Back in May of 2011 I blogged about Shouzou Takenami, a 93-year-old resident of Aomori prefecture who has kept an illustrated diary since 1955. In my post, I wrote that I hoped that the diaries would be published. It seems that a lot of Japanese television viewers had the same idea. A compilation of some of Takenami’s most interesting diary entries has been published as a 191 page book:

Although it only contains a limited selection of entries from Takenami’s set of 2,300 diary notebooks, Customers reviews on Amazon.co.jp are overwhelming positive. According to Wikipedia, over 120,000 copies have been sold.

Here is a follow-up TV segment about his book:

In a diary entry about the publishing deal, he has an illustration of himself offering the book as a gift to his deceased wife (who is watching over him from heaven).

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The blogger owner of famous YouTube cat Maru is releasing an English language version of her I am Maru Photo book and DVD:

…here comes an American version of the book I Am Maru, by owner/personal videographer mugumogu, previously published in Japan. It’s due Aug. 23 from William Morrow ($15.99). The U.S. version also features “a special edition inside jacket poster.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Maru, here are a recent videos:

And an NHK news report about Maru:

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Scott, a long-time reader of Japan Probe, has sent us an in-depth review of Debito’s latest book. It’s quite long, but I think this review well worth checking out if you’re interested in racism, child abduction, or any of the other issues that Debito writes about in his blog posts and books.

In Appropriate: A novel of culture, kidnapping, and revenge in modern Japan”
Book info:
Available from www.lulu.com, in paperback or e-book.
ISBN 978-1-257-02640-1
Published March 7, 2011
Pages 149
£9.27 (paperback) / £6.62 (digital download)

Does the author matter?

This was the primary question I struggled with while writing this review of In Appropriate, the first work of fiction from Debito Arudou. The author will be well-known to readers of his regular Just Be Cause columns in an independent English daily in Japan. A US-born, naturalized Japanese citizen, Arudou is an associate professor teaching English to Japanese students at a small private university in Hokkaido.

However, Arudou is more well-known for his role of social activist, fighting for equal rights of non-Japanese living in Japan. Indeed, the first of Arudou’s two non-fiction books was devoted to his first and largest case, the Otaru onsen case (“Japanese Only–The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan”); the book details Arudou’s successful lawsuit against a Hokkaido onsen after being denied entry based on his foreign appearance. His second non-fiction book was an in-depth handbook for newcomers to Japan (“Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan”, co-authored with Akira Higuchi). In Appropriate is Arudou’s first work of fiction.

Certainly with non-fiction writing, readers reasonably want to know more about the author. Has he or she written anything else? What are the author’s overall views on the subject? Is the author an expert in the field? Who is paying for the work? What possible bias might be involved? All reasonable questions that at first glance would not seem to apply to fiction. Surely in a work of fiction, the story should be allowed to stand on its own.

And yet, we are always fascinated with the personal lives of authors and writers and singers. This goes beyond just the Entertainment Tonight-esque Hollywood gossip of who’s dating who. Fans love reading ‘slice-of-life’ stories about their favorite author or actor – we want to dig deeper, to unravel what experiences and aspects of the author’s life made their way into our favorite book, our favorite song, our favorite painting.

In the case of non-fiction, one could say that wanting to know more about the author is reasonable, perhaps even necessary, to judge the book’s objectivity, authenticity, and accuracy. With fiction, one could argue that the author is – while perhaps of great interest to fans – ultimately irrelevant to the quality of the story.

This, however, is where I ran into a problem. Arudou does clearly state that this is a work of fiction. However, he also goes to great lengths to stress that the story and historical events as portrayed in the book are authentic and accurate (based on real events, including from his own personal experience). Further, the end of the book includes a couple of pages devoted specifically to his website, debito.org, which primarily acts as the headquarters for his activist work. It was this specific and very deliberate blurring of the line between the book as a simple work of fiction and the book as a tool in promoting the author’s activist role that forced me to take a closer look at the book and the story.

The book tells the tale of Gary Schmidt, a small-town boy from Georgia. Gary begins dating a Japanese exchange student at his local community college and eventually moves to Japan with her after she gets pregnant. At first, all appears to go well: he finds lucrative work as an English teacher, his wife has a second child, he is able to open up his own English conversation school, and he even takes on Japanese citizenship. However, his work gradually dries up in tandem with Japan’s slow economic post-Bubble decline. Facing rising tensions with his conservative father-in-law and increasingly dour work prospects, Gary decides to move back to the US. The rest of the book details the opposition to this plan from his wife’s family and resulting acrimonious divorce, and culminates with his attempt at abducting his children back to the US.

The story of course bears no small resemblance to the recent widely reported Chris Savoie child abduction case. Chris Savoie was arrested in Japan in 2009 on suspicion of kidnapping while trying to enter the US consulate with his children after his ex-wife (in violation of a US court order) returned to Japan with the children. There are numerous similarities: Both Savoie and Gary are southern US-born, naturalized Japanese citizens. Both fathers go to Japan in an attempt to bring their children back to the US. Both are arrested trying to enter the US consulate in Fukuoka with their children.

Certainly child abduction is no trivial matter, and Arudou’s plot holds great promise – there was enormous potential for a deep, moving portrait of how families cope with international marriages and divorces. Sadly, In Appropriate suffers on a number of levels.

Firstly, the book is littered with errors and inconsistencies. Arudou notes that he found writing fiction ‘easy’, and says that he wrote the entire book in less than a week. Unfortunately, it shows – the book is badly in need of an editor (and as is often said: easy writing makes for damn hard reading). At various times in the book the main character forgets how old he is, forgets that he’s never been to Tokyo, and forgets that he’s only made the transpacific flight once. Many of the factual errors are childishly basic that could have been avoided with the most casual of fact-checking.

Other errors are more problematic: Gary takes on Japanese citizenship because of a “legal requirement to have a Japanese on the board of directors” of the eikaiwa school he is setting up. But this is completely wrong; the only requirement is that at least one of the directors must have an address in, and be a resident of, Japan. If that person is a foreigner, there are some mild restrictions on visa status, but no restrictions if your visa does not restrict your work activity.

Neither does the story gain many points in authenticity. Upon arriving in Japan, Gary finds a job teaching English within three days and within a year is making $10,000 a month. While English teachers were no doubt making reasonably good money even in the early post-Bubble days – particularly given the lack of experience or actual skill needed to land an eikaiwa job – it is a massive stretch to suggest that English teachers were raking in four times the national average less than year after arriving. This high English teacher salary is used to establish Gary’s credentials as an ‘entrepreneur’ with ‘prodigious business initiative’, which in turn is used by Gary to justify his decision to return to the US, yet even ignoring the fantasy-land income, it hard to see how renting a room to talk in English to Japanese housewives equates to being an ‘entrepreneur’.

But by far the biggest problem with In Appropriate ties in to the issue of separating the author from the story. As an activist, Arudou fights for equal treatment for all in Japan, yet In Appropriate is shockingly one-sided and heavy-handed in the treatment of Japan and the Japanese characters. In fact, it is no stretch to say that there isn’t a likable Japanese character in the book – the Japanese men are sinister, mean-spirited racists, Japanese women alternate back and forth between being passive robots and sex maniacs.

It is almost impossible to like the main character: Gary starts out a red-neck racist – he never learned French or Spanish in high school ‘because he has no use for frog or beaner talk’. His main initial interest in the Japanese exchange students is a bet with his other red-neck friends (‘He had plenty of T&A in town and environs, but had never tapped Asian’…’Fifty bucks went to the first person to produce Japanese panties, verifiably scented with poon tang’).

Normally, this would set us up for a nice development arch: How dating a foreigner and living overseas shapes him, helps him grow as a person, helps him see the good and bad in his new and native country, while also coming to understand his own strengths and weaknesses. That doesn’t happen here – there is no soul-searching, no self-discovery. The story essentially starts and ends with the main character chasing Asian skirt, a flat, one-dimensional character. There was enormous potential to explore any number of fascinating issues. Most interesting to me would have been what goes into the decision to take on the nationality of another country; I was very disappointed to see this topic get such casual treatment.

Even more troublesome was the book’s main subject: child abduction. The problem is that it was almost impossible to work up any sympathy for Gary and his plight. In the book, Gary’s children have never set foot outside of Japan. They know no life other than in Japan, yet Gary – after making no real attempt to at least get visitation rights following his divorce – sees no problem with literally abducting the children and running away to the US, a foreign land where his children had never lived, knew nobody, and didn’t speak a word of the language.

Even allowing for this as the plot in a work of fiction, it would have been much better if Gary had at least agonized over the moral issues involved–Gary never even thinks about the fact that he’s completely cutting off the children from their mother, for instance. Do two wrongs make a right? Is he really ‘rescuing’ his children from an unbearable situation? As a single dad in a country he’s never set foot in as an adult, as a college drop out and only 15 years as an English teacher on his resume, will his children really be better of in the US? None of this is mentioned or discussed; instead, Gary rationalizes his decision by saying that he’s ‘ready to be SuperDad’, rescuing his children from the ‘racist, oppressive atmosphere’.

Herein lies the second major problem: by writing in third-person omniscient, the narrator has a god-like perspective, and is thus able to apply reasons and motives to every person for every action. The result is that Gary comes across as always being pure and noble in his motives, while the motive for every single Japanese character is evil and racist, such as when Gary’s wife objects to his idea of moving back to the US ‘because there are guns and black people’.

To make matters worse, for a book this short – only 140-odd pages – far too much time is spent on endless background information on the economy, the eikaiwa system, Japan’s penal code. If this much background detail was going to be given, the book needed to be much, much longer to fully flesh out the Japanese characters and make them a bit more human. Surely a father can not like the idea of his daughter marrying some unemployed college drop-out American who doesn’t speak a word of Japanese without being racist. Certainly a wife can be against the idea of relocating to a country she barely knows and where her husband’s work prospects are dim at best without being racist or irrational.

The story cries for some nuance and shape, but sadly the characters never even develop beyond cardboard cut-outs of stereotypes. And the sad truth is that Gary never develops into a likable person, mainly because we see nothing in the book that suggests that he works at being a good father, husband, or son-in-law. Gary barely remembers his mother-in-law’s name. When work is slow at the eikaiwa school for days on end, Gary spends the time surfing the net and hooking up with friends back home, even as he notes that he is missing his son’s and daughter’s childhood. Despite the father-in-law keeping Gary’s eikaiwa school afloat with frequent cash infusions, we see no signs that Gary is appreciative or that he realizes that perhaps his ‘prodigious business initiative’ wasn’t quite as prodigious as he thought.

The book is not without its high points. The plot device itself is deftly handled; the present day plot is neatly intertwined with back-story material. There are sections that are quite well-written; Gary’s frantic dash to the Fukuoka consulate was tight, taut writing with excellent pace – regardless of what you thought about Gary’s motives and whether he was morally in the right or not, no father could read that section without getting a lump in the throat.

Sadly, these sections are the exception. Rather than write in fine nuances and grays, it is unfortunate that Arudou chose to write with a sledgehammer instead, because there is definitely an interesting story lurking underneath. The crash of the bubble economy, the Kobe earthquake and Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack, the Asia Financial Crisis and crash of Yamaichi, PM Koizumi and (short-lived, alas) signs that Japan’s younger population might grow an interest in politics….the last 20-odd years would make for a fascinating backdrop for a story on the internationalization of Japan and what it means for families and children of international marriages.

Instead, I suspect that Arudou’s focus was not on the plot or character development, but instead was on trying to make points already spelled out in ample detail on his website. As a result, In Appropriate comes across as an overly mean-spirited and one-sided affair that doesn’t really work as fiction, and certainly goes against Arudou’s activist mantra of ‘fair treatment’.

I would look forward to more fiction from Arudou, but here’s hoping his next book takes longer than four days to write.

Contributor Bio: Scott Urista has a quarter of a century of experience in Japan. He is an executive director for a major Japanese investment bank. He currently lives in London with his wife, two-year old son and Golden Retriever.

UPDATE: The author of the book has responded to this review.

Arudou Debito here.  Thanks to Scott Urista for the review of my book IN APPROPRIATE.  It’s much more in-depth and thought-out (not to mention less nasty) than the one he originally posted on the publisher’s site.  I appreciate him taking the time and making the effort.  Thanks.  

Let me comment about the review:

I don’t mind a negative review.  As a writer, all I really want is to be read.  And if reviewed, I really want the reviewer to 1) clearly demonstrate that he’s read the book, 2) review the book (i.e., not me as a person), 3) offer constructive critique (i.e., offer his opinion about the strengths and weaknesses of aspects of the work), and if possible 4) place it in some context (e.g., the “realness” of the story, the power of the points or the images presented, the aims of the book, this book in terms of the progression of the writer’s other works, etc.)

 

Clearly Mr. Urista made a decent attempt, satisfying many of the needs of critique above and gave his personal opinion about the book (however disfavorable).  He gave concrete reasons why he liked this but not that, made clear his analytical tools, and said whether IN APPROPRIATE was worth reading or not.  Clearly he advises against doing so, which is his prerogative.

 

However, Mr. Urista also spent quite a bit of time talking about me (reviewers for some reason too often review me as a person more than the work itself), so that’s a bit disappointing — mainly because there’s not much that I (let alone the potential reader) can learn from that.  He seems to have a hard time separating me as a narrator (the narrator of the book is NOT me, remember, and (“third-person omniscient” is by no means a given) and it would have been helpful for him to realize that the tone is a departure from my usual writing.  Many people, including this reviewer, seem to miss this point, but IN APPROPRIATE is a work of fiction.

 I wanted to step outside myself and stretch my legs, portraying a worldview that was different than mine — that of Gary Schmidt and the world he created around him – including his shortcomings.  Gary is, quite frankly, a person I did not like all that much, and did not find (or intend for other people to find) to be a sympathetic character. 

In a word, Gary is a loser.  You watch him crash and burn because he’s dumb at times he shouldn’t be.  And the characters around him in the book are underdeveloped not only because Gary can’t wrap his head around them, but also because they themselves don’t let him in, as he’s seen as an interloper in the family.  The point is, Gary is isolated, *doesn’t* grow enough, and that becomes his fatal flaw for continued life in Japan.

You can critique Gary in terms of “accuracy”, fine — and in that respect I do know people like him; one friend said that he meets barflies like him grumbling away in drinking dives around the world.  But if you’re critiquing Gary (and, by extension, the author) in terms of “likeability”, then that is a matter of taste, and the reviewer should recognize that as his own shortcoming instead of claiming it as an analytical tool. (I shudder to think what the reviewer would have said about “Portnoy’s Complaint” when it first came out; if he had the final say, Philip Roth would have never gone on to win all his awards.)

For that reason, the reviewer’s antipathy towards the author blinds his reading of IN APPROPRIATE, demonstrable when he ignores other themes running throughout.  What about The Eye as social control, the aspects of child abduction and police incarceration, the Bubble Years (where, yes, it WAS possible for people to get that rich that quickly in those years) and how the system went sour, etc.?  Even the paragraph he devotes to an alleged error, the need for Japanese on a corporate board of directors, is based upon a true story in Sapporo, where a NJ friend of mine between 1993 and 1995 was bankrupted because of oddly-enforced directives requiring him to have a Japanese on the board AND two local hires.  I meet and talk to a lot of people, and many more send me their sob stories; everything in the book is based upon something that happened to somebody somewhere.

To be fair to Mr. Urista’s thoroughness, he did contact me beforehand, saying, “I have written a formal book review for publication, but before I submit it, I would like to give you a chance to respond to some of the key issues I see with the book.”  Then instead of sending me his points, he sent me four links to Tepido.org, a stalker site which, sorry, on principle I will not visit.  Moreover, this was after he had sent some angry comments to Debito.org, plus that even nastier book review at my publisher’s site.  So I decided Mr. Urista was a crank and let it go.  Then he gave this thoughtful review, which, again, I appreciate.  Thanks very much. 

Sorry for thinking you were a crank.

Again, I don’t mind a negative review.  I’ve had them before, and I might even learn from them as I begin to stretch my legs into more fiction.  But I hope that people will give IN APPROPRIATE a chance with a read of their own, understanding that one person’s opinion (particularly a reviewer whose Linkedin Profile shows his qualification as ten years of financial managerial analysis currently from London, but not divorce in Japan, child abductions, criminal incarceration, or even book reviewing) is not the last word on the subject.  I hope readers will read IN APPROPRIATE for themselves and decide.  More positive reviews at http://www.debito.org/inappropriate.html  

Thanks as always to everyone for reading and for devoting your attention to topics I bring up.  Arudou Debito

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2:46 Quakebook, a charity book prepared by a community of bloggers and Twitter users is now available via the Amazon.com Kindle store.

Here’s a CNN report about the Quakebook project and a quotation from a Wall Street Journal article about it:

Over 200 people—both Japanese and non-Japanese, but mostly living in the country—submitted their experiences and reflections to the project through written accounts and photography, while the editing and design was handled by an international Twitter-based network of bloggers, writers and designers.

“This came about as a group of us were just sitting here feeling useless and wanting to do something,” said Japan-based British blogger “Our Man In Abiko,” who first came up with the idea for the book and sent the first Twitter message calling for contributions on Friday March 18. The four-year resident of Japan declined to give his name, saying he did not want to be singled out amid the collaborative nature of the project.

“I can’t help people medically, but I know how to write and edit, so I thought we could put something together to raise money for charity,” he said.

Head over to Amazon.com and buy it now (or get it from Amazon.co.uk) ! Proceeds to go the Japan Red Cross Society.

For the latest updates on this charity project, follow the @Quakebook Twitter account.

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Hi probers,
Happy and Merry Everything.

I just wanted to let you know that…

I am announcing the release of a self published paperback version of my book “Everybody Dies- A Children’s Book for Grownups” today

Please pass on the website to anyone who you think might like it.

http://everybodydiesbook.com/

To enter a contest to win a free copy of the book, check out this video.

And in case you missed it, here is Ken Tanaka & Takeo’s Japanese song ニートの叫び Scream of Slacker:

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Fast Retailing-owned casual wear chain operator Uniqlo is selling a new batch of T-shirts commemorating the film adaptation of the 1987 literary work, according to a company news release. The cotton tee design depicts various scenes from the novel, a story set in the 1960s about a sensitive university student’s tribulations of love and loss. There are nine pictures printed on the front as well as the title. The shirts, which went on sale earlier this week, are available for 1,500 yen ($18) at the select Uniqlo outlets in Japan and online. The film opens in Japan Dec. 11.

The retail chain is also throwing in an extra goody to Murakami devotees: a discount off the admission ticket to go watch the film. Adult theatergoers receive a 300 yen markdown and students and children tickets are 200 yen off.

The trailer, if you haven’t heard about the film yet:

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There’s a very neat article in the Hokkaido Shimbun (Japanese) about a group called Project U-e-peker. The members of the Project have been working hard to translate books so that Ainu culture accessible to an international audience.

Their latest release is “The Ainu and the Bear,” and English translation of a children’s picture book about Iomante. As part of the effort to increase international awareness of the Ainu, 150 copies of the book have been donated to libraries in the United States and Canada.

[Note: At the time of this posting, Amazon.co.jp claimed to only have 2 remaining copies available for order. If you visit the link and it's sold out, try ordering it directly from the publisher.]

[hat tip to 空]

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You can watch/listen to the full interview here.

A note to the interpreter who quit because Mr. Kennedy made him ask for extra ketchup at McDonald’s: You are a lazy bastard. McDonald’s Japan is always okay with responding to requests for extra ketchup packs, and I’ve seen Japanese people ask for it. If you’re worried about having to ask twice, ask for a specific number of packs (四つ should be enough).

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Even though soldiers diagnosed with venereal disease risked having their beer ration suspended for 15 days, we learn that many still took their chances with the local “moose,” the Aussie rendering of musume (daughter). Not to mention the widows, wives and girls they encountered in bars, on the streets, in dance halls and as servants. Most of these liaisons were temporary, but there were also many marriages between couples looking for something more than casual sex, despite the best efforts of racist officials to prevent such ties.

Local women were discouraged from taking up with the soldiers by authorities who “warned that if they consorted with the Australians, they would give birth to kangaroos.” Many apparently took their chances due to destitute circumstances and the shortage of Japanese men.

Unfortunately, it is about $50. Somebody call the publisher and ask them to print it in paperback!

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Lisa Fineberg Cook and I would probably not have been the best of friends, had I met her before she came to Japan. She is judgmental, pouty, snide, prudish yet crude, and ignorant. I’m not saying I’m without faults myself, but my experience and attitude was much different coming into the country: I had an interest in the culture, I didn’t mind being alone and different, and I loved the countryside. So her perspective is really different from mine. Does she really change and get the J.A.P. removed by the end of her two years in Japan? Well, I can’t decide, and I don’t want to provide spoilers, but there is a poem mentioned, and an incident with a foreigner when she gets back that gives us hope she has changed.

In some ways, this is not really a book about Japan at all. It could have taken place in any foreign culture. Rather, it is about how living in a different environment may have changed Lisa. If you are contemplating a trip to or a stay in Japan, this book may be useful for you though. Materialists like Lisa may get a taste of the worst Japan has to offer while being amused, and others may get an idea of how not to approach the country.

Lisa is not an expert on Japanese culture. For instance, she mentions being appalled at men reading pornographic comics. Somehow, she missed the whole Yaoi phenomenon and it’s popularity among women. She also seems to think women are looked down upon in Japan, and offers as evidence the fact that their genitals are blurred out in pornography, while somehow overlooking the fact that male genitalia are always blurred out as well. One thing I can’t comment on is her mentioning female students sitting on male teacher’s laps in the teacher’s room at a high school. She also claims that the teachers smoke there too. I’ve never worked at a Japanese high school, so I really don’t know if these things were true or something Lisa misremembered.

My concerns about Lisa’s personality and grasp of Japanese culture aside, she writes in a very comedic style. Lisa tells of her epic battle against a Japanese washing machine, of committee-think, and how there is not a woman in Japan without drawn-on eyebrows, among other things, and it is fairly amusing. She gets surprisingly frank for the sake of some humorous stories, even going into detail about what she does with her new husband in bed. So knowing that, and the fact that this reads a lot like the voice-over to an episode of Sex and the City, you can consider yourself warned.

If you want to check it out, here is the book on Amazon America and Amazon Japan.

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Available through: Amazon.com / Amazon.co.jp

Tokyo-ite Botchan thinks teaching a bunch of high-school yokels in the sticks will be simple–after all, they’re essentially living in yesteryear. But Botchan soon learns that he is surrounded by schemers and tricksters and that the teaching job that should have been a walk in the park is more like a walk off a plank. Can he survive and make it back to civilization on Moral Fiber alone?

Available through: Amazon Kindle store [read a sample here.]

Musashi’s life was like something out of a nitro-badass Clint Eastwood or Toshiro Mifune movie. This lone warrior would quietly roll into town, get involved in a bunch of crazy adventures, start trouble with the toughest dudes in town, slaughter everyone with a pulse, get a hot chick to fall in love with him, and then ride off into the sunset without stopping to say good-bye to the rotting piles of corpses he left in his wake…..

The whole book is written in a similar badass style. Miyamoto and Tomoe Gozen serve as representatives of Japanese badassery.
Available through: Amazon.com / Amazon.co.jp

Available through: Amazon.com / Amazon.co.jp

Available through: Amazon.co.jp [American release date: February 2010]

From construction sites and homeless settlements to cherry-blossom viewing parties in the park, the ubiquitous blue tarp is a constant of Japanese life and a bearer of multiple registers of meaning. In sixty-four images from the boulevards, alleys, sidestreets and interstitial spaces, Tokyo Blues explores these dramatically different contexts, returning something “we see too often, and then forget to see” to full, vivid visibility. The result is a book that provokes its readers to see the city around them with new eyes — whether that city is Tokyo, or their own.

Available through: Do Projects [Free in PDF format]

Available through: Pie Books

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“One ordinary office worker (called “salary-man” in Jinglish), who is a typical father figure in Japan, could be a hero for others, and be a humorous individual.”

I started to have more respect to my father since he has passed away, who has had a whole life as a salary-man.

I, who have never lived as a salary-man, develop a thrill and hope in myself when I see salary-man find a moment to transform into a superhero, who normally dedicate all the time to working for company.

It’s possible to let them show us their individuality through a jump from ordinary life, and this is the very moment when I intend to take their photographs, thinking about an ideal figure of my own father.

ソラリーマン・プロジェクト ｜ Solary-MAN PROJECT

Solary-MAN means salary-man, who jumps in the sky, is another of my projects, directing a spotlight on Solary-MAN, a bearer of our present society.

In this project, photo session, questionnaire and interview are done for salary man.

Then, recognition of Solary-MAN is supposed to be gained through website, magazine, photo collection, and exhibition as well.

I intend to express each Solary-MAN’s drama hidden in their business suits.

Besides, I try to approach to our society for better impression of salary-man, in order that there will be lots of kids saying “I want to be a salary-man in future!”.

Here’s a short TV report from FTV. They ask famous politicians and showbiz salarymen to jump:

The Solaryman photos are on exhibition at Wada Garou in Tokyo until December 6th.

Oddly enough, I could not find this title on Amazon. It is available at PieBooks.com, as well as at Kinokuniya book stores across Japan. http://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/04f/index.htm

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The article mentions one big Japanese publishing company that is not rushing to embrace digital books:

In addition, the Kindle’s Japanese-language book download service is still also under review. Whether publishers will provide books, comics and other content for the new device is going to be a crucial sticking point in its success — however, many, including Kodansha, are choosing to wait and see.

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Mikio Amaya, CEO of Papyless Co., which is a Tokyo-based e-book provider, said Japan has more publishers compared to the United States, so it is hard to gather content.

U.S. content-providers can collect a lot of content if they can convince five or six major publishers to work with them, Amaya said, adding there are more than 2,000 publishers in Japan, including about 50 major ones.

Despite these numbers, Japan’s e-book market has been growing.

According to Impress R&D, a Tokyo-based market researcher, Japan’s e-book market in fiscal 2008 saw sales of ¥46.4 billion, which is a 31 percent increase from the previous year.

In fiscal 2004, the market posted a mere ¥4.5 billion in sales.

Amaya, whose company sells more than 127,000 books, also pointed out that computerizing Japanese documents is both time-consuming and costly.

“The optical character-reader can read English better,” said Amaya, adding that Japanese has more characters due to its kanji system so documents have to be carefully checked by humans.

While Amazon seems confident about bringing Kindle to Japan, the device itself is not Japan’s first choice for reading e-books.

Impress said 86 percent of e-book sales went to cell phones in fiscal 2008, while much of the rest went to personal computers.

Amazon says it is hoping to convince Japanese publishers to star selling digital versions of their books. In the meantime, it would seem that the Kindle is unable to read Japanese characters. Testing has found that the existing unicode font hack for the Kindle 2 does not work on the new Kindle 2 International, although an updated hack will probably be released soon.

BlogKindle.com is reporting that Kindle International users in the UK have found that they are able to browser Wikipedia without any problems. Someone in Sweden has found out that they too can use the Kindle International to browse Wikipedia, but they are prevented from accessing anything other than English language Wikipedia articles.

Folks in Japan who pre-ordered the International wireless version of the Kindle should be getting it in the mail sometime in the next couple days. If anyone has already received it, please leave a comment on this post and share your experiences with its wireless browsing features!

Update: I Just noticed this comment in an Amazon.com discussion thread. A new Kindle owner in Japan says that he can avoid the international book price mark-up when browsing from a U.S. IP address:

I can now buy US content and choose to pay transfer fees or not – the key is my purchasing IP address. If I try from my home PC it will not work, if I use a computer from work (where our Internet Connection is routed via the US) it does work. So my assesment is that the CC billing has little to do with it, it is where Amazon think you physically are that seems to be key. The interesting thing now would be for a true US user to try placing an order from overseas and see if they get US or ínternational ‘pricing’. I will have to check with a friend on that.

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A 12-year stint covering crime for Japan’s biggest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, brought Adelstein into contact with the seamy side of Tokyo that most Westerners never see, from loan sharking to murders to trafficking in sex workers.

His mission to pull off a scoop about the yakuza turned personal after the disappearance of a prostitute friend who had been trying to help him find out about what he suspected was a human trafficking ring.

Adelstein, who wrote in Japanese, left the newspaper in 2005. In his English-language memoir, “Tokyo Vice,” which will be published in the United States this week, he tells the story of how he got to grips with the unique Japanese way of journalism, becoming such a serious irritant to the yakuza that he faced death threats and was placed under police protection in 2008.

Not being an expert on organized crime in Japan, I cannot speak for the accuracy of what he is writing, but I am always suspicious of authors who hype up their tell-all books by advertising the fact that gangsters are supposedly trying to kill them for knowing too much. That being said, however, I downloaded the Kindle edition of his book yesterday, and what I’ve read so far is pretty interesting and not too outlandish or paranoid. Unlike other authors of English language books about the dark side of Japan, Adelstein at least has a resume that gives him some authority to speak about organized crime.

For more information on Adelstein and his book, check out the following links

• WNYC radio interview about Tokyo Vice
• Japansubculture interview with Jake Adelstein.
• Random House Q&A with the author.
• “Yakuza Wars,” a JapanFocus article by David McNeill & Jake Adelstein

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Wired.com reports that Kindle users outside of the US will only be able to download books over the 3G network and be unable to view blogs or use the experimental web browser. However, this appears not to be true for Japan. According to the Kindle product page for Japan, only “blogs are currently not available for your country.”  For other countries, such as Australia and the UK, “blogs and the experimental web browser are currently not available for your country.”

But there’s a catch.

It appears web browsing will not be free. According to the wireless terms and conditions:

Amazon provides wireless connectivity free of charge to you for certain content shopping and downloading services on your Device. You may be charged a fee for wireless connectivity for your use of other wireless services on your Device, such as Web browsing and downloading of personal files, should you elect to use those services.

The terms and conditions in Japanese (PDF) also indicate this is the case.

—
Contributor Bio: Steve has been splitting time between the US and Japan for the past 10 years or so and is now a post doctorate fellow at a large, lumbering University in Tokyo, where he gets paid to play with dirt.

—

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The move, announced on Tuesday, gives the world’s largest online retailer the widest global reach among its competitors, including chief rival Sony Corp.

The Kindle will sell for $279 in other countries.

Amazon also announced it would cut prices for its U.S.-only Kindle by 13 percent to $259 from $299, bringing its cost closer to its rivals. The new price is $100 lower than it was a year ago. [Update: It's now even cheaper!]

Amazon — which regards the Kindle as a pivotal growth driver — said over 200,000 English-language books from a host of publishers as well as over 85 international and U.S. newspapers and magazines would be available on the international device, which begins shipping October 19.

“Our vision for Kindle is every book ever printed, in print or out of print, in every language, all available within 60 seconds,” Chief Executive Jeff Bezos told Reuters.

• Books in Under 60 Seconds: Think of a book and you could be reading it in under a minute
• Free Wireless: Free 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle. No monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. See Coverage Map.
• Large Selection: Over 280,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines
• Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99, unless marked otherwise. You’ll also find many books for less – over 100,000 titles are priced under $5.99
• Amazon.co.jp customers will need to register on Amazon.com in order to purchase Kindle.
• Your international shipment is subject to customs duties, import taxes and other fees levied by the destination country. We will show you these fees upon checkout.
• Kindle ships with a U.S. power adapter and a micro-USB cable for charging your Kindle via a computer USB port. The U.S. power adapter supports voltages between 100V – 240V.
• You can transfer personal documents to your Kindle via USB for free at anytime. Service fees for transferring personal documents via Whispernet are currently $.99 per megabyte. Learn more
• Wireless download times can vary based on 3G or EDGE/GPRS coverage, signal strength and file size.
• Kindle books, newspapers, and magazine are currently priced and sold in United States dollars

Judging from the requirement that customers have to sign up for Amazon.com to purchase the Kindle, it looks like their target, at least for now, consists of English-speakers. A Nikkei news article mentions that Amazon is thinking about deals with Japanese book publishers, but details have yet to emerge.

As a happy Kindle 2 owner, I welcome this expansion. Amazon’s move will no doubt encourage more publishers to make their books available in digital format, which will make life easier for those of us who hate the mark-ups and the lack of selection one usually encounters when buying English language books in non-English-speaking countries.

Related post: Tips for buying English books in Japan.

This post was updated in Summer 2010 to include links to the newest versions of the Kindle. I still very satisfied with how my original Kindle 2 U.S. version, but I might also get one of the new international wireless Kindle DX units, since they are ideal for PDF reading.

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I just finished reading Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain and would like to recommend it. Here’s a short blurb:

One day in 1944, in the midst of World War II Japan, with people suffering and starving around him, Morie Sawataishi heard something troubling. The country people of Akita Prefecture were killing their dogs and selling their pelts to the military in order to line the winter coats of officers. The Akita dog, already dwindling in numbers as it fell out of favor, neared extinction. When an acquaintance offered him a puppy, Morie could not resist buying her and later purchased a male for breeding after he was able to verify the existence of only 16 other Akita dogs. Sherrill tells the story not only of the salvation of an ancient breed of dog but also of the complicated man who loved them and of his Tokyo-born wife, who had to learn country ways and how to love dogs. Throughout the book, the changes in postwar Japan are woven into the narrative, along with tales of Morie’s Akitas.

I’m not a dog person, but all the hype on TV about Richard Gere’s Hachiko movie kind of made me interested in the history of the Akita dog breed. I stumbled upon the book by chance and found it to be a very good read.

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If you have seen her posts, you will see a lot of familiar writing in the book, but it expands on concepts in ways that have never been achievable on the blog. There are charts, analysis, study tips, and much more, all written in Eve’s disarmingly friendly tone.

Here’s a video I made to show and describe the book. Hopefully by the time this post goes live, the HD option will be available so you can get a good look inside.

If you would like to check out the other book I mention in the video, it is called Read Japanese Today (JP link, USA link)

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The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P, a bizarre bestselling Japanese novel, will soon be released in English translation. I’ll let the plot summary speak for itself:

The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P tells the story of Kazumi Mano, a naïve twenty-two-year-old who wakes up one afternoon to discover that her big toe has turned into a penis. Her life as an ordinary girl is over, and a rigorous “apprenticeship” has begun. Kazumi flees her homophobic fiancé after he tries to castrate her, and hooks up with a blind pianist with whom she falls in love. Together they join a troupe of sexually deformed and emotionally twisted men and women who tour the country performing what amounts to sexual freak shows. In the course of her bizarre journey, Kazumi is forced to reconsider what she had always passively accepted: her body, her sexuality, and her life.

Amazon’s US site lists its release date as January 2010. Those who can’t wait that long can order it from Amazon Japan (where it has a August 5th 2009 release date).

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First we have Sayonara, Mr. Fatty, a book of advice from an otaku who was once fat:

In this uplifting memoir, famous Japanese pop culture “King of the Geeks” Toshio Okada tells of the diet and lifestyle changes he made in his fight against obesity, and how his public perception dramatically improved as a result of his healthier appearance.

Okada lost 110lbs in one year, without the use of funky dieting techniques or exercises, using nothing but a notepad. He recognized that a diet is doomed to fail if it’s unsustainable, and a person cannot continue something they do not enjoy. Examining various diets and exercise regimes—even considering surgery—he concluded that a recording diet would be the most effective method. By succeeding in the recording diet, a person will learn a means of self-control that can be applied to other aspects of life, such as budgeting. Toshio Okada’s diet reflects the six stages of space flight, each stage a little bit closer to the final goal of health and self confidence!

And you might also want to check out So I Need to Lose 15 Pounds, a dieting manga by Shiho Torii:

Who hasn’t worried about their weight at one time or another? This book presents an amusing new way to look at dieting. A non-fiction self-help book written in a comic format, it takes the hard issue of dieting techniques and presents them in the humorous style of Japanese “manga.”

Popular diets such as Macrobiotics, based on traditional Japanese cuisine, to way out there diets such as using experimental NASA equipment and hypnosis are tested in a 27 diet challenge. Readers can find motivation to lose weight and helpful information on which diets give the best results while laughing all the way. Written in the manga format from the country that does it best, this is the how-to comic based on one young author’s struggles with weight.

You can get an idea of her amusing illustration style by checking out her blog.

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The Nippon Foundation has assembled a team of scholars and produced a list of 100 Books for Understanding Contemporary Japan. The list appears to be aimed at serious scholars, but there are some titles general readers would probably enjoy.

Here they are:

Politics / International Relations

• The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
• Broadcasting Politics in Japan: N-H-K and Television News
• Constructing Civil Society in Japan: Voices of Environmental Movements
• Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan
• A Discourse By Three Drunkards on Government
• Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Major Economy
• The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment
• Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry are Reforming Japanese Capitalism
• Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose
• Japanese Foreign Policy at the Crossroads
• Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West
• Japan’s Quest for a Permanent Security Council Seat
• The Logic of Japanese Politics
• Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan
• Media and Politics in Japan
• Network Power: Japan and Asia
• Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy
• Securing Japan: Tokyo’s Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia
• Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics
• The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s
• The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future
• U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World

Economics / Business

• An Anti-classical Political-Economic Analysis: A Vision for the Next Century
• British Factory–Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations
• The Economics of Work in Japan
• The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota
• Four Practical Revolutions in Management
• Japan, China, and the Growth of the Asian International Economy, 1850-1949
• Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society
• The Japanese Company
• The Japanese Economic System and its Historical Origins
• The Japanese Firm: The Sources of Competitive Strength
• Japan’s Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change
• Japan’s Lost Decade
• Lectures on Modern Japanese Economic History, 1926-1994
• Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan
• MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975
• Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920
• Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism: Japan and Germany
• The Sun also Sets: The Limits to Japan’s Economic Power
• 21st-Century Japanese Management: New Systems, Lasting Values

Society / Culture

• The Anatomy of Dependence
• Bushido: The Soul of Japan
• Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600-1868
• Family and Social Policy in Japan: Anthropological Approaches
• Gender and Development: The Japanese Experience in Comparative Perspective
• Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.
• Japanese Science: From the Inside
• Japanese Society
• Japan’s High Schools
• Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots
• Neighborhood Tokyo
• Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection
• Science, Technology and Society in Contemporary Japan
• Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan
• Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World

Literature / Arts

• Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle
• The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto
• The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature
• Contemporary Japanese Film
• Contemporary Japanese Literature: An Anthology of Fiction, Film, and Other Writing Since 1945
• Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga
• Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times
• Five Modern Japanese Novelists
• In Praise of Shadows
• Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction
• Kabuki: Baroque Fusion of the Arts
• Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage, 1780-1830
• Kafu the Scribbler: The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu, 1879-1959
• Kokoro
• The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings
• Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
• The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film
• Oe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan
• Origins of Modern Japanese Literature
• A Personal Matter
• The Pleasures of Japanese Literature
• I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying for a While
• Tale of Genji
• The Tales of the Heike
• The Wild Goose

History

• The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910
• The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion
• A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi
• Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World, 1852-1912
• From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States
• The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945
• Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945
• The Making of Modern Japan
• Modern Japan
• Postwar Japan as History
• Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration
• Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and American Heritage
• State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu
• Victors’ Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial
• Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics
• War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
• From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible?

The foundation has plans to expand the list to include up to 300 titles. Unfortunately, quite a few of the books currently on the list are not readily available for sale and some are enormously expensive academic tomes – you’ll need to raid a university library to get your hands on them.

Details on the books can be found on this page, which also contains links to PDF files that summarize the books on the list.

[hat tip to Aceface]

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Japanese literature professor Edwin McClellan, perhaps best known for his authoritative English language translation of Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, has died at age 83.

In 1998 he was honored by the Japanese government with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. Other major awards include the Kikuchi Kan Prize for literature in 1994, the Noma Literary Translation Prize in 1995 and the Association for Asian Studies Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies in 2005.

His publications included translations of novels by Soseki ( “Grass on the Wayside” in addition to “Kokoro”) and Shiga Naoya (“A Dark Night’s Passing”); a translation of a memoir by Yoshikawa Eiji; a book of essays, “Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson”; and a biography of 19th-century “bluestocking” Shibue Io, “Woman in a Crested Kimono.”

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Black Jack, Volume 4 by Osamu Tezuka

The latest in Vertical‘s wonderfully-produced English translations of one of Japan’s greatest manga series. When you read this and other previous volumes of the series, its not hard to see why Tezuka has been called “the god of manga.”

Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura

Nonomura’s book about experiencing life at the Zen monastery of Eihei-ji has sold over 100,000 copies since it was first published in Japanese back in the 1990′s. The English translation will not be released in America until April 1st, but it’s already on bookstore shelves in Japan (and is on Amazon.co.jp). I’m currently a few chapters into it and although I don’t usually enjoy reading books about spirituality, I’ve found that Nomura’s descriptions of monastic life to be quite interesting. Read the book and educate yourself about proper Zen toilet etiquette, such as the proper chant to recite when you flush!

Strongholds of the Samurai: Japanese Castles 250-1877 by Stephen Turnbull

Turnbull continues to churn out books about the history of the samurai period! His other samurai history books published by Osprey are usually quite short, but this one will be about 200 pages.

Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship by John Haffner / Tomas Casas i Klett / Jean-Pierre Lehmann

This book, which argues that Japan should take a more active and outward-looking stance towards the rest of the world, is the only book on Amazon.com that references the Gaijin Hanzai File in its bibliography. Sample sections of the book can be read on its official website.

Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter by Shoko Tendo

This book already received lots of good reviews when its hardcover edition was published in 2007. If you missed it before, get yourself a copy of the far cheaper paperback edition that has just been released.

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Watanabe says he wrote the book in response to a national drumbeat of Japanese criticism about its education system that emphasizes rote memorization. Other Japanese books about problem solving had been written for the business market, but Watanabe made it simple for middle-schoolers. That simplicity struck a chord with business.

Watanabe went to school in Japan until the eighth grade before moving to Greenwich, Conn. He went on to an economics degree at Yale, a Harvard MBA and a job as a McKinsey consultant. He says U.S. schools don’t focus on memorization and are much better at teaching critical thinking but still fall short in the discipline of problem solving.

*Note: He is not the famous Ken Watanabe who starred in “The Last Samurai” and “Batman Begins.” The Japanese version of the book lists his full name as Kensuke Watanabe.

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The Daily Mail reports on how former POW John Baxter became friends with Japanese prison guard Hyato Hirano:

Mr Hirano risked being beaten by his fellow guards by offering starving prisoners food and water, and when Mr Baxter returned to Japan in 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of VJ day he tracked down his former captor.

The pair have kept in touch ever since, and yesterday Mr Baxter opened a card sent by Mr Hirano to celebrate the retired plumber’s 90th birthday tomorrow.

It reads: ‘Many happy returns. I am currently spending my days in and out of hospital, but I am well otherwise. I wish you the best of health.’

Mr Baxter, a grandfather from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, said: ‘I have absolutely no resentment about the Japanese of today.

‘In fact, I think they are a good indication of everything human nature should be. They are respectful, polite and always willing to stop and talk to you.’

He went on: ‘I was not as badly treated as some in my camp. There are those who finished the war with hideous deformities and mental issues they will never resolve.

‘There are men who I know still hate all the Japanese and won’t so much as discuss them, let alone travel to meet them.

‘For me, I have moved on. There’s absolutely no point in dwelling on the past. You have to move on and understand we were living in very different times.’

Baxter’s memoirs are available at ForgottenTitles.com.

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Standing on the stage flanked by Israeli president Shimon Peres and Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, Murakami said he had given “some thought” to attending, and that his biggest reason for coming was to thank his Israeli fans for reading his books.

“When I was asked to accept this award I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?” the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying. “I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I’m told. It’s in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can’t trust anything they haven’t seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.”

[via 空]

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As one would expect from it’s title, this book explains Japan’s love hotels to an English speaking audience. The first portion of the book contains a interesting history of the sex industry. One eventually finds oneself in the Post-War period, when the birth of the love hotel was born. It turns out that the operators of such hotels used a variety of names before the term “love hotel” became popular (quotation from the introduction of the “Origin” section):

The oldest name, moteru, dates back to the 1950s and comes from the English “motel.” When Japanese people hear this word, rather than imagining family road trips during the summer vacation, they think of sex, because when the motor hotel came to Japan, it was used exclusively by couples looking for a place to spend some intimate time together.

When motels moved into the downtown areas, they needed a new name, and came to be known as abecu hoteru, which comes from the French word “avec” and means “with.” People who use this term are showing their age, though, because that‘s how love hotels were referred to in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The word “rabu hoteru” dates back to the early 1970s, and the name came　about quite by accident. Apparently, it originated in Osaka, where there was　a popular hotel called the “Hotel Love.” It had a neon sign, and the name　circled around and around, so confused patrons often referred to it as the　Love Hotel‘ because that was how they had seen it on the sign. Love hotel　is still the most popular term, but more often than not, it gets shortened to　”rabuho.‟

Later portions of the book go into detail about the inner workings of the love hotel industry, including some interviews with operators of love hotels. It also contains reviews of individual love hotels found in Tokyo and Osaka, with helpful guide information provided for those who want to know how one goes about staying at a love hotel. And, of course, there are lots of sleazy love hotel-related stories and translations of diary notebook entries written at love hotels.

This book is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.jp. For sample pages, check out the book’s official website.

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Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan’s Game Centers – a fantastic work by Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku and PingMag editor Jean Snow. [Read Japan Probe's review of this title.]

Tokyo Realtime : Kabukicho – not exactly a book, but still very cool. WhiteRabbit has put together an audio walking tour of Tokyo’s famous red light district, splicing together traditional tour narration with interviews and stories from experts and locals. The audio sample at TokyoRealtime.com will give you a good idea of its excellent production value.

Black Jack, Volume 1 and Black Jack, Volume 2 – Vertical has published new English editions of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga Black Jack, the story of a maverick doctor that practices medicine without a license. These new volumes go beyond the 17 episodes of the series that had been published in English back in the 1990′s, with each 300 page volume containing 12 episodes. Free previews of volumes one, two, and three are available on Vertical’s website.

Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan – a look at the manga version of Batman created in the 1966 to tie-in with the Japanese release of the American TV series. Its creator, Jiro Kuwata, dropped a lot of the stuff from the original American story and added science fiction and fantasy elements that would appeal to Japanese manga readers. (more info and photos at BoingBoing)

Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan – a collection of cool and useful Japanese wisdom compiled by Lisa Katayama of TokyoMango.com. A few of the tricks are available for free on the book’s YouTube channel.

Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide and Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai – Both of these books are excellent sources for information about the supernatural beings found in Japanese folklore. Yokai Attack! is a fancy and stylish guidebook with lots of amusing artwork, and it has got a lot of good press reviews. Pandemonium and Parade is a more academic work, and would be break for readers who want to read a more in depth examination of the creatures and how they are viewed in Japanese culture. [See our review of Yokai Attack!]

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According to Observing Japan, Taro Aso has been letting the people know what books he’s reading these days. Aso used to enjoy telling folks about his love of comic books, but now it looks like he wants to be seen as a serious reader. One of the titles on his list is John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash of 1929.

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If you’re looking for a new way to explore Tokyo, why not walk through the streets of Tokyo with Edo period maps as your guide? Mainichi has translated an article about a boom in historical map guidebooks: Check it out!

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Want to read about activism and the rights of foreigners in Japan? The new book “Fighting for Foreigners: Immigration and Its Impact on Japanese Democracy” by USC professor Apichai Shipper sounds promising:

Shipper coins the term “associative activism” to describe how the presence of poorly treated immigrants has led Japanese citizens in recent years to push the local and national government to adopt new policies, thereby advancing social democracy in Japan.

Japan is now the only country in Asia to provide legal channels to permanent residency for illegal immigrants. Moreover, Japan is the only country in Asia to offer public education even to the children of illegal foreigners.

Nongovernmental organizations headed by Japanese citizens speaking on behalf of illegal immigrants have successfully pressured the government to adopt a plan to combat human trafficking, to grant certain overstayed foreigners “special residence permission” and to extend national health insurance to certain foreigners. Over a four-year period beginning in 2000, Japan granted permanent residence to more than 40,000 illegal immigrants.

“It is the new, and especially illegal, foreigners whose presence has reinvigorated Japanese activists and civil society,” Shipper said.

“These activists have forced government officials to reflect on Japan’s national identity and to negotiate a new social contract with citizens for all those who reside on their islands.”

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

Asahi reports that 86-year-old American Japanologist Donald Keene has become one of only a handful of foreigners to be awarded Japan’s Order of Culture:

Keene became interested in Japanese culture after reading the Arthur Waley translation of “The Tale of Genji” when he was 18.

During his long career, Keene has covered a wide range of genres, from the classics, such as “Kojiki,” the oldest surviving history book in Japan completed in the eighth century, to the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) and the works of contemporary authors, including Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) and Kobo Abe (1924-1993).

“Since there were so few scholars of Japanese literature, I thought I had to teach everything about Japanese literature once I was employed at university,” Keene recalled. “Since I had no one who preceded me, I had to explain in my theses such simple matters as futon and sushi.”

Keene has been translating and writing books about Japanese literature and history since the 1950′s, so if you’ve taken a Japan-related course at any university in an English-speaking country, chances are you’ve come across something Keene wrote.

Here are three Keene works I would recommend to readers interested in Japan:

• Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan – Keene’s 50+ years as a Japan scholar have given him a lot of interesting personal experiences to write about. In his memoir he shares stories of his friendships with some of modern Japan’s greatest authors (Kawabata, Mishima, Oe, etc).
• Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912 – One of the few good English language books out there about the Westernization of Japan during the Meiji Era. (Warning – this book is over 700 pages long!)
• Essays in Idleness – I must confess that in my university days, I didn’t particular enjoy studying pre-modern Japanese literature. There were a few assigned readings that I did enjoy, and one of them was Keene’s translation of this collection of whimsical essays written by a Japanese monk in the 12th century. Some excerpts can be found on this site. (Keene has told the Japanese press that this was his favorite translation.)

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
• Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)

After the Physics and Chemistry Nobel prize victories, some in the Japanese and international media were speculating that novelist Haruki Murakami could win this year’s literature prize. However, it ended up going to a French author, much to the disappointment of Haruki Murakami fans.

Neojaponisme has an interesting post today about the push to get Murakami a Nobel:

For the past three years, Murakami has been near the top of the odds list for the prize at many bookmakers. Murakami’s coming out party happened in 2006. Ladbrokes in London did not offer odds for Murakami to win the prize in 2005, but in 2006 he opened at 33/1 and closed at 9/1. In 2007, he opened at 10/1, closing at 5/1. The odds aren’t always accurate — Ladbrokes was giving odds of 50/1 on Doris Lessing when she won in 2007, and even popular favorite and eventual winner Orhan Pamuk’s odds were 7/1 in 2006 — but they are an interesting way of examining how Murakami is perceived. This year, his odds opened at 10/1 and closed at 7/1.

Read the full article!

Book Links:
Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide
Promenade of the Gods

As you can see from the image, the book is called Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan’s Game Centers. It covers a wide variety of Japanese game types, such as:

• Crane Games (claw machines!)
• Sticker-Picture Machines (purikura)
• Rhythm Games (DDR & drum games)
• Shooting Games (“schumps”)
• Fighting Games (street fighter and its buddies)
• Games of Chance (mahjong & pachinko)
• Dedicated Cabinets (racing games & gun games)
• Retro Games (Donkey Kong, anyone?)
• Card-based Games (popular with the little kids these days)

Each sub section has an history of its particular type of gaming, and there are mini-interviews with game makers and notable Japan-based expert gamers. These expert gamers explain why they’re obsessed with that particular type of game, and in some cases offer advice to would-be gamers (I’ll be trying out some of the claw machine game techniques mentioned in one interview).

What makes Arcade Mania truly cool is the beautiful style in which its pages are arranged. Almost every page is in full color, with lots of appealing photographs and screen captures of games that give this book a hip arcade feel:

Arcade Mania will be hitting Japanese book stores sometime in September, and it’s currently available on Amazon Japan. It does not come out in the United States until January 2009, so American readers not willing to pay shipping from Japan will have to pre-order it on Amazon. Anyone interested in Japanese gaming culture will enjoy this book!

To anyone interested in the question of nationalism in Japan, I recommend reading Kevin M. Doak’s A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan, published in 2007 and reviewed by Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka in Monumenta Nipponica 62:4 (an excerpt of the review appeared in The Japan Times on June 22, 2008). There is another excellent review of the book here.

 The author is a Georgetown University professor who says in the preface that, “My effort to provide a comprehensive analysis of Japanese nationalism has occupied—indeed, all too often, preoccupied—my thinking, research and publications for most of my professional career.”

The book is not without its faults, but is still well worth reading. One nice thing is that it’s almost completely devoid of jargon. Not once does vocabulary like “trope”, “rubric”, “paradigm”, or other such language so loved by historians and sociologists appear in its pages. Another of its strong points is that professor Doak does an excellent job of defining his terms. He says this in the opening paragraph:

 “Much of what is written about Japanese nationalism is not really about nationalism at all. This is the first paradox that anyone who wishes to understand the past, present and future of Japanese nationalism must confront. It is not only true about academic writing on nationalism in Japan, but a fortioro of journalistic accounts of “rising nationalism” or “neo-nationalism” that plague so many of the contemporary English language media reports on politics in Japan. When narratives of this “neo-nationalism” in Japan today are tied, implicitly or explicitly, to the historical militarism and expansionism of Imperial Japan during World War II, then misunderstanding of Japanese nationalism only deepens.”

Here is his definition of nationalism:

“Put succinctly, nationalism is a principle that asserts the people as the privileged principle of political life. But this principle of the people is more than a political one. It makes certain claims that go to the heart of identity, individual and collective, and as such it can place itself in a conflicting relationship with the state. It certainly did so for much of modern Japanese history.”

 Professor Doak also points out that the English word “nationalism”, besides often being used imprecisely, is basically a rather vague term that can be variously translated into Japanese. He makes a distinction between minzokushugi (ethnic nationalism) and kokuminshugi (civic nationalism), the former being populist and chauvinistic, the latter a healthy form of nationalism essential to any democracy. To simplify, it could be said that at times in its modern history Japan has suffered from a surfeit of the former, and at all times a shortage of the latter. That view reconciles the apparent dichotomy of the excessive pride some Japanese display toward their country’s culture, language, or seasons with the general cynicism and apathy felt toward domestic politics; and also explain what Japanese people mean when they say that they and their compatriots lack nationalism.  

Robert Dujarric said in his Japan Times editorial of July 30, which was featured in a recent post on Japan Probe, that “Japanese diplomats are as likely as those of the Holy See to resort to threats of force.” That’s accurate. But that doesn’t mean that nationalism is not a Japanese problem, it only means that militarism is not a Japanese problem.

One problem that Japan has is a lack of what Doak terms civic nationalism.  Though there are signs that the situation is improving, many Japanese still exhibit a general reluctance to accept the responsibilities of the citizens of a democracy, like voting for candidates based on their policies, or being willing to take part in the new lay judge system that will be introduced next May.

Japan also has a problem with ethnic nationalism. Even though the Ainu were recently officially recognized as an indigenous people of Japan, the fact of the very existence of minorities in Japan is still barely acknowledged in day to day life.    

Convenience stores are hoping that friendly/cool manga-style covers will get young people to read novels:

Concerned over flagging book sales, especially among younger age groups, publishers are having popular manga artists illustrate the covers of novels and are turning serious works of fiction into manga to be sold at convenience stores.

Such “combini novels” are proving popular among young people who are seemingly averse to conventional bookstores.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. in May became the first major convenience store chain to put on sale revamped editions of works by three Naoki Prize-winning authors–Arimasa Osawa, Miyuki Miyabe and Natsuhiko Kyogoku.

Although none of the books are new, they have been totally repackaged, with manga artists popular with young people illustrating the front covers.

They first went on sale in mid-May at all the 4,000 or so 7-Eleven outlets in the Kanto region.

Death Note manga series creator Takeshi Obata, whose illustration last year for a new edition of Osamu Dazai’s 1948 novel Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human)–published by Shueisha Inc.–helped it become a fresh hit, drew the cover for Kyogoku’s Bara Juji Tantei I (Rosenkreuz I).

The series, branded “Paperbacks K,” came about from a collaboration between Seven-Eleven Japan and literary agency Osawa Office Inc., to which the three authors belong.

Kodansha Ltd. has published 40,000 copies, and publicized them on the Osawa Office Web site. The publisher is reportedly considering a nationwide second printing run after the autumn.

Sakie Yokota, the mother of abductee Megumi Yokota, has announced that an English translation of her book North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter will be published and sold in America early next year:

“The abduction issue isn’t well known in the United States. I want people throughout the world to know that many abductees in North Korea are waiting to be rescued,” 72-year-old Sakie Yokota said.

Yokota plans to give copies of her book to U.S. President George W. Bush and other G8 leaders visiting Japan to attend the Hokkaido Toyako Summit, to be held later this month.

1. Basho: The Complete Haiku – by Matsuo Basho (translation and supplemental information by Shiro Tsujimura and Jane Reichhold)

This newly-released book claims to be the first English translation of the complete collection of haiku by master poet Matsuo Basho. The English language translations of each individual haiku are nice, but the best part of this book are the 159 pages of notes, providing the original Japanese text of each poem, a literal English translation, and a paragraph of English text explaining the significance and cultural meaning of specific words and phrases used in the Japanese original. The book also contains a short biography of Basho and an appendix on Haiku techniques.

[Japan-based readers can obtain this book through Amazon.co.jp.]

2. Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army by Sabine Fruhstuck

An anthropologist takes a look at how a pacifist nation views its armed forces and how members of the Self-Defense Forces view themselves. As part of her research, the author underwent basic training at a GSDF base.

[Japan-based readers can obtain this book through Amazon.co.jp]

3. In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia – by Ronald Spector

A sequel to Spector’s previous book about the Pacific War, this book focuses on the events in Asia immediately following Japan’s surrender. Emphasis is placed on how allied occupation forces dealt with Japanese soldiers/civilians, local nationalist groups, and Europeans who wanted their old colonies returned. This book is only available in hardcover at the moment, but paperback edition will be out on July 9th.

[Japan-based readers can obtain this book through Amazon.co.jp.]

4. Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist by Andrew Osmond

A book about Satoshi Kon, the filmmaker who created anime such as Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, and Paranoia Agent. If you haven’t seen any of those films, I suggest you watch them while waiting for the August 1st release of this book.

[Japan-based readers can obtain this book through Amazon.co.jp.]

5. Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings

British military historian Max Hastings examines the final years of the Pacific War, managing to create a book that feels fresh on a topic so many others have already written about. Those annoyed by bad pronunciations of Japanese might want to avoid the audiobook version of this title because the man who reads it really butchers some Japanese names (Kyushu = Kai-u-shu?!).

[Japan-based readers can obtain this book through Amazon.co.jp.]

Bonus: Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin

While it’s not exactly about Japan, this book provides some interesting background information about America’s golden age of whaling, and your friends who donate money to Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace will love it’s cover image! It’s finally been released in paperback, so check it out.

[Not available on Amazon.co.jp.]

In January, 1965, Jenkins was a U.S. Army sergeant stationed in South Korea. Sure that he was about to be sent to Vietnam, he drank ten beers, abandoned his patrol, and crossed into North Korea. He spent the next four decades in a country that had become “a giant, demented prison,” until the Japanese government secured his release, along with that of his Japanese wife, who had been abducted by the North Koreans. Jenkins’s book is oddly compelling. The blank ordinariness of his character brings out the moral and physical ugliness of life in North Korea, where soldiers steal and beg for food; a dog digs up a fresh mass grave (and the next day all the dogs in the neighborhood are shot); and Jenkins awakens to the bleak, deadening realization that his two daughters are being groomed as spies. “I would always tell them, ‘we are not in the real world. This is not the real world,’” Jenkins writes of his daughters. “But they didn’t believe me.” -The New Yorker

Back in November, I posted about an upcoming book by Charles Robert Jenkins, an American who defected to North Korea in the 1960′s, and ended up escaping to Japan 40 years later. I finally got around to ordering and reading Jenkins’ autobiography last month, and below is a compact review in bullet point format, together some thoughts on the overall tone of the book.

• No other American has lived for such a long period of time in North Korea and escaped to write a tell-all autobiography. Jenkins’ story is unique and fascinating, and thanks to the help of Time Magazine journalist Jim Frederick, it’s even well-written.
• At under 200 pages, this book is a pretty quick read. It probably could have been better if it had been lengthened to include more details, but I understand the need to make it smoother and more readable for a general audience.
• If you buy this book, don’t skip the 25-page introduction by Jim Frederick. In addition to providing good background information to the story, he shares some odd facts about Jenkins. (Example: Jenkins became a fan of Michale Jackson after listening to a tape that had been smuggled into North Korea, and he now avidly follows news about the pop star.)
• Jenkins managed to carry a photo album with him when he left North Korea, and some of the photos are included in an insert. The pictures are very interesting, but I was quite disappointed to find that the American publisher of this book, had included far fewer photographs than can be found in the Japanese version of the book.

As one might expect from a book written by a man who deserted to an enemy country, Jenkins spends a lot of the book defending himself and offering thanks to those who helped him get out of North Korea. He admits that his decision to desert the U.S. military and cross the DMZ as a stupid one, and expresses remorse at the thought of leaving his squad behind on patrol duty. In describing his work as an English instructor for the North Korean military, he claims that he made no effort to teach proper English and probably ended up harming the English ability of the officers he taught — a claim that doesn’t seem too outlandish if you’ve ever heard Jenkins speak English. He expresses gratitude towards Prime Minister Koizumi and the other Japanese government officials that helped his family relocate to Japan, and he has strong words of praise towards the Army lawyer that acted as his public defender during his court-martial. Although some Americans had said he deserved to be shot for treason, Jenkins feels that the 30-day prison sentence he received was fair, considering the 40 years he spent as a virtual prisoner inside North Korea.

Through my previous experiences reading about him in Time Magazine, seeing him on numerous Japanese television shows, and even watching a Japanese made-for-TV movie based on the book, I knew quite a bit about Jenkins. However, I found that the movie had left out a lot of interesting stories, particularly those relating to Jenkins’ release from North Korea and his court-martial at Camp Zama. I felt that the book was worth the time and money spend on it, and I’d recommend it to readers interested in finding out about life inside the world’s most reclusive and weird country.

Jenkins’ book is available on Amazon.com. Those interested should also check out Crossing the Line, a documentary about one of the other Americans who defected to North Korea.

A review of Nobuko Takagi‘s Translucent Tree, which has just been published in English by Vertical Inc:

I teach English in Japan, a common task for English speaking ex-pats here. As common is my task to stop my kids from reading non-English books during class—usually the girls. Cutesy books with pink covers and hearts and such. And though Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi is not a cutesy book, it is similar in having a very attractive cover, and, I can surmise, similar content as the high-school Japanese romance tales of my students—if, perhaps, a bit more aged—and probably no less racy.

The story is centered around divorced Chigiri, a suburban middle-aged mother taking care of her teenage daughter, Mayu, and her ailing father Kaho. Her life is mundane and rather hopeless until Go, a TV producer from Tokyo, pays a visit to her town and the tree they shared time under some twenty years back after a TV commercial shoot. His remembrances of her, the tree, and the long unrequited love stir both of their hearts to fumbling action as they re-discover some kind of love between them.

I had always wondered what kinds of books would appeal to those kids in my classes. Translucent Tree is a decently written tale, at least so far as my English translation can attest—though I fear there may be some art in the telling lost in translation. Go and Chigiri are at least properly flawed characters that can keep you hoping that they’ll find a way out of their self imposed cultural and communicative prisons.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they did. At least, not all the way.

I’m sure it’s not the fate of every Japanese romance that the most important information an intimate couple can share goes universally unsaid (though, perhaps it is of literature), but this couple at least commits to it. Most opportunities the characters are given to reveal their selves to each other, and thus perhaps find some small moment of authentic intimacy, are constantly thwarted, and it becomes a hard tale to hope for. By the end, it would seem the only method left for them is to redeem them selves in the closed, dark box of obsession or death—the two essentially being the same.

I don’t mean for this to be a poor review of the book. A tragedy with this much sex in it isn’t so bad—even if the development of that intimacy is terribly strained (and at least a portrayal of some of the cultural influences involved). I am happy that it’s the story of a middle aged couple, and doesn’t shy away from satisfying the reader of that difficulty. The two do eventually seem to come to some fleeting revelations of change, but not ones that seem to sustain themselves.

Fleeting moments of memory are sometimes the best some have to hope for—as is the case for Chigiri and Go. And though this seems to be enough for them, or at least all they are capable, it leaves me wanting a bit more from the story as well. Their only hope for happiness seems preserved in a certain kind of honor and the future hope that others, perhaps in Mayu, will figure it out some better way. But, as fleeting moments of happiness go, I guess that is the point.

Translucent Tree is available through Amazon.com. If you want to try before you buy, check out the free preview of this book at Vertical.

Vertical Inc has been doing some great work publishing English translations of popular Japanese literature and comic books. Back in February, Claytonian reviewed their release of a Takeshi Kitano book, and today I’ll be reviewing Shinjuku Shark, a mystery/thriller novel by Arimasa Osawa.

Here’s the official summary of the plot:

In the seedy Shinjuku district of Tokyo, Detective Samejima silently stalks his prey. To the yakuza gangsters he is the “shark” for his relentless pursuit of justice regardless of the cost. To his superiors, he is a thorn not to be pulled; his dismissal could unleash secrets capable of tearing down the force. None will be his partner, a risky proposition made more dangerous by their rough turf.

But now there’s a serial killer on the streets, and he’s hunting police officers. While the force will lose not only more men but its face if the spree continues, the use of a mysterious firearm stymies the investigation. Samejima is forced to choose between keeping to his maverick ways and working with HQ.

If it sounds cool, it’s probably because it is. Shinjuku Shark won a Japan Mystery Writers Association Award when it was published in 1990, and it has since spawned a series that is now up to its 9th book. Osawa’s Tokyo is a seedy place infested with yakuza, prostitutes, and corrupt law enforcement, and although he claims it is not based on reality, it is entertaining to read about. Inspector Samejima is not a particularly deep character, but one can’t help but cheer him on as he faces off against crooked cops and criminals in the streets of Shinjuku. If you’re into fast-paced crime novels, you should definitely check this one out.

Side note: Vertical will be releasing a translation of the second installment in the series, Shinjuku Shark 2: The Poison Ape, in August.

I recently received a copy of the book Sensei-tional! Confessions of English Teachers in Japan, which has the following description on its back cover:

“The vast majority of English teachers in Japan are horny and hedonistic travellers, desperate to delay their adulthood by drinking as much as is humanly possible and shagging anything with a pulse.”

Outrageous, grotesque, and frequently hilarious, “Sensei-tional” is a collection of true tales about the misadventures of language teachers in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Rex Chesney has been teaching in Tokyo for several years and here he compiles the most jaw-dropping anecdotes he has heard from his colleagues or experienced himself. Stories of drunkenness, debauchery and ineptitude, with a cast of gangsters, stalkers, transsexuals and hyperactive five-year-olds.

When you are an English teacher in Japan, anything can happen.

As the title of his book suggests, Rex Chesney’s book is a collection of wacky and sensational stories from the eikaiwa world, with special emphasis on Nova. The English teachers in his book regularly show up to work drunk, seduce their students, pass out drunk on the subway, and commit petty crimes. Chesney also tells tales of the terrible students, employees, and cops as well.

After reading the back cover the the book and the wild generalization it made about foreign English teachers in Japan, I really wanted to hate this book. However, it’s pretty clear that the focus of this book is ridiculous comedy, and few people who buy this book would be seeking a fair or accurate picture of what life is like in Japan for most English teachers. Several of the stories are actually amusing, especially when they’ve got illustrations such as the one below:

Near the end of the book, Chesney concedes that there are some decent individuals among the English teachers in Japan, which he calls “a few good apples floating in the barrel of scum.” It seems he doesn’t consider himself one of those apples.

Sensei-tional can be found at Amazon.com and Lulu.

For those of you living in the Tokyo area, with an interest in Japan, cycling or both, there is an event coming up this weekend which will look at an extraordinary adventure.

Leigh Norrie an English teacher decided to take a ride on his bike. Not just any ride, mind you. he decided to ride all the way across Japan. Riding through all 47 prefectures (including the 2 fus, the do and to). Starting in Saitama and working his way north all the way to Hokkaido, and then back down the Sea of Japan coast as far as Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa (it is safe to assume some ferries were involved here). The adventure took over a year of careful planning, a lot of which went by the wayside, and some great stories afterward. As Norrie said, “I wanted to experiment on myself by going on a long, tough adventure, completely self-reliant and alone.”

Once the ride was done Norrie sat down and decided that he needed to gather all his journal entries together and collate then in a book “Japan—6,000 Miles on a Bicycle”.

Some of these stories involve the usual, getting caught sleeping in people’s backyards, meeting up with other random travelers and cyclists along the way. One section, however, displays just how tough this journey must have been. The author gets caught trying to ride along the coast during a typhoon in September 2005:

I could hear myself breathing heavily, as though earplugs had just exploded out of my lugholes. The trees around me were dancing wildly, but it was deathly silent. I started making a video diary as the sun burst through a skylight in the chaos above my head. A few minutes later—overpowering gusts made me curse, laugh and scream at the same time. Everything about this day will stay with me forever: the incredible, sinister sound of wind whistling and groaning through the barriers and branches; the sight of the grass on the banks moving like a helicopter was taking off; and the awesome sight of the ocean escaping into the coastline. This was a living beast and I had total and utmost respect. Everything that’s important in life was suddenly thrust into my eyeballs.

Episodes like this are captured in such a way that you feel a part of it, and half way through the book, you feel yourself willing Leigh on for those few more thrusts of the pedals necessary to get him to the next town and the warm comfort of a hotel, if there is a room available.

The book is to be launched at 6pm on Sunday May 18, at “What the Dickens” in Ebisu. Entry is ¥2500 per person which entitles the purchaser to a copy of the book and a drink. 25% of all money taken will go to the Chi-ki Children’s Foundation, a very worthwhile cause. Hope to see you all there!

Looking through Japan-related new releases on Amazon.com today, I found that Kenneth B. Pyle’s “Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose” has been reprinted in paperback:

Japan is on the verge of a sea change. After more than fifty years of national pacifism and isolation including the “lost decade” of the 1990s, Japan is quietly, stealthily awakening. As Japan prepares to become a major player in the strategic struggles of the 21st century, critical questions arise about its motivations. What are the driving forces that influence how Japan will act in the international system? Are there recurrent patterns that will help explain how Japan will respond to the emerging environment of world politics?

American understanding of Japanese character and purpose has been tenuous at best. We have repeatedly underestimated Japan in the realm of foreign policy. Now as Japan shows signs of vitality and international engagement, it is more important than ever that we understand the forces that drive Japan. In Japan Rising, renowned expert Kenneth Pyle identities the common threads that bind the divergent strategies of modern Japan, providing essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how Japan arrived at this moment—and what to expect in the future.

Having recently read and enjoyed the hardcover edition of it, I recommend the new reasonably priced edition to anyone interested in Japanese history and international relations.

You can find out more about Beat Takeshi’s Boy here.
You can find out more about Big Dreams Little Tokyo here (also filled with the type of music I talked about).