Lost In Translation

The Seed And The Sower

I recently re-watched Nagisa Oshima's masterful Merry Christmas Mr.Lawrence and realized through the Criterion extras that the film is based on the writings of South African author Laurens van der Post. Post is a fascinating character who had worked in Japan as a journalist and had some Japanese language knowledge so that when he was captured he could communicate with his captors better than most. He went onto become a celebrated traveler and writer. This explains why Oshima choose a story written by one of Japanese captive who was somewhat sympathetic to the Japanese rather than a Japanese memoir or story. In addition I think Oshima saw elements of themes that he would pursue in his later film Taboo; how war brings men closer together with homoerotic undercurrents. There are three novellas in Post's collection, The Seed and the Sower (1963): A Bar of Shadow, The Seed and the Sower, and The Sword and the Doll. I was surprised by how closely the screenplay followed the events of the book, I had thought that Oshima had taken several liberties to make the sexuality ambiguous, but it was already there in the novellas told from the point of view of the narrator, John Lawrence, and Jack Celliers. I was also surprised by the almost mystical musings of the survivors of war and the lyrical prose:

"For it was not that how great things began in the tiny seed of the small change in the troubled individual heart? One single, lonely, inexperienced heart had to change first and all the rest would follow."

"If only we could all re-learn to speak out of our common suffering and need we would be surprised to find how close we are to another."

 

Hopscotch

I first heard about Julio Cortazar through the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai who was a fan of his and cited him as an influence for his films along with several other writers including fellow Argentine Mauel Puig. Hopscotch (1966) appears to be his masterpiece and a landmark in literature in South America and in the world. It is a difficult, challenging, inventive, and truly original novel. And that is probably my only misgiving-sometimes it seemed like too much work to get through some sections. Chapter 34, in particular, was very troublesome for me as the author alternated lines for the continuation of sentences only to have them merge near the end of the chapter-it was doing my head in. Fascinatingly Cortazar suggests that there are two legitimate and distinct ways to read the novel: one-following his byzantine chapter directions (as I did for this reading), and two-the traditional one, skipping the last third or so, which could be seen as unnecessary. I can see how Wong Kar-wai took the idea of exile and a difficult relationship from this novel for his film Happy Together. Stylistically a comparison can be made between the novel and his films in that he often tells the story out of context with flash backs and interludes that reveal the atmosphere and feelings of the characters and often uses voice-overs to tell the story or comment on it. Cortazar's narrative is also all over the board and there are many interludes and digressions with quotes or references to other works. It is a challenging but rewarding experience overall, but I have to admit sometimes it felt too much like work or being forced to eat all the vegetables on my plate. That being said I will re-read it at some point in the conventional fashion as well, and I have a book of short stories that I will also read sometime in near the future.

People Who Eat Darkness

I was compelled to read Richard Llyod Parry’s book, People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate Of Lucie Blackman, on the Lucie Blackman murder after seeing it on several best of the year lists for 2012.  Lucie Blackman’s story resurfaced again back in 2007 when another English girl, Lindsay Hawker, was killed and raped by an alienated rich man who went on the lam for 36 months before being apprehended.  In 2000, the year Blackman was killed, I was living in Harajuku not far from where Blackman was staying in Sendagaya and was witness to the media frenzy that surrounded her disappearance. I think Parry does an excellent job of giving cultural context about Japanese society and makes some interesting observations and conclusions on various aspects of the case and its effects after the fact. For example, Parry goes to great lengths to try and explain the cultural significance of being a “hostess,” the job that Lucie was doing in Japan. He makes references to an excellent academic book written by academic Anne Allison called Nightwork, as he explains mizushobai (the water trade) and the many tenants of this category from lighting cigarettes, pouring drinks, and chatting to full scale sex and everything in between.

Throughout the book Parry exposes the unusual policing methods and laws in Japan that swings from laughably ineffective to a type of effectiveness that borders on human rights abuses in other developed countries. Generally speaking the Japanese police do not pay much attention to crimes committed against foreigners and have many stereotypes about foreigners and woman working in the mizoshobai. This would become more apparent as stories of several other women came to the police with complaints against Obara. One in particular involved a woman named Carita Rigway. The story recounts how a Japanese friend tried to pursue the case of drugging and rape, the police suggested that he was a drug dealer who was responsible for her overdose-so they backed away from the combative ineffective police.  Parry drives this point home near the end of his book and doesn’t blame individuals, but rather the institution for failing to capture Obara:

“…they served an institution that was, and is , arrogant, complacent, and frequently incompetent. The inadequacy of its police force is one of the mysterious taboos of Japanese society, a subject that the media and politicians strain to avoid confronting, ro even acknowledging…against almost any out-of-the –ordinary crime, they are lamentably ill equipped-sclerotic, unimaginative, prejudiced, and procedure-bound, a liability to a modern nation. Their performance, in the Lucie Blackman case and many others, for Japan’s lack of crime lies not with its guardians but with its people who are law-abiding, mutually respectful, and nonviolent not because of but despite the performance of the Japanese police. ”

 Also, it seems that in Japanese law they have to prove a motive for a crime, which is usually through a confession that can be gotten through torture, violence, or indefinitely holding a suspect. In Japan it is legal to hold a suspect for 23 days without charging them with a crime. The laws seems quite arbitrary in other cases, for example, it is illegal to tap phone which has made it very difficult to fight organized crime the way that it has been groundbreaking in the U.S. for fighting organized crime. The yakuza still has a strong presence in Japan today-police and lawmakers are powerless to capture big fish as a result. Furthermore, they can legally hold the suspect for an additional 23 days after charging them with a crime, and often they will wait until that transpires and then add another charge giving them another 23 days to work on breaking the defendant down into a confession. This helps explain their 90% conviction rate. If the case looks to be difficult they will drop charges rather than lose face as a prosecutor. They were flummoxed by a criminal like Obara who refused to confess and stood by his innocence-a rarity in Japan; the dishonest criminal. Moreover, it took them seven months to find the body and in that state it was impossible to identify the cause of death. And in the end Obara was sentenced to life imprisonment, but not for Lucie Blackman’s murder due to lack of DNA evidence.

In fact, Tim Blackman was quite shrewd when he decided to go public and force attention on his daughter’s disappearance. Otherwise, I am quite sure the powers that be would have brushed it under the rug. But this also drove a wedge between him and the police who would no longer brief him on the finding of the case for fear of it getting out an alarming the suspect. Parry acknowledges this but does not come out say that it is gaiatsu (pressure from outside Japan) to do something or reform. Once you have Tony Blair bringing it up in meetings then you have people are responsible for getting results to save face. It didn’t hurt that Lucie was an attractive middle class white girl much like her later counterpart Lindsay Hawker. But there were some things that Tim Blackman couldn’t have foreseen, the fact that he-personally would also be under scrutiny. And people would judge his character and see him as a philandering husband. And also, he was seen as being a cold-hearted and emotionless man trying to profit from his daughter’s tragedy. Parry takes a stand and defends Tim Blackman and others who took money from Obara by explaining that it did nothing to detract from his chances of being convicted. Parry is trying to be even handed in reporting on the riff between Tim and his ex-wife Jane, but she comes off as a unstable , vindictive mental case who cannot let go or forgive or move on with her life.

Parry also does an excellent job of introducing and analyzing the criminal Joji Obara, the wealthy and maladjusted zainichi (second generation Korean).  I found the discussion of his family’s past and road to wealth and the whole issue of the history and context of second generation Koreans in Japanese society fascinating and well reported. I wasn’t aware of the post war battles between yakuza and sangokuji (third country people-Chinese, Taiwanese, and Koreans) for disputed land. Furthermore, within the Korean group there were two factions: the Mindan (who supported the right-wing American-backed dictatorship of Korea) and the Chosen Soren (who were loyal to the communist north). Obara’s father belonged to the Mindan group and was rapidly accumulating wealth with his three businesses parking lots, a taxi company, and with pachinko. The pachinko business, of which Koreans are know for operating in Japan, requires contact with yakuza who ran the illegal cash windows for prizes won. This meant they resolved “disputes, drove out unwanted tenants, made loans, and allocated the right of business to operate in a territory for a fee. Parry establishes that Obara was alienated and felt like an outsider in Japanese society and had no close friends or family relations over the years.

I read this on my Kindle while stuck in traffic, waiting in line, waiting for food to be served, but got completely hooked into the story and blazed through it in just a few days. It is a powerful story artfully recounted with meticulous reporting that hits close to home given that I was in Japan during the duration of this story. I think it would be a fascinating read for anyone interested in Japan or true crime stories.

Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany

Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany (2012) edited by Jay Jennings might only be of interest to those of what Ron Rosenbaum calls, from his essay included in the appendix "Our Least-Known Great Novelist," the Society of Portis. This and two other seminal essays, Roy Blount Jr.'s "Comedy in Earnest" and Ed Park's comprehensive "Like Cormac McCarthy, but Funny," extolling the virtues of the prose of Charles Portis. In fact Park uses many of the miscellany included in this book to tell the story of the elusive Charles Portis and was the essay that was most instrumental in spurring me to read all five novels owing to my status as a huge Cormac McCarthy fan as well. I believe the collection is worth it for the three act play, Delray's New Moon, alone. But the early news reporting on the desegregation of schools and various other pieces shows the reader how he developed his fine sense of observation and his ability to turn a phrase and create realistic dialogue, this especially true in his "Our Town" columns for The Arkansas Gazette. As a writer at the The New York Herald Tribune he was a contemporary of co-workers Tom Wolfe and eventual Harper's  editor Lewis Lamphan and rose to London Bureau chieff before quitting to write fiction. I also enjoyed his travel writing and it seems that "An Auto Odyssey through Darkest Baja" was an invaluable inspiration for Dog of the South and Gringos. I have to admit that the short stories weren't among my favorite pieces in the collection, but I did enjoy his memoir, "Combinations of Jacksons."  I have since read both Donna Tart's introduction to his American classic True Grit and agree with Wells Tower that is aside from the brilliance of that novel Gringos is probably a favorite. But that's like saying you love one kid more than the others-all of his novel are wonderful in their own way and there are only five (and Norwood is barley 200 pages long), so there's no excuse not to read America's "Least-Known Great Novelist."

The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986) by Kingsley Amis was a Booker Prize winner for that year. I had previously only read the brilliant Lucky Jim, but always wanted to read more since I was big fan of his son Martin Amis' writing. Martin wrote appealing about his father's novels in his autobiography Experience, and The Old Devils was one of the novels he singled out as being a good read. I feel as though I am missing out on some of the fun since I am not British and I can't see what all the fuss about being Welsh alluded to in the novel is all about. An infamous Welshman Alun Weaver who has a made a literary career out of being Welsh returns to Whales with his wife Rhiannon disrupting a community of long time friends who curmudgeonly gather to discuss the state of Wales and being Welsh while getting pissed on a daily basis. It is full of inter-sex miscommunication, adultery, dealing with the usual foibles of people you've know for ages and the condition of growing old. I enjoyed the novel, but perhaps not as much as I might have if I could be in on the joke of what is like being Welsh.

From Here To Eternity

It may be surprising that I was not inspired to read James Jones' epic novel, From Here To Eternity (1951) because of the film version starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Cliff, but rather by an essay, "Islands," from Joan Didion's collection The White Album. That being said it was a review by Pauline Kael in her book I Lost It At The Movies, that prompted me to search out the film version.  This novel is epic in that Jones inhabits many different worlds within the 850 pages of his novel. For example, on one level this novel is a love letter to a pre war Hawaii remembered by Jones. And it from this perspective that Didion is most drawn to the novel. I have to admit to having only been in Oahu twice but I could identify with that angle somewhat as well. It is, in my mind, the quintessential Hawaiian novel.

The book must have caused a sensation in its day (even though the first edition was somewhat self censored) due to the rough language, violence and the frank portrayal of the drinking, whoring, and consorting with known homosexuals that the soldiers engaged in and depicted in explicit detail. It is raw and brutal and true to life. On another level, it is almost an army procedural about life in the infantry, on leave, in the stockade, and at war. It delves deep into the convictions of the soldiers who often engage in quasi-philosophical musing about different aspects of life when faced with difficult decisions or exasperating results from the system that they cannot control. It gives a clear picture of the kind of men who were enlisted in the army pre-draft time and the troubles most saw. However, the two heroes of the story are Milt Warden the First Sargent and leader extraordinaire and the stubborn, anti-authoritarian Harland County private Robert E. Lee Prewitt. It is their lives and loves with the wife of the his commanding officer Karen Holmes for Warden and the prostitute with a hear of gold, Loren, for Prewitt. And their lives are bond to the that of the army, the officers, their fellow soldiers, and the inexplicable system that keeps the machine running. If there's any downside, it's that some stretches of the novel are not as captivating as the action packed sections.

Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan

I first learned about Mark Schreiber's book Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan (1996) from the bibliography of David Peace's postwar Tokyo-based crime novel Occupied City. The crime that Peace fictionalizes is from the third story in the book, "Enigmatic Bank Poisonings" (1948). This story like most of the others in this collection exposes an aspect of the dark side of Japanese culture that is far from the "official view" of the harmonious, benign culture that the Japanese tend to promote. This story suggests that a former member of Unit 731 (a medical unit that undertook medical experiments on prisoners in Manchuria) posed as a public official and enticed 12 bank employees to take fatal poison so that the bank could be robbed. The crime has never been satisfactorily solved. Schreiber researches and reports on some fascinating cases and the social implications of these seems easily apparent to me.

Schreiber begins that book with the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo subway gas attacks, "Tokyo 1995: The Crime of the Century," since it was causing a sensation at the time of the writing of the book and is probably the most shocking criminal event during the postwar era. This crime perpetuated by followers of a cult underscores the lack of spirituality in the life of many modern Japanese searching for a meaning in life that led them to take life from others.

This is followed by "The Matter of Kodaira Yoshio" (1946), about the rapes and murders of social a misfit. Kodaira may have honed this behavior serving as a Imperial soldier who admitted to committing atrocities (rape, theft, and murder) in Pegu, China in 1928. Thus, it might be a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Later in the collection, Schreiber, recounts the story of another murderer rapist in "The Girl Hunter" (1971) who killed 8, raped dozens and approached hundreds. This showed the nativity and possible adventurous nature of women then residing in rural Japan at that time that would risk getting in the car of the infamous Esiaku Sato. 

After the bank poisoning story, Screiber writes "Murder or Suicide? The Mysterious Death of a Railway Executive" (1949). It is the mysterious story of the death of a railway executive that was being harasses by the AMerican Occupation to lay off 95,000 workers and break the unionist power. This reeks of the burgeoning anit-communist stand of America. However, another of the concerns with this story is the dubious 99% conviction rate of the Japanese police that they often get from confessions obtained through duress-here they avoided questioning some important witness. Police incompetence is somewhat of a common theme in these stories, but there are also many instances of impressive action and effort taken to catch criminals. There's another mysterious unsolved story that Screiber reports on later in the collection, "Up In Smoke" (1968) in which a Toshiba factory is robbed of the cash bonuses they were planning on delivering to the factory workers-highlighting the absurd cash culture that is still prevalent in Japan today.

I thought "Last Rights for a Stewardess" (1959) was fascinating for several reasons. It was the example of a modern, fast living woman murdered and one of the examples where the Japanese media was pushing the anti-foreigner crime myth (99% of crimes are committed by Japanese). A promiscuous (the autopsy revealed semen from two men in her) women was murdered and the leading suspect was a Belgian priest-it was never solved. I was surprised to learn that the crime in "The Murakoshi Tragedy" (1963) was inspired by a fictionalized kidnapping depicted in Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film High and Low. This case seems to highlight police incompetence, they finally caught the kidnapper/murderer after screwing up an attempt to apprehend the him during the ransom drop.

It was inevitable that there would be some pieces on the yakuza in this book since organized crime has existed in Japan for hundreds of years. Schrieber reports first on a battle between two big syndicates in "High Noon at Matsuyama: The Gangs That Couldn't Shoot Straight" (1964). It seemed with the Olympics fast approaching the government wanted to control organized crime to save face in the world spotlight and yet the yakuza still persist today. The second story in the collection, "A Tale of Two Godfathers" (1978) looks a decade long battle between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai that shows the ineffectiveness of the police to stop organized crime.

"The "Mini-Cou d'E'tat of Kim Hee Roh" (1968) sees a Korean, bitter from racism and discrimination at the hands of the Japanese, take 13 hostages at a resort in Shizuoka before being taken in. The eleventh story in the collection, "Korean Intrigue at Iidabashi" (1973) also involves a Korean, a national political figure, Kim Dae Jung, is kidnapped in Japan and taken back to Korea. This incident is a classic example of Japan's absence of strong principles in international relations not involving matters related to its economic well-being.

"The United Red Army and the Siege of Asamasano" (1972) is fascinaiting to me, because I have seen two films that recreate many of the crimes committed by the United Red Army discussed in this report. The first Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army (2007) and some minor actions are chronicled in Olivier Assayas' Carlos (2010).

Poisoned food crimes terrorized people all over in the 80s, and Scheiber discusses some incidents that took place in Japan in "The Glico-Morinaga Incident: A Showcase for Corporate Blackmail" (1984-1985). However, no one is ever killed from the poisonings nor is anyone ever arrested in this curious case.

I was familiar with "The Miura Affair: A Three-Ring Media Circus" (1981-1985) in which Kazuyoshi Miura faked a robbery in LA and had his wife murdered by would-be robbers reinforcing stereotypes about dangerous America. He couldn't be convicted in America and served time in Japan. In 2008 he was arrested in Saipan and brought to trial in America where he died mysteriously in jail in LA, possibly a suicide. It was widely suspected that he got away with murder. The last piece in the collection "Candid Camera: Death of a Con Man" (1985) concerns the arrest and demise of a pyramid scheme scammer who was murdered on camera by an angry citizen. 

The Way We Die Now

The Way We Die Now (1988) is the last Hoke Moseley novel as well as the last novel written by Charles Willeford. And, as usual it, was great to inhabit this downtrodden world of late 80s Florida with the engaging Hoke Moseley. It's too bad, because I can see that Willeford ended this novel with the possibility of continuing the series. There are three mysteries that Moseley solves through the course of the novel. However, in the process we gets some great descriptions of food, clothes, and subjects as diverse as: car washes, Haitian migrant workers, truck driving, Florida governors, and Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche. The Hoke Moseley novels have been finished, however, I still have several other books by Willeford to savor and enjoy.

The Five Rings

I have been won over by the convenience of ebooks, however, I expect that there will always be reasons to buy a book as an artifact. Case in point, is the beautiful Watkins Publishing version of Miyamoto Musashi's The Five Rings (2012) translated by David K. Groff. This wonderfully designed book is made from high quality materials and is adorned throughout by paintings, photographs, maps, scrolls, elaborate print designs including kanji, and includes intricate border designs on the pages throughout. Groff's informative introduction give important background knowledge in which to consider Musashi's philosophical task at hand and understand it in context of the times he lived through. I have not had a particular interest in martial arts or ancient Japanese history before. However, I must admit that I come to find interest in through viewings of samurai films from the likes of Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Shinoda, and others. This volume will serve as a gateway into further study of samurai and Japanese history.



Page 63: A kabuki depiction of of an afficer of the lawarmed with naganata, being overpowered, woodblock print. The paragraphs from this section, Ground, are separated by the kanji character 地 chi.

Page 109: A garden in Kyoto, Japan.

Page 212-213: Zen Garden.

Deliverance

I have to admit that the film version of James Dickey's novel, Deliverance (1970), loomed large as I read the book. I think there is a lot to admire about Dickey's novel, especially the sections where the action takes place. I was curious to see how Dickey would describe the central scenes that are engraved into my memory from the film. But ultimately, it pales in comparison to that large shadow that was looming as I read the novel. I wanted "Dueling Banjos," Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and "Squeal like a pig!" It was entertaining, but now I want to see the film again.