Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Dear Alan,

I have just finished reading your Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Your tongue in cheek and at times cynical sense of humour certainly saw you in good stead as you battled your way through the byways and back roads of rural Japan.

Looking for the Lost is divided into three parts, three walks through the hinterland of Japan, and each walk is coupled to an historical tale or series of events which give your story more impact. And the search itself for “Japan” is one that rasies many interesting questions. I think that all of us who come here from other countries (in your case England) are searching for something, something special amongst all the concrete, the castrated rivers, the detritus of advanced (and know semi-retired) capitalism. We may find it, we may not, but the thrill of the adventure drives us on. Perhaps in one of the little liquor stores way up back in the back of beyond, over a bottle or two of beer, chatting to the locals, you found it.

The first of your tales in this book is Tsugaru, a place I have visited a few times, a place where the wilds things are up at the tip of Japan’s main isle of Honshuu, on the Japan Sea coast. You follow the path Osamu Dazai followed in his Tsugaru, a useful vehicle that gives your writing a greater depth, something to bite into and masticate heartily. Dazai has been described as a writer full of irony and possessed of a gloomy wit. A writing style you seem to have taken to heart:

The stretch between Minmaya and Tappi offers an especially good opportunity to compare what Dazai saw with what exists today because it is one of the few stretches of road along which Dazai actually walked and on which he chose to exercise his talent for describing landscape, a talent that was not his forte any more than it is mine …. wrote Dazai, “I could see how serene life can be in the cheerful atmosphere of those trim, well-appointed harbours,” and if any part of that sentence represents an honest description of what Dazai actually found here, then the change wrought upon these pitiful places in the forty-four years between our visits is hardly less than that wrought by an ice age. pp. 22-3.

After Tsugaru, it is a hard slog through the wilds of Kyushu following the roots of that hero much loved by the Japanese: Saigo Takamori. You follow his escape from the overwhelming government forces in 1877 in the last stand of samurai against the coming age. Oh, and how it ruins your feet! Those adders and the wasps. Quite a hike, and quite a story too. Then finally heading up and out of Nagoya from its concrete monstrosities into the mountains and rivers where remnants of the Heike clan may have escaped too after being driven out of Kyoto by their arch enemies the Genji.

The amount of beer you drink is legendary. And even if your feet stink as badly as you make out I would be honoured if one day I run into your ghost in an out of the way liquor store. I’d love to buy you a beer. And then maybe one more for the road.

Yours,

Blizzardboy

Alan Booth’s Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan was published by Kodansha in 1995, two years after he sadly passed away from cancer of the colon at the age of 46. You should be able to find a copy at your local library if you live in Tokyo.

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# Title: Tokyo Underwold: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan
# Author: Robert Whiting
# Publisher: Vintage (September 26, 2000)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0375724893
# ISBN-13: 978-0375724893

No, Tokyo Underwold isn’t an announcment for yet another visit by British electroheads Underwold tour to Japan to play yet another version of Hello Slippy to all their Japanese fans, rather it is a fascinating look at the seedier side of Japanese life and business.

In 1945 when the Allied forces began their occupation following the surrender of Japan, the country was in a right and utter mess. This left the field wide open to all sorts of dodgy entrepreneurs to set up shop. Tokyo was in ruins after heavy bombing by the allies, and food supplies were very short. The black markets which sprung up within days of the surrender being announced served in many ways to keep the population of Tokyo alive during those very difficult times. Tokyo Underworld starts from this point, and develops by recounting the mindboggling corruption and nefarious goings on in the post war period, including tales of both Japanse gangsters as well as the GI’s of the occupying force who stood to make a great deal of money at this time.

Two characters from Tokyo’s colourful past stood out in particular. First was Rikidozan, a former sumo wrestler who was almost at the top of the sumo ladder when the end of the war brought the sport to a crashing holt. He became a professional wrestler and for many Japanese an icon of the rebuilding as he fought and won against many much larger and stronger American opponents. Little did the populus know, or want to know, that both these fights were fixed, and also of his Korean parentage. Such are the machinations of a defeated nation.

The other character who provides much of the backbone of Robert Whiting’s well-written book, was an American from New York’s Italian East Harlem, Nick Zappeti. An amazing character who was once known as “the King of Roppongi and the Mafia Boss of Harlem” he seems almost to have stepped out of a Martin Scorsese film. Involved heavily in black market trading during the occupation, and then later moving out into more legitimate business Zappeti’s risa and fall, mirrored in an oblique way much of what has befallen Japan in the post-war era.

I particularly enjoyed reading this book and learning a lot about what went on back then, as well as picking a great deal of information about our local areas history. That this is non-fiction, and not fiction, makes it all the more worth reading.

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Above is a print by the Edo period printmaker Hiroshige depicting a hawk. It is in the style of Kage’e or shadow print, something I hadn’t seen before I stumbled on the post Kage-e: Shadow pictures over at the Pink Tentacle blog. You can see more shadow prints at that page.

I love the way it is so delicately clever.

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I picked up a couple of Japanese short story compilations from our local library earlier this week - Autumn Wind and Other Stories selected and translated by Lane Dunlop, and a collection of Japanese detective/crime stories - Japanese Detective Stories edited by American detective fiction icon Ellery Queen.

Before delving into these collections I hadn’t read much in the way of Japanese short stories; although the short story is a genre that I do enjoy. In New Zealand we have a wealth of short story writers from the very famous such as Katherine Mansfield through to excellent contemporary masters of the genre such as Owen Marshall. In fact I would say that New Zealand writers excel at short story writing much more than they do in the field of longer fiction.

Autumn Wind and Other Stories is a curious collection of stories spanning the majority of the 20th century. There are short stories by famous Japanese writers including Kawabata Yasunari and Akutagawa Ryunosuke as well as a number of works by lesser-known authors. Stylistically these stories in general are a little challenging for Western readers as they tend to seem vague and often lack the sense of closure we take for granted in short stories. These short stories on the whole are more like impressionist paintings with the reader having to do much of the work to fill in the gaps in terms “what happens.” I enjoyed Nagai Kafu’s The Fox (1909) the most of the works in this collection. Its strong sense of nostalgia for a “better past” reminded me strongly of Tanizaki’s Naomi (they make a nice contrast I feel).

The other collection, Japanese Detective Stories was more enjoyable, with the detective genre’s plot driven stories much easier and more satisfying to me. Originally published in the late 1970’s the copy I read was a reprint released by Japanese publishing company Tuttle. The original title was Ellery Queen’s Japanese Golden Dozen: The Detective Story World in Japan. Ellery Queen was actually 2 brothers who conspired(;-)) together to create the character / author Ellery Queen. As the longer title would suggest this collection brings together a dozen of the best Japanese detective stories. These stories were all published in the 1970’s and were selected from more then 2500 stories.

If one doesn’t read the Japanese language, then short stories can be hard to find, appearing as they do usually in periodical publications such as magazines. Therefore collections such as Autumn Wind and Japanese Detective Stories serve a valuable purpose, bridging the Japanese and English language worlds.

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James Millward, Associate Professor at the American University of Georgetown has had published a new book Eurasian Crossroads (2007, Columbia University Press) which aims to be the first comprehensive history of the Xinjiang region available in English.

from the  Georgetown University site:

Scholar Explores History of China’s Xinjiang Region

Looking forward to reading that. I wonder if it will pass muster in China though.

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