Books on Asia

Tokyo: Ueno Station

By Yu Miri (Author), Morgan Giles (Transl.), Tilted Axis Press, 2019 January 9, 2019

To be released Feb. 14, 2019

Pre-orders via Amazon Japan (paperback) or via the publisher’s website.

Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazu’s life is tied by a series of coincidences to Japan’s Imperial family and to one particular spot in Tokyo; the park near Ueno Station – the same place his unquiet spirit now haunts in death. It is here that Kazu’s life in Tokyo began, as a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and later where he ended his days, living in the park’s vast homeless ‘villages’, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.

Akutagawa-award-winning author Yu Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.

Books on Asia’s Take:

Although one can tire of translated Japanese books that dwell in pathos, we welcomed this story because of its point of view: that of a homeless person. “Tokyo: Ueno Station” is the life story of Kazu, who after a life of hard work and living away from his wife and two children, becomes homeless at an advanced age and ends up living in Ueno Park in a tent city. He lives in a cardboard structure with a blue tarp on top that he is required to disassemble before important events—such as when the Emperor and Empress visit the surrounding galleries or museums—and then can put back up again after the event. We learn many things about this group of permanent yet temporary residents of the park, a population that at one point reached over 500 inhabitants. We learn that during typhoons and the aforementioned park clean-ups, that the homeless head to the library, a public bath, a capsule hotel or a porno theater for the day. The saddest moment in the story is when, on a rainy day when he is soaked to the bone and shivering from the cold, Kazu relates that he was so miserable, he forgot that he was ever part of a family. Kazu recollects times of war, the Emperor, the Olympics (he was a construction worker for the 1964 Tokyo Games) and natural disasters as well as telling the intriguing history of Ueno Park, its monuments and the surrounding neighborhood. Many living in Japan will remember some of the newsworthy events (Imperial visits, Olympic bids and park clean-ups) which were also covered in the local media. But now we can gain a sense of how these events affect these marginalized residents of Japan. This is an important book because of its point of view.

About the Author: Akutagawa-award-winning author Yu Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.

About the Translator: Morgan Giles is a translator and critic. Her translation of Naocola Yamazaki’s short story “Dad, I Love You,” appeared in the anthology The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction. Her reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (UK). Originally from Kentucky, she currently lives in London and Tokyo.

Books

In the Miso Soup

By Ryu Murakami (Author), Ralph McCarthy (Translator), Penguin Books, 2006 January 9, 2019

In the Miso Soup won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature.

Book Description:

From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psychothriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo’s sex industry. In the Miso Soup tells of Frank, an American tourist who has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife. But Frank’s behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion—that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It is not until later, however, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this American will change his life. Translated by Ralph McCarthy.

“A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan . . . one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs.”
Kirkus Reviews

About the Author: Ryu Murakami was not yet 24 when he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his debut novel, Almost Transparent Blue. He has now published some forty best-selling novels, a dozen short-story collections, an armful of picture books, and a small mountain of essays. In his spare time, Ryu hosts a popular and long-running weekly TV show focusing on business and economic topics, and has for many years promoted tours and produced records for Cuban musicians. He has written and directed five feature films, of which Topaz a.k.a. Tokyo Decadence (1992) is probably the best known, and many of his novels have been made into films by other directors (notably Takashi Miike’s Audition). Translated novels include Coin Locker Babies (Noma Prize for New Writers), Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup (Yomiuri Prize for Literature), Piercing, and From the Fatherland, with Love (Noma Prize for Literature and Mainichi Publishing Culture Award).

Books

Tokio Whip

By Arturo Silva, Stone Bridge Press, 2016 January 9, 2019

“Tokio Whip exults in a discovery that every Tokyoite makes: that the constant sense of disorientation created by a city of such vastness and variety can offer a giddy form of liberation; that one can find oneself in being lost.”—Kyoto Journal

Book Description: A group of people walk across, around, and all over Tokyo.They talk, talk, talk. A linguistic, experiential, cartographical novel.

What is Tokio Whip?

The city in language, the city as language, on the micro and macro levels; an “experimental” novel, meaning only that style and structure are paramount over story and character (though those are there too); a linguistic, stylistic, structural, cartographical, experiential (eighteen years!), reading of Tokyo–a reading on every level–a city novel that begins with its title. Read more in the Reader’s Guide (a downloadable pdf) that will help you interpret the book’s rather elaborate structure.

Books on Asia’s Take:

This experimental novel has the feel of one that garners a cult following and is the perfect choice for those who want something original, entertaining and interactive. It’s an up close and personal look at discovering Japan’s great city.

****

David Cozy, in his review in the Japan Times writes: Tokio Whip, we come to see, is part of the lineage of great modernist novels about cities. Silva mentions James Joyce’s renderings of Dublin as part of the tradition to which his novel belongs, and in “Tokio Whip,” as with “Ulysses,” we have a certain surface incoherence obscuring an underlying coherence. Readers will find themselves asking, “How does this fragment connect with that?” and “Who, in this conversation, is talking with whom?”

****

The Kyoto Journal writes:

“Ostenesibly, Silva narrates the estrangement and eventual reunion of two European former lovers, Lang and Roberta in Tokyo. But his real preoccupation is with the capital’s anomalous fusion of coherence and incoherence, which he celebrates in a lively collage of fictional fragments, film summaries, historical vignettes, lurid tabloid articles, overheard conversations, playfully misquoted quotations and travel anecdotes.”

Books

Moshi Moshi

By Banana Yoshimoto (Author), Asa Yoneda (Tansl.), Counterpoint, 2016 January 9, 2019

Banana Yoshimoto is the acclaimed author of Kitchen.

Book Description:

Yoshie’s much-loved musician father has died in a suicide pact with an unknown woman. It is only when Yoshie and her mother move to Shimokitazawa, a traditional Tokyo neighborhood of narrow streets, quirky shops, and friendly residents, that they can finally start to put their painful past behind them. But despite their attempts to move forward, Yoshie is haunted by nightmares in which her father is looking for the phone he left behind on the day he died, or in which she is trying—unsuccessfully—to call him. Is her dead father trying to communicate a message to her through these dreams?

With the lightness of touch and surreal detachment that are the hallmarks of her writing, Banana Yoshimoto turns a potential tragedy into a poignant coming-of-age ghost story and a life-affirming homage to the healing powers of community, food, and family.

Books on Asia’s take:

One of our favorites by Banana Yoshimoto, Moshi Moshi gives a real feel of two Tokyo neighborhoods and how they are changing over time.

“An intimate portrayal of grief and recovery . . . Yoshimoto’s beautiful imagery—the cherry tree in front of the Les Liens bistro where Yochan works, restaurants glowing late at night, the coziness among the restaurant staff members, all captures the spirit of Shimokitazawa and marks Yochan’s slow return to an anchored life.” —Booklist

“Yoshimoto has an effortless ability to penetrate her characters’ hearts.” —The New York Times

This novel of a young Japanese girl grieving her father is “an unlikely, engrossing Tokyo ghost story . . . You won’t be able to take your mind off it” (Marie Claire).

Books

Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere

By John Nathan (Author), Free Press; Reprint edition, 2016 January 9, 2019

Book Description: John Nathan arrived in Tokyo in 1961 fresh out of Harvard College, bringing with him no practical experience, no more than two connections, no prospects, and little else to recommend him but stoic, unflappable pluck. Japan at that time was still in the shadow of the Occupation, and only a handful of foreigners were studying the country seriously. Two years later, Nathan became the first American to pass the entrance exams to the best school in Japan, the University of Tokyo.

*The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea*, by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Nathan.

He went on to translate two of Japan’s greatest contemporary writers, Yukio Mishima (The Sailor who Fell From Grace with the Sea), Natsume Sōseki, and Nobel laureate Kenzaburō Ōe (A Personal Matter) and direct several series of films in and about Japan in collaboration with world-famous directors and businesses; earn an advanced degree at Harvard and a professorship at Princeton; and become a Hollywood screenwriter. Nathan was given unprecedented access to the inner sanctum of Sony for his book Sony: The Private Life, and he explored the damaged psyche of postbubble Japan in his acclaimed Japan Unbound. He also wrote Mishima: A Biography and Sōseki: Japan’s Greatest Novelist.

During his decades of passionate engagement with Japan, Nathan became close friends with many of the most gifted people in the land — politicians and business leaders as well as painters, novelists, directors, rock stars, and movie stars — and was privileged to travel, in their very special company, inside domains of Japanese life not normally open to foreigners then or now. In his unique chronicle of that journey, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere, he details the adventures sublime, profane, and uproarious, many of a distinctly Japanese nature, that characterized his career, which was singular in its success as much as in its chaos. Along the way, he brings the most exciting era in recent Japanese history vividly into focus with wry humor, penetrating insight, and pathos.

*A Personal Matter*, by Kenzaburo Oë, translated by John Nathan

John Nathan is not the only foreigner to have developed a rich, full, deeply nuanced understanding of Japan. But his experiences are certainly extraordinary and in fact irreproducible, and his memoir is the most personally satisfying story yet told of Japan (and elsewhere). From Nathan’s lifetime of wisdom, compassion, and brazen resolve, we learn the value of traveling within our own mental and emotional borders as well as without the many places we call home.

*Sōseki: Japan’s Greatest Novelist,* by John Nathan

Books

A Tokyo Romance

By Ian Buruma, Atlantic Books, 2018 January 9, 2019

Book Description:

When Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo as a young film student in 1975, he found a feverish and surreal metropolis in the midst of an economic boom, where everything seemed new and history only remained in fragments. Through his adventures in the world of avant-garde theatre, his encounters with carnival acts, fashion photographers and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, Buruma came of age. For an outsider, unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese, this was a place to be truly free. A Tokyo Romance is a portrait of a young artist and the fantastical city that shaped him, and a timeless story about the desire to transgress boundaries: cultural, artistic and sexual.

Books on Asia’s take:

Ian Buruma lived in Tokyo from 1975 to 1981. Part of this time he was a student at film school. In 2018, he published this memoir written mostly from memory since, as the author admits, in that pre-internet age he wrote very few letters and didn’t keep a diary of his experiences.

So this memoir is about the this now-accomplished writer looking back on his Tokyo days hanging out with prominent people such as Donald Richie, Akira Kurosawa and a few greats of the theater world such as Kara Juro and Maro Akaji. The book is full of excellent description, always entertaining, but one gets the feeling that life was passing Buruma by. Perhaps many foreigners living here can relate to this, however, since it usually takes a certain number of years (probably more than the six Buruma spent) to find your place in Japanese society and learn how to truly make it work for you.

Buruma was presented with opportunity after breathtaking opportunity, but never could make these juicy leads work for him: He never gets on the silver screen despite the invitations to appear in works by Kurosawa, he fails at Butoh Theater, and his first student film is, in his words, an embarrassment. He even fails miserably at a translation opportunity to render a Japanese story into English. He did, however, become very proficient in spoken Japanese. But Buruma is refreshingly authentic and doesn’t try to pass himself off as anything other than himself. He admits his inadequacies and while we, as frustrated readers, might wish he were more valiant, courageous, and magnanimous, ultimately he doesn’t disappoint.

There are some transfixing stories such as an account of Kara Juro brawling with author Nosaka Akiyuki at the Golden Gai. All is told with rich detail and a command of the English language that it is delightful to read, successfully masking a mundane account of a rather lazy Dutch student coming to terms with his sexual identity and his role as a full member of society. Buruma knows Japan and doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to explain Japan, and generally skips the cliches. Only at the end of the book, when he falls into deep introspection of the meaning of being a foreigner in Japan, does he slip ever so slightly into the trite pontificating on the meaning of the expat experience in Japan. In the end, when Japan has chewed him up and spit Buruma out, he finally decides to leave. Not everyone can thrive in this ego-boosting country.

This book will appeal to Japan expats, scholars of Tokyo in the 1970’s, fans of Butoh and the Japanese performing arts, Donald Richie and Buruma’s other works. If you’re looking for new information on Donald Richie, however, there’s nothing in here that hasn’t already appeared elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews of Tokyo Romance from Amazon:

“A triumphal narrative . . . a winning mix of nostalgic bravado and judicious self-deprecation.…luscious and precise . . . In a time when the country’s public image abroad consisted largely of manufacturing and geisha girls he located an avant-garde culture and entered it fully, unafraid of drunken excess then and unafraid of recalling it now. ” — Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review

“Buruma is a keen observer and the owner of a well-provisioned mind. There are smart little junkets in this book into everything from Japanese movies (Buruma became a film critic for The Japan Times) to the country’s tattooing culture to its female elevator operators, about whom he made a documentary film. His prose is unflaggingly good.” — New York Times

“[A]n unusually lucid writer. . . . Buruma paints a vivid portrait of his often mind-boggling encounters with the motley collection of artists, expats and eccentrics he befriended over his six years in Tokyo. And his honesty is disarming.” — AP

“Oh my eyes. . . . the whole thing sparks astonishingly to life. We’ll come back to the details, lurid or otherwise, but for now all you need to know is that Buruma’s high-level immersion in the country’s culture begins with him tottering around on takageta, a high-heeled version of the traditional Japanese wooden sandals, and ends with him playing a character called the Midnight Cowboy in a play by the underground director and actor Kara Juro. In between, there are visits to porn cinemas, a string of lovers of both sexes, an appearance in a Suntory whisky ad alongside the great Akira Kurosawa, and a non-star turn in a butoh show in which he appears on stage wearing only a scarlet jockstrap.” — The Guardian

“Delicious… a wild ride through the late-20th-century Japanese avant-garde scene through the eyes of an innocent from across the sea.” — Kirkus, starred review

“New York Review of Books editor Buruma reflects on his immersion in the artistic underworlds of late 1970s Tokyo in this lucid, engrossing memoir…Buruma makes the archetypal quest for home in a foreign land both uniquely personal and deeply illuminating.” — Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

“With the insight and curiosity of someone on the outside looking in, Buruma describes a transformational moment in the making of modern Japanese culture.” — Booklist

Issue 4: Sense of Place—Tokyo

January 9, 2019

In this issue we introduce books we feel are essential reading to understand the great capital city of Tokyo. From historical reads and memoirs by English language authors Edward Seidensticker, John Nathan and Ian Buruma, to contemporary Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Ryu Murakami and Haruki Murakami, this selection of books brings together old Edo and modern Tokyo. We also introduce exploratory fiction, two new cutting edge guides to Tokyo shops and restaurants as well as new and upcoming releases you won’t want to miss! Our interview explores Tokyo’s neighborhoods with foodie author and style guru Jane Lawson. Lastly, we introduce a brand new section called “New Writing” located at the bottom of this page, which features work by up-and-coming writers, authors and translators.

Go to Issue 4: Sense of Place—Tokyo

Books

Metropolis Magazine

January 7, 2019

Metropolis, Tokyo’s number one English language magazine offers a folio of events, culture, movies, dining and travel. Their books section covers books written by Japanese authors, in print and online.

See their review of photographer Bruce Osborn’s photo book Oyako: An Ode to Parents and Children.

Excerpt: Images of children and parents isn’t your orthodox photo project. Acclaimed Japan-based photographer Bruce Osborn has amassed an impressive amount of Japanese oyako (parents and children) stills in his latest photo book, simply titled Oyako: An Ode to Parents and Children.

The idea was born in the early 80s when Osborn was on assignment to shoot Japanese punk musicians and expanded from there. He explains in the introduction:

“There is a Japanese saying – ‘Oya no kao ga mitemitai,’ or ‘I’d sure like to see his parents’ that is often uttered when coming into contact with bad-mannered children, and that helped solidify the idea for my photo shoot.”

Read the full review here.

Metropolis is a free magazine. Visit their website for more information.

Books

Tokyo Poetry Journal

January 1, 2019

Tokyo Poetry Journal is a biannual publication of poetry, art, reviews, and criticism. Bringing poetry to, through, and from the Tokyo world of words and sound since 2015. TPJ also offers book launch events to bring the contents of each issue alive by presenting poets and artists featured in the issue. The house band ToPoJo Toasters provides music and improvises with poets who’d like accompaniment.

*Tokyo Poetry Journal* Vol 6 features poems by Paul Hullah

The most recent issue, Vol. 6 “Butoh and Poetry” features poetry and translations by Peter Cole, Yoshimasu Gōzō, Daniela Camacho, Takiguchi Shūzō, John Solt, Kō Murobushi, Nada Gordon, Morgan Gibson, Terayama Shūji, Tamara Ikkō, John Gribble, Paul Hullah, Ikegami Naoya, Marc Sebastian-Jones, Edward Levinson, A. Robert Lee, Huw Lloyd, Taylor Mignon, Naka Tarō, Andrew Houwen and Nihei Chikako, Peter Robinson, Masaya Saito, Xiao Yue Shan, Jordan A. Y. Smith, Barbara Summerhawk, Tanabe Shin, Tian Yuan, Josefa Vivancos-Hernández, Zoria April, Abul Kalam Azad, Ira Cohen.

Essays/comments by Ohno Kazuo, Motofuji Akiko, Rosemary Candelario, Andrew Gebert, and Joff Bradley, and and interview with Kudo Taketeru by Joan Anderson.

Photography is by Ainhoa Valle (cover) and Morgan Fisher.

Reviews in this TPJ issue:

Jordan A. Y. Smith on Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en face: A Primer of Darkness for Young Boys and Girls (notebook written by Moe Yamamoto, translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu, edited by Yelena Gluzman)
Tanya Barnett on Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets From Japan (edited by Rina Kikuchi and Jen Crawford)
Joy Waller on Masaya Saito’s Snow Bones.
Read a review of Masayo Saito’s Snow Bones in Vol. 6 of the Tokyo Poetry Journal

Books

Tokyo Performance

By Roger Pulvers, Red Circle, 2018 December 2, 2018

“Roger Pulvers’ life reads like an adventure story. His recollections of life in Japan in the 1960s are bound to become a part of Japan’s national heritage,” Ryuichi Sakamoto, musician and composer.

Book Description:

Tokyo Performance is set in the pre-internet age, brilliantly captures the zeitgeist of Japan at the time. In this riveting, entertaining and wholly poignant tale, a Japanese celebrity receives a phone call while live on air that will change his life forever. Nori, a high profile Tokyo-based celebrity chef with his own weekly television show, is famous and beloved and he knows it—but he’s about to put in his strangest performance.

Roger Pulvers, brings his love and deep fascination for Japanese culture to Tokyo Performance, a funny and, at times, tragic story, which explores the cost of fame.

Books on Asia’s Take

In this 58-page short-story, a part of the Red Circle Minis series, Pulvers brings us into the troubled life of a TV co-host in a humorous, whimsical way that seems utterly believable despite its absurdity. A quick, fun read.

About the Author: Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theater director, and translator. He has published more than 50 books in Japanese and English, including novels, essays, plays, and poetry. His first book, a collection of short stories, On the Edge of Kyoto, was published in 1969 two years after he first came to Japan. His recent novel, Hoshizuna Monogatari (Star Sand), which he wrote in Japanese, was published by Kodansha in 2015 and subsequently in English in 2016.

Pulvers is the recipient of several literary prizes, including the Kenji Miyazawa Prize (2008) and the Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2013).

Tokyo: Ueno Station

Amazon Japan

In the Miso Soup

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Amazon Japan

Tokio Whip

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Apple Books U.S.

Amazon Japan

Moshi Moshi

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Apple Books U.S.

Amazon Japan

Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Apple Books U.S.

Amazon Japan

A Tokyo Romance

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Apple Books U.S.

Amazon Japan

Issue 4: Sense of Place—Tokyo

Metropolis Magazine

Tokyo Poetry Journal

Tokyo Performance

Amazon U.S.

Barnes & Noble U.S.

Apple Books U.S.

Amazon Japan

Books on Asia