Human Acts

Han Kang, 2014 [Deborah Smith, 2016]

(May 2017)

  

Despite the facts that South Korea is just across the water from the island I currently call home, and that aspects of its history loom (disproportionately?) large in the realm of Japan’s diplomatic efforts, I understand its recent past in only the broadest of strokes.

A Grain of Wheat

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1967 [1986]

(March 2017)

  

Set in and around the Mau Mau Rebellion which preceded Kenyan independence, an incident I’d previously heard of but know shamefully little about. Political dimensions aside, what’s surprising about this book is just how much it sweeps, despite its relatively short length (barely 240 pages). I was expecting the politics, I wasn’t expecting the melodrama, nor was I expecting them to mesh quite as well as they did.

The Vegetarian

Han Kang, 2007 [Deborah Smith, 2015]

(August, 2016)

  

Neither a pleasant nor an easy read. Extraordinarily well written, but in many ways that just makes it worse.

No Ghosts in This City

Uddipana Goswami, 2014

(February 2016)

  

A slim and brutal volume of short stories in and about the Indian state of Assam. If, as I was, you are a little hazy on the details, Assam is in the North East of the country, in that strange island of India wedged above Bangladesh, and almost entirely sundered from the rest of the country except for a slim corridor along the Brahmaputra.

  

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.

The Yellow Birds

Kevin Powers, 2012

(July 2015)

  

Much vaunted, this, and not undeservedly so. I need more time to roll it around my head, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for the deep and meaningful analysis (on which note, I’m definitely not a fan of the increasingly prevalent gimmick of adding book club discussion notes to the back any lit-fic paperback that didn’t tank on initial release).

Beasts of No Nation

Uzodinma Iweala, 2005

(November 2014)

Fucking hell. Not an easy read, this. Harrowing, frequently appalling, and just downright distressing, but then given it’s about a child soldier press-ganged into conflict in an unnamed African country those are exactly all the things it should be.

Out, Damned Spot

Or, Believing Your Own Bullshit

So this is going to be about the Comfort Women (again). And as an added topical extra I’m also going to be talking about #gamergate. If you find either of those two terms meaningful and want to back out now I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.

The Shock of the New

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything specifically about Japan, but then this categorically isn’t a blog about Japan, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I don’t. No, YOU shut up. Anyway, the reasons for this go beyond just a lack of time. The simple truth is that I’ve been keeping this blog for almost three years now and it really feels like I’ve covered most of the stuff in the news already.

Choice

So then. Toru Hashimoto. The man makes my face hurt. Seriously, it’s a genuine physical reaction every time I see him on TV or in the newspapers or on the internet or in my dreams and still waking nightmares smiling with his smug self-obsessed areshole of a face with the same blissfully ignorant grin you see on the face of a toddler who’s just taken a crap in the middle of the living room carpet and is now pointing at it with witless pride and expecting congratulations because he’s made the entire house stink of shit, and he did it all by himself.

…and a Weeding

2.    Achievement Unlocked

Americans, they know how to do a revolution properly. Well, almost. Even theirs wouldn’t have taken without considerable help from the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys (how soon we forget). Still, given the choice between national origin myths – the British desire for secret privilege granted by right of birth and the American kicking against authority and repression – and I know which I would choose.

  

Bully

So another Japanese kid has committed suicide because of issues at school. Like Japanese prime ministerial resignations or American gun massacres, it’s yet another of those events that seem to roll around so regularly that, while on an intellectual level you know you should care to some degree, in actuality it’s hard to summon up more than a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders. Even a real shrug feels like too much effort.

Flagrant Copyright Violations

Christmas lessons are, as I’ve previously hinted at, tricky little fuckers. Quite apart from all the cultural baggage which you may or may not bring to the table, the timing is generally a bit awkward as well; sandwiched as they usually are around end-of-year exams and the end of term itself.

Who Fears Death

Nnedi Okorafor, 2010

(October 2012)

A confession: I’m pretty crap with blood. Though that’s not right, really. I’ve spilled enough of my own, as well as dealt with other people spilling theirs, to know that the actuality of blood is something I can manage with the minimum of fuss.

Fight! Fight!

Y’see, this is how it happens. You read a blog post the first time and make a good humoured and mildly sarcastic comment. Then you check back a little while later and read a couple of other comments. But, crucially, you than get called away to change a nappy or give the kid a bath or something. And because these aren’t the most intellectually stimulating activities, your mind rehashes and dwells upon whatever it was you were thinking about last.

When your parental duties have been discharged, you return to the post and start to write a reply containing everything you’ve been kicking around for the last half-hour or so. A reply so witty, erudite, and compelling that only the most entrenched ideologue would fail to be convinced by its brilliance. And then you realize that, for all its brilliance, it’s probably going to be close to a thousand words long. There’s a word for people who leave thousand word comments on other people’s blogs. Several words, in fact, none of them good. So then you hit delete.

Offensive Things - Number Two

2. Getting Their Attention

This half-hearted attempt at an ongoing series is an effort to put some of my scrappier thoughts into some kind of order. As such, please don’t view anything here as concrete or a final position. Comments, thoughts, and any help in imposing some sort of order are all very welcome. Frankly I’m in still in two minds about whether to post this at all, if nothing else because it’s even more self-obsessed and introspective than usual. But we’re all adults here, so let’s see how this goes.

Potential trigger warnings. I hope that means nothing to you, as it did for me only a short time ago.

In Cold Blood

A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences

Truman Capote, 1966

(March 2011)

I started reading this after Jessie Lamb, before realizing I wasn’t quite in the mood and needed something cheerier. Then the film adaptation pops up in 69 as an hilariously self-inflicted cock-block, which I took as a sign not to take too long in getting back to it.