Podcasts

Podcast 14: Yamamba—Japanese Mountain Witch—with Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich

July 3, 2021

In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with the co-editors of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch, an anthology just released by Stone Bridge Press. Rebecca Copeland is a professor of Japanese literature, a writer of fiction (The Kimono Tattoo) and literary criticism, and a translator of Japanese literature (Grotesque, The Goddess Chronicle). Linda C. Ehrlich is an independent scholar and poet who has published on world cinema and traditional theater.

Podcast Show Notes:

Amy asks Linda and Rebecca how they came to publish Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch, and why, of all the yokai, they chose Japan’s mountain witch.

Rebecca starts off explaining that the Yamamba is often depicted as a wicked old woman who takes advantage of hapless travelers, but she is also described as a nurturing entity who helps the weaver at the loom and the farmer with the fields. She is complex, representing all the mysterious and unexplainable as played out on the noh stage, the setsuwa and folklore stories over the centuries. Rebecca is interested in modern, 20th century portrayal of the Yamamba image and how contemporary women writers have drawn on her subversive powers. This inspired both the co-editors to explore how art inspires and how it is diverse and dynamic, resulting in this anthology which includes poems, shorts stories, interviews, comprising an eclectic array of presentations of the Yamamba.

Amy asks about the image of the Yamamba as old crones living in the mountains, and Rebecca confirms this is so, adding that it is usually villagers who encounter the Yamamba on their way through the mountains.

Linda Ehrlich, who comes from a background of traditional theater from the University of Hawaii, explains more about the noh play that appears in the beginning of the anthology. She says that Ann Sherif translated the interview which was unique in that the two noh performers were women. In the play, she says, “Yamamba is mysterious but not as grotesque as she is portrayed as elsewhere. She is a force of nature but controlled by nature, so she is beyond all binaries. So we have different voices for the Yamamba, that work together.” Rebecca later conducts an interview with a performer who portrays a more current, updated version of the Yamamba reflecting the body, gender, and so on.

Rebecca discusses Ōba Minato’s “The Smile of the Mountain Witch” describing how she was one of these 20th century writers who reappropriated the Yamamba image, challenging the idea of the Yamamba as always old. Perhaps she could have been a young girl at times too? How did she become a Yamamba? The story charts how a young girl who can mind-read and who has a capacity for great joy, is taught to deny her talents in order to fit in. So to Rebecca this suggests all women have a Yamamba potential, for strength and reliance that we’ve been taught to deny ourselves. Oba uses an ancient legend to cmment on contemporary gender discrimination.

Amy mentions that Aoko Matsuda has, with her recent book Where the Wild Ladies Are, done something similar recasting and updating traditional Japanese folktales with strong contemporary female characters.

Amy asks Linda and Rebecca about how they put together the anthology. They relate there was lots of editing, discussion, compromising and and refining and mention the uniqueness of the anthology’s hybrid approach containing both scholarly and creative writing, a result of reaching out to writers, scholars and visual artists. They talk about contributing articles themselves: Linda’s poem translated into Japanese and Rebecca’s short story. It took a year to collect the material for the manuscript and another year for editing.

Linda says that the book isn’t just for women, and that there is one male contributor. Linda points out that when the Noh actors portray the Yamamba, it hasn’t much to do with gender and more to do with performance of power and awesomeness.

Linda talks about the images in the book, combining some that were specific and some that were abstract to give a mix. Amy mentions that Jann Williams, who reviewed the book for Books on Asia, wrote that “readers are left to imagine the Yamamba in her various forms and the freedom to do so adds depth to the reading experience.”

Amy asks both Linda and Rebecca about projects they are currently working on. Amy mentions she saw Rebecca’s name as writing an introduction or forward for a new book by Liza Dalby. Rebecca confirms, saying Dalby has translated Setouchi Jakucho’s work called “Places,” a self-reflective study of the places that Jakucho has been and how these places have influenced the Buddhist nun, writer and activist. Rebecca also mentions she has just published her first novel, The Kimono Tattoo, a mystery set in Kyoto.

Linda has just finished audio commentary for the new DVD for Hirokazu Koreeda‘s film “Afterlife” that will appear with Criterion in August. She has a new poetry collection called “Citron” just released.

Lastly, Amy asks Rebecca and Linda about their favorite books on Japan:

Linda

The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagan

Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko

“Take Kurabe” a short story by Higuchi Ichiyo (translated as either “Growing Up” or “Comparing Heights”)

In the Shade of Spring Leaves, about Higuchi Ichiyo.

Rebecca

Dangerous Women, Deadly Words, by Nina Cornyets

The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan, by Sari Kawana

Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan by Jan Bardsley

 

Read our review of Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, publisher of fine books on Asia for over 30 years. Sign up for the Books on Asia Podcast.

 

 

New Release—Another Bangkok, by Alex Kerr

July 1, 2021

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Just released by Penguin, U.K. Alex Kerr’s latest book Bangkok Found: Reflections on the City, now available only on Amazon.jp, Amazon U.K, and Book Depository, U.K. (free shipping world-wide). Stay posted for a talk with Alex about this book on an upcoming Books on Asia YouTube podcast where he visually walks us through some of the pages of the book. Subscribe here.

Book Description:

From the author of Another Kyoto, Lost Japan, and Finding the Heart Sutra, this new book is a rich, personal exploration of the culture and history of Bangkok, and an essential guide for anyone visiting the city.

Alex Kerr has spent over thirty years of his life living in Bangkok. As with his bestselling books on Japan, this evocative personal meditation explores the city’s secret corners. Here is the huge, traffic-choked metropolis of concrete high-rises, slums and sky trains; but also a place of peace and grace. Looking afresh at everything from ceramics to Thai dance, flower patterns to old houses, Kerr reveals one of Asia’s most kaleidoscopically complex cities. Another Bangkok will delight both those who think they know the city well and those visiting for the first time.

 

Alex Kerr’s new YouTube Channel: Secrets of Things

June 30, 2021

By Amy Chavez

Alex Kerr once told me, in a previous interview about his mentor David Kidd: “David was a genius of Asian aesthetics. He would put a group of snuff bottles or something on the table and say, ‘Now Alex, tell me what you see.’ Then we’d talk about it for hours and he’d expose their secrets. Or he’d pull out a screen in the living room and give insights. It wasn’t just about the look of particular antiques, but how they go together, that axis along which things should be arranged. That’s what I learned from David.”

In Kerr’s new YouTube channel Secrets of Things, he continues the tradition of passing down “secrets” to others by allowing the listener to eaves drop on his short conversations about East Asian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, and Thai art. And it’s fascinating stuff.

“…one thing I’m trying to do which goes all the way back to David Kidd,” said Kerr about restoring old houses in Japan, “is to take these old things and bring them into the modern age and make them new and fresh; to take a wonderful structure, make it more livable and bring out what’s hidden right now—its secrets—and to make people look again, and see what’s really of value.”

“Cinnabar Bowl” is the first in the “Secrets of Things” series. It’s rather appropriate that Kerr starts the series off with a humble tea bowl, because I remember him saying, “You ask the tea master why you should put the tea bowl to the left or to the right, and he answers ‘Because that’s the rule.’ What use is that to anyone? But there is a reason, and it’s a profound one, and it’s a useful one. So when you can introduce it that way, people can see the value.”

Start unlocking secrets of Asian art by watching “Secrets of Things.” And be sure to hit the Subscribe button while you’re there.

Excerpt—Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko

June 27, 2021

By Gordon Vanstone (Monsoon Books, 2021)

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From Part Three: Tokyo (Tonkotsu), “Cosmic Pachinko”

The crack of a bat drew my attention to a row of batting cages, the most ill-fitting of Kabukicho’s diversions. Guess even hustlers and pimps need to blow off steam with a little wholesome recreation once in a while. 

The batting cages and dense block of love hotels mark the bottom fringe of Shinjuku’s red-light district. I emerged from the carnival-like atmosphere of Kabukicho’s libertinism and entered Shin-Ōkubo where it becomes clandestine, existing as necessity more than luxury.

I’d just left the Beatles McDonald’s. While I’d have liked to have met Yukie again after work, and make love until sunrise, it had become impossible to ignore, once again, I was financially fucked. With barely enough left from my bullfight winnings to purchase the requisite Chu-his to get me through another day, I was in no position to be shelling out for love hotels.

As I ruminated on money woes and when I’d get to be properly intimate with Yukie again, Jae-hyun rounded a Korean BBQ joint on the corner and headed my way.

‘Been keeping busy these days. Things must be progressing well for you.’ He noted my frequent absences from the café of late with a prideful gleam in his eye.

‘Yeah, things have been going okay,’ I admitted. ‘But, you know what they say, romance and finance, the scourge of a man’s existence.’

‘Ah, and which is getting you down?’

‘Surprisingly, the romance is on pretty good track. But financial difficulties are starting to hamper that,’ I said with a pathetic self-pitying pout and hoped he didn’t think I was about to hit him up for a loan. But there was a favour I’d been wanting to ask him, something that could help my money troubles as well as scratch a long nagging cultural itch. ‘Hey Jae-hyun, can you teach me to play pachinko?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he replied, breaking into a broad smile.

Jae-hyun briefly stopped by his cubby and emerged donning a baseball cap pulled low and a bulky black jacket. We walked the streets of Okubo past several loud cajoling shops. For reasons, personal or professional, we couldn’t patronize any of those. Finally, we arrived at a rundown parlour off Okubo’s main drag.

‘You want to avoid the new bigger parlours, they rig the machines more and pay out less. They think they can get away with it with all that glitz and theatrics. They practically do, but us old hands know,’ he said, with an old cocksureness coming to surface.

Stage one, as Jae-hyun explained, was to walk around the place to find a machine that spoke to you. He said the pros study the machines for hours and see which ones are paying out, then snag them. We didn’t have time for that so were forced to go on feeling alone. It was a bit like being at the track, watching the horses as they were paraded around the paddock, and betting on a hunch the one who catches your eye.

The parlour still dinged and binged like the others, there still hung in the air a thick cloud of second-hand smoke and gentle whiff of fatalism; it was just the machines were a little bit older, the lighting drabber, and the carpet sullied with cigarette burns, old stains and sticky underfoot.

My sole peeled off the floor, and I seized Jae-hyun’s arm. ‘This one!’

A chair, padded with red vinyl covering like all the rest yet in the distinctive disrepair of the joint had rips in the covering and yellowing foam protruding out. It was the rips that caught my attention. There was one extended tear, and beside it, a diagonal cut intersected by a horizontal and that sliced through with another short vertical – making a distinct number fourteen.

I approached and swung the seat toward me, just to confirm, then sat. Jae-hyun seemed to approve of my selection as he walked to my side and stood ready to instruct. We put a five-thousand-yen note in the machine. ‘Okay,’ instructed my coach, ‘press the tamakashi.’

Inferring, I pressed a little red button and a bin which stuck out like a pouty bottom lip flooded with silver ball bearings. As instructed, I turned the handle on my lower right side, twisting back and forth.

‘You can’t manipulate the ball once in motion, just set it on the correct path,’ Jae-hyun told me as, by instinct or conditioning, his busted hand reached for the knob, and then retracted as if from a flame.

It was a delicate craft. If you turned the handle too sharply, the balls went right into the losing shoot at the bottom, if not enough, then they fell short of the goal. There were also pesky little pegs on the board, which would knock my ball off course if hit at the wrong angle.

‘Aim for the gap,’ he said. ‘Seek the clearest line to the winning holes.’

‘I am!’ Frustrated with my ability, I snapped. Thus far, I’d lost all balls down the losing side shoots.

‘You’re thinking too much. Forget any schemes or systems, find the feel and go with it,’ he directed in a firm whisper.

There’s some of that Zen shit I’ve been waiting for. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them to the machine’s bongo beat blast of blinking lights. Calmly, I adjusted the knob; based not on thought, but through sheer sense.

With my newfound rhythm, the balls started to fall into the winning destination, one after the other. It was like finding the g-spot, challenging to get there but once you had it, didn’t want to lose your place as the rewards came fast and furious, and felt pretty damn sweet.

Silver balls spilled forth from the base and collected in a plastic basket below. So much so that one became filled and Jae-hyun needed to grab an empty one to replace. Somehow the impossible happened and the parlour’s constant clangour faded away, only the sweet, steady sound of cascading ball bearings, like monsoon rains against a corrugated roof, could I hear.

When my touch waned, Jae-hyun would jump in with more eastern visualization blather, like reading from a sutra of eerily relatable aphorisms. ‘Stars falling through the cosmos, guide them through this muddled universe …’ or ‘don’t struggle against the current; find the centre, relax and flow with it.’

‘Sugoi, aotari,’ Jae-hyun exclaimed excitedly as a waterfall of little silver balls filled an entire basket with a single pour. I didn’t know what it meant but knew it was good. The way the machine screamed and lit up, I figured I’d hit some sort of jackpot.

At that point, I wasn’t sure if we were making any money. It sure felt like it by the baskets of ball-bearings being set aside, plus Jae-hyun’s beaming smile was a pretty good indicator. Despite my ignorance of the rules and results, I could see the appeal. The randomness of outcomes, all the variables and obstacles encountered along the way. The parlour sets the pegs, so yeah, it’s rigged against you, that’s life! But you determine the course, and that sense of control – the gambler’s hit – permeates the player’s mindset so a belief prevails; I can beat the game, with just the right touch.

It felt like I’d only been playing for thirty minutes, but when closing time rolled around close to midnight, it meant we’d been there almost four hours. We exchanged our many baskets of balls from a kind of gift shop near the front. For my efforts, an alarm clock, teddy bear and handbag were handed over the counter, like if I’d rung three bottles at a carnival. In exchange for this newfound armload of crap, I tipped the attendant with a baffled expression.

Jae-hyun was unfazed. He led me outside and around the corner to a small kiosk, the TUC shop. I handed over my random objects, the officious gentleman did some number crunching, and stone-faced, he handed me a thick wad of crisp bills.

I counted our winnings as we walked back to the main street, just under a hundred thousand yen.

‘Thanks,’ I said, handing Jae-hyun his half.

He waved it away.

‘No, I insist. My first pachinko … it was something. I’ve wanted to try ever since I arrived, but never knew how.’

The money hung from my arm in the air between us. ‘I’ve got no need for it.’ He glanced at the cash and then away with a kind of disdain. ‘The experience itself was all the payoff I require,’ he added with the jubilant smile of a travelling Mormon.

I procured us a couple of tall cans from the nearest conbini, and without any explicit plan meandered past Don-don Quijote. Across Syokuan-Dori, and tilting at windmills, I pointed out Tatsuya and Machiko’s bar. ‘Had a pretty fucked up time there the other night.’

‘How so?’ Jae-hyun enquired.

I gave a brief backstory on Hideki, the names he’d written and then said, ‘We were not welcomed, to say the least. All but chased out of the bar by an unrelenting bitterness.’

‘Hmm, sounds uncomfortable,’ Jae-hyun said, and I could almost see his thoughts hopscotch down a memory lane where every square was a far more significant occurrence of undue prejudice. ‘But consider it a peg.’

‘A what?’

‘It’s an obstacle in your path, but how you rebound or bounce off of it will ultimately determine where you land.’

‘I’ve landed on fuck ’em and fuck it. I did my part and delivered my friend’s message,’ I said, my feigned indifference gnawed through by a persisting ire.

‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against,’ Jae-hyun continued, seeing through my wispy emotional smokescreen.

‘Are you a Christian?’ I asked, recognising the line loosely from the Lord’s Prayer I was required to learn somewhere in my youth.

‘Not particularly, I adhere to a meticulously sewn patchwork of theology,’ he said, tipping up the brim of his cap. ‘But in the end, they mostly overlap and intertwine. So “to understand all things is to forgive all things” if you prefer.’ Jae-hyun shrugged.

That one I didn’t recognise. ‘You forgive your pachinko bosses, for your hand and Eun-ae? Or Kim Jong’s regime?’

‘All of them … wholly! I had to. It was impossible to forgive myself until I learned to forgive others. My freedom was found in that forgiveness.’

Freedom? He lives in a fucking 2 by 2 closet, I thought. But we’d been down that road before so I shut the fuck up and listened.

The bottom hemisphere of Kabukicho was in full swing with all the usual suspects drifting through the streets and alleys, like hungry Pac-Man looking to satisfy insatiable appetites. Jae-hyun and I walked void of destination, yet veered deeper into the red-light maze, and who was leading who remained unknown.

I stopped in my tracks and swung the back of my hand in front of Jae-hyun’s chest to halt his progress. There, before the Robot restaurant, in front of an old-school izakaya situated on the street like an Edo era abode rather than your usual garish Kabukicho establishment and next to a potted gumtree plant, the elegant fingers of a pianist played the single string of his silent instrument. ‘Check him out,’ I pointed with excitement.

‘The kite-flyer of Kabukicho, ne!’ His eyes squinted and lips curled into a subtle smile. ‘Quite a character.’ He shook his head with undiminished fascination at the specimen. ‘Oh, so you can see him? That’s good, most don’t or simply choose not to.’

‘Yeah, I noticed he goes largely ignored by the masses,’ I said. ‘Stumbled upon him a few times now but I’m still trying to figure out why he does it … like a ritual or something? But for what?’

‘Yes, a ritual sounds about right. I don’t really know, I imagine so he can see … Above it all, beyond you or me, and all the rest.’

I mulled until my head hurt. ‘You ever see what’s on the other side?’ I stared up at the dark blue underbelly. ‘The design that faces the night sky?’

Jae-hyun flickered a puckish smile. ‘Now you’re thinking like me. Many a night I wandered these streets pondering the same. Even asked Kai about him on a number of occasions. He wouldn’t tell me much, just flashed me a knowing grin,’ he chuckled with a light-hearted frustration.

‘Hold up. Kai knows him?’

‘Yeah, Jun and him go way back. Seen them chatting away, on anonymous corners all over Kabukicho through the years.’

This blew my mind. First that Kai ever left the vicinity of our little netcafe and secondly he interacted with someone willingly. ‘So they like friends, family, colleagues?’ Come to think of it, there was a likeness. If not in appearance, then the way each, in his own way, was too strange for this world.

‘Damned if I know.’ He tipped his can and drank. ‘Partners in some odd scheme, acquaintances at best maybe,’ Jae-hyun mumbled.

His bulbous head emerged from the wide teal lapels of that night’s leisure suit. He paid no mind to the gawking strangers down the block, but bore a concentrated look as he fixated on centring the rhombus at some specific point in the sky. ‘You got any theories?’ I asked. ‘On the design.’

‘More than you’d want … how much time you got? But I’d like to hear yours. Get a fresh take.’

I stared up, took a drink of grapefruit Chu-hi then let the can fall and dangle by my side. ‘It just came to me now … but like an ancient symbol of some sort, an Aztec eye or something?’

‘The Ollin. Hmm, very nice.’ His head nodded in slow motion. ‘Movement, shifting shapes, Gemini, and Venus, the evening star – pulsating hearts, and the earth quakes, a beat of butterfly wings or undulating motion of weft as the loom weaves,’ he spat like Twista. Off the top of his head, the string of connections came as if a computer crunching complex formulas. I understood none of it, but the words individually hit my subconscious like pinpricks.

‘It’d answer a lot but raise just as many questions,’ Jae-hyun finished, lost in contemplation.

I feel that. ‘Your theory? Just give me the top two or three.’ I smirked up one side of my face.

He was in good spirits, took two long drags and laughed heartily. ‘That I can do. The first … You ever read the Iliad?’

‘I like dead writers but not that dead,’ I smiled back.

‘Well, really intricate and busy, like the shield of Achilles. A universe unto itself, an alternate reality, soaring above it all, under Jun’s watch and control.’

I looked at the kite-flyer of Kabukicho, Jun, as I guess he goes by. Rooted to the pavement like the potted plant he stood beside and just as unassuming. I discounted Jae-hyun’s first theory, out of hand.

‘Or if you like, some incarnation of the yin and yang … the kite sways in constant deliberation. Would explain the location. Kabukicho after the gloam fades, what a better place to gauge the duality of man?’

Each theory came with a gleam of the eye. I sensed he was holding out on me. There was a final, a favourite yet. ’Come on, one more. You’re saving the best for last, eh.’

He glanced over with a conspiratorial smile, as if about to share a thought that shouldn’t be shared then looked back up at the kite. ‘Just black,’ he said. ‘Pitch black.’

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. On we sauntered in reflective silence, reviewing each step of the personal journeys which preceded us.

⁂

Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko can be bought from Amazon.com; Amazon.jp; Kinokuniya stores in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan (Shinjuku); Dymocks in Australia; and Waterstones in U.K.

Note: This book contains language and scenes that may be offensive to some people.

About the Author:

author

Gordon Vanstone hails from Victoria BC, Canada. After graduating with a Bachelor of Education from Simon Fraser University, he moved overseas and worked as an international school teacher throughout Asia, including eight years in Tokyo. Gordon currently lives in Singapore and works in sales and marketing for an education company. Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko is his first novel. Visit his website, or follow him on Instagram.

Excerpt—Taiwanese at Work

June 25, 2021

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Taiwanese at Work is part of the “Asians at Work” series written by John Spiri. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s oral history Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do Spiri traveled all over Asia interviewing people about their typical day of work. This volume on Taiwan, one of five books covering Asian countries, includes interviews with 45 individuals who work in jobs as diverse as politician, slaughterhouse owner, well digger, poem reader, activist, and convenience store clerk. Included is a special section of interviews with Native Taiwanese tribe members in Taitung and Lidao, featuring, among others, an aboriginal dance teacher, a weaver, a village chief and an ex-fisherman turned minister.

The following excerpt is an interview with Hiao Sin Fun, a 48-year-old Gravedigger living in Yunlin County, near Taichung.

John Spiri: What does a gravedigger do?

Jiao Sin Fun: The dead person’s family members come here and consult with a feng shui master to decide where to place the body. That’s the first step. After the body is buried more than ten years, I have to open the coffin, get the bones, and take them out of the ground. I gather and arrange the bones. A family’s fortune and wealth depends on this being done correctly.

Then what happens to the bones?

They are put in a jar. Nothing else is left. The bodies are not cremated; they just decompose naturally. The bones stay forever–but families just pay once.

How long does it take to collect the bones and put them in the jar?

Only one or one and a half hours. It’s troublesome to fit them in the jar. We put the bones under the sunlight; then we clean the remaining bits of meat off the bones. The bones are set up in a certain order, from the fingers to the toes. They stay under the sun for three days in order to totally dry out. The bones are then bound together with red string; the finger bones go in a small red bag. The remaining bones are arranged in a compact form, as if the person were sitting with knees up to chest. The backbone has 24 pieces so that has to be constructed.

That only takes 60 to 90 minutes?

No, just digging them up takes that long. This entire process takes three days. We put coals in with the bones to prevent humidity. At the initial burial, we use a silk cloth to hide the face. Also, the face is painted: eyes and nose are painted black, and the lips red. The clothes, however, are never red. Families believe that red clothes will make the dead person become a ghost. We put a wig of long hair on males, a ponytail, just like in the Ching Dynasty. For females we use a hairpin to keep the hair back so they look like a boy. If we don’t do that bad luck will be brought on the family.

When you first open the coffin after ten years, how do you feel?

Sometimes we find a body that hasn’t decomposed properly and stinks terribly. In that case we put in some water and cabbage. Then we put the coffin top back partially on, but with four bricks to allow air in.

Why water and cabbage?

To increase the moisture so worms will come to eat the body. Then it takes one more year to fully decompose the body

Do you believe in ghosts?

I’ve never met a ghost.

Taiwanese at Work can be purchased from Amazon or, in Japan, directly from the author: globalstoriespress (at) gmail (dot) com

Read an excerpt from Japanese at Work.

Review—Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan 1603-1853

June 24, 2021
Where to Buy

Support BOA by ordering Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853 through these links:

Amazon international
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By Haga Tōru (Japan Library, 2021) Transl. Juliet Winters Carpenter

Review by Cody Poulton

Lightning—

girdled by waves

the islands of Japan

This haiku by Yosa Buson (1716-1784) captures a snapshot of Japan in the Tokugawa era: isolated, peaceful, self-contained.

The Tokugawa era (aka Edo period), which stretched from 1603 until its fall in 1868, has generally been considered a dark, feudal age run by a draconian police state. To be sure, the samurai could come down hard on dissidents and were inveterate party poopers, but this period also witnessed the flourishing of practically every gentle art that Japan has become famous for: tea, horticulture and landscape gardens, kimono textile design, woodblock prints, haiku and its satirical cousin senryū, kabuki and the puppet theatre, and a few forms like kyōka (“mad poems”) and gesaku pop literature that would be less known to the layperson. In his book, Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853, Haga Tōru covers all these, as well as the advances made chiefly in medicine and natural history by Japanese philosophers and scientists. This collection of Haga’s essays is elegantly translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, capturing the voice of this engaging writer.

Haga enjoyed a long and brilliant career before his death in 2020. He held positions in comparative literature at Tokyo University and at the International Research Institute of Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto before becoming President of Kyoto University of the Arts, and later, Director of Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art.

Haga had no patience with Marxist or modernization theory, both of which hold that there is there is one single road to modernity and civilization. As his son Haga Mitsuru writes in his preface to this book, Tokugawa Japan was “an object lesson in relativity.” The great cultural relativists like anthropologist Franz Boas (who mentored Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict) have impressed on us that, however strange and conflicting other human cultures may seem at first glance, each one is a remarkably sophisticated device for making sense of the world and must be understood on its own terms. Haga’s book examines a number of key figures—poets, artists, doctors, natural scientists, writers and philosophers, and sometimes many of these occupations at once—whose reflections are a remarkable window into the world they lived in. Because Haga was also a comparatist par excellence, fluent in both English and French, he was also able to contextualize the achievements of these Tokugawa intellectuals for the world stage.

From the early 17th century—when Japan booted out Christians and most other Europeans except a few Dutch merchants—until Commodore Matthew C. Perry steamed into Edo Bay in 1853 (forcing the country to open to foreign trade), Japan had been a closed country, sakoku in Japanese.
Haga writes that:

“Sakoku has long been discussed as a lackluster state of lockdown unique to Tokugawa Japan, and served as the dreadful cause of delay and distortion in Japan’s modernization. But taking a broader view, Japan’s policy of isolation seems little different from similar policies in contemporary China and Korea, and its severity is questionable compared to continuing political, economic, cultural and communication policies of isolation in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, and Burma [Myanmar], especially amidst the far more tightly woven web of international interdependence in the latter half of the twentieth century to the present day. National seclusion, in other words, is a universal phenomenon seen frequently in the course of world history, including our own time (pps. 107-18).”

Sakoku enabled the Tokugawa regime to not only maintain its control over a relatively weak federation of semi-independent fiefdoms, each with its own language and customs, but to regulate the extent to which foreign powers could engage in trade and diplomacy with Japan. And isolation didn’t mean ignorance. Haga’s book examines a number of remarkably talented intellectuals such as Arai Hakuseki, Kaibara Ekiken, Sugita Gempaku, Hiraga Gennai, and Watanabe Kazan, who readily engaged with European advances in science, technology, and art. Some of the most fascinating passages in this book deal with encounters between Japanese officials and Europeans, like German Engelbert Kaempfer, who spent two years in Japan with the Dutch East India Trading Company and amassed a vast trove of information and artifacts which he took back to Europe. Kaempfer’s botanical discoveries in Japan influenced Carl Linnaeus’ classification of flora.

One singular encounter was Arai Hakuseki’s interrogation of the Jesuit priest Giovanni Batista Sidotti, who had snuck into Japan a little less than a century after Catholics had been banned. Hakuseki’s remarkably sympathetic account describes a meeting between equals, each curious of the other’s ways. He expresses great respect for Sidotti’s wisdom and tact, but remarks, “When Sidotti talked about religion, not one word seemed to approach the true way. It was as if wisdom had given way to folly and I were listening to the words of a completely different man. I realized that while the learning of the West may be superior in regard to concrete matters and objects with firm outlines, such learning can only be applied to the physical realm and has nothing to do with the metaphysical.” (p. 141)

Hakuseki would later publish Seiyō Kibun (Tidings of the West) in 1715, one of the signal works of so-called rangaku (Dutch Studies). Sugita Gempaku (whose expertise in a wide range of scientific and cultural pursuits Haga compares to Goethe’s) published Kaitai Shinsho (A New Text on Anatomy) in 1774 and Rangaku Kotohajime (The Dawn of Western Science in Japan) in 1815. Haga writes that Japan was gripped by a natural science craze in the eighteenth century, during which a remarkably comprehensive and objective classification was made by numerous keen observers of flora and fauna. The illustrations by these authors of plants, flowers, insects, fish, and birds are astounding. See Kaibara Ekiken’s Yamato Honzō (A Japanese Herbal) published in 1708 and the extraordinary sketches jotted down by Watanabe Kazan of insects and other small things at hand during his house arrest shortly before he took his own life in 1841.

The Japanese eye for naturalistic detail can be seen in the woodblock prints of Hokusai or Hiroshige, but also in the illustrations that Kawahara Keigo drew for Franz von Siebold’s meticulous collections of flora and fauna during the early nineteenth century. It is clear that Japanese natural scientists were at least on equal terms with their European colleagues during this period; their illustrations surpass anything made by Audubon or others in the West. They were as rationalist and empiricist as any of their contemporaries in the European Enlightenment. The scientific eye is an artistic eye. We see the same eye and mind at work in the remarkable writings of the polymath botanist, ecologist, and ethnologist Minakata Kumagusu (1867-1941), who owed a deep debt to his Tokugawa forebears.

Some of this will be familiar to those who have read books like Sir George Sansom’s The Western World and Japan (Knopf, 1958) or Donald Keene’s books The Japanese Discovery of Europe (Stanford Univ. Press, 1969) and World Within Walls (Henry Holt & Co., 1976), to name just a few classic studies of this period in English.

Where Haga excels is in his attention to the art and literature of this period. His collection is also sumptuously illustrated, many with colour plates of masterpieces of this era. Pax Tokugawana begins with a study of two painted screens depicting Kyoto. The first, called the Uesugi version, was commissioned by warlord Oda Nobunaga in 1574 and depicts a vibrant city at peace, crammed with people (2,485 figures in all) enjoying daily pastimes like the theatre, after nearly a century of civil war. The second screen, the Funaki version, was painted around 1616 and contains even more people. Haga describes how our point of view hovers over the city in both screens, as if we were gazing down on it from a helicopter. Zeroing in on the little details, he provides a delightful commentary, for example, on a scene in the Funaki screen of what is likely a portrait of English merchant Richard Cocks with his hound, panting in the summer heat. Aerial metaphors abound also in his portrait of Tawaraya Sōtatsu’s portrait of the wind and thunder gods in Kenninji, Kyoto, which have, Haga writes, “the flight accuracy of a pair of jets.”

Artists like Sōtatsu and Hon’ami Kōetsu (who often worked together) produced works of astounding beauty and were in large part responsible for the seventeenth-century revival and popularization of classical Heian culture. A portrait by Kusumi Morikage, of a peasant family enjoying a summer evening under a trellis of evening glories, graces the cover. Haga writes that “anyone who views this work with admiration or relief should be allowed into the country, visa or no visa, no questions asked” (p. 184). Alas, not likely under the current pandemic, when most countries (not just Japan) have gone sakoku on us.

Another chapter is devoted to a contemporary of Shakespeare: the founder of kabuki. Izumo no Okuni, created a dance fever in Kyoto of a style called fūryū (“drifting in the wind”). Kabuki, now written with the Chinese characters for “song, dance, skill,” originally meant someone “bent” or “deviant.” Kabukimono (or kabuki people) were the cross-dressing punks of their age, a tradition maintained with the onnagata, male actors playing women’s roles. (Tokugawa authorities had banned women from the stage in 1629 on the charge that their performances encouraged prostitution). An exemplar of her age, Okuni was a symbol of the new freedom, sensuality, and experimentation that was suddenly made available to the masses under the Tokugawa peace. Kyoto remained one of the largest cities in the world throughout much of the seventeenth century until its population was superseded by Edo around 1700.

Such a “lockdown” allowed Japanese culture to ferment and flower as it were in a hothouse, creating numerous prodigies. Haga is especially fond of Yosa Buson, whom he calls the “cloistered poet,” one who “slides into a deeply isolated ‘small world’ resembling the fin de siècle ennui of poetry and one-act pantomimes of nineteenth-century Europe” (p. 244).

And yet there is a serenity to Buson’s works that is rarely found in Western art. Buson’s superlative portrait of Mt. Fuji, of which Haga gives brilliant account, is one such case. He was as great an artist as he was a poet. Not everyone was content with the longuer monotone of the Pax Tokugawana, however. It was a trap for some. A genre of popular literature of this period, called gesaku (“playful works”) was the response of many, often writing under pseudonyms, who kicked against the pricks of official restrictions on free expression. Gesaku raised “ennui itself into an art” Haga writes. Two of its masters were Hiraga Gennai and Ōta Nanpo, who both came to a bad end, as did Watanabe Kazan, whose criticism of Tokugawa foreign policy led to his untimely demise little more than a decade before Perry made his unwelcome visit to Japan. Gennai’s essay “Hōhiron” (On Farting) published in 1774, and its sequel in 1777 describes the amazing flatulent talents of a sideshow artist, a fartist if you will. But then he concludes: “I have merely appropriated the sound of flatulence in order to awaken from their torpor those who are in despair or lacking in industry; but perhaps my argument smells suspicious. Tell me my ideas aren’t worth a fart if you like; I don’t give a shit.” (p. 221-2). You can find his essay in Haruo Shirane’s Early Modern Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900 (Columbia Univ. Press, 2003) called “The Theory of Farting.”

Like so many multi-talented men of this age Gennai was also a scientist; he was the inventor of an early electrical generator. Clearly, like many, he felt his talents were wasted on the Tokugawa regime. Nevertheless, Haga notes, when the Meiji era dawned (1869-1912) it was “a change, and not necessarily for the better.” This is a conclusion with which novelist Natsume Sōseki, whose life straddled the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, would readily have concurred. Japan’s race to catch up with Western civilization wrought enormous spiritual and cultural trauma, and precipitated the horrors of the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars. That’s as good enough a reason as any for staying unplugged in ages of empire or globalization.

From farts to Fuji, in Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603-1853, Haga ranges widely over the variegated landscape of Tokugawa Japan. Usually his insights are enlightening, but there is a good deal of repetition in this collection of essays, which had first appeared in a variety of different publications over the course of his long career. The book is sadly in need of an editor (not the translator’s job; Carpenter’s note on page 32 hints at her preference for, but also her exasperation over, certain essays and passages). The same cast of characters pops up in different guises from chapter to chapter and if readers are looking for a carefully reasoned argument, this is not the book for them. In that sense, Haga’s style is typically Japanese, the essay as zuihitsu (following the brush), and one has to go with the detours and digressions. As much culturally French as he was Japanese though, Haga would have likely called these jeux d’esprit.

Another drawback to this book is that his cast is, with the exception of Okuni, all men. Women appear only as subjects for male contemplation of their beauty. For insight into the real lives of women during the long Tokugawa peace, we need to read elsewhere. I’d start with Edwin McLellan’s delightful Woman in the Crested Kimono: The life of Shibue Io and her family (Yale Univ. Press, 1985), based on Mori Ōgai’s biography of Io’s husband, the early nineteenth-century doctor Shibue Chūsai, and, more recently published, Amy Stanley’s Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese woman and her world (2020).

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 13: Kyoto’s “Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries” with Catherine Pawasarat

June 20, 2021

Cathrine Pawasarat, author of Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries is one of the founders of the Clear Sky Retreat Center in British Columbia, Canada. Her previous book is From Wasteland to Pureland: Reflections on the Path to Awakening. The former Kyoto resident talks with us today about Kyoto’s most famous event, the Gion Festival that happens every July in the former capital.

BOA Podcast 13 Show Notes

Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries, with Catherine Pawasarat

Amy starts out the podcast describing Kyoto’s Gion Festival, the giant floats with the tall towers on the top as they parade down the street among crowds of bystanders. Catherine explains that Kyoto’s neighborhoods work year-round on the preparations and the festival itself lasts the entire month of July.

Catherine lived in Kyoto 20 years and first found out about the festival when she practically ran into one of the gigantic wheels of a float when walking out of her accommodation one day. This led her to start asking questions about the festival and she found that the locals themselves couldn’t exactly explain what it was all about.

So, what is it about? Catherine explains that one role of the festival is to serve as a giant purification ritual and another is to serve as a community bonding event across multiple generations.

What is the status of the festival in the modern context? Some of the major challenges are high real estate prices, and urban flight. Promising developments are also emerging such as neighborhoods using the festivals to rebuild their communities and allowing the public to join in.

Amy asks about the social impact of the Gion Festival and its sustainability to which Catherine discusses some aspects such as the case of the funeboko festival float that looks like a boat, and the plans through high precision digital measurements to recreate and reinstate it. Catherine goes on to talk about why the float is in the shape of a boat and tells a story that involves Empress Jingu.

Catherine says that The Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries, covers the many stories behind the floats that are directly related to Japanese legends and myths, including those from the Kojiki, the Nihongi, and the Tale of the Heike. There are 34 floats that participate in the festival and the book dedicates a page to each float and the history behind it.

Amy asks Catherine why she brought out the book in two separate versions, print and e-book, and to elaborate on the differences. They talk about the pros and cons of both print and digital books, and Catherine hopes that by offering both formats she can provide two very different reader experiences. Amy mentions that Cody Poulton, who reviewed the book on the Books on Asia site, was so intrigued with the idea of two different formats that he bought them both.

Catherine says she was inspired by the book Gateway to Japan, a Kodansha guide written by June Kinoshita and Nicholas Palevsky and wanted to provide engrossing information for the sights. She also realizes that guidebooks are heavy to carry around. So the e-book version has a hyperlinks to the other related information on the festival, its components, legends, noh theater, etc..

Amy asks Catherine what it takes to put together a book like this. Catherine said it started with her writing a couple of articles for the Japan Times. One of the articles was about women being able to participate in the musical troupes after an absence of 300 years. This sparks off a discussion on women’s roles in festivals, and although women might not be seen in the procession, they actually do have very important, but more hidden, roles. Catherine talks about how the women are the main representatives of historic families that the floats are oriented around. There are two sides to whether women should participate or even whether they want to participate.

Getting back to writing the book though, Catherine says she lived in one of the Gion Festival neighborhoods for three years so she had a lot of opportunities to become familiar with it, ask questions and take notes. There were challenges to putting together a print book with so many photos while having to be mindful of the price of the book.

Catherine realized there wasn’t much information available in English so wanted to publish a book. That was 15 years ago. She also talks about the Japanese way of doing things, in which one dedicates their whole life to something before they actually “know” anything about it, so while she realized she probably knew more than any native speaker about the Gion Festival, she still felt she had to do more research. This research has been cultivated over 15 years. In the meantime, the self-publishing industry has become robust enough for her to take a chance at self-publishing the book herself. So she went to a writing retreat so she could give herself the time to just write and write and write. She had been taking photos for many years, so she already had something to work from.

Amy says she has heard that at the Gion Festival, tourists are invited into the houses of the locals to see their family heirlooms. Catherine responds by saying that no, this is a false rumor! People are supposed to admire the artworks from he outside. But the doors are left open, so tourists might think they can walk in.

This sparks a discussion on tourist manners in Japan. Catherine says she has a section on do’s and don’ts. She notes that the Kyoto people all volunteer to do these things for the festival, so this generosity really needs to be respected.

Amy, who wrote Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan, says she always advises people to ask before they do anything in Japan. So even if the doors are open, don’t presume you can just walk in. If you ask first, it allows the person to politely decline, and Catherine points out that it also gives them the opportunity to educate us.

Catherine talks about the two parts of the festival, the “before festival” July 10-17, which is the biggest, with 23 floats, street stalls street food and such, and the “after festival,” July 18-24 with 11 floats.

Catherine says research is important for the festival and she is happy to be a resource for people interested in doing their own research on the festival and need help on where to go to learn more. She talks about the role writers have in helping the festival survive, especially since the popularity of the festival also inherently endangers it, so she wrote the book to help it remain sustainable and to help people understand that it is not just a tourist event but is a spiritual ritual that is put on voluntarily so that we can enjoy it. Having a sense of appreciation and meaning helps ground it and make it a more thoughtful experience for everyone.

Find out more information on Catherine Pawasarat, see her website GionFestival.org and social media channels: Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Get a free excerpt of the Gion Festival book here: gionfestival.org/booksonasia

Catherine can also be found at planetdharma.com

Lastly, Amy asks Catherine what her favorite books on Japan are:

Gateway to Japan by June Kinoshita

Old Kyoto: Guide to Traditional Shops, Restaurants and Inns, by Diane Durston

Lost Japan by Alex Kerr

Memories of Silk and Straw by Jun’ichi Saga

Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan, Edited by Barbara Ruch

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, publisher of fine books on Asia for over 30 years. Sign up for the Books on Asia Podcast here.

Excerpt—Japanese at Work

June 18, 2021

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Japanese at Work is part of the “Asians at Work” series written by John Spiri. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s oral history Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do Spiri traveled all over Asia interviewing people about their typical day of work. This volume on Japan, one of five books covering Asian countries, includes interviews with 53 individuals who work in fields as diverse as Japanese traditional crafts (a hariko papermache maker, a Japanese sweets chef, a soy sauce maker, an antiques store owner), music (a violinist, a Jazz club owner) public service (a labor union representative, social worker, an environmental specialist), jobs that employ the homeless (a cardboard deliverer, a magazine vendor, a car counter) and many, many more. The following excerpt is an interview with Kimono Teacher Ms. Matsuoka Fukiko.

John Spiri: Why did you decide to teach kimono?

Matsuoka-sensei: It comes from my interest in sado (Japanese tea ceremony). The kimono is necessary for it. I was always fond of my mother’s kimono and hated to see it just hanging in the closet. It was from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) and was made of silk. It’s the same for many of my friends—they know of beautiful old kimono just gathering dust. I feel that the kimono has both cultural and historical significance. Young women now are losing that cultural identity. I want to help preserve it.

Could you tell me about your training?

I studied for 13 years at a dress school in Kumamoto. I got my license after five years. I’ve been studying sado for eight years now. Some day I want to teach it.

What is teaching kimono all about?

Western clothes, you see, are made to fit the chest, hips and rear, whereas kimono are meant to hide all body shapes. Towels are stuffed underneath, for example, to present a flat shape. During class, I first show women how to put on the undergarments. They are tied with a belt. That takes five minutes. For the kimono to fit properly, many adjustments are necessary—a pull here and a tug there. We practice putting one on several times during the one hour class. There are detailed rules for what type of kimono to wear, according to the woman’s age and a number of other factors. There are formal and informal kimono. Also, kimono styles have subtle differences in each region of the country. I explain how to bow, stand, and sit when wearing kimono. Finally, I give explanations about the materials and dyes used in making a kimono, as well as a little about its history.

Can you summarize its history?

Records show that kimono were worn as far back as the Jomon period (before 300 CE), but they looked quite different back then. I suppose they were more similar to traditional Chinese clothing on which they’re based. Styles changed based on the availability of certain materials and the improvements in techniques. The modern form of kimono started in the Edo Period (1603-1867) and has remained essentially unchanged ever since.

How much do lessons cost?

For beginner-level classes, which meet once a week for six months, the fee is 20,000 yen. At this level, a student learns how to dress herself. The fees rise at the intermediate level (learning to dress others) and advanced level (earning a license).

What about the future?

I’m interested in sado, too. It’s so deep. I’m studying The Book of Tea now. This is a book written by Okakura Kazuko in 1906. It was actually originally written for a Western audience, in English. Its roots are closely associated with Japanese Zen. It is a classic which lays down the guiding principles of tea ceremony. We learn to give up living a luxurious or complicated life. Living a simple life is best. Sado is about learning to concentrate and calm the mind. It takes a long time to improve concentration. People today are too busy. I don’t want future generations to forget these important aspects of Japanese culture.

Japanese at Work can be ordered from Amazon US or, in Japan, directly from the author, John Spiri  globalstoriespress (at) gmail (dot) com

Review—Things Remembered and Things Forgotten

June 14, 2021
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A delightful book of short stories from Kyoko Nakajima, author of The Little House, and winner of the Naoki Prize

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Review by Tina deBellegarde

Kyoko Nakajima tackles the past and present, the mundane and the ethereal in her delightful collection of short stories Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian McCullough MacDonald. The glue that holds these stories together is memory: how the characters remember, wish to remember, or even remember events they never experienced.

This collection includes love stories, narratives of lost memories, and several tales where time-slips and parallel worlds work their magic. Along with other flights of fancy, ghosts make appearances or are implied in almost all the stories. Subtle, charming, they are not always even clearly ghosts, but rather a wish or desire. The apparitions serve a purpose; they are there to blur the past and present, and as they do, they blur reality as well. As readers we begin to understand that perhaps some of the ghosts aren’t there at all, that the character’s desire for the encounter is enough for it to transpire.

Among my favorites, in “Kirara’s Paper Plane” (transl. MacDonald) a ghost remembers when he was alive, and in “The Life of a Sewing Machine” (transl. Takemori) a thrift shop customer experiences nostalgia for times and places she’s never seen, setting the stage for the telling of the “life” of a dilapidated old sewing machine. Through the history of the appliance we learn the evolving struggles of the humans in its orbit. These two stories are particularly rich in cultural and historical details of wartime Japan. They demonstrate how the war, post-war and then modernity changed the world these characters inhabited and how that, in turn, shaped them. The translators are very successful in conveying the nuances of the culture of Japan while not losing the intimacy or immediacy of the story.

“When My Wife Was a Shiitake” (transl. Takemori) is the most fanciful in the collection. A grieving widower is introduced to an unknown side of his wife when he discovers her cooking journal. In it she shares not only recipes but her reflections on life. One of her musings is about remembering when she was a shiitake; she lingers in this memory with all her senses. He learns to cook, fashions a new memory of his wife, and soon he too learns to remember when he was a shiitake.

The final and capstone story is the longest and my personal favorite. In “The Last Obon,” (transl. MacDonald) all the elements of the prior stories converge. Here memories lost and found blur, and the corporeal and the ethereal are indistinguishable. It is also the story where the main character is most self-aware. As Satsuki prepares the festival to honor her ancestors, the last Obon in her ancestral home before it is sold, her faulty memory causes her to stumble through the process. Consequently, each event, conversation, and image evokes a faint memory, reminds her of her childhood, and dredges up long forgotten memories.

    “…an image flitted through her mind of her and her two sisters running around the garden with some children whose names she had long since forgotten. Who was the girl in a red pinafore she was chasing? Satsuki sensed that her real childhood had been gradually overwritten with scenes from movies and TV shows set in an imagined, nostalgic past, and the unexpected shallowness of her memories appalled her.” (p. 233)

Finally, Satsuki comes to the realization that her intentional engagement with her ancestors allows the past to take its rightful place.

    “Obon wasn’t something mystical or paranormal, nor was it a metaphor for human existence – it was an expression of how the dead were resurrected through the gestures and actions of the living in the performance of traditional customs and practices.” (p. 256)

Each story in Things Remembered and Things Forgotten shimmers with nostalgia and delight, yet at the same time reminds us how ineffective our memory is. The inaccuracy of our recollections and our desire to remember things a certain way blur our reality and intrude on our ability to see the present clearly. These stories assure us that we are not alone in these shortcomings. This collection leaves the characters and reader with the unsettling yet familiar feeling of trying to remember something just beyond reach.

For more on Japanese short stories, see the BOA Issue 8: The Art of the Short Story where you’ll also find a podcast episode with Tina deBellegarde about what makes a good short story and why some short-story writers are so appealing.

About the Reviewer:

Tina deBellegarde’s debut novel, Winter Witness, is nominated for the 2020 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her story “Tokyo Stranger” appears alongside celebrated authors in the Mystery Writers of America anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town. Tina lives in New York with her husband Denis where they harvest shiitake mushrooms and tend to their beehives. She travels to Japan regularly to visit her son Alessandro. Visit her website.