1 comments about Hideo Date: Line, Color, and the Quest of a Japanese American Artist.

1. This survey of the art of Hideo Date is published in conjunction with the Japanese-American National Museum and presents the artist's blend of Japanese and American painting. Gorgeous color paintings by a Japanese-American artist who survived the camps makes for a striking synthesis of styles and cultures.

1 comments about The Last Kamikaze: The Story of Admiral Matome Ugaki.

1. "Last Kamikaze" is like a Reader's Digest abridged version of the book "Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941-1945". It is easy to read and has some additional historical background and commentary thrown in by the author to help understand some of Ugaki's thought processes.
   
   After reading this book, I went and found "Fading Victory" in the library. I am still trying to slug through that book - it's pretty dense going by comparison and makes me appreciate Hoyt's version much more.
   
   The only problem with condensed versions, of course, is that some of the details get lost, glossed over, or are over-generalized. This is a generic problem with Hoyt's writings, I have found.
   
   Nevertheless, this book is a good read. It really gives you a good sense of the thinking behind the intensely macho military culture run amok in Japan during WWII.
   
   The most important concept that I got out of this book was that this military culture was basically just like "Beavis and Butthead" in terms of their pathetic determination to engage in high testosterone acts of male stupidity and aggression, safe in a complete ignorance of how well the intended victims might be able to fight back. The parallels to this sort of teenage impulsiveness and short-sightedness continue with the (well-documented in this book) inability of the Japanese military to plan for the future or to anticipate potential pitfalls, after their inital success had faded. The only result of all this was a lot of death and suffering for the ordinary soldiers and civilians of Japan.
   
   A good example was the Guadalcanal campaign - the book describes in some detail how the Japanese Army first completely underestimated the capabilities of the American forces on Guadalcanal and repeatedly landed, piecemeal, undersized contingents of soldiers to drive off the Americans. Then, when these soldiers failed in their initial assaults, it turned out that the Japanese Army had made almost no plans for supplying these soldiers long term so that they could re-group and continue to fight. Large numbers of the Japanese soldiers starved to death or died of disease as a result. An initially small and tenuous American foothold on Guadalcanal grew ever stronger until Japan had to admit defeat and withdraw from Guadalcanal, giving the US its first major vitory over Japan in a land conflict.
   
   Ugaki was among the contingent of hotheads who had sought to start the war with the US. After working with Admiral Yamamoto, (who was the only Japanese officer of any rank who had actually once lived in the US and so knew something about the country), he came to undertand how foolish that decision was. The level of American resources and economy was just far superior to Japan.
   
   Nevertheless, neither he nor the other militarists could bring themselves to admit that they had made a terrible mistake and give up the fight. Lots of foolish pride!!!
   
   At the moment of Japan's surrender, Ugaki's final act of desperation, which was to get into the back seat of a bomber and try to crash it into an American ship or installation on Okinawa, also failed miserably. His flight of last kamikazes was unceremoniously shot down by American night fighters on routine patrol.
   
   About all I can say is, good riddance. A lot of people died in this world because of militarists like Ugaki. Japan, and the whole world have benefited greatly from getting rid of them. Ugaki's own words reveal him and the entire military culture of WWII Japan to be nothing but a bunch of aggressively ignorant fools.

No comments about Shapers of Japanese Buddhism.

1 comments about The Tosa Diary (Tuttle Classics of Japanese Literature).

1. You know, there's always some level of hype about the "latest translation" and all, but this wonderful translation of "The Tosa Diary" by William Porter, originally published in 1912, demonstrates that we are not always so much more clever than those who came before. Porter is carefully faithful to the sense of the original while capturing its tone and mood in English with great talent. And his method of rendering the waka poems scattered throughout the story is inventive and interesting--though sometimes understandably a bit strained; he has taken the original and fashioned it into something that is true both to waka poetics and to the English poetics of his time (before T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and all that jazz), with a rhyming couplet at the end corresponding to the way the last two lines of a waka break off from the first three thereby completing the poem with a flourish. Compare his rendering of a poem by Ariwara Narihira with Helen McCullough's more conservatively literal (though not inferior) rendering, and you'll get a sense of Porter's distinctiveness here:
   
   Porter: "If the cherry trees/Nevermore burst forth in bloom,/'Twould be better far;/For the saddest time of all/Is the spring, when petals fall."
   
   McCullough: "If this were but a world/To which cherry blossoms/Were quite foreign,/Then perhaps in spring/Our hearts would know peace."
   
   As for the story itself, it is a fairly interesting early attempt at prose narrative, though it is pretty uneventful and kind of drags in spots (one almost wishes the much-feared pirates had actually caught up with Tsurayuki's boat). The thing I found most significant about the tale, though, was the manner in which Ki no Tsurayuki here fleshes out in narrative form the principle he elucidates in the first paragraph of his preface to the "Kokinshu" waka anthology, i.e. poetry being the expression of people's emotional reactions to their experiences and sensual perceptions. Here we see that principle in action all along this otherwise rather tedious trip back to the Capital. Certainly, such moments were Tsurayuki's primary focus and interest, not "Pirates of the Inland Sea" per se.
   
   This book also has the original Japanese text on one side with the English translation on the other, so it is really handy for students of Japanese literature.

5 comments about Contemporary Japanese Film.

1. "Contemporary Japanese Film" is a mis-named book. Judging from the title and size, I was expecting something along the lines of a continuation of Donald Richie's seminal "100 years of Japanese film," something bringing equal insight into contemporary Japanese film as Richie brought into the historical. Instead, "Contemporary Japanese Film" is nothing more than a collection of previously published and unconnected essays, interviews and film reviews by Japan-based film critic Mark Shilling. Obviously, someone saw the potential to make money off of existing material, without further work. There are no original articles.
   
   Shilling is a fine film critic and clearly knowledgeable about the modern Japanese film industry. However, either he or his editors do not know how to assemble this knowledge into a useful book. Several of the essays overlap, with the same information in each. For instance, Shilling is clearly a fan of Iwai Shunji's film "Swallowtail," as it is introduced, described and critiqued in several essays, without any acknowledgement that it was introduced only a few pages before in a different essay. Also, several concepts, such as block-booking movies and advanced ticket sales to drive up box office, are talked about but never adequately explained for non-familiar readers.
   
   In addition, although it looks like a thick and potent read, more than half of the book, 250 pages out of a 388 page book, is film reviews, culled from Shilling's column in the English-language Japan times. The majority of these films are not available to Western audiences.
   
   All of this may sound terrible, but the content that is here is of good quality, and once one gets over the initial disappointment of the mis-labeled title, there are a few kernels of insight to pull out of the pages. Probably the most interesting section is the directors interviews, showcasing such luminaries as Kurosawa Akira, Takahata Isao, Itami Juzo, Suo Masayuki (Shall we dance?) and Kitano Takeshi. There are some glaring oversights, such as no Suzuki Seijun, Miike Takashi or Miyazaki Hayao, but I suppose he can't have covered everyone in his newspaper work.
   
   As a book about contemporary Japanese film, it is a failure. As a collection of non-related essays, interviews and film reviews from someone with knowledge and history of modern Japanese film, it is successful.



2. I found this book to be useful in giving a broad range of information on contemporary Japanese film makers. Although It was not always clear why Schilling had chosen to feature certain directors and not others. I was able to link the directors together which was helpful but I wished there had been more detailed film reviews



3. The Japanese reporter for the prestigious Screen International, Mark Schilling gets to see all the new films in advance, and brings not just a reviewer's critical eye, but a linguist's critical ear = his comments on translation and delivery add a whole new dimension lacking from writers who can't speak Japanese. His comments, even where I don't initially agree with them, such as his Poppoya review, are always thought-provoking and worthy of consideration, and his introductory essays on the state of modern Japanese film are unequalled in the current market. Some of the background stories, such as the influence of the Middle Eastern carpet trade on the Japanese film business, are quite mind boggling, bu also bery interesting explanations for some of the strange behaviour of Japanese film producers. An excellent survey of Japanese film in the 1990s, from someone who was there when it all happened.



4. One of the better and hipper books on Japan is the Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture, by Mark Schilling. Schilling is one of the few foreigners who can really distinguish the important icons of Japanese culture from the stuff that's of less interest. It was with great relief that I found his Contemporary Japanese Film, focusing on cinema from the 1990s. Not surprisingly, he makes reference to the golden age of Japanese cinema in the 1950s, including the magnificent talents of Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi, in an effort to understand what has gone wrong in the nation's cinema since then: a downward spiral of bad talent and visionless film producers. Ever since, there has been little international attention paid to Japanese cinema except for the interesting work of '60s mavericks Nagisa Oshima and Seijun Suzuki (the "Sam Fuller of Japan").

   According to Schilling, there were some new beams of light in the Japanese cinema of the '90s. Leading the pack is filmmaker Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, who has already gotten serious attention in the States and Europe for his stylized gangster films, such as Sonatine (1993); and the hysterical films by the late (and very much missed) Juzo Itami, who made the culinary adventure Tampopo. So it is not surprising that the two most interesting interviews in the book are with these filmmakers. Takeshi must be the hardest-working man in the world: He makes at least two films a year plus eight television episodes a week. He tells a funny story about how on one talk show dealing with food and drink; he fell asleep on television due to the alcohol. The other guests just went on their merry way while commenting every so often on Takeshi's sleeping habits. He claims that there is no pressure doing that much television shows because nothing is planned; it is even relaxing. It is worth noting that, on the side, he has a career as a kind of Japanese David Letterman.

   As for Itami, who is known for his television acting as well as his films, his interview focuses on how contemporary Japanese culture is conveyed in different aspects of his film work. Itami has made fun of everything from family practice (The Funeral) to the Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza (as a result, he had his face slashed by a Yakuza member).

   The second half of the book includes nearly 400 Japanese film reviews by Schilling, published originally in the Japan Times. I would recommend this book not only to film fans, but also to readers who are interested in contemporary Japanese culture. Schilling, along with American journalist Donald Ritchie, has excellent insight into what makes Japan tick, and also understands the nature of kitsch in Japanese culture




5. Mark Schilling is a film reviewer for one of the Tokyo newspapers, so this book is made up of all the films released in the past 10 years, bundled up with a load of articles/interviews with the like of Shunji `Swallowtail Butterfly' Iwai and Juzo `Tampopo' Itami. He writes very well, but most interesting is the wide diversity of the films reviewed. It's far more comprehensive than Weisser's book, which would have you believe that Pinku Eiga were the only type of films being made in Japan in the 90's. Most of the films reviewed have probably had little release outside of Asia. This definitely the best book out there on the subject.

No comments about What I Talk about When I Talk about Running.

No comments about A Zen Life in Nature: Muso Soseki in His Gardens.

No comments about As I Have Loved You.

No comments about Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature.

No comments about Courage Beyond the Blindfold.