Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Sometimes concurrences occur in the most unlikely of places. I have just finished reading a couple of books – The Bookseller of Kabul by Norwegian journalist Anse Sierstad and The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi – both of which strangely echoed each other. A novel written in Japan’s Showa period and set around the Meiji era by a Japanese novelist and a piece of ficto-journalism detailing life in current day Afghanistan? Strange as it seems both these books deal with similar themes and highlight interesting similarities despite there great differences.

Fumiko Enchi’s The Waiting Years details the interplay within a powerful upper-class family during the period in Japan’s history when the country was beginning to Westernize. The novel revolves mainly around the character of Tomo who is the wife of powerful bureaucrat Shirakawa. Shirakawa himself is the scion of a minor Samurai family and embodies a set of values which, even at that juncture in time bordered on the anachronistic.

The Waiting Years derives its strength as a novel from the interplay between Tomo and Shirakawa and, as the story develops the relationship between those two as well as that between the other two women Suga and Yumi who become Shirakawa’s lovers. This leaves his first wife Tomo in more the position of a household manager. This is a tragic and at times touching look at life in Japan, as well as sexual relationships during this period.

On the other hand, The Bookseller of Kabul is set in post-Taliban Afghanistan and describes in fascinating detail the family of Sultan Khan, a bookseller from Kabul (as the title would suggest) as he and his family struggle alongside the country of Afghanistan as it tries to find its’ feet again following the destruction caused by first the Soviet invasion, then the Taliban’s ultra-conservative attack on people’s freedoms and after that the ongoing fighting involving the American-led attempts at securing peace, cloyingly known as Operation Enduring Freedom.

A large part of The Bookseller of Kabul looks at the relationships within the Sultan household. The journalist who wrote the book, being a woman, was able to enter both the male and female sides of this Muslim household and as a result was able to bring to the world a balanced view of life in Kabul that would have been impossible for a male journalist to enter.

Sultan, head of the household, early in The Bookseller of Kabul decides his first wife is getting a bit past it and that he wants to take a second, and much younger wife, and it is this point that really brings the two books together. Despite their differing nationalities, religions and the different periods they are found inhabiting, Sultan and Shirakawa share surprisingly similar attitudes to both life and women. Their elevated social positions allow them certain “freedoms” within their societies even if these “freedoms” are frowned upon by segments of their societies and certainly in most of the Western world.

Both books offer insightful windows into parts of the world impossible to visit (at least in the case of The Waiting Years) or bordering on the insane (in the case of present-day Afghanistan). Read together they provide an interesting comparison of what it is to be human, and to remind us that despite differences in religion, nationality and even temporal location there are similarities both positive and negative within that experience.

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There is nothing like snuggling up with a nice hot cup of Milo and good read as a way to relax during ones’ nights away from the bars and clubs of Roppongi, Kawabata and Ame-mura.

If you are in Japan, or are interested in this country you will probably want to read some of the delightful fiction produced on these isles. Top of your list would have to be Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto who offer deep and revealing perspectives on contemporary life in Japan. Ryu Murakami is a good place to start if you are looking for Japan’s darker side. For crime and detective fans, Seichi Matsumoto and Miyuki Miyabe will leave you turning pages till late into the night and for fans of horror fiction the eery works of Koji Suzuki will send a shiver down your spine.

Here is the list of 69 contemporary Japanese novels:

Haruki Murakami

1. Pinball, 1973
2. A Wild Sheep Chase
3. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
4. In a Norwegian Wood
5. Dance Dance Dance
6. South of the Border, West of the Sun
7. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
8. Sputnik Sweetheart
9. Kafka on the Shore
10. After Dark
11. The Elephant Vanishes

Banana Yoshimoto

12. Kitchen
13. Asleep
14. Goodbye Tsugumi
15. NP
16. Lizard
17. Amrita
18. Moonlight Shadow
19. Hardboiled & Hard Luck

Genichiro Takahashi

20. Sayonara Gangsters

Kenzo Kitakata

21. Ashes
22. Winter Sleep
23. The Cage
24. City of Refuge (forthcoming)

Taichi Yamada

25. Strangers
26. In Search of a Distant Voice

Kaori Ekuni

27. Twinkle Twinkle

Keigo Higashino

28. Naoko
29. Malice (forthcoming)

Mari Akasaka

30: Vibrator: A Novel

Natsuo Kirino

31. Out: A Novel
32. Grotesque

Miyuki Miyabe

33. The Devil’s Whisper
34. Brave Story
35. Shadow Family
36. Crossfire
37. All She was Worth

Mariko Hayashi

38. Green Green Grapes of Home

Akimitsu Takagi

39. The Informer
40. The Tattoo Murder Case (Soho Crime)
41. Honeymoon to Nowhere (Soho Crime)
42. No Patent on Murder

Randy Taguchi

43. Outlet

Seicho Matsumoto

44. Inspector Imanishi Investigates (Soho Crime)
45. Pro Bono
46. Points and Lines

Asa Nonami

47. The Hunter
48. Now You’re One of Us

Ami Sakurai

49. Innocent World

Seishi Yokomizo

50. The Inugamui Clan (Stone Bridge Fiction)

Yusuke Kishi

51. The Crimson Labyrinth

Hitomi Kanehara

52. Snakes and Earrings

Koji Suzuki

53. Birthday
54. Dark Water
55. Death and the Flower
56. Paradise
57. Ring: The Ring Trilogy – 1
58. Spiral: The Ring Trilogy – 2
59. Loop: The Ring Trilogy – 3

Kenzaburo Oe

60. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
61. The Silent Cry
62. Somersault
63. The Changeling
64. A Quiet Life

Ryu Murakami

65. In the Miso Soup
66. Coin Locker Babies
67. A Paler Shade of Blue
68. Piercing
69. Sixty-Nine

The list is in no particular order, although I started with my favourite Japanese author Haruki Murakami and worked my way down to his namesake Ryu Murakami with his novel Sixty-Nine being a nice place to end a list of 69 Japanese contemporary novels. I would say I have read about half of the books on the list – and it was quite nice to find some new names while I was researching this list – Mari Akasaka and Hitomi Kanehara being two new finds I will have to track down.

I wonder if I missed any contemporary Japanese authors? Japan does have a huge publishing industry – and those authors who make it to translation into English are the cream of the crop. I left off authors such as Konno Abe, whose work, despite being post-modern in nature doesn’t fit into the realm of the contemporary.

This list was inspired by upstairsforthinking’s list of books from the Guardian’s List of Top 100 Books of All Time that he hasn’t read.

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I was very glad to get a copy of Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip earlier this week. I mentioned Mr. Pip briefly in an earlier post, and with the awards ceremony for The Man Booker Prize just around the corner I thought it might be nice to give Mr. Pip the once-over.

The Man Booker Prize is the world’s leading book award and has been won previously by a New Zealander with South Island author Keri Hulme picking up the prize in 1985 for her classic novel The Bone People. Unlike the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Man Booker Prize focuses on choosing the greatest novel of the year, so if Mr. Jones were to pick it up for Mr. Pip it would be an honour indeed.

Mr. Pip is a delightful read. It is a story told through the world of Matilda, a child growing up on the Papua New Guinean Island of Bouganville. Named by the Australians who controlled the extremely valuable and productive copper mines on the islands, Matilda’s story brings us right down to earth at the very juncture between many different memes. During the period the story is set in – the 1990’s – the island was blockaded by the Papua New Guinea government as the island was rollicked by war.

Themes of innocence versus power, the effects of industry on an island people, intelligence versus christianity drive this book in a delicate and informed way that both intrigues and stimulates the mind. It would be easy given the themes that this book deals with to drop into glibbly patronizing the characters but Lloyd deals with the themes in an elegant manner that inspires the reader.

Those of you familiar with English dinosaurs may recognize the character from the title – Mr. Pip – as being drawn from Dickens’ Great Expectations. Mr Pip as a novel works in layers and the Dickensian Mr. Pip is several of these. On the island there is only one white man – a certain Mr. Watts who ends up teaching the children. Untrained as a teacher he teaches in a ‘novel’ way – by reading Mr. Pip to the kids. But in a sense he also becomes Mr. Pip. I really enjoyed the way this layering creates a sort of palimpsest enticing the reader to dig between the layers to create their own meanings and interpretations.

This book conjures up images of author such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being’s Milan Kundera. It does, very slightly miss the lightness that makes A Hundred Years of Solitude such a magnificent read. I think Jones is on the verge of greatness – perhaps just one novel away from creating his own masterpiece.

For a rating I will give it nine carriages of drunken salary-men on the Yamanote line out of ten.

There is a nice review from Australia’s The Age here (thats where I got the photo) and if you want to pick up a copy from Amazon then click here.

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One of the most pleasant experiences these fair isles have to offer is that of a visit to an onsen or hot spring. Particularly rewarding after a hard day hitting the slopes on your snow board, there is nothing better than leaning back and relaxing in the hot waters of some rural spring and watching the snow flakes flutter down amongst the bathers.

With a truly huge number of hot springs, and a corresponding range of quality from the superb resorts down to dingy joints that haven’t seen a cleaning cloth or a builder since some time in the 1960’s finding the perfect hot spring can be a challenge. If you live in the country it probably isn’t so much of a problem, just ask around at your local drinking hole and you are bound to start a veritable fireball of a discussion amongst the regulars on the respective merits of the plethora of springs to be found in most parts of Japan.

If you live in the big smoke of Tokyo you will want to get your hand on a guide book, and if it is the idea of soaking away those aches and pains of city life in some beautiful out of the way onsen, then I would highly recommend Anne Hotta and Yoko Ishiguro’s well researched A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs.

Featuring 160 select hot springs scattered the length and breadth of Japan, A Guide to Japan’s Hot Springs offers a wealth of information to the traveller – hot spring newbie or onsen connoisseur alike. If you are looking for a romantic getaway from Tokyo then this book will be indispensable in helping you select and unforgettable destination. Or, if you are looking for some apres ski action (something Japan is sorely lacking) then this book should do the trick.

Surprisingly Chiba has no hot springs worth speaking of. Tokyo gets a mention with the Rokuryu Onsen, (near Ueno and comfortably close if you are staying around the Akihabara / Ueno parts of Tokyo), but it is in the rural areas that A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs really bubbles.

Like the last two off the main-stream guide books featured (Tokyo for Free and Kanto Pilgrimages (day walks around Tokyo)) this book is highly recommended if you are looking for something special during your time in Japan.

# Title: A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs
# Authors: Anne Hotta with Yoko Ishigura
# Paperback: 284 pages
# Publisher: Kodansha America; 1st ed edition (April 1986)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0870117203
# ISBN-13: 978-0870117206

If you would like a copy, you can pick up a copy from Amazon by clicking here: A Guide to Japanese Hot Springs.

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Tokyo has an image of being one of the most expensive cities in the world, a city where spending ten thousand dollars on an evening entertaining clients, where everyone sports their Louis Vuitton status symbols as if they are truly unique. But of course being a city of 24 million people things are a little more diverse than that reputation would have you believe.

Of course such frivolous nights are possible, even though they are less common than they were during the effervescent bubble of 20 years ago and the yen, being as weak as an American democrat, makes Tokyo an even more affordable place to visit than one might imagine. Even more affordable though, if you are struggling on an unpaid Nova teachers salary, are the free activities and attractions on offer in present day Tokyo.

Tokyo for Free, written by Susan Pompian is a great resource if you are looking for free adventures in Tokyo, or just something interesting to do on the weekend.

With over 300 free attractions there is something for everyone in this book – from watching Japan’s famed sumo wrestlers practicing, through to visiting the home of the Imperial Family in Tokyo, as well as a range of the truly bizarre such as the worlds only Parasitological Museum in Meguro. Whilst being a few years old now – published in 1998 – most of the attractions mentioned are still open and still free.

Tokyo for Free has sections on Parks, Museums, Martial Arts and Sports, Gardens and Festivals, Libraries and Galleries, the Performing Arts and museum-like Antique stores, Super showrooms, free views and temples and shrines. So there is a huge range of things to do for just about anyone.

We have been to a few of the places mentioned in the book, including the wonderful view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings in Shinjuku, the aforementioned Parasite Museum as well the Fire Museum in Yotsuya and the Bank of Japan’s Currency Museum in Nihonbashi.

One negative for this book is a lack of a geographically based index – which would make finding nearby places much easier. But like the Exploring Kanto book I reviewed earlier, Tokyo for Free is a wonderfully useful resource to liven up ones life in the land of the rising sun.

# Title: Tokyo for Free
# Author: Susan Pompian
# Paperback: 464 pages
# Publisher: Kodansha International (March 23, 1998)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 4770020538
# ISBN-13: 978-4770020536

You can pick up a copy from amazon.com: Tokyo for Free.

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Tokyo is a magnificent beast of a city, a circuit board of buildings stretching far across the Kanto Plain, rolling on into the surrounding provinces of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa. Home to 24 million souls by day and 12 million at night. Tokyo is one of the megalopolii. A concrete jungle where space is the ultimate luxury.

It is easy to forget, when one lives in Tokyo, that there is more to Japan than just office buildings, subway lines and harried office workers. To forget that out beyond the confines of the city there are mountains and rivers, farms and rice fields, open spaces and yes, even nature.

Michael Plastrow’s excellent Exploring Kanto: Weekend Pilgrimages from Tokyo is a guide book for day walks one can do from Tokyo. Covering 33 routes it offers a plethora of options for those looking to get out of Tokyo for the day.

These 33 walks follow the order of, and cover the 33 temples of the Bando ‘Sanjusansho’ Pilgrimage. As Plastrow writes in the introduction:
The Bando circuit is dedicated to Kannon, (Avalokitesvera in Sanskrit), a merciful bodhisattva who is supposed to have thirty-three separate manifestations (hence the number of temples on the circuit).

The book covers 9 walks in Yokohama’s Kanagawa Prefecture, 1 in Tokyo, 4 in Saitama, 2 in Gunma Prefecture, 3 in Tochigi Prefecture, 6 in Ibaraki Prefecture and 7 in Chiba Prefecture. We have been on a couple of the walks in the book and found it to be a useful guide – not just to the temples themselves, but also to local sites of interest that one passes on the way.

Published in 1996, it is a little dated in parts but overall the temples and walks described in the guide book are all still there making this book still as useful as when it was first published. Bus and train times may well have changed in the interim however there is enough in this book to make it a valuable addition to ones bookshelf during ones stay in Tokyo.

Highly recommended as a source of inspiration for what to do whilst living in Tokyo.

# Title: Exploring Kanto: Weekend Pilgrimages from Tokyo
# Author: Michael Plastow
# Paperback: 256 pages
# Publisher: Weatherhill; 1st ed edition (June 1996)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0834803321
# ISBN-13: 978-0834803329

This book is reasonably hard to find, you might get lucky with one of the second hand bookstores in Tokyo – such as Good Day Books in Ebisu, or you should be able to pick up a copy from Amazon.com: Exploring Kanto.

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Japan’s war crimes during the Second World War are well recorded and widely acknowledged, however when thinking about the war, it is easy to overlook the fact that at some levels the Japanese soldiers during the war were human and like all human beings had feelings, knew beauty and desired for peace.

The Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama is a novella that traces the experiences of a company of Japanese soldiers from the final period of fighting through internment by the British in the south east asian country of Burma (now known as Myanmar). This is no Platoon or Thin Red Line, war is important to the book, but more important is music, and to a lesser extent Buddhism.

This is a moving book. The soldier in the unit documented by The Harp of Burma have taught themselves to sing, to make instruments and to play them to a level that made them famous amongst the occupying Japanese soldiers. Just how “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast” is clearly delineated.

My own readings about Burma have been limited to George Orwell’s work whilst stationed there, and accounts of the current regimes brutality. The differences between Orwell’s colonialism and the bond that Buddhism provides the Japanese soldiers and the local citizenry are stark. And compared to the current situation in Burma, The Harp of Burma paints a picture of much happier times.

This book is well worth reading, both for another angle on the Second World War, as well as for a peek into what Burma was once like, and hopefully can one day become again.

# Title: The Harp of Burma
# Author: Michio Takeyama
# Translator: Howard Hibbett
# Series: Unesco Collections of Contemporary Works
# Paperback: 136 pages
# Publisher: Tuttle Publishing (June 1968)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0804802327
# ISBN-13: 978-0804802321

You can pick up a copy of Michio Takeyama’s classic The Harp of Burma by clicking here.

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The post-war period in Japan was one of immense social change as Japanese society adjusted to the shock of defeat and to the occupation of Japan by American forces and their allies. Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun takes this milieu as its background to tell the story of the decline of a minor aristocratic family.

The story is told through the eyes of Kazuko, the unmarried daughter of a widowed aristocrat. Her search for self meaning in a society devoid of use for her forms the crux of the novel. It is a sad story, and structurally is a novel very much within the confines of the Japanese take on the novel in a way reminiscent of authors such as Nobel Prize winner Yasunori Kawabata – the social interactions are peripheral and understated, nuances must be drawn, and for readers more used to Western novelistic forms this comes across as being rather wishy-washy.

Kazuko’s mother falls ill, and due to their financial circumstances they are forced to take a cottage in the countryside. Her brother, who became addicted to opium during the war is missing. When he returns, Kazuko attempts to form a liaison with the novelist Uehara. This romantic displacement only furthers to deepen her alienation from society.

Famous as it is in Japan, I wouldn’t recommend The Setting Sun. The translation comes across today as being dated and stilted. If you are looking for a novel focusing on the decline of the aristocracy I would recommend Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, which while having no relation to these fair isles does manage to capture the decline of the nobility without sending the reader to sleep.

#Title: The Setting Sun
#Author: Osama Dazai
# Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; Revised edition (June 1968)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0811200329
# ISBN-13: 978-0811200325

You can pick up a copy of Osama Dazai’s The Setting Sun by clicking here.

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