62 Sonnets + 36

Published by Shueisha Bunko,who also published Tanikawa's Two Billion Light Years of Solitude, 62 Sonnets + 36 is a dual text edition of Shuntaro Tanikawa's 1953 collection of poems, translated again by William I.Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura. In the afterword by the author he mentions his disbelief that poems he wrote half a century ago are still being read. 62 Sonnets is in three parts, and this edition comes with an additional 36 poems. As the translators point out in their preface these sonnets are not to be confused with that of Petrarca or indeed that of Shakespeare but here represent Shuntaro Tanikawa's love of life, an aspect that is to be found throughout his poems. The poem 'Expanse' shows another of his poem's subjects, that of solitude, and in this collection the word 'absence' crops up a few times, but I think it's also used in a way that eludes to feelings of solitude, but in Expanse the poem explores aloneness, 'surrounded by things indifferent to me' and also the subtle influence of the presence of time and that of it's end,'Subtle gestures, though, are soon forgotten. In the expanse of which no one is aware, time dies'.

Shuntaro Tanikawa's poems explore perception and things perceived, from a mountain, a cup, time's progress, and many aspects from nature. One of my favourite poems here is one which hasn't a title really but has the number he used in his notebook to mark it by, the number 58, perception lies at the centre of this poem, and is used as an observation about human nature,'Scenic panoramas stop people in their tracks, making them conscious of enormous distances surrounding them', then later in the poem 'Yet people contain inside themselves a distance.That is why they go on yearning', concluding 'In the end people are just places violated by distances. No longer observed, people then become scenery'. Tanikawa's poetry is informed from perspectives of solitude, although some of the poems here are addressed to an unnamed woman, but largely they concern the self, abandoned in time observing the elements and their effects.Time also appears as a broken line, but also something that is also continually regenerating itself, so many of his poems have the feeling of first awakenings to experiences and observations, which have kept these poems immune from ageing. 'Homecoming', a poem that comes to us from a universal perspective, Tanikawa's narrative seems to come from a lost astronaut, contrasting an unexplored planet with that of his own familiar planet, the narrator also has something of the exile about him, from it's opening lines, 'This was an alien land, Opening the side door of this wretched earth,' contemplating his stranded scenario though he reflects on himself, 'I no longer aspire after other planets. I will live on this planet with more pleasure than in eternity'. The parallel between the familiar terrain and the alien world is extenuated again at the end, when he hints at the possibility of parallel existences, 'There maybe an unexpected homecoming from this familiar alien land - a homecoming without me about which i know nothing', this line fantastically conveys the multi-layeredness of existence, and of how the exiled are usually the hidden. Identity is something that many of his poems seek to confirm, in 'The Necessity of Greeting', this poem again begins somewhere out in the nebulae and the vacuum,and concludes with the need of greeting people by posing the question 'Could I really be a human being?', knowledge of the extra-terrestial (and unknowing) is observed in 'to confirm the real heat of the sun by treading on the earth'.

Tracks: The World of Gen Otsuka

Published by Heibonsha in November 1996, the book has texts by Teruo Okai and Ryuichi Kaneko, with English translations by Jeremy Angel.The first half of the book is made of plates of his photographs, and then there's the texts afterward. The photographs here are a selection made by Ryuichi Kaneko, who also put together the exhibition Tracks of Gen Otsuka. Hajime 'Gen' Otsuka, an important Japanese photographer who has little representation on the Internet, this book, (which I think is out of print), presents a great selection of his pictures, starting from the work that earned him attention from some of Japan's top photographer's of the day, 'Gecko' from 1933 which was included in the British photographic almanac; 'Modern Photography 1934-35'. Thanks to Teruo Okai's biographical piece we have an insight into the life of a remarkable photographer, who's father was also interested in photography, Otsuka was brought up in a household surrounded by photographic equipment. Otsuka was born in 1912, his father owned a coal mine, but the families fortunes were lost when the mine was destroyed in a gas explosion. As a student of photography he was well connected, Yasuzo Nojima was an early admirer of his work, Otsuka walked the Ginza searching for well attired young ladies to use as models, staying away from using professional models. An early success came when an exhibition of his was held at Kinokuniya Gallery in the Ginza.

The photographs in this book show Otsuka's range, theres a stunning collection of portraits, Toshiro Mifune, (1949), Setsuku Hara (1951), Hikosaburo Bando (Kabuki actor 1949), Mishima Yukio (1949), Eiji Yoshikawa(1951), theres also mention of a study of Kawabata Yasunari, although no images are included, and among the non Japanese portraits theres Juliette Greco 1961, Margot Fonteyn 1959, Marcel Marceau 1955, Charlie Chaplin, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, (1965), but this is a small selection of names here. Otsuka worked at Asahi in the 1930's and was abruptly sent to China to photograph the Sino-Japan War, although he was more interested in the everyday life of the Chinese, and was interrogated by disgruntled military who had thought perhaps he should have been producing propaganda like images instead. He was present at the defeat at Taierzhuang, where he was lucky to have escaped alive. A striking image is that of the juxtaposition of a Japanese bomber seen from the perspective of a rice/barley? field, but also the photograph has caught a cricket jumping at the same time, giving the impression that the cricket is nearly the same size as the aeroplane. Near the end of the second world war, he was sent to Korea as an advisor to a newspaper, on his return he was posted to photograph the identity numbers on U.S B29 bombers, whilst on these flights he witnessed the fire bombing of many cities, including Kobe. Some photographs are taken during the war years, and some from Hirohito's tour of the Kansai area from 1947, another historically interesting series of plates here are those capturing some location shots and the filming of Japan's first colour film 'Carman's Home-coming/Karumen Kyoko Ni Kaeru' directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, and there are also some montage pieces Otsuka put together, mainly depicting his thoughts on post war society, a man reclining under an umbrella, hiding from a shower of falling Yen notes. There also photographs of Mount Fuji, taken in various seasons and from many viewpoints, and there are many dream like shots of Tokyo during snowstorms that span his career. In 1964 he organized the photographic exhibition of the Tokyo Olympic Games, a couple of years after he organized two exhibitions of Henri-Cartier Bresson. This book gives a great selection of Otsuka's oeuvre, shortly before his death in 1992 an exhibition of his work was put together under the title The Tracks of Gen Otsuka.

 

Tracks:The World of Gen Otsuka

Villain by Yoshida Shuichi

 

 

 

At it's centre Villain/Akunin is a murder story although there's many things about this novel that sets it apart from being pigeon holed into being solely a crime/murder novel. Published in Japan in 2007 it won Shuichi Yoshida both the Jiro Osaragi Prize and also the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award, Villain is Yoshida's first book to be appear in English,the translation is by Philip Gabriel. After the body of a woman, (Yoshino Ishibashi) is found on Mitsuse Pass, a mountain range reputedly haunted and a haven for murderers on the run,Yoshida's novel begins to piece together the scenario of her last moments. The night she was murdered she had dinner with her friends, during their conversation Yoshino exaggerates her relationship with Keigo Masuo, a popular guy, who's parents run an expensive inn, later in the night her friends say goodbye to her thinking she was meeting up with Keigo on a date. In actuality she's arranged to meet with Yuichi Shimizu, a guy she had met through an online dating agency, the following day her friends at work are curious that Yoshino hasn't arrived at her job, the t.v is on at work and a report comes on that a woman's strangled body has been found on the mountains, worryingly the description matches Yoshino's. After following up the leads the police find that mysteriously Keigo Masuo has gone missing. Yoshida's approach to telling his story has a real originality about the way he introduces his characters, starting with descriptive passages and scenes that lead on to connect with those of the main characters, as the history of their lives are emptied out before our eyes, we learn more about Yuichi from the eyes of Miho, a woman who he had met at a massage parlor and had an unsuccessful relationship with, Yuichi was abandoned by his mother when he was a child after his father had run off with another woman, adopted by his grandparents, Fusae and Katsuji, and and in turn the narrative takes us back to Fusae's childhood, and we see a life spent largely struggling, from picking up rationed potatoes thrown on the floor, in the post war days of her youth, to being bullied into buying unwanted medicine.

 

The story is shot through with the quiet desperation of the loneliness of it's characters, Tamayo and Mitsuyo are sisters living a rather dissolute existence together, and through online dating Mitsuyo contacts Yuichi, but after he asks her to meet him she stops the communication between them, but after a period of loneliness she contacts him again out of the blue, over the course of some emailed texts Yuichi's own loneliness comes to the fore, he texts -''These days I haven't talked to anybody', He looked down and saw the words on the screen. They weren't words someone has emailed to him. Without realizing it, he'd typed the message'. This time the couple meet up and after Yuichi's forthright invitation head for a love hotel, the anonymous world of online dating is summed up when Mitsuyo asks, 'is Yuichi Shimizu your real name?', she revels in Yuichi knowing that her lonely isolation is nearing an end. Yoshida has drawn an accurate portrait of contemporary Japan, name dropping many brand names, and I think this has the most references to Japanese food and customs that I've read in a contemporary novel in a long while, furikake, butaman, kamaboko, chikuwa to name but a few, and the novel opens with Yoshino's father doing the calculation of how much money you can save by choosing between the slower and faster train service, and the price of the ETC system, the addition of these details place you right in the novel's setting. Although a story of murder, the story is more character study than police procedure, and the relationship between Mitsuyo and Yuichi grows in intensity after his confession, Mitsuyo haunted by an apparition of her loneliness can't stand to leave Yuichi, the two know their time together will not last but still head for refuge in a deserted light house, a light house also figures in his relationship with his mother. As the net begins to tighten around them, were left with a slight enigma with Yuichi, is he at heart a good man, who's loneliness has pushed him to the limits where his actions slip momentarily out of his control?.

 

Villain is published by Harvill/Secker in the U.K and Pantheon in the U.S., in Japan a film adaption of Villain/Akunin directed by Sang-il Lee, (Scrap Heaven, 69), will appear in September 2010.

Eri Fukatsu recently won best actress at Montreal Film Festival for her role in Akunin.

143rd Akutagawa Prize Winner Announced

The winner of the 143rd Akutagawa Prize
is Akiko Akazome for her story,
'The Maiden's Betrayal', as announced on
Bunshun's webpage, the story appeared in
Shincho literary magazine along with another
story that was short listed for the prize I Am
Not in Khartoum by Shibazaki Yuka. The 143rd
Naoki Prize Winner has also been announced as
Nakashima Kiyoko's novel 'Little House/Home' ,
a novel set in early Showa period.

Doll Love

The opening sentence of 'Doll Love' gives a conundrum for the reader to reflect upon whilst reading the first part of this short story, 'I was waiting for Tamao, Tamao is eighteen', who is Tamao and what is the relationship between him and the narrator?. Doll Love/ Ningyo ai, a short story by Takahashi Takako from 1976 takes us into the wanderings of a woman who's husband recently committed suicide, his suicide had left her in a 'confused state in which my head had become perfectly clear'. On something of a whim she decides to travel to T city, recently she had been in the habit of boarding trains without a predetermined destination, on the station she notices a strange lightness in the sky, and pondering what it's source could be, remembers that the mountain range nearby is mainly made up of granite which reflects the light. Thinking over her husband's suicide she also recalls the suicide of a previous lover she had,a fortune teller she consults offers the explanation that some people store death inside themselves, others store life, sometimes it can take years to come to the surface.Before the train reaches T city, she decides to get off a few stations before, walking around she comes across a Western style house, that was old maybe built before the war, a middle aged woman is watering the roses in the garden, and the woman can see her son in the doorway, within this paragraph there's a switch in the narrative, and for the last few lines we read the thoughts of the woman watering her roses,'This copper watering can, which has been passed down through our family for many generations, feels full and heavy' and 'In this area the sun does not set over the mountains but goes down slowly far beyond the horizon that opens to the sea....', were brought back to the wandering woman when she asks if there is a hotel nearby she can stay at, the woman in the garden suggests somewhere in T city, this confirms to the woman that she was meant to journey to the destined T city.


In the hotel that night Tamao makes his first appearance in her dreams, Tamao, a life size wax doll standing in her room,in her dream the thought presents itself to her that, 'It seemed that i had been living in this room with the young man, and in this same room I would go on living with him in the future'. She begins to caress him, the more she does the more he seems to come to life, 'there was a pulse as if his heart was beating'. The dream seems to last the entire night, in the morning, waiting at the elevator door she encounters a young man almost identical to Tamao, and without thinking she calls him 'Tamao' he doesn't disagree to this given name, over the next few pages the narrator explores her fascination with both the real life Tamao and the wax doll who she had subconsciously named Tamao,and the relationship between the two, noting about the real life Tamao 'It was as if his smile, held captive in flesh that suggested an inanimate object, radiated from deep within the innermost part of his body', and she notices the doll like qualities of the real life Tamao, 'the mode of his exsistence was devoid of expression'. Each night she dreams of the doll, caressing him more and more, slowly awakening life in him and in the day she meets with the real life Tamao, over their afternoon meetings she begins to get to know more about him, they talk about his forthcoming exams a painting by Albert Martin, and a musical score by Toru Takemitsu called 'Love',on one of their meetings her thoughts provoked by observing some plants, she asks him if there are any botanical gardens nearby, he gives her directions. She continues dreaming of the wax doll Tamao, bringing him to life by her touch, and in her dream she applies lipstick to the lips of the doll, increasing it's resemblance to a living being. The following morning seeing the real Tamao at the elevator door she thinks she detects a trace of lipstick, he runs away, this alludes to the possibility that the dream Tamao and the real life Tamao are one and the same, but later when examining her bed she finds the hollow where his head had lain and finds one of his hairs, holding it up to the light, she sees that it's exactly like that of her own, which hints that it all could be an illusion, a product of the woman's grief?, the narrative follows closely the fine line between the possibly real, and the possibly imaginary. She visits the botanical gardens and through associations of observations of the plants there the woman's narrative blends back to being the woman she saw in the house near the beginning of the story, 'I felt myself expanding in a boundless space. The antique copper watering can was heavy in my hand. Morning and evening I water the roses like this, everyday'.


This enigmatic story has many looping elements within it,this is an intricate and subtly written story which could be read as a feminist fable, maybe an exploration of grief, Doll Love is amongst stories collected in the anthology, This Kind of Woman:Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers 1960-1976, edited by Yukiko Tanaka and Elizabeth Hanson published by Stanford University Press. Recently published by Columbia University Press is Lonely Woman.

Film Diary 2010

As it's been a year since I started my blog, I thought it was about time for an update on the films I've watched since the 2009 post. I've not watched as many films recently, but here's a list of what I've seen -


Life of Kenji Mizoguchi dir:Kaneto Shindo
Miyoko Asagaya dir: Tsubota Yoshifumi
Mind Game dir: Masaaki Yusa
Toyd dir:?
Sea and Poison dir:Kei Kumai
Assasination of Ryoma dir:Kazuo Kuroki
Life of O'Haru dir: Mizoguchi Kenji
Trees Without Leaves dir:Kaneto Shindo
Humanity and Paper Balloons dir:Sadao Yamanaka
Drunken Angel: Akira Kurosawa
Onibaba dir:Kaneto Shindo
The Funeral dir: Juzo Itami
Coup D'Etat dir: Yoshida Kiju
Sado/Third Base dir: Yoichi Higashi
Branded to Kill: Seijun Suzuki
Dear Doctor dir:Miwa Nishikawa
Woman of Water dir:Hidenori Sugimori
The Affair dir: Yoshida Kiju
Air Doll dir:Hirokazu Kore-eda
A2 dir:Tatsuya Mori
Crazed Fruit dir:Ko Nakahira
Fried Dragon Fish dir:Shunji Iwai
Twilight dir: Tengai Amano
















A film I'd also really like to see soon is Koji Wakamatsu's, Caterpillar, which was nominated for the Golden Bear award at last year's 60th Berlin International Film Festival, actress Shinobu Terajima won the best actress award for her role in the film, Wakamatsu took his inspiration from an Edogawa Rampo short story,it tells the story of a soldier returning horrifically wounded from the Sino-Japanese war. Another film shown at the same festival was Yoji Yamada's Ototo/About Her Brother a film due to be released on dvd soon. A film I'm hoping to see soon is Takeshi Kitano's latest Outrage, and also a film I missed when it was released but want to see is The Clone Returns to the Homeland (2008)dir:Kanji Nakajima.

Tokyo Autumn

Araki Nobuyoshi is a Japanese photographer largely known for his erotic photography, although he has produced many books of photo-journalism. His book Tokyo Autumn, or Tokyo Fall, published in 1992 by Chikuma Shobo is a collection of observations and images he and his wife took as they wandered through Tokyo's suburbs. Many of the pictures are of places not usually seen in photographs of Tokyo, here you see demolition sites, garages, shop fronts of stores closed long ago, deserted streets and alleys, street corners. The photographs give a feeling of the passing of time, as if these buildings are intruding from an age alien to us, and they act as a reminder of the collapse of history, things not lasting forever, the photographs included in this book were taken originally in 1972, but recompiled for this book. When I see an old building that has been restored I usually get no impression of it's age, it's surface belies it's real identity, it's become in a way a manicured replica of the original. This book reminds me that time, once passed, is irretrievable. Also there are a few shots of people, a paint sprayer sits after preparing a car to paint, in another, a body builder holds a pose for the camera, and next to a crowd eating under the cherry blossom, a man asleep, corpse like, is lying under some blankets.

 

Just as the passing of time slips our control, there's a shot here of a tree's roots breaking through a wall and over-spilling onto the pavement, reminding us that although the appearance of nature in cities is controlled, this picture gives a glimpse that nature is always not to faraway to take back what man has temporarily built upon. I'm not too sure as the availability of this book, but here's some links.

Tokyo Autumn

Chikuma shobo

Araki Nobuyoshi

 

The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P

Whilst reading The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P/Oyayubi P no shugyo jidai, I was reminded slightly of Jeffrey Eugenides 2003 novel, Middlesex, a book which gives a fictional portrait of a modern day hermaphrodite, some of the territory covered in Big Toe P seems to overlap with that of Eugenides novel, or perhaps the other way around. The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P was published in Japan in 1993 and became a bestseller, Kodansha International published the novel last year, 2009 in a translation by Michael Emmerich. The novel opens with Mano Kazumi visiting her novelist friend M. (a fictional cameo of author Rieko Matsuura perhaps?), they discuss the recent suicide of Kazumi's friend/boss Yoko, the relationship between Kazumi and Yoko runs as an undercurrent which is referred to throughout the novel to examine Kazumi's emotional make up,the two characters are contrasted,Yoko the stronger,and Kazumi as her slower on the up take employee. During Kazumi and M's conversation, Kazumi mentions that she had a vivid dream that the big toe on her right foot had turned into a penis, Kazumi asks M to pull her sock off to double check, and when she does, to their amazement 'The big toe of her right foot was a penis', the two consider the possibility that maybe her attribute could be a curse from Yoko. Leaving M's, Kazumi receives a call from her boyfriend Masao who is trying to avoid a call from his friend Haruhiko, recently shunned by his group of friends as he pinched someone else's girlfriend.Masao and Kazumi are planning to marry, anticipating how Masao will react to her news, Kazumi begins to contemplate sexual relationships from both male and female points of view,'It's a wonderful thing, the existence of two different sexes' she observes. During a role playing game in which they are pretending to both be males, Masao discovers her toe penis, but at the same time Haruhiko turns up in a rage, and Kazumi begins to suspect the two could be possilby having a gay relationship, Haruhiko blurts out that he and Masao once had a three some with a girl, Kazumi runs out of the flat. Meeting up again Masao explains his relationship with Haruhiko, that they aren't having a relationship, and Masao begins to slowly adjust to the change in Kazumi's toe.

There's a lot of exploratory dialogue between Masao and Kazumi exposing and exploring the two's thoughts and approaches to sex and sexual identity, maybe things alluded to in Middlesex are explored a little more in depth here, I read Middlesex quite a while ago, so my comparison might be hazy, Kazumi's newly attributed androgyny also seems to overspill onto other people that discover her toe too, and it's not long until cracks appear in the veneer of Masao's acceptance. One day his anger spills over and he tries to severe her toe, running away she finds refuge in a neighbour's apartment, the blind piano player and composer, Shunji. Looked after by his overbearing cousin Chisato, Shunji seems to be everything that Masao wasn't, Kazumi soon discovers that Chisato has been ripping off Shunji, and Kazumi slowly learns the reason for Shunji's ambivalent attitude towards sex, and their relationship grows. Chisato's overbearingness soon looses it's strength, and she introduces Kazumi to her new boyfriend, who turns out to be,a little incredibly, Haruhiko. Through conversations with Haruhiko there are further explorations into sexuality and sexual politics, Haruhiko's philosophy is quite close to adopting an 'anything goes' approach, but Kazumi has a much more reasoned rationale, and she's constantly sieving her emotions and experiences to reach her conclusions. Through Haruhiko, Kazumi learns of a travelling troupe called 'The Flower Show', a private show, featuring other people with unusual bodies, similar to Kazumi's, she's interested in meeting and possibly joining them, Shunji is also willing to go along, although we get a foreboding sign when Kazumi reflects on taking there phone number from Haruhiko 'I now regretted that I had let Haruhiko cajole me into even doing that'. Through The Flower Show, she meets the nihilistic Tamotsu and his girlfriend Eiko which leads Kazumi further into exploring the relationship between love and desire. The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P is an epic 447 pages but it's a deeply absorbing read, it won The Women's Literature Prize, a recent novel by Rieko Matsuura called Kenshin (2007), won the Yomiuri Prize.

 

Kodansha International

JLC4