Kanji of the Year 2018, by Eve Kushner

 

Every December, a Kyoto-based kanji organization chooses a kanji that best represents the feeling of the past 12 months. For 2018 the winner was 災, which indicates “disaster.”

Last year Mother Nature walloped Japan with floods, typhoons, earthquakes, and a record-breaking heatwave, all of them proving fatal. As if that weren’t enough, there was recently a massive explosion in a Sapporo restaurant, injuring dozens.

Given all that, the selection of 災 seems quite apt. But I can’t help thinking that while 災 represents something terrible, this shape is far too cute for what it depicts.

The top of the character represents a “river,” which means “flood” in this context, according to Henshall’s A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. The bottom shape means “fire.” Fires and floods are symbols of disasters, he adds.

The 災 kanji has two Jouyou readings, サイ (sai) and  わざわ•い (wazawa•i). To me the latter pronunciation sounds like someone’s reaction to a catastrophe: “WAZZUP with all this destruction?! WHY?

We find わざわ•い (wazawa•i) in this phrase:

不測の災い (ふそくのわざわい or fusokunowazawai: unexpected disaster)     not + expected + disaster

Aren’t almost all disasters unexpected? I mean, one can see a typhoon in the forecast, and these days one can anticipate that major storms will wreak havoc, especially in low-lying or otherwise vulnerable areas. Even so, I doubt anybody ever really expects a massive catastrophe (because we’re great at burying our heads in the sand), even though we probably should.

The term 不測の災い reminds me of a joke by comedian George Wallace, who is known for his catchphrase “People say stupid things.” One bit goes like this (and I’m working from memory here):

People say stupid things! They say things like, “He died of an untimely heart attack.” Well, of course it was untimely. Who looks at their watch and says, “Any minute now… It’s about time for that heart attack I’ve been expecting”?

Then again, Japan is disaster-prone, so the Japanese should probably be on guard more than most. Because disasters occur so frequently in that country, this is a common term:

防災 (ぼうさい or bousai: disaster prevention)     prevention + disaster

In this photo below of an ema votive plaque, 災 appears in the bottom right four-character compound, read top to bottom as 無病息災 (むびょうそくさい or mubyousokusai), meaning “no illness.”

(Photo credit: Ulrike Narins)

Here’s a spin-off:

防災頭巾 (ぼうさいずきん or bousaizukin: a protective hood worn during earthquakes and other disasters [to protect the head from falling objects])    prevention + disaster + head + cloth

I’m sure I shouldn’t be joking about any of this stuff, but 防災頭巾 strikes me as funny. Wouldn’t a helmet provide more effective protection than a 巾, which means “cloth”?

I can just imagine the conversation: “Yeah, I’ll be running into a burning building, and yeah, bricks and wood will be raining down on me, but no, I don’t need a hard hat, thanks. I have a magic hoodie to protect me.”

I Googled 防災頭巾, certain that despite the kanji, these protective hoods would turn out to be quite solid. Nope! They look about as protective as bubble wrap.

This topic is rather grim, so let’s examine more cheerful terms involving 災. Here’s one:

一病息災 (いちびょうそくさい or ichibyousokusai)     1 + sickness + breath + disaster

The breakdown certainly doesn’t seem uplifting, but I promise that this term is. What could it mean? Choose one option:

a. After surmounting a serious illness, a person will be fine for life and can breathe freely.
b. Only one person in a family becomes seriously ill, so if someone else already is, you’ll be okay.
c. One who is sick gains an invaluable perspective on what matters in life.
d. The chronically ill take better care of themselves and therefore live longer.

Eve Kushner is author of Crazy for Kanji.

And the answer is:

d. 一病息災 (いちびょうそくさい: 1 + sickness + good health [last two kanji]) means “The chronically ill take better care of themselves and therefore live longer.” I’m really not sure I agree, but let’s focus on kanji matters, not mortality statistics!

Note that I changed the breakdown to reflect that 息災 means “good health.” Various dictionaries indicate that this reading of 息 means “to stop” and was originally a Buddhist term that meant “the Buddha prevents disasters from happening.”

We find 息災 once more in another positive four-character compound, this time at the beginning of the word:

息災延命 (そくさいえんめい or sokusaienmei: health and longevity; enjoying a long and healthy life being untouched by disaster)     good health (first two kanji) + prolonging life (last two kanji)

We can’t hope for much more than that. Except for money. There’s no use in living a long life in brutal poverty.

Here’s hoping all of us have a healthy and prosperous 2019!

About the Author: Eve Kushner is author of Crazy for Kanji: A Student’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters. She also runs the Joy o’ Kanji website.

Zero Plus Two, by Simon Rowe

 

From her flight bag Chiharu Kobayashi drew out a Chanel cosmetic purse and popped its clasp. In front of the mirror she touched up her lashes, eyebrows, then her lips. She examined her teeth and made a mental note to pick up a bottle of Hibiki 17-year in Dubai before the onward leg to Tokyo. Was it only her mother—or did all dentists love malt whisky?

Giggling sounded. Two cabin attendants, immaculate in their midnight blue uniforms and crisp epaulettes, rounded the restroom corner and appeared in the mirror’s reflection. On sighting Kobayashi, their giggles ceased. They bowed respectfully and greeted the woman before them with, ‘Good morning Flight Captain.’

At the coffee kiosk outside, the First, Second and Third Flight Officers afforded her similar reverence, then, together as a single unit, they made their way briskly through the quiet hall towards the boarding gate.

Through the gangway’s porthole windows, Kobayashi glimpsed the A350-900, sleek and gleaming in the Heathrow mist. The sight of the ‘Spirit of Kyoto’ always sent a pang of homesickness through her. And yet, for sentimental reasons, it also set her at ease; Kyoto prefecture was her grandfather’s home.

Outside the aircraft, the First Officer finished his inspection and gave Kobayashi the thumbs up. She stowed her logbook, took a few moments to programme the autopilot and made a final call to Air Traffic Control to confirm weather conditions. Last, but not at all least, she assembled the crew in the galley to wish them well for the flight. It was her ritual; her grandfather had done the same during the Pacific War.

Back in the cockpit, she called the ATC for ‘start-up and pushback’ clearance. She initiated the first of her two Rolls Royce engines, then the second, and after a short taxi to the apron, waited, watching the golden dawn sweeping the fog from the English countryside. The tower gave the all-clear. She moved the thrust levers and felt the big engines respond. With nothing but blue sky ahead and three hundred and seventy kilonewtons of thrust behind, her manicured fingers gripped the throttle, shifted it smoothly forward, and there it was—more than the elation of mastery over machine—that freedom to soar.

The English Channel slid beneath her, the French coastline next, and soon the patchworked farmlands of Normandy were lost to the clouds. She brought the aircraft to 30,000 feet, levelled out and handed over control to the computer. Hot coffee arrived. She cupped its warmth in her hands, marvelling at the sea of altocumulus ahead of her. It recalled the valleylands of Kyoto in winter, when, many years ago, she’d gone to visit her grandfather for the last time.

A green Toyota made its way along an icy road. Snow-covered fields of rice stalk ran to the base of mountains on each side. At a railway crossing, the car halted and from a tunnel a red two-carriage diesel train burst with plumes of white powder into the bright morning light. Wrapped in a pink bomber jacket and wearing a knit cap, the young girl seated in the back of the car looked sullen; neither the landscape nor the funny-looking train held for her any mystery or intrigue.

The car turned into a driveway and a few moments later stopped outside a large wooden and tiled-roof homestead. Craggy rocks jutted from an ornamental garden. There were stone lanterns, plum and cherry trees, and a pine whose trunk had been coaxed into an archway. To a youthful mind it might have harboured dragons, fairies and goblins. But to the young girl peering out of the car window, it was simply a garden—cold, still and lifeless.

A kitchen curtain ruffled, a face appeared, then was gone. The entranceway door slid back and framed in the doorway a small woman wearing a faded blue smock and apron appeared, all red-cheeks and smiles. The young girl’s mother got out of the car and ran to embrace the old woman. They exchanged greetings then turned around.

‘Chiharu! Come and say hello to your grandmother!’

The car door swung open, the girl got out and walked towards the women. She swung a backpack beside her, dragging its small Totoro figurine in the snow.

‘Who’s this young woman?’ said the old woman. ‘Look how she’s grown! I hardly recognise you from the photos.’ She stepped forward, hugged her, and the small body softened within her embrace.

‘Let me see, you must be nine by now?’ the old woman said.

The girl nodded, smiled shyly.

‘Well come in, come in! Let’s meet your grandfather. He’s been waiting.’

The homestead was warm and dim inside. Kerosene fumes, the aromas of steaming rice and incense fought for air superiority as they moved deeper into the house. Chiharu looked about at the earthen walls, the crooked ceiling beams and the paper sliding doors—so different to her two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo, so quiet and still.

The three of them reached the center of the house and the grandmother slid back a door. Sunlight flooded through the windows and onto the tatami mats of a large living room. The snowbound garden outside seemed otherworldly. In one corner of the room, a sacred alcove held a hanging scroll of a tiger crouching in bamboo; beneath this a set of deer antlers stood with a samurai sword cradled in the horns.

Chiharu’s attention moved to the opposite corner and a purring kerosene heater; a flask of sake bubbling on its mantle. Her gaze was suddenly arrested by a stirring movement at the low table in front of her. She hadn’t noticed the body tucked beneath the futon of the kotatsu. Slowly, it rose and turned.

‘O-tosan,’ her grandmother said, ‘They’re here! It’s Megumi and Chiharu.’

The old man wore a strange leather hat—the kind that Chinese or Russian people wear in winter. Lined with wool, the side flaps curled up like dog ears. The old man’s eyes were watery, his skin ivory-coloured. Though he smiled, he seemed at first not to see them.

The girl’s mother rushed forward to embrace him. They talked in whispers for a short while, her mother tearfully holding his hand, until the grandmother said, ‘And look at Chiharu! The last time you saw her was three years ago, remember?’

The old man turned and studied the girl, and his expression changed, as if something from long again had been suddenly recalled.’

‘Chiharu,’ he said in a raspy croak.

‘Hello Grandpa.’

He motioned her closer, holding out his dry, creased hand until he felt hers, and gripped it.

‘You’re a young woman…’

Chiharu giggled.

‘Would you bring my sake over there?’

‘Don’t be silly!’ said the grandmother. ‘She’ll burn herself.’ The old woman took a cloth from the table, lifted the flask from the heater and carried it to the table.

‘Did you take your medicine?’ Chiharu’s mother asked.

‘This is my medicine,’ he said, fingering the hot flask.

‘How’s your heart?’

‘Still ticking.’

‘Well, just don’t drink too much, alright?’

He nodded, grunting in the affirmative, but winked slyly at Chiharu.

The two women moved to the kitchen, chattering as they prepared refreshments. The old man patted the futon beside him.

‘Sit down here,’ he said.

Chiharu obeyed, tucking her feet into the table’s warm depths beside him.

‘How was your trip?’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘You like Tokyo?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must be an elementary school student now?’

She nodded.

‘You like school?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got a favourite subject?’

‘Science.’

‘I liked science too. When I was young I wanted to be a scientist and build things.’

She said nothing and he leaned closer to her, so that she could smell the land on his body, the sake on his breath.

‘What do you want to be when you get older?’

She smiled shyly.

‘An engineer? A nurse? A dentist, like your mother?

She shook her head.

He reached for his sake cup, an odd-shaped vessel fashioned from brown clay.

‘Would you pour my sake? My hands, they’re a little shaky.’

She lifted the flask, hot beneath her fingers, and poured with precision—not a drop spilled.

‘Well done,’ he smiled, then raised his cup and slurped noisily.

They sat in silence for a while, then she asked, ‘Why do you wear that funny hat?’

‘This?’ He patted the strange headgear. ‘This is the only thing that keeps my head warm in winter.’ He lifted it from his blotchy pink head and placed it on her hers.

‘This is a pilot’s hat,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.

‘It is, you know. It’s a Japanese Imperial Navy flier’s hat.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘It’s mine.’

‘It smells funny.’

He chuckled, watching her small fingers explore the creases, the furrows and mysterious lines in the leather, as if tracing routes on an old map. He lifted the sake cup to his lips, drained it, and rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘Toilet,’ he said.

He was gone a long time. From the kitchen Chiharu heard snatches of conversation, words like “divorce” and “separately”, words she’d heard shouted with ferocity between warring parties late at night in their Tokyo apartment. She got up and crossed to a low bookshelf which ran against the wall. Her fingers danced across the volumes of old books, stopped, and plucked one out. She mouthed the title, ‘Taiheiyo Senso.’ She thumbed the soft, worn pages of black and white images and stopped at a double-page spread. For a while she studied the photo carefully: a line of highschool girls waving branches of cherry blossoms at a young pilot readying his plane for take-off on a grass airstrip.

‘Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa.’

His voice startled her. She turned quickly to find him staring down.

‘You know what means?’ he said.

Hayabusa? It’s a bird,’ she said.

‘Good, good! Most kids these days think it’s a motorbike or a bullet train…’

‘It’s the fastest bird in the world.’

‘So it is, so it is. You’re very clever.’

‘You really were a pilot?’

The old man seated himself, pulled the kotatsu futon over his legs and again reached for his sake flask. He poured a cup, spilling droplets on the table, and took a sip. He looked outside at the frozen fields.

‘Yes, I was.’

‘You flew the Hayabusa?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘The best plane Japan ever made—a Zero.’

Chiharu turned back to the book and thumbed the pages, but there were no more images of planes, only photographs of dead men on beaches, dirty-faced children and ruined cities.

‘The book with gold letters, see it?’ He pointed to the top shelf.

Chiharu replaced the book and reached up. It was heavy, but with some effort she laid it on the table in front of him.

‘The Mitsubishi Zero A6M5c.’ He lifted the cover and turned the pages. ‘Fast, light—powerful.’

Chiharu moved closer, peering at the images of a plane so simple in shape and design that it might have been an outline in a child’s sketchbook.

At that moment, the two women returned carrying a tray of cups with a teapot on it, and a wooden bowl filled with rice crackers.

‘What’s that, Chiharu?’ said her mother.

‘O-tosan…’ the grandmother said gravely.

‘She’s interested in planes…’ he said.

‘She’s more interested in birds, aren’t you Chiharu?’ said her mother, setting down the tray and pouring the steaming hojicha into small cups. ‘Problem is, in Tokyo there aren’t many.’

‘Yes there are! There are bulbuls and sparrows and crows…’ said Chiharu.

The grandmother passed her the snacks, ‘Help yourself, Chiharu,’ she said. They took their tea and slurped it noisily.

‘Look!’ said the grandfather. The three women turned to the garden, where a small bird with metallic green plumage and a white ring around its eye flitted among the branches of the plum tree.

‘Know what kind of bird that is?’ said the grandfather.

‘Mejiro,’ Chiharu said.

‘That’s right!’ The old man clapped his hands.

‘Funny, I’ve never seen one in Tokyo,’ said her mother.

‘How did you know that?’ said the grandmother.

‘From the library.’

‘Ah yes…of course. That’s where you spend all your time,’ said her mother.

‘What about sports?’ asked the grandmother. ‘Don’t you play table tennis or badminton with your friends?’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘No friends?’ The grandfather looked incredulous.

Her mother sighed. ‘The neighborhood kids are all too busy with cram schools, ballet, violin lessons—’

‘Hooaka!’ Chiharu cried. The adults turned back to the garden. Sure enough, a second bird, larger with a light brown plumage a black-and-white striped head, had joined the first. For a moment they danced madly, loosening plumes of snow powder from the tree branches, and then were gone.

‘They come down from the mountains looking for insects and farm seeds,’ said the grandfather, slipping a rice cracker into his pocket. ‘Chiharu, let’s take a walk shall we?’

The two women stood at the window watching the old man and the young girl set out across the snow covered field. A small Shinto shrine stood at the base of a forested, snow-dusted mountain in the distance.

‘How is she doing at school?’ asked the grandmother.

‘She’s having a hard time.’

‘Poor thing. Why not move back here? Open a practice downtown. Chiharu can visit us.’

‘Kyoto?’

‘It’s cheaper than Tokyo—and there are lots of birds.’

The girl’s mother sighed, her gaze returning to the two distant figures which now seemed to float on a glistening white plane.

‘Sometimes I wish I was a bird.’

The snow sparkled in the sunlight, mesmerizing the young girl and with each crunching step. She squeezed the old man’s hand and shouted, ‘Wagtail!’, pointing to the shrine up ahead. A persimmon tree grew in its courtyard and about the branches a flittering movement made by a small, bulb-shaped bird with black and white plumage, was visible.

‘You’ve got a good eye,’ he said. ‘Just like a pilot.’

They reached the shrine and entered beneath the torii gate. He pulled a rice cracker from his coat pocket and crumbled it in his hand. He cast the golden crumbs into the air, scattering them over the snow beneath the tree. ‘They’re watching us. You wait, when we’ve gone…’ He looked skyward. Look! A kestrel up there, see?’

Her gaze followed his to a point high over the mountainside where a raptor whirled on the updrafts in slow, graceful arcs.

‘How does it feel to fly, Grandpa?’

‘Free—that’s how it feels.’

‘You were scared?’

‘Oh many times.’

‘Because you might crash?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘Because there were other men up there trying to kill me.’

She looked thoughtful.

‘Come on, let’s go home,’ he said quickly.

‘Aren’t you going to pray at the shrine?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t believe in gods.’ He looked back to the sky, but the kestrel had gone. ‘We’ve fed the birds. Now I’m hungry.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

They made a game out of tracing their footsteps back across the snowy field to the house doorstep where they stomped their boots free of snow.

‘Grandpa…’

‘Yes?’

‘Could we build a Zero?’

‘What?’

‘A model plane, like the one you used to fly. We can buy one—I’ll use my New Year’s gift money.’

‘A Zero? Well, I don’t know—’

‘You can help me build it.’

He stood on the threshold, gazing into her face, so filled with innocence and earnestness that it might have been begging for food.

‘No-one’s ever asked me that before,’ he said quietly.

‘I like birds and planes.’

‘So you do,’ he said. ‘So you do.’ He patted her on the head and together they entered the house.

They stood at the bus shelter the next morning, staring out at a world rendered smooth and formless by the night’s fresh flurries. Mountains, like great big sugar loaves, rose on each side, stark white against the January sky. Icicles dripping from the bus shelter eaves; the sound of running snow melt everywhere. They waited in silence, Chiharu in her pink down feather jacket, the old man in a brown woollen coat and scarf knotted beneath his chin. The bus arrived with its snow-chains rattling and clanking, and soon they too, like the other solemn-looking passengers, peered out at the winter wonderland, each lost in their own private world of thought.

‘I don’t think your grandmother was too happy,’ he said.

‘About what?’ she replied.

‘About us going all the way to the city just to buy a plane.’

‘Neither was mum.’ They looked at each other and giggled.

The valleyland grew wider and wider until a large river appeared and townships and factories sprouted along its banks, and then finally the city reared up, all hustle, lights and noise. They got off at Nishinikaimachi Street in the heart of downtown and the old man took Chiharu’s hand, lead her away from the bright and bustling department stores, and into a covered arcade where ‘old Japan’ somehow still lived and breathed; where elderly shopped for fish still fresh from the Japan Sea and tea leaves from northern Kyoto, roasted and packaged while you waited. They stopped to sample mikan oranges from an old woman outside her fruit emporium; he promised to buy some on his return.

At a chestnut roaster’s stand they stopped to ask directions; a little further on, said the man in the white bandanna and flashing a gold tooth. They arrived outside a corner shop whose sign announced in English, ‘Takata Toys and Stationery’. The grandfather set the doorbell jingling. The interior was dim and stuffy, the aisles narrow and cluttered with toys from another era. To Chiharu, it was a museum.

From behind the counter, an elderly woman greeted them, listened to the grandfather’s question, then directed them to an aisle filled with kit models of battleships, tanks and army men. At the very end they found the aircraft.

‘Chiharu, we’re looking for the Mitsubishi Zero A6M5c…can you see it?’

She pulled out boxes at random, examining each, then sliding it back and pulling out another. She turned it into a quest, a game of matching memory—the picture in her grandfather’s book—with the artist’s painted image on each box.

‘Nakajima Ki-84…’ she said, holding a box up to the light.

Hayate,’ the grandfather said. He took it from her and studied the artist’s impression thoughtfully: an aircraft rising from a seaborne carrier, young men waving white caps from its deck against a red dawn sky.

‘Know what Hayate means?’

‘It’s a manga story.’

He laughed. ‘Not in my day it wasn’t. It was a plane. Hayate means ‘fresh breeze’. I flew one at pilot school in Korea. Not as fast as a Zero, but handled well enough.’

‘What about this?’ she said, sliding a second box onto the one he was holding.

‘It’s a Zero alright. But this one’s an A6M3. I flew the A6M5.’

‘This one!’ she said triumphantly, shoving a third box onto the second so that he now had to hold them away from his eyes to focus. Then something changed in his gaze. A tremor passed through his body, causing his hands to rattle the boxes and almost dropping them. His eyes remained fixed on the artist’s impression of two Zero fighters soaring sideways over a mountainous tropical island, an American Liberator bomber tumbling, flaming, into the sea far below.

‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes, it is.’

‘The pilots have the same hat as you.’

‘Yes, they do…’

‘Grandpa, are you okay?’

‘I am. I just remembered something. Something from a long time ago.’

‘We don’t have to buy it, Grandpa…’

‘No. I promised.’ He passed it to her. ‘Let’s get it.’

After they had picked out glue, brushes and a half-dozen small pots of paint, they handed everything to the old woman who set to work on her abacus.

The air outside in the shopping street was frigid. ‘Hungry?’ he asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said, and so they stopped at a dumpling stall and bought six balls of hot battered octopus each, hoisting them into their mouths, and sipping Cokes to cool their burning tongues.

Snow began to fall and as the bus headed back to the valleylands, through the intermittent blizzards, Chiharu dozed against her grandfather; he with his arm around her, his own eyelids growing heavy with the locomotion of the bus as it rejoined the river. The mountains, once again, reared up like great white sugar loaves. At some point the old man’s eyelids flickered and he uttered a murmur, ‘Hellcat on your tail, Ando. Pull up, pull up, you’re too low …’. His face contorted, he lurched awake and screamed, ‘Andoooo!’

He looked about, at Chiharu wide-eyed and staring up at him. The bus driver, who had pulled over, and passengers all watched him curiously. ‘Sir, are you alright?’ the driver asked over the speaker system. The old man took a deep breath and exhaled slowly; he nodded, bowing his head. ‘I’m sorry.’  

At the bus stop, the mother and grandmother were waiting for them. Inside the car their voices comforting, their inquiries soft and quiet. Chiharu looked at her grandfather, who quickly put a finger to his lips.

After dinner they sat at the kotatsu, watching TV. Chiharu took out the box containing the Zero.

‘What’s this?’ her mother said, frowning. ‘I thought you were going to buy an All Nippon Airways jet.’

‘That mightn’t be such a good idea,’ the grandmother chimed in. ‘For a small girl…’

‘The Zero A6M5c’s maximum speed was five hundred and sixty-five kilometres per hour. It could fly to eight thousand metres in nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds,’ said Chiharu. ‘The Americans called it ‘Zeke’…’

The two older women exchanged glances; they turned to the grandfather, who quickly picked up his sake cup and drank it dry.

Later, as Chiharu lay beneath the heavy futon in the guest room nextdoor, she heard her mother speaking in hushed tones to her grandfather. Snatches of conversation that, even if she could not understand, were plainly clear by their tone; words like, ‘psychological trauma’, ‘dark memories’ and ‘unsuitable for a young girl’. And the quiet rebuke of her grandfather, that the child showed a passion for ‘flight and flying machines,’ that he was once a pilot and he understood this better than anyone…But it was her mother who had the last word. ‘I do not want her hearing old war stories—or building machines of war. She’s a nine-year-old girl for goodness sake!’

Chiharu rose the next morning to a house becalmed. Snow fell in steady veils across the fields outside. She found her grandfather seated at the kotatsu, the flaps of his flier’s hat pulled down over his ears and a flask of sake steaming on the kerosene heater. Spread haphazardly over the table in front of him was a thousand-and-one-piece jigsaw puzzle.

‘Where is everyone?’ she asked.

‘Farmers’ market. Shopping for dinner,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Building Kinkakuji—The Golden Pavilion. Want to help me?’

‘Why don’t we build the plane?’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea. Your mother—’

‘We don’t have to tell them.’

Her gaze held his, and there it was again, that intense look of earnestness and determination. It was too much for him to bear. A conspiratorial smile worked to his lips, as he pulled the box from its hiding place under the kotatsu and placed it on the table.

‘Trouble is, my eyesight is bad and my fingers shake. You’re going to have to help me.’

She joined him on a cushion at the table.

‘The A6M5 Zero was the Imperial Navy’s best fighter plane in the Pacific War,’ he said, producing a small pair of scissors.

‘I painted the pieces last night, after everyone had gone to bed,’ he said.

‘What about the plans?’ she asked.

‘Don’t need plans—I know this plane by heart.’

He passed her the scissors.

‘You can cut out the pieces.’

In a short time, the table top was covered with them, and Chiharu looked with uncertainty at her grandfather.

‘I think we need the plans, Grandpa—’

‘Don’t need plans. I used to fly this, remember? Just follow my directions.’

The snow continued to fall silently, surely, across the mountains, fields and valleylands as they commenced, piece by piece, to assemble the aircraft.

‘This is a Nakajima ‘Sakae’ engine. Eleven-hundred horsepower,’ he said, passing her three round silver disks. ‘Thread these onto the propellor shaft,’ he instructed her. Next, he handed her a set of curled silver-coloured pipes. ‘This is the exhaust propulsion system. Gave a top speed of five hundred and sixty-five kilometres per hour…but you know something? I clocked five-eighty-five once over Rabaul in…let’s see now, that was May 1942.’

‘Where’s Rabaul?’

‘In Papua New Guinea. Right above Australia.’

‘You shot someone?’

‘No, no—I was escaping! One of my guns had jammed, the other was out of ammunition’

He picked up two long black-painted gun barrels. ‘The Zero A6M5 had two seven-point-seven millimetre machine guns and two twenty millimetre belt-fed cannons on each wing,’ he said, holding them away from his eyes. He passed them to her, hands shaking. ‘Now glue the holes in the middle of each wing section and insert these.’

‘Did you travel the world, Grandpa?’

‘During the war?’ He chuckled. ‘Oh, no, no. But I saw more than enough of it, let me tell you. When I was seventeen, I went to the Imperial Navy college in Mie prefecture, and after that to Korea for pilot training. Then I joined the Tainan Air Group and we flew in China, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. After that, I was sent to Yap. You know it?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s a tiny island in Micronesia…’

‘In the Pacific Ocean?’

‘It was beautiful…’ A sudden spasm reached his throat. He coughed, harked, took tissue from the holder and wiped his mouth. ‘But war doesn’t care for beautiful things. The Americans were getting closer and I was eventually sent home to defend the country’ He passed her the left and right wheel units. ‘You know where these go, don’t you?’

She nodded, applied glue to the wing cavities and inserted each wheel strut. He continued, ‘Our name was changed to the 251 Air Group and many of us experienced fliers were ordered to train the younger pilots. I went to Kure.

‘Near Hiroshima?’

‘Yes—Don’t forget the antenna, it goes in that tiny hole near the wing tip.

‘Did you shoot down many planes?’ she asked matter-of-factly, while skillfully pushing the black needle into its hole.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that was my job. I did it because I had to.’

He rose slowly from his cushion and took the steaming flask of sake from the heater’s mantle. He returned to the table and poured his cup full. He raised it to his lips, drops sprinkling the table, until it was dry. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘You’ve done well. Now attach the wings to the body and we’re almost done.’

‘Is that why you had a bad dream on the bus yesterday?’

He poured another cup of sake and, as if to fortify himself, took a sip.

‘We were fighting for our lives by war’s end. I was an instructor, but I flew with our group because we had only eleven pilots left. Just boys, they were. The Americans were close and our losses were terrible. One day we took off, four of us, heading south for Kyushu and I got engine trouble. I turned back, had the engine fixed, and joined the second four Zeros on the runway. But as we prepared to take off, we were attacked. Corsair fighter planes from an American carrier swooped in over the hills, hit us while we were still on the ground. Ando, the Master Sergeant, was shot down on take off. I survived only because I was last in line. I jumped from my cockpit and ran. My plane was hit right after that.’

‘What about the other pilots?’

‘The first three? They never came back. Everyone else was killed…except me.’

He rose from his cushion.

‘Grandpa, where are you going?’

‘I forgot to give you the most important part of the plane—the pilot.’

He returned carrying an old paulownia wood box which he placed on the table. Then he opened it and drew out a folded piece of red and white cloth. Chiharu watched curiously as he spread it across the table.

‘Hinomaru,’ she said quietly, eyeing the old flag. It was covered in the names of men.

‘Those are all the pilots in my group. Fifty-five men. They’re all gone now…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m the only one still alive.’

He took from the box another item—a wristwatch.

‘This is my flier’s watch. It’s a Seikosha. I think it still works. Let’s see…’ He twisted the crown several times and the second-hand leaped forward. ‘It does!’ he said and passed it to her. ‘This is for you. For helping me build the plane.’

‘But you were helping me,’ she said with wide eyes.

‘Oh no!’ he said looking beyond her, out the window. ‘Here they come!’ She followed his gaze, and in the distance, spied the small Toyota now making its way up the long driveway towards the house. ‘Hurry, put everything in the box. We’ll hide it under the kotatsu.’

‘But where’s the pilot?’ she said quickly.

‘Oh, I almost forgot. Here,’ he said. He pulled from his pocket a small figurine and placed it in the palm of her hand. She stared at it, and said. ‘But why did you paint him with a pink jacket?’

‘Because it’s not a ‘him’, it’s you.’ He smiled. ‘Now hurry up, put it in the box before they see.’

She obeyed, and together they quickly cleared the table.

When her mother and grandmother appeared, they were still huffing and puffing from  the weight of the fresh produce boxes they had brought into the kitchen. Sliding back the door to the living room, their expressions turned to surprise.

‘What’s this? All this time and you haven’t even started the jigsaw puzzle?’ said her mother. ‘What have you two been doing?’

‘Just talking,’ Chiharu said.

‘About what?’

‘Flying.’

The grandfather turned back to the window and gazed out at the sunlight now casting through the snow clouds directly onto the roof of the Shinto shrine. It looked almost heavenly.

A shrill scream split the dawn.

Chiharu listened to the sound of hurried steps, moving between rooms, and then the grandmother’s voice into the kitchen telephone, requesting an ambulance.

He had died during the night. Of heart failure, said the doctor—but peacefully. There was nothing that could have been done. What had seemed strange to them all was the paulownia wood box which had been placed at the foot of Chiharu’s futon. Inside, a note written in his hand read,

To Chiharu,

May your spirit soaralways.

Your Grandpa.

Only after the ambulance had pulled away and begun its descent of the valley road, did the mother and grandmother notice her missing. They hurried inside, calling her name, but there came no answer. Then, through the lounge window, they glimpsed a small figure wearing a flyer’s hat and scurrying across the white field. Tied about its neck like a cape, a piece of red and white cloth billowed. Its hand, raised high into the freezing air, held in it what looked like a small airplane.

‘Captain, are you alright?’ The voice sounded beside her. Chiharu Kobayashi jerked upright, still clutching her coffee cup. She looked up at the Third Officer.

‘Yes, yes, I’m quite alright,’ she said, wiping the tears away with her hand.

‘May I take your cup?’ he asked.

She thanked him, then turned back to her console to confirm that all was well with the Spirit of Kyoto. With the altocumulous far below them, the morning sky stretched blue and unfathomable ahead of her. She drew back the cuff of her shirt and examined the old Zero flier’s watch.

It was still ticking.

 

About the Author:

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Simon Rowe’s stories have appeared in TIME (Asia) magazine, the New York Times, the Australian, the South China Morning Post and the Paris Review. He is author of Good Night Papa: Short Stories from Japan and Elsewhere.

Books

Tokyo Kill

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Don’t miss our feature with Barry Lancet in the Hon Podcast: Sense of Place—Tokyo

Barry Lancet’s long-running series of thrillers center around Jim Brodie, and antiques dealer and inheritor of his father’s security company in Tokyo. Real page-turners!

Book 2: Tokyo Kill

In the second thriller of this new series from “a fresh voice in crime fiction” (Kirkus Reviews), antiques dealer-turned-P.I. Jim Brodie matches wits with an elusive group of killers chasing a long-lost treasure that has a dangerous history.

“A stellar novel of action, adventure, and intrigue. Jim Brodie is a true twenty-first century hero…On page after page of Tokyo Kill, skeletons bang on every closet door longing to be set free—and Barry Lancet delivers.”
—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lincoln Myth

“Lancet’s familiarity with Japanese history and culture, combined with his storytelling skills, make this a first-rate mystery…a clear indicator that the author considers Jim Brodie a series-worthy character. He’d be right, too.”
Booklist

“Boasting surefire characters including the taciturn, thick-chested chief detective Noda and notorious crime figure called TNT who owes Brodie favors…[Lancet’s] series remains highly distinctive.”
—Kirkus Reviews

When an elderly World War II veteran shows up unannounced at Brodie Security begging for protection, the staff thinks he’s just a paranoid old man. He offers up a story connected to the war and to Chinese Triads operating in present-day Tokyo, insisting that he and his few surviving army buddies are in danger.

Fresh off his involvement in solving San Francisco’s Japantown murders, antiques dealer Jim Brodie had returned to Tokyo for some R&R, and to hunt down a rare ink painting by the legendary Japanese Zen master Sengai for one of his clients—not to take on another case with his late father’s P.I. firm. But out of respect for the old soldier, Brodie agrees to provide a security detail, thinking it’ll be an easy job and end when the man comes to his senses.

Instead, an unexpected, brutal murder rocks Brodie and his crew, sending them deep into the realm of the Triads, Chinese spies, kendo warriors, and an elusive group of killers whose treachery spans centuries—and who will stop at nothing to complete their mission.

Book 1: JapanTown

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$11.99 on US Kindle or free on Kindle Unlimited

Best of Debut of the Year from Suspense Magazine
Winner of the Barry Award for Best Debut Novel

In this “sophisticated international thriller” (TheNew York Times Book Review), an American antiques-dealer-turned-reluctant-private-eye must use his knowledge of Japanese culture to unravel a major murder in San Francisco—before he and his daughter become targets themselves.

San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie receives a call one night from a friend at the SFPD: an entire family has been senselessly gunned down in the Japantown neighborhood of the bustling city. As an American born and raised in Japan and part-owner of his father’s Tokyo private investigation firm, Brodie has advised the local police in the past, but the near-perfect murders in Japantown are like nothing he’s ever encountered.

With his array of Asian contacts and fluency in Japanese, Brodie follows leads gathered from a shadow powerbroker, a renegade Japanese detective, and the elusive tycoon at the center of the Japantown murders along a trail that takes him from the crime scene in California to terrorized citizens and informants in Japan. Step by step, he unravels a web of intrigue stretching back centuries and unearths a deadly secret that threatens not only his life but also the lives of his entire circle of family and friends. “Readers will want to see more of the talented Jim Brodie, with his expertise in Japanese culture, history, and martial arts” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Book 3: Pacific Burn

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Third in the series, now $8.99 on US Kindle

Japanese antiques dealer and PI Jim Brodie goes up against a killer operating on both sides of the Pacific in Barry Lancet’s Pacific Burn—“a page-turning, globe-spanning tale of murder, suspense, and intrigue that grabs and holds your attention from beginning to end” (Nelson DeMille).

In recognition for his role in solving the Japantown murders in San Francisco, antiques dealer and sometime-PI Jim Brodie has just been brought on as the liaison for the mayor’s new Pacific Rim Friendship Program. Brodie in turn recruits his friend, the renowned Japanese artist Ken Nobuki, and after a promising meeting with city officials and a picture-perfect photo op, Brodie and Nobuki leave City Hall for a waiting limo.

But as soon as they exit the building, a sniper attacks them from the roof of the Asian Art Museum. Brodie soon realizes that, with the suspicious and untimely death of Nobuki’s oldest son a week earlier in Napa Valley, someone may be targeting his friend’s family—and killing them off one by one.

Suspects are nearly too numerous to name—and could be in the United States or anywhere along the Pacific Rim. The quest for answers takes Brodie from his beloved San Francisco to Washington, DC, in a confrontation with the DHS, the CIA, and the FBI; then on to Tokyo, Kyoto, and beyond, in search of what his Japanese sources tell him is a legendary killer in both senses of the word—said to be more rumor than real, but deadlier than anything else they’ve ever encountered if the whispers are true.

In the third book in “what will likely be a long and successful series” (San Francisco Magazine), Barry Lancet delivers his most exciting Jim Brodie novel yet.

Book 4: The Spy Across the Table

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Fourth in the series, now $8.99 on US Kindle

In this fast-paced fourth thriller featuring Japanese antiquities expert Jim Brodie, a double-murder at the Kennedy Center forces the PI into a dangerous game of espionage—putting him in the crosshairs of the Chinese, North Korean, and American governments.

Jim Brodie is an antiques dealer, Japan expert, and second-generation private investigator. When two of his friends are murdered backstage at a Kennedy Center performance in Washington, DC, he’s devastated—and determined to hunt down the killer. He’s not the only one.

After the attack, Brodie is summoned to the White House. The First Lady was the college roommate of one of the victims, and she enlists Brodie—off the books—to use his Japanese connections to track down the assassin. Homeland Security head Tom Swelley is furious that the White House is meddling and wants Brodie off the case. Why? For the same reason a master Chinese spy known only as Zhou, one of the most dangerous men alive, appears on the scene: Those murders were no random act of violence.

Brodie flies to Tokyo to attend the second of two funerals, when his friend’s daughter Anna is kidnapped during the ceremony. It is then Brodie realizes that the murders were simply bait to draw her out of hiding. Anna, it seems, is the key architect of a top-secret NSA program that gathers the personal secrets of America’s most influential leaders. Secrets so damaging that North Korea and China will stop at nothing to get them.

“As usual in a Barry Lancet novel, the action scenes are first-rate…and the knowledge he imparts about Asian politics and culture is deep. A solid, consistently smart thriller” (Kirkus Reviews), The Spy Across the Table takes us on a wild ride around the world and keeps us on the edge of our seats until the very end.

About the Author:

Barry Lancet is a Barry Award­–winning author and finalist for the Shamus Award. He has lived in Japan for more than twenty-five years. His former position as an editor at one of the nation’s largest publishers gave him access to the inner circles in traditional and business fields most outsiders are never granted, and an insider’s view that informs his writing. He is the author of the Jim Brodie series: The Spy Across the TablePacific BurnTokyo Kill; and Japantown, which received four citations for Best First Novel and has been optioned by J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot Productions, in association with Warner Brothers. Visit Lancet at BarryLancet.com or on Twitter @BarryLancet.

Books

Tokyo Style Guide

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One of the most exhilarating and inspiring cities in the world, Tokyo is vast, complex and ever-changing, pulsating with youthful energy. Author Jane Lawson has been travelling to Japan for more than thirty years, and has led many group and private tours to various parts of the country. In Tokyo Style Guide she offers a unique insight into Japan’s culture and aesthetic with her expert guided walks through 21 of the most intriguing and stylish Tokyo neighbourhoods and the best of what they have to offer.

Jane shares information on how to get the most from your trip-what to see and how best to experience it. Tokyo Style Guide is packed with places where you can shop, relax, be inspired, eat and sleep, as well as practical tips to help you prepare for your trip, navigate the city with confidence and make the most of your visit.

An exclusive Books on Asia interview with Jane Lawson

Before we start our interview with Jane, I want to give a little background on my first encounter with her Tokyo Style Guide: Eat, Sleep, Shop. I was traveling in Australia with my husband and we stopped in one of those typical little Aussie towns and wandered into the local bookstore (as you do). It was a tiny store crowded with people. I always go to the Travel shelf first, to see what they have on Japan and there were scant few books (like, three!). One was Tokyo Style Guide.

The first thing that struck me was how beautifully bound the book is. The cover is embossed, and reminds me of Japanese washi paper. The photo art was very appealing. Upon opening the book, I was taken by the quality of the paper, which while thick, didn’t contribute to the weight of the 319-page guide, designed to be light and compact enough to carry in a handbag. My first thought was: A lot of thought and love that went into making this book!

Books on Asia: Once I opened the book and started reading, I was entranced by the writing. I even called my husband over from the other side of the bookstore and said, “Take a look at this!” Being a bit of a stickler for Japanese manners myself, it was rewarding to see your first paragraph on what to wear:

“You’ll quickly notice that the Japanese are rather snappy dressers and, even at their most relaxed, almost always immaculately groomed. So, when you plan your travel wardrobe, bear that in mind in order to feel less self-conscious.”

This paragraph alone showed me how well you know Japan. And that you take some responsibility being a tourist here. You’re telling your reader right away that we’re stepping into a special place, so please take note!

Jane Lawson:  I’ve been living in or travelling around Japan for 35 years and, as you know, the more you know about this fascinating country – the less you know… its layers are deep. Sometimes it’s hard to pull out the basics and pare them back for sharing with first-timers but I felt there was core information required for visitors in accessing the best of Tokyo – and a big part of that is respecting cultural nuances.

BOA: How much of a part of this creative process were you? Did you have any input on the design or cover? Or is Tokyo Style Guide part of a series of such guidebooks of cities around the world?

 Jane: The book is part of a ‘loose’ series but they all have their own personalities. For Tokyo I wanted to break away a little from earlier titles because what translates well for one city doesn’t necessarily work for the next and I felt Tokyo needed to be really user friendly, as a city this busy can be overwhelming. So I broke it into chapters around areas I like to focus on and designed them as structured but flexible walks.  I shot the book while I was researching and plotting out the routes so they are a visual aid as well as an embellishment to the text. I worked closely with the designer to ensure the images gave readers a true ‘feeling’ for each area. The maps look simple but we worked painstakingly on them to make sure they were easy to understand.

BOA: Let’s talk about your “Suggested Walks,” which I really loved. The maps are charmingly simple and easy to understand and you offer a bit of nature and Japanese culture along the way; places for people to take a time-out after ducking in and out of myriad shops all day. You even recommended a cemetery! I love that.

Jane: I designed the walks so readers could get the most out of each area in a balanced way—spending time in a garden or visiting a gorgeous temple, admiring traditional buildings, viewing spectacular art in locations as they naturally fall along each walking route which includes fabulous shopping and excellent coffee, bar and dining options.   If you’re in the middle of a walk and you don’t know where to find a toilet or stop for caffeine or a bite to eat it can ruin the flow and send you on a wild goose chase. I’ve included all the sorts of things I would if I was actually guiding the reader around for the day.

BOA: So, how did you discover Japan?

Jane: I became quickly fascinated during Japanese language and culture classes at high school and at age 15 I visited Japan for the first time with my family. I was completely smitten. Tokyo was mind-blowing even back then! After high school I started working for a Japan Airlines travel subsidiary in Sydney—Jalpak—with mainly Japanese co-workers and excellent staff travel discounts which fed my obsession!

BOA: At some point in your book, you come right out and say that this guide is not for otaku, like gamers, cosplayers and maid cafe dwellers. And I noticed there was only a little bit of kawaii, hardly any Hello Kitty.

Jane: I certainly don’t’ want to alienate anyone but the series is aimed at those who fancy their travel or holidays with a good dose of style, design, beautiful scenery, culture, comfort, great food, coffee, shopping and insider secrets.

BOA: Let’s just do a sampling here of these ‘insider secrets.’ A little quiz, if you like. Ready?

What part of Tokyo would you go to buy wax food models?

Jane: Kappabashi, aka ‘kitchen town,’ very close to Sensōji (or Asakusa Kannon Temple)! It’s great to explore both of them while you are in the Asakusa area.

How about vintage children’s books?

 Jane: There’s a gorgeous little place in Koenji called Ehonya Rusubanbansuru Kaisha – it’s a mouthful but worth seeking out for beautifully illustrated pages with a bit of history.

How about Japanese cooking knives?

Jane: Kappabashi (has several knife specialty stores) but you can also purchase them at Japanese department stores and there’s a good shop in Tokyo Midtown that beautifully displays all kinds of stunning cutting implements for the home.

What if one should have a hankering for natural Japanese cosmetics made with green tea, konyaku starch, and yuzu?

Jane: Oh, in gorgeous Kagurazaka—the atmospheric sloping streets and cobbled laneways of this area, not far from Shinjuku, make this one of my favourite places to wander alone in Tokyo. This previous samurai entertainment quarter still boasts a couple of geisha houses and plenty of traditional stores. Makanai Kosume (cosmetics) is one of them.

BOA: You also recommend some dining precincts tourists rarely get to see, and certain department store gourmet basement dining where one can get the real deal to take back and eat in the hotel room. You really thought of everything!

Jane: Food is an important part of travel experiences as it can offer you great insight into the culture. Sure I recommend a few flash restaurants for those wanting to have a special night out, but it’s the local joints specialising in a specific dish or styles of Japanese food, where the locals eat, that can bring unexpected joy – and a way to make friends! I really wanted to make sure I included a wide range of eateries so that folks could try a bit of everything along the way and feel like they’d truly tasted Tokyo. It’s probably not obvious to readers but a lot of thought went into what landed on the pages food and drink wise. Of course some nights you just need a break from being out and about. Fortunately, Tokyo’s department store food halls or depachika are out of this world!

The choice of fresh, flavoursome and often healthy dishes is stunning and of course there’s amazingly decadent desserts, chocolate and even ice creams which are secured and surrounded with dry ice packages so they’re still in pristine condition when you get ‘home’.

BOA: When you were talking about one of the museums of Japanese arts and crafts, where to find second hand kimonos, natural dyed fabrics and even festival wear, I couldn’t help but think of Kyoto. I had no idea you could find all that in Tokyo. That said, we hope you’ll be putting out a Kyoto Style Guide! 

I so appreciate your support and am keeping my fingers there will be a Kyoto Style Guide (or similar) one day!

BOA: Can you tell me about the tours you run?

Jane: Zenbu Tours are high-end: we stay in wonderful accommodations, eat amazing food and work hard behind the scenes to ensure each tour is unique, fun, fascinating and delicious! There’s a real focus on the Japanese aesthetic: design, architecture, art, beautiful spaces, places and presentation. We spend time with local experts in everything from ceramics to textiles, from tea ceremony to markets, and zen meditation to cuisine like shojin ryori and kaiseki. Of course people will just have to come along to find out exactly what they are! 😉

I really hope Books on Asia readers enjoy Tokyo Style Guide—and tell them not to be shy—I love getting little reports from people who are in situ. Tokyo is a place you could keep exploring until the end of days; this book is really just a start and I hope it provides encouragement for folks to keep returning!

About the Author

Also by Jane Lawson

After many years working as a chef in Sydney, Jane Lawson moved into publishing, combining her love of travel, cooking and books. She is the author of Snowflakes and Schnapps, Spice Market, Grub, Yoshoku, A Little Taste of Japan, Cocina Nueva, Zenbu Zen and 2016’s Milkbar Memories. She is also the co-author of BBQ Food for Friends, which won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2003. Jane has been traveling around Japan for over thirty years. She runs independent tours to Japan on a regular basis, guiding her clients to the best that the country has to offer, from culture to fashion, food and lifestyle. Her particular area of interest is Japanese cuisine. Visit zenbutours.com for more information..

 

Books

The Lost Children of Tokyo

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Winner of the National Book Award in Translated Literature, for 2018

Listed as Library Journal‘s Best Books of 2018

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Also published as “The Emissary”

(This book is also published under the title of The Emissary.)

Book Description: Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient—frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism. Yoshiro concentrates on nourishing Mumei, a strangely wonderful boy who offers “the beauty of the time that is yet to come.” A delightful, irrepressibly funny book, The Emissary is filled with light. Yoko Tawada, deftly turning inside-out “the curse,” defies gravity and creates a playful joyous novel out of a dystopian one, with a legerdemain uniquely her own.

 

Books on Asia’s Take:

This is an important book because it discusses some of the well-known problems of Japanese society that, while familiar to those inside the country, may not be so well-known outside. Many other countries are just now considering that they too will face aging populations, declining real estate markets, the burden of healthcare and its costs, an increase in natural disasters, and the possible results of industrial chemicals having entered the food chain. Add to that a myriad of other possible crises of the future, it is worth considering this haunting, apocalyptic scenario Yoko Tawada portrays of a fictional family living in Tokyo. While the book ventures into futuristic scenarios, one can’t help recognizing the truths that lead up to it.

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Also by Yoko Tawada

Also author of The Memoirs of a Polar Bear, “she has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as ‘Yoko Tawada’s magnificent strangeness’—Tawada is an author like no other.”

About Memoirs of a Polar Bear. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany: they are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a bestselling autobiography. In chapter two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son—the last of their line—is Knut, born in chapter three in a Leipzig zoo but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away…

Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and “the intimacy of being alone with my pen.”

 

 

 

The Un-Well, by Richard Donovan

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A story in the style of Murakami Haruki and his English translators

One late-autumn Sunday morning when I set out into the back garden wielding the hedge trimmers, I found the well was gone. It wasn’t that I’d particularly liked the well when it had been there—it hadn’t provided us with delicious ice-cold water in the summer months, or even simply glistened mysteriously down at its waterline and amused us with the occasional decorous plopping sound à la Bashō. It hadn’t because it was clogged with sludgy black algae all year round. The stone blocks encircling its mouth were not especially well placed, and a few were coming loose, like an old man’s dental work.

So it was not a romantic well by any stretch of the imagination. But still, it was a little disconcerting to look out past the unkempt hydrangea bushes and notice a blank field of moss where the well had been until yesterday.

Great, I thought. This didn’t bode well for the day.

To my mind, it’s harder to lose a well than, say, a pot, a cat or a person. As we learned in first-year quantum physics, all things are twinned with their opposite—an un-thing, if you will—that is their absence. If the big iron pot you got from your uncle as a wedding present isn’t in the cupboard when you go to make spaghetti, it can be annoying, but it isn’t going to upend your world. It’ll turn up soon enough, you think: my wife must have put it somewhere else. I shall make do with the saucepan. And even if you never see it again, it’s no great loss. If you squint hard enough, after a while you’ll see the un-pot fill the space where the pot had been, like a dully shiny shadow.

Or if one morning the cat (which turned up last winter and wouldn’t leave) isn’t yowling for his breakfast of sardines, you just shrug and chalk it up to happenchance. Even if the cat still hasn’t returned a week later, sure, you’ll be sad, maybe even start reminiscing about the time Nobuta Wata’ame—that was what we named the cat—brought fleas into the house and you scratched yourselves raw for a week. But eventually you’ll just accept the un-Nobuta that has slipped in on fuzzy un-paws to replace him.

Even a missing person isn’t as big a deal as a missing well. I mean, the set phrase ‘missing person’ says it all. It embodies a kind of expectation that people go missing from time to time. Sure, if it’s someone you care about, like a life partner or your kid, then you’ll probably go crazy for a while and spend your evenings driving around town looking for them on street corners, posting plaintive but concise appeals in the local paper, that sort of thing. You’ll also certainly have filed the missing-persons report with the police after a couple of days of hosting the un-person in your home, when you’ve had enough of watching them twiddling their un-thumbs and looking through you. But even if you never see the original person again, their absence is quite within the realms of possibility in this world of ours. In short, it’s simply a given that things and people go missing from time to time and are replaced by their un-counterparts.

But the problem with a well is that its absence inescapably means the presence of something else—and not just its un-well. After all, a well is essentially a vertical tunnel, a space in the rock through which fluids like water and air can pass freely. (Since I learned it in science class in seventh grade, I’ve always been amazed that air is classified as a fluid. To me, it just seems too floaty for that: almost as if air is the un-thumb-twiddling stand-in for water.)

Anyhow, to put it another way, a well is defined by the absence of what surrounds it. Take that absence away, and ipso facto the well itself disappears. (Now I’m sounding more like a lawyer than a scientist. I guess that’s the kind of phrase you pick up from a decade of copy editing for a small translation agency—just about everything has crossed my desk over the years, apart from documents relating to the removal of a well.)

I know what you’re thinking: hadn’t someone simply filled the well in while I’d been out—maybe a DIY neighbour with a grudge, a deranged construction worker on his day off, or someone drunk in charge of a cement mixer? More likely, had my wife got fed up with the gungy, stinky well and commissioned someone to seal it over once and for all? She’d never thought much of the backyard well, having wanted to ditch it along with the rotten wooden cladding and skew-tiled roof of the old house that had stood where our new place was.

But no—I sensed immediately that there wasn’t going to be such a mundane explanation as a well-filling. For a start, the moss of the garden now unbrokenly spanned the once-holey ground. It looked quite at home, as if it had sat there for as long as the average temple garden in Kyoto. Even if someone had capped some surreptitious well-removal (a.k.a. fill-in) work with perfectly aligned moss-encrusted topsoil, it would inevitably have looked different from the moss around it. At the very least, there would have been some sort of edge, be it square or circular, like the ringworm brand my hand had picked up from the cat in spring. But this moss was as smooth and unperturbed as a crystalline pool on a particularly calm day in the middle of some ancient forest known for its lack of wind. If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed there had never been a well there in the first place.

I abandoned the hydrangeas and ran my hands over the mossy surface. It was spongy to the touch and still slightly damp from the late-afternoon showers the previous day. Its green was slightly mottled here and there, but overall the colour of a well-tended baseball field in the off season. This moss hadn’t been anywhere else recently, and wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

I lay down on the mossy carpet and pressed my ear to the spot where the well had been. At first the only sound was the blood pumping through my ears and the slightly accusatory shuck-shucking of the dry branches around me that I was supposed to be pruning back. But after a few minutes of lying there, the gentle sunlight bathing my left cheek like a golden retriever’s tongue, I seemed to hear a piano playing under the ground. My neighbour was a Glenn Gould fanatic, it was true, but I knew that he was away at a conference in Newcastle (the UK, not Australia), so it couldn’t have been his stereo resounding. None of my other neighbours had the sonic firepower to penetrate the depths of the earth.

I was probably just hearing things, I told myself, but it didn’t alter the fact that our backyard well was definitively gone.

The querulous look in my wife’s eyes when I nonchalantly quizzed her about it on her return (she was a middle-ranking officer in the Tokyo municipality who had little time to devote to the un-well) was sufficient information for me to gauge that she had no knowledge of what had happened. She seemed mildly bemused as she expertly dissected her butter-fried smelt with chopsticks over dinner, but not concerned enough to go out and look. “Anyway, thank you for filling me in,” she murmured.

The following Tuesday, when, hedge clippers in hand again, I finally went out to deal with the desiccated hydrangeas, they had vanished, and the well was back. It was like it had never not been there—the gap-toothed stones gummed up in black algae.

And then the denizens of the well began to emerge from it.

The first girl I’d liked in high school but abruptly ditched—still wearing the same skimpy bra that exposed the sheep-shaped birthmark on her left breast and the unicorn-shaped birthmark on her right breast that had stolen the thunder from her nipples and sent me running from her bedroom—hoisted herself over the edge and sat there dazed for a moment before exiting the premises via the front door, her head held high. Nobuta the cat leapt up over the edge and immediately disappeared again into the azalea bushes. The antique pewter pencil sharpener that had been a present from my grandmother and that I’d dropped through a gap in the tatami in our family home in a fit of pique when I was twelve rolled itself up over the lip of the well and plopped among the surrounding moss, giving a slight wheeze. A poor aunt of mine who I’d made fun of when she hadn’t made it to last year’s big family wedding—here she was scrabbling out of the well and looking brassed off about it, too. The desiccated hydrangeas I’d neglected in favour of scouting out the un-well susurrated like a pair of maracas as they cleared the top of the well and flounced off.

Even my sense of self-worth was there: I’d lost it almost three years to the day after I’d started the copy-editing job when I’d been asked to compose romantic waka for Little Ladies’ Weekly on the side. It was invisible, of course, but I caught it wafting up over the wonky stone edge in a burst of the pine-scented confidence I’d briefly experienced in my mid-twenties.

Finally, a baby grand piano rose majestically from the well like a buoyant wooden dolphin and rolled away on its castors, leaving three parallel indentations in the moss. I recognized it immediately as the piano I’d practised on at home for a few brief months in junior high before renouncing the musical arts forever. The piano had been shipped away into obscurity soon after. Now Bach’s Prelude No. 1 played across its keys—that had been what I’d heard when I’d put my ear to the moss and plumbed the subterranean depths!

Just then it struck me—I was the un-me to them. All those people I’d rejected and put behind me for no good reason, all those things I’d lost: they had been building up in the un-well in our garden these past couple of days, and now they were parading past me as if I didn’t exist. Because from their perspective, I didn’t. It was the rejectees’ revenge, I suppose.

I’m not a translator, but I’ve associated with translators, and edited their prose. So over the years I’ve observed something basic about the act of translating—you either do it or you don’t. Let me explain. Say there’s a word or an idea in the original language that simply doesn’t exist in the other language. Let’s choose ‘sushi’. Sure, sushi exists in English now, but when Edward Seidensticker translated Tanizaki’s Makioka Sisters in the late 1950s, Americans didn’t know what sushi was. So he put an asterisk next to the word sushi and explained the meaning in a footnote. A few years later, people started translating sushi as sushi, italicising it to show that it was a foreign borrowing. And now no-one even bothers italicising sushi, because everyone knows what it means.

But sushi is still sushi. It wasn’t translated into another language. It’s left as an artifact of Japanese in other languages, like the fossil of a deep-sea fish found high up in a mountain millions of years after the ocean drained away. (I have no idea if deep-sea fish make good sushi, but I can guarantee this one would be hard on the teeth.)

Anyway, when you translate, you either keep the original term, which is un-translation, or you substitute another term. And if you substitute, you change. Translation is all about change. You may kid yourself that you’re being faithful to the original, but the only way to do that is to write down exactly the same words as the original in the same order. And I can guarantee you, the new publisher isn’t going to be moved by such fidelity: “I could’ve got a monkey to copy that,” he’d say, with some justification.

What I realised is that for my entire adult life, I’d been keeping all the original terms on the page. Nothing had changed. It was no wonder my rejectees had banded together in the un-well and then en masse rejected me.

The next day, I gave notice at the translation agency. The boss was mildly concerned, but wished me the best. I had no idea what I was going to do with myself next, but the one thing I did know is that it would be the real me turning up to do it.

By the way, my neighbour changed his musical tastes after Newcastle, too. It was out with Glenn Gould, and in with Herbie Hancock. Well, well.

Richard is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Letters at Kansai University, Osaka. He has a PhD in Literary Translation Studies from Victoria University of Wellington, and lectures on translation studies and English literature. His translation of Hayami Shun’s short story “Shinkun no kakejiku,” translated as “Ieyasu’s Scroll,” will be published by Kurodahan Press in 2019 in a contemporary anthology of samurai tales entitled Strokes of Brush and Blade. His book Translating Modern Japanese Literature was published in 2019 is about translation stylistics and consists of his translations and analyses of out-of-copyright Japanese literary works by major authors. Richard feels lucky to live in Kyoto with his wife Mika and daughter Milly.

Books

Underground

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Note from the BOA Editor: I’ll never forget the morning of March 21, 1995 when I was on my way to teach at university in Okayama, Japan. On every street corner in the city was a policeman standing erect, silent, observing. I didn’t have a TV in my apartment and I lived alone. I certainly didn’t have internet in my abode in 1995. It wasn’t until I reached the university that I learned of the sarin gas attack in Tokyo, over 650 kilometers away, the previous day. At around 5 p.m., high commute time on the subways, the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, led by Shōko Asahara (sentenced to death, and executed in 2018), poisoned subway passengers by releasing liquid sarin gas in the subway trains. Naturally, this terrorist attack on their own soil was a shock to the Japanese. The assault killed 13 people and injured thousands. For the next week or so, the rest of Japan was on red-alert for any further suspicious activity; even the police in Okayama were omnipresent.

Just like most people who were alive at the time know where they were when they heard Princess Diana was killed, John Lennon was shot, or about the terrorist attacks of 9-11, most Japanese people know where they were when the Sarin Gas Incident happened in Tokyo’s subway. In his book “Underground” Haruki Murakami interviews some of the survivors of an attack that left an indelible mark on the psyche of the Japanese. This is one of Murakami’s few non-fiction books.

Book Description:

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere. Translated by Alfred Binbaum and Philip Gabriel.

About the Author: Haruki Murakami is Japan’s best-known contemporary Japanese author. He was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His books have been translated into more than fifty languages.

Books

Tokyo New Wave

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In Tokyo New Wave, Andrea Fazzari explores the changing landscape of food in Tokyo, where a young and charismatic generation is redefining what it means to be a chef in this celebrated food city. Open to the world and its influences, these chefs have traveled more than their predecessors, have lived abroad, speak other languages, and embrace social media. Yet they still remain distinctly Japanese, influenced by a style, tradition, and terroir to which they are inextricably linked. This combination of the old and the new is on display in Tokyo New Wave, a transporting cookbook and armchair travel guide that captures this moment in Japanese cuisine and brings it to a savvy global audience.

This 304-page book is Andrea’s love letter to Japan and the country’s distinct philosophy and approach to food. It includes 435 of her photographs, her insights, interviews, and chef recipes. As a Tokyo-based author and dining consultant, Fazzari is an insider in the city’s food scene, working regularly with Tokyo’s many influential and respected chefs.

Sample interview: Zaiyu Hasegawa, of “Den”

Zaiyu is a unique name. What is its origin?

One of my relatives is a Buddhist priest, and he named me Zaiyu, which means “to do good things and to help others.” When Japanese Buddhists pass away, they receive a new name for the afterworld. In my case, I can use the same name in the afterworld because a priest gave me my name.

Why do you cook?

I love seeing people eat and enjoy my food. In my experience, there are a lot of nice places to eat, but I can never actually remember what I ate. I remember the restaurant more if it makes me feel something. So I wanted my own restaurant to give people a feeling, an experience.

Guests respond strongly to your welcoming style here at Den. Did you set out to develop a style of hospitality that feels like eating with family?

I grew up in a large family, but today’s families are smaller. People care less about—and for—others. When I was a child, my family and neighbors tried to teach me about life and raise me. I treat my staff like family. I am always thinking about Team Den—if we are all well, if everyone is happy. My employees and customers are a part of an extended family.

What is your favorite place or town to visit in Japan and why?

I like going to the mountains in general, but specifically Fuji-san [Mount Fuji], so I can forage wild mushrooms.

What was your childhood like?

My mother was very hardworking. She was a geisha, and even when she worked late, she always prepared a nice meal for me and my siblings. I always felt taken care of. She made things like miso soup, gyoza, rice, hamburger, and even beef stroganoff.

Whenever I would see my mother dressed a geisha, she was a totally different person. She was transformed. She would not talk to me. I’m the second child, so I had to take care of my youngest brother and sister. Because of this, I cooked from a young age, making them fried rice, nigiri [a slice of fish over vinegared sushi rice], sandwiches, and Japanese spaghetti.

What is your earliest food memory?

My mother introduced me as omiyage, a kind of bento box that she would bring home from elaborate kaiseki (haute cuisine) meals. She would surprise us with these gorgeous, tasty little gifts when we woke up in the morning. It was so exciting! It was after eating one of these omiyage that I began to think about cooking as a profession. I was twelve or thirteen years old. By high school, I knew I wanted to be a chef.

For you, what does it mean to be Japanese?

I think that Japanese people consider and think about other people more. When Japanese people have a given goal, I think they try to assess how the decision will affect others in their lives. I also think that Japanese people are not good at being direct. There are good and bad aspects of being Japanese, and I realize that when I am in other countries I need to act a bit differently. If I say whatever is on my mind to just everyone, I’m afraid I will hurt people’s feelings.

Do you have future plans or goals?

I do think about the future, especially for children. I hope children will think about becoming chefs. Now young people don’t think about becoming chefs so much. For children in Japan, it’s hard to go to Japanese restaurants. In the future, I’d like to create more opportunities for children to cook and learn about food in Japan.

What is your favorite word?

Fun.

 

Sample Recipe!

UNI IN SOY BÉCHAMEL SAUCE

 

Uni comes from the sea, while yuba comes from the soil. The idea behind this dish is to play on the creamy texture that they both share, despite coming from different sources.

SERVES 4

  • ¼ cup soy sauce
  • ¼ cup sake
  • ¼ cup mirin
  • 28 yellow or orange pieces of soft, creamy uni (sea urchin), at room temperature
  • 8 dark yellow pieces of firm uni, at room temperature
  • 3½ tablespoons unsalted butter
  • ¼ cup flour
  • 2 cups soy milk
  • 1⅔ cups heavy cream
  • Sea salt
  • 3 ounces fresh yuba sheets
  • Dab of freshly grated wasabi root or small ball of wasabi paste

In a medium bowl, mix together the soy sauce, sake, and mirin. Add the two types of uni, toss gently, and marinate at room temperature for 5 minutes, then drain.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Stir in the flour and continue to cook the mixture for about 10 minutes, until little bubbles appear. Add the soy milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly, so that no lumps form. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly with a whisk, until the mixture thickens and becomes glossy, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in the heavy cream and season with a pinch of salt.

To finish, cut the yuba into bite-size strips, place it in four serving bowls, and then pour the cream mixture over the yuba. Put seven soft uni in the center of the mixture. Place two pieces of the firm uni on top of each serving, and then garnish the uni with some wasabi. Serve right away.

NOTE: Fresh yuba sheets (also known as tofu skin) can be purchased at Japanese grocers. Uni comes packaged in a box, no cleaning needed, and can be found at high-end seafood markets and Japanese markets. Ask for the highest grade for this preparation and buy the freshest uni possible. If there is no expiration date, make sure the uni has bright color and is in nice plump lobes. Uni can vary in softness, and you will need one firm type and one softer type for this recipe. Ask your fishmonger for assistance.

Complete list of the 31 chefs and restaurants covered in Tokyo New Wave:

  • Zaiyu Hasegawa / Den
  • Hiroyasu Kawate / Florilège
  • Shinobu Namae / L’Effervescence
  • Hiroyuki Sato / Sushi Tokami
  • Yosuke Suga / Sugalabo
  • Koji Koizumi / Kohaku
  • Lionel Beccat / Esquisse
  • Kentaro Nakahara / Sumibiyakiniku Nakahara
  • Toshifumi Nakahigashi / Erba da Nakahigashi
  • Shuzo Kishida / Quintessence
  • Takaaki Sugita / Sugita
  • Satoshi Kakegawa / Äta
  • Yoshiteru Ikegawa / Torishiki
  • Yoshiaki Takazawa / Takazawa
  • Hayato Takahashi / Pellegrino
  • Kan Morieda / Salmon & Trout
  • Fumie Takeuchi / Sushi Take
  • Susumu Shimizu / Anis
  • Yusuke Namai / Ode
  • Yuji Tani / House
  • Kotaro Meguro / Abysse
  • Yoshihiro Hiraoka / Kamachiku
  • Shinya Otsuchihashi / Craftale
  • Makoto Konno / Organ
  • Takao Ishiyama / Sushiya
  • Kuniatsu Kondo / Owan
  • Daisuke Tsuji / Convivio
  • Shinsuke Ishii / Sincère
  • Daisuke Kaneko / L’As
  • Yuki Onishi / Japanese Soba Noodles Tsuta
  • Jinnosuke Umehara / Yakumo Saryo

About the Author: Andrea Fazzari is the photographer and stylist of L’Aperitivo, shot entirely on location in Italy. She is Starwood Hotel Group’s first Luxury Collection Global Explorer; her photographs, journal entries and audio narration of her travels on six continents are featured on the Luxury Collection website and in the Luxury Collection Destination Guides. She is a tastemaker in Hotel Stories, a travel book which showcases unique luxury properties around the world, and the featured photographer for the book Bvlgari Il Ristorante, photographed in Japan.

She is the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Travel Photography and Photo District News featured her as one of the year’s best cookbook photographers in PDN’s Food Issue for 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

Books

Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989

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Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989 is a combination of two previously published (now out-of-print) books by Edward Seidensticker: Low City, High City and Tokyo Rising.

This edition features a preface by Donald Richie, and an introduction by Paul Waley.

This classic comes highly recommended by expats living in Japan. Edward Seidensticker, the author, is best known for his translations of Yasunari Kawabata (Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Sound of the Mountain, Master of Go).

Book Description: Tokyo: From Edo to Showa tells the story and history of Tokyo’s transformation from the Shogun’s capital in an isolated Japan to one of the most renowned modern cities in the world. With the same scholarship and style that won him admiration as one of the premier translators of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his own brilliant picture of a whole society suddenly emerging into the modern world. By turns elegiac and funny, reflective and crisp, Tokyo: From Edo to Showa is an important cultural history of Asia’s greatest city.

Now $4.99 on US Kindle

There can be few cities in the world that live, pulsate, and breathe through their geography as Tokyo does, few cities with a history that shifts through the creases of space as does that of Tokyo. This is particularly ironic in a city whose neighborhoods today hold few distinctive features and whose gentle topography has been all but obscured by batteries of building. But it was not always so, and what better way is there of writing Tokyo’s history than by reflecting this shifting geography as neighborhoods prospered and declined while others, more aspirational, climbed up the socio–spacial ladder? This is precisely what Edward Seidensticker does in the pages of these books, brought together here together for the first time under one cover with numerous illustrations and an insert of beautifully colored Japanese woodblock prints of Tokyo from the era.

 

Books

Tokyo Roji

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An academic book about Tokyo’s alleyways from Routeledge Press.

The Japanese urban alleyway, which was once part of people’s personal spatial sphere and everyday life has been transformed by diverse and competing interests. Marginalised through the emergence of new forms of housing and public spaces, re-appropriated and re-invented by the contemporary urban design, the social meaning attached to the roji is being re-interpreted. Tokyo Roji highlights practices of contemporary Tokyo to portray the life cycle of an urban form being rediscovered, commodified and lost as physical space.

“Heide Imai evokes the subtle complexity of Tokyo’s traditional back streets in a way that resonates with all cities struggling to be simultaneously local, global, and modern. This book is tremendously useful for shaping a deeper understanding of, and better tools for, historic preservation and community planning in Asia and throughout the world.”

Sharon Zukin, author, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

“By emphasizing on the importance of the sense of place and the ordinariness, this book takes the readers to the roji of contemporary Tokyo. Using multiple insightful urban narratives, Heide Imai skilfully unfolds the various facets of neighbourhoods of these hidden urban spaces.”

Davisi Boontharm, International Program of Architecture and Urban Design, Meiji University, Japan

Excerpt:

The yin and yang of Tokyo: Nezu and Yanaka and the mixed used roji 

 

Between Soba and Curry Pan, Tuesday around Noon, Mid September, between Nezu and Yanaka.

 

Arriving in Nezu on this early autumn day, I walk along the busy Shinobazu Street full of buses, cars and people, most of them tourists on their way to the Nezu Shrine. I am on my way to the local soba shop. Soba is a type of noodle made out of buckwheat flour, crunchy and soft at the same time. The local noodle maker is known for his soba combinations with duck or grilled unagi (eel). The soba shop is located behind the Nezu Shrine at the end of a narrow alleyway.

 

I am surprised that in contrast to the external appearance, which looks like an old dwelling, the shop is fashionably furnished with just three tables, expressing the owner’s interest to just cook for a small crowd, knowing that many people will leave the place without having the chance to enjoy the great taste of his freshly made buckwheat noodles. Thus, I know I am lucky, as I am invited by a local friend, Miura-san, who knows the owner and comes here every week for a chat and drink. Hayashi-san, the owner, greets us with a smile and waves with his hands the way to the only empty table at the end of this little place.

 

My acquaintance orders some brown, thin soba and to my surprise, a small bottle of local sake from Niigata together with some nibbles like fish balls, omelettes and pickles. When I ask my friend why she has ordered sake for lunch she starts laughing loud and wholeheartedly. Shortly after, she explains that once she realized that she got old, she does not care anymore what others think but enjoys the small things in life that make her happy. The owner brings the bottle and says with an even louder voice “kampai (cheers).” It seems that they have known each other for a long time, sharing not just the age and neighbourhood, but also countless stories of everyday life I am happily listening to and trying to follow with my Japanese not always being able to catch the local Edo ben (Edo dialect), which sounds to me like the rakugo speech (type of Japanese storytelling for entertainment), typically performed in shitamachi areas like Nezu.

 

Some days later, I wander along the alleyways of Yanaka to meet a young mother who is living in an alleyway nearby. Standing in front of an old house in which a famous writer lived, we recognize that just behind us, a new house has been constructed, one of the many pencil-like structures that emerged in the last few years in this neighbourhood. We greet each other and continue our walk along this alleyway. Some sun rays enter the street, and the air is moist, but a light wind is coming from the other end of the alleyway. We cross the main street and the mother, Ito-san, explains that she wants to take me to a new café, which she started to use to get her work done as freelance writer, a profession she loves and combines with her time she spends in this ‘micro version of Tokyo’, an expression she uses when fondly talking about Yanaka. We sit down and order some hōjicha latte (a type of Japanese tea with hot milk) and karē pan (curry buns), local delicacies and a must-tries. Listening to the Brazilian Bossa Nova playing in the backdrop and studying the menu, I spot other interesting fusions such as matcha egg salad, pickled spring onion sandwiches and ginger lemonade made from local Yanaka ginger. Soon after, we start to exchange our first impressions, and it is obvious why my acquaintance, Ito-san, a newcomer to Yanaka, loves this new place.

 

Nezu and Yanaka

Most visitors to Tokyo envision the city as a mix of futuristic skyscrapers and glamorous advertisings, yet in some parts of the city, a slower, older and more traditional way of life prevails. One district in the eastern city area, known as YaNeSen, made up the neighbourhoods of Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi. The three neighbourhoods share a long history, traditions and specific everyday life features characteristic for this low-city part of Tokyo. Re-discovered in the 1980s, nowadays it is a mix of traditional craft and rice-cracker shops coexisting with modern art galleries, cafés and bakeries. The area is attracting more and more people to walk the streets and alleyways, which offer a human-scale atmosphere unlike other high-rise areas in Tokyo. And although the neighbourhoods mirror different realities, poetics and politics, they are spatially as well as socially closely intermingled.

 

The neighbourhood of Nezu

Nezu is a neighbourhood in the Bunkyo Ward, in which currently 6,291 residents live (2015). Nezu is located in a part of Tokyo that escaped the damages of the 1923 Earthquake and the bombing of the Second World War, next to a few other areas such as Yanaka. Having remained un-shattered from these two events, the area is said to represent the character of shitamachi, the low city in which people lived in close proximity and interaction together. Nowadays, a popular place for town walks, which were started in the 1980s around Mori Mayumi’s Yanesen Group, the area is in high demand. Regularly featured on TV and magazines, new galleries, cute pop-up stores, cafés and other corners of everyday life appear in the dense urban neighbourhood, promising to soon become one of the next urban trends.

Nezu and Yanaka Nezu was especially known as a yūkaku or red-light district. Due to its location so close to the prestigious Tokyo university and the high number of prostitutes (at its peak, 574 women were employed in the Nezu brothels), the pleasure district was moved to Susaki, East Tokyo in 1888. As there is nothing left that indicates that Nezu was once a quarter for pleasure, one can only imagine how everyday life was in these narrow, hidden streets and alleyways. Nezu is traditionally characterized by small lanes and alleyways along block-shaped plots with dense, low-rise housing of local shopkeepers, merchants and craftsmen and famous for its shrine, which attracts a diverse clientele, which enjoyed in the past all kinds of entertainment activities. These are features of the past, however, the narrow lanes and remaining low-rise dwellings still indicate that this area was and still is partly the home of a ‘lower’ shitamachi class. Since the 1960s, the area changed gradually, as the main street, Shinobazu Dōri (dividing the area of Nezu in the middle), was developed by the establishment of the new Chiyoda subway line underground, allowing the emergence of more cars on top; the widening Shinobazu Street from 16 to 22 m (allowing the construction of a large number of new high-rise buildings).

Accordingly, it is argued that Shinobazu Street divides the neighbourhoods of Nezu 1-and 2-chōme forming a ‘wall’ between the two areas, which was before spatially and socially connected but is now increasingly separated. Due to the lack of support coming from the local ward office or an active local town planning group (like found in other neighbourhoods such as Yanaka), we can observe that more and more pencil-like high-rise buildings appear along the side and backstreets, penetrating the low-rise, soft core; fragmenting the neighbourhood on the social and spatial level; and repeating the soft core/ hard shell pattern on an increasingly smaller scale (Popham 1985). These ‘vulnerable’ areas are not prepared for the demands of the new clientele, being, for example, inaccessible by car. Yet, Nezu still somehow retains the character of an Edo neighbourhood, as “… Nezu and its surrounding areas have managed to avoid excessive attention from the tyrants of trend and fashion. In other words, they have struck a happy balance between craving for the future and basking in the past” (Waley 1991, 191). Similarly, Muminović (2014) argued that Nezu keeps a good balance between endurance and transformation, maintaining a comfortable identity situating itself between its rich history and contemporary development. In her work, she extensively analyses facades of dwellings, demonstrating that the few old houses that remain are not clustered together and that the majority of them have contemporary facades using non-wooden materials. Despite these changes, the neighbourhood still has the typical shitamachi charm, showing that the atmosphere is not just based on historical buildings and their preservation, but it is much more the diversity and complexity of the whole mix that determines the flair of the area.”

About the Author:
Heide Imai is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Global Interdisciplinary Studies (GIS) at Hosei University and Research Associate at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. Licensed as an architect, her research, teaching and practice focus is urban resistance, resilience and the future of vernacular landscapes in global cities.