Explains, in layman’s terms, what Buddhism is and how we can manifest its teachings into our daily lives, and why we should
In preparation for an upcoming podcast with Catherine Pawasarat, we’re revisiting her two books: The recently released (Nov. 2020) The Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries (review here) and From Wasteland to Pureland: Reflections on the Path to Awakening (for a BOA quick take, click here).
Androids are certainly tools to think with and one thing they make us think of is our own mortality.
The Other Ishiguro
Review by Cody Poulton
Last month in Books on Asia I reviewed Klara and the Sun and contrasted Kazuo Ishiguro with another author with the same surname. Well, here’s a book by the other Ishiguro, Hiroshi, who happens to make robots—and not just imagine them.
Ishiguro Hiroshi is probably the most famous robotics engineer around. Many will be familiar with his android double, Geminoid HI-1, released in 2006, which has had several incarnations since. Ishiguro has had himself updated by cosmetic surgery so that he and his Geminoid twin continue to resemble each other. He has created a number of other Geminoids as well: his daughter; a newscaster; an anonymous woman who was the model for his hardworking Geminoid F (more on her later); the rakugo artist Katsura Beichō; trans TV personality Matsuko Deluxe; and even the early 20th century novelist Natsume Sōseki (with the voice of his grandson, manga artist and scholar Natsume Fusanosuke).
In this manner Ishiguro Hiroshi has kept himself in the limelight for close to twenty years, while publishing dozens of academic papers in both Japanese and English, appearing on a number of Ted Talks, and even cameo-appearing in a Hollywood movie. He has also written a sheaf of popular books. How Human is Human? (Transl. Tony Gonzalez) is one of them.
Androids have been the stuff of Hollywood for decades now: Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, Arnold Swarzenegger in the Terminator series and Alicia Vikander as android femme fatale in Ex Machina. These days even sheep dream of androids.
But we need to distinguish between science fiction and scientific fact. As Ishiguro Hiroshi would be first to admit, we are still years away from fully autonomous bots. His Geminoids are essentially paraplegic because their legs are needed to accommodate the compressors that power the pneumatic actuators that serve like muscles to move their upper bodies and simulate the expressions of joy, doubt, sadness, or annoyance that we normally associate with living humans.
Japan has been at the vanguard of the creation of robots since the implementation of industrial robots in the car industry in the 1970s, and with humanoid robots since at least 2000. Indeed, one could argue that Japan’s robotics industry reaches back to the Edo era with the production of mechanical dolls from the late-17th century on. The father of one of the founders of Toshiba was an inventor of automata. Most robotics and AI research in the US is driven by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), but Japan’s postwar constitution prevents robotics research from being used, for the most part, for anything but commercial applications. This is one of the reasons why Japanese robots are generally cute, not scary.
Cutting-edge research for the past couple of decades has been in the area of human-robot interaction (HRI), developing new generations of robots that can interact with, and assist, human beings in a variety of spheres, from staffing a fleet of fully automated hotels (Henn na Hotel) to elder care. Anthropologist Jennifer Robertson has argued, however, that Japan’s robotics industry has been in part driven by a certain xenophobic tendency to avoid immigration to mitigate Japan’s ageing demographic and labour shortage. Indeed, for this reason, Shinzō Abe’s first cabinet touted robotics in its “Innovation 25” campaign of 2007, an initiative Abe would continue to promote throughout his second tenure as Prime Minister.
But the question remains: What are androids good for? Ishiguro’s own research has been guided by an attempt to understand what makes humans tick by attempting to build one. He believes that his various attempts have led to some striking insights into human nature.
Ishiguro is an engaging speaker and his controversial, counterintuitive, man-from-Mars opinions on the nature of humanity and the future of human-robot interactions, in addition to his own technological achievements, are well-known. A materialist and determinist par excellence, he casts doubt on our received notions about the uniqueness of humanity, our sense of possessing a free will, an identity, a soul. Western philosophy has been haunted by mind-body dualism, what English philosopher Gilbert Rile called “the ghost in the machine,” since at least Descartes. Ishiguro would like to disabuse us of that notion. “‘I’ am a fragile array of sensations” he writes (p. 42), which sounds rather like the Buddhist concept of self-hood.
I met the author, who has a Doctorate in Engineering from Osaka University, through one of his colleagues, playwright and director Hirata Oriza. Ishiguro and Hirata first teamed up to create what is claimed to be the world’s first play in which robots are robots: I Worker (2008). The two creators would go on to produce several more, including Sayonara, starring Geminoid F in a two-hander with the Geminoid and American actress Bryerly Long playing a mortally ill woman. (For translations of these plays see Poulton and Hirata, 2019.)
Refreshingly for an engineer, Ishiguro has been an avid interdisciplinarian, working with neurologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, and artists in his ongoing efforts to map out human consciousness and replicate that in machines. Curiosity about human nature has driven his research, not the need to translate it into commercial applications. In this sense, Ishiguro is a pure scientist, not just some inventor.
Some of the most intriguing sections of How Human is Human? discuss telepresence, the feeling that our consciousness can inhabit an object or entity at physical remove from ourselves. (To some extent this is what Marshall McLuhan was getting at back in the 1960s when he wrote that electronic media are essentially extensions of our central nervous system.) Operators of Ishiguro’s Geminoids, including himself, identify so much with their doppelgangers that when their androids are touched they feel it physically. Ishiguro has frequently sent his Geminoid overseas to give lectures, which he can still deliver in his own voice over the internet. If our minds are not in our bodies, then where are they? This further complicates the Cartesian problem.
Androids are certainly tools to think with and one thing they make us think of is our own mortality. That was Hirata’s take in Sayonara and Kazuo’s take too in Klara and the Sun. Hiroshi, who is something of a trans-humanist, would like to think of androids as a way to become immortal. He wonders whether it would be possible to download his identity, his memories, his emotions, into his android double. If we all had one, could we then live vicariously through our surrogates, perhaps extending our lives, not only in space, but beyond our limited time on this planet?
What is elided here is that Ishiguro Hiroshi’s robots are essentially puppets that still mostly need to be operated by a human being. As of yet, they do not possess autonomy or agency. After some years of seeking the roboticist’s Total Turing Test—to build an android that can fool you into thinking it’s human—Ishiguro turned to making more idealized humanoid forms, in various shapes and sizes, to act as tools of communication and intimacy between individuals separated by distance: smart phones if you will, that feel like human flesh and respond to your touch. In truth, however, his Telenoids and Elfoids haven’t replaced our iPhones or Androids (a misnomer, that one). Nobody outside Ishiguro and the folks in his lab carry little homunculi in their pockets. They’re not cute, like Aibo, Pepper or the huggable LOVOT, and we know that in Japan, cute is queen. The current pandemic has driven home the need for new ways of intimacy in a world of physical distancing; if technology can’t solve the problem, at least it is ameliorating it.
A leitmotif in this book is Ishiguro’s sense that he is becoming more and more like his Geminoid, rather than the other way around. This is a feeling first flagged by Donna Haraway in her “Cyborg Manifesto” of 1985, where she writes that “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” (Haraway herself has a cameo in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence [2002].) Technology is undoubtedly transforming what it means to be human, but it’s been doing that since the birth of homo sapiens. Sherry Turkle has also had much to say about recent iterations of this problem.
If I had a bone to pick with this book, it would be, first, the English title. “How human is human?” asks nothing, and provides no answers. More evocative is the original title, Dōsureba Hito o Tsukureru ka: Andoroido ni Natta Watakushi, which literally translates as “How can one make a human? I, who became an android.” Better yet, call it, à l’Azimov, “I, Android.” There is another problem: the original Japanese text was published in 2011. A whole decade has passed since then and, while we still haven’t reached the singularity, robotics research has grown by leaps and bounds. Ishiguro’s book is therefore a report on the state of his corner of the field, but it is no longer up to date.
The biggest issue with this book is that Ishiguro has been digging a trench in the Uncanny Valley for so many years now in an effort to marry resemblance to familiarity but only getting weirder. Simulation isn’t identity and “humanness” (ningen rashisa) isn’t humanity. He’s the first to admit he hasn’t cracked that mystery, however, so let’s give him some credit for trying.
A delightful book of short stories from Kyoko Nakajima, author of The Little House, and winner of the Naoki Prize
This is a delightful book of short stories from Kyoko Nakajima, author of The Little House, and winner of the Naoki Prize. I’m half-way through Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, (transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) but my favorite story so far is “The Life Story of a Sewing Machine,” which describes the model number 100-30 machine, born in 1920, and all the events it has seen, experienced, and constructed over its lifetime before it ends up in a thrift store. Battered and beaten, the relic is about to be purchased by someone who is determined to continue its life. This collection also includes Nakashima’s story “My Wife was a Shiitake.” Charming!
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, “Strange Weather in Tokyo” is a story of loneliness and love that defies age.
Support BOA by ordering Strange Weather in Tokyo through these links:
Thanks for helping support Books on Asia!
Limited time only deal for US$1.99 (on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple Books) See Where to Buy links to the left.
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a story of loneliness and love that defies age.
Book Description: Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, ‘Sensei’, in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass – from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms – Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love. Perfectly constructed, funny, and moving, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a tale of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance.
Books on Asia’s take:
Hiromi Kawakami (transl. Allison Markin Powell) writes lovingly about Tokyo and its people. Possessing a gift for understatement, she nurses the reader along with small insightful details which culminate in something large, meaningful and beautiful. This brilliant soft touch makes you want to keep reading, and reading, and reading…We’d classify this under the sub-genre of “sensei” novels, where, like Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro, involves the gentle guidance that can only be found in the benevolent character of a sensei, or teacher.
Another Kawakami book, also translated by Allison Markin Powell is The Nakano Thrift Shop, about a used goods and antiques store in Tokyo and the every day customers who come and go, the strange procurements they bring, and the oddly normal relationships among those who work there.
Limited time only Amazon Kindle deal for US$1.99 (Amazon US, Canada) or 150 yen (Amazon Japan)
Book Description
The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia’s family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia’s sarcasm, and sees the dead with her “yin eyes.”
Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.
“The Hundred Secret Senses doesn’t simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations.”–Newsweek
A modern recasting of stories surrounding Japan’s famous mountain witch.
(Stone Bridge Press, June 22, 2021)
Review by Jann Williams
Over two-thirds of Japan is covered with forested mountains. Traditionally these are sacred places, viewed as dwelling places of the dead and ancestral spirits, and as a liminal space between this world and the other world. Yama, the Japanese word for ‘mountain,’ is reflected in the words yamabushi—an ascetic practitioner who “lies or prostrates on the mountain”— and yamamba, the mountain witch, crone or hag of folklore that is the focus of this anthology.
Since the name yamamba first appeared in the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the mountain witch has appeared in many guises. Depending on the circumstances, she can both ignite fear or perform acts said to transcend ordinary kindness. Yamamba is one of the best known yōkai (strange or mysterious creatures) in Japan and continues to be reimagined in contemporary times. Yamamba’s identity is intimately connected to mountains, nature, the feminine/other as well as the duality of good and evil throughout this fascinating volume.
Yamamba expert Noriko T. Reader sets the scene for Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch, a collection of poems, interviews, short stories and commentary. The style of each contribution is used as the heading in the Table of Contents, which makes it possible to dip in and out of the book according to one’s inclination. If one feels like reading poetry for example, it is easy to locate the two delightful chapters in (translated) verse. Or if one is hankering for a short story, there are three to select from. At 152 pages, it is just the right length for the combination of literary styles.
The anthology, co-edited by , features authors who range from academics to performance artists in both North America and Japan. Several of the entries are translated from Japanese, and one poem has been translated into Japanese. With a limited number of illustrations, readers are left to imagine the yamamba in her various forms; the freedom to do so adds depth to the reading experience. The diverse perspectives and categories are presented as “a sampling of the awe the yamamba inspires with her power.” This yōkai certainly taps into the deeper recesses of our ‘being’.
Two seminal Japanese works are highlighted in the anthology: one composed in the early 14th century, the other in 1976. The Noh play “Yamamba,” attributed to Zeami Motokiyo, has been regularly performed for centuries. The story tells of the meeting in the mountains between a real yamamba and an actress who plays yamamba. Hisa and Hikaru Uzawa, two contemporary Noh artists who know the play intimately, are interviewed and their contribution is my personal favourite. Along with a recent review of Noh As Living Art, the portrayal of this noh play has inspired me to further explore this Japanese art form.
“The Smile of the Mountain Witch,” a story by the highly respected female writer Oba Minako, provides a feminist perspective on the yamamba. This 1970s work was the starting point for the anthology and is reproduced within its pages. In the Preface, the editors powerfully state that Oba-san “reveals the compelling way creative women can take charge of misogynistic tropes, invert them, and use them to tell compelling stories of female empowerment.” This new narrative shows a different and more intimate side of the yamamba. The ability of the mountain witch to read people’s minds is used with great effect in Oba-san’s story.
Komatsu Kazuhiko states in his preface to the English edition of An Introduction to Yokai Culture that “a deeper knowledge of yōkai is a prerequisite for a deeper understanding of Japanese culture as a whole” In that spirit, I feel much better acquainted with the yamamba, especially her representation of nature and the seasons, and as a woman living outside the norms of village or city life. Her role as an archetype is also addressed in the anthology, another aspect of this complex character.
No longer will I view this yōkai as an unsightly old woman who lives in the mountains and devours humans, as she is popularly characterised. Readers can discover her many dimensions and multiple layers as seen through the words of an impressive group of authors. For those wanting to learn even more, a comprehensive reading list is provided at the end of the book.
Yasuda has provided a witty and fresh approach to this art.
Support BOA by ordering Noh as Living Art: Inside Japan’s Oldest Theatrical Tradition through these links:
Thanks for helping support Books on Asia!
Review by Cody Poulton
This slim volume, at just over 100 pages, is a primer to noh, Japan’s classic performance art. First appearing in Japanese, the text was translated by Kawamoto Nozomu, who was raised in the United States and currently trains with the author in noh utai singing. The work was published by Japan Library, as part of a series of non-fiction English translations by prominent Japanese authors that is backed by the Japanese government. As might be expected, this series reflects a somewhat conservative picture of Japan’s achievements in politics, economics, international relations, art, and culture.
With all the books out there on noh, would this be worthwhile for a first-time student of this venerable tradition? My answer would be a qualified yes. The translator has, along with the author, made certain changes to target a foreign readership, but more than that, Yasuda has provided a witty and fresh approach to this art.
Yasuda Noboru is a professional specializing in waki roles, which he calls the “foil.” (The protagonists of noh plays are called shite, pronounced not as Roddy Doyle would say it, but more like shté.) It escapes me why anyone would want to specialize in waki roles when everyone knows that the shite get all the best parts, not only for singing, but also for the dance (mai). Waki don’t say much, and after entering and introducing themselves, sit down and pretty much do nothing else for the duration of the performance. A thankless task for any actor, one might think. Like many outsiders attracted to noh, however, Yasuda was already a musician in another genre— jazz—and waki performer Kaburaki Mineo’s voice literally “swept [him] away.” Kaburaki thus became Yasuda’s mentor. One of Yasuda’s own students is the novelist and rap artist Itō Seikō. (More on him later.) Chance encounters like this are life-changing.
Since Yasuda is not directing this book to scholars or other professional actors, but to the general public, his angle on noh is as a guide to living well, a sort of tongue-in-cheek self-help book along the lines of Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Save Your Life. For centuries noh has served as a window into the Japanese classics and as a means of spiritual and physical cultivation, not only for the samurai class in past centuries, but also for commoners. Indeed, today it is largely via teaching amateurs and professionals that noh has been able to survive as long as it has. Even so, the number of people studying this ancient performance art is dwindling, hence the need for a proper guide. Besides conducting a regular coterie of students in utai as do most other professional actors, Yasuda also teaches outreach classes, even as therapy to hikikomori (shut-ins who have shut themselves out of society for a variety of reasons). The psychological benefits from practising noh, Yasuda suggests (following from Rollo May), has to do with enabling a person to become, not an object of others, but a subject in one’s own right.
Toward the end of his book Yasuda offers fifteen witty reasons for studying noh and one of the best is: “Belting out an utai piece is an excellent way of relieving stress,” and “…it is also a good way of beating the blues. Unlike pharmaceuticals, moreover, utai has no side effects” (p.90). (Yasuda’s appendix provides information on excellent online resources like the-noh.com and where to find places to study the form.)
Practising noh is good for the body too and many actors are phenomenal athletes. In his fifties, Yasuda was examined by a physician who pronounced that he had the core muscles of a twenty-year-old. Kamae, the distinct stance taken in noh, and the sliding footwork of suriashi, ensure that even the waki, who seems to do little on stage, is in superb shape. The energy expended but often sublimated by the actors in performance ensures that noh is thrillingly alive and not a museum piece.
The master to disciple iemoto system has ensured a continuous performance tradition for over 650 years, which is unprecedented in any European performance art. Still, it has had to change with the times. Noh as Living Art provides a quick, standard history of this form and the singular contributions that Zeami and his father Kan’ami made to lifting it out of a popular, but low-class, entertainment into a high art patronized by Japan’s elites. Along the way, Yasuda suggests that noh served as a civilizing influence particularly for Japan’s warrior class, noting how it was a successful “attempt to redirect the energies of the samurai from warfare to dance” (p.42). Japan, after all, enjoyed 250 years of peace under the Tokugawa rule.
The texts of noh also served as a kind of lingua franca for Japanese people, who were divided by their distinct local dialects. Zeami’s noh was a good deal faster (Yasuda surmises it might have been more like hip hop) than it became during the Tokugawa Shogunate when it was transformed into a kind of court ceremonial.
Noh wasn’t only for samurai, however. The poet Matsuo Bashō was evidently a great fan of the form and utai especially had many amateur practitioners among the lower classes. Noh might have died out during the Meiji era were it not for politicians like Iwakura Tomomi initiating a transition of patronage from the disbanded samurai class to the prewar aristocracy, but many key figures in the arts, like novelist Natsume Sōseki and haiku poets Masaoka Shiki and Takahama Kyoshi were avid amateur singers of utai. However, since 1945, in order to survive, noh has needed to open up to people from all walks of life.
Which brings me back to Yasuda’s student, the rapper Itō Seikō. Since April of last year, Yasuda, Itō, and Jay Rubin have been running a monthly series in the literary magazine Shinchō, with Itō providing modern Japanese translations and Rubin the English translations of ten plays, one per month. Rubin may be better known to readers here as a translator of Haruki Murakami, but he’s been tinkering with noh texts for over a quarter century now. Royall Tyler’s Penguin translations of noh may be the gold standard for some of us, but I for one am eager to hear what noh sounds like as a kind of rap Haruki. Let’s hope that Japan Library or someone else will make Rubin’s translations available soon to English readers.
Note: This title is currently only available in hardback form from Amazon Japan (see “Where to Buy” link to the left) or directly from The Japan Library.
By CJ Fentiman
From Chapter 3: A Cat’s Resentment (toward those who help it)
(猫の逆恨み / Neko No Sakaurami)
I’d had kittens before, but none with such a destructive nature. Finally, I decided it was time to take him to the vets and get some advice. Maybe there was something physically wrong with him that was causing this outlandish behaviour, or maybe the vet could help with advice on how to change such a war-mongering
attitude.
To my astonishment, when I took him to the vets, the kitten switched personalities again. He was completely well-behaved during his first consultation and
exam, and with a complete stranger, too.
‘Amerika no short hair desu ka?’ the vet asked as he picked him up to examine him.
I shook my head. Kawaii, he most certainly was, but an American shorthair he most definitely was not.
Still, it was true that he did look more exotic than the traditional Japanese bobtail, which has a stocky build with brown patches and a short tail. The kitten’s
pricked over-sized ears, extremely long back legs, and triangular face gave him an alien-like appearance (something we both had in common).
I described the kitten’s aggressive behaviour.
Dr. Iguchi, the vet, nodded. ‘Hai-tenshon. Violento kitten desu yo.’
‘Yes, very bad,’ I said showing him some scratches on my hand.
‘Sou desu ka?’ (Is that so?) He said with a smile.
It turned out that the kitten had nothing physically wrong with him. The aggression was in his nature. Dr. Iguchi gave him a full bill of health and we were sent home with the singularly unhelpful recommendation to feed him a more nutritious brand of cat food.
When we got home, I let the kitten out of his carrier and we regarded each other. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ I asked.
He looked at me as if to say, ‘Why should you do anything with me? I’m perfect the way I am.’
He had the most personality I’d ever encountered in a cat. This small silver tabby could express more emotion and more comments with his black-rimmed green
eyes than many people could with words. He was a human in a cat suit: a soul who had once had the ability to speak with words and now could only communicate with eyes, body, and tail.
And express himself he did. When not engaged in battle, he always held himself with a superior air: an emperor in kitten’s clothing, noble in appearance and
attitude.
Ryan and I had posted flyers trying to find the kitten’s original owners, but no one had responded. We couldn’t keep calling him ‘the kitten’ and ‘hellcat.’ He needed
a name. Because of his skillful ping pong ball work, we considered the names Beckham and Pele, but they seemed too obvious. Later we thought of Hirohito,
because of his establishment of his imperial reign. But nothing felt right for this charming little terror.
Then one day, quite by chance, the peaceful chords of a cello filled our sparsely decorated apartment. Ryan and I were watching the Japanese television
network NHK, which was airing a documentary about the work of famed German composer Johannes Sebastian Bach. To my amazement, the lovely music had an
almost instant impact on the kitten. His high-octane nature reversed itself, his usually tense body relaxed, and his green eyes slid half shut.
That music could have such a dramatic impact on the kitten led Ryan and I to discuss all sorts of musician, singer, and composer names for him. We finally settled
on Gershwin, ‘G’ for short.
And now, besides a name, we also had a new strategy to calm him down whenever his energy or aggression were dialed up too high. We tuned the radio to the
classical music station, to be turned on when needed.
‘This is only a temporary solution,’ Ryan warned, and I agreed. It didn’t matter that it was the idea of living with cats that had helped lure me back to Japan in
the first place. It didn’t matter that I was crazy in love with Gershwin and Ryan loved him, too. The apartment was meant to be a two-cat household, not a three-cat
household. The responsible thing to do was to find Gershwin a permanent home, preferably as a single cat.
After a couple of weeks, when no one responded to the flyers we’d posted for the Ninja Kitten, Ryan and I approached our friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.
But no one wanted a rambunctious cat.
So, I turned to the Internet and, after an exhaustive search, I found just one Japanese animal charity run by a British woman. But it was far away in Osaka. So, I
emailed her to see if she knew of any cat animal shelters, humane societies, or sanctuaries in Gifu. Sadly, to her knowledge, there were none.
‘What do the Japanese do when they find strays and they don’t have an RSPCA or animal welfare group to help them?’ I demanded of Ryan.
‘They probably try to rehome them through friends or leave them on the streets, or in a forest,’ he said sadly.
If there was an animal shelter out there, I couldn’t find it. The Osaka charity kindly offered to put a photo of Gershwin on their website, and suggested that I try advertising with vets and in the local newspaper. I took her advice but, again, we had no response.
‘Try not to worry too much,’ Ryan said reassuringly that evening. ‘We’ll find Gershwin a home. Maybe one of the vet adverts will work.’
On the following morning, I was rudely awakened by a sharp pulsating pain in my abdomen. I cursed and opened my eyes to be met by a piercing pair of unblinking
green eyes. Gershwin placed his paws atop my full bladder and began to knead it. He was already developing ways to manipulate humans. In the morning, every morning, he wanted his breakfast, which meant he needed me to get up.
This feline routine had been happening with greater regularity. Ryan called it ‘the bladder stomp.’
I had never been known for my love of mornings. With such a determined furry alarm clock, though, it was becoming impossible to lie in and be lazy and avoid
the day. Gershwin’s new morning ritual was breaking me from a bad habit I’d spent far too long indulging.
On this particular morning, however, he was unusually persistent, even for him. Then all three cats began running around the bedroom agitatedly, meowing
incessantly. I pulled the covers over my head, turned on my side to protect my bladder, and tried my best to ignore them.
But their meows grew more ferocious. The three of them were making sounds I had never heard out of a cat before and Gershwin, who had got back on the bed, was digging his claws even deeper into my easily-pierced flesh.
Reluctantly, I crawled out of bed to see what in hell had turned my cats into psycho-kitties. No sooner had I pulled on my dressing gown, than the old clinic
windows began rattling loudly, sending the cats scurrying for cover under the bed. I had no idea what was happening until I heard the city’s warning sirens.
Earthquake!
I was home alone and I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Panicked, I crawled under the bedroom table like I’d seen people in movies do and huddled there
waiting (and praying) for the tremors to pass. I wrapped my dressing gown tightly around my body as everything in the apartment shook. Books flew off shelves. Chairs hopped across the floor. The windowpane shook so violently, I was sure it would break. The very floor I clung to pulsated.
In the midst of my fear, I realised that Iko, Niko, and Gershwin’s harassment this morning had been their desperate attempts to warn me that an earthquake was
coming. They had known long before the humans’ seismographic sensors had known what was coming. In the midst of my fear, I felt my love for that feline trio triple.
Thankfully, the earthquake passed in a few minutes. I cuddled the cats to reassure them (and me), and thank them for their early warning.
Though it had scared me to death, the earthquake really hadn’t been terribly strong by Japanese standards. No buildings had been levelled and my home was
relatively undamaged. The country’s propensity for earthquakes was something Ryan and I had not considered when deciding to come back to work in Japan.
According to Japanese mythology, the Namazu, or giant catfish, lives under the islands of Japan. Whenever it moves, the ground shakes. Being a fish, it moves a
lot. I told myself to learn much more about earthquake safety procedures, should the Namazu decide to make itself known again, and to pay much more attention to the cats’ warnings of changes in atmospheric pressure.
On the evening after the earthquake, I gazed fondly over at Iko, Niko, and Gershwin, who were eating their dinners contentedly while Ryan and I prepared our own meal. With no response to our flyers, Ryan and I had decided to put the idea of re-homing Gershwin on a back burner. We truly had done all we could to find him a new home. It seemed – to our secret joy – that he was meant to be a permanent member of our temporary Japanese family.
Because of these three cats, I was learning truly, deeply, and for the first time in my life the importance of trust and companionship, commitment and caring.
Because of them, I was shedding a lifetime of loneliness and rejection.
And yet . . . Ryan and I had never intended to stay more than a year in Japan.
When our contract at the school was up, we would leave. We would leave Iko, Niko, and Gershwin and then, even with Ryan, my life would be lonely again.
About the Author:
Carla Francis is the author of the 5th edition guidebook (and blog) Travelling with Pets. Her work has been featured in publications in Australia, the UK, and Japan.
The Cat With Three Passports is available from Bookshop.org (US) or Amazon (international) or via Angus & Robertson (Australia)
It is that so-called “insignificant encounter” that Murakami focuses on to develop beautiful short stories.
Review by Tina deBellegarde
Memoir or fiction? Murakami blurs the line between the two in First Person Singular, his most recent collection of stories where he tackles time, dreams, and memory (its power, lapses and distortions). He demonstrates how we wish into existence and remember into existence memories we are unwilling to abandon, such as how a one-night stand or a girl running down a high school hallway can stay with us and leave a lasting imprint.
First Person Singular (translated by Philip Gabriel) is reminiscent of Murakami’s previous collection of short stories The Elephant Vanishes in that all the stories are told in the first person and in Murakami’s famous conversational style. Some stories are other-worldly while others are based in the mundane. This volume has less punch and polish than The Elephant Vanishes and, as such perhaps should not serve as an introduction to Murakami, but nonetheless, these stories remain a welcome read for Murakami fans.
This collection is solid, recognizable Murakami with the usual attention to music, whiskey, sex and baseball. The stories are diverse: a mysterious philosophizing old man in an abandoned park; a one-night stand with a tanka poet; a Charlie Parker dreamscape where Parker plays bossa nova from an imaginary album; a life-long obsession with a girl the narrator once saw carrying a Beatles album; a talking monkey masseur with a fetish for stealing women’s names; a platonic attachment to a charismatic woman; an homage to the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team where he remembers poetry he never wrote; and the titular story where an encounter with a stranger forces him to regret actions he doesn’t remember.
Some stories are clearly autobiographical, such as the one about his life-long attachment to the Yakult Swallows. Others just feel like actual experiences, still others are pure fantasy, but all are told with the same casual conversational tone that gives you the sense you’re sitting across from the author over a coffee or whiskey, sharing his memories.
Simply told tales of memory and reckoning, Murakami investigates how we form our identities and how certain encounters are powerful in that formation. Every story starts early in the narrator’s life, with a tale of an encounter, and then takes a leap forward many years to reflect upon a memory. The reckoning that comes with the passage of time and the assessment of the life lived is the crux of these narratives.
Murakami is adept at capturing a slice of life—something ordinary—but with a strong sense of time and place. Even in his trademark magical-realism, Murakami evokes the mundane to immerse the reader in the ordinariness of the narrator’s life. A good example is “With the Beatles” where Murakami takes an unremarkable moment and constructs an entire story around it. In high school, the narrator encounters an unknown girl running down the corridor clutching a Beatles album. He never sees her again, not in high school and not later in life, yet he measures every subsequent girl and woman by the feeling he had at the sight of this girl.
Murakami best sums up these moments with this quote from the end of “Carnaval:”
“…a pair of minor incidents that happened in my trivial little life. Short side trips along the way. Even if they hadn’t happened, I doubt my life would have wound up much different from what it is now. But still, these memories return to me sometimes, traveling down a very long passageway to arrive. And when they do, their unexpected power shakes me to the core. Like an autumn wind that gusts at night, swirling fallen leaves in a forest, flattening the pampas grass in fields, and pounding hard on the doors to people’s homes, over and over again.”
In a novel, especially a modern one which addresses shortened attention spans, a conversation in a park or attendance at a baseball game might not make it into the book. The character in the novel may very well have such an encounter, but unless it leads to the development of the plot, the scene would be edited out. It is that so-called insignificant encounter that Murakami focuses on to develop beautiful short stories. He lingers in these stories and savors the moments in a way a novel cannot.
Similar to movie director Akira Kurosawa, Murakami is sometimes considered too Western by the Japanese literary establishment. In my opinion, however, his Japanese-ness sneaks in via kishōtenketsu, the Japanese literary tradition where a major conflict is not necessary. Kishōtenketsu has an introduction, a development, a twist (often not a major conflict) and a wrap up where the protagonist is not necessarily deeply changed but adjusts to the new normal. Kishōtenketsu relies more on the evolution of a character through natural change versus the destructive nature of conflict so prevalent in the West. Some of Murakami’s works have dramatic twists and disruption, but many, especially his short stories, have only minor twists, and this collection of stories is particularly so.
I read this book while listening to the music mentioned in the stories as I do with every Murakami book. In the past I have made my own playlists, but this time there was one posted on Spotify. Make sure to find it. Murakami deserves to be read accompanied by the music he has coursing through his mind.
I get the distinct impression that Murakami writes for himself. It is clear that he is having fun while tackling existential questions. You must suspend disbelief to enjoy the flights of fancy Murakami undertakes to tell his story. Accept his invitation to go along for the journey and you will enjoy him.
For more Murakami books, reviews and trivia, see the BOA Issue 6: What You Don’t Know About Haruki Murakami.
In this episode of the Books on Asia podcast, show host Amy Chavez talks with Robert Whiting about his just released memoir Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys . . . and Baseball (Stone Bridge Press, April, 2021). Whiting is known for his numerous books on Japanese baseball: The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, and The Samurai Way of Baseball. He’s also penned a book about gangsters called Tokyo Underworld. In this episode of the podcast, Whiting talks about all these books as well as what its like to write a memoir.
Podcast Show Notes:
The show starts out as Whiting tells how he came to Japan in 1962 and worked for the CIA. At the time, Japan was preparing for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Whiting elucidates the transformation of Tokyo as the city prepared to host the Games. He contrasts that with the upcoming 2021 Tokyo Olympics to show how far Tokyo has come in 60 years.
Whiting talks about attending Sophia University where he studied politics, and why he returned to the U.S. His homecoming led to his first gig writing The Chrysanthemum and the Bat and after that, a chance to come back to Japan with “Time/Life.”
While working in Tokyo, he started hanging out with gangsters at the bars which, eventually, led to his writing Tokyo Underworld.
Lastly, Whiting talks about his life with his long-time wife Machiko, and how he followed her career around the world for her position as Officer for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Whiting shares some writing advice as well as his favorite books on Japan:
Japan Diary by Mark Gayn
Five Gentlemen of Japan: The Portrait of a Nation’s Character by Frank Gibney
Typhoon in Tokyo: The Occupation and Its Aftermath by Harry Emerson Wildes
MacArthur’s Japan by Russell Brines
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein
Japanamerica by Roland Kelts
Anything by Alex Kerr, Richard Lloyd Parry or Peter Tasker.
See Books on Asia’s review of Robert Whiting’s memoir Tokyo Junkie
The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, publisher of fine books on Asia for over 30 years:
Your guide to finding quality books
on Japan and Asia
