The Accuracy of Death by Isaka Kotaro

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.

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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 Other Murakami Movies

 Just a quick little post today, but this was so cool that I had to share it.

There are a handful of movies based on the works of Murakami. As I mentioned yesterday, Norwegian Wood is the latest, but there's also movies based on "Tony Takitani" (awesome) and "All God's Children Can Dance" (not seen but heard is thoroughly mediocre), both of which were made in the last five years. There are two other Murakami movies, both made in the 1980s. One is called 森の向こう側 based on a short story called 土の中の彼女の小さな犬 (which I believe has not been published in English; I certainly don't recognize the title), and one based on his debut work Hear the Wind Sing (風の歌を聴け).

And you can watch the entirety of Hear the Wind Sing (in pieces) on Youtube. Here's part one. (Check out it's old-timey-ness.)

 
Enjoy.

Norwegian Wood: The Movie

About two years ago, it was announced that a movie version of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood was in production. The only details then was that Tran Anh Hung would direct, and it would be released sometime in 2010. I haven't seen any of Tran Ang Hung's work, but apparently he's a very well-respected director. I've also heard around that Murakami is incredibly picky about movie versions of his stuff, so if Murakami approved it/him, it should hopefully be worth seeing.

The latest news is that Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood will be scoring the film. At first I was like, Um what? but as it turns out he composes classical music too, including scoring the film There Will Be Blood. So that's pretty cool. Still, Ryuichi Sakamoto's score for Tony Takitani is my favorite soundtracks of all time and one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard, so Greenwood's got his work cut out for him.

Other news you may have missed:

• It's release date is a (relatively) more specific December 2010 for Japan. I hope it gets a limited release some time soon after in America as well...

• It stars Kenichi Matsuyama as the main character Toru Watanabe. Kenichi Matsuyama is a pretty famous actor these days; you may have seen him as L in the Death Note movies, the main guy in the Detroit Rock City movie, and in the drama version of the [awesome] manga Sexy Voice and Robo. Except for being pretty hilarious in Sexy Voice and Robo (which after only one episode I thought in general was pretty lackluster, and they lead the whole TV show with the best plot line in the manga, so I figured it was only going to go downhill from there), I don't have great feelings towards him. I hated the first Death Note movie (I liked the manga enough; but it was more how the movie was terribly written and acted and directed that made me hate it than it's "faithfulness" to the original) so much I didn't see the others.  He's got a lot of other credits, but from the stuff that I've seen, he hasn't really done anything to make me take him seriously as an actor. Let's hope I'm wrong and Norwegian Wood changes that.

• Rinko Kukichi stars as Naoko. I don't know her, but apparently she was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie Babel, and her character didn't utter a single word. That's pretty neat.

• The character Midori is being played by fashion model Kiko Mizuhara, in her first acting role. (Not to judge a book by it's cover, which honestly is what I'm totally doing, but this makes me nervous.)

• The IMDB forums link to this site that has some stills from the movie. Looks pretty damn cool, honestly. 

Can't wait to see it. 

Japanese Movie Round-up

I love the library. I love the library because you can get a hold of just about anything, if you know where and how to look. Lately, I love the local public library for their DVD collection (it doesn't hurt that I'm going to the main branch of a pretty large city). These are some of the Japan-related movies I've had the enjoyment of viewing in the last week or two.

• Big Man Japan (大日本人）

 

Released in Japan in 2007, Big Man Japan is the directorial debut of the comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto, who seems to be most famous as part of the television comedy duo Downtown. The film also stars Matsumoto as the eponymous hero.

The film is a mockumentary following Masaru Daisato, a man who inherited his job of protecting Japan from giant monsters from his father, grandfather and so on. When zapped with electricity, he can transform into the giant 大日本人 （Dainipponjin) to fight said monsters off. However, the pay sucks; his wife left him with their daughter, who he only gets to see a few times a year; his television show tanks in the ratings at 2am; and overall, he just isn't very good at his job. He's overshadowed by his grandfather, once hugely famous in the '60s, but is now senile in a nursing home. 

For those who love the inherent sillyness of the giant monster genre, there's a lot to enjoy about Big Man Japan. Personally, I'm a big sucker for any sort of comedy that derives it's humor by taking something crazy and fantastic, and then presents it as if it was just part of someone's mundane, everyday existence. So the fact that Daisato is forced to do his job as part of the family legacy, and therefore hates it and doesn't try very hard at it, brings out a lot of laughs. There's also a lot of great in-jokes for those familiar with the tropes of the genre, and the movie is great at putting real-world logic on a pretty illogical premise. It's a pretty dark comedy, though it drags a bit in the middle, mostly because there aren't as many monster fight scenes (complete with pretty hilariously bad CGI) as one would have hoped. However, the whole movie needs to be watched, if only for the out of nowhere climax and then credits sequence that just has to be seen to believed. Trust me, it's worth it for that alone.

(Incidentally, I waited months to see this movie. I reserved it at the local library last summer as soon as it was released and available. I was number 3 in the queue, and didn't get a hold of it until about three weeks ago. I think someone lost it somewhere down the line.)

• Prince of Space (遊星王子）

This may be sort of cheating, because I was actually watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version. But, here we go.

Prince of Space is the Americanized splicing of two separate movies, 遊星王子 (Wikipedia says its translated "Planet Prince") and 星王子 - 恐怖の宇宙船 (Planet Prince - The Terrifying Spaceship), which were both released in 1959 within a week of each other. Originally it was a TV show that got popular and made into a movie (a reboot, essentially). Basically, a Japanese scientist develops an amazing new rocket fuel that would allow for long-term space travel, and then somehow evil aliens with beaks made of silly putty learn about it and show up to steal the formula (because they need it so they can travel in space? How did they get to Earth in the first place??) Luckily, Prince of Space shows up to protect the scientist and his colleagues, as well as two nosy, annoying kids who get in everyone's way.

This movie was pretty terrible. Horribly dubbed, badly acted, really cheesy effects (Ok, those made it kind of awesome). Luckily, the MST3K team makes it all better, pointing out all the glaring plot holes, cheap-ass dubbing and bizarre translation/localizations. It's on the Vol. 7 DVD.

• Big Dreams, Little Tokyo

Again, maybe this is cheating a little; this is an American indie film, but the film was actually mostly in Japanese. So deal with it, haters.

Made in 2006 but not relased on DVD 'til 2008, Big Dreams, Little Tokyo was written, directed, and starred David Boyle. It's about an American "businessman" who lives in the "Japantown" district of an unknown city, where he goes around trying to sell his learn English book to the various Japanese citizens. He lives with a half-Japanese half-American who's training to become a Sumo, even though he can't gain enough weight to be accepted to the sumo academy. The film basically follows the two trying to fit into Japanese society with their half-baked business ventures.

The film is charming, in it's low-budget indie-way, and explores with some success some various ideas about cultural identity (even ones beyond Japanese vs American). It's got some really funny moments dealing with culture shock, and the characters are quirky without being unbelievable (even the main character, whose crazy-strict devotion to Japanese culture/language/identity reminds me of someone who might be afflicted with a touch of Aspergers). Jayson Watanabe, the half Japanese friend, steals almost every scene he's in. And hey look, it's got James Kyson Lee (Ando from Heroes) as a mean bookstore owner!

I might have liked this film more than a regular film-goer would because I do see something of myself in the main character, who loves a culture he'll always be an outsider too. So it resonated with me, and I imagine it would to any other Westerner with a passion for Japanese culture, so if you fall under those circumstances, I would certainly recommend it.