'll have a killer sense of humor.

Machida has won some awards for fiction, but the fact that he doesn't come from a literary background could keep this novel from being well-crafted or elegantly structured, and being instead choppy or aimless, as I find a lot of Japanese literature to suffer from, at least from my Western-literature-educated eyes. Still, the offbeat sensibility is what appeals to me, and Machida has proven himself in the literary circles to be a talented writer, so I have high, though cautious, hopes.

Possibly Forthcoming JLPP Books I'm Excited About

2011-04-10T22:45:00.000-04:00

So about two months ago, the JLPP released an "advance information" sheet, which is their list of books they're trying to sell to American publishers.

Although I've written about it here, quickly, the JLPP, or Japanese Literature Publishing Project, is an organization that funds and promotes the translations of Japanese fiction into various foreign languages. They hire the translator, they edit the translation, they sell that book to American or French or whatever publishers (who are relieved they didn't have to spend any money doing that work themselves), and then, as an added bonus, the JLPP buys, from the publisher, a large number of copies themselves to give to libraries and such to promote Japanese culture to a larger foreign audience, thus ensuring the American publisher makes a certain amount of money, even if it doesn't sell very well at Barnes and Nobles to readers like you or me. Everybody wins.

According to their website, this is round five of books they're trying to hawk. All the books on this list have been translated already, but it does not specify whether the rights have been bought by someone already or not. As such, there's no guarantee that any of the books on the list will be seen on American shelves anytime soon.

Nevertheless, over the next few days I'm going to highlight the books that look especially intriguing to me. Starting with:

Death Penalty
Masahiko Shimada
Translated by Meredith McKinney

Why I'm Excited: Masahiko Shimada is an extremely interesting writer. He won a literary award for his book A Divertimento for Gentle Leftists while he was still a college student, and among his works he has a novel called Higan Sensei which is supposedly a parody of Natsume Soseki's undisputed classic Kokoro.

I've read MOST of Dream Messenger, his only novel available so far in English, (I got it out from the library and had to return it before I could finish), and I'll admit right now that I thought it was a bit uneven. It's got an interesting idea, some interesting parts, it's occasionally hilarious, but it's far from a fully cohesive story. But his short story "Momotaro in a Capsule" from Monkey Brain Sushi is one of the smartest and most hilarious stories I've EVER read (he also has a story in the far inferior Japanese fiction anthology New Japanese Voices that I've yet to read). Honestly, though, at his best, he reminds me of a slightly more postmodern Kenzaburo Oe - intelligent, political, and full of black humor.

The basic summary of this book is that a man demands the right to commit suicide but to have the time of his life for one week until then. The summary makes it sound both thought provoking and really outlandish/funny (he takes out his life savings to dine with his favorite idol, for one), which from my experience, are both extremely accurate descriptions of Shimada's work. It thus has an equal chance of being absolutely brilliant, a train wreck, or simply mediocre, but my gut feeling is that it will be pretty awesome.

New Review: Rieko Matsuura's "The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P"

2011-03-28T20:16:00.000-04:00

Good evening once again my friends. I come to you once more to redirect you to another review I wrote, since I'm just everywhere on the internet these days; this time it's the cult '90s bestseller The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P by Rieko Matsuura, and translated by Michael Emmerich, which I wrote for the newly revamped Chin Music Press blog.

Matsuura is an interesting figure in the Japanese literature community. I have the Japanese edition of her latest novel Kenshin, another "transformation" type book, only this time someone turns into a dog. I haven't read it yet, or even looked at it really, but it did win the Yomiuri Prize, which is a pretty big deal. She is also (according to her Japanese Wikipedia page) an avid (female) pro-wrestler fan.

As for other bitlits, I don't know if anyone looks at my Twitter feed (I'm totally on Twitter, you guys! Follow me!), but you may or may not have noticed that the cover for the US edition of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 has been revealed and it's pretty awesome. Chip Kidd (who designs a lot of awesome book covers) talks about the design of it here.

New Review: Kotaro Isaka's "Remote Control"

2011-03-25T15:08:00.000-04:00

Hello internauts. Just a quick announcement that I have a new book review at the Three Percent website. It's Kotaro Isaka's Remote Control, which was originally called "Golden Slumber" in the Japanese, based on the Beatles' song of the same name.

I've talked about Kotaro Isaka here before a little bit ("Golden Slumber"/Remote Control was actually one of the books my Japanese teacher recommended to me to read), and I've even translated him a little bit for fun (Accuracy of Death seems like a much easier sell for foreign audiences, what with this goth/death renaissance we're having in pop lit. right now). He seems like he has some interesting books and is a promising young writer; though Remote Control wouldn't normally be my cup of tea I found myself caught up in it nonetheless. Nothing groundbreaking, but a very enjoyable read.

A sad bit of coincidence though: The novel takes place in Sendai, and I finished writing the review for it just two days before the earthquake and tsunami hit Sendai in real life. So if you haven't yet, be sure to donate to your organization of choice - just be careful of scams. I went with the Red Cross, myself.

Bungakukai: a Japanese Literary Magazine

2011-03-16T00:44:00.000-04:00

Today I got my hands on a number of recent issues of the literary magazine Bungakukai. According to the great and powerful Wikipedia, it is one of the top five most prestigious literary journals of Japan, the others being Gunzo, Shincho, Subaru, and Bungei. I'd only heard of Gunzo before because I've read about Haruki Murakami being published in it.

It is very much like an American literary journal, but a bit larger than the ones I've come across - it's a good 340 pages (for instance, Glimmer Train comes in at a little over 200; Paris Review certainly felt smaller when I held it in my hands at the bookstore a few weeks ago). It has short stories, poetry, serialized parts of longer novels, interviews, and essays. Also, they all have the same type of cover - that of large, scary-looking sculptures of various animals with the same zombie bugged out eyes.

Another cool thing about Bungakukai, especially in comparison to American literary journals, is that it comes out monthly. Not quarterly, or trimester-ly. I have no clue how well these magazines sell or how easy it is find them when in bookstores (I never thought to look for them when I was in Japan) but you would think that they're a bit more popular than our American counterparts.

Here in front of me I have the newest issue, that is, April 2011. There's some interesting stuff here, and a lot of names I recognize. The following is just a small portion of what it has to offer:

The "headline" so to speak is a new novel(la?) by Yoshimoto Banana called Juujuu ("Sizzle sizzle") - described as taking place at a steak house in Shitamachi. It's advertised as being 200 pages, but takes up only 60 in the journal - but each page has two columns so maybe that translates to 200 regular, paperback sized pages.

There's also a part of a serialized novel (part 11) by Masahiko Shimada called 傾国子女Keikokushijo （"Prostitute children"?)

A conversation between Itoi Shigesato (essayist and Earthbound creator!) and Genichiro Takahashi called (maybe this is not what the Japanese is going for, but it sounds right to me, and also hilarious) "To 'Sayonara', or not to 'Sayonara': 30 Years of Japan and After." Described as: "The first dialogue between two people who together washed away the limelight of the '80s and ran through 30 years of Japan." I think this has something (everything) to do with the live tweet marathon Takahashi did at Itoi's office to promote his latest volume of literary criticism called "Sayonara, Japan: Japanese Novels 2."

There's of course, much much more, but these are the things that jump at me, since these are the names I can recognize in Japanese.

Still, pretty neat, yeah? Maybe I'll do this again with some of my other volumes. Let me know if any of you out there are even interested.

Vertically Challenged: What's Going On With the J-Lit Scene in America

2011-03-06T19:16:00.006-05:00

About a week and a half ago on February 24th, I saw through my Twitter feed that Vertical Inc., one of the only publishing houses devoted to Japanese literature and non-fiction was being bought out by Kodansha and Dai Nippon Printing. (You can see the original article at Publisher's Weekly). Then, a few days ago, the Japan Times reported that Kodansha International (unfortunately, the other publishing house for J-lit) was shutting down entirely.

Needless to say I was shocked and flummoxed. My initial thought was, Shit, that's bad news. But also really dumb - why would Kodansha acquire someone if they knew they were going under? Of course, that's what you get for not reading the words carefully: Kodansha International, a subsidiary of Kodansha was shutting down, not the parent company itself.

Also part of this deal is that Kodansha is starting a new manga line called Kodansha Comics, which will reacquire the rights to the titles put out by Del Rey, including, I imagine, critical (and personal) favorites Genshiken and Nodame Cantabile. Will we be seeing new reissues of these manga? Dunno. But it might be cool if they did with some deluxe packaging or new odds-and-ends. Vertical will continue to put out their classic and cult manga like their Tezuka properties which is nice, because their art design is pretty damn spiffy.

Honestly, the news that Vertical has been bought out actually brings me some sense of relief. Don't get me wrong; it sucks that Kodansha International is no more. They were the first to publish Haruki Murakami as well as more contemporary fare like Kotaro Isaka's Remote Control - which I suppose is now officially the last piece of fiction they're publishing before shutting their doors.

BUT, Vertical has been struggling for a long time. And for a while, Vertical was the tops. Obviously, I am a little biased towards them - they put out Sayonara, Gangsters for God's sake. Do I have to tell you again how it is one of my favorite books ever, or that Genichiro Takahashi is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors? But even beyond that, they've put out novels by other important and popular contemporary writers like Kaori Ekuni, Koji Suzuki, Randy Taguchi, etc. etc. etc. In fact, if you look at the numbers, according to the Translation Database upheld by Open Letter Books, in 2008 Vertical put out 10 of the 23 Japanese language fiction books, and only 1(!!!) of 15 in 2010. Big drop. For a little bit, Vertical was looking to be a very important player in the J-lit scene.

But that was years ago now. Lately, all they put out is manga, and even before then, they focused a little more on genre fiction than straight-up literature. So, even if Vertical will still be in charge of the artsy manga while Kodansha Comics puts out the popular stuff, there's a very good chance that Kodansha International's death will be Vertical Inc.'s rebirth, at least from a literary fiction stand-point. I sure hope that's the case. We can't being losing both of the only two Japanese-centric presses...right?

The other issue with J-lit right now is what's going on with the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (note that a lot of that info is out of date now), who yes, are holding a translation contest at this moment, but whose online presence has grown to almost nil (the translation contest is literally the ONLY info you can get on the JLPP website right now). Read Japan, which sounds basically like the JLPP in function and scope, might help bring more J-lit in English translation, but they have yet to announce any projects. The JLPP is an integral part to getting more Japanese literature on US shelves, but have been steadily declining in titles over the years, according to the research by David Jacobson at Chin Music Press (a great article that you should look at and that I've used for a lot of the research in this here article).

Anyway, it doesn't look great, but hopefully things will be turning around, and Vertical will keep on keepin' on (particularly with more non-genre literature please).

(P.S. - It might be a little unfair to call Vertical and Kodansha International the only Japanese centric presses. Stone Bridge Press is also pretty Japan-centric, and have a number of titles I'm interested in reading, including In the Pool. Tuttle and Chin Music Press also have vested interests in Japan, and then, of course, there are the big presses and the (few) big names. Basically, I think all publishers should show a larger interest in Japanese literature, but obviously my opinions are totally biased. It also made me realize how all of these presses have to sell non-fiction/manga/miscellany/classics to support their forays into contemporary literary fiction, which is too bad, but that's the business.)

UPDATE: I just checked the JLPP website and they seem to be up and running full speed ahead again - they even have a list of their work up! List looks great too... some really interesting stuff that I hope publishers will pick up.)

An Introduction to Japanese Drinking Songs

2011-02-22T22:14:00.004-05:00

This past weekend my friend from Japan came to America as a graduation present to himself. My friends and I only saw him for two days and three nights, though he had been exploring other parts of the Northeast like NYC and Washington DC (thank goodness, as much as I was happy to see him, my friends and I were the ONLY thing of interest up here, so hopefully he got his money's worth).

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and of course threw a little nomikai in one of our apartments. And then he taught us a great, fun, easy to learn drinking song.

(I realized just now that I don't personally know any English drinking songs. The only one that comes to mind, embarrassingly, is "99 Bottles of Beer" on the wall, which I'm sure 99% of the time is sung by little kids on road trips and at summer camp.)

Anyway there are many, many 飲み会のコール (nomikai no kouru, from the word "call," as in chant) a.k.a 一気コール（ikki kouru), and the only one that I learned AND remembered (I know there's a second one that I learned but have since totally forgotten, probably because I was already a bit drunk) is a very simple repitition of 飲んで (nonde, literally, "Drink!") as you would chant "Chug! Chug! Chug!" in English. The rhythm is more complicated than that quintessential "Chug!" though it speeds up in the same way, and ends with もう一杯（mou ippai, "One more!). Here's a video with the proper rhythm.

This one, though a bit more complicated, is still very easy for a non-Japanese to learn, because the way my friend taught it to us, the tune is to the classic Disney song "Bippity-Boppity-Boo." Each verse starts with a month of the year, and ends with 酒が飲めるぞ (sake ga nomeru zo, "We can drink booze y'all!). You go in order from January to December, and in the middle, you come up with your own "reason" to drink for that month. For example,

一月は雪が降って、
酒が飲めるぞ
酒が飲める、酒が飲める、酒が飲めるぞ！

(In January, the snow is falling,
So we can drink booze!
We can drink booze, we can drink booze, we can frickin' drink booze!)

Although the tune is slightly different in this video (copyright issues?), it goes more or less like this. They're mostly holidays, but pay particular attention to September and November:

These drinking songs, of course, are very popular with the young'uns, so many universities in Japan have clubs/teams that actually performed WITH CHOREOGRAPHY and then COMPETED in a national competition (I'm pretty sure this competition hasn't been held since 2008, but, that's why there's Youtube):

So join in on the festivities the next time you find yourself at a nomikai!

Poems by Toyo Shibata

2011-02-12T19:03:00.002-05:00

「溶けてゆく」 Melting

ポットから　　 Hot water
注がれる　　　 Pouring
お湯は　　　　 From the cup
やさしい　　　 Are like
言葉のようだ　Kind words

私の　　　　　 My
心の角砂糖は　 Sugar cube heart
カップのなかで Melts
気持ちよく　　Gently
溶けてゆく　　In my mug

____
「返事」　　　　　　My Reply

風が　耳元で　　　　In my ears    the wind
「もうそろそろ　　　Invites me
あの世に　　　　　　In intoxicating tones
行きましょう」　　　"Shall we go now
なんて　猫撫で声で　To the other side?"
誘うのよ　　　　　　

だから　私　　　　　So,    I
すぐに返事をしたの　Quickly replied
「あと少し　　　　　"I'll stay here
こっちに居るわ　　　Just a bit longer
やり残した　　　　　There are still some things
事があるから」　　　Left undone"

風は　　　　　　　　The wind
困った顔をして　　　With a pout on her face
すーっと帰って行った Swiftly returned from whence it came

____

「肩叩き券」　　　　　　　　　A Coupon for a Shoulder Massage

埃にまみれた　　　　　　　　　Something I pulled out
がまぐちの中から　　　　　　　Covered in dust
出てきた物　　　　　　　　　　From an old coin purse

父ちゃん　母ちゃんへ　　　　To Mommy and Daddy
十五分肩叩き券　　　　　　　15 Minute Shoulder Massage
（三十一年十月まで使えるよ）(Expires 10/1931)
健一                   Kenichi

当時　小学生だった倅が　　Back then    my boy was in grade school
わら半紙を小さく切って　　He cut out cheap straw paper
作ってくれた券の束　　　　And made us a these bundle of coupons

今でも　　　　　　　　　 I wonder if I could use it
使えるかしら　　　　　　 Even now

______

「秘密」　　　　　　　　A Secret

私ね　死にたいって　　　You know,    I've thought
思ったことが　　　　　　So many times
何度もあったの　　　　　That I wanted to die
でも　詩を作り始めて　　But I started writing poetry
多くの人に励まされ　And have been encouraged by so many people

今はもう　　　　　　　　So now　
泣きごとは言わない　　　I won't complain anymore　　

九十八歳でも　　　　　 Even at 98
恋はするのよ　　　　　 I love
夢だってみるの　　　　 And I dream
雲にだって乗りたいわ　 I want to ride on a cloud　　

[From くじけないで、2010, Asuka Shinsha.]

How to be a Poetry Bestseller in Japan

2011-02-12T12:01:00.001-05:00

The Short Answer:
1) Don't start writing poetry until you're in your 90s
2) Get on TV as a human interest story

The Long (and less cynical) Answer:

In the world of publishing, poetry I think will always be a hard sell. Because really, "good" poetry requires work on the part of the reader - it's very hard (and not rewarding) to be a passive reader of poetry. By it's very construction poetry requires looking deeply at the very construction of the poem and analyzing it beyond the sum of its parts. Sure, it might take less than a minute to read the lines of a short poem, but how much do you get out of a quick scan of the words on the page? And bad poetry, for instance any and all of the poetry we all wrote as lovesick teenagers, is easy to spot, and easy to dismiss. So in my not at all scientific or even particularly literary theory, bad poetry is obviously bad but figuring out why good poetry is good takes a little extra work.

I'm not saying that prose fiction is totally different either. Good fiction is more rewarding when you can take a closer look at its unique construction, and bad fiction is also just as easy to spot as poetry. For some reason though, bad fiction (and I guess I should point out that "bad,"which is an admittedly vague and poor descriptor to use in a pseudo-literary criticism based theory, in this context is more like "unoriginal" maybe, bringing nothing new to the table) is encouraged in the publishing world. It's comfort food. Sometimes that's exactly what we want - familiar things only dressed up as something slightly new.

I would never say that all bestsellers are bad pieces of fiction, because that would simply be untrue. But bestsellers are bestsellers because they satisfy some literary or emotional need because it targets very base and universal instincts and desires. Again, I don't mean this to be derogatory in any way, but it simply has to play those universal notes, since to reach that many people it has to be able to affect (in some way, intellectually, emotionally, what have you) the widest group of people possible. And recreating that sort of widespread appeal with poetry is difficult, since bad (or "unoriginal") poetry is not tolerated in the same way that bad fiction is. Poetry has to reach a very difficult level of creativity to be popular, I think - not too high as to be off-putting or "difficult," but not too low as to be seen as boring or unoriginal or amateurish.

And all of what I just laid out isn't necessarily true. Sometimes you just need some sort of sensational angle to get people talking.

Phew. Now we turn to Toyo Shibata.

Yes, the latest poetry bestseller in Japan right now is 99-year old Toyo Shibata, who published a collection of 42 poems called くじけないで ( Kujikenaide, "Don't be discouraged") that has now sold 1.5 MILLION copies.

1.5 MILLION COPIES.

According to Reuters, a collection of poetry in Japan is considered successful in Japan when it sells ten thousand copies. So yes, this is certainly a runaway bestseller. It's got numbers comparable to Murakami's 1Q84. The only other collection of poetry that I know of with sales numbers like this was Machi Tawara's Salad Anniversary almost twenty years ago in the early 1990s.

So is her poetry worth all the fuss? Well, I don't know.

I've mentioned on this blog a few times that poetry is not my strong suit or where my literary interests lie. I think I've got a pretty good critical eye though, even if I'm not as versed (PUN MOST DEFINITELY INTENDED) in the history of great poetry, classical and contemporary, as others. So in my opinion, yes, some of her poems are quite nice. At their best, they're emotionally resonant and the language is pretty, I would say, in lieu of beautiful. At their worst, though, they're cloying, overly sentimental, and somewhat cliche, even of herself: she tends to use a lot of the same motifs and imagery in her poems, especially things dealing with nature: you'll see a lot of "sunshine" and "wind" and "I can hear "X" (as in "the wind" or "the cry of cicadas," etc.). Memory is also a go-to theme.

But oy it breaks my heart to say these things! Obviously memory would play an important role in her poetry - she's almost a hundred years old! She seems like a nice old lady who can't do much in her old age except write poetry. What joy does she have besides a nice sunny day and a hot cup of tea and visits from her son? Who am I to criticize?

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you a handful of the poems that I did enjoy, first in the original, and then in a quick English translation that will won't be very poetic in and of itself.

「溶けてゆく」 Melting

ポットから　　 Hot water
注がれる　　　 Pouring
お湯は　　　　 From the cup
やさしい　　　 Are like
言葉のようだ　Kind words

私の　　　　　 My
心の角砂糖は　 Sugar cube heart
カップのなかで Melts
気持ちよく　　Gently
溶けてゆく　　In my mug

(Things lost in that translation: the nice rhyme and rhythm of the last two lines: kimochi yoku / tokete yuku. Approximated with the slant rhyme of "melt" and "gentle." Also didn't want to end the poem with in my mug, which is the third line in the Japanese, but sounded really bad when I kept it there anyway.)

「返事」　　　　　　My Reply

風が　耳元で　　　　In my ears    the wind
「もうそろそろ　　　Invites me
あの世に　　　　　　In intoxicating tones
行きましょう」　　　"Shall we go now
なんて　猫撫で声で　To the other side?"
誘うのよ　　　　　　

だから　私　　　　　So,    I
すぐに返事をしたの　Quickly replied
「あと少し　　　　　"I'll stay here
こっちに居るわ　　　Just a bit longer
やり残した　　　　　There are still some things
事があるから」　　　Left undone"

風は　　　　　　　　The wind
困った顔をして　　　With a pout on her face
すーっと帰って行った Swiftly returned from whence it came

(Things last in that translation: Possesessive-ized the title - sounded bad as just "Reply" or "The Reply". Lost a line because it was too stilted not putting "Shall we go now" together. Said "Invites me / In intoxicating tones" to get the nice alliteration/assonance of "nante nekonadegoede," since "nekonadegoe" is more like a "coaxing tone"; it's literally "the voice you use to talk to a cat." "Returned from whence it came" is decidedly more flowery than the simple "went back" - WENT BACK WHERE I ASK YOU. Also made the wind feminine, who in the Japanese is more or less neutral.)

「肩叩き券」　　　　　　　　　A Coupon for a Shoulder Massage

埃にまみれた　　　　　　　　　Something I pulled out
がまぐちの中から　　　　　　　Covered in dust
出てきた物　　　　　　　　　　From an old coin purse

父ちゃん　母ちゃんへ　　　　To Mommy and Daddy
十五分肩叩き券　　　　　　　15 Minute Shoulder Massage
（三十一年十月まで使えるよ）(Expires 10/1931)
健一 Kenichi

当時　小学生だった倅が　　Back then    my boy was in grade school
わら半紙を小さく切って　　He cut out cheap straw paper
作ってくれた券の束　　　　And made us a these bundle of coupons

今でも　　　　　　　　　 I wonder if I could use it
使えるかしら　　　　　　 Even now

(Hate that I had to invert the last two lines.)

「秘密」　　　　　　　　A Secret

私ね　死にたいって　　　You know,    I've thought
思ったことが　　　　　　So many times
何度もあったの　　　　　That I wanted to die
でも　詩を作り始めて　　But I started writing poetry
多くの人に励まされ　And have been encouraged by so many people

今はもう　　　　　　　　So now　
泣きごとは言わない　　　I won't complain anymore　　

九十八歳でも　　　　　 Even at 98
恋はするのよ　　　　　 I love
夢だってみるの　　　　 And I dream
雲にだって乗りたいわ　 I want to ride on a cloud　　

(If you're not touched at least a little bit by that last poem then you are more heartless than I. Those four poems are a very small portion of what's found in Kujikenaide, and what I think are overall some of the better ones. But if you decide to check the book out for yourself, be warned: you'll probably find a number of duds. Or maybe you won't. It has sold 1.5 million copies.)

1st JLPP International Translation Contest

2011-01-21T14:54:00.000-05:00

This just in!

It looks like the Japanese Literature Publishing Project is holding their first annual translation contest! Apparently they announced this back in late December, but I hadn't caught a whiff of it anywhere until I randomly decided to check out the JLPP website today.

The JLPP needs to advertise more!

One of the requirements is that this is for first-time translators only. Previously published translators (even those with just one story in an anthology) are inelligible. Also, curiously enough, there are no details about the prize for the winner, although there is a first and second prize winner, so hopefully there is one (especially publication!).

There are six total choices for the translation pieces - three short stories and three literary essays. Although the wording might be a little misleading, it sounds like the translator must submit one translation from each category, so a total of two submissions. They even provide PDF files of the pieces - no expensive shipping from Amazon Japan necessary (if you are indeed not living in Japan, like I am)! Also, for any German speakers out there, it's for both English and German translators!

You have almost all year to work on these you guys - the submission period is September 1st, 2011 to November 30, 2011. So get crackin'! Oh, and one of the judges is Stephen Snyder - who translated Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor and Ryu Murakami's Coin Locker Babies among many other great contemporary works. So that's neat.

Clearly this is very exciting to me. You know I'm giving it a shot.

Anyway, check it out here!

A Translation Comparison of Haruki Murakami's "100% Perfect Girl"

2011-01-18T17:27:00.000-05:00

In preparing for the soon arriving untitled project I mentioned in the last post, I went to the library today looking for some books and I found a somewhat old anthology of Japanese short stories called New Japanese Voices: The Best Contemporary Fiction of Japan. I was drawn to the collection of writers assembled for this book, including (Wednesday Afternoon Picnic favorite) Genichiro Takahashi, Masahiko Shimada, Amy Yamada (here under the spelling Eimi Yamada), Banana Yoshimoto, and everyone's favorite Haruki Murakami.

What struck me about the Murakami was that the story in the collection was called "On Meeting My 100 Percent Woman One Fine April Morning," subtly different from the title I'm used to, "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning."My interest piqued, I took it out along with an assortment of other books you may hear about in the near future.

The reason why the title is slightly different is that it was translated for this collection by a different set of translators than any of the "official" translators, i.e. Jay Rubin, who translated the version of this story for The Elephant Vanishes, Philip Gabriel or Alfred Birnbaum. And boy does it show.

Overall, I guess the problem is that the non-Rubin version is extremely literal. Checking against the original as collected in カンガルー日和 (A Perfect Day for Kangaroos), nothing seems wrong in any obvious way. But it's extremely wordy and structured in a way that when reading it just doesn't sound quite natural. And that's probably the deal-breaker. This early in his career, Murakami was a "cool" writer, a voice for the young, and consequently his style was decidedly not "literary" or flowery in the traditional sense, (my professor has called his style "flat" in many of his published work, to my dismay) but one that was extremely modern and accessible. And that has to come across in English too.

Today in a class on translation, we talked about how editors have the final say in the publishing world, and how ultimately editors will edit in a way that will get the book read by as many people as possible because in the end what is important to the company is if the book sells. And obviously different publishers and different editors have very different agendas and see the text in very different ways - a university press might go for something more scholarly than accessible and sell-able like a big publisher like Random House.

Therefore, I wish I could see Jay Rubin's original draft of "100%." Maybe at the end of the day it was his editor that gussied up the text. In terms of faithfulness, there are some slightly liberties: the most obvious are the additions of a handful of sentences that aren't even in the original text - although it is possible, however, that they may have existed at some point. Murakami is infamous for re-writes of his own work in later editions. But in this case, I think Jay Rubin/his editor at Knopf had it right. In my opinion, it is the better translation. I hope that this evaluation is as unbiased as possible - I did read the Jay Rubin first and many times over since, so obviously I'm "used to" that version. But let's take a look now at both.

For now, the first sentence:

Jay Rubin:
One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harajuku neighborhood, I walk past the 100% perfect girl.

New Japanese Voices version:
One fine April morning, I passed my 100 percent woman on a Harajuku back street.

Obviously, the "Tokyo's fashionable neighborhood" part isn't in the original - every person in Japan knows Harajuku, although the same assumption can't be made for Americans, especially in the early 1990s (I'm talking about those innocent days before Gwen Stefani's appropriation of Harajuku fashion in the early 2000s' cultural zeitgeist). But one inclusion that IS necessary is the simple word "perfect" in Rubin's translation. No, it's not in the original. But it is clearly implied in the context of the story and sounds 100% weird without it. Continuing:

Rubin: Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

NJV: She wasn't an especially pretty woman. It wasn't that she was wearing fine clothes, either. In the back, her hair still showed how she'd slept on it; and her age must already have been close to thirty. Nonetheless, even from fifty meters away, I knew it: she is the 100 percent woman for me. From the moment her figure caught my eyes, my chest shook wildly; my mouth was parched dry as a desert.

Rubin's "She doesn't stand out in any way" is an obvious addition - in my copy of the Japanese, anything resembling that sentence is not there, but it fits in perfectly (non-descript-ness has always been a favorite image for Murakami). The same goes for "She isn't young, either" and "not even close to a "girl," properly speaking" - 100% not in the original. It's an interesting choice to be sure. Like I said, the NJV version is much closer to the original text, except for one change, for reasons I absolutely can't fathom: the NJV is in the past tense, when the original (and the Rubin) are in the present. Let's continue:

Rubin: Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or that you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the table next to mine because I like the shape of her nose.
But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can't call the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It's weird.

NJV: Maybe you have a type of woman you like. For example, you think, women with slender ankles are good; or, all in all, it's a women with big eyes; or it's definitely women with pretty fingers, or I don't understand it, but I'm attracted to women who take a lot of time to eat a meal - something like that. Of course, I have that kind of preference. I've even been distracted, eating at a restaurant, by the shape of a woman's nose at the next table.
But no one can "typify" the 100 percent woman at all.
I absolutely cannot even remember what her nose looked like - not even whether she had a nose or not, only that she wasn't especially beautiful. How bizarre!

Again, the NJV matches the original pretty accurately, but this is where that translation really breaks down for me. The most egregious aspect of the NJV is that "typify" nonsense - in the Japanese it's a katakana word: タイプファイする. From personal experience, it is certainly extremely tempting to use the exact same word as in the original when it's presented in the text as a foreign loan word like this instead of a Japanese word. But this just doesn't make any sense. And that weird paragraph break after that sentence is NOT in the original, making it kind of an odd choice. Part of me likes the way the NJV keeps the sense that people are thinking to themselves "Oh, I like THIS about women" in the original, but it does come out a bit wordy, and the Rubin ultimately flows better. Maybe it was painful for even Rubin to have to cut that out. And "It's weird" matches the tone of the narrator in my opinion much better than the extremely emphatic (and overly dramatic) "How bizarre!" - the original, "なんだか不思議なものだ", would be something like "Rather mysterious" if we were to be super translation-ese about it.

I could continue, but this post is getting rather long as it is. Other weird things include the NJV version taking out that the narrator wants to see a Woody Allen movie in particular, for reasons I don't understand (maybe he has a patent on his own name and we have to pay him money every time he's even mentioned).

But look, before anyone starts judging, translation is hard, and it's not a science. If the translators for the NJV version and the book itself had any influence in getting more Murakami translated into English, then good for them. Something is better than nothing. And even though I'm worried about the qualities of the translation, I'm very much looking forward to reading the Shimada and Takahashi stories, simply because there is so little of them in English.

Anyway, The NJV version of the translation can actually be found online in a few places, including here, so check it out for yourself. If you feel I'm totally misguided in praising the changes Rubin/Knopf made in the name of commerciality and selling out, that the translator's integrity has been somehow compromised and that the New Japanese Voices version is the REAL Murakami voice, feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear what other people have to say on this matter.

One last comparison to prove that I'm right though:

Rubin: Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, for too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.
Oh, well. It would have started "Once upon a time" and ended "A sad story, don't you think?"

NJV: Of course, now I know exactly how I should have spoken up to her then. but, no matter what, it's such a long confession I know I wouldn't have been able to say it well. I'm always thinking of things like this that aren't realistic.
Anyway, that confession starts, "once upon a time," and ends, "isn't that a sad story?"

Happy 1-Year Anniversary, Wednesday Afternoon Picnic!

2011-01-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

Huzzah! As of today, I've been (fitfully) doing my blog for exactly one year!

I started Wednesday Afternoon Picnic partly as a means to stave off boredom, partly as a means to help my Japanese, and partly because it seemed like a fun thing to do anyway. This time last year, instead of being at school like I am now, I was waiting for my study abroad to Japan to start in late March. My girlfriend was still in school and I mostly worked nights at a movie theater trying to desperately save up for the trip, which meant that many of my daytimes were actually spent alone in our apartment, and when my girlfriend did get home she had to get through her homework.

Lonely and bored, The Kumozaru Project was the way for me to give myself weekly assignments that would be fun and help me improve my Japanese and get some experience in literary translation, which is something I see myself doing at least as part of my future career. For those of you who don't know, the Kumozaru Project was a weekly translation of Haruki Murakami flash-fiction from his collection Yoru no Kumozaru, which has not been published in English. Once a week I posted a translation and also a commentary on the process and any problems I had.

The amazing thing was, I actually kept up with this self-imposed assignment. I was on schedule for 6 weeks and well into the 7th installment when I got an email requesting on behalf of Murakami's rights management company that I not only stop but take down all the translations I had posted or face some serious consequences. A quick look through my archives will show you that I obviously complied.

Since then, it's been harder for me to keep the site active and regular without a clear goal like I had with the Kumozaru project. I've done the best I can to keep up with content that was diverse and (somewhat?) interesting, but there were certainly many dry spells, which was exacerbated by the fact that once I was in Japan, and back to school, I became incredibly busy. Looking through the posts, even without the Kumozaru posts those first three months had a lot more regular content that they do now.

I can't promise a complete turn-around in terms of frequency of posts, but I do love my little blog and will continue to add to it, with my New Year's resolution to always have a post at least within a two-week period. I know I've focused a lot on Murakami in the past, and I will tell you that I probably will continue to do so. He has so much unavailable in English, especially essays in little bite sized pieces, that as far as translation projects go, they're the perfect size for me to handle regularly on this site. I will also keep up with posts about Genichiro Takahashi, because of my misguided attempts to give him something akin to buzz - I really think he is one of today's most interesting active writers that English-readers would respond to. And since I've never gotten a comment about him that said "Hey! This guy sucks and no one cares!"I see no reason to stop. :)

But, for not just you anonymous members of the Internet, but also for myself, I want to diversify my writing and expand my knowledge of Japanese contemporary writers. At this very moment I'm formulating a new project to kick off the New Year that will help me achieve such a goal, so expect very soon an announcement regarding this new project. And although I've started projects that went nowhere and posts I wanted to do but couldn't get off the ground, I'm pretty excited about this one and really want to do it - so before I say anything more I'm going to figure out the logistics of it exactly so I don't regret anything down the line and have to drop it.

In the meantime, to all you out there who have started following me or just discovered an article or two by accident, thanks for coming and I hope you come back again! I hope to make this year bigger and better.

Genichiro Takahashi's "Life"

2011-01-13T18:35:00.005-05:00

Today I'm going to share some excerpts from a short story that I translated recently by Genichiro Takahashi. It comes from his short story collection 君が代は千代に八千代に (Kimi ga yo ha chiyoni yachiyoni, "May Your Reign Last Forever and Ever") which I've already shared a little bit of here.

This particular excerpt comes from a short story called 人生, or "Life." The story follows Kento, a novelist with a wife and newborn. The beginning is extremely low-key, so much so that the lack of action is actually stifling. He drinks water while his wife drinks beer after beer watching the home shopping network. Eventually he goes to do his work, which of course is his writing. The reader learns that Kento has been suffering from writer's block, and is only able to begin stories. The majority of the "action," as it were, lies in the section where Kento sorts through the collection of his unfinished stories sitting on his computer. The first one he looks at (the one he's currently trying to work on) is called "Handicapped":

Theman was handicapped, ever since birth. He had a large badge attached to hischest, one of crisscrossing lines of green and yellow. It was the mark of thedisabled. This badge was attached to him when he was in first grade. He took atest at school, and then they knew he was handicapped. And what's more, in aranking of the disabled from level 1 to level 8, he was ranked level 1.

His teacher put the badge on him. Then she saidgive this to your mother, and handed him a letter.

The boy went home triumphantly. For he was theonly one in his class to get a badge.

His mother fainted as soon as she saw hisbadge. After a while, he sat down quietly next to his unconscious mother. Afterthat his mother came to. When she saw the badge on his chest, she faintedagain. Then his mother came to again. There was nothing she could do but cometo. Truly, she wanted to stay unconscious like this forever. The boy handed theletter he was given to his mother. His mother read the letter. She faintedbefore she finished reading it.

At some point, his father came home. He wastall; his face, hands and nose were big as well, and he had a stoop as if hewas embarrassed by these things, and there was always creases in his shirt overhis chest. As soon as he came home, his mother and father started to quarrelviolently. It was regarding the matter of the badge pinned to his chest.

“I don't get it. I work for this family frommorning to night, and this is what I get in return. There's still twenty yearsremaining on our loan, and three years ago, when I thought we were gonna get abonus, half of it was payment in kind. And on top of that, get this! The brathas a huge fucking badge on his chest.”

“Are you saying it's my fault?”

“If it's not my fault then whose is it?”

Next to this fight the boy shined his badge. Itsomehow felt magnificent.

Writers writing about writing is certainly a theme of countless stories and novels, but I think the reason this story works is the way Takahashi focuses on the fragments that have been written instead of the inner life of Kento and his frustrations. Instead of something that could be seen as static (in lieu of another less helpful word like "boring" perhaps) Takahashi brings together pieces that are more dynamic. And as a reader, I found that it brings up the question of why the pieces that are shared with the reader in the story (the others are about a son finding out his father has cancer, which at the risk of sounding unsympathetic or meanspirited could be seen as a generic topic, and a man buying a sex robot that hilariously proves to be not what he expected) simply can't be pushed or tweaked into something usable. It's a fascinating idea to me - that something, that on paper sounds like perfect material for a story, cannot be manipulated or evolve into a worthwhile story - and one that sounds very realistic and true to life to me.

But I think that including the unfinished stories alone wouldn't make this story as meaningful or emotionally resonant as it is without picking at Kento's brain somewhat, and showing the reader that behind the frustration of not being able to write is really just fear - fear that he has nothing meaningful to say because his life is ultimately empty:

Kento pulled out a number of novels from thebookshelf written by his peers.

It seemed that everyone was writing about life.About how there was some sort of meaning in life, or something like that. Theywere writing about what was moving, what was full of hardships, and about thejoy that existed afterward. They were writing about this and that, and theexperiences behind them. And when he finished reading them, it seemed like thisthing “life” wasn't so bad. If life is just like this, Kento thought, then Iwant to give this “life” a shot too.

Kento stopped reading the books written by his peers.They won't be his references. No matter what, novels are written about life.There is no such thing as writing about anything else. What Kento wanted toknow was what about life he should write about.

When Kento gives up on his writing for the night and leaves his study, he finds his wife the same way he left her:

Whatthe hell was I thinking, writing these novels? Kento leaned his head to oneside, and gazed at the novels, one after the other; novels that were like streams thatdisappeared halfway through the desert. Just wasted time. Kento switched hiscomputer off and went to the kitchen. His wife was still drinking beer. Thehome shopping network was still on. The products seemed endless.

“Your mother called,” Kento's wife said withoutlooking at him. “She's being treated badly by her daughter-in-law. Even thoughshe knows her teeth are bad, she gives her only old and stale things to eat.”

“That's awful,” Kento said.

“Ifthe time comes, I wonder if it would be OK if we take her in.”

“Of course,” Kento replied.

Kento spoke without moving his eyes from theTV. This is life, he thought.

Therefore, I am living life. It's so quiet.But, Kento thought. But...yet...

I wonder if the effect is not as chilling as it is coming from reading the whole story, but in my opinion "Life" is a powerful story, and a fascinating and important one from Takahashi, who as a writer, is characterized by post-modern tricks and outlandish premises. The outlandish premises color the story, certainly, in that the first and third of the unfinished stories shared are ever so slightly bizarre, but the real meat of the story, and Kento the character, are defined by the silence and the fear and insecurity that silence represents. "Life" is Takahashi proving that there is something very real and very vital behind all the post-modern noise of his fiction.

"Bands You Should Be Listening To" Volume 4: SuiseiNoboAz

2011-01-06T23:33:00.002-05:00

Today's Subject: SuiseiNoboAz

I've been sitting on this for a while now (read: almost a year). I've wanted to talk about this band for just about forever, but I wasn't sure if it was a good candidate. The thing is, they only have one album out. No other EPs or singles. The ten songs on their self-titled album is all that they have offered so far to the world.

But holy shit was this not one of my favorite CDs in the last year - if not ever.

("From Mercury with Love")

The trio formed in Takadanobaba, Tokyo in 2007 and came out with their debut CD in March 2010. It was produced by Number Girl and Zazen Boys' Mukai Shutoku, which makes sense because the little Zazen Boy's I've heard is pretty similar in tone. They released it on their own record label.

And that's as much info there is readily available on the net. But seriously, did you listen to that song above? What? You need more? Go for it:

Damn I can't stand how awesome these guys are. I almost went to see them right before I had to go back the US, but it was really last minute and I was running out of money. Man I wish I had done it anyway.

I apologize that I don't have much else to say about them but just say how great they are. But even after only a single album they have this really defined and polished sound. And each member of the trio really know how to play - listen to those bass licks in that first video. And the drums in this:

プールサイド殺人事 (Poolside Murder Case)

I know this isn't how most people would describe them (cause it's not how anyone uses this word), but to me, these guys got swagger. I'm counting down the days until any news about a follow-up EP or album.

How to Get 'Em: Looks like CD Japan is your only option if you live in the US.

God Bless America

"Do You Like Nicolas Cage?"

2010-12-28T19:07:00.001-05:00

Question 94
Do you like Nicolas Cage?
At 10:35 AM 1998.08.31

   My husband is starting to go bald a bit, so I suggested that he follow the example of the bald but cool Nicolas Cage. However, my husband really hates that he's balding, so he won't listen to me. According to him, "The dude IS bald!!" So all of our arguments end on an unpleasant note.

   But I digress. What I mean to ask is, is there anybody out there that thinks Nicolas Cage is cool? I decided to try asking around.

   If you're not busy, please tell me what you think. Also, does your wife like Nicolas Cage? I'd be so happy if you took the time to answer. (29 years old, Gemini, Blood Type A)

___

   Hello. It seems my wife does not like Nicolas Cage. When I asked what about him, it seems that she doesn't like:

1) the way he talks
2) the shape of his nose
3) the look in his eyes (when he's looking down).

She's a rather prejudiced person. But when I asked her what she thinks about baldness, she said, "That sort of thing doesn't really matter." Please tell that to your husband.

   I personally neither like nor dislike Mr. Cage. He was good as the one-handed baker in Moonstruck, but I guess it must be sweltering, since he only wears tank-tops and is always sweaty.

[From the book 「そうだ、村上さんに聞いてみよう」と世間の人々が村上春樹にとりあえずぶっつける282の大疑問に果たして村上さんはちゃんと答えられるのか?, 2000, The Asahi Newspaper Company.]

Do YOU like Nicolas Cage?

2010-12-28T00:30:00.003-05:00

First of all, my apologies for the long lack of posts. It started with the end of a very intense and busy semester, and then my computer went kaput! I hate it when I go so long without a post, but there wasn't much I could do until now.

Anyway, I've been looking for a fun thing to start off my return, and I was flipping through some of my books and I found the following little selection. It comes from a neat book called "Ah Yes, Let's Ask Mr. Murakami!" which is a collection of questions and answers posed on Haruki Murakami's website in the late nineties. It even has illustrations by longtime collaborator Anzai Mizumaru. Some of the questions that Murakami was asked are pretty random (and consequently hilarious) and Murakami answers them in a most Murakami way (my favorite question, and how I discovered this book, can be found here at How to Japonese). And then I found this:
-----

Question 94
Do you like Nicolas Cage?
At 10:35 AM 1998.08.31

   My husband is starting to go bald a bit, so I suggested that he follow the example of the bald but cool Nicolas Cage. However, my husband really hates that he's balding, so he won't listen to me. According to him, "The dude IS bald!!" So all of our arguments end on an unpleasant note.
   But I digress. What I mean to ask is, is there anybody out there that thinks Nicolas Cage is cool? I decided to try asking around.
   If you're not busy, please tell me what you think. Also, does your wife like Nicolas Cage? I'd be so happy if you took the time to answer. (29 years old, Gemini, Blood Type A)

   Hello. It seems my wife does not like Nicolas Cage. When I asked what about him, it seems that she doesn't like:
1) the way he talks
2) the shape of his nose
3) the look in his eyes (when he's looking down).
She's a rather prejudiced person. But when I asked her what she thinks about baldness, she said, "That sort of thing doesn't really matter." Please tell that to your husband.
   I personally neither like nor dislike Mr. Cage. He was good as the one-handed baker in Moonstruck, but I guess it must be sweltering, since he only wears tank-tops and is always sweaty.
--------

YES.

Bonus bonus bonus! The question gets a comic to go along with it! Start with the guy on the right in each panel (click on the image to make it big enough to be legible. Also, pardon the poor image editing skills. I sort of rushed through it to get it up):

[For those curious, Lou Oshiba is an actor/comedian. He looks like this:

Well, it's true. He's no Cage.]

Interesting Link Round-up

2010-11-03T19:33:00.000-04:00

Many months ago I wrote a post on the JLPP, and how they're an NPO that promotes Japanese literature in translation through myriad means (you can see what I wrote for yourself here).

The other day, I saw at the Literary Saloon that a new like-minded project called "Read Japan" has been established. The article at the Literary Saloon is quite interesting, and I suggest you read it.

But it turns out it was just a good day for Japanese literature news the other day at the Literary Saloon, so I link you to a book review that also talks a bit about the JLPP (and their problems...) and a Q&A with Haruki Murakami translator Jay Rubin.

Basically, this is a post that is telling you to start following the Literary Saloon if you haven't already, especially if you have an interest in international literature even beyond that of Japan.

An Excerpt from "The Illusions of Love and Marriage"

2010-10-30T01:06:00.002-04:00

Although this isn't exactly what I had in mind originally, I'd like to share with you a piece of work by Genichiro Takahashi, author of of one of my favorite novels, Sayonara, Gangsters.

I bring him up a lot and it's kind of funny when I think about it. I've only read a small fraction of his work, in English - only a novel, and in the original Japanese, maybe a combined total of seventy-five to a hundred pages from about a dozen short stories, beginnings of novels, and literary essays. And yet I'm obsessed. I believe in him as a writer almost entirely on faith. Yes, I loved his one novel, but does that prove his entire body of work to be of literary worth? I mean, yes, I do think so, but if you were to ask me why I believed so much in what I only know so little of, I couldn't give you a good answer. I can point out what I like about his work only so much. Maybe I should have a little more confidence in my taste/sense of "good" literature, but I can't let go of this idea that Takahashi is or should be the next big thing, but nobody knows it outside of Japan yet (and even there I don't think he has the largest following).

The following bit is from a short story of what I'm translating as "The Illusions of Love and Marriage", from his short story collection 君が代は千代に八千代に. I'm satisfied with just presenting this beginning bit because although the story itself is interesting, it's too long to translate here (at least for now). And what I want to focus on translating is the poem.
---
He met her at a party. She was a poet. She was reading poetry in the middle of the party. A real beauty. Narrow hips, a big butt. And big eyes. In other words, she was just his type. She wore a white t-shirt over jeans, and with a spellbound expression she read her poetry.

"Einstein rode the Galaxy Express
Einsten, with the Fuji Evening News and Shonen Jump in his lap
And by the window a plastic bottle filled with oolong tea
His travel arrangements are complete
The conductor came
And Einstein took out his ticket and said
'Standard class, Shinagawa to Kamakura'
The conductor took off his cap
'Does light appear to stop to people running at the speed of light?
Is the medium that transmits his light ether?
Is the object's matter inherent in that object?
What is the ultimate matter?
What will happen when matter and anti-matter collide?
The price of the standard class ticket is 750 yen, thank you for riding with us'
After a while the conductor came back
'Sir, we've already passed Kamakura'
Einstein was surprised
'Huh? Where are we now?'
'Well we've passed Kamakura, and Muromachi as well, and in 15 minutes is Heian'
'Oh darn, I've mistaken this for the Yokosuka line'
The Galaxy Express will go
Anywhere, you know
E=MC²"

----
Poetry is super hard to translate. In the original Japanese, it's pretty loosey-goosey in terms of form, but since many of the phrases end with the simple desu ka or verb past tense -ta, there is definitely some sense of rhyme in many phrases, but it's just so easy to construct in the Japanese, and totally weird in the English. Maybe with some time I could come up with a substitution or solution, but I just wanted to share this crazy little poem. The Galaxy Express is quite a fixture in the Japanese pop culture consciousness (think of all the anime alone). And I would also like to point out that Kamakura, while also a famous city outside of Tokyo, is also the name of a time period in Japanese history, as are the Muromachi and the Heian eras.

Review: Ryu Murakami's Popular Hits of the Showa Era (and bonus!)

2010-10-23T15:32:00.003-04:00

I redirect you once again to the wonderful Three Percent blog for my latest review on Ryu Murakami's forthcoming in English Popular Hits of the Showa Era.

Every book I read by Ryu has to live up to Coin Locker Babies, which is one of my favorite books of all time, which means Popular Hits has a lot to live up to. I liked the book enough as I read it (most of it not under ideal conditions either - waiting around in the ER), but now that some time has past I realize it's grown on me quite a bit. It's just so absurd. Even though all the characters are pretty much inherently unlikable, what happens is just so whacked out it's hard to not read it with a smile (of course be prepared for grimaces too, I think).

One of the fun things about the book that didn't make it into my review is how all the chapter titles are actual popular songs from the Showa Era, aka, 1940s through 70s, which are now considered enka, I guess. Although these songs were originally all sorts of kinds of pop, rock, and jazz, performances of them now are actually kind of enka-ized - compare this original performance to this more modern one as performed by the same group - guitars become strings and horns. Admittedly, some of them were basically enka to begin with.

As a bonus to my handful of readers who I assume exist somewhere out there, here's a complete list of the songs used as chapter titles:

Chapter 1: Season of Love - Pinky and Killers: Koi no Kisetsu
Chapter 2: Stardust Trails - Akiko Kikuchi - Hoshi no Nagare ni
Chapter 3: Chanchiki Okesa - Minami Haruo - Chanchiki Okesa
Chapter 4: Meet me in Yurakucho - Frank Nagai - Yuurakuchou de Aimashou
Chapter 5: A Hill Overlooking the Harbor - Hirano Aiko - Minato ga Mieru Oka
Chapter 6: Rusty Knife - Yujiro Ishihara - Sabita Knife
Chapter 7: After the Acacia Rain - Sachiko Nishida - Acacia no Ame ga Yamu Toki
Chapter 8: Love Me to the Bone - Takaya Jou - Hone made Aishite
Chapter 9: Dreams Anytime - Sayuri Yoshinaga & Yukio Hoshi - Itsudemo Yume wo
Chapter 10: Until We Meet Again - Kiyohiko Ozaki - Mata Au Hi Made

Feel free to use this guide as your reading soundtrack when you pick up your own copy January 2011.

Kaori Ekuni - "The Night, My Wife, and the Detergent"

2010-10-18T09:18:00.017-04:00

“The Night, My Wife, and the Detergent"
by Kaori Ekuni, from the collection Somber Slumbers (Nurui Nemuri)

--

I want to get separated, my wife said. We gotta talk.

It was already 10 PM. I was tired. My wife and I are in the fifth year of our marriage, no kids.

You can pretend you don't see it, she said. But even if you pretend, this isn't going to go away.

Without responding, I continued to watch TV, but she turned the damn thing off. What I was pretending not to see, what wasn't going to disappear, I hadn't the faintest. Same as always.

I saw, as my wife stood blocking my way and glaring down at me, that her pedicure was chipping off.

“Oh, nail polish remover!”

I said. You don't have nail polish remover, so you can't take your pedicure off. That's why you're all upset, right?

My voice was half full of hope and half full of relief. My wife shook her head.

“So then it's those cotton balls. Even if I told you to use tissues instead, you're saying you definitely could not use them, so it's 'cause you don't have any of those cotton balls.”

She sighed - no, she said. That's not what I'm saying at all. I have nail polish remover and cotton balls. I haven't taken my pedicure off because I'm too busy. I just don't have the time to take care of my nails.

Time. I give up.

I love my wife, and I wish I had her strength. But I don't know what to do when she asks for things you can't get at convenience stores.

“Hey, listen to me. I really think we should live separately. I'm sure we could become really good friends.”

I was getting real sick of this. Can't she just leave it alone for tonight?

“About how many trash bags do we have left?”

As a husband, I decided to give my best to her. But the thing you need to know about my wife is that she answers questions. Even when she's angry, even when she's crying, if you ask her a question, she always answers.

“How about detergent? Milk? Diet Pepsi?”

I listed off the things my wife needed in her daily life.

“Well, we have a lot of trash bags. As far as detergent goes, we only have the bottle we're using now, but we have milk and diet Pepsi too. But that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to say to you right now. Please, listen seriously.”

I wasn't listening. I already had my shoes on and was at the door. Stop, or, listen, or whatever my wife was saying at my back, I went outside and headed to the convenience store. The windows in all the houses along the way were lit.

The detergent my wife likes is in a pink bottle. There are several brands with pink bottles, but it's the one with the pink cap as well that's the lucky guy. I bought five of them. I bought diet Pepsi and milk too. And trash bags and nail polish remover. And cotton balls. And while I was at it, an onigiri.

The bag was real heavy. The white plastic bag rustled and crinkled in such a way that I thought it was going to tear apart on the way home.

My wife looked miserable standing at the front door.

“Why would you buy so much?

The amount is crucial.

She sighs again as I pull out the contents of the bag one at a time. You really don't listen when people talk to you, huh. Didn't I tell you we already had diet Pepsi? And milk. And trash bags.

Then, she bursts out laughing.

“Why are you like this, honey? You don't listen to anything do you?"

She's holding the nail polish remover in her hands.

I win.

------------------

Kaori Ekuni is another famous contemporary author. She's won, among others, the Murasaki Shikibu Prize 1992 and the Naoki Prize in 2004. Not only a literary fiction writer, she is famous for her young adult fiction, poetry, and translations (including poetry by e. e. cummings. and my favorite children's book, The Runaway Bunny. Aw...) Her works have been made into films and she's celebrated for her depictions of modern relationships.

I've been looking through nice short pieces to add to this site, and this Ekuni collection was one of the many that I came across at Book-Off, and now one of the fraction of books that survived the transatlantic voyage to my house (I don't know what happened, but somehow when the package got to my door, it was badly damaged and missing over 30 books. Including some of the Genichiro Takahashi novels I spent weeks trying to find... very upsetting). Anyhow, I was just rifling through the book and this one stood out for it's length. Now that school is upon me I can't devote the time I'd like to long form translations except the ones I'm doing to graduate, so my apologies that the works I put up here are selected for their overall shortness, and not for their literary value. Still, despite its brevity, the story condenses nicely the problems of many Japanese (and others) failed relationships.

If you liked this short story, then you should check out Ekuni's only published work in English, Twinkle Twinkle, which was put out a few years ago by Vertical.

The Accuracy of Death by Isaka Kotaro

2010-10-09T14:32:00.004-04:00

Once, a long time ago, a barber told me that he didn't care one bit about hair. "So I'll cut the customer's hair with the scissors probably. Morning 'til night, from when I open the store 'til I close with no break, we know I'm just gonna be snip snip snipping. Having the customer's hair be all neat and trimmed is fine, you know, but, it doesn't mean I particularly like hair."

He died five days later, stabbed in the stomach during a killing spree, but at that time he wasn't expecting to die, of course, so his voice was full and lively.

So when asked, "Then why do you work at a barbershop?", he replied, mingled with a strained laugh, "'Cause it's my job."

This coincides neatly with my thoughts and, if I were to speak somewhat grandiosely, my philosophy.

I have no particular interest in the deaths of humans. If a young president is going to be shot from above, in a parade of private cars going ten miles an hour, if somewhere a boy is going to freeze to death with his beloved dog in front of a Rubens painting, it is of no concern to me.

Speaking of which, the barber in question even revealed to me: "Dying is scary."

To counter this, I asked him, "Do you remember the time before you were born? Before you were born, was it scary? Did it hurt?"

"Nope."

"Death is pretty much like that. It's just a return to the state before you were born. Not scary, not painful."

The deaths of humans have neither interest nor value to me. Or, conversely, everyone's death ends up having the same value. So for me, it has nothing to do with who will die when. Even so, I will go out this very day in order to confirm these deaths.

Why? Because it's my job. Just like the barber said.

ーーーーーー

This is the opening to Koutaro Isaka's episodic novel The Accuracy of Death, 死神の制度 (shinigami no seido). Koutaro Isaka (伊坂幸太郎）is one of the big contemporary authors right now. Go to any bookstore in Japan and he's got tons of paperbacks on display.

I heard about this book from the Japanese Book News magazine, put out by the Japan Foundation. It's a great way to read about notable books and book news, but it only comes out quarterly. Still, a useful way to wade through contemporary fiction and non-fiction releases.

I'll be honest, I haven't gotten much further than this bit that I've translated (a bit further, but not enough to really say if the book as a whole is any good), but its so sad to see my blog so empty. So I was looking through my computer bits and bobbles and saw a rough translation of this little bit and decided to clean it up and post it. Intriguing, yes? I think this is the kind of book that would do well in the States. This gothic-lite stuff is where the money's at. (Better if it were zombies or vampires, but...)

Like I said, Isaka is pretty hot right now, and famous enough (or maybe this is a chicken and egg situation) that he's had a lot of movies and TV dramas based around his stuff, including "The Accuracy of Death". In fact, here's the trailer (looks like it's actually called "Sweet Rain: The Accuracy of Death":

The Night, My Wife, and the Detergent

2010-10-08T18:51:00.002-04:00

"The Night, My Wife, and the Detergent" by Kaori Ekuni

I want to get separated, my wife said. We gotta talk.

It was already 10 PM. I was tired. My wife and I are in the fifth year of our marriage, no kids.

You can pretend you don't see it, she said. But even if you pretend, this isn't going to go away.

Without responding, I continued to watch TV, but she turned the damn thing off. What I was pretending not to see, what wasn't going to disappear, I hadn't the faintest. Same as always.

I saw, as my wife stood blocking my way and glaring down at me, that her pedicure was chipping off.

“Oh, nail polish remover!”

I said. You don't have nail polish remover, so you can't take your pedicure off. That's why you're all upset, right?

My voice was half full of hope and half full of relief. My wife shook her head.

“So then it's those cotton balls. Even if I told you to use tissues instead, you're saying you definitely could not use them, so it's 'cause you don't have any of those cotton balls.”

She sighed - no, she said. That's not what I'm saying at all. I have nail polish remover and cotton balls. I haven't taken my pedicure off because I'm too busy. I just don't have the time to take care of my nails.

Time. I give up.

I love my wife, and I wish I had her strength. But I don't know what to do when she asks for things you can't get at convenience stores.

“Hey, listen to me. I really think we should live separately. I'm sure we could become really good friends.”

I was getting real sick of this. Can't she just leave it alone for tonight?

“About how many trash bags do we have left?”

As a husband, I decided to give my best to her. But the thing you need to know about my wife is that she answers questions. Even when she's angry, even when she's crying, if you ask her a question, she always answers.

“How about detergent? Milk? Diet Pepsi?”

I listed off the things my wife needed in her daily life.

“Well, we have a lot of trash bags. As far as detergent goes, we only have the bottle we're using now, but we have milk and diet Pepsi too. But that has nothing to do with what I'm trying to say to you right now. Please, listen seriously.”

I wasn't listening. I already had my shoes on and was at the door. Stop, or, listen, or whatever my wife was saying at my back, I went outside and headed to the convenience store. The windows in all the houses along the way were lit.

The detergent my wife likes is in a pink bottle. There are several brands with pink bottles, but it's the one with the pink cap as well that's the lucky guy. I bought five of them. I bought diet Pepsi and milk too. And trash bags and nail polish remover. And cotton balls. And while I was at it, an onigiri.

The bag was real heavy. The white plastic bag rustled and crinkled in such a way that I thought it was going to tear apart on the way home.

My wife looked miserable standing at the front door.

“Why would you buy so much?

The amount is crucial.

She sighs again as I pull out the contents of the bag one at a time. You really don't listen when people talk to you, huh. Didn't I tell you we already had diet Pepsi? And milk. And trash bags.

Then, she bursts out laughing.

“Why are you like this, honey? You don't listen to anything do you?"

She's holding the nail polish remover in her hands.

I win.

[From the collection ぬるい眠り, 2007, Shinchousha.]

"Suburbanization (The Doughnut Effect)" & "Donuts, Once Again"

2010-08-17T19:10:00.002-04:00

"Suburbanization (The Doughnut Effect)" by Haruki Murakami

I'd been dating my fiance for three years, but it was when she suburbanized that our relationship went sour — how the hell can anyone get along with a lover who leaves the city for the suburbs? — and I was getting wasted in bars almost every night, washed out and losing weight like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

"Brother, I'm begging you, you've got to get over her. As it stands now, your body is broken," my little sister urged me. "I know how you're feeling, but those who suburbanize can't be un-suburbanized. You've got to end it! Don't you think so?"

Of course she was right. It was like my sister said, once you've gone suburban, you're suburban for eternity.

I called my fiance to tell her goodbye. "It's heartbreaking to be separated from you, but in the end, it's only fate that this is happening, right? I'll never forget you, not for one second in my whole life..........and so on."

"You still don't get it, do you?" my suburbanized lover said. "At the center of human existence is naught. Nothing, zero. Why aren't you trying to focus on this vacuum? Why do your eyes only go to the parts around it?"

Why? That's what I wanted to ask her. Why suburbanites can only have such a narrow-minded worldview.

But at any rate, that's how I broke up with my fiance. That was two years ago now. Then, last spring, without any warning, my sister suburbanized. Immediately after she left Sophia University and started working at Japan Airlines, in a hotel lobby in Sapporo after a business trip, she suddenly just up and suburbanized. My mom locked herself in her home and spent day after day in tears and sorrow.

Every now and then I try to call my sister and ask, "How are ya'?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" my suburbanized sister says. "At the center of human existence...."

_______

"Donuts, Once Again" by Haruki Murakami

It was because of an event called the Sophia University Seminar for the Study of Doughnuts - boy, college students these days sure come up with all sorts of things - that I got a call asking whether I'd like to participate in a symposium to discuss the current state of doughnuts. Sounds good, I replied. I too have a personal opinion regarding doughnuts. Knowledge, opinion, a sense of appreciation - no matter how you slice it, it will be a long time before I lose to these strange college kids.

The Sophia University Seminar for the Study of Doughnuts, Fall Event was held in a rented hall at the Hotel New Otani. There was a band and a doughnut matching game, and after a dinner mixed with snacks, the symposium was held in a neighboring room. Besides myself, famous cultural anthropologists and food critics, among others, were in attendance.

"Doughnuts are a part of contemporary literature, and if we decide we can have the power, that is, the indispensable factor to commit directly a certain kind of coming together individually to identify the areas of our subconsciousness... " I recited. My compensation was 50,000 yen.

I thrust the 50,000 yen into my pocket, headed to the bar, and drank vodka tonics with a girl from the French Literature department who I met at the doughnut matching game.

"In the end, for better or worse, your novels are kinda doughnut-y. I bet Flaubert didn't even think of something like a doughnut even once."

That's right, Flaubert probably did not think about doughnuts. But it's the 20th century now, and pretty soon it's going to be the 21st. You don't just bring up Flaubert in this day and age.

"The doughnut, c'est moi," I said, mimicking Flaubert.

"You're an interesting person, aren't you," she said, giggling. I'm not trying to brag here but, making girls from the French Lit department laugh is kind of my specialty.

[From the flash fiction collection 夜のくもざる, 1998, Shinchosha.]

Donuts Make Me Go Nuts

2010-08-16T20:32:00.000-04:00

Because A) I have a feeling no one cares about my thoughts on The Great Gatsby and therefore I don't have the energy to write anything about it, and B) I've been dying to put a translation up here for a long time but the one I'm working on is kind of a beast, I present to you some new (and old) Haruki Murakami translations.

In Yoru No Kumozaru, Murakami's nifty little flash fiction collection, Murakami has two stories based (sort of) around donuts. The first story about donuts (sort of) is one that I translated and put up many moons ago, back in the good ol' days of the ~~now thoroughly defunct~~ Kumozaru Project. I went on vacation with my family this past weekend, and what better way to relax than a nice, quick little translation work for fun. Besides the relationship between the word "donut," I like the little call back to Sophia University. And without further introduction...:

"Suburbanization (The Doughnut Effect)"

I'd been dating my fiance for three years, but it was when she suburbanized that our relationship went sour ---- how the hell can anyone get along with a lover who leaves the city for the suburbs? ---- and I was getting wasted in bars almost every night, washed out and losing weight like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

"Brother, I'm begging you, you've got to get over her. As it stands now, your body is broken," my little sister urged me. "I know how you're feeling, but those who suburbanize can't be un-suburbanized. You've got to end it! Don't you think so?"

Of course she was right. It was like my sister said, once you've gone suburban, you're suburban for eternity.

I called my fiance to tell her goodbye. "It's heartbreaking to be separated from you, but in the end, it's only fate that this is happening, right? I'll never forget you, not for one second in my whole life..........and so on."

"You still don't get it, do you?" my suburbanized lover said. "At the center of human existence is naught. Nothing, zero. Why aren't you trying to focus on this vacuum? Why do your eyes only go to the parts around it?"

Why? That's what I wanted to ask her. Why suburbanites can only have such a narrow-minded worldview.

But at any rate, that's how I broke up with my fiance. That was two years ago now. Then, last spring, without any warning, my sister suburbanized. Immediately after she left Sophia University and started working at Japan Airlines, in a hotel lobby in Sapporo after a business trip, she suddenly just up and suburbanized. My mom locked herself in her home and spent day after day in tears and sorrow.

Every now and then I try to call my sister and ask, "How are ya'?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" my suburbanized sister says. "At the center of human existence...."

_______

Donuts, Once Again

It was because of an event called the Sophia University Seminar for the Study of Doughnuts - boy, college students these days sure come up with all sorts of things - that I got a call asking whether I'd like to participate in a symposium to discuss the current state of doughnuts. Sounds good, I replied. I too have a personal opinion regarding doughnuts. Knowledge, opinion, a sense of appreciation - no matter how you slice it, it will be a long time before I lose to these strange college kids.

The Sophia University Seminar for the Study of Doughnuts, Fall Event was held in a rented hall at the Hotel New Otani. There was a band and a doughnut matching game, and after a dinner mixed with snacks, the symposium was held in a neighboring room. Besides myself, famous cultural anthropologists and food critics, among others, were in attendance.

"Doughnuts are a part of contemporary literature, and if we decide we can have the power, that is, the indispensable factor to commit directly a certain kind of coming together individually to identify the areas of our subconsciousness... " I recited. My compensation was 50,000 yen.

I thrust the 50,000 yen into my pocket, headed to the bar, and drank vodka tonics with a girl from the French Literature department who I met at the doughnut matching game.

"In the end, for better or worse, your novels are kinda doughnut-y. I bet Flaubert didn't even think of something like a doughnut even once."

That's right, Flaubert probably did not think about doughnuts. But it's the 20th century now, and pretty soon it's going to be the 21st. You don't just bring up Flaubert in this day and age.

"The doughnut, c'est moi," I said, mimicking Flaubert.

"You're an interesting person, aren't you," she said, giggling. I'm not trying to brag here but, making girls from the French Lit department laugh is kind of my specialty.

Summer of the Re-Read #2: The Catcher in the Rye

2010-07-27T21:23:00.000-04:00

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

You may be wondering (and I say this because I'm sort of wondering the same thing myself) why I would bother writing about a novel that most likely you have read. And honestly, I don't know. You think I plan these things as I go along?

Enter Holden Caufield, our hapless, teenage narrator who does everything as he goes along ("What I thought I'd do was..."). Never thinking anything through, always shooting off his mouth: you know, your average, self-centered yet self-clueless teenager.

Maybe reading The Catcher in the Rye at the same age as the narrator is necessary to fully appreciate the book. At the time, although I loved the book and thought that Salinger "got it" (to my memory, at least) I didn't fully embrace Holden as an extension of me, nor did I fully relate: even I didn't want to associate myself with someone so annoying (of course, I probably was just as annoying too, and didn't realize). But still, I would be hard pressed to find anyone who read it as a teenager, like actually read it, and not skimmed through the important parts in class for major plot points (hey, I was a high school student too), and couldn't relate.

The most obvious example of Salinger's perfect distillation of teenage-ism is Caufield's inherently contradictory nature. Everything he says is taken back, or qualified, or qualified in a way that basically is a negation. The only exception, of course, being his dead brother Allie.

Granted, death in the immediate family will fuck anyone up. So it's easy to see why Holden's behavior is a sort of worse-case scenario of a moody teenager, which I think is why even at the time I thought Holden really acted more like a little kid than a theoretical peer of mine. But looking back on him now, I can see maybe with clearer eyes that in essence, I really was a Holden, because I was a teenager too.

So why did I want to read The Catcher in the Rye now? Well, for one, I saw an English copy at a Book Off while in Japan and I think it made me nostalgic and a little homesick. I also think it's interesting that it's one of the books Haruki Murakami (boy, it always comes back to him, doesn't it? I gotta institute a No-Murakami month or something) decided to re-translate it into the Japanese. But I've known that for a long time, and it wasn't until about a month ago that I knew I wanted to re-read it. Maybe I had a conversation with a friend about it. Hah, hope you enjoy my non-answer, hapless reader. I really should just delete this whole paragraph.

Things that surprised me about the novel: The similarities between now and 1950s-America. Somewhere in our American tapestry of culture or education is this brainwashed notion that 1950s-era America was somehow more wholesome than any other era. Something about that post-war era (and the now-we-Americans-try to-ignore-it start of the Cold War) keeps propagating this notion and manifests itself in our movies and TV shows (whether as pastiche or cliche) as the squeaky-clean America. I don't know why we Americans see the 1950s as the purest slice of Americana in our history, but there it is.

And obviously this is not the case, but it was still surprising to see that even kids in the 1950s were scratching "Fuck You" in the walls of their schools or to read about the high school kids having sex (or lying about doing it) or that a 1950s 16-year old would be trying to get away with underage drinking at bars and paying for a prostitute. Obviously it's all the same and always will be, but it was weird how I too unconsciously bought this weird stereotype that pervades our national conscious.

My question to you, readers, especially the non-Americans, is your relationship to The Catcher in the Rye, if you've read it, and how relatable it is to your own teenage experience. We consider it now (despite the protests that continue even today by weirdo parents who can't honestly communicate to their kids about sex and swear words) to be a paragon of American literature, a solid member of the literary canon, so I'm curious to see what non-Americans think.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say on the matter. It was definitely worth the re-read, and I think in another 10 or 20 years it'll be worth another re-read. And then forcing my teenage kids to read it, if the novel has somehow fallen out of favor when my kids are in high school. I wonder how relatable it will be to my kids then, considering how different we can assume our culture will be in another 25 years.

[Next up on Summer of the Re-Read: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Another indisputable (and deservedly so) member of the American literary canon.]

The Kurodahan Press Translation Prize

2010-07-23T12:52:00.000-04:00

Fellow translators,

I direct you here, information on the Kurodahan Press Translation Prize.

I was interested in doing it last year, but I was too lazy. This year I'm definitely giving it a go. It's only 1700 characters (which, in an average paperback, assuming the page was a solid block of text, would be less than 3 pages, so probably like 6 or 7 more realistic pages, tops?), which is quite short, honestly.

The winner gets 30000 yen, publication, and something like an additional 15000 upon publication.

Kurodahan Press seems to specialize in science fiction, as this piece (and the last two year's pieces) comes from a SF anthology, best of 2007 collection. The piece is called 忠告 by 恩田陸 (Onda Riku), who according to Wikipedia, is the pen name of women's lit writer Kumagai Nanae, which is most definitely a name I've seen/read about before.

Deadline is September 30, which seems to me to be plenty of time, then again I haven't looked at the piece yet so maybe it's super hard.

Another (and to me, mindblowingly) interesting thing is who's judging: Meredith McKinney, who did the most recent translation of Natsume Soseki's Kokoro (and who also seems to be Penguin Classic's go-to translator of Japanese literature), Juliet Winters Carpenter, who has translated a couple books by Kobo Abe, the tanka poetry collection Salad Anniversary, and is a member of the JLPP, and ALFRED BIRNBAUM, translator of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase and other works.

So I'm pretty much geekin' out right now, you guys.

On a side note, when I told my girlfriend I was going to write this post, she said, "Are you dumb? Stop making more competition!" To which I said, "...Oh well. I'm not going to win anyway."

But I swear to god if any of you guys win because I told you about it...

Summer of the Re-Read #1: Sayonara, Gangsters

2010-07-21T17:14:00.003-04:00

Sayonara, Gangsters
by Genichiro Takahashi
Translated by Michael Emmerich

I wish I could remember how I discovered that this book existed. I know I first read it in the spring of my first year of college. I was so into it that I read it during my physics class in the very, very back of the lecture hall (although to be fair, I either slept or did other work during most of those physics lectures). I know I took it out of the school library. But did I discover it through aimless browsing? Or was it a title I was interested in after looking through Vertical Inc (the publisher)'s back catalog, who describes it as a "postmodern novel...from Haruki Murakami's way-more-out-there cousin"?

If the Murakami comparison really was the reason I picked up the novel, at least the description was somewhat apt. In many ways, Sayonara, Gangsters does seem like Murakami with the post-modern bizarreness cranked up to 11. But after re-reading Sayonara Gangsters and exploring more of Takahashi's work in the Japanese, the comparison (like all authorial comparisons, honestly) is somewhat diminishing.

First of all, there's no good way to even summarize Sayonara, Gangsters, which at least can be done for Murakami's work. To grossly simplify matters, Sayonara, Gangsters follows a poet who teaches at a poetry school in some sort of bizarro-world where people choose their own names, which in turn can take a life of their own, and where on the sixth floor of the building that the narrator works is a river of some unknowable length. Even "dream logic" doesn't quite convey the sense of un-reality that pervades the novel:

I think about many different kinds of death.
I'd seen something horribly sad at the amusement park. "The Giant Ferris Wheel" had on a big black ribbon, and it was folding itself up.
The owner of the amusement park must have decided it would cost too much to call in the workers whose job it was to dismantle the rides, and hit on the idea of ordering "the Giant Ferris Wheel" to dispose of itself.
I sat on a swing and watched "The Giant Ferris Wheel" commit suicide.
"The Giant Ferris Wheel" kept rotating its circular frame, yanking off the little carriages where its riders used to sit. It removed one, then another, then another. Every time it pulled off a carriage it bled and cried out in pain. "Oh, it hurts!" it yelled, "It hurts!" Once the circular frame had removed the last carriage, it set about cutting away the circular frames at the center; after that the concrete supports struggled to sever the axle.
Splattered with blood, "The Giant Ferris Wheel' continued to dismantle itself, and at every step along the way it screamed so awfully that the entire amusement park trembled.
"The Merry-Go-Round," which was just next door, sat there shaking with its eyes squeezed shut, covering its ears with its hands.
Finally only the concrete base remained. Its breath came in gasps. Nothing but this block of concrete indicated that "The Giant Ferris Wheel" had ever existed: the block was "The Giant Ferris Wheel"'s ego, its self.
I wondered how the base would finish the job.
There wasn't anything left to do.
"Eat shit and die!"
Leaving these bitter last words, the concrete base put an end to it all.
It did this in a way no human would ever think up.

The novel is divided up into three parts, and each part has its own major plot and focus. Part 1 establishes the setting and the narrator's life. Part 2 describes the Poetry School and his work with the students. Part 3 is about the narrator's experience with the dangerous gangsters of the novel's world.

Reviews of Sayonara, Gangsters tend to praise Part 1 as the most compelling and well-written part of the novel (speaking of, our friend Nihon Distractions has a review here), but I find myself more drawn to Part 2. After reading more of Takahashi's other work, it is clear that Takahashi is a writer concerned about writing, and despite this bizarre, post-modernist world that Takahashi created, the novel itself, at its core, is really all about writing:

My teaching here isn't focused on knowledge.
If you want to know about poetry, read books. You'll find all that in books.
My knowledge of poetry is both fragmented and fuzzy. It can't be trusted.
I don't teach people how to interpret poetry or any of that stuff either.
I'm not so good at interpreting poetry.
When I read a poem, I respond to it in one of two ways: "Wow, this is great!" or "God, this is awful!" I have no other responses.
Having eliminated those possibilities, we are left with "How to create poetry." Surely that must be what the man teaches! That's what you're all thinking, right? Hell, that's what I'm thinking myself.
But the truth is that if there really were some technique that permitted everybody who knew it to write wonderful poems, I'd want to be the first to know.
If I had a a technique like that, I'd keep it all to myself and produce one masterpiece after another, setting my sights on the Nobel Prize for Poets.
I'm a poet, but even now I have no idea how to write my poems.
I really doubt there is a technique to writing poetry.
We poets spend the eyeblink of time granted us until we slip away forever into the eternal dark composing poems, never having the faintest idea how we out to go about writing them, or what we ought to be writing.
I do almost nothing at all here.
Pressed to explain, I might say that my job is CONDUCTING TRAFFIC.
The students who come here all want to write poems. But none of them have any idea what kind of poems they should be writing.
You mustn't tell them to "Write what you like."
I may be incompetent as a poet, but I don't shirk my responsibilities.
I talk with my students. Or, to make it sound hard, I counsel them.
Actually, for the most part all I do is listen.
Writing poetry is a fairly morbid thing to do. Of course, that doesn't mean all morbid people are poets. It is here, you see, that the difficulty lies.

All irony aside, and despite the fact that this really is more or less exactly how I feel about poetry (being absolutely terrible at it), in a true post-modernist fashion, Takahashi explores almost all aspects of the experience of the written word, including but not limited to the relationship between literature and the author, the relationship between literature and the reader, the act of reading/writing itself, literary criticism, and the power of words.

The first time I read Sayonara, Gangsters, I loved the bizarre world and imagery that Takahashi created. But the second time around, I found myself more drawn to the ideas about literature and the power of the written word that Takahashi has built the world around, a theme that Takahashi will continue to explore throughout his career.

As Takahashi's debut work, it really is amazing that he was able to produce something so original and compelling. Sayonara, Gangsters is still one of my favorite books, but the second time around, I can see some of its flaws. The prose is jarringly fragmented and vignette-y, similar to Murakami's Hear the Wind Sing. (I guess this is a problem that plagues many an author's debut/early works.) Translator Michael Emmerich had his work cut out for him, and though I'm so grateful that he was able to get a publisher to take a chance on this work, I occasionally find the translation a little awkward.

To which I mean no disrespect; I went to a translator's round-table about a year ago that Emmerich was a part of (as in, when I saw that he was a part of it, I immediately knew I was going), and he's pretty young, early 30s, if not late 20s, I'd say. This book was published in 2004, which means he was probably working on it around seven or eight years ago, when he was in his mid-twenties. So nothing but respect for him. I sincerely hope that I can achieve the same thing at that age. Also, he's got great taste in J-lit and was just a really interesting and funny guy to listen and talk to. So whenever I see he has a new translation out, I always pay attention.

At this translator's round-table I went to, I asked Emmerich if he would ever translate something by Takahashi again. He said he definitely would like to, but it's all about finding a publisher, and apparently this novel didn't make a real splash, which makes it a hard sell. But now that I've been able to explore more of his works, I really feel that Takahashi is a great author that deserves to be translated. And I hope to be the man to do it.

Expect many Takahashi-related posts in the future, including a forthcoming short story translation and a look at his (well, to me) fascinating Twitter account.

[Next on "Summer of the Re-Read": The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Let's see how a novel about a teenager that one reads as a teenager holds up when one is no longer (quite) a teenager.]

Introducing: Summer of the Re-Read

2010-07-16T23:51:00.004-04:00

Now that I'm back in the States again, I have a lot of free time until school starts back up. A LOT of free time. And besides the time I've wasted since discovering my family started using Netflix (instant streaming...fuck and yes), I've started really reading again.

This summer I have a massive reading list I want to but ultimately will fail miserably at completing, which can be divided up into three sections: (1) new, unread books, (2) unread "classics", and (3) stuff I want to read again.

The thing is, I don't often re-read books, besides Murakami (surprise, surprise). Some fun facts: Sputnik Sweetheart is probably the most read at 3, possibly 4 times, and Hardboiled Wonderland... is the one that I've started and put down the most times, though I have finished it once and thoroughly enjoyed it; for some reason, it's just the unluckiest book in that I just start it at bad times or get distracted by something newer and shinier. I have a pretty good memory, so I more or less remember what happened and how I particularly felt about any particular book, and there's just so much out there to read I usually give preference to something unknown (except in the cases where I find myself in an irrepressible Murakami mood). Contrast this to my TV habits, in which my favorite shows are constantly being cycled through and re-marathoned, though this is usually done in conjunction with something else, since I don't have to be focusing on it 100% to enjoy it. In fact, the only book in semi-recent memory that I recall re-reading is Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. (Oops, wait, that's a lie; the last Harry Potter was also re-read, though only just a month or two after I had initially read it in the first place.) And books have to be particularly crappy for me to give up on them before the end (i.e. Higashino Keigo's "Naoko". For such a fucked up concept, boooooooooring.)

But this summer, I really want to re-read a bunch of books. Maybe it was because I was in Japan and didn't have access to my collection, or maybe because I didn't have easy access to English-language books. Not really sure. And since I like doing book reviews on this blog anyway, I thought I'd chronicle my exploits.

Here's the list so far:

1) Genichiro Takahashi - Sayonara, Gangsters
2) J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
3) F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
4) (tentative) Ryu Murakami - Coin Locker Babies
5) (tentative) George Orwell - 1984
6) (tentative) Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun
7) (tentative) Albert Camus - The Fall

I guess in general, I want to see if each of these books still "hold up" since the last time I read them, though the reasons for why I want to see depend on each book. For example, South of the Border, West of the Sun was by far and away my absolute least favorite Murakami book when I read it, but paradoxically, it also has one of my favorite quotes by any author ever. So on and so forth.

I'll talk about all this stuff more specifically for each book when I get to it. Anyway, that's something that you can look forward to (I originally wrote "one more thing" you can look forward to, but I haven't written anything in months, so you haven't been looking forward to anything for a while) very soon, since I've already finished reading Sayonara, Gangsters and am halfway through The Catcher in the Rye.

(P.S. New books will be reviewed either separately or, more likely, in a "Recently Read Round-up" column.)

(P.P.S. That translation I'm working on that's non-Murakami? Totally starting to work on that again. I spent most of my time in Japan just trying to read as much Japanese as possible, and practicing the art of getting as much out of a text as I can without checking the dictionary every 10 5 seconds, which was actually really awesome. Newest record: 40 consecutive pages that I can thoroughly summarize to you, that I did with little dictionary-consultation. Very proud of this.)

(P.P.S. I'm now on The Twitter. There should now be a doohicky on the side of this here thing-ama-blog.)

I live!

2010-07-10T00:47:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I return to America. The study abroad is over.

I wanted to keep up with regular posts over the last few months, but I decided (unconsciously really) that I wanted to use the time I would've spent organizing posts and writing them with going out and experiencing Japan as much as possible.

So, expect new content coming very soon and much more regularly. I have a few translations lined up, and I'll go back to explore my experience as well as other things about my time here that I enjoyed too.

よろしく！

Amazing Engrish Vol 2.

2010-05-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

Been a little busy lately and haven't been able to focus on the blog. Please enjoy a few more Engrish-y things in the meantime. The first isn't really Engrish, but some excerpts from a strange, joke English language phrase learning book called warau eikaiwa. See for yourself.

I found all of the following on an ad outside a store on my way to taiko practice.

I didn't even know what "Sodality" was until I looked it up, basically a synonym for fraternity. It's not even in Firefox's dictionary files. And that second shirt is awfully aggressive/egotistical. UNFAILING SINCE BIRTH!!!!!GRAGHHGHG!

This may be my favorite. Amazing Time. Hopefulness.

And finally, I wanted to share this amazing advertisement that's everywhere in Tokyo right now.

(The answer, of course, is Emperor Palpatine. Silly Japanese people.)

"A 32-Year Old Day Tripper"

2010-05-01T19:14:00.001-04:00

"A 32-Year Old Day Tripper" by Haruki Murakami

    I'm thirty-two and she's eighteen, and... every time I say that to myself, it just always sounds so boring.

    I'm not yet thirty-three, and she's still eighteen... that'll do.

    The two of us are simply friends; nothing more, nothing less. I have a wife, and she has no less than six boyfriends. On weekdays she goes out with these six boyfriends, and one Sunday a month she goes out with me. The other Sundays she watches TV at home. She's as cute as a walrus when she's watching TV.

    She was born in 1963, the same year President Kennedy was shot and killed. And the first time I asked a girl out on a date. And the popular song at the time was... Cliff Richard's “Summer Holiday”?

    Well, whatever.

    At any rate, that's the sort of year she was born into.

    That I would be going on dates with a girl born that year would have been inconceivable then. Even now it feels impossible. Like going to the other side of the moon to have a smoke.

    The general consensus of our peers is that “Young girls are boring, man!” Nevertheless, these very same guys date young girls too, all the time. So do you think they eventually discover young girls that aren't boring? Nah, it doesn't mean that at all. It's actually the boringness of the girls that attracts them. They're just playing a complicated game, a game they honestly enjoy. A game where they wash their faces with buckets full of the young girls' boredom water, while they don't let their lady friends have a single drop.

    At least, that's how it seems to me.

    In truth, nine girls out of ten are boring things. However, girls don't realize that. Girls are young, beautiful, and full of curiosity. The boringness of their own selves is completely unrelated to the things that young girls are thinking about.

    Yeesh.

    I have nothing to criticize them for, and again, no reason to dislike them. On the contrary, I like girls. Girls make me remember the times when I was a boring young man. That is, how should I put it, quite wonderful.

    “Hey, do you think you'd ever want to be eighteen again?” she asked me.

    “No way,” I replied. “I don't wanna go back.”

    It looked like she didn't quite get my answer.

    “Don't wanna go back... really?”

    “Of course.”

    “Why?”

    “Cause I'm fine the way I am now.”

    She thought about this for some time while resting her chin in her hands at the table, and while she pondered she spun a clinking spoon in her coffee cup.

    “I don't believe you.”

    “You better believe it.”

    “But isn't being young wonderful?”

    “Probably.”

    “So why is it better now?”

    “Because once is enough.”

    “It's not enough for me.”

    “But you're still eighteen.”

    “Hmm.”

    I caught the attention of the waiter and asked for a second beer. Outside it was raining, and from the window you could see Yokohama Port.

    “Hey, what did you think about when you were eighteen?”

    “Sleeping with girls.”

    “What else?”

    “That's it.”

    She giggled after taking a sip of coffee.

    “So, did it turn out well?”

    “There were things that turned out well and things that didn't turn out so well. Of course, there were more things that didn't turn out well, I guess.”

    “How many girls did you sleep with?”

    “I'm not counting.”

    “Really?”

    “I don't wanna count.”

    “If I were a guy I'd definitely count. Isn't it fun?”

    There are times when it seems to me that it might not be so bad to be eighteen again. However, when I try to think of what the first thing I'd do if I was eighteen again, I can't come up with a single idea.

    Or maybe I'll end up dating charming thirty-two year old women. That wouldn't be so bad.

    “Do you ever think you'd want to be eighteen again?” I'll ask.

    “Hmm, let me see.” She'll grin and pretend to think about it. “Nope. Doubt it.”

    “Really?”

    “Yup.”

    “I don't get it,” I'll say. “Everyone says that being young is a wonderful thing.”

    “Yeah, it is wonderful.”

    “Then why don't you want to?”

    “You'll understand when you're older.”

    Of course at thirty-two, if I skip even a week of running, my stomach flab starts getting conspicuous. I can't be eighteen again. That's obvious.

    After I finish my morning run, I always drink a can of vegetable juice, lie on my side and put on “Day Tripper” by the Beatles.

    “Dayyyy-ay-ay tripper!”

    When listening to that song, I start feeling like I'm sitting on a train. Telephone poles, train stations, tunnels, bridges, cows, horses, smoke stacks, garbage, steadily they all pass by, one after the other. Scenery that never changed, no matter where I was. Though in the old days, it seemed like the scenery was incredibly beautiful.

    Only the person sitting next to me would change. This time, the one sitting next to me is the eighteen year old girl. I'm in the window seat, she in the aisle seat.

    “Would you like to change seats?” I'll say.

    “Thanks,” she says. “You're too kind.”

    It's not a matter of kindness, I say with a bitter laugh. It's just that I'm much more used to boredom than you.

    A 32 year old
    Day tripper
    Sick of counting the telephone poles.

       1981/8/20

[From the collection カンガルー日和, 1986, Kodansha.]

Mistakes!! plus the text.

2010-05-01T11:40:00.005-04:00

[For those of you confused, this post is a response to the post "A 32 Year-Old Day Tripper", which I posted a few hours right before this one. You might want to read that post first.]

Instead of fixing the last post, I'll just say what I need to say here. It's all part of the process (that's what I try to tell myself instead of being upset by my foolishness).

Well, I have to admit, I think I made some mistakes. If you Google "32 Year Old Day Tripper", there are two other translations available online. I of course read through both.

Two things struck me. One is the whole bucket of water thing. Still enough variety there for me to not throw away my own translation entirely.

However I do feel I made one big error. Right before my final long excerpt, the narrator says this:

There are times when it seems to me that it might not be so bad to be eighteen again. However, when I try to think of what the first thing I'd do if I was eighteen again, I can't come up with a single idea.
    Or maybe I'll end up dating charming thirty-two year old women. That wouldn't be so bad.

I hate how little context is needed for a Japanese sentence to work. It's so vague. The only outright mistake I made in my translation in the next line (“Will there ever be a time when you think you'll want to be eighteen again?” I asked.) is that past tense, "asked', when in the original it's "ask", present/future.

BUT THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!

Basically, it implies the girl, only marked as 彼女, "her" is being asked this in the present and/or future. And by continuity of the conversation, it implies that the narrator is asking this 32 year old woman in his imagination, and not the eighteen year old girl he was talking to. Thus, I would probably be better suited to write: "Do you ever think you'll want to be eighteen again?" I'll ask her.

And of course, the line "Even if you're old, you know why." is just flat out wrong. It seems to be "You'll understand when you're older." Which makes sense, since in this scenario the narrator is eighteen and the woman is thirty two.

Bah. My future as a translator is compromised. I am clearly not to be trusted. This is upsetting to me. However, reading alternate translations is fun. There are things I like about theirs and things I like more in mine. The following is my revised, complete story. I might as well put it out there.

    I'm thirty-two and she's eighteen, and... every time I say that to myself, it just always sounds so boring.
    I'm not yet thirty-three, and she's still eighteen... that'll do.
    The two of us are simply friends; nothing more, nothing less. I have a wife, and she has no less than six boyfriends. On weekdays she goes out with these six boyfriends, and one Sunday a month she goes out with me. The other Sundays she watches TV at home. She's as cute as a walrus when she's watching TV.
    She was born in 1963, the same year President Kennedy was shot and killed. And the first time I asked a girl out on a date. And the popular song at the time was... Cliff Richard's “Summer Holiday”?
    Well, whatever.
    At any rate, that's the sort of year she was born into.
    That I would be going on dates with a girl born that year would have been inconceivable then. Even now it feels impossible. Like going to the other side of the moon to have a smoke.
    The general consensus of our peers is that “Young girls are boring, man!” Nevertheless, these very same guys date young girls too, all the time. So do you think they eventually discover young girls that aren't boring? Nah, it doesn't mean that at all. It's actually the boringness of the girls that attracts them. They're just playing a complicated game, a game they honestly enjoy. A game where they wash their faces with buckets full of the young girls' boredom water, while they don't let their lady friends have a single drop.
    At least, that's how it seems to me.
    In truth, nine girls out of ten are boring things. However, girls don't realize that. Girls are young, beautiful, and full of curiosity. The boringness of their own selves is completely unrelated to the things that young girls are thinking about.
    Yeesh.
    I have nothing to criticize them for, and again, no reason to dislike them. On the contrary, I like girls. Girls make me remember the times when I was a boring young man. That is, how should I put it, quite wonderful.
    “Hey, do you think you'd ever want to be eighteen again?” she asked me.
    “No way,” I replied. “I don't wanna go back.”
    It looked like she didn't quite get my answer.
    “Don't wanna go back... really?”
    “Of course.”
    “Why?”
    “Cause I'm fine the way I am now.”
    She thought about this for some time while resting her chin in her hands at the table, and while she pondered she spun a clinking spoon in her coffee cup.
    “I don't believe you.”
    “You better believe it.”
    “But isn't being young wonderful?”
    “Probably.”
    “So why is it better now?”
    “Because once is enough.”
    “It's not enough for me.”
    “But you're still eighteen.”
    “Hmm.”
    I caught the attention of the waiter and asked for a second beer. Outside it was raining, and from the window you could see Yokohama Port.
    “Hey, what did you think about when you were eighteen?”
    “Sleeping with girls.”
    “What else?”
    “That's it.”
    She giggled after taking a sip of coffee.
    “So, did it turn out well?”
    “There were things that turned out well and things that didn't turn out so well. Of course, there were more things that didn't turn out well, I guess.”
    “How many girls did you sleep with?”
    “I'm not counting.”
    “Really?”
    “I don't wanna count.”
    “If I were a guy I'd definitely count. Isn't it fun?”
    There are times when it seems to me that it might not be so bad to be eighteen again. However, when I try to think of what the first thing I'd do if I was eighteen again, I can't come up with a single idea.
    Or maybe I'll end up dating charming thirty-two year old women. That wouldn't be so bad.
    “Do you ever think you'd want to be eighteen again?” I'll ask.
    “Hmm, let me see.” She'll grin and pretend to think about it. “Nope. Doubt it.”
    “Really?”
    “Yup.”
    “I don't get it,” I'll say. “Everyone says that being young is a wonderful thing.”
    “Yeah, it is wonderful.”
    “Then why don't you want to?”
    “You'll understand when you're older.”
    Of course at thirty-two, if I skip even a week of running, my stomach flab starts getting conspicuous. I can't be eighteen again. That's obvious.
    After I finish my morning run, I always drink a can of vegetable juice, lie on my side and put on “Day Tripper” by the Beatles.
    “Dayyyy-ay-ay tripper!”
    When listening to that song, I start feeling like I'm sitting on a train. Telephone poles, train stations, tunnels, bridges, cows, horses, smoke stacks, garbage, steadily they all pass by, one after the other. Scenery that never changed, no matter where I was. Though in the old days, it seemed like the scenery was incredibly beautiful.
    Only the person sitting next to me would change. This time, the one sitting next to me is the eighteen year old girl. I'm in the window seat, she in the aisle seat.
    “Would you like to change seats?” I'll say.
    “Thanks,” she says. “You're too kind.”
    It's not a matter of kindness, I say with a bitter laugh. It's just that I'm much more used to boredom than you.

    A 32 year old
    Day tripper
    Sick of counting the telephone poles.

                        1981/8/20

A 32-Year Old Day Tripper

2010-05-01T09:03:00.002-04:00

Before the resolution I made to tackle Genichiro Takahashi as my next translation project, I had been 85% (made up number) done with a translation of a Murakami short-story from かンガルー日和, a simple but not easily translatable title, I think. 日和 simply means weather, usually implying "good" weather. It's the attachment to the noun that makes it a bit tricky. So I think Rubin/Birnbaum[?]'s "A Perfect Day for Kangaroo-ing" is a sweet and effective title. Whoops, getting off track already. Anyway, the story is called "３２歳のデイトリッパ". It's quite short, one of the reasons I picked it, and I was also curious about the very obvious Beatles' reference in the title.

Since I always feel the icy specter of a certain creative rights management company looming over my shoulder whenever I post things Murakami-related (probably unnecessary) I won't post the story in it's entirety here. But I do want to talk about it some. So I will.

Like I said earlier, the story is short and sweet, with not a whole lot of meat on the bones. But it does start with a curious premise, as most Murakami stories do:

    I'm thirty-two and she's eighteen, and... every time I say that to myself, it just always sounds so boring.
    I'm not yet thirty-three, and she's still eighteen... that'll do.
    The two of us are simply friends; nothing more, nothing less. I have a wife, and she has no less than six boyfriends. On weekdays she goes out with these six boyfriends, and one Sunday a month she goes out with me. The other Sundays she watches TV at home. She's as cute as a walrus when she's watching TV.

I quadruple checked the word "walrus", せいうち, since that is an awfully strange animal association. Is this girl kind of fat? Masculine (obviously I know there are both female and male walruses but the word itself seems to be undeniable "male" to me)? Or does Murakami just have a soft spot for this particular sea creature? Mysteries upon mysteries.

The narrator spends some time thinking about how strange it is to be hanging out with a girl so much younger than him. Then he starts judging people:

    The general consensus of our peers is that “Young girls are boring, man!” Nevertheless, these very same guys date young girls too, all the time. So do you think they eventually discover young girls that aren't boring? Nah, it doesn't mean that at all. It's actually the boringness of the girls that attracts them. They're just playing a complicated game, a game they honestly enjoy. A game where they wash their faces with buckets full of the young girls' boredom water, while they don't let their lady friends have a single drop.
    At least, that's how it seems to me.
    In truth, nine girls out of ten are boring things. However, girls don't realize that. Girls are young, beautiful, and full of curiosity. The boringness of their own selves is completely unrelated to the things that young girls are thinking about.
    Yeesh.

The last sentence of the first and third paragraph in that excerpt drove me nuts! In the first case I just had to divide up the sentence into those parts. I'm still not entirely convinced of the accuracy of the translation (actually, I'm pretty sure of it, but it was a pretty messed up sentence), and even now it doesn't sound great, but so it goes. (This ain't being published, and I just want to get this out there and start my new project. If I was in an alternate universe were I was being paid to publish Murakami, I'd still be working on it, だよ.) "Yeesh", of course, is what I decided to use for Murakami's quintessential "やれやれ”. Maybe it's too personal a choice. How would y'all handle it? Oops, derailing again.

So, anyway, the rest of the story is mostly a conversation between the narrator and his date about whether they'd like to be eighteen again. They have a fun little banter, ultimately deciding that neither particular would want to, though for no particular reasons why either.

Again, a simple little story, that based on the above contents, makes it not particularly memorable to me. A sweet little diversion, but not surprising that it's not in any English langauge short story collections yet. However, I really like the very end. And that is what salvages the story for me. It needs a little context, so I'll start at the end of their conversation:

   “So will there ever be a time when you think you'll want to be eighteen again?” I asked.
    “Hmm, let me see.” She grinned and pretended to think about it. “Nope. Doubt it.”
    “Really?”
    “Yup.”
    “I don't get it,” I said. “Everyone says that being young is a wonderful thing.”
    “Yeah, it is wonderful.”
    “Then why don't you want to?”
    “Even if you're old, you know why.”
    Of course at thirty-two, if I skip even a week of running, my stomach flab starts getting conspicuous. I can't be eighteen again. That's obvious.
    After I finish my morning run, I always drink a can of vegetable juice, lie on my side and put on“Day Tripper” by the Beatles.
    “Dayyyy-ay-ay tripper!”
    When listening to that song, I start feeling like I'm sitting on a train. Telephone poles, train stations, tunnels, bridges, cows, horses, smoke stacks, garbage, steadily they all pass by, one after the other. Scenery that never changed, no matter where I was. Though in the old days, it seemed like the scenery was incredibly beautiful.
    Only the person sitting next to me would change. This time, the one sitting next to me is the eighteen year old girl. I'm in the window seat, she in the aisle seat.
    “Would you like to change seats?” I'll say.
    “Thanks,” she says. “You're too kind.”
    It's not a matter of kindness, I say with a bitter laugh. It's just that I'm much more used to boredom than you.

    A 32 year old
    Day tripper
    Sick of counting the telephone poles.

                        1981/8/20

A lot of interesting things in this last section. The first and most obvious is the inclusion of another poem. Looks like early Murakami had a thing for it in his early days of writing. There's no other way to see it. It was tricky because in the paperback edition, it's basically by itself on the page, due to the layout. But there's a very clear line break (it doesn't start where the first line normally starts on the margin), and for only a handful of words it is divided up in a very specific way. Of course, due to Japanese word order it comes out a bit difference. Literally, it should be more like:

Sick of counting telephones poles
A 32 year old
day tripper.

In a way it's nicer for the composition to end with the word "Day Tripper" since it's in the title. But the most poetic image is obviously the "sick of counting telephone poles" part. So I'm willing to make the trade. The stilted clause order is too classical Japanese for me, too Basho.

The next bit that's interesting to me is that it ends with the date. August 20, 1981. Five years before the book was published, well after A Slow Boat to China, his first collection of short stories, was released. It almost makes me wonder if it's somewhat based on a true story that he came back. Or maybe he wrote it at the time but didn't include it in that first collection for some reason? Who knows.

Finally, something about the line "It's just that I'm much more used to boredom than you" just stirs something in me. I think it's a powerful line with a lot of weight, even though there's not all that much to it. It ties the story together to me. Then again, maybe it's just me.

And one final aside. I don't see how the original Beatles song fits into this story thematically at all. It must be just the tune that he likes. The lyrics don't fit at all. But considering the amount of English Murakami may have known back then, maybe all he could understand was, "Day Tripper. One way ticket, yah." So maybe he just associated it with travel. Traveling far away with the intention to never go back.

EDIT: Check out why I'm wrong(!!) and the entire translation of the story here