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| 0385513038
| 9780385513036
| 0385513038
| 3.59
| 910
| 2006
| Sep 19, 2006
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liked it
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One of the things you learn about Japan when you get here - and you learn it pretty quickly - is that there can be a vast difference between the appea
One of the things you learn about Japan when you get here - and you learn it pretty quickly - is that there can be a vast difference between the appearance of Japan and the reality of it. The faces that people show you, or even that the city shows you, is not necessarily their true face. Take Kyoto as an example: it prides itself on being a city of traditional culture, the touchstone of all that is Truly Japanese. When you first see it, though, you think, "Really? Because it looks like a big ol' jumbled-up city to me." And it does - aside from the temples, which remain more or less relegated to the edges of the city, the vestiges of Old Japan have been swept away in favor of concrete and glass. Kyoto Station is a glimmering lump in the middle of the city, and Kyoto Tower, as many have said, is a stake through its heart. But ask anyone and we'll say, "Kyoto is a beautiful city." Because that's the way it's supposed to be. This is how it is to live in Japan. There is a gulf between the true nature of things and the way we want them to be. For someone born and raised here, this kind of thinking is taught from birth, and without the ability to divide oneself in twain, life in Japanese society can be very difficult. These two states have names, too - tatemae is the face that you present to the world, the one that everyone expects of you. Honne is your "true self," the feelings and thoughts that you hold in reserve so as not to cause conflict with the greater society around you. The origins of this dichotomy are unclear, although there are those who attribute it to a culture with roots in collective agriculture. If your life and the lives of everyone in your village depends on getting the rice crop in, you have to learn to hold back certain feelings or desires for the good of the group. You sublimate yourself into the group structure, because that's what has to be done. So, tatemae isn't a lie, or a deliberate performance designed to deceive people. It's a bargain between oneself and society - "This is what society needs me to be? Fine. I can be that." What remains is honne, the inner self that society cannot touch, but can never see. So what happens when someone can't hold up their end of this social contract? What happens when the modern world makes demands of people that this ancient compact can't handle? Well, that's when things start to go wrong.... For many years, this bargain between the individual and society worked, mainly because society kept up its end of the deal. People were protected, employed, and given a place in the world, whether it was the feudal culture of the Edo era, the wartime mobilization of the 30s and 40s, or the indomitable Japan Inc. of the post-war years. As the world progressed, however, it soon became evident that the old ways weren't enough. Japan needed to change, or face stagnation and irrelevance. In this book, Zielenziger tries to figure out how Japan got into the state it's in - a decade and a half of stagnation, with no end in sight, and the very real possibility of a slide into graying irrelevance by the middle of the century. To do so, he looks first on the human scale, at the people who have given up on Japan's social contract - the hikkikomori. Like so many other things Japanese, the hikkikomori phenomenon is said to be unique to Japan. Not quite agoraphobics, not quite dropouts or depressives, the hikkikomori are people - usually men - who have given up on the world. They usually live in a single room, often in the homes of parents who enable their hermit lifestyle, and refuse to come out. They sit in there and read, or watch TV, or think. They see no place for themselves in the outside world, and so they give up on it. The men that Zielenziger interviewed suggested that the outside world was too much for them. In many cases they were bullied by others - a pattern of social control that is unfortunately ingrained here - or they simply looked at their parents and thought, "Is this what I will become?" An American child, faced with the knowledge that he doesn't fit with the rest of the world, will probably see it as an opportunity to shape his own identity. A hikkikomori sees it as a personal failure. He knows how Japanese society works, and rather than blame the world for not accepting him, he blames himself for not being able to fit in. Thus, retiring from the world is seen as the only option available, other than suicide. Some hikkikomori spend years in their rooms, refusing to speak even with their parents, who - often out of a sense of shame or the nurturing love known as amae - support their boys' choice of lifestyle. At the other end are the people who give their identity over to an outside source. In more dangerous cases, this outside source might be a cult, like the Aum Shinrinkyo group who carried out the deadly sarin attack against the Tokyo subway in 1995. A more benign manifestation, however, is brand mania. Zielenziger talks to women who identify themselves through the brands they buy. These people will spend money they don't have in order to get a bag from Louis Vuitton or Gucci or Chanel. They distinguish themselves with their brand identity, willingly giving up their own in the process. In a country where one can no longer trust the government to look after your best interests, or the media to tell you the truth, or business to give you a job, putting all your faith in Louis Vuitton - with its worldwide reputation for quality - seems to be a good idea. It's a nation in crisis, according to Zielenziger . It's a country that's gone from feudalism to full modernity in only a century and a half, but the culture hasn't changed nearly as much as the country has. It's a bustling, 21st-century nation built on a foundation that was laid in the 17th century, and things are starting to fall apart. It's a country that puts society before the individual, but that premise is cracking under the weight of a world that values individuality. It's a place where responsibility is distributed and accountability doesn't exist, where mistakes go unexamined lest they bring shame upon those who made them, and where the past is a thing that can be easily ignored if it troubles you. Zielenziger believes that the underlying social structure of Japan is holding it back, leading the entire country to another withdrawal from the world. Much like the hikkikomori that no one likes to talk about, Japan may one day find itself alone and isolated, not knowing its place in the world and not knowing how it can get back to what it used to be. The book is quite a read, going from small one-on-one interviews to historical and sociological analyses, but it is overwhelmingly negative in tone. Zielenziger isn't wrong, necessarily, but he is of the mind-set that Japan is irrevocably screwed and that only Western cultural intervention can save it. He lays the hikkikomori problem - and the problem of parasite singles, NEETs, and all the other dysfunctional youth - at the foot of Japan's collectivist culture, as well as the intense bond of amae that exists between the parent and child. While he doesn't say it in so many words, he does imply that the traditional social structure of Japan is simply incapable of keeping Japan competitive in the modern era. He believes that Western values, especially those stemming from Christianity, are what Japan needs to survive. The bit about Christianity seemed to come from left field, but he does make a case for it. Christianity, he believes, places the onus of salvation on the individual. It is a person's works (or faith) that ensure his place in the afterlife. This focus on one's personal responsibility, and ultimate judgment, fosters a Self that is harder to suppress. From that strong sense of individuality, a culture can foster more competition, thereby preventing stagnation. There's a long, not entirely interesting chapter on Korea that he uses to illustrate this point. Unlike Japan, Korea - once called "The Hermit Kingdom" - found itself facing economic turmoil and got themselves out of it. Not because Korean ways were better, but because they knew that if they stuck to their traditions they'd be screwed. Korea is a nation strongly influenced by Christianity, and the individuality that Christianity fosters, suggests Zielenziger, is what gave Korea the courage to risk social turmoil for the betterment of their nation. There may be something to this, but I doubt that adopting Christianity en masse will save Japan from Zielenziger's dire future. Honestly, it was tough to stay objective while reading this, mainly because of the gulf between what I see, having lived here for the better part of a decade, and how Zielenziger describes the place. If I didn't know better, I would have read this and thought that Japan was a zombie nation, populated either by hermits or soulless consumers. From what I've seen, I know that this is not the case. Granted, I haven't completely immersed myself in the culture, mainly because that's an extremely difficult thing for a non-Japanese to do. Most of the people I talk to are my students, and people with the desire and the resources to study English are probably not an accurate cross-section of the country. So I don't claim to have any more insight into the Japanese mind than Mr. Zielenziger does, but from my experience it seems that all hope is not lost. Yes, the government is a faceless bureaucracy, the media is completely complacent and the corporate community that once offered jobs for life has vanished. But Japan has proved resilient in the past, adapting to great changes that were thrust upon it from the outside. And a quick look at Japanese history shows that, when the times need it, people emerge to challenge the established order. That's what Japan needs now. Someone - or, more effectively, a group of someones - to stand up, stick out and risk themselves for the betterment of their country. It won't be easy - revolution never is - but it needs to be done. Perhaps one day, instead of shutting themselves in their rooms, there might be young men and women who take to the streets and show Japan that there is value in the individual. I hope I get to see it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 21, 2009
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Feb 24, 2009
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Hardcover
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| 0720610311
| 9780720610314
| 0720610311
| 3.95
| 32,405
| 1949
| Oct 27, 1998
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really liked it
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From what I can tell, Yukio Mishima was not a very happy man. Granted, the only works that I have read of this very prolific author are this and Kinkak From what I can tell, Yukio Mishima was not a very happy man. Granted, the only works that I have read of this very prolific author are this and Kinkakuji, but I'm seeing a pattern already, and it doesn't point towards Mishima being a cheerful, laid-back guy. Of course, his suicide by seppuku is also a good indicator that he took things way too seriously. Published in 1948, Confessions of a Mask addresses a subject that would have been taboo anywhere, not just Japan. The main character, whose name is only given as Kochan, is a young man dealing with the fact that he is homosexual. He begins with one of his earliest memories, seeing a night-soil man and finding him beautiful, which he believes is what set his preferences for life. As he gets older, he doesn't yet realize that he's different from other boys, except in that he's small and thin and gets sick a lot more often. He finds himself entranced by men, especially laborers, and not knowing if this is what he's supposed to be feeling. His sexual maturity is a sad and stunted thing. The pleasure and rapture that he sees in paintings of St. Sebastian hide dark urges of violence and despair. His boyhood love of a classmate is a secret that gnaws at him until he finally convinces himself that he was never actually in love at all. And his attempts to become "normal" end with nothing by emptiness and sorrow. Kochan has no friends to talk to, no family to lean on, and no way to know if what he's feeling is good or bad. All he knows is that the other boys are fascinated by women, and he's fascinated by other boys. In darkness and isolation, Kochan grows. What he grows into, however, is a pale, lonely and barren man. Like many gay kids, especially in the pre-internet era, Kochan believes that he is unique. An aberration, a deviation from the norm. As far as he knows, no other boy has felt the way he did, and the only other one he hears of - Oscar Wilde - is long dead. His desire to fit in with the rest of the world leads him to play an elaborate game, to wear a mask so convincing that it nearly convinces himself. Being able to hide who he really is and what he really wants becomes a matter of hiding from himself. And as anyone who's tried that will know, hiding from yourself only works for so long.... Such is the life of a young gay man in wartime Japan. While I'm sure what Mishima has presented here is not the average, it is a depressing picture of what it's like to live in a society where such a deviation from the norm is punishable by societal exile. While I can't claim to know what would have happened to a young man in that era who came out of the closet, the narrator doesn't even seem to consider that as an option, good or bad. Thus I can only assume that the consequences would be dire. There's no doubt that this book is at least semi-autobiographical. A look at Mishima's life shows a number of parallels, especially in the early days. Both he and Kochan were raised by grandparents and separated from their families. Mishima stared writing as a boy, an activity that his father deplored and which earned him beatings by other students in school. He knew what it was like to be different, and that probably fed into this novel. Whether or not Mishima was actually gay is, it seems, debatable. He did marry, and had two children, which would seem to indicate against it, but if, like the character in this book, he fought against his own nature, such an arrangement could be understandable. One of the things that I found difficult about this book - and Kinkakuji - was how very introspective it was. The narrator tells the story of his life from his older point of view, and dissects every thought and every memory in exacting detail. It creates a picture of a person who lives entirely in his own head, and attributes modes of thinking that one wouldn't normally associate with, say, a twelve-year old. He appears to be very analytical, even from his earliest days. Though he tells us that he is not letting his adult mind get in the way of his memories of childhood, this great attention to detail proves him wrong. The depiction of Kochan's attempts to hide himself is yet another mask - the mask of purposefulness. The narrator would like us to believe that he made every decision with purpose, as part of a plan. That he really did choose this life of self-deception. Perhaps because the idea that all of this was beyond his control is just too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps because it is better to own a bad decision than to admit that it was an accident. The narrator shows us quite clearly how adept he is at hiding from himself, and so he cannot be trusted to tell us truthfully about how he thought when he was a young man. This makes reading the book a challenge - the reader must evaluate every statement and judge every event for its possible veracity. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how much is true and how much is falsehood. In the end, we just have to take Kochan at his word, all the while accepting that he's probably lying - and doing it without being aware of what he's doing. Reading Confessions of a Mask today, sixty years after it was first published, is illuminating. In the US, we're involved in a great societal discussion over whether or not gays should get married, and while being homosexual certainly isn't something that is universally accepted, the prospects for young gays and lesbians in the modern age are much better than they would have been for someone coming of age in the 1940s. Even in Japan, where coming out to one's family is still as hard as it ever was, there are gays and lesbians on television and the matter is open to discussion. A homosexual in Japan may not be as willing to kick down the closet door as his or her American counterparts, but the abject horror of being utterly rejected by society is probably much less than it was. When you consider what happens in this book, the horrible mental contortions that the main character must make in order to hide his true nature from the world - and himself - you can appreciate how far we've come. ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Dec 07, 2008
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Dec 10, 2008
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Paperback
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| 1933164182
| 9781933164182
| 1933164182
| 3.66
| 101
| Mar 25, 2006
| Mar 25, 2006
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liked it
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The main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad. He reads Japanese books exclusivel The main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad. He reads Japanese books exclusively now, and will be returning to the US to take up translating full time. For a while now, I've been hearing about all these books he's been going through, and they all sound really weird and really cool. Mystical battles for the fate of reality, clumsy vampire girls who get thundering nosebleeds, motorcycling pre-teens with guns, visiting little isolated countries.... They're all really interesting-sounding, and I can't read any of them. Admittedly, I haven't put nearly as much effort into learning to read Japanese that he has, so I have only myself to blame. Still.... Boogiepop is one of those weirdly brilliant ideas that take a little while to wrap your head around. At Shinyo Academy, a second-rate high school somewhere in Japan, girls are disappearing. The teachers and police figure they're runaways - after all, these aren't the prize students, the cream of the crop. They're pretty well ordinary, and if a few girls run off every now and then, well, these things happen. But the girls at Shinyo Academy have a legend. A rumor. The boys don't know about it, but I daresay they'll find out. The secret is Boogiepop. Boogiepop is.... Well, I don't think even he knows what he is. Is he an alien intelligence possessing the body of young Miyashita Touka? Is he simply a repressed expression of her personality? Is he a shinigami, a death-spirit who takes girls while they're still pretty? Maybe. Whatever Boogiepop is, he's the only thing that is standing between the Manticore - the man-eater - and the end of the world. The Manticore has insinuated itself into the school and seduced - or been seduced by - one of the boys. It has terrible plans, and Boogiepop might thwart them. If he feels like it. It's a weird book. You get a crash course in Japanese high school life, albeit even the author admits that the school in his book is a lot more strict than most high schools are these days. Forbidding dating, having teachers patrol the neighborhood on off hours to make sure the kids aren't frittering away their youth by having fun.... The relationships between the characters are complex, affected by gender, age and position much more than those of us from an American high school might be used to. But the narrative is oddly compelling and complex. Oh, and the author doesn't deal with such childish fripperies as "linear storytelling." The various sections of the story are told from the points of view of various people, from various points in time. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, and from time to time we see the same event from the perspective of two or even three different people (although from what I've proofread in my free lessons, the next book has one event viewed from no less than four different points of view). It takes a little bit of getting used to, but he does warn you, right in the beginning.... For those of you who are into Young Adult fiction (and you know who you are), definitely check it out. The translation is very readable and natural (and I'm not just saying that because I helped to proofread it), and it's a fun and complicated story. Plus, there's a nice preview of volume two, where you get to meet the cram school guidance counselor who can tell a person's personality by the image of plants that he sees in their chest. Like I said, weird. But good. [1] The Japanese is Boogiepop wa wararanai, which can be translated either as "Boogiepop Doesn't Smile" or "Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh." The former being the more interesting (and thematically accurate) translation, the publishing company naturally chose the latter. The translator is still pissed about it. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Mar 02, 2006
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Feb 08, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0739326228
| 9780739326220
| 0739326228
| 4.15
| 2,027,481
| Sep 23, 1997
| Nov 15, 2005
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liked it
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It's interesting that it took me six years to get around to reading this. I mean, it's one of the things that people always mention when they wonder i
It's interesting that it took me six years to get around to reading this. I mean, it's one of the things that people always mention when they wonder if Japan is just like they thought it was. This and Lost in Translation, which I can't watch without becoming cripplingly depressed. This book, though, is wonderful. At the same time, it was well worth the wait. Why, you might ask? Because I can probably, within two streets, pinpoint the location of the main character's home in Gion. When she talks about the Minamiza or Kaburenjo theatres, I've been there. When she performs in the "Dances of the Old Capital," I've seen it. She walks across the small bridge over the Shirakawa, and so have I. I cannot tell you what a rush that is. It gives me a warm feeling to know that people all over the world are imagining Gion as they read this book, and coming up with images of sublime beauty and utter Japanese style. They imagine, but I know, and I know it's all true. At least when the tourists are thin on the ground. This is a very good book, and Golden, I have to say, is a hell of a writer. How an American man, living at the end of the 20th century could write in the voice of a Japanese geisha in the pre and post war years is astounding to me. For a man to write in a convincing first person female voice is hard enough work, I know. But to jump that hurdle and then proceed to go over hurdles of time, society, culture, tradition, and still have it sound utterly and completely real when you read it.... He did a lot of research, yes, including one-on-one interviews with former geisha in Gion, but still.... Kudos. For those of you who haven't actually read the book, go out and get it. As the title suggests, it is the story of a young woman who, when she was a child, was sold to a geisha house in Gion, the most famous geisha district in Kyoto - and Japan. It goes through her struggle to adjust to life in Gion, so very different from the little fishing village in which she had lived, and her attempts to find out both who she is and who she wants to be. There are some laughs, there are some heartbreaking moments, and some very, very difficult choices she has to make. But it all works out in the end, I guess. I haven't seen the movie yet, though I probably will once it comes to DVD. I already know there's no way it can be as good as the book. ...more |
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not set
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Jul 07, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0864423705
| 9780864423702
| 0864423705
| 3.80
| 3,527
| 1993
| 2002
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really liked it
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Alex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signa
Alex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signal the end of the Japan Honeymoon for any long-time resident. To explain - for a lot of people who come here, Kerr included, there's a kind of romantic idea of Japan that keeps people here. It's the Zen and the temples, the red torii gates, the yukata and the festivals. It's the Japanese Mind and the Far East attitude, so different from our own, that entrances us and keeps us here. Then along comes the moment you realize that, as with so many things in this world, the romantic ideal doesn't match the reality. That's where Kerr comes in. He's lived here for many years, and spent all of that time getting to know Japan and its culture, and like so many people who study Japan's culture, he mourns its demise. He longs for the simplicity of hidden valleys, of wabi tea bowls and the days when you could buy really good calligraphy cheaply at auctions. He has en entire chapter entitled, "Kyoto Hates Kyoto," about how the city, so desperate to be a Modern City, is tearing down everything that made it the cultural center of Japan. He sees Japan in a state of flux, and he's really worried that it'll go the wrong way. This book is a series of essays about his life in Japan, the things he's seen that he doesn't see so often anymore. It's pessimistic, to say the least, though not quite so pessimistic as Dogs and Demons is. This kind of harsh eye has led to Kerr being labeled as a Japan-basher, which is a very odd thing to say about someone who's spent most of his life studying and living in Japan. As he notes, though, there are certain fundamental forces in Japan that resist change, and not the least of those forces are the Romantics who refuse to admit that Japan, the land of philosophy, tea ceremony and Zen, is royally screwing itself up. He is hopeful, though. He believes that this is another age of transition for Japan, and knows - or at least I think he knows - that no age, however glorious, can last forever. Many of the things he loves about this country will indeed be lost, in the fullness of time. All we can really hope for is that amazing things will arise to take their place. ...more |
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not set
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Jul 27, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0804816204
| 9780804816205
| 0804816204
| 3.64
| 13,808
| 1906
| Jan 01, 1989
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really liked it
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Soseki is one of Japan's most famous pre-war novelists. He wrote tons of books, lived in London for a while, and was featured on the thousand yen bill
Soseki is one of Japan's most famous pre-war novelists. He wrote tons of books, lived in London for a while, and was featured on the thousand yen bill until a couple of years ago. So, yeah, I thought I'd give him a try. Actually, I'd read this once before, a little while after I got here. I didn't really get it, and put it away to be sold or given or something. But, after going through books to put up on Bookmooch, I figured I'd give it another shot. Also, Takeo Doi used Botchan in his book The Anatomy of Self to illustrate the extremes of honne (the "inner self" that one keeps quiet in order to get along with others in society), and that book was pretty interesting, so I thought this time I might get more out of it. Indeed, Doi has an excellent perspective on this book. Our narrater, whose nickname is one you would give to a demanding child (it means "little master"), is utterly incapable of understanding one of the most basic lessons of adulthood - It's Not All About You. He was a willful child, who easily roused his parents' anger. His mother died after she'd sent him away to relatives, and he viewed this as a kind of ultimate punishment. His brother wants nothing to do with him, he has no friends, and no prospect of a bright future. He views any obstacle as an attack, and reacts instantly with an attack of his own. Long story short (too late), he's an asshole. The only person who has any love for him is his old nurse, Kiyo, and she treats him as an indulged child. No wonder she's the only one he seems to like as well. As we go through life, we learn how to deal with other people. We learn how to give up some of the things we want in order to keep our environment running smoothly. It's a carefully laid web of tradition, customs, social dance steps and lies that allow the world to spin, and learning how to navigate this web is a necessary part of growing up. And Botchan can't do it. Indeed, he's not even aware that it exists. When he is transferred to a middle school in a small country town, he is dropped headfirst into this tangled web and almost instantly makes a mess of it. When the waitresses at the inn are nice, he sees them as condescending. When the innkeeper at his second boarding house tries to be friendly, Botchan sees opportunism. When the boys at the school indulge in hijinks, Botchan immediately knows it to be harassment. The only person he gets along with is the other math teacher, but only because the math teacher's need for revenge coincides with Botchan's. Until that point, the math teacher is another adversary. I kept thinking through this book how similar Botchan is to Holden Caulfield. Both of them impose their own faults on the people around them, and refuse to admit their own shortcomings. Neither of them know how to live in their worlds, the only difference being that at least Holden knows what he's done to his life and feels powerless to change it. Botchan has no idea that he's such a dick, and probably wouldn't care if he did. It's kind of funny and kind of tragic. A classic of modern Japanese literature.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Sep 04, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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Paperback
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| 4805307714
| 9784805307717
| 4805307714
| 3.64
| 302
| unknown
| Apr 15, 2007
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really liked it
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At last, the book you've been waiting for - a book of gay samurai love stories! Woo-hoo! Hot Bushido love! Awwwwww yeah..... No, seriously, it's short At last, the book you've been waiting for - a book of gay samurai love stories! Woo-hoo! Hot Bushido love! Awwwwww yeah..... No, seriously, it's short stories of gay samurai love. You see, here's the thing - prior to the modern era of Japan, the attitude towards gay love was similar to that of ancient Greece. Women were fine for having children and securing alliances and building property, but if you want real passion, real true love, you needed a bright-eyed young boy. This kind of relationship between an older man and an adolescent boy, generally known as pederasty (which is often wrongly confused with pedophilia), was considered a natural and healthy bond in those days, and assuming that both parties acted honorably and respectfully, it was mutually beneficial. As in many other world cultures, this kind of bond was a common one, especially amongst the religious and ruling classes - people who were less interested in breeding large families and more interested in the aesthetic aspects of romance and eroticism. It wasn't necessarily a lifelong bond, but it could be, and some of these pairings have inspired love stories as passionate and heartbreaking as any other. This being Japan, of course, most of the love stories in this book don't end well. About half tend to finish with seppuku, ending the lives of the lovers and, occasionally, other people who are unlucky enough to be in the area. The story All Comrade-Lovers Die by Hara-Kiri is a case in point - it's the story of Ukyo, Uneme and Samanousuke, three youths bound together by a deep, passionate love. When Ukyo murders a romantic rival in order to prevent the deaths of his friends, he is ordered to kill himself to pay for it. His beloved Uneme joins him in death, and Samanousuke, unable to live without either of the men he loves, takes his own life soon after. Then there's Love Vowed to the Dead, in which young Muranousuke fulfills the dying wish of his best friend Gorokitji by giving himself to Gorokitji's lost lover. In He Died to Save his Lover, young Korin allows himself to be tortured and executed by one lover to save the life of another, and of course, He Followed his Friend into the Other World, After Torturing him to Death, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Let it be said, though, that Sasanousuke didn't mean for Hayemon to freeze to death, it just kind of happened that way. In my favorite, The Tragic Love of Two Enemies, a man, Senpatji, falls in love with the young son of the samurai that he had been ordered to kill many years before. The boy, Shynousuke, is ordered by his mother to kill Senpatji, and thus avenge his father, but the boy cannot bring himself to murder the man he loves - especially since Senpatji had been acting under the orders of his lord. He convinces his mother to give them one more night together, which she does, because she's not completely heartless. She finds them dead the next morning, both impaled through their hearts on Shynousuke's sword. Who says the Japanese aren't romantic? There are happy(ish) tales, too. Tales of constant dedication, of loyalty and hidden desires in the courtly world of the ruling classes of Edo-period Japan. Men and boys endure great hardships and risk their lives to be together, an on occasion get to spend the rest of their lives together. These stories were all written back in the 17th century and the author gained great notoriety writing these kinds of soft romances. One of his books was titled, Glorious Tales of Pederasty, which I would really love to see on a bookshelf at Borders someday. Just to see the reactions.... There's a whole lot of, "They lay together through the night" kind of language, and a general avoidance of sordid detail. Still, they're well-written, and well-translated, so you can get a very good sense, in these short, short stories, of the kinds of relationships that popped up among the samurai class way back before Western prudishness got its claws into people. In the preface to Glorious Tales, Ihara says: Our eyes are soiled by the soft haunches and scarlet petticoats of women. These female beauties are good for nothing save to give pleasure to old men in lands where there is not a single good-looking boy. If a man is interested in women, he can never know the joys of pederasty.So that should give you an idea of the cultural divide you're working against when you pick up this book. It's tough for us modern folks, whose culture is dead set against cross-generational homosexual relationships, to really be comfortable reading stories like this. Usually when you hear stories about a grown man and a teenage boy, it's immediately classified as "abuse." Images of windowless panel vans, sweaty gym teachers, NAMBLA meetings rise up and.... Yeah. Speaking from an American perspective, I can't think of any situation where a relationship such as the ones in this book would ever be considered acceptable, despite the purity of the feelings involved. The characters in these stories, it must be noted, are not leches. They're not Herbert from Family Guy. But no matter how pure my intentions might be, if I were to start hanging around the arcades, chatting up fifteen year-old boys, my life as a respectable citizen would be effectively over. Even assuming that a relationship built on pederasty can be mutually beneficial - and it could be argued that it can - it's still a) illegal in most places and b) massively creepy. So that makes it an interesting challenge to get into these stories. Life was different back then, after all. The extended childhood that we take for granted in our teenage years pretty much didn't exist. As soon as someone reached the age of sexual maturity, they were basically proto-adults, rather than lingering children, and were therefore fair game. So as much as I hate to invoke cultural relativism (because I find it wishy-washy and noncommittal), I have to just say, "It was a different time." In times gone by, pederastic relationships worked, but our culture has moved to a point now where even if it were legalized, the emotional and experiential gulf between the older and younger party would probably make it impossible to go beyond a relationship built on physical eroticism. Still, the feelings in these stories are just as valid and pure as "traditional" romances, the obstacles they overcome and risks they take are just as real and just as difficult. If you can set aside your more judgmental self, you can appreciate the depth of feeling that existed in these relationships, and recognize the universal themes of all great love stories - discovery, love, loss, betrayal, redemption.... They're all here. So get reading. ...more |
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| 0571212158
| 9780571212156
| 0571212158
| 3.73
| 9,192
| Apr 20, 1993
| Aug 31, 2001
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I do enjoy reading Japanese fiction, especially that fiction that stands on the fringes of fantasy and reality. Haruki Murakami is a master of this, w
I do enjoy reading Japanese fiction, especially that fiction that stands on the fringes of fantasy and reality. Haruki Murakami is a master of this, with his weird underground people and border universes. Banana Yoshimoto is equally skilled, writing exquisite short stories about the minor strangeness that one might encounter in life. About a strange shapeshifting creature that rides the train, trying to tempt salarymen to leave their lives of dullness and predictability. A woman who can heal with her mind, but finds that it takes a little bit of her soul away each time. A man who creates simple metal amulets that absolutely radiate with the quality of amae, that unique Japanese concept of total immersion in a greater unconditional love. In her afterward to this book, she says that all the stories she chose were those about hope, and the utter terror and exhilaration of finding hope for the first time. Hope, she believes, is not something that we are born with. It is, rather, something that is presented to us, something that comes to us by way of a small change, an insignificant alteration in our reality that gives the glimmering of another way. And that can be a wonderful thing, as so many people say, or it can be utterly repellent. Each case is unique, and this book is a group of six stories about the rise of hope and what can come after.... ...more |
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| 086171380X
| 9780861713806
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| 4.02
| 6,959
| Aug 08, 1994
| Oct 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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It's a book about Zen, obviously, from the point of view of an American who went from punk rocker to zen master over the course of many years. It's ve
It's a book about Zen, obviously, from the point of view of an American who went from punk rocker to zen master over the course of many years. It's very different from most other zen books out there in that Warner doesn't try to affect the "wise and learned sage" voice in his writing. I imagine him more as a jittery skinny guy, chain-smoking cigarettes and telling you about the time he saw the entire history of the universe unfold around him in a dream. Any book on Zen that quotes South Park, Philip K. Dick and Bart Simpson is a book worth reading. Zen interests me, for many reasons, and a lot of them were addressed in this book. The idea that the past is the past and the future doesn't exist is one that I picked up years ago and has made life a lot less stressful. He does drift into the "We are all one" vein of Buddhist philosophy from time to time, which I'm still not entirely down on, but he's a lot of fun to read. Go give it a look. ...more |
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| 1568363567
| 9781568363561
| 1568363567
| 3.78
| 451
| 1967
| Aug 20, 2004
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When this book was originally released, it was published as "historical fiction," since it followed a much more narrative style than most history book
When this book was originally released, it was published as "historical fiction," since it followed a much more narrative style than most history books usually do. There's narrative, quotes, and reactions which the writer, having not been in the room, could not have known about it. Still, he believed that it would be the best way to take this person, this last of the Tokugawas, and humanize him. Because one of the things that's always been a problem with Japan is that the higher one is in the power hierarchy, the less human they are encouraged to be. So while the Shogun wasn't quite up to the level of inhumanity that, say, the Emperor was, he was always seen as someone who is drastically more important than the average man, and certainly due a bit of deference. Unfortunately for the Shogun, good historians must not show deference. Their job is to illuminate their subject under the harsh light of truth and see them for who and what they really were. Shiba does a fairly good job with that, although I do have to say that he does seem to have a fondness for his subject. I've read other books about the events of the Meiji Restoration, and Yoshinobu doesn't quite come off the tragic hero that Shiba wants him to be. Still, he is not without his flaws. He's impulsive, has no patience for nonsense and empty ritual, and tried very hard to be his own man. He was inquisitive, quick-witted and had a mind like a steep trap. Honestly, he probably would have been much happier as a scientist or an explorer than as a politician. Unfortunately, that decision was out of his hands nearly from the moment he was born. He was guided, pushed, prodded and cajoled every step of the way, by his family and other members of the political elite in the late Edo period. Normally this would be a bad thing, but the young Yoshinobu - called Keiki at the time - proved to be worthy of each push. Every step higher simply meant that he had to try harder. And he did, all the way to the top. And then he had to do the hardest thing any leader in history has done: Give up all his power. There was a struggle in the 1860s between the Imperial Court and the Shogunate as to who really ruled Japan. The heads of the provinces played dangerous games with each other, shifting alliances back and forth so fast you could get whiplash. On top of that, there was the ever-growing number of shishi - sometimes called "Men of High Purpose," but probably better labeled as Angry Young Samurai who wanted the Shogunate overthrown and were willing to sacrifice any number of lives to make it happen. On top of that, the country had been cracked open by the United States, and there was international disagreement over who to approach as the ruler of Japan. Some countries naturally thought the Emperor was the go-to guy, others went to the Shogun, causing no end of trouble. Even better, when the Shogunate had to delay action to foreign powers, they tried to play the kind of subtle, oh-so-Japanese game of misdirection that would have been perfectly understood by a Japanese feudal lord ("Open the port? Well, we'd love to, but we need to get the Emperor's approval first. We'll get right on that.") but which backfired horribly against the more direct-minded Western powers ("Shit! They said they wanted to come to Kyoto and talk to the Emperor about opening the ports! Dammit, dammit, dammit!") Maybe not in those words. But you get my meaning. Basically, the country was headed towards a replay of the Warring States Period, when Japan was at war with itself. The first time that happened, a Tokugawa grasped the reins of power to unite the country. This time, a Tokugawa let go of power, and achieved the same end. Yoshinobu gave the Emperor absolute political control of the country, and basically said, "It's all yours now, good luck." He had to then sneak out of Kyoto (if you can call leading a column of several thousand men out of Nijo Castle "sneaking") and then sneak out of Osaka Castle, where his men were determined to retake Kyoto whether he wanted them to or not. The ex-Shogun lived out his life doing what he enjoyed - learning about the world, while staying at home. He refused to meet with most of his former contacts in the Shogunate, and only went to Tokyo once after his abdication. He lived a long life, mentally acute until the end, and died in 1913. ...more |
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| 0306815133
| 9780306815133
| 0306815133
| 3.57
| 289
| Mar 06, 2006
| Oct 31, 2006
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really liked it
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I got this as a present from my friend Chris, who thought it looked cool and that I might be interested in it. Bless his heart, he was right... *grin*
I got this as a present from my friend Chris, who thought it looked cool and that I might be interested in it. Bless his heart, he was right... *grin* Yukio Mishima is considered one of Japan's greatest modern writers. A repeated contender for the Nobel Prize, and one of those strangest of people, a writer-celebrity. He was an avid bodybuilder, a student of history, and one of the very few people in the modern age able to write a new Noh or Kabuki drama. He was a militarist, a hedonist and a homosexual with a wife and children. All in all, a very complex man. On November 25th, 1970 Mishima led his private militia, The Shield Society, onto the grounds of the Ichagaya headquarters of the Self Defense Force. He attempted to incite a coup which, since the soldiers on the base weren't particularly eager for one, was unsuccessful. I doubt he was surprised, because he and his second in command Masakatsu Morita were prepared to commit seppuku, the death by ritual disembowelment so preferred by the samurai of old. Seppuku is not a pleasant way to die. First you plunge a dagger into your belly, just below the navel. You then move from right to left across your abdomen. Then a cut upwards so your intestines unspool onto the floor. All of this, mind you, without an unseemly display of agony. At the last moment, your second will cut your head off from behind, ideally leaving a small bit of skin intact at the throat so your head doesn't roll around ungracefully. Mishima did a bang-up job on himself, but his second was clumsy. The first cut went into Mishima's shoulder, the second into his jaw. Another man took over, and the third cut took off the writer's head. As you might expect, this shocked people in Japan, and those worldwide. Seppuku had been outlawed for many years, and was considered an unpleasant remnant of an unnecessary past. Mishima got everybody's attention in a big way, and made people think again about what Japanese culture had become. For good or ill, most people put Mishima in the "brilliant maniac" category, and wrote him off. Christopher Ross, a longtime student of martial arts and a resident of Japan for five years, wondered where the sword went. And so he came back to Japan, looking for Mishima's sword. On the way, he ended up learning more about Japanese history, manners, culture, craftsmanship, suicide, gay bathhouses and, of course, Mishima, than he had ever expected. The book is written like a diary, which has some good points and some not so good. It's very readable, and done in an interesting style. The most readable moments are when he's talking about his actual quest to find Mishima's sword. When he starts getting into history, however, he starts to sound more like a history book. When he tries to get into Mishima's mind, he starts to sound kind of the way that Mishima does in his books. This makes reading the book an inconsistent effort, which rather parallels both his subject, Mishima, and his goal. The drawback to the diary style is that he includes several events that are only tangentially related to the search for Mishima's sword - an unexplained, chronic stomach pain and nosebleeds, a very polite visit from the local Yakuza and so on - which do not get resolved. I know they're not important to the story, really, and I know that human existence doesn't follow narrative causality, but why was he bleeding from the nose so heavily that he needed to be hospitalized? Why were the yakuza looking for the man who had lent Ross his bar/home while he was away? I know Ross didn't have to answer these questions, but I kind of wish he had. Someone, I forget who, once remarked that being a storyteller is kind of like being the guy who packs a hiker's backpack. You want to put in only the things that the hiker (reader) will absolutely need, and you have to make sure the hiker will use them in the course of going up the hill. If the hiker gets to the top with, say, a '72 Volkswagen in his pack that he didn't need to lug up the hill, he's gonna be pissed.... All that aside, though, it's an excellent tour through a variety of subjects, all of which shed more light - but never enough, of course - on a very interesting, complex, sad, talented man. ...more |
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Dec 23, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 1860467571
| 9781860467578
| 1860467571
| 3.91
| 20,580
| Mar 20, 1997
| 2000
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really liked it
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On March 20, 1995, in the middle of the morning rush hour, the Aum Shinrikyo cult unleashed a terrorist attack on the subways of Tokyo. Five men on fi
On March 20, 1995, in the middle of the morning rush hour, the Aum Shinrikyo cult unleashed a terrorist attack on the subways of Tokyo. Five men on five different trains unleashed sarin gas in the subway system, which shut down most of the city, injured at least 5,000 people, and left 12 dead. It was the single worst attack on Japan since the end of World War Two, and it gripped the nation. I remember hearing about this, but I don't remember giving it too much attention - I mean, when was I ever going to have to know much about Japan, right? In the light of our own terrorist woes in the US, I wish I had. Haruki Murakami is best known for being a fiction writer. I've read a few of his books, and they're all really interesting. He has a very strange mind, and he's a good enough writer that he can often successfully avoid giving his characters names, something that still surprises me. This time, however, he decided to turn his hand to non-fiction, chronicling the events of what was a shocking blow to his home country. In his introduction to this book, he explains why he decided to write it. Like many people, he heard about the attacks while he was living abroad, and thought, "Oh, that's terrible." And then he tried to put it out of his mind. But it wouldn't stay there. A woman had written a letter to a magazine about her husband. He had been on the subway that morning, and had been injured by the sarin. His injuries had impaired him to the point where he had been forced to quit his job. Not only because of the physical effects of being gassed, but also because he had become an outcast at work. People would look at him and whisper about the "weirdo" who had been on the subway that day. He was, probably, a reminder of what people wanted to forget. He had, by no will of his own, become an outsider, and that pressure led him to quit his job - what Murakami calls a "double violence." First by the sarin, then by Japan. From that point, Murakami took to wondering what really happened to people that morning. Not what the newspapers and TV said, but the stories of the people who had actually been on the trains. So he began taking interviews. Of the hundreds he contacted, he got a total of 60 people to agree to talk to him. This is definitely a huge difference between Japanese and Americans. After September 11th, I'm sure people were falling all over themselves to tell their stories, or to talk about their dead friends and relatives. In Japan, people were eager to forget. They didn't want this nosy journalist stirring things up again. It's easier to put things in the past, to say, "It can't be helped" and go on with one's life. Fortunately for us, Murakami got some people to talk, and for that we have this book. He divides the stories into subway lines and stations, and it's interesting to see how peoples' stories are slightly different at times, where one interviewee and another interacted. He gives the histories of people, and provides a narrative of what was happening to people on that morning - where they were going, what they were doing and thinking, and how they felt. Some people thought they were sick, others thought that some kind of cleaning fluid had splashed. A few guessed that it was an attack. Some of the best stories come from the station personnel. So far, my experience with the guys in the uniforms who run the stations is that they all say "Arigatou gozaimas" whenever you put your ticket through the gate. These guys, though, had to take charge of a subway system that was under attack by an odorless, invisible weapon, without knowing who had done it or why. Unlike firemen or policemen, these guys had to deal with a situation for which they had likely never been trained. The civilian stories are also fascinating, as they tell how they tried to help, and they vented their frustration with the lack of help. They talked about what they were thinking as the symptoms set in - dimming of vision, nausea, lack of coordination.... One interesting commonality is how many people kept trying to go to work. They put down their symptoms to any number of garden-variety maladies - anemia, lack of a proper breakfast, general stress. Half-blind, unable to walk straight, many of them still made it to their workplaces, not knowing the danger they were in until they heard about sarin on the news. Sarin is a nerve gas, originally designed by Nazis, it is one of the most powerful gasses out there. Iraq used it to great effect against Iran in the 80s, and could well still have some floating around. According to the translator's notes, a drop of sarin the size of a pinhead is enough to kill a person. The cult members who set this thing off had liters of the stuff. Fortunately, they cut it with another liquid (and even pure sarin doesn't evaporate well) which cut its lethality. Somewhat. Perhaps the tiny number of fatalities - 12 - were due to the lower potency of the gas. It certainly wasn't because the Tokyo or Japanese governments were any good at dealing with disasters. Interviews with doctors at local hospitals talked about the utter confusion that ensued after the attacks. None of them were briefed on the situation, they didn't know what kind of gas had been used, and therefore couldn't treat it properly. Worse yet, in some cases, they didn't even know it was a gas. In some hospitals, sarin victims were admitted to the emergency rooms, where the sarin in their clothes began affecting the ER nurses and doctors. They figured it was probably cyanide. One doctor, who had happened to have been at a seminar on a previous sarin attack in Japan, recognized the symptoms of sarin poisoning and faxed the information around the city's hospitals, apparently a very unusual act by a doctor in Japan. Like many organizations in Japan, hospitals are loathe to share information without going through the proper channels, even in an event such as this. But this fits into the Japanese mind-set as well: to take such initiative is to invite criticism. Should the decision be the wrong one, it would bring shame down on everyone involved. Thankfully there were some people whose minds were more concerned with saving lives than saving face. Not enough, though. The Tokyo Bureau of Health didn't chime in until 5:00 PM, nearly eight hours after the attack. One doctor claims that the only reason so few people died was because of the efforts of individual doctors and paramedics. The official organizations were more or less useless, much like they were after the Kobe earthquake in 1992. However it happened, the death toll was kept low, but the effects lingered on. Sarin has long-lasting physical effects, weakening the victim for years to come. Even more, there were the psychological effects that come with any even of mass terrorism. I saw an article in an Australian magazine which interviewed some people who had been photographed during the burning and destruction of the World Trade Center. None of them were happy, none of them were leading good lives. Months later, the attack still lingered in their minds and their lives, effectively continued on. The same was, and probably is, true in Japan after the Tokyo subway attack. After the publication of the first edition, Murkami decided that he had a feww more interviews to do. It's one thing to know what happened to the victims, but one also has to wonder: Why would anyone do such a thing? So he went to interview current and former members of the Aum cult, and find out why they joined, what attraction the cult held for them, and what they knew of the cult's plans. After the attacks, most of the Japanese media were treating Aum simply as "The Enemy," a faceless group whose members were, in the grand Japanese tradition, not individuals but simply facets of the whole. Aum, under its leader, Asahara, worked like most cults do: They recruited people with doubts, misgivings and unreconciled views of the world. Many of the people Murakami interviewed were highly intelligent people who felt, from childhood, that the world they lived in made no sense to them. Others were lost, confused, who felt unhinged and disconnected. Such people are classic candidates for cults, and Aum took them in. In Aum, they tell Murakami, there was no fear of responsibility, no worries about their choices for the future, because their future was preordained. If anything bad happened, it was just bad karma falling away. For some, Aum was just a new way to look at life, a new way to go through life that offered less uncertainty and pain than conventional life. For others, though, it was a political movement. It was a group whose goals could be achieved by murder, both individual and mass. The interviews are interesting, because you can understand why the lifestyle of Aum might be attractive to people, if not very practical. Murakami wanted to point out, by interviewing the Aum members, that this cult didn't appear out of nowhere. It arose in Japan, made up of Japanese men and women. It was a reaction to Japanese society, a signal of the illnesses that permeate it. It was not, and should never have been treated as, something separate. There's not a lot of judgment in this book, as that was not Murakami's goal. He did what he set out to do - tell the stories of people who had been there, who had experienced the terrors of the sarin attack. It's always interesting to hear real stories, and always good. One has to wonder, though.... Terrorism is not all bombs and airplanes and Arabs. These terrorists - and they do fit the bill - were people who looked like everyone else, men in suits, carrying briefcases and a newspaper-wrapped bundle each. No one would have given them a second thought. Could this happen in America? Probably. We still haven't found whoever was mailing the anthrax around, at least not at the writing of this review. It would be very possible for a group of men to board the subways in New York at rush hour, gather their resolve, and unleash an attack at least as destructive as the World Trade Center attack was. And the answer isn't "More Security" - that's closing the barn doors after the horses have not only left, but they've started their own fertilizer reprocessing plant and planned to blow up the Kentucky Derby. The interviews in this book suggest that terrorism is a societal issue, not a security one. If we want to stop people from doing violence to us, we need to find out what drives them to do so. Remember: the majority of terrorist acts carried out in the United States were not done by al-Qaeda. They were done by Americans, just as the Tokyo attacks were done by Japanese. No matter what our politicians and police tell us, we're never completely safe. Japan learned that in '95. We need to learn it as well. ...more |
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Feb 25, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.98
| 20,804
| 1956
| Jun 29, 2011
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liked it
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Mishima is one of the most famous modern Japanese writers and, near as I can tell, a complete nutjob. Or was, anyway. He killed himself by seppuku bac
Mishima is one of the most famous modern Japanese writers and, near as I can tell, a complete nutjob. Or was, anyway. He killed himself by seppuku back in 1970. Kinkakuji is one of his most famous works, and I chose it as a first entry into Mishima because I love reading books set in Kyoto and, well, I've been to Kinkakuji a few times. My reaction upon seeing it was a lot like the main character's - disappointment. In the book, a young Mizuguchi is told by his father that the Golden Temple is the most beautiful thing in the world, and so the child - who secretly despises beautiful things - has an idealized vision of it in his mind. And, as we all know, the idealized vision never quite holds up to the reality. The real Kinkakuji is nice, yes, but not quite as nice as you thought it would be. Or at least, not as nice as I thought it would be. I rather prefer the Silver Pavillion - not quite as ostentatious. Anyway, young Mizuguchi, a recluse, a stutterer, becomes as acolyte at Kinkakuji when his father dies. And thus begins a bizarre love-hate obsession with the temple that ends in flames.... There's a lot of philosophy in this book. Discussion of What Beauty Is and what we should do with it. Long talks about the transitory nature of human life and the eternity of structure and.... I'm not sure. I was reading a lot of this on the plane, and trying not to kill some small children with the power of my mind. Mishima is one of those authors I want to know more about, though. He's thoughtful and creative, a very good example of post-war Japanese angst, and definitely had a lot of big ideas that he wanted to get out. He gathered a kind of cult following and shocked the nation with his suicide. This is a book that'll take a few re-reads, I think. ...more |
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May 05, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 0804836272
| 9780804836272
| 0804836272
| 3.80
| 627
| Jan 15, 2005
| Sep 15, 2005
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really liked it
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So, what do the Hell's Angels and the Shinsengumi have in common? They both had a propensity for violence, a strict internal code of conduct, and an a
So, what do the Hell's Angels and the Shinsengumi have in common? They both had a propensity for violence, a strict internal code of conduct, and an alarmingly excessive reaction to insult, real or perceived. Also, they probably would have slaughtered each other on sight. A couple of years ago, Japan's national TV network, NHK, aired a Sunday night drama about the Shinsengumi, a band of samurai who operated in Kyoto at the end of the Edo period. While I didn't watch it, mainly because I was working and even if I had, I wouldn't have understood, my students kept me updated and it sounds like NHK did a nice job of romanticizing the group. Indeed, if the sudden upswing in traffic around Mibu temple is any indication, NHK made them look positively heroic. Romulus Hillsborough (which, for the record, is an awesome name) takes a different approach to the Shinsengumi story, proving once again that, in history as with so many other things, how you see things depends on where you stand. The 1860s were a bad decade. Every American schoolchild can tell you that. But it was bad in Japan as well, on a similar level. You see, for the previous 250 years, Japan had pretty much shut itself off from the Western world. There was limited contact with China and Korea, but as for Europe and the Americas? Nothing. Japan wanted nothing to do with the white devils, and did a fantastic job keeping us out. But the march of progress is inescapable, and by the mid-1800s, word got round to the Shogun that Great Britain had been working its way across Asia, taking out India and China through treaty, deception and conquest. This, naturally, worried the Shogun, who although being the military head of the country, had not fought a significant military battle since Sekigahara in 1600 (well, not the same shogun, but you get what I mean). The Tokugawa family ruled over a peaceful land,the Emperors stayed out of the way in Kyoto, and everything was copacetic. In other words, ripe for some rampaging foreign power to take over. Lucky for Japan, the first rampaging foreign power to show up on their doorstep was the United States. Admiral Perry and his Black Ships arrived in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1853 with trade agreements and heavy cannon and announced that they would be happy to start trading with the land of the rising sun. And if the land of the rising sun wasn't too keen on that, well, maybe a few well-placed shells would change their minds. The shogun at the time, Tokugawa Iesada, was no idiot. In 1854, a "Treaty of Peace and Amity" was signed in Kanagawa, opening Japanese ports to western ships for the first time, and basically ending the era of seclusion. That's when all hell broke loose. Most of the people living in Japan at the time had never seen a foreign person, and could rely only on rumor and misinformation to know what Westerners were like - pale-skinned, long-nosed blondes, as it turned out. No one knew what to expect from their new neighbors, and frankly, no one wanted to find out. Despite the "Amity" of the treaty, everyone knew that the only reason the American and British and Dutch had been let in was because they had better guns. Everyone, from the Shogun to the Emperor all the way down to the lowest burakumin wanted the foreigners kicked as far out of the country as they could get. With the possible exception of Sakamoto Ryoma, but we'll get to him later. Two factions opened up. There were the Imperial loyalists, who wanted to overthrow the Tokugawa bakufu and restore the Emperor to power, while kicking out the foreigners. And there were the Tokugawa loyalists, who stood behind their lord and master, and who would fight to the death to keep him in power. While kicking out the foreigners. The famed Samurai, who had really nothing to do for two and a half centuries but collect their stipends and harass commoners, finally had their chance to see some action. Many of them left their homes and became ronin, ready to fight for whomever would give them a chance. The city of Kyoto was the Imperial city, and if Tokugawa Wosshisname (there were four Tokugawa shoguns between 1853 and 1868) were to keep the imperial loyalists in line, he would have to do it there. So, a man named Matsudaira Katamori - a close personal friend of the shogun's, head of the Matsudaira clan and Lord of Aizu, and came up with an idea for keeping order in Kyoto. With the help of longtime friend and violence enthusiast Kiyokawa Hachiro, they got together the best of the wandering ronin and brought them to the village of Mibu, in Kyoto (where I now live). They made quite an impact on the community, and were soon given the cute nickname of "Mibu Wolves." The Mibu Wolves were soon shaped and molded into the Shinsengumi, "The Newly Selected Group." by three iron-willed men: Kondo Isami, Hijikata Toshizo, and Serizawa Kamo. Each of these men left lasting impressions on the Shinsengumi and on Japanese history. So... what was the impression? Well, the Shinsengumi were a kind of police force for Kyoto, keeping the locals in line and watching for any threats against the shogunate. Unlike a regular police force, however, they had almost limitless power within the city. Their word was enough to arrest, convict and execute someone. There was no slight too small to provoke violence and murder, and no length they would not go to to destroy the enemies of Tokugawa. They fought to the end to keep the Shogun in power, even after Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the fifteenth and final Tokugawa shogun, abdicated control of the country to Emperor Meiji. You could take the NHK view, that the Shinsengumi were on the wrong side of history, trying to uphold the virtues of their fathers and grandfathers, and that they were trying to keep the nation they loved from falling apart or changing irreparably. Hillsborough takes the point of view that the Shinsengumi were deluded with the "germ of self-importance." That they couldn't see the broader picture of history unfolding around them and reacted to change the only way they knew how - with their swords. That they were thugs and bullies, relics of an age that should have ended long before it did. Perhaps the Shinsengumi were inevitable, perhaps they were even necessary for the Meiji Restoration to take place. But if even half the stories about them were true, they are not a group of men that I would really want to hang out with. It's a very informative book, if a little too short. Hillsborough says in the beginning that you're reading a "historical narrative," which should be taken carefully. Given the lack of primary sources, knowing exactly what happened when is difficult. Many texts on the Shinsengumi contradict each other, and for a long time, they were not a polite subject of research. Think about it - from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 through the surrender to the United States in 1945, the Emperor was a living god and a subject of reverence among the people of Japan. Who, then, would have the balls to do research into the group that was actively opposing imperial rule? Still, it's a good read. It's even better when you actually live in Kyoto. I can see Mibu temple from my balcony. I've walked past the site of the old Ikeda-ya (where the Shinsengumi foiled a plot to burn down Kyoto and kidnap a high-ranking Tokugawa ally) hundreds of times. I can walk to the site where Ito Kashitarou was assassinated for splitting from the group. History becomes much more fun when you're right where it happened.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Mar 18, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Hardcover
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| 0966740165
| 9780966740165
| 0966740165
| 4.09
| 55
| May 01, 1999
| Feb 01, 1999
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liked it
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Good lord, that took a long time.... Prior to this, I read about the Shinsengumi, the all-powerful police squad of Kyoto at the end of the Edo period. Good lord, that took a long time.... Prior to this, I read about the Shinsengumi, the all-powerful police squad of Kyoto at the end of the Edo period. They fought for the Shogun, and would kill anyone they could find to protect the status quo. Unfortunately for them, they were on the losing side. So, I thought I'd take a look at the man who pissed them off oh so much.... If he hadn't been Japanese, Sakamoto Ryoma would have been an ideal model of the American Dream. He was born to a poor family that had bought its way into samurai status only a couple of generations before. When he was a kid, people thought he was kind of slow and useless, and never thought he'd amount to anything. He was terrible in school, and so his father enrolled him in a school for sword fighting, where he found his passion. He was a damn good swordsman, and quickly became qualified to open his own dojo. By this point, it looked like Sakamoto Ryoma would have been simply another famous name in the annals of Japanese swordsmanship. And then the Americans came, and all hell broke loose. The shogunate, knowing it was outgunned by the Americans, agreed to let them in, a decision that sent shockwaves around Japan. A political world that had been fairly simple to live in - a hierarchical system in which the Shogun was at the top of one's loyalty chain and the Emperor was someone about whom one did not even think - became so complex that "Byzantine" doesn't even begin to describe it. Webs were spun, and within instants, there were factions who wanted a thousand different things for the future. The simplest of these, and the one that Ryoma and other lower samurai from his home region latched on to at first, was simple: Throw out the foreigners and throw down the Shogun. Luckily for Japan, Ryoma was not stupid enough to follow that path for too long. He was a bright guy, who quickly saw what needed to be done. With the help of other progressive thinkers, both within and outside the Shogunate, Ryoma decided that the survival of Japan was more important than that of the Shogunate or any individual clan or region. And in order to save Japan, they'd have to let the barbarians in. His plan was simple, really: learn from the West, build a navy, buy weapons, and form a western-style democracy. Only then, with Japan standing as a strong modern nation, would it be able to deal with the outsiders, to say nothing of avoiding subjugation by them. Ryoma had learned from the lessons of China and India, and knew that infighting within the various factions was a sure road to being invaded and colonized by France or Britain. A simple plan. The only problem was that no one wanted any part of it. And so it became Ryoma's job to run across the country, cajoling, convincing and reasoning with the country's great powers, all while staying one step ahead of the law - he was a fugitive from his region, an executable offense, and he rose to the top of the Shogun's most wanted with undue haste.... It's a neat story, if really long. Hillsborough has used an interesting style, though, that I'm still not sure I really like. It's a kind of novelized biography. While I'm sure that his facts are solid - countless books have been written about Sakamoto Ryoma and he's considered one of the founding fathers of modern Japan - he tries to make the story more... story-like by dramatizing events. Writing dialogue with action and inflection that he could only have known by being there. Ryoma roars and pounds the floor with his fist a lot. In fact, pre-Meiji Japan seems like a very noisy place, what with all the yelling and roaring and pounding and high officials shouting, "Impertinence!" every time someone set a foot wrong.... Like I said, I'm sure he didn't make up anything important, but it still gives me a lingering feeling of doubt. By turning Ryoma into a character for his novel, Hillsborough displays his bias, and nothing is more deadly to history than bias. He portrays Ryoma as a kind of genius puppetmaster, twitching strings here and there until he got what he wanted, which kind of demeans the contributions of many other people without whom Sakamoto Ryoma would have died years before he was finally assassinated. On to my third "Japan in Transition" book, which is much shorter and by a man with a less interesting name.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 09, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 1573223328
| 9781573223324
| 1573223328
| 4.06
| 43,169
| Aug 26, 2002
| Jan 01, 2002
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liked it
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This is a weird book for anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of Japan. The author is a great fan of Japan, its culture and its history. That's This is a weird book for anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of Japan. The author is a great fan of Japan, its culture and its history. That's obvious just by looking at her name, Lian Hearn, which is a pseudonym. According to Wikipedia, it's a contraction of "heron," an important bird in the Tales of the Otori series, but it's also the surname of one of the most famous Western experts on Japan, Lafcadio Hearn. She's gone to great lengths to instill Japanese culture into every part of this book, from the names of people and places to social and political customs, even clothing and holidays. For all intents and purposes, this is a story about feudal Japan. Except it isn't. The Tales of the Otori takes place in a kind of alternate-universe Japan, a place where everything is the same except where it isn't. Once you get past that, the book becomes a lot of fun to read. And if you don't know much about the history and culture of Japan, that all shouldn't be a problem. It's the story of a boy from an isolated town, one of the Hidden - a small religious sect that faces political and religious ostracism (see Christians in the Edo Period) from an isolationist and power-hungry warlord (see Tokugawa Ieyasu). Young Tomasu is the only survivor of a raid by that warlord - his family, his friend and his people were burned to the ground and he only lived thanks to the appearance of the Lord of the Otori, Shigeru. Wracked with guilt over the death of his brother, Shigeru took Tomasu in as his son, renaming him Takeo. The boy found himself in a new land, with a new home... but that wasn't quite all. He soon discovered that he had a secret birthright, passed down through his father. Takeo was a member of The Tribe, a mysterious clan of spies and assassins who possessed near-mystical powers. They could move silently across nearly any floor, they could become invisible, or appear to be in two places at once. They were masters of the shadow and deliverers of death. See Ninja. It's a neat story, and the beginning of a series of books which are the author's first major foray into adult-ish fiction. It probably qualifies as Young Adult fiction, so if you're into that (as I know some of you are), it'll be a good read. Thanks to Mom for sending me this.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 28, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0195301382
| 9780195301380
| 0195301382
| 4.13
| 103
| Oct 01, 2005
| 2006
|
it was amazing
|
FINALLY! I've been here six years and I've been looking all over the place for a book in English about Kyoto's history. It's such a key part of Japanes FINALLY! I've been here six years and I've been looking all over the place for a book in English about Kyoto's history. It's such a key part of Japanese history and culture that you would think there would be tons of work out there for the Anglophone in Japan. But no. Oh sure, there were plenty of books about walking tours, or the best places to go and see temples, or Kyoto traditional neighborhoods, but I couldn't find a general, comprehensive account of the history of Kyoto. So finally, this year, John Dougill publishes his book. At 225 pages it's a bit thin, but it's very readable and very relevant, and to be honest, I wish I had read it before I came here. He tackles the history of the city by way of its culture - art, religion, poetry, tea and so on. By looking at the changes in the arts and the creativity of Japan through the ages, he's able to plot the exciting, beautiful and occasionally tragic times in Kyoto's history. The fun of reading about the city in which you are living is that you know the places that you're reading about. For instance, I found out that I live nearly dead-bang in the middle of the original site of Heian-Kyo, designed over a thousand years ago. I learned something that had been bugging me for a long while - who was living here, and what was this place called before it was Kyoto? Turns out it was the Hata and the Kamo families on the west and east sides, with a whole lot of nothing in between. And it was called Yamashiro. I found out who the statue of the kneeling samurai on Sanjo street was (Takayama Hikokuro, who struck the very first sparks of what would eventually be the Meiji Restoration). And so on. In short, this book made Kyoto new again for me, and that is a fantastic feat. I still want more history, but this will satisfy me for quite some time.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 03, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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| 0870119028
| 9780870119026
| 0870119028
| 4.09
| 53
| Jun 01, 1986
| Jan 01, 1988
|
really liked it
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Mmmm... Japanese psychology. I'm not even sure where I got this book. Maybe I picked it up one time when I was living in a NOVA apartment, I don't know Mmmm... Japanese psychology. I'm not even sure where I got this book. Maybe I picked it up one time when I was living in a NOVA apartment, I don't know. All I know is, I was going through some books with the thoughts of selling them, and figured I could give this one a try. Maybe, I figured, it would give me some insights I could use. And, in a way, it did. Doi is a Japanese psychiatrist, who's made his career trying to figure out how the Japanese Mind works. In a country that is very reluctant to seek mental counseling (I read today that Eli Lilly decided not to sell Prozac here because there was "no market" for it), I imagine this was a daunting task. His previous book deals with the concept of amae, which is kind of necessary to understand, because the rest of his theory rests on it. Amae is the condition of dependency and security that one has as an infant. In his view, we pretty much long to return to that state, where we can feel safe and provided for, but we have to live in a world that doesn't allow that. So, we have to make mental adjustments in order to live comfortably with other people, while at the same time maintaining our individual identity. The Japanese have developed a very detailed psychological structure to illustrate this kind of self-division, and there's a whole lexicon of words to describe it. There's omote - the outside, the public - and ura - the back side, the private. There's tatemae - the attitude and personality that one shows to the world - and honne - the thoughts and feelings that are normally hidden. Despite first appearances, Doi takes great pains to explain that there are no divisions involved in this situation. The tatemae is not a false face, and the honne is not the secret thoughts. Neither is "better" or "worse," the "true self" or the "mask." Instead, they are a construct that allows a person to maintain their identity while at the same time fostering a kind of substitute amae by contributing to a good and stable society. Confused? Yeah, so was I. I kind of get it, because Doi uses fairly simple terms most of the time, and relates his concepts to concepts in Western psychology that mirror them. He uses a lot of literary examples, from Natsume Soseki's Botchan (which I now have to read again, having gained new insight) to Romeo and Juliet. The book is short, and includes an appendix with a couple of summaries of his work. He's able to lead you to a point where the stereotype of the "crafty Japanese" can be discarded, and the reader can start thinking more deeply about why Japanese people might behave the way they do, and how to best live in that society. But, not having been born and raised a Japanese person, I don't think I'll ever completely "get it." I see some things a little more clearly, though. and that's pretty good.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 15, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4770028008
| 9784770028006
| 4770028008
| 3.70
| 305
| 1973
| Feb 01, 2002
|
liked it
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Those of you who are paying attention might recall that I have reviewed another book by Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Self, which deals with the problem o
Those of you who are paying attention might recall that I have reviewed another book by Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Self, which deals with the problem of how one can live in a society where the primary drive of everyone is to return to the state of perfect peace and dependence that we knew as an infant at our mother's breast. In Japanese, this emotion is called amae and it's one of those great words that can only be imperfectly translated. The image of the baby at the breast is Doi's way of describing it. He believes that while the feeling is one common to all humans, the Japanese are the only people who have an everyday word to describe it, and a whole host of words to describe what happens when amae goes wrong. This being the case, he believes that the Japanese are somehow special in being the only culture in the world that holds amae as a core element in their national psychology. In his opinion, to understand Japanese psychology and the way Japanese people behave with one another, you have to understand amae, and that's a very long struggle. The verb form, amaeru is defined in my dictionary as, "to fawn; to take advantage of; to depend on," which, of course, is kind of misleading. To many Westerners, Americans especially, there's very little in that definition that is positive. We are brought up to deny amae, and so strike out to become independent, individual, and beholden to no one. To the Japanese, though, it is a way of gauging relationships with other people, and the level to which one can amaeru with another person defines everything about their relationship. How they will talk, how they'll act, how much of their true opinions they'll let out and how much they'll conceal. Doi takes amae to be his central pillar of his own practice in psychology, and so his perspective on all other concepts of relationship is defined by his views on amae. As you can imagine, it's not the easiest book in the world to get through. While the book is written for popular consumption, there are a few places where it would have helped to have known some basics in psychological terminology. But if you're very familiar with life in Japan, you can see that he certainly has a point. For example, he views the Emperor as the embodiment of amae in Japan. He is, in theory, the most important person in the country, and yet he is the most helpless. Everything is done for him by assistants or staff. Every dinner is chosen by dietitians, every moment of a traveling schedule, every wardrobe decision, every word of his speeches is prepared for him. In other words, he is like a baby, comfortable in the knowledge that no matter what, he will be taken care of, he will be "loved." His life is steeped in amae, and if he ever had to rely on his own resources, he would probably be totally lost. And yet this is the ideal to which all Japanese aspire. It is the knowledge that they cannot achieve it that brings about the elaborate social constructs that keep everyone from going nuts from their unfulfilled desire to be taken care of. A thought occurs to me as I write this, too - about the Two Princesses. Princess Kiko, who had a baby boy last week, is very popular with the Japanese people. Not only because she had a boy, but because she does everything that a princess is expected to do. She smiles, she waves, she is sweet and pleasant and kind, without a bad word to anybody or, near as I can tell, any ambition but to be a good Princess. In other words, she allows herself to be loved and indulged by the people of Japan. She amaerus. Princess Masako, on the other hand, is a little less popular, and not only because she had a little girl. She is more independent, having spent time living and studying in the US and working on diplomatic missions for the Japanese Foreign Ministry. She has has a lot of trouble fitting into the Princess role, leaving behind a life of her own and entering one where she is no longer in control of her own existence. Currently she's keeping a very low profile due to anxiety and nervous exhaustion. In other words, she doesn't amaeru - she doesn't want to be taken care of or doted upon, but she really has no choice in the matter, and so the conflict is driving her slowly nuts. Anyway, enough armchair psychology. It's a fascinating book for anyone interested in comparative psychology or Japanese society. Take a look.... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 13, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060931302
| 9780060931308
| 0060931302
| 3.85
| 3,048
| Aug 22, 2000
| Sep 04, 2001
|
liked it
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Wow, this was a tough one. It wasn't a bad book by any means - it was well-researched and informative and certainly illuminating. But it was a tough r
Wow, this was a tough one. It wasn't a bad book by any means - it was well-researched and informative and certainly illuminating. But it was a tough read anyway. Bix had a very important purpose in writing this book other than simply writing a biography. He wanted to look at Hirohito's true role in the wars of Asian aggression and World War 2. One of the most enduring myths of modern Japanese history is that Hirohito was a passive ruler, manipulated by his advisers and the military. He pretty much sat by, helpless, and his only true act of leadership was in ending the war. Not so, Bix says, and spends 288 pages explaining why. He looks all the way back to Hirohito's childhood, when he was groomed almost from birth to be an effective emperor. His grandfather, the emperor Meiji, had been handed control of a chaotic state back in the 1860s, and pulled it all together through sheer force of will. He was an impressive man who had natural leadership ability, which is a very good thing for Japan. If it had been otherwise, the country probably never would have made it into the 20th century intact. His son, however, was not so lucky. Yoshihito was sickly, weak-willed and generally useless as a leader. Even from his youth, the Imperial court knew that this was not the man who would be able to lead Japan in the manner of the great Emperor Meiji. And so they turned to Yoshihito's son, Hirohito. From the day he was born, Hirohito was surrounded by teachers and instructors who were preparing him to take his father's place as the supreme ruler of the Japanese Empire. Every lesson they taught him was focused on one very important fact: he was the descendant of an unbroken line of living gods, and the survival of Japan was inextricably bound to the Emperor. He was taught to revere the memory of his grandfather, to love the military, and to follow the "Yamato Spirit" which had made Japan great in the past. But, and this was important, to make sure that the imperial line was never extinguished. The war in East Asia was an incremental one, and, according to Bix, had Hirohito's marks all over it. The Army had been sent out into Manchuria to "keep the peace," but also to expand territory wherever it could. It was given free rein to do so, too - abuses such as the well-known "Rape of Nanking" and the sanko policy of "kill all, steal all, burn all" went unpunished and unchecked, despite the many, many chances that the Emperor had to keep the army under his control. At every step, the Emperor either explicitly sanctioned or permitted by silence the actions of the Imperial Army and Navy. The biggest problem with this book, which Bix states right out, is that there's so very little information available from Hirohito's own hand. He wasn't a prolific diary-keeper, and the Imperial Household Agency wouldn't let such information out in public anyway. The only way to figure out what the Emperor did and didn't know, say or do is either by secondary sources - the diaries of his ministers and advisers for example - or through inference. Still, the evidence for Hirohito's war responsibility is pretty damning. Bix concludes that not only did Hirohito actively participate in the planning of the war, but he was more involved in the delay of the war's end than in the ending of the war, contrary to popular belief. As before, he had every opportunity to put an end to the war and the deaths of thousands of people, but he delayed out of pride and arrogance and a disbelief that any force could stand against the sheer willpower and devotion of the Japanese military. He had been trained in the idea that it was not strategy that won a war, but passion and desire, and his Imperial Army was his tool. As far as he was concerned, they were an extension of his will, and for the army to surrender would reflect not only on Japan, but on him. And when the war did end, when two cities were laid waste, he did everything in his power - with the happy assistance of the United States - to appear blameless. Together with MacArthur and GHQ, the supreme commander of the Japanese armed forces and the embodiment of the nation itself was reduced to an impotent puppet. He was stripped of his power and humanized. But he survived, and he remained the Emperor. He'd held power without responsibility, and suffered no consequences for his actions. So is it any wonder that Japan has a hard time dealing with its past? If the Emperor, the person who was supposed to have been the very embodiment of the nation, the one for whose benefit the people of Japan existed cannot accept his part in the Greater East Asian War, how can the rest of the country? It's an interesting book, once you can get through it. There was a lot of minutia that kind of bogged the story down, which is very good in a history book, not so good in a page-turning account of a historical figure's life. But it was essential to proving Bix's point - Emperor Hirohito was complicit in the wars of aggression in Asia-Pacific, and completely escaped responsibility. ...more |
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Feb 15, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.59
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liked it
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Feb 21, 2009
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Feb 24, 2009
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| 3.95
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really liked it
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Dec 07, 2008
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Dec 10, 2008
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| 3.66
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liked it
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Mar 02, 2006
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Feb 08, 2008
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| 4.15
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liked it
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Jul 07, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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| 3.80
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really liked it
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Jul 27, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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Sep 04, 2006
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Feb 06, 2008
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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Nov 30, 2006
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Feb 02, 2008
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| 3.73
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liked it
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Dec 28, 2006
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Feb 02, 2008
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| 4.02
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it was amazing
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Dec 31, 2005
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.78
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liked it
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Jan 24, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.57
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really liked it
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Dec 23, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.91
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really liked it
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Feb 25, 2009
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.98
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liked it
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May 05, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.80
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really liked it
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Mar 18, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.09
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liked it
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Apr 09, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.06
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liked it
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Aug 28, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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Aug 03, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 4.09
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really liked it
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Jun 15, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.70
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liked it
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Sep 13, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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| 3.85
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liked it
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Feb 15, 2007
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Jan 31, 2008
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