Cathy Hirano on Fantasy in Japanese Literature

November 13, 2018

By Cathy Hirano

Nahoko Uehashi is a prolific and well-loved Japanese author of fantasy as well as non-fiction. The list of awards she has won is impressive and includes the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, considered the Nobel Prize of children’s literature. During her writing career, which extends over three decades, she produced the 12-volume Moribito series, the 4-volume Beast Player series and The Deer King, a 2-volume epic encompassing more than 1,000 pages. Amazingly, through much of that period, she was also working as a full-time professor of cultural anthropology. Although most of her fantasies tend to be classified as children’s and young adult literature, a look at publisher surveys shows her readership spans all ages. Seventy percent of those who purchase her million-sellers range in age from their 30s into their 60s, with a particularly high concentration among women in their 30s and 40s. Her fan base includes elementary school students and seniors. While some adults are certainly buying the books for children, many are reading them for their own entertainment.

 

Authors of contemporary Japanese fantasy, including Uehashi, were nurtured by a very rich body of translated (into Japanese) fantasy literature, including such classics as Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books. But Japan also has its own rich heritage of myths, folktales and literature on which to draw. Blending the real and the fantastic, these stories feature gods and goddesses, monster-vanquishing heroes, and strange, supernatural creatures known as yokai. This foundation is clearly reflected in manga and anime culture, which is now so popular in the West. Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and such anime series as Naruto, Inuyasha and Yokai Watch are good examples. Uehashi herself attributes her lifelong love for stories to the folktales she heard at her grandmother’s knee as a child.

I think the broad appeal of Uehashi’s work lies in her ability to create worlds so authentic that they seem completely real. In addition, her complex and riveting plots, and believable characters are intriguing. Her exploration of universal themes, particularly the human fascination with “the other” lie at the bottom of much of her fantasy. As a translator and as someone living outside the culture in which I was raised, this theme of the other really resonates with me.

Her extensive knowledge and deep understanding of different cultures developed through her career as a cultural anthropologist gives her works a unique edge, enabling her to paint in rich detail not only the cultures, lifestyles and customs of the peoples she creates, but also their political systems, social values and religious beliefs. In fact, her descriptions of food are so enticing that a group of cooks got together to recreate the dishes described in all of her stories and published them as a cookbook.

At the same time, she leaves a lot to the imagination. For example, in The Beast Player, while the behavior of the Royal Beasts’ eating and mating habits are described in quite a bit of detail, their appearance is not. As a reader, this wasn’t a problem because I could picture them in my mind but when I went to translate the book, I found I didn’t know if they had four legs or two. And I had to look at the anime, for which Uehashi approved the portrayal, in order to make sure.

Uehashi’s works have influenced creators in other genres, such as in anime and film. She is collaborative in her approach and has an intense respect for, and understanding of, what it takes to translate a work into another language or medium. She is clear on what parts cannot be compromised in order to retain the integrity of the original work yet flexible on those parts that need to change to bridge the gap.

Other Popular Fantasy Authors

According to Otona no fantaji dokubon, a book that introduces  fantasies published in Japan that can be enjoyed by adults as well as younger readers, the following authors (in addition to Uehashi) have had at least one of their fantasy works published in English: Noriko Ogiwara (Dragon Sword and Wind Child, Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince), Eiko Kadono (Kiki’s Delivery Service), winner of the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Miyuki Miyabe (Brave Story, The Book of Heroes), Fuyumi Ono (The Twelve Kingdoms series), Tomiko Inui (The Secret of the Blue Glass) and Naoko Awa (The Fox’s Window and Other Stories).

However, Otona no fantaji dokubon also indicates there are many Japanese fantasy authors that have yet to be discovered by the English-language world. That’s not so surprising considering the low percentage of Japanese books published in English.

Some award-winning not yet translated Japanese fantasies and their authors include Sachiko Kashiwaba’s Kiri no muko no fushigi na machi (The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist) which inspired the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, Riku Onda’s Tokono Monogatari (Tales of the Tokono), Jun Okada’s Nifunkan no boken (Two-Minute Adventure), and Kaho Nashiki’s Uraniwa (Back Yard). Some more recent fantasy authors are Tomoko Inuishi (Yoru no shahonshi: Scribe of Sorcery) and Chisato Abe (Karasu ni hitoe wa niawanai: Unlined Kimono Don’t Suit Crows).

See Nahoko Uehashi’s English website.

The author would like to thank Yumiko Kotake, Ritsuko Sanbe and the Yamaneko Honyaku Club for helping with this article.

About Cathy Hirano: Cathy lives in Shikoku, Japan and has translated a variety of fiction and non-fiction books including best-selling authors Nahoko Uehashi and Marie Kondo.

 

Review—Cake Tree in the Ruins

November 11, 2018

NEW RELEASE! Moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.

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The Cake Tree in the Ruins, by Akiyuki Nosaka (Transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Pushkin Press (Nov. 13, 2018)

Reviewed by Suzanne Kamata

As an American reader, conditioned to expect happily-ever-after endings, or at least those in which justice is served, I found this to be an odd and disturbing book. From the titles of stories such as “The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine,” “The Mother That Turned into a Kite,” and “A Balloon in August,” one might expect whimsy or fantasy. While they do contain a bit of whimsy, these tales, rendered in highly readable English by translator Ginny Tapley Takemori, are not easily categorized.

Although the story about the whale, “a complete flop with the ladies,” and his quest for a mate starts out sweetly, we discover that the submarine he falls in love with is actually preparing for a suicide attack on the American fleet. In “The Mother That Turned into a Kite,” a woman tries to protect her son from flames caused by incendiary bombs by smearing him with her bodily fluids – first, sweat, then tears, and breastmilk. Finally, devoid of moisture, she becomes flat and floats away. “A Balloon in August” features a group of unnamed, undistinguished Japanese children who are tasked with making hot air balloons out of paper made from mulberry trees, and glue made from konnyaku paste. The balloons are then used to convey incendiary bombs to America.

Many of the stories feature animals, which might lead one to believe that these are lighthearted children’s tales. While Nosaka did write with children in mind, American parents accustomed to Disney finales would probably be surprised at how these stories turn out. Spoiler alert: almost every main character, child and animal alike, dies in the end.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. As Nosaka writes in “The Elephant and Its Keeper,” “Too many undernourished people and animals appear in these stories, I know, but it was wartime, after all.” Each story is dated August 15, 1945, the date on which Emperor Hirohito gave a radio address announcing the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces. As noted at the beginning of the book, since 1982, August 15 has also been known as “The day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace.” War is sad and tragic, Nosaka seems to be reminding us. There is no way to sugarcoat the reality of it, and it would be wrong to do so.

Nevertheless, there are moments of grace, however fleeting. A starving she-wolf thinks of eating a little girl, but after discovering that she has been abandoned by her mother, gives her a ride on her back instead. A zookeeper ignores orders to kill an elephant, and escapes with it into the hills. A solider on a beach hallucinates a happy trip under the sea.

In her book On the Bullet Train with Emily Bronte, scholar and author Judith Pascoe writes of a conversation with Japanese author Minae Mizumura in which the latter opines about “American editors’ intolerance for anything that might be strange or off-putting to readers.” According to Mizumura, when reading works in translation, “Japanese readers are aware of the oddity of what they are reading, but undeterred by this awareness.” Pascoe writes, “I thought about Japanese readers down-shifting as they confronted the first pages of foreign literary works, while American readers insisted on a smooth frictionless reading experience, unhappy with any grinding between gears.” Reading in translation is akin, then, to traveling to a foreign country. Both can be unsettling, even jarring, but ultimately broaden our horizons if we remain open to the experience.

While The Cake Tree in the Ruins might seem confounding at first, it is a haunting and unforgettable collection, worthwhile for readers of many ages.

Read an excerpt of Cake Tree in the Ruins here.

About the Reviewer: Suzanne Kamata is an American, but she has lived in Shikoku for over half of her life. Her books include The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997) the award-winning short story collection  The Beautiful One Has Come (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2011) and novel Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible (GemmaMedia, 2013), which was named a book of Outstanding Merit by Bank Street College. She is an associate professor of English at Naruto University of Education. For more info, visit http://www.suzannekamata.com.  

About the Author: Akiyuki Nosaka (1930 – 2015) won the Naoki Prize in 1967 for his stories Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki (included in the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories).

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 3: Juliet Winters Carpenter talks about translating Japanese Literature

September 29, 2018

In this episode of the Books on Asia podcast, Amy meets up with Juliet Winters Carpenter to talk about her 70 or so translated works of Japanese literature including Shion Miura’s The Great Passage, Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel, Shiba Ryōtaro’s Clouds Above the Hill, Jun’ichiro Saga’s Memories of Wind and Waves, and Abe Kōbō’s Secret Rendezvous. (more…)

Ginny Tapley Takemori on translating Convenience Store Woman

September 29, 2018

Convenience Store Woman was originally published as Conbini ningen (Bungeishunju Ltd., Tokyo, 2016)

Ginny Tapley Takemori talks with Books on Asia about translating “Convenience Store Woman,” for the English audience

Books on Asia: Convenience Store Woman challenges us to reconsider how we should define a “normal person” in modern society and prods us to accept people who may be different from our own ideal of what is “normal” or even acceptable. In some ways, Japan seems a more traditional society from the US or UK when it comes to marriage, family and a good job being universal and absolute norms.

Takemori: I think the pressures on individuals to get married, have a career and so forth, are very present in other countries too, although perhaps not quite to the same extent—or in the same way—that they are in Japan. In this respect the central issues in the book are universally understandable and I didn’t really have to work hard to bring those across. Of course the multi-faceted convenience store is a very Japanese phenomenon, so I did have to actively work to bring it alive in the imagination of readers who have never experienced it—but really, Murata’s descriptions are so detailed that most of the time the original speaks for itself.

BOA: What kind of cultural sensitivities (regarding mental health, for example) did you have to consider when translating the story into English? One Books on Asia reader questioned whether Keiko is perhaps autistic. Is this something that was addressed in the original? Do you think it even matters?

Takemori: I think Murata wanted to create a character who was absolutely logical in her approach to life, utterly non-emotional, non-judgmental, and lacking in what society as a whole would call common sense, as a way to examine what society generally thinks of as “normal.” Through Keiko’s hyperlogical perspective, we can see how illogical and rather odd “normality” actually is. However, all readers will bring their own life view and experience to their reading of a book. Perhaps you can say it’s a kind of reverse cultural sensitivity, which in itself is quite interesting. I would hope, though, that giving a label to Keiko’s “abnormality” doesn’t detract from the novel’s main purpose of highlighting how very strange “normal” actually is.

BOA: One of the things a couple of BOA readers have mentioned about the book is how short it is. I don’t know how many pages it is but my Kindle told me I could read it in 3 hours. One BOA reader even felt the book was too short and that the author could have spent more time explaining some of the issues.

UK edition published by Portobello

Takemori: It is on the short side, only around 150 pages in the original Japanese and 160 pages in the English. Perhaps you could say it is more a novella than a novel, although it was published originally as a novel in Japan (the hardcover edition alone sold over 600,000 copies). I don’t think there are such rigid criteria in Japanese publishing, and you often get very short novels. For the English edition of Convenience Store Woman there had been an idea of possibly publishing it together with some short stories, but when the editor read the full translation he decided it was strong enough to work in a standalone edition, which I think was absolutely the best decision, and true to the original.

BOA: Yes, and we have novellas in the English world as well. Come to think of it, “The Perks of Being a Wall Flower,” a coming-of-age novel by Stephen Chbosky, is extremely short, but seems to be just enough. There is also the keitai shosetsu short novel in Japan. Can you explain this genre?

Takemori:The keitai shosetsu genre is where authors (usually hiding their identity behind a pen name) write installments of a novel on their cell phone and send them out directly to a subscription mailing list via email, SMS or website. I’m not sure to what extent Murata may have been influenced by the trend, any more than other young novelists writing in Japan today, but I can say that she is a superb literary author, a master of the short-story, and is a well-established novelist (most of her novels are a more conventional length of around 250 pages).

BOA: Being British, did you translate into British English or American English? Personally, I wish American publishers wouldn’t change British English spelling and references because I feel that part of the fun of reading is discovering differences in language. I am curious if Grove Press changed any of the English to account for the American version?

Takemori: I aim for a literary language that is neither particularly British nor American, although of course there will be some influence depending on who I’m translating for. I translated this for Grove Press, an American publisher, and so it is nominally in American English. They changed very little of my translation beyond normal editing. There are peculiarities of phrase such as “Thank you for your custom” but my intention here and elsewhere was to create a formulaic-sounding language to roughly approximate the manual-dictated customer service language (baito keigo as it’s known in Japanese) in which there is really no equivalent for in English. It shouldn’t sound too natural! That said, yes, I do find it a bit sad that American publishers generally change British English to cater to their readers. British publishers rarely do this, and UK readers are quite accustomed to handling all types of English from around the world, which I feel adds to the richness of the reading experience.

BOA: Several themes in the book should make us pause for further thought. The convenience store provides a safe, predictable place, an environment which allows certain people to thrive in a more facile job. Such people might not appreciate the lack of a routine or the unpredictability of a job in a more challenging work environment. “The convenience store is a normalized environment” is brought up a few times by Keiko, the main character. She takes comfort that as long as you wear the uniform and repeat the set phrases, customers will see you as “staff” and won’t ask you any questions beyond where a certain product is shelved. In addition, as “staff” you only have to suggest the special of the day. Even two of the long-term customers comment that “This place doesn’t really change, does it?”

US hardcover by Grove Atlantic

Takemori: In Japan, working in a convenience store is seen as a very temporary job filled by students and housewives. There is a manual to dictate every work function and phrases to use with customers, and this is practiced daily at the start of every shift—and is necessary to ensure continuity for an ever fluid workforce. But for Keiko, it functions like a manual for life generally. She is unable to function outside that predictable environment, and even finds comfort in the routine and satisfaction in doing the job to perfection.

BOA: The convenience store also allows someone like Shiraha, the new employee, to fulfill his desire to “just breathe without anyone interfering in my life.” But even he doesn’t really fit the convenience store mold, revealing how contradictory we humans are, if indeed we are even human.

Takemori: Shiraha is an outsider too, but there is a fundamental difference between him and Keiko: Keiko doesn’t resent society, she wants to fit in but doesn’t know how, whereas Shiraha probably could fit in but doesn’t want to, and resents the pressure on him—whether in the store or anywhere else. His response to this is to retreat and hide from society, but this won’t work for Keiko—in fact, when she loses the predictable environment of the store, she is left rudderless and falls apart.

BOA: Yes, I felt that she had lost her ikigae (reason for being) once she gave up her job. And I guess many of us feel that way when we lose or give up a job, no matter what kind of job it is. Many people really struggle to adjust to not having a job when they retire at an advanced age, for example. So maybe Keiko is actually normal.

Takemori: What I find so brilliant about this book is how Murata has, through Keiko’s uncritical, unresentful, uncomprehending but well-meaning gaze, shone a light onto how society works and how utterly strange it actually is. I think this is something not limited to Japan, but is quite universal really, and we would all do well to examine what we take for granted as “normal.”

Ginny Tapley Takemori lives in rural Japan and has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers, from bestsellers Ryu Murakami and Kyotaro Nishimura to literary greats Izumi Kyoka and Okamoto Kido. Her most recent book publications include Earthlings (Oct. 2020) by Sakaka Murata,  The Little House by Kyoko Nakajima, (2019) Miyuki Miyabe’s five-volume Puppet Master and Tomiko Inui’s The Secret of the Blue Glass, shortlisted for the Marsh Award, and her short fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was named by New Yorker magazine as one of the best books of 2018.

Exploring the ‘My Year in Japan’ novel

September 3, 2018

By Amy Chavez

So many books are published each year about someone’s year abroad in Japan that it has fostered its own genre called the “My Year in Japan” novel. Basically, a Westerner spends a year here (Japan), returns to their home country, and writes a book about this “weird country” that proceeds to get picked up by a major publisher. Unfortunately, too many of these books slide into the perilous territory of over-generalization, cultural mistranslation and even self-righteousness. In some ways it’s inevitable: after all, how much can one know about a country in just one year?

If well done, however, this genre can be a real eye-opener and offer intriguing glimpses into a different culture with disparate values, and such books can prove to be an extremely worthwhile read.

But most My Year in Japan books fall into the former category, making shallow conclusions based on limited knowledge of the culture. Oft-times the author has followed a spouse here and thus lacks a support network (friends), a structure to fit into (a job) or anyone to guide them through the cultural maze (colleagues or a boss). Japan can quickly become an object of loathing, an impediment to their dreams, something hurled at them undeservedly.

Many would agree that such books risk misrepresenting the host culture. More often than not, unhappiness on the part of the author is blamed on the host country rather than the author’s own inability to adapt. Coming to Japan (a privilege in itself) inevitably forces us to confront things we never imagined: our own value systems and even the very definition of happiness.

The most successful books remain true to both the author’s time abroad and to Japan itself. I’d venture to say that the best nonfiction books of this type don’t center around the author as much as the complexities of the host nation. Here are just a few of the best books in My Year in Japan genre, penned by writers who spent a limited amount of time here.

Book Cover

In On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë, Judith Pascoe fills her year in Japan with interviews and sleuthing to gauge the effect of English author Emily Brontë on Japanese culture. Her exploits delve into Japan’s eccentricity, absurdity and its flair for pastiche, while exposing the literary side of a country deep into anime and “boys love” manga.

Less introspective but equally satisfying is Florent Chavouet’s Manabeshima Island Japan, about his two months living on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea. Primarily an artist, Chavouet uses drawings more than words to convey the people and the inner secrets of a population of 250.

Book Cover

Bruce Feiler, in his book Learning to Bow, charts his year as a teacher in the JET Programme, introducing Japanese culture along the way.

book cover

For a more acerbic take on the good, the bad and the ugly of Japan, Will Ferguson’s Hitching Rides with Buddha offers a scrupulous view of the country, while never holding it to any preconceived standard. This brutally honest exposé traces Ferguson’s trip hitchhiking across the archipelago following the movement of the cherry blossoms from the southernmost point in Kyushu to the northernmost point in Hokkaido. But in fact, there isn’t a whole lot of sakura in the book -— it’s more about the compelling characters he meets and his unanticipated experiences. Even though his trip was only mere weeks (the length of blossom season), he had several years of living in Japan to draw upon, resulting in a sagacious portrayal of a complex country.

By pursuing a greater goal than themselves, these authors allow the culture to speak for itself. They’re not afraid to allow the country to simultaneously dazzle and befuddle them, whether they actually like or agree with certain aspects of it or not. They understand that to interpret a culture risks misinterpreting it.

The question is, then, why aren’t there more books like these? Why don’t publishers seek out more “qualified” writers to pen stories that give a clearer, more in-depth picture with candor? After all, Japan requires a higher-than-average social IQ. Anything less is a bull in a china shop. Why not leave it to the experts rather than the amateurs?

I asked a couple of publishers this question, and this is what I found out.

It turns out that the “My Year in Japan” genre is a fascinating one to armchair travelers, according to one publisher. The outsider, the fish out of water, the eternal struggle to fit in are enduring themes. At the same time, the armchair traveler yearns for worlds far removed from his own that are by nature inaccessible to him (because of jobs, family, distance — reality).

The second publisher went even further. “Most American readers don’t care about how Japan ‘really’ is,” said Peter Goodman of Stone Bridge Press. “American ‘Japan fans’ still respond to superficial allure: pop culture, singing toilets, crazy inventions and absurdly uniform levels of public politeness and behavior. Most readers don’t want to know what it’s really like. They will get bored and restless if you try to give them too much detail.”

In other words, they want beach reads.

I’d go yet further and say that many people don’t want to be challenged with the truth that what they learned growing up isn’t necessarily a universal right or belief. The person who comes to Japan for a year returns to their country. The long-term expat does not. The one-year resident parries the deeper questions of existence by returning to common ground.

In addition, the armchair traveler needs the reassurance that his country is where he belongs, and nowhere else. It’s not how well the author grasps the culture or country she is writing about, it’s more about the fact that she was brave enough to venture abroad at all.

And herein lies the gulf. Long-term expats, imbued with cultural acumen and a concern for accuracy, are survivors. They want to read about characters who persevere and overcome the inevitable hardships all ex-pats encounter. On the other hand, those whose suffering becomes so central to their being that they fail to rise to the challenge and embrace the complexities of the new culture, are unappealing. “Lifers,” the moniker for long-term ex-pats, have little sympathy for the spoiled child who can’t accept the way things are in a foreign country. Likewise, authors mired in admonitions of how they think things should be (inevitably, more like the country they come from), represent unwavering self-righteousness.

In addition, Western expats are in a sense traitors who have left behind countries made great by their forefathers who fought so hard to protect them.

At the end of Will Ferguson’s hitchhike across Japan, he comes to the end of his journey in Hokkaido both physically and metaphorically. He realizes that after so many years, he is finally ready to leave Japan. This is brilliant, because he does what everyone thinks he should do: go home to where he belongs.

This article previously appeared in The Japan Times on Sept. 23, 2018

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 2: Judith Pascoe on Wuthering Heights

July 6, 2018

In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, Amy talks with Dr. Judith Pascoe in her office on the campus of Florida State University while a Brontëesque storm rages outside their window. Pascoe discusses aspects of her book On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights in Japan, and even offers up some unique Japanese language learning tips.

You’ll find her book, as well as others discussed in the podcast in Issue 2 of the Books on Asia website.

Sean Michael Wilson on Comics & Graphic Novels

July 6, 2018
author photo

The History of Comics and the Graphic Novel

What are comic books (manga) and graphic novels? They are the combination of images and text. Essentially that’s it. What, on theoretical grounds, would place an age or sophistication limit on something that combines image and text? Are, for example, road signs – which are normally a combination of image and text – only meant to be read by teenage road users? Clearly not. It would be an odd idea to suggest.

Even comic book creators like myself have to admit, however, that for most of the history of the art form of comics/manga, they have been created with younger readers in mind. But, the audience normally targeted by the producers of an art form is quite different from that art form’s potential and inherent characteristics. We might as well say that music is inherently for kids because most pop music is targeted at teenagers. To extrapolate that ‘music is for kids’ seems ridiculous, even laughable. There is nothing inherent in comic books that dictates they are for younger readers or that they are lowly in artistic value. Instead, we should recognize that there are comic books for children and comic books for adults, just as there is music for children and music for adults.

Comic books have a long history. In the US most scholars place the roots of comics in the 1890s with The Yellow Kid. In the U.K. scholars place them further back, to Ally Slopers Half Holiday in 1867. Some recent research in my home country of Scotland puts their origin even earlier, claiming that The Glasgow Looking Glass (1826) was the first comic strip. Given that Scottish creators such as Grant Morrison and Alan Grant have contributed so much to comics in the last 30 or 40 years, it would be a fitting origin to the art form to have Scottish roots.

Whatever the origin, comics have a long and varied history, stretching over different periods and places, including Japan. In this long flow we have seen developments in the audience, the type of people who make comics, the subjects covered, and the printing and distribution methods. At various points in that history the main target audience for comics were kids and teenagers. But at other times the focus was more on adult readers or a general audience. We are in such a period now, that started in the mid 1980s.

cover

Increasingly, and especially in the last 15 or 20 years, the image of comics is changing. Comics were rebranded as ‘graphic novels’ in order to indicate the increasing sophistication of comics and their suitability for adult readers. Comic books have also become more prominent in public and college libraries, often in dedicated graphic novel sections. Courses in comics are taught in sociology, literature and art degrees in universities and there are even special degrees in comic studies. Many mainstream book publishers have branched out into graphic novel imprints, such as my own US publisher, Shambhala Publications, known for its range of books on East Asia. Comics have also broken into the world of literary awards. In the USA, the long running ‘Independent Publisher Book Awards’ has two categories for graphic novels, alongside the categories of travel books, design, modern history, etc.

The late 30s to the early 50s is often referred to as the ‘golden age’ of comics. But, looking at it another way we might say we are in a golden age right now. Over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a renaissance in the comic book world in the UK and North America. We have seen the breadth of subject matter and type of creators expand dramatically. There has been a substantial increase in the number of female creators, and in the number of creators from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa in English translation (and French, Spanish, Italian, and others). The range of topics has expanded from the customary subjects of superheroes, comedy, and sci-fi to embrace documentary, history, sociology and intimate portraits of dealing with disease, trauma and war. My own books are often about elements of Japanese history or global society, such as my book with Akiko Shimojima, Secrets of the Ninja, which received an award from the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Another book on alternatives to capitalism, Parecomic, features an introduction by Noam Chomsky, the first involvement of the renowned intellectual with comic books. Our illustrated sociology book, Portraits of Violence, won a literary award and garnered a review in The Times Literary Supplement.

A stubborn level of resistance to the value of comic books persists among fans of literature and art. At a writers convention at a university in Kobe I had a heated debate with a professor who insisted that ‘books don’t need visuals’. He is, of course, right. Novels, ‘regular books,’ text-only books don’t need the illustrations that comic books have. But that is a little like saying spaghetti bolognese doesn’t need Parmesan cheese. Sure, it does not – but if we decide to add it, then without question, something is gained. Regardless of whether it’s to your taste or not.

Comic books inherently bring that mix of text and images, something that regular books do not have. That mix of ingredients gives them something unique which, as readers, we can appreciate and enjoy the taste of. Books have different aspects, which produce different experiences each of which is interesting in it’s own way, for readers of any age. So, I urge you to dip your fork into the taste of the wonderful mixture of text and art found in comic books and manga.

Sean Michael Wilson is author of the graphic novel Wuthering Heights.

He can be found online at:

Web Page: http://seanmichaelwilson.weebly.com
Blog: http://sean-michael-wilson.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @SeanMichaelWord
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmichaelwilson/

Seeking Judith Pascoe

June 29, 2018

Emily Bronte’s only novel “Wuthering Heights,” set in the moors of northern England in the late 18th century, has long been staple reading in Japan.

The story of Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted brother Heathcliff, has spawned over 20 Japanese interpretations since the novel was first translated into Japanese by Yasuo Yamamoto in 1932. Japanese language renditions include manga series (including a yuri lesbian-themed manga by Takako Shimura), stage productions, a children’s book version and a contemporary adaptation of the classic story told by Minae Mizumura in “A True Novel” (“Honkaku Shosetsu”) which sets “Wuthering Heights” in postwar Japan. With the translation of this Japanese story into English (by Juliet Winters Carpenter), the drama crosses cultural and geographical boundaries that give it an enduring global quality.

So, what is it that endears Emily Bronte’s novel to the Japanese people? I traveled to Florida State University to find out.

 

The campus, situated in the capital of Tallahassee in the northwest panhandle, lies smothered in the embrace of giant canopied trees that drip heavily with thick strands of Spanish moss the size and diameter of boa constrictors. Among this haunting graveyard-like beauty is a cluster of stately red brick buildings, one of which houses the Department of English.

Inside sits the esteemed professor of 18th- and 19th-century English literature Judith Pascoe. But the petite woman with large horn-rimmed glasses admits that she struggled for years to understand the ostensible brilliance of “Wuthering Heights.”

“I just didn’t get it,” she tells me, although as a graduate student she sailed through the works of Bronte sister Charlotte’s epic “Jane Eyre.”

Keep in mind that Emily wrote her novel in less than a year, a single-minded pursuit carried out among the constant disruptions of living in the Yorkshire moors of the mid-1840s. Elizabeth Gaskell recounts in her biography of Charlotte Bronte that the noisy modern railway churning through the countryside — with no obvious regard for aspiring female novelists — was unsettling. Then there was the much-anticipated visits by the postman, who might bring letters the sisters would fancy responding to. It’s enough to yearn for the days of such “interruptions.” But still the sisters managed to churn out admirable volumes of literature.

In contrast, Pascoe set out on an eight-year study to find out why, in a country so culturally disparate as Japan, the story of “Wuthering Heights” endures. Her adventure encompassed four visits to the country, commencing with a stint as a Fulbright teacher of American literature at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo. As ambitious as this is, Pascoe set the bar even higher by determining to learn the Japanese language so she could read the novel (called “Arashigaoka” in Japanese) and its various interpretations in the local language.

The result of her peregrination, in which she interrogates casual readers about their attraction to the novel and interviews key figures involved with the various renditions, is chronicled in her book “On the Bullet Train with Emily Bronte.” She weaves her own narrative of attempting to understand Japan, the Japanese and the Japanese language together with her genuine perplexity at the popularity of Emily Bronte’s novel, resulting in a highly readable and enjoyable little book. A Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction allowed her to finish the project, which documents this journey flanked by her own cast of characters: her two daughters who devour manga and attend Japanese schools, and a very patient husband who feigns interest whenever Pascoe has a “Wuthering Heights” epiphany. Within the first few pages of the book, the reader is speeding along on the bullet train at 300 kph in the same row of seats as Judith Pascoe and Emily Bronte.

Anyone who has seen the original “Wuthering Heights” movie by William Wyler (the 1939 black-and-white version starring Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine), will remember a fairly irreproachable love story sans the overdoses of violence, revenge and animal cruelty that existed in the original novel.

The scariest part of the movie for me was the sudden and constant violent storms that plagued the Earnshaw’s property. “Here’s this violent, nasty novel that has all this viciousness in it, so in that way is almost anti-romantic,” Pascoe says. While the Hollywood version played down these scenes, the Japanese versions embraced the more sordid episodes.

Pascoe relates that she obtained her first real sense of the all-yielding power of “Wuthering Heights” here in Japan after meeting Miyako Koshiro, the woman who played Heathcliff in the first Takarazuka stage play (1969) and who described the role as transformative. It was the role that set her on the path to stardom.

Pascoe forges on to interview Tetsunori Ota, director of the second Takarazuka theater production of “Arashigaoka” (1997-98). “He placed Bronte in a Japanese literary context,” she tells me as the sky suddenly darkens and rain starts pelting the window of her office. As the wind starts howling, I imagine the Spanish moss slinging itself across the campus quad.

Ota introduced Pascoe to the works of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the dramatist who explored themes of double suicide in bunraku puppet theater and kabuki productions. In such trysts, the two lovers become one another. “These lovers have to kill themselves in order to fulfill their love in heaven,” Ota had explained to her.

In the first scene of the novel, Catherine’s ghost revisits Wuthering Heights. While the specter that appears presents a frightening scene in the original novel and the Wyler movie, Pascoe discovers a cultural disparity: Ghosts are not always scary in Japan. She relates how in Mizumura’s “A True Novel,” a ghost dons a summer kimono and returns during the o-Bon festival of the dead, a time when most Japanese people are welcoming spirits back home.

Yoko Hanabusa, who has published a manga version of “Wuthering Heights,” helps Pascoe uncover more cultural innuendo: that a romance in a faraway foreign country can evoke a sense of longing among Japanese women.

In addition to a romance, the Japanese may also see a multiple family saga where Catherine and the urchin Heathcliff engage in a genuine love that can never come to fruition in real life because of class differences. Catherine ends up marrying Edgar Linton, a man who will provide her with the wealth she needs to live the life of a society woman. I suspect that Japanese readers can also identify as it is still common to value wealth and status over true love when it comes to marriage in Japan.

As our conversation comes to an end, so does the wicked weather outside. As we move on to less tumultuous subjects, sunshine streams its approval through doctor Pascoe’s office window.

A previous version of this article appeared in the Japan Times on March 25, 2018.

Interview with Alex Kerr: The Importance of Mentors

May 27, 2018
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Known to most as the author of Lost Japan, Dogs and Demons and, more recently, Another Kyoto, Alex Kerr came of age in 1970s Japan, a golden era when he hung around with other notable foreign residents such as antique dealer David Kidd, curator Alexandra Munroe and Zen abbot John Toler.

Alex took time to talk to me about those early years while he was here visiting Shiraishi Island.

“I love these old Japanese houses, the wood, the space, like this room I’m sitting in now. It’s both airy with big columns and you can see out,” he says.

Instinctively running his hand over the thick edge of the table in my living room, he identifies it as keyaki, “one of the most beautiful woods in Japan, a type of elm. Temples in Kyoto with columns 3 feet thick are solid keyaki.”

In preparation for his visit, I’ve put out a few items I hope will make him feel more at home. Within seconds he exclaims: “There’s Nao Deguchi! And Onisaburo!” as if greeting old friends. He holds the picture frame in his hands, unable to hold back a huge smile.

My house is a former Omoto house, where this branch of the Shinto religion flourished in the days after World War II. Kidd, the legendary antique dealer, set up the Omoto School for traditional Japanese arts in the ’70s and gave Alex his first job helping to manage a program that introduced tea ceremony, noh drama, martial arts and calligraphy. Years later, when the school closed its doors, Alex started his own Origin Program in Japan and later Thailand, to help provide access to their respective Asian arts.

When I was at Tenmangu, Alex’s Kyoto house earlier in the year, I recognized the objects, scrolls and carpets that evoked the David Kidd era. Time stops at Tenmangu, so there was plenty of it for stories.

Inquiring about a particular rug, he answered: “That carpet has an interesting story. David Kidd once called me up when he needed $10,000 to buy some antiques. David didn’t have any money at the time, and he knew that I did. So we went down together and bought a room full of stuff and this carpet was one of the treasures I kept for myself.”

Despite the occasional cash shortage, David’s collection made him very wealthy, and his influence proved wide.

And now that we have even more time on Shiraishi Island, Alex expands upon what it was like to be in Japan in the ’70s.

“David Kidd was larger than life, outrageous, tall, skinny, blond. When he was 18 he went to Beijing, met a young Chinese heiress to a great princely family who lived in a 400-room palace that he later moved into. He was among the last people in history who would ever live that way. And he stayed there until the communists took over and he got kicked out. Then he came to Japan and found another grand residence to live in, a daimyo palace that had been moved to Ashiya.”

The palace in the Hyogo Prefecture city was destroyed in 1977 to make way for apartments, but Alex relates his first visit.

“The residence encompassed an entire city block with a gate. You walked through the gate, then another gate, then a third gate and finally you get to the front of the house and it was like a scene from kabuki where suddenly a whole range of fusuma doors swish open. They were silver-leafed doors, one layer then another layer, and then, David appeared.”

“David was a genius of Asian aesthetics,” Alex continues. “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.

“He impacted a lot of people, not just me,” he notes. Other deshis (disciples) included Alexandra Munroe and Yoshihiro Takishita, both who went on to carve niches for themselves in Japanese aesthetics.

More than 20 years after his death, the influence of the tall, skinny, blond-haired art dealer remains profound.

“I’ve restored probably 40 houses and written several books, but there is one thing I’m trying to do which goes all the way back to David Kidd: 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.

“That’s the shadow behind what I’m doing with these houses, because that background can’t be learned. It can only be found by spending time with someone like David.”

Alex likens the process to what he’s doing with the Origin Program.

“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.”

The furin bell clangs lightly in the breeze. A goat bleats in the distance. Time doesn’t stop long enough on Shiraishi Island.

 

Amy Chavez is a columnist for The Japan Times and Editor of Books on Asia.