Facing the Bridge

Yoko Tawada, 1993-2000 
[Margaret Mitsutani, 2007]

(January 2018)

After my first experience reading Tawada was something of a qualified success, I decided to try again with this older collection of three longish short stories. In summary, it confirms what I think I already knew—she’s an intriguing writer, and one worth engaging with, but not one I’ll ever really love. There’s just a little too much distance in her work, too much detachment to engage on that more emotional level. To be fair though, that’s probably deliberate.

Unlike Memoirs of a Polar Bear, the stories here have been translated into English straight from their original Japanese, rather than passing through German on the way. Germany still features prominently in the first tale, though, as it splices the life of (the real-life) Anton Wilhelm Amo with the experiences of (the fictional) Tamao, a Japanese exchange student studying in Leipzig.

Infomocracy

Malka Older, 2016

(December 2017)

The first of Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle, the last of which comes out this summer. Given all the other trilogies I’ve still to catch up on, starting a new one seems like a bit of a leap of faith, but I’m very glad I did. The “relate it to what the reader knows” tagline would be something like “Snow Crash meets The West Wing,” in that Older takes the almost throw-away concept of micropolities from Stevenson’s book and then explores that through the slightly melodramatic viewpoints of young political operatives working behind the scenes. The two main PoV characters are Ken, a fixer for the broadly progressive Policy1st party, and Mishima, a security chief for Information.

Following a worldwide conflict of some sort (Isn't it always?), the world's governance has been reconfigured into a kind of global first past the post system. Each constituency is an even 100,000 people, which obviously mans that they're packed very tight in urban areas and cover large swathes of wilderness. In major cities the laws thus change from block to block, à la Snow Crash. There are global elections once every decade, and campaign for the third such is in full swing. These are policed by Information, which is essentially Google with its own police force, and the closest thing this world has to a global bureaucracy.

Crossfire

Miyuki Miyabe, 1998 [Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi and Anna Husson Isozaki, 2005]

(December 2017)

I'm branching out! (Slowly.) I've a guest review of this over at Rachel Cordasco's excellent SF in Translation site. It was an interesting, if often flawed, read. The book. Not the site, which is excellent. Did I mention that?

Spring Garden / Ms Ice Sandwich

Tomoka Shibasaki, 2014 [Polly Barton, 2017]

Mieko Kawakami, 2013 [Louise Heal Kawai, 2017]

(December 2017)

Another couple of books from Pushkin Press's lovely Japanese Novella series.

Red Girls

The Legend of the Akakuchibas

Kazuki Sakuraba, 2006 [Jocelyne Allen, 2015]

(June 2017)

Red Girls is a family saga, spanning sixty years in the town of Benimidori. It’s a company town, built around steelworks owned by the titular Akakuchibas, and we follow the family’s rise and, if not decline, then stagnation, as three generations of its women (and the town itself) exemplify the experiences of post-war Japan as a whole. This fictional community, it’s probably worth mentioning, is located on the very real, very provincial San’in coast of Chugoku, which is not so very far from where I live now.

Asura Girl / A Clockwork Orange

Otaro Maijo, 2003 [Stephen Snyder, 2014]

Anthony Burgess, 1962

(May 2017)

Japanese ghosts will fuck you up.

Hotel Iris

Yoko Ogawa, 1996 [Stephen Snyder, 2010]

(March 2017)

Odd little Lolita-esque novella about a bored and repressed high school dropout getting into a sadomasochistic relationship with an elderly man. Divertingly uncomfortable in and of itself, but to be honest the thing that sticks in my mind the most is how the blurb on the back gives away plot points that don’t occur until three pages before the end. I get that the constant cry of “Spoilers!” can be pretty tedious, but really. Three pages from the end.

Record of a Night Too Brief

Hiromi Kawakami, 1996 [Lucy North, 2017]

(March 2017)

On the one hand, I loved this, on the other, I found myself in a broadly grudging agreement with Ishihara Shintaro, which those of you who know me (and him) will understand is not a position I ever really wanted to find myself in.

Izanami's Choice

Adam Heine, 2016
(November 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Robots and ronin. Solid action, but not much else.

Death Sentences

Kawamata Chiaki, 1984 [Thomas Lamarre & Kazuko Y. Behrens, 2012]

(January 2017)

Death Sentences is, at least as far as plot goes, about a poem that causes anyone to read it to die. The blurb suggests that this conceit is shared with The Ring, but for me the obvious comparator is Monty Python:

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Ken Liu, 2016
(May 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. It's very good.

United States of Japan

& The Man in the High Castle
Peter Tieryas, 2016

Philip K. Dick, 1962

(August 2016)

The first time I read The Man in the High Castle was way back, before I ever imagined I might end up living in Japan. Reading it a second time, it became apparent that there was a hell of a lot I missed, in terms of both the Japan-related stuff and just as a side-effect of being younger and dumber. The plan, however, was merely to refresh my memory before moving on to United States of Japan, which is something of a tribute/homage/reimagining of Dick’s seminal work. I wasn’t really going to talk much about the latter, except to the degree it informs USJ.

Spring 2016 Comics

(April/May 2016)

The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 3: Commercial Suicide

Kieron Gillen et al, 2016

Rat Queens Vol. 3: Demons

Kurtis Wiebe et al, 2016

Occupied City

David Peace, 2009

(April 2016)

The sequel to Tokyo Year Zero, and apparently the middle volume of a planned ‘Tokyo Trilogy’, though given the continued absence of a final volume it’s probably better if we don’t hold our collective breath on that score.

Strange Weather in Tokyo

Hiromi Kawakami, 2001 [Allison Markin Powell, 2013]

(November 2015)

Look, I’m as hacked off as the next man by the tendency for every Japanese author translated into English to get compared to Haruki Murakami, as if he’s the only author from the 10^th most populous country in the world. Here, however, I think it might actually be justified.

10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights

Ryu Mitsuse, 1973 [Alexander O. Smith and Elye J. Alexander, 2011]

(August 2015)

  

I invite you to marvel dumbfounded at the depth of my ignorance and the height of my hubris, as I attempt to mix it with people far, far smarter than me over at the Strange Horizons Book Club.

When the Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka, 2002

(August 2015)

  

You’ll recall that I was blown away by The Buddha in the Attic, which you could say acts as something of a prequel to this. Emperor isn’t quite up to those rarified standards, but is still a very good book, dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and so reading this during early August just added to the normal merry-go-round of opinion and counter-opinion regarding the end of the Pacific war. Once again, I'm quite glad I’ve got the excuse of these bite-sized holiday round-up posts to let me avoid expanding on that, to be honest.

China's War with Japan

1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival

Rana Mitter, 2013

(July 2015)

Holidays are over. I'm sure you're delighted, because this means that not only do you have a maudlin and self-indulgent State of the Nation/Family/Self post to look forward to in the next couple of weeks, but I'm also going to be indulging my slightly obsessive record-keeping streak with individual updates for my summer reading. Hurrah!

The Goddess Chronicle

Natsuo Kirino, 2008 [Rebecca Copeland, 2012]

(July 2015)

  

As I write this it’s mere hours after the Nadeshiko have been rather freakishly drubbed in the World Cup final, so it’s fitting that we return once again to the subject of gender relations in Japan, and especially so that we do it in consideration of a book whose notionally feminist message I am decidedly ambivalent about.

Honest Abe

Abe Shinzo gave a speech to congress a couple of days ago, and now I am conflicted.