Japanese Short Fiction

Caitlin's website

2009-06-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

Just in case you missed it, and while it's still available, click here!

Now you can watch it at home!

2006-07-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch the wildly popular film The Blue Hood!

I fixed the links

2006-06-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I fixed the links in the post below, so now everything should be working. The stories by Ivan and Andy & Nick have received some comments, and Caitlin's site, a wonderful tribute to our semester together, has even more than before.

If you happen to stop back here and are reading anything this summer that you'd like to share, let us know!

Welcome to your work!

2006-05-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

The following permalinks are, for some reason, best viewed with Firefox or Explorer. I notice some problems with Safari. If you notice any problems in my transfer of your text to the blog (I had to italicize, etc. manually), please let me know.

Read "The Story of Me" by Ivan!

And a short story by Andy and Nick!

And a review of Lonely Hearts Killer by Jenn!

And an essay entitled "Seeking Out the Elephant" by Adam!

And Stephanie's paper Suicide Stories and Recent Trends!

And the essay "Making the Connection" by Ray!

And Takekurabe, as adapted for the stage by Brendan!

And Mi Kappa es Su Kappa!

And The Jason Gallery!

And A Long Rainy Season!

And D-Mo's paper on Yuri K.!

And Japanese Lit at UI by Marcus!

And, of course, Caitlin's website!

Please also check out the message to Shiori and the class from Mr. Sakai!

I will do my best to get as much of your stuff up as quickly as possible!
Enjoy!
I sure am!

Takekurabe, as adapted for the stage by Brendan

2006-05-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

たけくらべ
Or
Child’s Play
by
樋口一葉
Higuchi Ichiyô
Translated by
Robert L. Danly.
Adapted for the stage by
Brendan Thomas.

Dramatis Personae
Fujimoto Nobuyuki: A boy of fifteen
Chokichi: Head of the side street gang, 16
Tanaka Shota: Head of the main street gang, 13.
Tarokichi: Sangoro: } Boys of Shota’s gang
Donkey: /
Midori: A Courtesan’s sister. 14

Setting: The streets of the pleasure quarter in Tokyo, 1895

Scene I

Enter Tarokichi, Sangoro and Chokichi.

Chokichi:
(upset) you can’t turn your backs on me like this! The Festival’s coming up and how am I going to humiliate that Shota kid? Come on, don’t we have some great ideas this year? What’s he got, anyway? Why are you so eager to betray me like this?

Tarokichi:
Come on, it’s not like that. Your ideas are fine and all, but, uh…

Sangoro:
It’s, you know… he can actually afford to do his ideas.

Chokichi:
What?! Are you calling me a cheapskate? You! Sangoro! Your dad owes my dad money, and you’re complaining about my not having any? You mark my words, if you stab me in the back now; you aren’t even going to have time to regret it later! Go on then! I don’t need whiners like you anyway! I can beat Shota on my own!

Tarokichi and Sangoro exit.

Chokichi: That’s right, run! Do you know who you’re dealing with? Chokichi from the back streets, that’s who! You tell that little runt that I’m coming for him, you hear me? (A moment passes) This isn’t good… this isn’t good at all. I need someone… Someone who can help me win this year. I need ideas. (Agitated) Those guys were dumber’n most, but… man, I’ve got nothing!

Nobu enters.

Chokichi:  What’re you doing… wait. I know you. You’re Nobuyuki, right? The priest’s kid?

Nobu: What, you have another dead cat for me to bury? I’m not interested, Chokichi. Go play your kids games somewhere else.

Chokichi: Wait, wait. Look. I know people say I’m a roughneck, and maybe I am. But it’s no wonder, with the way they goad me. Listen, Nobu, I’ve had enough of them. Ever since last year when that jerk from Shota’s gang picked a fight with my little brother and they all came running and jumped on him and threw him around. I mean, what do you think of something like that? Beating up a little kid and breaking his festival lantern!

Nobu:  I think it doesn’t have much to do with me, actually.

Chokichi:  (Continuing) and then that Donkey from the dumpling shop, who’s so big and awkward he thinks he can go around acting like a grown up! He comes and starts insulting me to my brother behind my back. You know what he said? ‘Think Chokichi’s so smart, huh? And so high and mighty because your father’s the fire chief? Well, your brother isn’t head of anything. He’s the tail end -A pig’s tail end!’ That’s what he said! And while I was off in the parade, pulling our float. When I heard about it later, ooh, man I was ready to get even. But my father found out and I’m the one who got in trouble somehow.

Nobu:  Look, I’m sad for you, really, but…

Chokichi:  (Continuing) and you remember the year before that, don’t you? I went over to the paper shop, where a bunch of kids from the main street were putting on makeup for their play. You know what snide things they said to me? ‘Doesn’t the back street have its own games?’ And all the while they’re treating Shota like king. I don’t forget these things, Nobu… And I don’t care how much money he has. Who is he, anyway, but the son of a loan shark? I’d be doing the world a favor to get rid of such a creep. This year, no matter how tough I have to be, I’ll see to it that Shota eats his words. That’s why, Nobu -Come on- for a friend, you’ve got to help.

Nobu:  I-

Chokichi:  I know you don’t like this kind of rough stuff. But it’s to get our honor back?

Nobu:  Our…?

Chokichi:  Don’t you want to help me smash that snooty Shota with his stuck up school songs? You know when they call me a stupid private schooler, it goes for you too. So come on. Do me this one favor and help us out. Carry one of the lanterns around at the festival. Listen, I’m eating my heart out, this has been bothering me so much. If we lose this time, it’ll be the end of me.

Nobu:  I’m not very strong, you know.

Chokichi:  That doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you’re strong or not.

Nobu: (Weakening) I don’t think I could carry one of the lanterns.

Chokichi:  Then you don’t have to!

Nobu:  You’ll lose even with me -don’t you care?

Chokichi:  If we lose, we lose. Look, you don’t have to do anything. Just be on our side. It’ll attract others, build morale. I know I’m not very smart, but everyone knows you are. Hey, I feel better already. Thanks, Nobu.

Nobu:  (sighs) …All right, I’m on your side. But you’d better keep the fighting down… If they start things, we won’t have any choice. And if that happens, I’ll wrap Shota around my little finger. (Shows Chokichi a knife)

Chokichi:  Hey, that thing’ll really cut!

Nobu:  My father brought it for me from Kyoto. (Puts it away and nods) Alright. You let me know where we’re meeting. You know where my house is, right? I’ve got to get back to my chores now.

Chokichi:  I’ll come get you, don’t worry. (Exits)

Nobu turns to go, just as Midori enters. He avoids running into her barely, but falls.

Midori:  Oh! I’m sorry. Here, wipe yourself off with this. (Offers him a white handkerchief)

Nobu:  (takes it) my fault. I should watch where I’m going.

They recognize each other at the same time, Midori smiles, but Nobu closes up.

Midori:  Hello, Nobu. I haven’t seen you at school.

Nobu:  (shortly) I’ve been busy.

(Pause)

Midori:  Well… the festival is coming up, isn’t it. The weather’s so nice… Shota invited me to come with him and his boys and make paper lanterns. Won’t that be fun?

Nobu: Mm.

Midori:  Say, Nobu, is something wrong? You used to talk to me all the time and now you won’t even look at me. Did I do something?

Nobu:  No.

Midori: Come on, tell me!

Nobu:  It’s nothing, alright? I have to go. (Exits)

Midori:  Well! If that’s how you’re going to be! (Exits in opposite direction)

End Scene I.

Scene II

Enter Midori, Sangoro, Tarokichi and Donkey, the boys carrying paper lanterns and cut out dolls.

Sangoro:  Shota? Hey, Shota, where are you? I brought Midori.

Tarokichi:  His grandma came. He had to go home for dinner, but he’ll be back in a bit. What took you guys so long?

Midori:  Well this isn’t going to be any fun. We can’t start the lantern show without Shota.

Donkey:  He’ll be back in a few minutes.

Chokichi:  (from offstage) is Sangoro there? Come here a minute, quick.

Sangoro:  Just a minute! (Runs towards the wings.)

Chokichi enters and punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor. Nobu is behind him with his knife.

Chokichi: You double crosser! This’ll teach you! Who do you think I am? Chokichi, that’s who! I’ll make you sorry you ever made fun of us! Now where’s Shota? You! Donkey from the dumpling shop! Don’t think you’re going to get away so easy! Where’s Shota? Hide him, will you? (Fights with Donkey)

Nobu and Tarokichi fight.

Midori:  What are you taking it out on him for? If you want to fight with Shota, fight with Shota! He didn’t run away and he’s not hiding. He’s not here, that’s all! This is our place! If you want to hit someone, why don’t you hit me?

Chokichi: (Knocks Donkey down) yeah? Why would I fight with you? You’re nothing but a whore, just like your sister! (Throws a gob of mud at her) This is all you’re worth!

The mud hits Midori squarely and she gasps.

Chokichi:  Serves you right! By the way, guess who’s joined our side! Nobu, from Ryuge Temple! So try and get even any time you want.

Nobu shoves Tarokichi away and straightens, locking eyes with Midori for a moment.

Chokichi:  You fools! Weaklings! Cowards! We’ll be waiting for you. You’d better be careful walking the back streets after dark! Come on, Nobu.

Chokichi exits. Nobu looks at Midori a moment longer, and then exits. Shota enters from the other side, humming. He stops.

Shota:  What happened?
 Sangoro:  That bastard Chokichi showed up and tried to kill me! They were after you, but you weren’t here.

Shota:  (Sees Midori) Oh, Midori, I’m so sorry.

Midori:  That’s alright; it’s not your fault. They got Sangoro and Tarokichi worse. You should look after them.

Shota: Those bastards! Attacking us on our own street. Who do they think they are? (Goes over to help Tarokichi, Donkey and Sangoro) It’s not your fault. Don’t be upset. It wasn’t a fair match, so don’t be ashamed. They took you by surprise. It’s lucky you weren’t hurt worse. You should go on home before the police want to know what happened.

The other boys exit and Shota goes back to Midori and examines her.

Shota: Did they hurt you?

Midori:  Well, it’s nothing that will leave a scar. (Laughs bravely) Just my dress. But listen, Shota, you mustn’t tell anyone. If mother ever found out, I’d get a real scolding. If she found out that a dolt like Chokichi smeared mud on my dress…

Shota: Please forgive me. It’s all my fault. Come on, cheer up. I won’t be able to bear it if you’re mad at me.

Midori: Hey, look out. I’ll be really mad if you ruin my dress further. (Laughs) Boys aren’t supposed to cry.
 Shota:   I guess I’m just a sissy, then. (Smiles) Sometimes I get to thinking about things… usually in the winter, when the moon is out and I have to make the rounds, you know, collecting the interest on the loans my grandmother gives out. Sometimes when I walk by the ditch, I sit down on the bank and cry. Not from the cold. I don’t know why… I just think about things. Like my mother. She died when I was three, and my father went back to his own family’s place in the country. So it’s just me and my grandmother, and her eyes aren’t so good anymore, so she can’t see what she’s doing when she loans out money. I know people say she’s stingy, but she’s only careful, you know? It really bothers me, to hear them talk that way. When I think about it, sometimes, I just can’t help it if I cry. I guess I am a weakling. A boy looks pretty silly when he cries, doesn’t he? I don’t know why I’m telling you this… but you look so nice in that dress and it makes me mad that an oaf like Chokichi ruined it for you.

Midori:  Hey, it’s okay. You look really handsome today too. You’re the best dressed of all of them.

Shota:  (laughs) I look good? You’re beautiful! Why, you’re even prettier then your sister today. Boy, I’d be proud if you were my sister. I’d hold my head high with a girl like you alongside me. Say, Midori, what do you say we have our picture taken?

Midori:  What? But my dress is a mess! Look at me! (Laughs) If you take a picture of me when I look funny like this, you might not like me anymore.

Shota:  Oh, come on. If the photographer takes a big one, maybe he’ll use our picture in his shop window! Won’t Nobu be jealous then! He’ll turn white, he’ll be so envious. A guy like him is too proper to know how to turn red. What’s the matter, don’t you like that idea? You don’t look very excited.
 Midori:  Shota, I… should go change. Why don’t you come over? We can float candles on the pond and chase the fish. It’ll be fun.

Shota:  Uh… sure. Yeah. (Smiles) It will be fun. And easier now that the bridge is fixed. I’ll walk you home then, Midori.

End Scene II.

Scene III.

Enter Chokichi and Nobu.

Chokichi:  Alright… look. I know you’re probably angry. I couldn’t help it though. Everything got so out of hand. You won’t hold it against me, will you? How was I supposed to know Shota would have flown the coop? It’s not as though I planned to beat up Sangoro and pick a fight with that tramp Midori. Things just happened. All I wanted was to show a little muscle, show them who’s boss. It’s my fault, I know. But come on, Nobu. If you get mad now, how’s it going to look for both of us? After I went around telling everyone you were on our side? You can’t leave us all in the lurch like this. Okay, so you don’t approve of this one thing. Next time, you be the leader and we won’t botch it, okay?

Nobu:  … (Shakes his head) All right. But listen up. If we bully the weak ones, we’ll be the ones made fun of the next day. We’re not gaining anything by fighting Sangoro and Tarokichi, let alone Midori. If Shota and his lieutenants want to stir up trouble, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. But we don’t need to be egging them on to start a fight.
 Chokichi:  Alright, alright. I promise, okay? No more fighting at all.

Nobu:  And you should go apologize to Midori and Sangoro, too. If you want Sangoro back on your side, you’d better show that you can be nice to him too, you know.

Chokichi:  Bah. Sangoro’s a weakling. But alright, fine. If you insist, I’ll talk to Sangoro. But only if you talk to that tramp Midori. It’s not like she’d even give me the time of day right now, anyway.

Nobu:  What? Why do I have to talk to Midori?

Chokichi:  I saw her staring at you. When she grows up, maybe you can buy her contract from one of the brothels, huh? (Laughs) From Midori, goddess of the brothel, you could make her the goddess of the kitchen! That ought to suit you, Mr. Priest.

Nobu:  Oh, shut up. I mean it. If you bring that up again, I’m leaving.

Chokichi:  Alright, alright. I’m sorry. It was just a joke. You will talk to her, though, won’t you?

Nobu:  … yeah, alright. You talk to Sangoro and I’ll talk to Midori.

Chokichi:  Better hurry up, she’s probably about back at her house already, dressing in another of her whore sister’s dresses.

Nobu raises a threatening fist and Chokichi exits. Nobu hides. Shota and Midori enter.

Shota:  …see that Sangoro’s been babysitting again? Carrying around a little kid on his back and singing nursery rhymes all day. He looked like he’d forgotten that he was a boy!

They laugh

Midori:  Do you hear someone coming? It sounds like footsteps.

Shota:  I don’t hear anything. (Looks around) Boo! Hey, who’s there?

Nobu exits.

Shota:  Oh, it’s just that old maid Nobu. He’s not interesting.

Midori:  Nobu? That old priest! I’ll bet he came to bother you and scurried off the moment he saw there was more then one of us! Nasty, stupid, toothless old-maid Nobu. I wish he had stayed. I’d have told him what I think of him! Too bad he ran away. (Stares after Nobu for a moment)

Shota:  (taps her on the shoulder) Hey, Midori, what is it?

Midori:  Nothing. I hate that stupid altar boy. Isn’t he awful? My mother says people who are straightforward are the good ones. She’s right, don’t you think Shota? It’s a sure thing Nobu has an evil heart, the way he lurks around.

Shota:  (laughs) Well, at least he knows his butt from a hole in the ground. Not like Chokichi. Now there’s a real moron. The boy’s a total ignoramus.

Midori:  You and your big words. Such a serious face! (Laughs) Since when are you so grown up?

Shota:  For your information, it won’t be long before I am grown up. I’ll wear a topcoat like the shopkeeper at Kabata’s, and the gold watch my father left for me, rings, hats, everything. I’ll smoke cigarettes and wear leather sandals, the good kind, with triple layered heels and fancy satin straps. Won’t I look sharp then?

Midori:  You in triple heels and a square cut overcoat? (Laughs) Sure, if you want to look like a walking medicine bottle!

Shota:  Oh, shush. You don’t think I’ve stopped growing, do you? I won’t be this short forever.
 Midori:  Seeing is believing, you know, Shota. Even the mice laugh when you keep making promises like this!

Shota:  Yeah, yeah. Midori makes jokes about everything. But everyone grows up, you know. Why is what I say so funny? The day will come when I go walking with my pretty wife. I always like things to be pretty. If I had to marry someone dirty like that pock marked Ofuku at the cracker shop, or the girl at the firewood store with the bulging forehead, well, I’d say no thank you and send her home! No big foreheads for me!

Midori:  Oh, very nice. Well then, who is there that you’d be satisfied with? Oroku at the flower shop has got a pretty face. Or there’s Kii at the fruit stand. Or who else, I wonder? Who will it be, Shota? The lucky girl?

Shota:  What are you talking about? Oroku, Kii, what’s so good about them? (blushing)

Midori:  Oh, then who is it?

Shota:  How do I know? It’s still a long way away, like you keep saying, right? Like you’re going to be a kid forever? One of these days it’s going to be you with your hair all up like your sister’s, putting on makeup and attracting admirers, you know.

Midori:  Oh, bah. Just because there’s a destiny doesn’t mean we have to rush towards it. I like where we are now. I’ll see you later, okay Shota?

Shota:  Hm? Oh, yeah. I guess I should change out of these festival clothes before we play in the pond, huh. Okay, Midori. I’ll be back in an hour or so.

Midori:  Don’t grow up too much while you’re gone! (Teasing)

Shota:  (laughs) just watch me. Next time we see each other, we won’t even recognize ourselves. (Exits)

Nobu re-enters slowly and tentatively. Midori doesn’t notice him. He watches her for a moment before leaving again.

End Scene III
 Scene IV Enter Nobu. It’s raining heavily. He carries an umbrella, huddling under it from the rain. As he passes center, his sandal strap breaks and he loses his shoe. He spends a moment trying to fix it, and his umbrella is blown away.

Nobu:  Damn!

A window is opened, and Midori looks out into the rain, spying Nobu but not recognizing him.

Midori:  (over her shoulder) look, someone’s broken his sandal. I’ll be back in just a moment. I’m going to give him something to fix it with. Poor boy, out in the rain without an umbrella.

The window closes, and a moment later Midori enters, holding a red strip of cloth.
 Midori:  I…

Nobu straightens and turns, and they recognize each other at the same time, standing speechless for a long moment.

Shota:  (from offstage) Midori, the game is ready. What are you doing out there? Don’t you know better then to play in the rain? You’ll catch another cold.

Midori:  (not taking her eyes from Nobu) Alright, coming…
They stare at each other for another moment, both unable to say anything. Then Midori throws the red rag at Nobu and turns, running offstage, biting back tears. Nobu watches her go for a moment, then looks at the rag, beginning to bend over to pick it up but then stopping. He turns away. Chokichi enters, with an umbrella.

Chokichi:  What’s the matter? Break your strap? What a sight you are!

Nobu:  (looking past Chokichi towards where Midori disappeared.) I didn’t know what to do. I’m not very good at these things.

Chokichi:  No you wouldn’t be, would you. It’s alright. Wear mine. The straps won’t give out.

Nobu:  (appears to be coming out of a daze) Hm? But what will you do?
 Chokichi:  Don’t worry. I’m used to it. I’ll just go like this. (Takes his sandals off) The mud feels nicer then the sandals do anyways.

Nobu:  You’re going to go barefoot? That won’t be fair.

Chokichi:  I don’t mind. I’m used to going barefoot. Someone like you has soft feet. You could never walk barefoot on the gravel. Come on, wear these. I’ll take your sandals and toss them in at the back door of your house. Here, let’s switch.
Nobu looks back at the scrap of red cloth for a long moment before nodding silently and putting on the other boy’s shoes. He exits. Chokichi sees the red cloth and picks it up curiously, looking at it for a moment before balling it up and tossing it away again as he exits.

End Scene IV

Scene V Enter Shota and Donkey, from opposite sides.

Shota:  Hullo, Donkey. How are you doing? Making any money?

Donkey:  Shota! You’re just in time. I’ve run out of bean jam and don’t know what to do. People keep showing up and we don’t want to turn them away. Father sent me out for more, but all the stores are out. What should I do?
 Shota:  Don’t be stupid. Just scrape the stuff off the side, add water and sugar and you’ll be able to feed another ten or twenty people easily. Everybody does it, it’s not like you’d be the first. (Shrugs uninterestedly) I saw Clammy do the same thing in the alley. It’s not my idea. Hey, do you know where Midori is? I’ve been looking for her since this morning. Where’d she go off to?

Donkey:  Midori? She went by a little while ago. I saw her take one of the side bridges into the quarter. Shota, you should have seen her. She had her hair all done up like her sister. She’s really something, that girl!

Shota:  Yes, she’s even prettier then her sister. I hope she won’t end up like her.

Donkey:  What do you mean? That would be wonderful! Next year I’m going to open a shop and after I save up some money, I’ll buy her for a night, maybe.

Shota:  Don’t be an ass. Even if you tried, she wouldn’t have anything to do with you.

Donkey:  What? Why would she refuse me?

Shota: She just would. (Laughs uneasily) I’m going to walk around for a while. See you later.

Donkey exits. Midori enters, with Tarokichi. She is dressed up, in makeup with her hair in an elaborate style. Shota stares at her for a moment until she notices him.

Midori:  Shota! (To Tarokichi) Hey, you’ve got more shopping to do, right? Why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll go home with him.

Tarokichi:  Oh, you don’t want me around, now that Shota’s here is that it? (Joking) Alright, I’ll be off home then. See you two lovebirds later. (Exits. Midori looks very unhappy at that last line.)

Shota:  You look really nice, Midori. When did you get your hair done up like that? This morning? Why didn’t you come show it to me?

Midori:  … My sister did it. I hate it. (Unhappily) But sorry I didn’t show it to you. I’m… I’m going home. See you later, Shota.

Shota:  Why? Come on, stay and play. What happened, did someone scold you? I bet you had a fight with your sister. (Teasing)

Midori:  (flushes) you’re such a child. I don’t want to walk with you, Shota. (Moves away)

Shota:  Hey, you aren’t coming to the festival? (Follows her) Why are you going home? You might at least explain, you know.

Midori: … It’s nothing.

Shota:  Come on, what’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?

Midori begins to cry into her hands.

Shota:  Please tell me what’s the matter. You’ve never said anything to me, so how can you be angry with me? Come on. Please tell me what I did.

Midori:  It isn’t you.

Shota:  Then what is it? Please, you can tell me.

Midori:  I don’t know, alright? It’s just… thinking about things, like you said before, remember? I just want to be left alone. I want to sit in a dark room and… and just play with dolls all day and night and not have to talk to anyone! I’m so sick of being stared at and talked to all the time! I’m so sick of growing up! I hate it! For God’s sake, go home, Shota. I feel like dying with you here. All these questions are giving me a headache. They make me dizzy. I don’t want anyone here. Just go home!

Shota:  … You sure are acting strange, Midori. I… I don’t know why you’re talking this way. You must be crazy or something. (Hurt)

Midori:  Go home! Go home, will you! If you don’t get out of here, you’re not my friend at all. I hate you, Shota!

Shota:  If that’s the way you feel, I’m sorry to have bothered you.
(Midori exits at a run, crying, and Shota watches her go dumbfounded. A moment later, Sangoro enters.)

Sangoro:  Hey, Shota! I was looking for you. Look at how much I made today! Anything, anything you want, it’s my treat!
 Shota:  (Still upset) You idiot. Since when do you treat me? Don’t start talking big.

Sangoro:  What happened? Was it a fight? Who was it? Nobu? Chokichi? Where? The temple? Come on, we have to get them back! It won’t be like last time! This time, there’s no way we can lose. Let me lead, okay Shota?

Shota:  Take it easy. There was no fight.

Sangoro:  Really? Then what happened? Hey, but if we don’t do it tonight, we won’t have another chance. Chokichi’s losing his right arm.

Shota:  Huh?

Sangoro:  That Nobu guy. Didn’t you hear? I just found out. He’s going off to be a monk a year early! And once he puts those big floppy robes on, there’s no way he’ll be able to fight! But you know what that means, don’t you? Next year the front and back streets will be all yours. There’s no way Chokichi can hold them without Nobu.

Shota:  (In a bad mood) Alright, quiet. For a few coins, every one of you would go over to Chokichi in a heartbeat. I could have a hundred of you, and it wouldn’t excite me in the least. They can go where they like for all I care. I’ll fight my own battles. It was Nobu I wanted to beat, anyway. But I thought he was going away next year, after he graduated. What a coward! Why’s he going so soon?

Sangoro:  I don’t know. It must have been something important, though. I heard even his parents don’t know why he’s leaving so suddenly for seminary. Come on, Shota. Let me buy you something. Cheer you up.

Exeunt. End Scene V

Scene V1
Midori is at her window, looking out wistfully. A knock sounds, but she ignores it. It sounds again.

Shota:  (from offstage) Midori? Sangoro bought sweets, do you want any?

Midori:  … Maybe later. You go on ahead.

Shota:  … Alright. I’ll see you later, Midori.

Midori doesn’t respond. Down on the stage, a figure enters in darkness and moves beneath her window. She notices, and disappears from the window. The figure stoops, places something on the ground, and flees, exiting just as she enters. She looks around, out of breath, and sees the object. She moves over to it and picks it up. It’s a paper narcissus. She looks at it for a long moment before clasping it to her chest as the lights fade.

The End.

A Short Story by Andy Adams and Nick Taylor

2006-05-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

Man Under a Train

Preface: This short story contains depictions of suicide as well as vulgar language of racial discrimination. In writing this story, we the authors do not wish to encourage. let alone condone the use of such language but felt it was necessary in order to heighten the reality of hardships that people must face throughout their daily lives. Furthermore, we the writers do not wish to downplay these sensitive issues such as race, mental issues, and suicide.

Ok, so get this! I was standing at the train station waiting to get the hell home, when all of a sudden, I notice this group of guys givin’ shit to this black guy. So I’m thinkin’ to myself, “great, what a bunch of assholes.” Right then, I hear the train coming in and the instant it enters the station, the black guy jumps right in front of it and kills himself. Needless to say, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d never seen such a horrible sight before. There was blood and guts everywhere and yet that’s not what bothered me. No, I’ve been so desensitized to gore that it doesn’t affect me. What really got to me was how those jerks drove that guy to throw himself in front of a train.

You know, it’s just so hard to put myself in that guy’s shoes, impossible really. But how else can I feel empathy for him? I think I’ve gotta try though, ‘cause I can’t stop thinking about the whole situation. I mean, what would it be like to be discriminated against your whole life? Granted, I’ve been raised an Atheist in a very christian area and was occasionally hurt because of it, but I can’t really consider that to be equal to the level of discrimination, be it advertent or inadvertent, that the man had suffered his whole life.

...

I was sitting on a bench in the subway terminal, awaiting a train home after a long day of work. I was working longer and longer days to pay for my wife’s medical expenses. I had been reading the daily paper when the commotion started. I hadn’t heard everything they said but an argument was occurring. A man was shouting angrily at two business-types standing nearby. The terminal was nearly vacant, save a few people trying to catch the last train out of the city. The man was spitting as he spoke and gave menacing gestures. Despite his fearsome appearance the two men egged him on. I didn’t make it a habit to interfere in daily dramas such as this, so I observed them quietly thinking nothing much of the ordeal. After a final tirade the man looked defeated. He began to cry. I remember seeing the grief on his face, I didn’t immediately feel sorry for him, everyone had something to deal with on their plate, and mine was full. The man who had been standing close to the train tracks slowly turned to face them. He began mumbling to himself, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t hear him; the train had started its approach and was getting louder. Then, just as I was about to gather my things to prepare to board the train, the man jumped from the platform. The train had struck him right before he would have landed on the tracks. His body suddenly seemed in-human, doll-like as it was bent tumbling under thousands of pounds of speeding metal. I found myself standing at the edge of the platform witnessing his demise. His arm had been severed where he had jumped, and most of his body couldn’t be seen. There was what looked like wet trails of organs. From what I’ve seen in movies they appeared to be intestines. Only this was no movie. There was no cut away to save the viewer from the gore they had just seen from the wizards of special effects. This was something that had once been inside the man, living. Everything was dark, but with the train’s braking sparks they gleamed and I couldn’t be turned away.

…

Like I said, I think the guy probably suffered his whole life and these guys pushed him over the edge. I can just feel how horrible the guy felt as he stood there being verbally assaulted for accidentally bumping into one of them on his way to the boarding section of the train. I think the guy must’ve been like, “What the hell did I do to them?” The guy, we’ll call him Z, was probably just sitting there stewing, thinking about how sweet it would be to jack those jerks right in the face. Or maybe he just didn’t care, perhaps this felt to him like a vicious cycle, one with no exit, well except for one, I guess. You know, let me rephrase that, ‘cause it isn’t a cycle, it never has been. More like a vicious path, maybe a gauntlet? Going through all walks of life while suffering so many blows to every aspect of your being (It’s like POW! You can’t get a job here ‘cause you’re black, or WHACK! We’re gonna watch you like a hawk from the minute you enter the store!) So yeah, I think a more ‘appropriate’ description would be how Z had been fighting through a gauntlet his whole life, and it finally got the best of him.*

What irritates me even more though, is how those guys had no fucking idea who Z was, they just knew he was black and had bumped into them and that was enough. I can’t picture myself hurting someone just because of his or her skin color, the idea is completely ridiculous to me. So what made those guys think it was OK?

…

The self destruction I witnessed took me away from the natural, normal feeling you get from being in your own body. The next few days were a blur, I felt isolated from everyone. The images replayed in my mind a thousand times and over I began to question myself. Why did I stand and do nothing? Why did I rush to the edge of the platform to view this macabre spectacle? I had read about the man in the paper the following day. A short headline read “Man throws himself into train, causes delays.” How inconvenient. I read more. This man had a name, a family, a life. In an instant it had disappeared. How is he different from my friend, from my wife, from me? Why did they bother putting the man’s name in the article, it was apparent from the writing that the readers only wanted how he died and how long the train was delayed. This information was given first, then the witness accounts and the man’s name and surviving family. I hadn’t stuck around for the police to arrive. I had ran, taken an expensive taxi ride home, but it didn’t matter, I didn’t want to be held accountable for doing nothing again.

…

Yeah, so like I was saying, the guys aggressing Z, there were two of them. They looked like, you know, like your average Joe Blows. Nothin’ too remarkable about them, ‘cept their asshole demeanor. There were a couple of other people there, didn’t really get a good look at’em though. But then, after something as horrible as that happens, who’d be able to picture some random faces, hell, I can barely remember what those two white guys looked like.

…

Over a week after the man’s death, I still couldn’t make myself work. I felt useless and vegetative, nothing, it would seem, was able to bring me out of this grief. My life had suddenly become an ongoing dilemma on the lookout for the next problem; I became even more bitter than I had already been. I had convinced myself that everyone had problems, that mine weren’t any worse than the next man’s but suddenly that had all changed. I felt wronged, cheated; this unfair fate was taking advantage of me, giving me so much pain. I continually thought of my friend who had committed suicide while I was in college. Before it was hard to imagine the gruesome details of his death, but now they came to me when I slept. I saw him sitting in his car, pulling his shoes and socks off… crying. I saw him push the metal tube into his mouth. His toe slips down, and eventually rests on the trigger. The explosive force is loud and I can see it all. His face is now a piece of plaster, which I can only briefly visit at his funeral. These emotions come back to me now, as if they were there all along waiting for me to realize them. We were supposed to visit the night he had died; I was going to come back after finals. Instead, I had stayed to spend time with the girlfriend who had become my wife. I had always felt responsible, he was my friend, an intimate relationship that two people have, yet I suddenly felt this way about a stranger whose name I had to read in the paper. I failed to help him, even though I didn’t know his problems.

…

Sorry, I kind of went off on a tangent there, but like I was saying, there was an argument between the two guys and Z, luckily I was standing near enough to overhear what was going on.

It happened like this. At first, the two guys were just standing around talking amongst themselves until Z came up the stairs to the boarding platform. He was talking on his cell phone and because the guys were so close to the stairwell, Z had to brush up against one of them. As soon as he did that, the guys zoned in on him like hawks targeting their prey. Z said ‘excuse me’ and kept walking until he had reached the loading area for the train. Maybe it was just me, but I really think Z knew they were going to do something, perhaps he felt their eyes locked on him as he walked by, but whatever the case may have been, to me it felt like watching an impending crash. I had that feeling like when you’re dreaming and you try to punch something, or reach out for something, or whatever...but your arm just never seems to move fast enough, and the more you strain, the slower you move and the more defeated you feel.

…

Slowly I began to go to work. I felt the need to, being concerned of our debt and I no longer wanted my wife to worry. I think she too felt responsible for my state of disrepair. I took a bus to and from work, which took longer because of the need to switch lines and frequent stops. Still I couldn’t get myself to ride the train. I only worked half days and spent my afternoons in the park watching people go about their lives. They seldom noticed me; I began to wonder if they had become busy in their lives to avoid their own problems. I began to apply problems to them. This woman has an eating disorder. This man is bi-polar. This woman feels guilty about her abortion. That man was raped. They all smile and rush to where they need to be. Is it fair to say they are better off than me? This made me feel better, made me feel less alone, I was suddenly aware of their problems, and it was okay. I knew they were going through something as tough as I was; it was okay to not be okay. Despite all of this I would come home depressed. Did the only joy in my life consist of other peoples mutual suffering? My wife began to question my state of health, trying to get me to seek out help; “people would understand” she would say. But I couldn’t. The bills were high enough, and I would make her problems take precedence over mine. If I held on long enough my problems would be okay, my wife would get better, I would be able to work again, and I could become one of those shining faces you see in magazines or T.V. I couldn’t be resentful of my wife’s depression or our failing marriage. Those were her worries, I couldn’t fuel the fire. I am not resentful.

…

So anyways, like I was saying, Z went up to the loading area and the guys sort of trailed behind him. They looked really unsure of what they were doing, kind of like when kids are being pressured into doing something they know is wrong, but feel as if they can’t back down. One of the guys would jeer him, “fuckin’ nigger”, and his lackey would follow up with a, “yah, show us some fuckin’ respect”, and this went on for a while, until Z got fed up with it.
Out of nowhere, Z just turned around really fast and started diggin’ into the two assholes. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? I said excuse me when I walked by!” Lemme tell you man, when he said that, Z looked pissed! I could tell all the shit those jerks were givin’ him had really taken it’s toll and he wasn’t gonna put up with that bullshit anymore. This kind of scared the jerks ‘cause they backed up a bit, but you know, I think they kind of wanted him to react like he did. They wanted to piss him off and when he took the bait, they started reelin’ him in. “Better watch your fuckin’ mouth, boy”, “yah man…you shoved the wrong guys, nigger”.

…

I shuddered suddenly when speaking with a co-worker. She had, in an attempt to show her overwhelming frustration at work, hurt me without intention of doing so. How would she know? She couldn’t. I had missed work and used up many of my sick days, but didn’t specify directly why. In the middle of her complaint, images of trains, guns, and pills instantly invaded my head. Sick and abused, I wanted to scream at her. I could feel my face flush and I quickly finished the conversation without even thinking. I couldn’t remember much of it, only the words repeating over and over in my head, “if this server crashes again I’m going to kill myself.”

…

I mean shit, it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, latino, or whatever, you’re a human being and human beings can only put up with so much crap until they break. And like I said, to be basically born with strikes against you, seems like more opportunities to snap.

And you know, I swear I saw his face change a little bit. Z looked like he knew how pointless arguin’ with those guys was, ‘cause they sure as hell weren’t gonna back down, and you know, he was one against two…those odds aren’t good. So then, the jerks kept harassing him and started circling him like sharks. Man, at first I was so glad when that train whistle blew, I thought his salvation had come. I mean they backed off a bit, stopped harassing him as much… and then he jumped.

…

The next day, the bus broke down along the way to work. I caught myself in an unfamiliar part of town nearby a zoo. Instead of waiting for another bus to come by I made my way into the zoo, feeling a little guilty about excusing myself from my responsibilities because of a minor delay. I walked around looking at the animals in a different way than before. I had always liked the zoo, thinking about how nice it was to have the remarkable ability to see these oddities without traveling to a distant land. I had always assumed these animals to be happy, being cared for so tenderly by volunteers and zookeepers. Oh how I had envied them, not having much to worry about, only feeding and bathing in the sun, watching the children and families pass by with an ominous gaze. But upon this visit I felt different. I saw the jaguar pace against his iron prison, unable to release his primal aggressions towards his suffering. I viewed a zebra feeling paranoid without the threat of danger he instinctively feels in the wild. I noticed hawks through a slew of chicken-wire yearning to roam. I watched kids as they held out their hands filled with food, as sheep glutted themselves at the chance for it, they weren‘t hungry, they’d been eating for hours, and it’s the attention that they craved. When I left the zoo I felt like I’d abandoned my new friends. They don’t know my name, but that’s what we are, friends.

…

Everybody looked like...I don’t know how to explain it very, well, kind of like…”what the fuck?” Everything happened so damn fast, everything. Like, the whole thing took about 5 minutes, you know. But it seemed like so much longer. I felt like I was trapped in time and space. I kept wondering why I couldn’t move...I wanted to help Z, but I don’t know, I just couldn’t.

…

I returned to work after the zoo, the sense of duty keeps me there. Even though I only planned to work a short while, I felt compelled to work more. By the time I was leaving the building, I realized it was late and that the buses had stopped running. I was gripped by fear. I could take a taxi home, but with my trip to the zoo, I didn’t have enough money to pay for the trip. I approached the station with caution, a bird, alert of impending danger but still progressing to food from a stranger; I was ready to flee out of the station which had become a grave beneath the road. Fists clenched, I reached the bench I had sat every other time I had gone home, now tarnished from the experience.

The station was nearly empty; I felt the sweat drip off my face as my mouth dried up. My eyes became fixed at a piece of cement. The man had been standing here when he jumped. Agitated, I walked around the station. Two trains had already gone by and I was still there. There would be only one train left before they ceased to stop here. I suddenly felt a sense of urgency and moved to the edge of the platform. I was awestruck. He jumped from here. A strange feeling came over me; I could only describe it as temptation. My world had returned to this point. I had seen suicides everyday since that day. I could see one now. But I didn’t feel dreadful like I had earlier. It was as if there was an intolerable weight sliding away from me. For the first time I felt empowered instead of debilitated. Suddenly I became startled, I hadn’t noticed, but a man had appeared next to me. He was a business-type, his white knuckles clutching his briefcase, his hair matted, he had tears swelling in his eyes. I heard the train approach. He finally looked up at me and I smiled. He away from me to face the oncoming train. The wind throughout the tunnel fluttered his hair towards the tracks. It was as if he was having a conversation with the wind, they were both saying jump.

We would like to have a discussion on the blog about this story and will also include our thoughts while writing, editing, and in general the whole process. We're totally cool with having it forwarded on to Caitlin's webpage or anything else.

Thanks a lot,

Nick and Andy

Tevis has the mumps!

2006-05-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

He wrote:

adrienne, i was diagnosed with the mumps thursday night.

i unknowingly exposed you and the class (thinking i had a strange toothache), so you should be aware of symptoms yourself (and may want to alert others in our class).

Please, everyone, take very good care!!!!

The Story of Me

2006-05-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

by Ivan Kling

Chapter 1
Us

If pressed to classify us, I would say we were probably lower middle class. We were a military family moving around from base to base in Japan. Papa was a career Navy man who never rose too far in the ranks. He was a good man and a hard worker, but, as he put it, wasn’t willing to kiss the necessary ass to get promotions. Mama was an angry depressed Japanese housewife. She was never too loving or affectionate, but she made sure we got fed. Looking back on it now, I guess I can understand why she was angry and depressed, but I’ll get into that later.

Papa, like any good sailor, liked his booze. As he got older, he switched from liquor to beer, but he still drank a lot of it. I never saw my dad hit my mom, but they were always fighting and arguing. It wasn’t uncommon late at night to hear mama and papa going at it, dishes flying and furniture being tossed around. It was almost always because there wasn’t enough money. Mama liked to gamble and papa liked his drink. I guess you could say they were a match made in heaven.

For the longest time it was me, my brother Justy and sister Juli. Juli, the oldest, was four years older than me, and Justy was two years older. As far as siblings go, we were not particularly close. I’m not really sure why. Justy and I had a lot of the same friends and we did things together a lot, we even shared a room most of the time, but to this day I couldn’t tell you what his favorite color is or what his thoughts on life are. Juli was older and she was a girl. We liked to terrorize her and steal pencils and erasers from her collection, but I can’t remember ever playing at the park with her or anything like that. She would grow up to be the trouble maker. But again, that’s for later.

As a sailor, one of the things you do is go sailing. Not necessarily because you want to, but because it’s your job. So, every now and again, papa would go sailing. Sometimes he’d be gone for six weeks, sometimes he’d be gone for six months. But, whenever he went, the homecoming was always a huge deal. When he got off the boat, we would run up and give him a big hug, then he would grab mama and give her a big nasty “I’ve missed you” kiss, and then we would go home. I bet that’s the greatest feeling in the world having your family there waiting for you when you get back from a long trip. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what kept mama and papa going for so long.

When sailors come home to their wives after long journeys, sometimes they forget about contraception and where babies come from. As a result, at least in my family, sometimes you get a couple of extra children. The fruits of my father’s lapse in judgment came in the form of Cassy and Emi. What am I talking about? I think we were all a result of that same lapse in judgment! Anyway, the last two members of our family came ten and eleven years later than me. That huge difference in age made the emotional distance between me and them even greater than with the older two. To be quite frank, I was a dick to them. I was the meanest older brother in the world. I still don’t really understand why, but it probably had something to do with the fact that after they were born my parents’ fighting got worse. Mama was not the least bit happy about being pregnant, and I think she wanted to end both of her final two pregnancies, but papa wouldn’t allow it. My parents don’t really talk about the subject, that’s just what I’ve pieced together from overhearing their arguments over the years. I can only imagine how it makes Cassy and Emi feel to hear shit like that.

So, there we were, good ‘ol drunken Iowa boy dad, gambling addicted Japanese mom, and now five kids. Talk about the picture of dysfunction. My mom wasn’t the best housewife in the first place, but now, at the age of 41, she had to take care of two babies and the rest of us. I honestly think I would have run away or killed myself. Papa was never a big help around the house. In his mind, he brought home the paycheck so he should be able to come home to a clean house and a meal sitting on the table. But that rarely happened. I think at some point, the cultural differences and frustration and miscommunication made them both shut down. By the time I was old enough to really know anything about anything, mama was already into her routine of depressed late night insomnia and television viewing. She rarely got up to help us get ready for school in the morning and most of the time she was sleeping on the couch when we got home. This became a huge problem when Cassy and Emi came along. It’s ok to expect 10 to 14 year old’s to take care of themselves to a certain extent, but not looking after toddlers can cause a lot of trouble. When mama was sleeping they would go upstairs and get into mine and Justy and Juli’s stuff. Not only that, but once they learned to get their diapers off, they pooped and peed wherever was convenient. I can’t count the number of times I came home to find a terd in the middle of my bedroom floor. They also loved to roam the neighborhood with only a t-shirt on. It was a regular scene. I would come walking home from school and find Cassy playing at the park that was adjacent to our housing complex, no shoes, no diaper, naked from the waist down playing on the equipment. It all seems so surreal now, like it couldn’t have really been like that, but that’s the way it was. It’s so bad it makes me laugh when I think about it.

Chapter 2
The move

Part of the reason for the madness of my family is the fact that my parents are of different ethnic backgrounds. They were not the kind of parents that tried to nurture an understanding of both cultures or anything like that. They were the kind that were holding on for dear life and hoping that no one got killed in the process. As a result, I grew up not really having a good sense of national identity. I knew I was Japanese because whenever I looked at mama I could see she was Japanese. I knew I was American because they reminded me every day during the pledge of allegiance. I never really had any problems fitting in when I was in Japan because everyone on the base was a mixed breed like me, or they were Hispanic, or Phillipino, or black. It never really became an issue until we moved to Iowa. Good old Newton, Iowa.

When you go to a new country for the first time they say you experience culture shock. I think that would explain what happened to me when we moved to Newton. Although I am an American, moving to Newton was the first real experience I had with living in America. One could argue that living on an American military base overseas is just like living in America, and it is very similar, but it is also different in a lot of ways. As I stated earlier, most of the kids living on the base are minorities in one form or another. So, just by having lived on the base, you get a real multi-cultural experience. But, when you live in Newton, your multicultural experience is going to the Chinese restaurant just off the interstate. I’m not saying that the folks in Newton are bad people or even that they are closed minded, but they are definitely white by an insanely overwhelming margin. I guess before we moved to Newton, I never really gave a lot of thought to my own ethnicity. I knew I was Japanese and I knew I was American, but beyond that I never really thought much of it. But, when you’re the new kid in a school of about 2000 and the only other minorities are the kid from that Chinese restaurant just off the interstate and maybe two black kids, all of a sudden race and ethnicity are at the forefront. The funny thing about it is that nobody could figure out what I was. Some thought I was Mexican, some guessed Native American, some even asked if I was Eskimo. Everyone was always shocked when I told them I was half Japanese.

Chapter 3
Auto Mechanics

For some reason my sophomore year in high school I decided it would be a good idea to take an auto mechanics class. I’m not really sure what possessed me to do it, but I did. The other kids in class fit the mold of every hick stereotype you can imagine. Every day it was NASCAR t-shirts and working on Firebirds and all kinds of good stuff. Now, again, these probably weren’t bad people, but they were extremely ignorant. And as it inevitably always happened, one day someone asked me what I was. Teenage boys aren’t the most tactful beasts by nature, but when they are the auto mechanics students from the middle of nowhere, Iowa, they tend to have even less restraint or good judgment. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, instead of dodging the question, I let them have it. At first there were responses of disbelief. But then, as I convinced the group of my identity, the ignorance and lack of intercultural experience started to shine through.

“If you’re Chinese then why aren’t your eyes slanted?”

This of course was followed by raucous laughter.

“I’m not Chinese, I’m Japanese, you fuckin’ moron. There’s a pretty big difference. It’s like calling you a Mexican.”

“I aint’ no fuckin beaner! I’m American!

“Hey, my dad told me that their pussies are slanted too!! So the farther you spread their legs, the tighter they get!”

Followed, of course, by more laughter.

“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

It really was the dumbest shit I had ever heard. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d like to believe that nobody in that room believed what was being said, but honestly, I’m not so sure.

After that, I was a little more careful about who I let in on my little secret. It’s not that I ever felt that I was in any danger or anything like that, but somehow when people found out I was half Japanese, it was like I became tainted in their eyes. Of course, there were those who didn’t care, but everyone had some kind of comment. I had a good friend who affectionately referred to me as “nip”. I never really objected. By that time I had become de-sensitized. It really is funny. When I was a kid in Japan, no Japanese person would have ever referred to me as a “Japanese”, not even mama. The best I could hope to do there was hafu. But, when I came to the United States, the land to which I legally belonged, I was singled out as “Japanese”.

Seeking Out The Elephant:

2006-05-06T10:54:00.001-07:00

Spotlight on Haruki Murakami’s Short Stories

Adam Entsminger
Adrienne Hurley
Japanese Short Fiction

“Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. Married life is weird, I felt.” Haruki Murakami is weird, I feel, or perhaps I should be fair and say that his writing is what is strange. Perhaps the man himself is actually very straight and normal; I would even go further and say that he is methodical. It is this meshing of his method and technique with the complete absurdity of his writing that makes his stories so immensely intriguing. What Murakami does is to take a simple piece of content, perhaps simple is a poor word choice, but an idea that can be at least loosely grasped and thought upon, and take it into a context so bizarre that it creates this absolutely surreal feeling. And this feeling just makes you as the reader just go with it; suspend your disbelief and just accept what he is telling you. And this strategy is beautifully successful. The reader completely escapes into these worlds and upon returning to real life, brings back gems of understanding and interpretation, not to mention a great deal of entertainment. These treasures shine brightly would put up against some of Japan’s other short fiction, literature that shines in a different, almost dimmer if not necessarily duller light.

Murakami was born in 1949 Kyoto to a Buddhist Priest father and a mother who both taught Japanese literature. He grew up in Kobe and eventually studied drama at Waseda University. It was here in Tokyo where he met his wife Yoko and worked in a record store and ran a jazz bar named the “Peter Cat.” Murakami’s dive into writing did not occur until his thirties, where the story goes that he was suddenly hit by a compulsion to write a novel at a baseball game. Later he taught at Princeton and Tufts Universities. Murakami has suffered from some criticism that he writes mere pop literature, a term that has a stigma of the low brow and unliterary, yet he has won numerous awards and turned the opinions of former naysayers. Murakami’s work often smells of a great Western influence as well as a sense of music, many of his titles are direct references to song. Perhaps this is a reason he is often written off the literary radar, and also why he stands apart from other Japanese short fiction. He has a style all his own, but nonetheless a style that combines the east and west, much like the world of Japan itself does. He understands and uses this.

Although frequently a novelist, Murakami has written a fair share of short stories. One collection is entitled The Elephant Vanishes. From this, I will focus on a set of three stories. These were not chosen arbitrarily, but in fact lifted from an arranged set that is used in another medium. Complicite, a British theater group performs a production, The Elephant Vanishes, which is actually an adaptation for the stage of these three stories. I used this group’s selection in order to not choose stories I prefer or dislike from the collection. The short stories are The Second Bakery Attack, Sleep, and the final yet title story, The Elephant Vanishes. The Second Bakery Attack was first published in Playboy and the other two first appeared in The New Yorker. It is important to note that Jay Rubin has translated all these cross sections of the collection, so consistency has been preserved. This commentary will of course reflect on him as well.

The Second Bakery Attack is a story about a young married couple that suddenly awake in the middle of the night sharing extreme pangs of hunger. They have no substantial food in the house and are far too hungry to return to bed. They sit in the kitchen and attempt to chat but it is awkward, and eventually leads the husband to speak of his first bakery attack. He was young and poor and hadn’t eaten in a while. He and his best friend decided to rob a attack a bakery for its bread, not rob it for its money. The wife does not quite understand the story but it is she who suggests that they now must rob another bakery for it is the only way to purge their hunger. They set out to do it but are unable to find an all night bakery and settle upon a McDonald’s, which they attack and steal thirty Big Macs from, and pay for two cokes. They leave, eat, and the wife rests on his shoulder, their hunger gone.

Before anything else, I will quickly note the obvious intrusion of the West. The only place the couple can find to attack is a McDonald’s. When they are inside and order the manager to close the shutters and turn off the sign, the man can’t help but declare he can’t do that. “Wait a minute, I can’t do that. I’ll be held responsible if I close up without permission.” Whether this is a commentary on the extreme work ethic of the Japanese or money grabbing of capitalism, I am not sure; it could be both. When the couple is first struck with the hunger, it is described as, “the pangs struck with the force of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.” This one of many ways Murakami simply evokes thoughts of the West. Also, it is interesting to think about that tornado. In that film, the tornado has enough force to rip Dorothy from one reality into another. I can clearly see this as a similarity with Murakami, he is that tornado and he can just as easily take his characters as well as his readers into another surreal place, and then drop them back in the normal plain with just as much ease. As far as Murakami’s obsession with music goes, he plays that right into the story as well. The husband’s first attack was spoiled, actually it was really just altered, by the baker who proposed that if the man and his friend were to simply listen to his entire album of Wagner Overtures, he would let them take as much bread as they wanted. There is more here than just music, but I will touch on that later.

Before I look at these three stories as a single unit, I want to look at them individually. I saw this piece as being mostly about marriage. “I’ve never been this hungry in my whole life, I wonder if it has anything to do with being married.” The couple experiences their incredible hunger after they have been married only two weeks. This hunger is just a device to represent the hollow feeling they each have from their marriage not fulfilling what they thought it would. Perhaps they rushed into it, or they just don’t know each other as well as they thought. Regardless, the assumption that this institution of marriage would fill in the gaps between them was false. “I met you and got married. I never did anything like that again. No more bakery attacks.” The man was a different person before the marriage; whether it was because oh himself, her, or the marriage itself doesn’t matter, he is not the same person anymore, and how can changing yourself like that breed a happy and successful marriage? “I didn’t want to talk about them with her.” The answer is it can’t, and will only lead to hiding the emergence of the part of you that is bound away.

The wife sees this problem, and perhaps more than the husband wishes to solve it. “And unless you, yourself, personally break the curse, it’ll stick with you like a toothache. It’ll torture you till you die. And not just you. Me, too.” She knows that because of this marriage, whether it was good idea or bad (“wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa”), they are in this together and either they both find a way to fulfill that hunger, that empty hole within themselves, or they will rot away. So they do this second bakery attack together, and somehow, it pulls them together. “Sometimes you just have to compromise.” They are compromising themselves, each putting himself at risk to be discovered by the other in this act, and this compromise and vulnerability is what strengthens them as a single unit. When they confront the employees they are now a “masked duo,” evidence of their new solidarity. When the husband has the shotgun pointed at the workers, he has an urge to rip into one of the burgers, “but I could not be certain that such an act would be consistent with our objective.” Of course not, their objective has nothing to do with actual stomach based hunger. This whole time a young couple has been asleep at one of the tables and the husband wonders, “What would it have taken to rouse them from a sleep so deep.” He should know the answer; emptiness like the one he has just faced could rouse them. The real question should have been what allows them to sleep so peacefully. And the answer is love and unity. “Afterward, she rested her head on my shoulder.” Now that they have used this act to learn about each other, become part of each other’s history, and consolidate themselves, that hunger is gone, and they can rest like that couple inside the McDonald’s.

Sleep is the story of a wife and mother who one day finds herself unable to sleep. So she goes through her normal daily routines and at night reads and reads and drinks brandy. A very short description for a story much longer than the previous one, however, as far as the plot goes, not much happens. This story is all about her perception of life and how she feels. This is another story about marriage. “No one could guarantee that we would survive in such a tough world. But we have survived, one way or another. Five years. No, we really can’t complain.” The problem is that surviving in itself is not enough to live on. The wife is surviving in that home, yes, but she is not really living. “It’s a recognition of reality- of the fact that e have managed in one way or another to survive- and it’s an important ritual for us.” This surviving is all they have. She is trapped in a marriage, in a way of life that is killing her. “Had I remained immersed in the dream for another second, I would have been lost forever.” That dream was her life as it was, monotonous and unfulfilling, and if she kept sleeping through it there would be no hope left for her. But she has woken up, she no longer sleeps and it is in these night time hours that are hers alone that she reads and escapes this life of hers into a different life all together, and it is there where she is truly living. This story is full of metaphors and lines that reflect this stale sense of being lost in the static world of the housewife. She too feels a “tremendous hunger” as the other married couple had felt, but she fills it only temporarily here and there with books. At the end, she returns to a dark pier in the middle of the night where she had previously been warned about rape and murder occurring recently, but anything, even acts so terrible as those, would be a welcome occurrence into her life. At least those would prove she is alive. “I’ll never get the key. I fall back against the seat, cover my face with my hands. I’m crying. All I can do is cry. The tears keep pouring out. Locked inside this little box, I can’t go anywhere. It’s the middle of the night. The men keep rocking the car back and forth. They’re going to turn it over.” This is how the story concludes. This is a concise description of her life. She is confined to the kitchen by her husband and son, and this life is about to drive her insane.

The Elephant Vanishes is a simple and short story. A zoo runs out of money and a town acquires its old elephant and old keeper because no other zoos which to purchase them. There are two groups, one who would like to keep the elephant, and the other who would rather do without it. The town keeps it, and sets it up with an enclosure and all it needs. After a year the elephant and its keeper simply vanish, without a trace and without possible explanation of escape. The narrator sells kitchen appliances, and meets a magazine worker whom he hopes to advertise with. They get to talking personally and eventually the story of the elephant comes up. It turns out he was the last to see the elephant and keeper from an opening on an overlooking hill he relaxes at. He describes the two as somehow changing, as if the elephant were shrinking, but before he could really observe closely the lights went out and the next day they were gone.

On first glimpse I thought this story was about the elderly and even nursing homes. “And so, after its companions were gone, the elephant stayed alone in the decaying zoo for nearly four months with nothing to do- not that it had had anything to do before.” All the descriptions and in this story just sent out this elderly vibe. Even the keeper himself, “The elephant’s keeper was a small, bony old man… his almost perfectly circular ears stuck out on either side with disturbing prominence.” The similar descriptions of keeper and animal make be see them as similar, old creatures. “He seemed to like the children who visited the elephant house, and he worked at being nice to them, but the children never really warmed to him.” This line was absolutely ringing with tones of an old folk’s home. The grandchildren being force to go and see their grandparents who liked to seem them, but the kids just being grossed out and not wanting to be there. “The disappearance of one old elephant and one old elephant keeper would have no impact on the course of society.” The key word here seems to be old. It seems to say that if old people were just to disappear, the rest of the world, the youth and adults simply wouldn’t care, wouldn’t even notice. It is interesting to note in regards to Murakami’s obsession with the West, that the narrator’s company insists on using the English word for “kit-chin” as opposed to the Japanese. “I had the feeling that to some extent the difference between them had shrunk.” It is as if the elephant and his keeper had compromised, the beast becoming smaller and the man growing, so that in the end they were the same thing; we wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. They aren’t individuals, just the old.

So that’s what each story was about, but after reading them all there is a connection. A little research revealed the term hikikomori that can mean “acute social withdrawal.” This, it seems, is what this collection of short stories is all about. The husband and wife feeling withdrawn from each other in The Second Bakery Attack, the wife feeling completely isolated her role as housewife in Sleep, and the narrator’s strange sense of not being able to discuss the elephant in The Elephant Vanishes. The entire collection is riddled with lines that vouch this sense of reclusion. “I didn’t want to talk about them with her,” “so I didn’t see a doctor and I didn’t say anything to my parents or friends, because I knew that was exactly what they would tell me to do,” “I just know…this is something I have to deal with myself,” “I didn’t want to get involved with anybody. I didn’t wan to have to waste time on endless gossiping,” etc. The bakery story ended well because the couple ended their withdrawal, and the sleep story ended poorly because the wife did not. “The most important thing is unity,” says the narrator in the title story. “And it seemed to me, too, that the elephant and the keeper were gladly giving themselves over to this new order that was trying to envelop them.” Joining together with someone in unity is very important and something that Murakami must feel deeply about. The title story reflects this most and in different facets, both positive, the elephant and keeper, and negative, the narrator unable to successfully share the elephant story with another.

The other Japanese short fiction I have read seemed to be more about style and tone than anything else. They were all overtly complex and confusing, often super autobiographical, and dealing with the identity crises of the authors. They were often dark and as often as not unentertaining. But Murakami takes some of these characteristics and injects them with life, content, understanding, and possibly most important, entertainment.

Suicide Stories and Rising Trends

2006-05-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Schoeller
Japanese Short Fiction
Final Project Essay
Due: 05.05.06

Suicide is never a comfortable topic to discuss in any situation. However, recent trends in Japan make it a necessary topic in some instances. One might not think that there is a lot of correlation between rising suicide rates and Japanese short stories of fiction; however, the mentalities of the stories we have read in class are similar to the mentality of Japan. Depressing and confusing stories are akin to the depressed and confused mental state of the nation of Japan. The rising suicide rates and recent internet cult suicides are indicative Japan’s mental state. Three of the stories we read in class have either an instance of suicide such as in “House on Fire”; something I interpreted as suicide, as in “Snow”; or just a generally self destructive mindset for the main character, such as the main character in “The Marsh”.

In recent years Japan has become a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates. With a rate of 27 suicides per population of 100,000, Japan doubles the United States rate of 12 per 100,000 and even triples the United Kingdom’s rate of 7.4 per 100,000. Most of these suicides are committed by young adults. This has lead to suicide being the leading cause of death in young adults from the ages of 23 to 39. It is also the second leading cause of death for youths between the ages of 15 and 24 and adults ages 40 to 54. Also of note is the fact that in the age range of 40 to 54, men commit suicide five times more than women. This trend is popularly attributed to unemployment and economic recession. One has to think that the high rates of suicide in the adults of Japan might be contributing to the high rates in the youth. If the youth of Japan sees that the adults are committing suicide, it might be instilling in them the idea that suicide is not such a bad thing.

Another recent and depressing phenomenon in Japan is the rise of internet cult, or club, suicides. With today’s massive increase in telecommunications, thousands of young people can meet online in chat rooms, websites, or other venues and chat about things, including killing themselves together. Like in the case of Naoki Tachiwana, who said,“‘I visited a website and thought - ah, if I join this I won't have to go through with it on my own. It's like crossing the road when the traffic light is red... it's not so scary when you're with others’ ” (Harding). These websites and chat rooms make suicide seem more accessible, easy, and even popular. There are mixed feelings about the internet group suicides. Some say they are inhuman and cult-like while others seem to think along the lines of Wataru Tsurumi, who said, “‘there’s nothing bad about suicide. We have no religion or laws here in Japan telling us otherwise. As for group suicides - before the internet people would write letters, or make phone calls... it's always been part of our culture’” (Harding). Regardless of whether or not there are laws against suicide, while the internet suicides currently only represent a small portion of the overall suicides in Japan, the trend is growing quickly.

In "House on Fire" by Kenji Nakagami, “brother’s” older brother kills himself at the age of 24. The “brother” notes that “since then he had felt the gaze of the dead on him – assuming his brother’s voice, breath, and eyes lived on in the realm of the dead. But the man, he realized, had been watching him with the gaze of the living. Still, everyone dies. Everyone fades away. As he’d said the other night when his mother called him, ‘They just keep on dying’ (120, Nakagami). The story of "House on Fire" is one of the struggles of burakumin in Japanese society. It’s a depressing story of a man who is domestically violent and he passes it on to his son. The suicide of the “brother’s” older brother is just a further example of the depressing state of things. The suicide in the story is just mentioned. There is no explanation as to why the older brother decided to kill himself. Was he ashamed of his family? Was he depressed at his situation in life? We don’t know. What we do know is that his solution to his problems was to kill himself. By committing suicide he ended all of his pain and suffering and instead passed it all on to his younger brother. This story says that “everyone fades” and “everyone dies”. With that reading of it, why then would someone want to accelerate the fading process? Why speed up death; make it premature? One would have to be in a very desperate situation to think that suicide it the best option. The older brother obviously felt himself to be in such a situation. Whether we would do the same in his place…there is no way of knowing unless we were to experience what he experienced. Readers are confused as to why this young man committed suicide and the story is rather depressing as a whole, considering the domestic abuse and mental anguish that occurs throughout. A story with suicide for a nation with one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

In Yuuko Tsushima’s "The Marsh" we read about a character that seems to have a self destructive tendency. She is constantly searching for a way to keep the men in her life close to her, and she seems to pick the wrong sort of men; the married sort. Even when she knows that she should not be getting involved with a certain man she is drawn to him and cannot help herself. This woman at the end of the story says, “I want to go to see the Round Marsh. My longing is getting stronger every day, but I haven’t been able to tell the man who described it to me that I want to visit it with him. I am merely gazing at this man, with whom I became acquainted on some unexpected occasion” (163, Tsushima). There is this longing to become self destructive. The marshes are her longings in a more substantial form. These dangerous bogs that pull the unwary visitor down; she cannot hope to escape the problems of either the marsh or a married man. I think that the tone of this paper is very much the way it is because the father of the author committed a love suicide. Dazai, Tsushima’s father attempted many love suicides in his life and finally succeeded. He was tempted by the idea of a group suicide, even if the group only consisted of one other person. This is akin to the internet cult suicides. People find it easier to kill themselves when they have company when doing so. When you are not alone in a difficult time, things seem to go more smoothly and there is less fear of the unknown, because someone is there with you. I think that this is the main mentality behind the internet cult suicides and also behind love suicides like the one performed by Dazai.

The last story, "Snow" by Kouno Taeko has Hayako the main character attempting to bury herself in snow at the end of the story. She even tries to enlist help from her boyfriend Kisaki in the burying process.

“Bury you? In the snow?” Kisaki asked in amazement. The shock in his voice only exacerbated Hayako’s desire. Just then, a sharp pain ran through her head. She waited for it to recede, then stood up and caught hold of Kisaki’s wrist above the hand holding the umbrella.
“Please do it. I want you to!”
“But you’ll die of pain.”
“Yes, that’s what I want! I want to die just this once. Please bury me. Go ahead—please dig!”
Kisaki was silent, his wrist pulling back from her hand.
“Bury me here, in the deep s-s-snow,” Hayako begged him again through her stutter. “J-j-just cover me a little. Please do it!”
Kisaki staggered, and the snow fell from his umbrella with a soft thud, the thud of a dead bird falling out of the sky.

When I read this story I interpreted it as Hayako truly wanting to die and Kisaki in horror of her request. Hayako has gone through so many difficulties in her life, particularly as a child with the snow incident. I think that she might think it would be better if she had died in the snow when her mother put her there when she was younger. Since that death was thwarted by her father, she now has another opportunity to die in the snow. Even though her first snow experience was not her choice, she now at the end of the story chooses to bury herself in the snow. Again we have another person in the mix. Kisaki’s presence seems to help give Hayako the courage to do this thing. While Kisaki is not burying himself beside her, he is asked to help kill her. So, while not strictly a group suicide, it would be assisted and continue the idea that having someone else with you during suicide makes it easier. When Kisaki staggers at the end and the snow sounds like a dead bird, I believe that Kisaki staggers backward in horror. The sound of snow like a dead bird falling, to me, is a forbidding sound. It foretells of Hayako’s death in the snow. Hayako is the dead bird falling from the sky. She died that night in the snow when her mother left her outside. Her existence up until the end of the story has been one of a dead bird still somehow able to fly in the sky. When she finally decided to bury herself and kill herself in the snow, it was the last process of removing the dead bird from the sky. Hayako would be truly dead.

I’m not trying to say here that the stories we have read in class are adding to the rising suicide rates in Japan. I am simply trying to show the similarities in the mentality of the stories we read and the mentalities of the people in Japan; the mentality of the nation of Japan as a whole. Suicide is a topic in stories from all countries and people can be self destructive in any language, not just Japanese. While I hope that suicide rates in Japan start to decline and that people start to realize that internet group club suicides are pretty stupid, I am afraid that the current trend does not point to that happening. While this was a rather depressing topic, the stories were still excellent and I just find it interesting how the writing of people from a country can represent the feeling of the country as a whole.

Sources
Goerzen, Matt. Suicide: Japan's Growing Nightmare. Apr. 2003.<>.
The Foreigner-Japan.2005

Harding, Andrew. Japan’s Internet “suicide clubs”. Dec. 7 2004. BBC News.

Kouno, Taeko. Toddler Hunting and Other Stories: Snow. New York, New Directions Publishing Corportation. 1996.

Nakagami, Kenji. The Cape and other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto: House on Fire. Berkeley, Ca. Stone Bridge Press. 1999.

Tsushima, Yuuko. Unmapped Territories: The Marsh. USA. 1991.

Ueno, Kayoko. Suicide as Japan’s major export? 2004.

Making the Connection

2006-05-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

By Ray Kriz

There are no doubt many reasons for reading fiction, but among them all I feel the most important one is to in some way use a story to improve life for yourself and others. Often this is difficult to do, because it is not always easy to identify with the characters in the stories that we read. The stories we have read throughout the semester have presented me with the challenge of trying to identify with certain issues and feelings that I have had little experience with throughout my life. Some problematic themes that I recognized in many of the stories we have read concern gender inequality and societal pressures within Japan. There is a lot to be read about these problems, but I felt that it was hard to establish a connection to them as they are not problems I have dealt with before.

In my quest to gain a deeper understanding of these problems, I would have to in some way make them my own problems as well. In order to do this, I decided to interview my Japanese friends as I care about them and would thus have an interest in the problems that they have encountered. So through my friends, I could in a way connect myself to these problems in order to gain not only a better understanding of the issues themselves, but more importantly how my friends feel about them.

A few things

Out of respect to my friends their identities will remain unknown.

Most of the friends I interviewed admit to being very westernized, which I feel means that there are still many different views on the same topics that will not receive attention here.

While this paper focuses on these issues in Japan, Japan is not the only place where these issues are important. Very similar problems and situations can be found elsewhere in the world.

Much of what is stated in this paper is based on observation, reflection, and insight, not formal scientific research, as was meant to be the case.

This project is geared more towards the issues of the present, despite the fact that most of the stories we have read take place before our generation.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me at Raymond-kriz@uiowa.edu, or to post on the blog.

Among the numerous themes and problems that have been covered in the stories we have read, one of the most frequent issues we have encountered are problems in lovers’ relationships. It became apparent to me through the interviews that in Japan there is a very big difference between a relationship and marriage. One of the males interviewed said that before marriage couples are in love, but once they get married they do not love each other as much. It seems that this has lots to do with expectations in a relationship versus expectations in a marriage. He told me that marriage seemed like a “goal” and that he felt that while marriage in America seems to be a new beginning, marriage in Japan is “the end.” He also said that once married both a man and woman face pressures to conform to certain roles.

It is important to remember that gender roles are deeply rooted within Japanese tradition. It was tradition for hundreds of years that a woman’s parents would arrange her marriage, and once married, only the woman’s father or husband could break it off, not her. Women were expected to be housewives and this was not questioned, and one interviewee said she thinks things were like this up until about the 1950’s.

There was an overwhelming and predictable similarity in the way that all of my friends described the gender roles, which did not surprise me as it is similar to almost everywhere else. It is quite clear that the stereotypical view society has is that men should be out of the home working to provide for the family, while women are to stay home and take care of the children and housework. An interviewee drew this chart which I thought explained the situation quite well.

{-----work-----} {----home-----}
[-----men------][---women-----]

When I asked the question as to how they felt about men working and women staying at home, the responses differed. One female interviewee thought that the whole concept of being a housewife is boring, while some of the others did not mind it so much as long as they were appreciated and could pursue other things.

One of the male interviewees felt “constrained” because he wants to have a family yet he knows that he will most likely have to work most of the time to support it. He said he was worried that having children will be too expensive and thus his wife will be forced to work to support the family as well. This was mentioned quite a bit throughout the interviews, that children are so expensive and time consuming that in Japan people nowadays opt to have fewer children, and do so later in life. And it seemed that especially for men in Japan, there was no option at all but to work, which leaves little time to spend with the family or help out at home. This leads to some big problems.

On one hand, there is pressure on parents to be good parents, which would require them to spend time with their children. Oh, I forgot to mention that once married women are also expected to have children. Now, women in Japan tend not to be in the higher management positions at companies, nor do they tend to make as much as men. So it makes sense that the man would work because he will on average make more money and have better career opportunities. However, because of the pressure to be great parents, if the man is working then that essentially forces the woman to stay home. Even if she did want to work, her career path would be limited because it was mentioned that companies discriminate against women who are married, especially if they have children. This in turn means that women who are forced to work to help support the household will generally not have satisfying careers, and will still be expected to have all the same duties as if she were a stay at home mom.

Another problem that was talked about was what options are available to couples when a marriage is failing. I got the impression after having completed the interviews that once married, Japanese couples are pressured not to get divorced. One interviewee said she felt that if someone gets divorced “they have really serious problems.” Another interviewee said that she felt couples would put off divorce for the sake of their children, which leads me into another topic.
What is it like growing up in Japan these days? I got the impression that most of my friends were concerned about today’s generation of children. It was stated in several of the interviews that delinquency is increasing, which is recognized as a serious problem. The reasons for this are numerous, and it became apparent to me that some of the things mentioned earlier have an influence on childhood as well.

One of the things that can affect a child is when the parents get divorced. One interviewee said that in her hometown, it was common for people to have a child and get married shortly afterward because of it. She said that when this is the case things almost never work out, and either the couple is unhappy or they get divorced. Both are less than ideal situations for children, as it is most likely that the mother will be left looking after her children with little support. And again, because of discrimination in the workplace she will have difficulty making enough money to make ends meet. It also seemed that many women who have children find out that being a mother is not exactly what they expected, which can lead to the abuse of a child be it intentional or not.

For married couples that do stay together and have children, there are other problems. One of the issues that came up was that because fathers are out working most of the time, the mother is left to see to a child’s education. It was mentioned that often times children are under extreme pressure from their mothers to do well in school. It was also mentioned that this pressure can begin at a very early age, so that a child can get into a good primary school. This is just the beginning. All the way up until college children are often forced to go to cram schools, which take place after school and usually focus on studying and reviewing for exams. This is very common and children often expect to have to go to these schools, and are usually given little choice. It was also said that these cram schools are expensive and that parents can have trouble coming up with the money to send their children to them.

Because there is such an importance placed upon exams, the pressure to do well can be a tremendously stressful feeling. The consequences of this can vary, depending on the child as well as the family.

It was said by a few of the interviewees that social class and status have a significant impact on the future of the child. It was mentioned several times that those from more well to do and financially stable families are more likely to study harder and get into better schools. That is not to say that all of the kids go along with this though, and there is resistance to this pressure which can lead to “delinquency.” In less well to do families, it was said that there was a greater tendency to drop out of high school, get a dead end part time job, gamble, and simply leech off of the parents. One interviewee said that her brother was pressured to do well in school, and that now he usually just stays around the house and does nothing. This leads me to believe that when pressured, youths are becoming passive aggressive as a means of dealing with all of the stress, and try to find ways in which to escape from reality.

It was said in one of the interviews that today children spend lots of time playing video games and are going out less and less. This can lead to depression and a falling out of touch with reality. It doesn’t seem odd to me though, because when given the option to either stress out over exams or sit around and play videogames, the videogames are more enticing. I think this is actually quite illustrative of how receptive kids are to their environments. They seem to have picked up on the fact that all that the reputation and prestige of getting good grades and getting into a good school is not worth the pressure or effort. This is especially true because the motivation to do these things is external, be it from parents or from status that is awarded by society.

And what society thinks is important, is. One interviewee said she noticed that in Japan there is a lot of pressure to look and act in certain ways. For instance, she said that if a certain kind of purse was fashionable, then virtually every girl she saw would have one. She said that the media, for instance, fashion magazines, portray women in a specific way. The real issue I see here is that she also said that the women try to live up these standards of style and femininity, which can be confining. There is also the stress of being acceptable to one’s peers, which is taken very seriously in Japan. It was said that bullying is common and I think that part of that might have to do with people attaching themselves to group mindsets which tend to alienate those who do not conform to the standards of the group.

“ I don’t know why but women are supposed to cook and men are supposed to work.”
“Some women get used to it.”
“Who cares for the children?”
“Fathers work too much.”
“My female friends complained about not getting promoted.”
“Appearance is important.”
“Romance is lost.”
“People want to be at the same level as everyone else.”

I think that over the course of writing this paper, I have found that as much as I learned, there is so much more that I don’t know. The feelings surrounding the problems we have read about are very real and depressing. Every day we bear witness to suffering and injustice that we inflict on each other and ourselves. I think that there is a hope for the future, and that just because things are the way they are that they do not have to stay that way. There is progress being made, and I think that things can change for the better, everywhere. If these problems continue, it is only because we allow them to. And so I would like to end with a quote that resonates with me.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and women] do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Click here for further information about this quotation.

Now dig this!

2006-05-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

This post is obviously inspired by Two Gakuseis' Blue Hood. What a great ending! I watched it again tonight and hope we can YouTube it or something.

I am so pleased with the quality of your presentations and final projects. You all really know how to commit, and you've created some beautiful and meaningful work. Some of you still need to submit projects, but if the initial crop is any indication, it looks like we'll only get more great stuff. Please read Jenn's review of Lonely Hearts Killer and keep up with the blogs and websites your classmates are making. We can also use this blog to continue our conversations about J-lit over the summer, so keep it bookmarked. And, of course, I'll keep posting work from you all as it arrives. I know Caitlin will too!

Review of Lonely Hearts Killer

2006-05-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Jenn Olmstead
5/2/06
Hurley
39J:144:001

We have read a lot of short fiction in our Modern Japanese Fiction class, but one of the few that I really enjoyed was “Chino” by Hoshino Tomoyuki. Because I enjoyed the themes of that story, and what we learned at the New Nationalisms Symposium, made me want to read more by Hoshino-san. “Lonely Hearts Killer” is Hoshino-san’s first full length novel that has been translated into English. While this book was originally written Japanese, I believe that this story, like any great work of art can cross all borders.

“Lonely Hearts Killer” takes place in the near future of Japan. While it is based in the future, it’s more of an “alternate future”. The underlying plot of this story is that the Emperor dies at a relativity young age, leaving behind no heir. The late Emperor’s sister ascends the throne; she is not married, nor does she have an heir. The story continues to question “what happens next.” This work of fiction also runs a close parallel with what is going on in the political climate of Japan at this time. The best question that this story asks is what would happen if a female ascended the throne?

This book centers around two main characters, Shoji and Iroha, who are both have their time in the spotlight. There are two secondary main characters, Mikoto and Mokuren. It is through this group of four that we are drawn into this world of “Lonely Hearts Killer.” We are told this story through the eyes of first Shoji, then Iroha, and finally we learn more about Mokuren, each of their stories lends a back story to the others. They all are all in their early twenties, but not of diverse background. This story spans about ten years, leaving the character in their early thirties at the end. Shoji and Iroha are both filmographers, Mikoto seems to be just a common worker, and Mokuren is a “job placer”. Shoji and Iroha are the “disaffected youths”; they feel that they have nothing to worry about in society. They are just floating in a world that was created for them. I think a lot of young people can relate to that. None of these people, except for Mokuren seem to have found a place for themselves.

While reading this I was trying to decide if it could be considered a “purely Japanese” story. While “Lonely Hearts Killer” does talk about the Imperial System and that makes it Japanese, there are a lot of other universal themes running throughout the book. One is authority. Where does authority come from, how does it get enforced? If something happens in the “political structure” that everyone is used to, what happens next? Another question is how does society affect authority? There are other themes as well, but a main overarching theme is, the search for individualism in society. In this search are the questions that everyone has: who am I; where do I fit in; do I even belong? While these questions are not answered, they are touched upon. Like many Japanese writers, Hoshino-san likes to keep his stories ambiguous, to let the reader draw their own conclusions.

We are brought to thinking about authority right away in the story. The first sentence of the story is “Even when His Majesty died, I wasn’t phased, not even un poquito” (p. 1). The Emperor is considered the most authorative state figure in Japan. What makes this Emperor different than other Emperors who have died is that this one had no successor. We in America have a “succession” of the Presidency if ours happens to be assassinated; this “succession” goes down three levels. What would happen if all those “successors” were not available? That would be the best way to think of this from an “American” perspective. Would we be lost with out a leader, would we even care?

In “Lonely Hearts Killer” the people become lost with out their leader. Even the people that didn’t care about the Emperor while he was alive become lost. Is this merely a reaction to the fact that the “symbolic” leader that was younger died, and therefore making everyone feel their own mortality? Or does this stem from the fact that their political leader died? Either way we have a lot of people in Japan that become “spirited away” (p. 24), or they fall into a depression so bad that they cannot do anything for themselves. So then authority comes from people who need to take care of them, wives become the authority over their “spirited away” husbands. These “spirited away” people are not exactly alive, but they are not dead either. Where does the authority of life get transferred to? Should the wives continue to fulfill their filial duty and care for their husbands, or should they take control of their own lives?

In this story media and society play a huge role in authority. When the Emperor dies, the societal system of authority becomes off balance. In the place of societal authority, comes the more overarching form of media authority. After people come back from being “spirited away” (no we don’t see how they come back), we are brought into the time of “love suicides”, “indiscriminate love suicides”, and finally “justifiable self-defense.” All of these, except the “justifiable self-defense” are what we would call here in America “murder suicides,” the “justifiable self-defense” is the whole ideal of “I have to get them before they get me.” The media, in using its authority, made the world seem like a safer place during this time of unrest. I think what Hoshino-san is trying to do during this, is trying to get us to think about how the media frames what it reports. To me the media reporting on a “love suicide” – indiscriminate or otherwise – makes me think that the people that did it knew, if not loved each other. Sure it would make me question my friends, or people that I talked to on a regular basis (co-workers), but I would not be worried about walking out on the street, getting killed by someone I didn’t know. When the media talks about “justifiable self-defense,” now that’s when I would get worried. Then again you have the “justifiable” which leads one to think that I will get killed only if I provoke someone. This shows us just how much authority the media has over us and the way we think. This is true no matter what country you live in.

As we’ve seen, this story asks a lot about authority, but where does individual identity come in. All we’ve looked at so far in my analysis is the role of authority in society. What about the role of a single individual identity in that same society? Do they just get swallowed up by society, or do they come out strong. In this book Hoshino-san gives an overall dim view of the “individual identity in society.” Yet he makes a point about what that “individual” is trying to do. Hence we have Shoji’s journey to “find himself”.

We create identities with those around us. We all become a part of something bigger by our identities – individual or societal - but sometimes you feel your identity changing. For this to happen, it usually takes something drastic. In “Lonely Hearts Killer” we have that drastic event take place; with “his young Majesty” dying, it pushes everyone in society to find their own identity. This causes some of the people to become “spirited away”, their sense of identity has been taken away from them. In this story we have two people searching for their new identity (Shoji, and Iroha) and their choices to either accept that new identity or reject it.

Shoji is a filmographer and has made a deal with his parents that if he can’t make “real money” with his job in three years, then he will move out and live on his own. Shoji films everything, because that is the way he sees his life. The world goes on around him, he participates, but just enough. He doesn’t go out of the way to be active in society. To him everything happens on a screen, and nothing you can do is going to change it. However once the Emperor dies, something changes in Shoji. He becomes aware of what he does, but he can’t change it. He still continues to film, and shows those films up on his website. He still continues to feel like he’s just participating. Maybe through his website he was trying to change society. Maybe instead of “I’m just participating”, he was trying to show people what they were doing and how they could change it. However the flaw with that kind of thinking is you just can’t put something out there and expect it to be interpreted the way you wanted it to be interpreted. People have their own ideas and identities that help them interpret the message you were trying to create. If you want something to be interpreted a certain way, you need to precede the message with something, like a statement about what you were doing. Shoji does that for his final “internet film.”

Shoji meets Mitoko, who is Iroha’s boyfriend. Mikoto, like a lot of other people was “spirited away.” It is really him that opens up Shoji’s eyes as to what he is doing. This basically turns Shoji’s life upside down. He was so used to “just participating,” now he feels he has exposed the holes in society. He needs a way to let people know, he posts his last film on his website with a statement. Then he and Mikoto meet to discuss the new turn that his identity has taken. They are the ones who start the “love suicide” era. Shoji and Mikoto had to kill themselves to make a statement. To keep this new statement of identity and individualism under control, the authorities shut down Shoji’s website and charged him of crimes that entice people to murder. He was found guilty, even though he was dead.

Shoji found his new individual identity through his work and a new friend; the meeting of Mikoto, who Shoji could bounce his new ideas off of. Iroha on the other hand ran away from her would be new identity, even though she was not that much different from Shoji. Where Shoji was stubborn to a point, he finally accepted his new identity; Iroha was so stubborn that she ran away from hers.

Iroha seems to be a very confused woman; it seems as if she is lost without Shoji or Mikoto. She seems independent, but way down deep she needs someone to care for her. She won’t let anyone know that though and if anyone gets to close to that, she gets angry. She has lost both Shoji and Mikoto and Japan is going through an “identity crisis” so now she doesn’t know what to do. Iroha tries to keep her tough façade, but the pressures of the media and her new job make it hard for her. Even though she has isolated herself from the population of Japan, she still gets the news on a radio and still tries to make sense of the crisis of the Japanese people. I think the pressure finally makes her see what Shoji was trying to do. Through this, however I do think that she ends up feeling lost and a little off balance.

For her isolation Iroha went to stay at Mokuren’s mountain home. I think this was for two reasons: one she was afraid of all the “love suicides” that were happening and two because she didn’t want to accept the new reality. She was Shoji’s friend, but she couldn’t accept that Shoji and Mokoto were accepting of the fact that the late Emperor’s passing was ushering in a new era. Shoji and Mikoto were ready for a change while, Iroha on the other hand was afraid of change. Like a lot of people they want to keep everything constant. That shows up a lot, the people being “spirited away” due to the “young Majesty’s” death, people accusing others on the “outside” of being different. Iroha tried to keep her identity the same as everyone else’s for as long as she could. When she couldn’t do that anymore, she turned herself in for committing a “crime”. She released Shoji’s document and final film to the public again. Even though it seems that she is running from everything, she does eventually see what Shoji was trying to do. She finally accepts the new identity set out before her, but it may be too late.

Have these “disaffected youths” finally gotten their point across. Perhaps the fact that they thought that they were “living on a screen” was not that far from the truth? If we were to take a look at history, all cultures had rights of passages for their children to become adults. We have lost those rights of passage. Perhaps Hoshino-san was commenting that people don’t “grow up” until it’s too late. People do not want to become adults. There are a few places where I thought this came out very clear: “none of us can die even if we want to” (p.5), “It’s an island of children, where children just produce more children” (p.58). I believe that what Shoji and Iroha did, was their rite of passage. They are no longer seen as children in their own eyes now. Hoshino-san’s thought into such issues are very thought provoking.

Hoshino-san does a good job with his writing between genders. Both women in this story are very independent. This could be his way of critiquing the way gender roles are played in Japan at this time. As with the filmographers in this work of fiction, he as an author could be “exposing the holes in society.” Authors, especially in the fiction genre can do a lot of critiquing and not have to worry about a lot of repercussions. Fiction can be sensationalized, and not necessarily have to be based in fact. One has to wonder though, as much as Hoshino-san hates the “I-novel” genre, how much of this could be considered an “I novel.”

What makes “Lonely Hearts Killer” so interesting, is like Hoshino-san’s other works (“Chino”), it revolves around identity, but not the identity of just one person. This work could be understood to encompass, not only the identity of the main characters, but also the identities of the people of Japan. When an Emperor dies, there has always been the next one ready to be put on the throne, however this time there wasn’t. While the Emperor seems to be more of a symbolic power figure, such a drastic loss would affect everybody. The book “Lonely Hearts Killer” is what could happen. Overall this entire book has a grim about how society react to that issue. An Emperor dies and everybody is affected in different ways. It seems that once the Emperor is gone a world of anarchy envelops Japan. It seems that the authorities become just as lost as the “regular people” of Japan. There seems to be no silver lining. When the Empress makes her first speech, it does nothing for the people. To them it was a “pre-written” piece of garbage. This to me made the women in the story more upset than the men. Shoji’s mother was excited to hear the new Empress, but after that she accepted the fact that nothing would change for women in Japan, even though a woman is in the highest political position. Hoshino is known to be against the Imperial system in Japan. However, the way this book is written, the Emperor dying would affect every person, not just the right wing nationals that want to keep the Imperial system in tact, but those that want to abolish it was well. If this work of fiction was ever to become reality, there would be a lot of unrest, and resistance to change. Could the effect of changing the Imperial system be as drastic as Hoshino thinks? I don’t know; one would hope that people would be able to make better decisions.

Hoshino invokes the sense of loss and unease in a people deeply affected by the drastic change in their political structure; perhaps the fact that people feel let down by the new Empress, makes this story more real. As with most Japanese stories a lot of things are left ambiguous, Hoshino used the terms “lifestyle”, and he talks about people who are “married just for looks”. These terms are the most ambiguous, and let you the reader decide what they mean. Also like most Japanese writers the ending may not be that satisfactory to American readers. Most American’s like a “nice and tidy” ending to a story they read and when they don’t get that, the feel disappointed. It all goes back to “what happens next?” At the end of the story that is for the reader to decide.

And announcing ...

2006-05-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

Caitlin's website!!!!

Bad Teacher

2006-05-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

I won't hold anyone to the usual posting requirements this week, because I'm too late in giving you a place to post. But i would love to read your thoughts about "Eucalyptus."

free food and stuff

2006-05-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

a message from the library

Mi Kappa Es Su Kappa

2006-04-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Announcing the debut of Karen's blog!

The Jason Gallery

2006-04-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

This painting is inspired by the description of the "sword trees" that had branches pointed like animals' fangs. (p. 46)

I wanted to combine the image of impalement with the concept of being tortured by birds.

I wanted to take a closer view rather than a shot from the distance so that more story could be told in the image. I added details from the passage on p. 66 that detailed the burning of Yoshihide's daughter.

Discover Nikkei

2006-04-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Check out the amazing new resource coordinated by the Japanese American National Museum!

DISCOVER NIKKEI

The Long Rainy Season

2006-04-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

Click on Roxy's Blog to check out her developing final project. Please check often over the next couple of weeks as she builds it.

The Remarkable Life of Yuri Kochiyama

2006-04-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

Dylan Mooney
April 10th, 2006
Hurley
39J:146:001

“Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.”

This is just one of the inspiring quotes from Yuri Kochiyama as stated in her memoirs, titled ‘Passing It On’, in which Kochiyama has dedicated to her family, friends, and others who have been moved by the hard work and determination she has put into many important civil rights movements within the last fifty years. For over half a century (she is currently eighty-five), Kochiyama has taken an active approach to inform, educate, and take a stand against social injustice faced by many ethnic groups in the Twentieth Century including African and Asian Americans, Latinos, and even political prisoners. What many people find inspirational about Ms. Kochiyama is that she takes an active stance not only for the people of her same race who face injustice, but all ethnicities which have been marginalized in our society. Kochiyama’s influence and reputation has expanded not only through her family, which are discussed thoroughly throughout her memoirs, but also internationally. Kochiyama is a remarkable woman who will continue to be remembered for many years to come, especially because she is still taking an active stand against any form of social injustice that takes form within the world.

Born Mary Yuriko Nakahara on May 19th, 1921, Yuri Kochiyama grew up in a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood in San Pedro, California. Growing up with first generation Japanese parents, Yuri’s home life was quite different than her outside life. At home, she would speak Japanese and eat traditional Japanese cuisine, while outside of the home she would be described as an ‘all-American girl.’ She was very involved in her adolescent years and kept busy. The clubs and affiliations she belonged to included the local YWCA, Girl Scouts, and her local Presbyterian church. These volunteer activities helped gear Kochiyama towards the political activist she has become today. As a teen she wrote her own personal views and beliefs in statement aptly titled ‘My Creed...22.’ In this statement, Kochiyama declared ideals in which she chose to live her life by. Specific points mentioned within ‘Creed’ in Passing It On to which may be of interest were the following:

To never break one link of friendship, regardless of the time or distance that separates me from that friend, even if that friendship is only a memory stored away in my heart or mind.

To never humiliate or look down on any person, group, creed, religion, nationality, race, employment, or station in life, but rather to respect.

To take every disappointment, disillusion, sorrow, and grief as a part of life; to never expect another to be indebted to help me, but should I be able to help anyone, to be grateful that I could be of use.

For any eighteen year old to write such noble and heartfelt things in which they strive to live their life by is truly amazing. Compared to any other typical American eighteen year old, Kochiyama is quite unique in the fact that she is truly caring for the well being of mankind as a whole and believes that any unequal treatment should not be tolerated. Kochiyama was thinking not only about herself, but for other individuals as well. She does not give ‘Creed’ the credit of her awakening to the political world, but rather a day that will continue to live on in the lives of Americans for many years to come, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

December 7th, 1941 changed the lives of the entire Kochiyama and all Americans for the rest of their lives. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese during WW2, no Asian American’s life was ever the same. Kochiyama says before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she saw America through the eyes of an American, but afterward she saw America and the rest of the world in Asian American eyes, (Kochiyama xxiii). The feelings of resentment she had must have been intense towards America, due to the thousands of Japanese Americans that were sent to interment camps if they had more than 1/16th Japanese blood within them. Kochiyama’s story unfolds just hours after the bombing occurred, when three FBI agents came to the family household and apprehended her father, Seiichi Nakahara, who had just recently gotten home from the hospital following treatment for diabetes and a stomach ulcer. As it turns out the FBI had intercepted “suspicious” mail from Mr. Nakahara and were also interested in the fact that Nakahara owned a short-wave radio that operated with an outside antenna on the house. After detaining Mr. Nakahara for nearly a year, he was released and died a few days after his release. From encountering such horrible experiences faced not only by the Kochiyama family but other Asian Americans, she has passionately devoted her time, effort, and life to prevent and stop any other racial ideology that she could.

The lives of all Asian Americans changed the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On February 19th, 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced nearly 120,000 Asian Americans into internment camps (similar to concentration camps). After the bombing, all Asian Americans were seen as spies to the U.S. government and weren’t to be trusted, and the best way to deal with these “spies” was to send them to internment camps. Of the Asian Americans that were sent to the internment camps, nearly two-thirds were American citizens, and one-fourth of them were children under the age of fifteen. As a matter of fact, only ten people were ever caught as being a spy for the Japanese, all of which were Caucasian. Internees dealt with many hardships; including the fact that most of these individuals were given 48 hours or less to get rid of most of their possessions, as they were only allowed to take the bare essentials. These hardships did not end here; within the internment camps all Asian Americans were housed in barracks, and were given communal shower, eating, and laundry privileges. They were also given improper medical care, which ended up costing many of these individuals their lives. It wasn’t until January of 1945 that all internees were allowed to return to their homes, (World War Two).

Yuri was not the only one within the Kochiyama family to become such a loyal activist. She spread her active stance against social injustice not only to her friends and acquaintances, but also to her six children, all of whom participated in demonstrations and protests with their mother at a young age. Yuri’s children; Billy, Audee, Aichi, Eddie, Jimmy, and Tommy all followed in the footsteps of their mother, as they all grew up in the housing projects in Harlem – “a community thriving with social, political, and cultural activity,” (Kochiyama 47). This setting was a breeding ground for political awareness, not to mention Kochiyama’s approach to teaching her children about racial and political injustice at a young age and in a rather strict way. For example, when four African American girls were killed in a bombing of a Presbyterian church in Alabama in 1963, Yuri decided that she and the rest of her family would not celebrate Christmas that year. Looking back, Kochiyama regrets doing such an act, as to deprive the younger children of many fun times in which the older children were able to participate in the past. Although the absence of common practices such as Christmas helped her children gain some insight as to the pain experienced by those of the unfortunate, one can’t help but think that it was a harsh reality check to children who were under ten years of age. Yet, it did implant in their minds that people of ethnicity should not face inequality, at a young age.

The one individual who truly inspired Yuri Kochiyama would definitely be Malcolm X. Kochiyama was fortunate enough to meet Malcolm on more than one occasion. Her first meeting with Malcolm occurred at CORE protest that was demanding jobs for both African American and Puerto Rican construction workers. She was intimidated by him, and wasn’t sure whether or not to approach and talk to him. After some convincing from a friend, she went up to Malcolm and asked to shake his hand. When he asked what for, she replied, “What you’re doing for your people – for giving them direction.” He took a step toward Yuri and stuck out his hand, (Fujino 136). Yuri must have made some kind of impact on the great Malcolm X, for he would end up being a friend to her by the time of his death on February 21st, 1965.

Kochiyama was even graced by his presence later the following year when she invited him to her home in Harlem on June 6th, 1964. The occasion was one of which three hibakusha writers were in the U.S. for a world tour in which they were speaking about nuclear proliferation, (Kochiyama 67). These three A-bomb survivors wanted no more than to meet Malcolm X themselves, so Yuri contacted his office and tried her hardest to get him to visit her house, where a reception would take place. She was told not to expect Malcolm; that he’d never come. So she went on preparing for the rest of the meeting, booking a few cultural performances and speakers. Kochiyama took quite a risk in arranging a reception where the main attraction may or may not show up for.

The day of the reception, Kochiyama states that the A-bomb survivors wished to go off to explore on their own, and not have overly protective Americans watching their every move. After this access was granted, the survivors visited many local places within the Harlem community, including the ‘world’s worst fair’- which was opened up in one of the most impoverished communities within Harlem. This ‘fair’ allowed any tourist to see the ways in which truly poor neighborhoods were forced to live, including broken windows, toilets that would not flush, and garbage-filled streets. After sightseeing at such places, the hibakusha returned to the Kochiyama residence in time for the reception. Not soon after, there was a knock on the door and Malcolm X walked in, to many people’s surprise. Kochiyama describes Malcolm as being extremely gracious, and willing to shake people’s hands. He also thanked the A-bomb survivors and said to them something to the extent of, “Thank you for visiting the ‘World’s worst fair.’ You have been scarred by the atom bomb. You just saw that we have been scarred, but the bomb that hit us was racism,” (Kochiyama 69). Malcolm continued to keep in touch with Yuri and her family, and would send them postcards while on his travels. Over the years, she collected a total of 11 different postcards from Malcolm X.

Yuri was not only interested in the civil rights protests throughout the world; she also actively took a position against all political prisoners. In ‘Passing It On’ Kochiyama states, “When we think of statistics which impact people of color, we cannot help but surmise that racism, classism, and politics weight heavily in the criminal justice system.” People are treated unjustly within the entire legal system; whether it is in the jury selection, poor defense, police intimidation of witnesses, or long stays in solitary confinements. Such harsh treatment should not occur on the basis or such sensitive classes as race. She even goes further on the topic as to say, “Prison is not a place of rehabilitation; it is a place for punishment, isolation, and humiliation,” (Kochiyama 127). These prisoners which had affiliations with a political group, or were activists before incarceration were of concern to Ms. Kochiyama. Yuri received and wrote letters to various people, one of which was a leader of the RNA (Republic of New Africa) with whom she corresponded for many years named Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata.

Mtayari was Kochiyama’s first teacher in the RNA’s Nation Building class. He was the first to administer the oath of the RNA to Yuri and on September 13th, 1969 Yuri Kochiyama was made an honorary citizen of the Republic of New Africa. The RNA was founded at a conference of militant black activists who all met in Detroit in 1968. When the original manifesto of the party was created, it demanded the states Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina to be ceded to the RNA, along with $400 billion in reparations for unjust treatment of African Americans prior to desegregation in the U.S, (Republic).

Kochiyama and Mtayari corresponded with each other for over six years while he served time in Green Haven Prison throughout the 1970’s. She has kept all the letters written from Mtayari because they express the hardships felt by everyone while in prison, not only did prisoners deal with the extreme loneliness and horrid conditions, but must somehow struggle to keep sane while so many years in solitude without an end in sight, as many prisoners experience. In ‘Passing It On,’ Mtayari writes, “It takes a very strong and dedicated man to survive this war of the mind. He must have something to stimulate his will to survive this war of the mind; otherwise, he will blow his mind by surrendering himself to the octopus.” Not only did these individuals face the struggle of racism while on the outside, but faced an even larger struggle of keeping their mentality while in complete solitude in prison for many years. While writing back and forth to Kochiyama, Mtayari would still educate and inform Yuri not only about prison life, but would also teacher her more about the RNA and other political problems in which he had been researching. Yuri also reciprocated by telling Mtayari about other world issues that had come up such as the Vietnam War, or struggles faced by other ethnic groups. In a way, they were both focused on teaching one another in topics in which they were specialized in. Kochiyama learned much from Mtayari and states, “How fortunate I was to have had Mtayari as my mentor and comrade,” (Kochiyama 133).

Yuri Kochiyama’s work doesn’t end there. Even at the age of sixty-seven, she was still on the move. This time, she took a chance and applied for a chance to go to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade in 1988. The Venceremos Brigade is a left-wing organization that was comprised of many different nationalities including, Latinos, Blacks, Middle Easterners, Asians, and Caucasians. Almost eleven percent of the group consisted of senior citizens, so Yuri was not the lone person in her sixties at the time. I personally don’t know any person over the age of sixty-five who would volunteer their retirement time to go and volunteer in such a foreign place as Cuba, especially since the country is seen in such a negative light with their socialist viewpoints. While in Cuba the group visited hospitals, schools, and construction sights, and even a senior citizen housing complex to see how they differed from that in America. The entire trip left Yuri feeling that no one in Cuba seemed to be marginalized, which is the exact opposite in America. “Cuba is truly a nation whose primary concern is the basic needs of her 10 million people,” (Kochiyama 152). In America, we are too concerned with building condos, penthouses, and summer homes for the wealthy and ignoring the thousands of people on the street. Yet in Cuba, Kochiyama describes the construction going on within Cuban towns to meet needs of housing, education, and healthcare. The socialist objective is even abundant within the prisons. At a women’s correction facility toured by the group, women were allowed to postpone or delay their prison sentence, should a medical or family emergency arise. These objectives helped create more humane conditions within the prisons of Cuba.

Yuri Kochiyama is quite a remarkable woman within our society. From an early age, Kochiyama strived to live her live as true to her values as possible. By writing ‘My Creed…22’ around the age when most teenagers hardly care about anyone but themselves, she set her own standard to which she chose to live; to stand up against injustice or inequality of a person or group of people. Many activists today could learn a thing or two from Ms. Kochiyama; she not only stood up for what she believed was right but also stood up for the marginalized people around the world. By living her life to the fullest and by continuing to take a political stance at the age of eighty-five, she will continue to inspire and amaze people with different races and beliefs, as they once inspired her to stand up and make a change in this world.

Sources
Fujino, Diane C. Heartbeat of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Kochiyama, Yuri. Passing It On. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Press, 2004.

Republic of New Africa. Wikipedia

World War Two: Japanese Internment Camps in the USA. History on the Net

Don't forget to read both Ogawa stories

2006-04-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

"THE CAFETERIA IN THE EVENING AND A POOL IN THE RAIN"
and
"THE PREGNANCY DIARY"

I'll post some more Jason Art soon too!

"Hell Screen"

2006-04-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Mark says the "Hell Screen" movie is here. If enough of you say so, I will arrange a free screening.

Look what Jason made:

Click on the image to see a bigger version.

Caitlin Wants You!

2006-04-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

... to send her your final projects. If you want. Caitlin is making a comprehensive Japanese Short Fiction website. It will be soooooo cool. Please send her your projects or anything else you think would be appropriate for the site. Of course, she will decide what she uses in the end.

小川洋子 (おがわ・ようこ）

2006-04-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

Ogawa Yôko (born in 1962) won the Akutagawa Prize for "Pregnancy Diary" (Ninshin Karendaa), and she is hot, hot, hot in the European and North American publishing worlds. She has, I guess you could say, the buzz of the moment. You can be the judge as to whether or not her popularity is warranted. You can also think about why her work has attracted such a following among editors and the literary elite in places like Paris and New York. Several English translations of her novels are forthcoming (from publishers like Picador), and you are reading the two short stories that appeared in The New Yorker (translated by Stephen Snyder, the very best).

For an interview in Japanese with Ogawa, click here.

If you read French, click here.

If you read German, click here.

Her fiction has been adapted into feature film and tv movies in Japan. Here is a trailer for a French film based on one of her novels.

Mr. Sakai and Nakajima Atsushi

2006-04-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Our guest speaker, Mr. Sakai, introduced two stories by this man, Nakajima Atushi (中島敦), today! The stories were Sangetsuki and Meijinden. Hopefully you are inspired to learn more about Nakajima after Mr. Sakai's presentation.

Here are some links that might be helpful:

Waseda J-Lit Entry

Sangetsuki in Japanese

Meijinden in Japanese

Toragari in Japanese

At a recent meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, my friend Kota delivered a paper on Nakajima's "Toragari" ("Tiger Hunt"). Here's the abstract:

Korean Subject in the Imperial Capital: Reading Otherness in Nakajima Atsushi’s "Toragari"
Kota Inoue, New York University

At his death in 1942, Nakajima Atsushi had only published two books and was virtually an unknown writer. As Komori Yôichi has recently argued, the wide recognition of his name today is largely due to the continuous inclusion of his short story, "Sangetsuki" in school textbooks since the end of WWII. The humanistic reading mode that prevails in schools has inevitably promoted the short story, based on a Chinese classic about an elite bureaucrat who turns into a tiger, as a simplistic moral story. Komori suggests that such depoliticized reading is only possible by suppressing the historical specificity of the story’s setting -- a period of factional power struggle and armed conflict. Despite the depoliticized image shaped by the common perception of "Sangetsuki," Nakajima’s personal life intersected with Japan’s colonial administration, and he often set his story in colonial peripheries. The focus of my paper, "Toragari (Tiger Hunt)," is a story in which the narrator, an ethnic Japanese, recalls several episodes about his Korean schoolmate in Seoul. While describing his childhood friend, the narrator at times makes observations about the friend’s complex and suppressed feelings about his own ethnicity. But the story points to the colonial conditions in more oblique ways as in the title, which serves as a reference to, through the legendary tiger hunt by the warrior Katô Kiyomasa, Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea. This paper teases out the colonial conditions embedded in the story by focusing on the story’s depiction of urban life in Seoul and Tokyo.

If you have any questions for Mr. Sakai (or if you just want to thank him), please post your comments and questions below.

Specific Questions

2006-04-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

1. Have high stakes standardized tests ever seemed absurd to you?

a. How are such tests "high stakes"?
b. In what sense do you understand them as "standardized"?
c. Are they absurd? If so, in what way and for whom?

2. How is the high stakes standardized testing process depicted in our "entrance exams" story?

3. In a situation in which kids are coached to focus on high stakes standardized tests, what role does or can an active fantasy life play?

4. How have RPGs (or video games in general), anime, and the like played a role in YOUR life?

a. When, where, and why did you develop an interest in them?
b. In what situations do you turn to them in your life now?

5. What is the "Yamada Diary"?

a. What kind of game is it?
b. What might it say about the situation facing many Japanese youth in the late 1980s?

What did you think of the readings?

2006-04-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

A short and simple blog post.

If any of you need anything ...

2006-04-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

Please let us know here. I hope none of you were hurt or displaced!!! We can mobilize as a community to support anyone who needs anything, so holla!!

地獄変 (Jigokuhen) "Hell Screen"

2006-04-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Who is Reynard? Why would we offer vows to him?

In the original, the figure in question is:
福徳の大神

The Sanskrit word for "good fortune" punya ends up as 福徳 (kudoku or fukutoku) in Japanese. This notion of a Buddhist god of good fortune is pretty different from the medieval trickster fox, Reynard.

In 1927, as I mentioned in class last time, Akutagawa and the novelist Tanizaki Junichirô debated the value of a plot in fiction. For those of you who are still searching for a viable project topic, you might want to research this debate and apply it to what we've read in class this semester.

I'm suspicious.

2006-04-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

Good job today, everyone!

Roxy's thesis is nice when reading Akutagawa for several reasons, one of which relates to just the sentence level. Am I, myself, suspicious? Am I suspicious of someone or something? Jacob, in his early-bird "Hell Screen" post, identified a suspicious strategy the narrator uses. I'm sure you'll think of more.

For now, keep your stories from the class activity coming below on the Rashômon movie post, and use this one to discuss your initial thoughts on "Hell Screen."

怪しい

羅生門

2006-04-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Kurosawa Akira's Rashômon (1950) stars Mifune Toshiro, Kyo Machiko, and Mori Masayuki. The acclaimed director was 40 years old when he made this film, arguably the most famous work of his illustrious career. The film was drawn from the two stories you have read for this week.

In his autobiography, Kurosawa writes that he decided to use Akutagawa's "In a Grove," because the story "goes into the depths of the human heart as if with a surgeon's scalpel, laying bare its dark complexities and bizarre twists."

In addition to winning the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, this movie won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Last Minute Blog Posting Epidemic

2006-04-05T10:31:00.001-07:00

For some time now, I've noticed an increase in lengthy blog comments posted shortly before class begins. The number of students affected by this "last minute" condition has reached epidemic proportions, and something must be done! There hasn't been much sustained discussion throughout the week, and it's become clear that many of you aren't reading what your classmates post. Many of your comments have been excellent, but I'd like to see you all engage each other more in conversation.

Here is a discussion question for you to pick apart and toss around as much as possible:

We have read about characters who struggle with painful feelings and whose lives are fraught with challenges. The desperation we see in the story "Rashomon" is no exception, but the story is radically different from others we have read in terms of how it is told. What makes this story different from what we have read up until now?

Short Fiction Short Essay Contest (Deadline April 13)

2006-04-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

This contest involves using your research and interpretive skills. If multiple entries are submitted, the big prize will go to the most substantive and compelling answer. If, as a class, you choose to work together on the blog and submit a collective answer, the prize will be distributed equally to be shared by everyone. Only entries posted to this blog by 10:00 am on April 13 will be considered.

Imagine this is the monkey in Akutagawa's "Hell Screen."

Who is memorialized in this famous landmark in Tokyo? Find out everything you can about his story.

In no more than 2 pages, compare and contrast the fates of these two animals.

March 1, 1892 - July 24, 1927

2006-04-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

Akutagawa entry in the Waseda J-lit Database
"Hell Screen" in Japanese on Aozora Bunko
"Rashômon" in Japanese on Aozora Bunko
"In a Grove" in Japanese on Aozora Bunko
Walking in Hell with Akutagawa
Akutagawa page by Kumiko Sato
Akutagawa Bio
"The Dog, Shiro" (1923)

Wan-wan!

2006-03-29T23:19:00.000-08:00

The dômaki (胴巻き）to which the narrator refers are money belts, but also sometimes just fanny-packs.

I'll also refer to the following word and concept in class tomorrow:

変身 (henshin)
Literally this just means a physical trans-formation or meta-morphosis (e.g. "I turned into a dog while wearing my domaki"), but for our purposes, a sexual meta-morphosis into a male body that a woman is supposed to experience before achieving enlightenment. (In the classic Nô play Yamamba, the yamamba achieves enlightenment without undergoing a henshin.)

Ohba Minako

2006-03-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

"Candle Fish" (Rôsoku no uo) 蝋燭の魚
by Ohba Minako (Nov. 11, 1930-)
大庭みな子

Thanks for your sweet notes. I missed you too and am sorry I had to cancel class.

I'll offer two short make-up classes next Wednesday (NOT tomorrow) for those who would like to discuss Uno Chiyo's story "To Stab." You are not required to attend. I'll offer one from 1:30-2:30 p.m. and another from 4-5 p.m. on April 5th. If both those times are bad for you, I can set a up a third time. Please let me know if and when you'll attend asap so I can make appropriate room arrangements.

Please feel free to post more about "To Stab" and also start discussing this week's reading by Ohba Minako (pictured here). Your job is to read "Candle Fish" very closely and also be familiar with the following:

NY Times book review

An academic panel on the author

Notes by Kumiko Sato, who is now a Japan Studies professor at Earlham College

More notes by Prof. Kumiko Sato

More notes by K.S.

Ad for Urashimaso

For those of you who can read Japanese:
大庭みな子氏のプロフィール
and
大庭みな子「火草」の世界─ネイティブ，ジェンダー

And if anyone reads German, I found this in an online German publication called Minikomi I have no idea what it means.

Unter dem Titel „Demons, Transnational Subjects, and the Fiction of Ohba Minako“ zeigt Adrienne Hurley, wie Ôbas Protagonistinnen, die zuweilen die Fähigkeit besitzen, „magical forces“ herbeizurufen und die in einem Bereich Zuflucht suchen, „in which the supernatural and the real coexist“ (S.90), herkömmliche (für „weiblich“ erachtete) Verhaltensmuster und Konzepte von Nation und Identität unterlaufen. In diesem Sinn, so Hurley, sei Ôba, die mit ihren yamamba (Berghexen)-Charakteren subversive Frauenpersönlichkeiten entwirft, eine politisch denkende Autorin. Diese Schlussfolgerung ist zu bestätigen: Ôba greift, anders als viele Schriftstellerkollegen, das ‘Andersweltliche’ (Stichwortikai) nicht als folkloristisches und (Japan)-nostalgisches Element auf, sondern wendet es in einem feministischen Diskurs an.

Finally, if you can find back issues of A. Magazine, there is a great essay ("Postmodern Cherry Blossoms") in the April 30, 1992 issue by Stanford Prof. of J-lit Indra Levy. Word has it that you can find it online, but I couldn't. If you can, please let us all know.

NO CLASS TODAY

2006-03-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

I never thought it would happen, but I'm calling off class today. After a perfect track record of 14 years of university teaching without ever missing a single class, I am definitely bummed, and I am definitely sorry. So, Brendan, D-Mo, and Tevis, you won't be missing anything...

Changing Face of Yamamba

2006-03-22T00:34:00.000-08:00

Many of you have expressed a desire for a reprieve from the heavy literary fiction we've been studying, and Ivan went so far as to plot a rebellion tomorrow.
If you can develop the discussion on "To Stab" under the Uno Chiyo thread below before class, I will stand down.

Ivan's plan is actually in everyone's best interest in terms of the following week's material, which draws heavily on folk tales.

So, head straight down to the Uno Chiyo thread to learn about the rebellion and sort through as much as you can!

One folk figure we will discuss next week has undergone some transformations over the years. These images will give you a little preview.

Genre Theory: Part I

2006-03-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

I was really delighted with your first "genre theory" exercise responses. Here are some highlights and excerpts I'd like you to discuss in the comments section below. We have stories ahead that may require us to revise, reconsider, and amend our preliminary ideas, but I think you've all contributed to a really fabulous start!

I want to start with Nicky's response (entitled "Tevis").

Tevis, in reference to "The Marsh," mentioned something along the lines of being haunted by the ghost of a man. This, taken a bit out of context, can make a very convincing definition for a genre.

Throughout the course of the class many of the stories we have read involve restrictions beyond the characters' control that are in some way or another haunting the characters throughout the course of the story. For example, in "Crabs," the woman has all sorts of pressures, seemingly beyond her control, that cause her tuberculosis to worsen, i.e., her husband who tells her she is fine and that he will spend no more money to cure her, or in "The Marsh," for example, if one reads the story under the premise that Tsushima can't escape the shadow of her father and so writes in response to his haunting her; one can see the apparent connection between forces beyond the characters' (sometimes even authors themselves') control and how they are affected by them.

Several people referred to comments Shiori made. Tevis, for example, chose Shiori's comments on Hoshino's story "Chino" to develop his preliminary theory:

...Shiori described the kinds of questions the text made her ask herself, those huge questions about identity, what happens after we die, the purpose of it all. Her remarks (her questions) led me to think about the inherently interactive nature of these stories, an essential incompleteness. Of course, all texts work this way, but the stories we've read in class (my only exposure to such) seem designed as incomplete – the deferral of character names/identities (and pronoun play), the ambiguous endings, the somewhat free-floating status of time and place (at least the necessity of context), the nonlinear temporalities and slice-of-life feel (which thwart traditional endings and beginnings). All of them put a great deal of pressure (interrogative in nature) on the reader, sending him/her to those questions that Shiori asks. Like little bombs inserted in the reader, the detonations are delayed (and often multiple), requiring the reader to complete the circuit, light the fire. Ambiguity seems a central strategy, and while I have no desire to dispel it, such questions do help me find my way (and in the process, reflect my own reader-image/identity back to me).

Kristin also referred to Shiori:

In Shiori's comments on the Nakagami Kenji story "House on Fire," she talked about her personal knowledge and experience of discrimination against Burakumin and people living in the "Buraku neighborhood" in Japan: how the neighborhood was pointed out to her and her emotional response of indignation. She also wrote about how the life of discrimination that Nakagami portrays in the story is so far beyond her knowledge that she had trouble knowing how to respond to it. These comments resonated with me because we have read a number of stories (all of them, really) that describe in detail personal experiences very different from, even foreign to, my own, despite some previous background in Japanese literature, language, and culture.

I tend to find myself responding to the stories, like Shiori did, as if they were the direct testimony of a real person's experience, rather than "literature" or "fiction" as I'm more used to. I suspect this is an effect of the stories we've read being part of or strongly influenced by the "I-novel" tradition. If I were to base a short story genre theory only on the selections we've read for class, I would almost certainly posit that the Japanese short story always contains strong autobiographical elements, and can be read as a direct reflection of the author's/narrator's life experience. Reading more widely would probably disprove this theory, since I know there is other Japanese fiction that doesn't so directly correspond to the author's life, or conflate author with narrator as a matter of course.

As for her own response, Shiori described identifying so heavily with the main characters in the stories we've read that she sometimes had trouble finding the "message." (You'll see how the "realness" of the stories is a recurring topic in many of your responses.) She referred to Jacob's comments on "Memory of a Night" as having helped her think beyond the main character's subjectivity and find a "message" in that story:

I remember what Jacob wrote about Sata Ineko's story. When I read her story, I couldn't really understand her intention or the message. Jacob analyzed the story in detail, and what I took away from his blog comments was the idea that "there's always some message in the story." I'm not sure this could be a "theory" though. When I read a story, I start to synthesize the feelings of the main character. I usually just come up with something simple like the author has a relationship with a certain real person and that's why the author put this character in the story. As a result, I just don't get the idea or message – nothing! [...] After reading Jacob's comments on the blog, all of a sudden, everything made sense to me.

Taicho also responded to the "realness" and invoked comments by Andy and Ivan to suggest that the stories grapple with identity and personal relationships. For example, he wrote:

Ivan talked about in/out groups and how their dependencies affect decisions. Andy talked about how we identify ourselves through others. I think that both directly and indirectly affect what kind of story is told and how it progresses.

Jenn was another to draw on a comment about "realness" to develop her theory. She wrote:

Under the "Chino" blog, Nick commented on how authors use fiction to comment on the reality of the times. I feel that this is true. People write about what they know. They may hide it in fiction, but a lot of that fiction is a reflection of reality. If you are a "read between the lines" type of reader, then you can pick out the pieces of reality.

Andy referred to Jacob's comments, along with Jason's, to develop an ambiguity theory for Japanese short fiction. Andy sees ambiguity as a defining characteristic (or perhaps strategy, as Tevis put it) in the short stories we have read:

Jacob and Jason's posts on "Memory of a Night" are in one way very typical of how we read this story. In Jacob's post, he wrote about how the goodbye for the m.c. was happy, and the m.c.'s reflection was very sincerely positive like remembering a fun, exhausting vacation. However Jason's post was more about how the reflection on the trip was more negative, thinking that the family was meaning "don't come back" in their gracious farewell to the m.c. Because the text is ambiguous, both interpretations can be interpreted. By looking at straight text Jacob's view could be supported, but by looking at the tone, Jason's view is supported. This ambiguity exists in all the stories, whether in the character names, places, or how to interpret situations. Hoshino Tomoyuki talks warmly of ambiguity, which lends support to my argument for its place in my "theory."

Jeff also pointed to what he called the "beauty" of Japanese short stories: "All of these stories have been interpreted in so many ways, ways that the author could never have thought up on his own." He recalled disagreeing with other people's interpretations of what the fabric Midori throws out to Nobu means in "Child's Play." His theory is that "the stories actually adapt to the individual reader."

Ray also focused on reader response and the different meanings we as readers can create with a story. He recalled Roxy's comment about how she felt a lack of feeling in "The Marsh" and wrote that the stories we've read seem, to him, geared to "evoke complex emotions." Ray took this observation to develop a genre theory that really empowers us as readers to do something with our readings. He wrote that "the power of raw emotion is what makes us human and the ability to understand better how we and our friends think gives us the power to make a difference in each other's lives."

D-Mo (the student formerly known as Dylan) turned to Ivan to discuss how open to interpretation the stories are and how real the characters are:

In all the stories we've read in class, there have been numerous different layers to each story. In the stories we've read the characters have depth and are all very real characters. Some may be flawed and relate to the readers, while others are longing for something – whether it is a relationship or a parent, love, or companionship. Under the blog comments for "The Marsh," Ivan wrote of the longing of both the main character and her friend, and how both long for a sense of identity. I found it interesting how Ivan related this idea back to the identity theme as focused on in other stories read in class. The two main characters are ostracized by society for being "promiscuous" and having children out of wedlock. These characters long to be accepted, not only by society but by another human being. Ivan proves how many layers there are in these stories – not only the plot, but also the characters. The flawed characters add depth to the stories and make them open to interpretation to people who read them.

Jacob's comments inspired Roxy's genre theory. She wrote:

I believe that it was Jacob who mentioned in the "House on Fire" thread ... about each of the characters being "on fire" – and also, he mentioned that story asks us to look at what our "houses" are made out of and how easily they would be set aflame. Elegant, eloquent, and poignant ... I really feel that a "good" short story, especially the ones we've read – burns – burning happens quickly, but you know how it takes a while to feel the pain after you burn yourself? I've found it's the same with these Japanese short stories – it takes a while for the crazy, painful issues to sink in. It's the short, bittersweet aspect of these short stories that can really set us aflame, as we say. Also, really, we all get burned up about the issues ... so, eh.

Stephanie also turned to comments from the "House on Fire" blog entry. She also was one of several people who referred to comments Ivan made:

[Ivan] wrote about the realistic quality of the story. How, yeah, it was descriptively violent, etc., but that we couldn't get the full impact of what the author is trying to impact if it was sugarcoated and the son's wife was just given a "tongue-lashing." So, this idea of realism in the stories was really striking for me. I guess I just think about the realistic qualities of all the stories we've read so far. They are fiction stories, yes, but the elements of realism are quite obviously there. These serious and depressing topics keep coming up in the stories and it is all very real. Ivan just made me think that it wasn't just in "House on Fire" that the quality of realism in the story helps to get the message across. So, I guess what I think of as the genre, is this short fictional story that managed to be real on all the levels that it needs to be. They are all just very realistic and somehow that manages to make them more poignant.

Karen cited one of Stephanie's comments on Sata Ineko's story and applied it to everything we've read:

[Stephanie wrote about] the wrongness mentioned by the author [of "Memory of a Night"]. How was it wrong? What was wrong? I see this as not only relating to "Memory of a Night," but to every story we've read so far. Each one addresses an issue that the author sees some controversy in, whether societal or personal. Perhaps Japanese short fiction deals with things that are not just wrong to someone, but to Japanese in general. The short stories are commentaries on life in all its various forms and what is wrong with it, and sometimes how to fix it. Can "wrongness" be a genre, or would it be called a commentary or, perhaps, a mirror genre? I think the latter is fitting because all the Japanese short stories I've read so far reflect some kind of issue the author sees as a problem. Therefore, mirror genre I shall dub it.

Several of you wrote about comments Karen made for the "Chino" blog post. For example, Jason wrote:

In Karen's post on "Chino" her reading in which she saw the Spanish names of the towns equalling "ambiguity" and "illusion" struck me as relevant to how the short story hides larger ideas in smaller format. When I read her comment it opened the story up to a greater interpretation. From that point on I tried to look for words or phrases that would hold those larger meanings in a more compact form. This makes me believe that the short story incorporates larger themes in more compact formats, using words and phrases to invoke the larger ideas connected to them so that the impact of a longer story can be experienced in less space.

Mark cited the same comments and wrote:

[Karen's observation revealed] a layer of symbolism that could have gone unnoticed. That seems to be the single recurring theme in these stories. Symbolism layered on metaphor and frosted with allusion.

Amanda recalled a comment Mark made about the "unfinished feeling" of a story and posited that this is an effect of the ambiguity so many of you noticed. She went on to suggest Japanese short fiction "usually relates to the author's experience," "usually has ambiguity," "does not have to follow a chronological order," "doesn't need to have specific names," "does not need a specific ending," and "doesn't need a 'happy' ending."

Adam also took a broad view of the genre in his response, referring to comments by Alecs and Karen:

My very first thought was to use an idea Alecs posted on the Nakagami thread in relation to "House on Fire." He came up with what I like to call the Phoenix Factor. He stated something along the lines that Yasu, "the man," tried to "purify" the places where he had done wrong by "destroying" them. This destructive-purification reminds me of the tale of the phoenix who bursts into flames (especially significant to the kind of destruction in "House on Fire") and out of the ashes is born a new phoenix. It seems many of the stories we read have some kind of destruction, or at least conflict, in an attempt to reclaim some innocence or clean a tarnish. I think Japanese short fiction relies havily upon this destruction-purification. Like perhaps the only way to survive once you've gone down the wrong path is to sprint down to its end.

I also thought about Karen's "Do the sins of the fathers become the sins of the son?" from the same post. Identity is something that comes into every story. The identity of being the mulberry child, of being Dazai's daughter, of not knowing your roots in "Chino." This in addition to the knowledge gained from the New Nationalisms makes me feel this is all but unavoidable in the genre.

Perhaps to connect the two – in order to create your own identity, you must purify yourself by destroying what is around you, and building yourself up.

There were also some of you who focused on specific themes and questions related to sexuality as a basis for a genre theory. Ian, for example, suggested sexual themes are a defining feature. He wrote, "It'd be too strict to say it's always present, but it seems like something dealing with an aspect of human sexuality can be read from the stories. I'd tentatively offer this as a beginning definition for these stories." Jonathan also wrote about human sexuality and sexual imagery, referring to Kristin's comment on "The Marsh" and suggesting our stories could be interpreted as a "sex drama" genre.

Caitlin also referred to Kristin's comment on "The Marsh" and described it as a "layer of social commentary" that she "did not personally identify" in her own "first reading." She also wrote:

More than just giving a good read, most of the stories this semester thus far have painted a picture with an undercurrent that makes a commentary or brings to attention the social, political, or psychological forces that make the situation what it is. Seldom if ever do the characters come out and say to the reader what ails them or what force opposes them. This commentary or message within a message within an everyday set of actions occurs again and again. These simple, awkward stories each apply to a bigger world beneath the surface.

I want to end with Ivan's response:

This is a bit of a stretch, maybe, but ...

Brendan wrote in a blog comment about "House on Fire" that the story was incredibly vulgar and the situations or characters were perverse or something like that.

His comment made me think about what a Japanese short story is. I think that a Japanese short story is about reality. I think the Japanese short story is about revealing flaws in the system. I think the Japanese short story is about telling a story in the best way you know how, it's about weaving your personal experiences in with your fiction, even or maybe especially if it shocks and angers people.

Higuchi Ichiyô writes about the lives of people who live in or just outside the pleasure quarters in early modern Japan. She incorporates aspects of her own life growing up outside those quarters.

Minakami Tsutomu tells about the shaka shaka ritual in an area of Japan that he had lived in. He tells us about the shocking practice of throwing unwanted babies into a hole.

Kôno Taeko writes about child abuse and adultery in her story "Snow."

Tsushima Yûko talks about some of the same things in the story we just read.

Hoshino Tomoyuki talks about identity, bringing some of his own personal struggles with identity into the story.

And of course Nakagami writes about sex, arson and babies without fathers and spitting in his story "House on Fire."

All of these authors, in the spirit of the "I-novel" tell their fiction with a bit of their personal life sprinkled in. Also, their stories are, for the most part, an attempt to change society for the better by exposing some of its ugliest weaknesses.

宇野千代

2006-03-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Obituary: Uno Chiyo

The Independent (London)
June 12, 1996
by James Kirkup

The novelist and kimono designer Uno Chiyo was an enchantingly vivacious old lady who occasionally appeared on Japanese television wearing unusually classic kimono, old-fashioned hairstyles and thick pebble glasses. It was easy to see what a beauty she must have been in her youth, and to understand why so many men - most of them quite unworthy of her - fell under her spell.

She reminded me of the sexually voracious Marlene Dietrich - her almost exact contemporary - revealed in her daughter Maria Riva's bitter biography. Or of the centenarian grandes dames, still avid for male attentions, in Ronald Firbank's novels, one of whose delicately caricatured aristocrats, Lady Parvula de Panzoust, loves to practise her "hobby" of "standing in shafts of sunlight", just as Uno Chiyo to the very last gasp adored basking in the glow of media celebrity.

The first time I saw her in the flesh was at the Tokyo Imperial Hotel for the celebration of her 88th birthday, the special occasion known in Japan as beiju. Hundreds of friends and fans attended. During the long evening she changed her resplendent kimono three times, a custom (o-iro- naoshi) more usually performed by young brides at the wedding reception after the Shinto ceremony. These were really just opportunities for the star of the evening to freshen her make-up, and to the end Uno was an ardent maquilleuse - her first published story was the prize-winning "Shifun no kao" ("Painted Face", 1921).

She started off as a schoolteacher at the Kawashima Elementary School in Iwakuni in 1914, and in what was then a quiet provincial backwater she at once created a scandal by wearing an elaborate geisha wig and make- up in class, and had a love-affair with a young teacher. The teacher had to transfer to another post, while she went off blithely in search of another romance. It was to be the pattern of all her life.

Uno Chiyo wrote only a handful of works, most of them short. Her longest story is purely autobiographical, Irozange (Confessions of Love), serialised in the literary magazine Chuo Koron from 1933 to 1935, and runs to only 150 pages or so. After a disastrous "arranged" marriage to an unsuitable cousin, she fled to Tokyo. She worked for a while as a waitress in a restaurant opposite the office of Chuo Koron, where she got to know the editor who later published her first story.

Confessions of Love is based on a gruesome personal experience in 1929, when she had a love-affair with the artist Beiji Togo, who was recovering from a nasty double love suicide. Uno had wanted to collect information about the affair, in which the girl had died, for a novel. She arrived at Togo's house with only a handbag, but after making love with the artist on the very blood-stained futon on which the botched double suicide had taken place, she lived with him for five years. Sixty years later, she recalled: "We fell upon each other like animals. You see, it was the blood- stained bandage round his neck that got me."

The "hero" is portrayed as selfish, cowardly, weak-willed, fickle and very capricious. He is an artist who has lived some years in America - "Merican Jap" is the term Uno uses - and he never puts brush to canvas, but scrounges money from various morose, insolent girls. In the end, as nearly always in Japanese life, it is the women in this story who emerge as the stronger characters, while the self-important males reveal themselves to be little boys at heart, with second-rate abilities.

Uno Chiyo kept writing sporadically for magazines, and for her own Sutairu ("Style"), Japan's first fashion magazine. During the Second World War, however, it was suppressed by government censors, who found the articles she wrote on themes like "How to Wear a Summer Frock" and "Proper Underwear - a Must for Western Dresses" not in keeping with the seriousness of the times. But the unsinkable Uno Chiyo resurrected it during the Occupation. She became even more famous as an innovative kimono designer than as a writer.

Her "Aru hitori no onna no hanashi" ("Story of a Woman Alone", 1971) is another fascinating re-telling of her life, mainly confining itself to her early years and her precocious sexual needs. She asks herself, "Was it instinct? Fear? Or merely lust?" as she ponders her youthful erotomania. She emerges as a woman who did exactly as she pleased.

Her beautiful short novel Ohan she declares to be the most "constructed" of her works, claiming its rather erratic story is based on La Princesse de Cleves. It is a historical novel about the puppet-makers and puppeteers of Shikoku, and was awarded the Noma Prize when it appeared in 1957. The film director Kon Ichikawa made it into a movie in 1984.

Uno Chiyo celebrated her 95th birthday in grand style with a party at the Ginza branch of Takashimaya Department Store. The eighth-floor art gallery staged an exhibition of her works, including manuscripts of her novels as well as their now rare first editions, and a number of sumptuous formal kimonos designed by her. Moreover, there was an exact reconstruction of her gorgeous living-room in the high-class Aoyama district of Tokyo.

During the run of the show, this indefatigable nonagenarian was on display every day to chat with a retinue of famous friends in the presence of an appreciative audience and adoring television cameras.

For the magazine Claire Uno Chiyo composed this maxim: "I like people who don't give up their lust for life in whatever situation they find themselves until the very last moment." Again, she said: "All deaths before the age of 100 are accidental deaths, deaths caused by carelessness or thoughtlessness. Men and women can live naturally to be 100 and over." Uno Chiyo just missed that mark.

Uno Chiyo, novelist and kimono designer: born Kawanishi 28 November 1897; died Tokyo 10 June 1996.

For tomorrow

2006-03-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

I wanted to remind you all that you'll want to have reviewed previous blog comments for tomorrow's class. I won't be asking you to reproduce anything in precise detail, but you should review what your classmates have written and be prepared to use ideas from the blog comments to answer a question in class. You should remember the names of people who wrote comments that stand out as especially significant to you.

Here are some terms and titles I will identify and define in class tomorrow:

無頼派 Burai-ha (Notice this second character, rai, is the same character used in the verbs tanomu and tayoru. For those of you who know these verbs, what do you think this term burai-ha might mean?)

The Setting Sun (斜陽 Shayô)
No Longer Human (人間失格 Ningen Shikkaku)

Post-Symposium Dinner

2006-03-07T23:33:00.000-08:00

That was a great dinner-discussion tonight! I know I wasn't able to hear everyone's reflections on the symposium and class visits, so please share some highlights and any lingering thoughts/questions below. (Please also check out the New Nationalisms blog for recent answers from Hoshino-san.)

By the way, Hoshino-san emailed me today. He remembered we would be having the dinner tonight and said to tell you all he had a great time speaking with you all and sends his thanks.

Tsushima Yuko 津島佑子 (born in 1947)

2006-03-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

Adam started with a neat response to Yuri Kochiyama. I hope you all write a lot more about her and the articles linked in the post below.

All life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. MLK, 1965

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. From MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963

I also want to give you some information to consider as you read "The Marsh."

Those of you who took the Japanarchy class will remember Dazai Osamu as the writer who finally died in a love suicide after several "failed attempts." For those of you who haven't heard about Dazai, please check out this link. Tsushima Yûko is Dazai's daughter. Like Hoshino, she has won many literary awards, such as the Noma Prize.

Yuri Kochiyama

2006-03-02T23:32:00.000-08:00

I want to urge you, again, to take as many Ethnic Studies courses as you can. You should definitely look into taking classes with Tamara Ho (Women's Studies and English). In the meantime, start learning as much as you can on your own. Look up the murder of Vincent Chin for starters.

Please check out and discuss these Yuri Kochiyama links:

Azine Film Review
Yuri Kochiyama info
AWOL Magazine interview by Kil Ja Kim
Trip to Cuba
Yuri Kochiyama bio
Model Minority interview
War Times interview
Eulogy Yuri Kochiyama wrote for Safiya Bukhari
Revolutionary Worker interview
The interview you saw in class
Nobel Peace Prize Nomination
SF Chroniclearticle

New Nationalisms Symposium Plenary Discussion and Dinner for Adrienne's J-lit Students

2006-03-01T00:40:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce that a post-symposium discussion and dinner will be held for all of my students (in both classes) next Tuesday (March 7th) at 7pm at Oyama Restaurant in the Sycamore Mall at 1853 Lower Muscatine Rd., Iowa City, IA 52240. We will discuss the readings and talks over a Japanese dinner, which will be provided by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies thanks to the Freeman Foundation. Please bring a list of questions and comments to the dinner and be prepared to enjoy a lively and in-depth follow-up discussion over a nice meal. Please feel free to use this post to arrange carpools to the restaurant. Given the size of my classes, I regret that only my students can attend this educational event. Please let me know if you will NOT be able to join us as soon as possible. After this special event, you will be asked to write about our discussion on the class blog.

Great Movie to Follow up on the Symposium!

2006-02-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

This Thursday, March 2nd, at 7 p.m. in 101 BCSB (corner of Washington and Madison), the Proseminar in Human Rights Film will screen Kazuo Hara's THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON (Japan, 1987, 122 min).

A 16 mm print! Free!!

I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society.
-Kazuo Hara Director, THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON.

THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON traces the efforts of Okuzaki Kenzõ to chronicle war crimes, including murder and cannibalism, committed by Japanese soldiers in occupied New Guinea during World War II. Okuzaki, who is infamous in Japan for having slung marbles at Emperor Hirohito in 1969, repeatedly criticizes the emperor during the course of the film, thus challenging one of the strongest taboos in Japan. For this reason Hara's film has never been shown on Japanese television, and major movie studios were afraid to distribute it.

The Proseminar is organized by Assistant Professor Louis Schwartz. All films are free and open to the public. Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you require accomodations to attend this event, or if you would like more information about the program, please call the Institute for Cinema and Culture at (319) 335-1348.

Sata Ineko 佐多稲子

2006-02-27T19:09:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

I hope you enjoyed the symposium. I sure did, and I know it was a special experience for Dr. Naitô, Hoshino-san, and Su Tong too. If you still have questions or would like to discuss any of the topics raised, you can contribute to the discussion on the New Nationalisms blog, where you can also see some great photos and videos Caitlin made. Of course, you can also talk about it on this blog too.

We'll have an interesting transition this week with Sata Ineko's short story, "Memory of a Night." This first picture of her was taken in the 4th year of the Shôwa Era (昭和4年). So, when was that? :)

If you are intrigued by Sata Ineko, you might want to check out this book review. We are using translations from other books by the author.

This is the jacket of a book on Sata Ineko and Postwar Japan （さたいねことせんごにほん). You can see what she looked like later in her life.

If you can read Japanese, you can see the afterword to this book online at the Kinokuniya Book Web website.

"Chino"

2006-02-16T19:50:00.000-08:00

The Nakagami thread is outstanding! I will base an in-class assignment on it 2 weeks from now, so make sure you read everyone's comments carefully. And please keep it going! You can think of questions to ask Hoshino-san and Naitô-san next week too.

You can access your reading for next week here.

To help you be better prepared for class next week, I want you to find out and share as much as you can about the Zapatistas. Read letters and statements by Subcomandante Marcos, look for news on the Zapatistas, and check out independent media sources. If you are a very dedicated student, check out the film Men With Guns (directed by John Sayles) and read Our Word is Our Weapon by Subcomandante Marcos.

Don't forget to read over the New Nationalisms blog too.

Wow!

2006-02-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

I cannot overemphasize how moved I am by your comments. I feel hopeful about the future when I imagine you all will be shaping it. I teared up while reading your comments and reflecting on the sensitivities and insights behind them.

Some of my former students will be coming to Iowa City for the New Nationalisms symposium (from as far away as San Francisco and New York City). I'd love for them to meet you all. If you come to the reception on Friday afternoon at the Shambaugh House (click on the New Nationalisms link for the details), you can meet the writers informally and also meet my former students. If you are interested in hanging out with them, let me know, and I'll put you in touch with one another.

For Andy:
Information on Miyako Harumi

What about her biography lends added significance to her brief appearance (well, not really appearance per se) in the story?

Don't forget we will meet for the Study Abroad Workshop Tomorrow!

2006-02-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

I wanted to give you a few visuals for the story. On page 142, you encounter a reference to Moomin. Moomin is the pale blue character on the left here.

Moomin was created by Tove Jansson of Finland, who died just a few years ago, and was very popular in Japan. You can still find products with Moomin characters on them and Moomin toys. My guess is that some of you have seen Moomin before.

The description of "the man" on p. 111 is significant. Maybe some of you have visited Nara, where you can see this famous sculpture by Unkei (12th century) protecting the Great Buddha at Todai-ji. (If I remember correctly. Unkei himself had a lot of sons, and I think most if not all of them became sculptors too.) A reader might imagine something like the very famous barrel-chested figure pictured here.

The man had been completely transformed. His body looked three times larger than his own. He was absolutely terrifying. Where the hell had he come from, and why had he come?

...this man standing in the crowd, arms folded across his chest like some demonic guardian king...

Near the end of class tomorrow, I will ask you if you think this story critiques or condones violence. Or does it do something else in its representation of violence? You might want to start thinking about your answers.

Responses to the Sisterhood Film and Discussion

2006-02-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

This post is for those of you who attended the 30 Years of Sisterhood event on Saturday. Feel free to share your responses with the class!

中上健次

2006-02-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

CAPE (Japanese)

English Version

1989 interview

bio/info

logo in your reading

book review

BLHRRI

Buraku Liberation League (Japanese)

English Version

1922 Declaration

Radical Empathic Leaps Ahead

2006-02-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

After class, I spent a lot of time thinking about why I teach literature. You all gave me lots of reminders today. Sometimes things that feel the most real to us, things that remind us the most of ourselves, our lives, and what we know from our own experiences show up in the stories we read. Maybe we see ourselves and what we know in the fictional lives and situations we encounter. Do we identify with Hayako? Kajii? Takeshi? Yûko? When we do identify and identify hard, we can be a lot more emotionally invested in a class discussion, and we can really want to be heard, to be understood, to have what we know be recognized. Not everyone felt it this week, but it seemed quite a few did.

I'd like to ask you all to take on another imaginative empathic leap with me as you continue your discussion of "Snow" and "Crabs."

I'd like us to imagine that EVERY person in this class feels strongly about the stories and/or class discussion because of a related personal experience.

Specifically, this means I want you to imagine EVERY person in class has been abused, deals with depression, has been called out as "sexually deviant," has wanted to die, has TB, has been derided as "crazy," or has suffered the loss of a parent. I want you to imagine EVERY person in class has a huge scar on her/his back, a series of medications to take every day, and powerful and debilitating headaches. I want you to imagine EVERY person was sexually abused as a kid. How would that affect how we read the admonition to keep a secret in "Crabs"? Imagine EVERY person is a parent of young kids. How would that affect the tenderness of a back scratch? Imagine EVERY person has watched someone they love more than anything in the world suffer and feel unable to help.

Then think of the hardest thing that's happened to you and imagine it's happened to EVERY other person in the class.

After all, you can't really tell what someone has lived just by looking at her/him.

If someone writes something that feels hurtful or off-putting or flies in the face of your experience, think of a way to let them know while recognizing that whatever they are writing might be coming from a really embattled or painful personal place. Imagine they have experienced the most painful and awful thing you can imagine. Imagine that person is trying to share something very personal and real with you. Think of every word typed in the comment section as being surrounded by floating animated hearts and flowers, all directed right at you.

I say all this because Kôno Taeko can make us raw. She opens up worlds of hurt for us to engage, and she compels us to try our best to understand. Her stories, I think, reveal a real concern for people in pain. I'd like us all to be mindful of that as the rest of the conversation develops.

I've never taught a genre course before. One of the reasons I had avoided it was because I didn't know what would happen if I gave up a sustained Adrienne framework or series of Adrienne questions structuring the class from week to week. (And, seriously, how could I effectively brainwash the masses and create my army of J-lit revolutionaries if I gave that up? I am the Japanarchy teacher!) I'll admit that it was a little weird for me to have Kôno come into our class without the Adrienne arguments I'm used to using to frame her stories. But as "weird" as it felt at first, I think something pretty neat, like a productive crisis, developed.

But I don't want you all to sit at home alone with whatever you might have taken from the Kôno crisis. I want you to rock.

I have a lot of confidence that you can create some meaningful follow-up conversations. I urge you to look back at earlier comments, some of which were posted before class (so you might have missed them).

I will quiz you on each other's names in a few weeks, so be able to match names and faces soon. (Caitlin, I may ask for your help in this project.)

Mark, I told you I'd put up a post about "Snow" and "Crabs" so you all could write more.

The Freedom to Interpret or an Interpretive Burden?

2006-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

Wow! Karen has already raised (and run with) what will be one of our big themes in tomorrow's class: what happens next?

In a little over two weeks, Chizuko Naitô will be here for the New Nationalisms Symposium, which you are required to attend. In 1999, she wrote an essay for the journal Gendai Shisô (現代思想 or "Contemporary Thought") called "Mikan to Uragiri" (未完と裏切り or "The Unfinished and the Betrayal"). In this essay, she refers to the very famous case of the novel by Natsume Sôseki (above right) called Meian (明暗 or "Lightness and Darkness"), which was left unfinished when Sôseki died in 1916. Many decades later in 1990, the writer Mizumura Minae (above left) imagined her own ending and even published a "sequel" to Meian.

Naitô begins her essay by telling us she has been "fascinated by the word unfinished" and goes on to describe some of the ways in which we, as readers, create our own endings through whatever longings, imaginings, hopes, fears, etc. we bring to a story. We'll do some speculating about what might be "fascinating" about the "unfinished."

In some stories, such as “Snow,” the “ending” almost refuses to let us leave and asks us to examine how a moment, event, feeling, relationship, or situation came to pass and what it could mean.

How do we read the ending in "Snow"????? Is everything settled? Do we feel betrayed or let down since Kôno doesn’t tell us what happens? Does it make us mad? Or do we, like Karen, treat it as "in progress" or unfinished & take up the burden of imagining an ending for ourselves?

I'm going to give you some vocabulary words Naitô uses in her essay, because they will help us think through our responses to the endings in Kôno's short stories.

結末／けつまつ (ketsumatsu) an ending, a conclusion ("closure")
未完／みかん (mikan) unfinished, incomplete
裏切り／うらぎり (uragiri) a betrayal (also double-crossing, treason)

By the way, I'm loving what all of you are writing about the stories so far! Kristin and Roxy, there are hints in the story that offer very compelling "evidence" for your readings. Dylan, you are getting at the heart of what makes "Snow" a complicated story with your righteous indignation over differential treatment. And Jenn, when you described Kôno's stories as almost "too realistic" for your tastes, I loved it. I think you were responding to precisely what is most striking, whether we like it or not, about her psychologically gritty (maybe?) stories. And Alecs' comment addresses a theme that many people see as central in much of Kôno's writing: rough feelings – from yearning to ambivalence or even sheer hatred – related to parenting and adult-child relations in general.

Here's another word I'll use in class tomorrow:
戸籍／こせき (koseki) family register

And, finally, I know at least Jacob has been waiting, so I'll give you my answer to the paper narcissus question. I think Nobu leaves it for Midori. It is commonly read and taught this way, and I think my ability to imagine otherwise is very impaired.

Heads Up for Feb. 16th

2006-02-07T20:22:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

The following announcement is for next week and NOT this Thursday!!

On Feb. 16th (Nakagami Kenji Day), we will have a slightly different kind of class, and I thought I should give you a heads up. We will start off NOT in our regular room, but in 315 Phillips Hall, where you will enjoy refreshments and then hear all sorts of great stuff about studying abroad in Japan. You'll even get to hear members of our class community describe their experiences in Japan. You are not required to attend this session, but I highly encourage you all to come and will look favorably upon those who do.

You ARE required to show up for our class though, which will begin at 5pm instead of 3:30.

3:30 ~ refreshments
4-5 ~ study abroad presentations
5-6:30 back in our classroom (EVERYONE MUST BE PRESENT FOR THIS!)

浦島太郎

2006-02-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

When I told you the story of Urashima Tarô last week, I'd forgotten it shows up in "Crabs." It's everywhere! (Even in the fiction of Hoshino Tomoyuki, who will be here in a matter of weeks now!)

An English-language animated Urashima Tarô version for kids!

Here's a swarthier Urashima Tarô.

Updates on earlier news stories:

"Special high schools try to reintegrate absentees"
"SDP: SDF activities are unconstitutional"
"Aso, Tanigaki defy Koizumi, call for delay in female emperor bill"

Links to news stories are often short-lived now that many online periodicals require subscriptions to access archives. So, please check these out sooner rather than later.

Blogger Down!

2006-02-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

My apologies to everyone who has been trying to post comments. Blogger has been down most of the weekend, and some of my blogs are still entirely inaccessible. While there have been short outages from time to time in the past, this is the largest unscheduled outage I've ever experienced with them. Needless to say, I will adjust my expectations this week accordingly.

河野多惠子

2006-02-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

Next week, we'll be discussing two stories by Kôno Taeko, "Snow" and "Crabs." If you are a very diligent and motivated student, you can read yet another story by her ("Iron Fish"), which is made available free of charge online thanks to the Japan Society here. I am very fond of "Iron Fish" (and teach it a lot in other courses), but it is optional reading for us. Kôno won the Akutagawa Prize (one of several really big literary prizes in Japan) in 1963 for "Crabs."

The following excerpts come from an essay by Kôno entitled "What is the short story?" (短編とは何か) from an issue of the literary journal Gunzô in 2000. The translation is by Ursula Owen.

"Everyone knows that short stories are a format of fiction quite different from full-length novels. What's more, they must in the eyes of many people seem much easier to write than novels. However, when you look at Japan's modern literature from the standpoint of literary development, the point at which the growth of the short story first becomes apparent is much later than that of the novel, Ichiyo Higuchi's short stories were only a few in number. Ichiyo's works, more automatically than unconsciously, quickly fused together the elements of so-called modern literature (and thus she's held in such high esteem), but those short stories that developed later diverge from her work."

"At a symposium with the late Mr. Junnosuke Yoshiyuki (short story writer and novelist), or perhaps in an idle chat, when we spoke of short stories, he said, 'The short story is that which writes a cross-section of life.'"

"Shocked by this opinion, I even argued with him."

"To relate in this limited amount of space what the short story is, I can only answer in defeat that it's not that which portrays a cross-section of life. However, once one knows that 'the short story is not that which writes a cross-section of life', the possibility of creating new techniques for the short story might develop."

The UI Main library now carries the Japanese literary journal Gunzô in the East Asia Collection thanks to Sakai-san, the patron saint of our class and all students of J-lit at UI.

You might also want to skim the following links on tuberculosis, PTSD, and migraines. (I'm not kidding.)

What is TB?
TB symptoms
PTSD info and links
Complex PTSD
Migraine Research

For reading, check out Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman or Traumatic Stress by Bessel van der Kolk.

Nicky T. said Chuck Norris jokes are all over the internet...

2006-02-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

Well, so is Toilet Hanako-san (トイレの花子さん).

Apparently, she is back.

I hope she's not in Phillips Hall. Avoid the third toilet from the entrance just in case.

I'll let you research her yourselves.

Toilet Hanako-san sleeps with a night light. Not because Toilet Hanako-san is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Toilet Hanako-san???

(This post is mostly just a gift since you were such a good class today.)

Kannon Gallery

2006-02-01T22:16:00.000-08:00

It looks like some of you have studied with Prof. Sawada! I'll say a bit about Kannon tomorrow. Keep up the great blog comments!

Babies, babies, babies

2006-02-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

You've developed some conversation threads I didn't anticipate. That's neat. I will address some issues raised in class tomorrow. In the meantime, here's your last batch of readings.

"Japan's PM envies dogs' high birth-rate"

"Wooing Women as Birth Rates Drop"

"Rally against Japan royals change"
(You can read more about this on the New Nationalisms website, link to the right.)

"Japan fertility hits record low"
Comments on aricle above

Elderly crime

Big up to Stephanie and Tevis for making my job tomorrow easier with their blog comments!

Chew on these too!

2006-01-30T01:06:00.000-08:00

It's been cold in Tokyo. A friend sent me this photo, taken in Ueno Park on Jan. 6th.

In the interest of providing you with lots "to chew on," here are a few more links:
Shoes
Haruhiko Kumamoto
Showa Period Songs

水上勉

2006-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

While the translator renders his name as Minakami Tsutomu, I more often see it as Mizukami Tsutomu. In Japanese, it's 水上勉. (If you can't see the Japanese, you'll need to adjust the encoding in your browser preferences to Shift JIS or Unicode or something else that supports Japanese.) How about we go with that? He died at the age of 85 (from pneumonia) in 2004. You might get a kick out of this interview with him.

Even though the crucial action in "The Mulberry Child" (1963) involves kids and poverty and takes place back around the same time "Takekurabe" was written, the stories are quite different, especially in terms of how and by whom they are narrated. How many people are involved in the telling of "The Mulberry Child" story? What is that like for you as a reader?

There might be a few Japanese film buffs who have seen the classic movie based on a Mizukami novel and starring this woman. Her name is Iwashita Shima, and the film (not the one pictured below) is entitled The Ballad of Orin (Hanare Goze Orin).

Iwashita Shima portrays a blind itinerant musician – a very sad story, because "all she knows is work and suffering." Of course, you might also recognize her from one of her many, many other roles.

Extra Credit Opportunities

2006-01-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

If you attend either of the following events and write a 1-2 page response paper, you'll earn extra credit, which can be applied where ever you need it most at the end of the semester, for each. Sorry about the late notice for the first opportunity, which is tomorrow!

Public seminar: "The OSS and Ho Chi Minh"
(Note: This seminar does relate to Japan direcctly)
Monday, January 30, 2006
By Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, Associate Professor of History, Buena Vista University
2:30 p.m. in Lecture Room 2, Van Allen Hall

30 Years of Sisterhood: Women in the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement in Japan
Press Release: Please join us for the screening followed by a panel discussion of 30 Years of Sisterhood: Women in the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement in Japan (co-directed by Chieko Yamagami & Noriko Seyama, documentary: 57 min. 2004) at ten US locations in February. Starting with the University of Chicago, the tour's main host, the directors and several of the Women's Lib activists featured in the film will visit the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, Yale University, the LGBT Community Center and the Bluestockings Books in New York City, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Feb 11 (Sat)
4 pm in 140 Schaeffer Hall

Gotta ♡ Caitlin!

2006-01-27T00:40:00.000-08:00

♡♡♡♡♡Caitlin filmed our Short Fiction Actors' Gang! Below are her fabulous descriptions from YouTube and her films, followed by some photos she took! (Thanks, Caitlin!! You are speedy!!) If you check out the last comment under the "Child's Play" post, you'll see all the details on how to get these "mizunocaitlin" originals for yourself! You can also click on the photos to see bigger versions.♡♡♡♡♡

As part of a class discussion on the short story Child's Play (Takekurabe/Comparing Heights), members of our class performed a skit based on a key scene from the story. In the skit, the leader of a street gang (Chokichi) attempts to confront the leader of another street gang during a festival only to discover he isn't around. In the process he encounters a former member of his gang (Sangoro). When their exchange escalates, the younger sister of a prominent courtesan (Midori) steps in and the gang leader insults her and throws his muddy sandal at her in frustration.

I apologize that the sound is poor and the first few words were cut off. My camera and I were having trouble due to low battery power.

In this take, Midori's "actress" has been replaced with a male student.

WWKSD?

2006-01-26T19:37:00.000-08:00

For those of you who know her, you can share your Kanno Sugako deus ex machina ideas for the fight scene in "Child's Play" here!
Portrait of Kanno by UI student John Nedved

Socialization (and its Discontents)?

2006-01-26T18:48:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

Our volunteer actors did a fine job today, didn't they? And I'm sure we're all very grateful to Sakai-san for introducing us to such wonderful databases and dictionaries. Don't lose that precious handout she gave you, and if you try out one of the resources, it would be nice to send her a "thank you" message. She is also always very helpful when students visit her with questions and ideas, so please take advantage of the help she's willing to offer. Like I said in class, she really is the most important person on campus for those of us studying Japanese literature!

The range of responses you had to the story was very heartening, and I'm glad to see such an interest in literature (and such creativity)! I also was happy to see that many of you engaged one another's comments. I have a feeling that some of you might have started skimming other people's comments given the length, which is why I'm suggesting we try shorter, more frequent comments for a bit. I think that will also help you "talk" to one another more easily. I'll give you more blog posts this week, and each will feature a few news articles from recent Japanese newspapers that relate to themes in our readings.

Tonight's theme is socialization.

I talked a bit about culture and socialization today, and I mentioned we'd be spending a few weeks looking at literary representations of childhood. We agreed on a definition of a "culture" as the customs, patterns of relation, and belief systems through which a people perceive themselves to be affiliated and according to which they engage with others. So, child-rearing, education, and other socialization practices (including how we as adults see ourselves in relation to kids) can be both conveyors of culture and sometimes even "cultures" themselves.

Tonight, I'm giving you links to three news stories. I'd like you to discuss what (if anything) you think these articles might reveal about socialization and what (if anything) you think is significant about how the news stories are told. The Japanese literary and media critic Chizuko Naitô urges us to read the news carefully and critically, because the stories the media tells are, even when drawn on real events, still arranged to be read as stories. What kinds of stories are these reports? Feel free to speculate widely and try out even your most tentative ideas on one other. The idea here isn't to compete for who can come up with the most convincing analysis, but to see what you can discover in conversation together. (I also hope this gets you in the habit of reading the Japanese news.)

"Kyoto University Trio Accused of Gang Rape" in the Asahi Newspaper, January 26, 2006
"Japan's latest great export is lazy young bums" in the Mainichi Newspaper, January 26, 2006
"Body of Newborn Found" in the Mainichi Newspaper, January 26, 2006

A Sense of Time and Place in "Child's Play"

2006-01-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

You may have been wondering what a kumade rake looks like. Here is a picture of one, as well as a photo of rakes for sale at a Tori no Ichi Festival.

You can learn more about the Tori no Ichi Festival here.

The story opens with a festival, the Senzoku Summer Shrine Festival, and ends with the Tori no Ichi Festival.

According to the Japanese literary critic Maeda Ai, even though many people still think of the Daionjimae neighborhood depicted in this story as "typifying Shitamachi (Downtown) life in the Meiji period, the Daionjimae of [this time] was in fact a peripheral space located where the edge of the city met the agricultural areas beyond." You'll find little clues in the story that tell us this neighborhood outside the Yoshiwara licensed quarter wasn't perhaps as urban as we might imagine. In a matter of a few short decades, however, this whole area would be filled in with development – new neighborhoods and businesses. Some places where the kids in the story went swimming or met along paths bisecting rice paddies, would have disappeared quickly. Perhaps this is what Maeda Ai had in mind when he also wrote that adult society has "usurped children's places of play, one after another." You can read the essay from which these passages are taken and many others by Maeda Ai in the book Text and the City available here. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about Japanese modernity and Japanese literature.

Tomorrow we'll talk about many of the issues you've already raised below in your wonderful comments (including the translation)! We'll have a very full session with the presentation by Chiaki Sakai, our Japan Studies Librarian, and lots to do to get this short fiction party started, so come with your brains turned on their highest settings!

P.S. There will be a scheduled Blogger outage at 6PM tonight. It should only last about 15 minutes. Stuff like this happens, but I do apologize for any inconvenience.

Let the Blogging Begin!

2006-01-19T17:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

That was a fun first class! For your first blog comments, I'd like you to write your general impressions of "Child's Play." Feel free to include any observations, interpretations, and questions you might have. Also, please read and respond to one another's comments. The more you sort through on the blog, the more exciting and in-depth our class discussion will be next week! You are also welcome to make comments on the post below.

Higuchi Ichiyô

2005-12-26T20:52:00.000-08:00

The first author we will study this semester, Higuchi Ichiyô (May 2, 1872 - November 23, 1896), is pictured here on the new 5,000 yen note (along with some irises). The increased attention to her short career and works that accompanied the release of the new 5,000 yen note led to special exhibitions, television programs, and walking tours. Here are a few examples:

Ichiyô's Well
A Special Exhibition on "The Life of Higuchi Ichiyô

If you'd like to read the story "Takekurabe" in Japanese, you can view the e-text at Aozora. You do NOT have to know Japanese to take this class. All readings will be in English. I will make Japanese readings available when possible for those who would like to check out the original.

Stay Tuned for 39J:144!

2005-12-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

This survey course focuses on the tanpen shôsetsu, a short prose narrative. We will read works by major authors (such as Oba Minako, Hoshino Tomoyuki, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Nakagami Kenji, and Ogawa Yôko) in English translation. Your coursepack will be available at Zephyr Copies on East Washington Street (between Clinton and Dubuque) in downtown Iowa City.