Lost In Translation

Runaway Horses

Runaway Horses is the second volume of Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility teratology. I was inspired to read it after seeing Paul Schrader’s film Mishima again recently. The film incorporates aspects of the novel in to the narrative to explain some of Mishima’s perplexing behavior. The novel reflects Mishima’s death wish fantasy by seppuku, the main character is obsessed by this idea and finally commits the act at he end of the book. It also helps explain Mishima’s attraction to the right wing ideology which informs his suicide when he fails his cou d’teau. There are some direct connects with the first volume Spring Snow in the apparent reincarnation of the protagonist in the hero of this volume and some of the principal characters of the previous book as adults. It was interesting to see which parts of the novel Schrader chose to use in the film and they were in large the main turning points of the novel.

Slate in Japan

Slate's Daniel Gross is in Japan for the week and has been posting stories that are Japan related. For example this one on the popularity of American fast food in Japan:

The image of Japan as being inhospitable to imports is old, enduring, and not entirely unjustified. The government is offering immigrants from South America—many themselves descendants of Japanese emigrants—$3,000 to return home (the better to free up jobs for native-born Japanese). The vista that meets visitors at Narita Airport is hardly more welcoming: masked staffers, health disclosure forms, and a sign warning that people who are coming in from countries such as Bolivia and Brazil must go in a special line. (They're looking for either soccer players or swine flu.) On the 80-minute ride from Narita Airport to Tokyo, I tried in vain to spot an imported car on the road.

Here's another on the financial crisis in Japan:

Combine Japanese cultural tendencies toward formality, politesse, and indirection with the usual central banker's love of opacity and econo-jargon, and you'd expect that a meeting with the deputy governor of the Bank of Japan would be a one-way trip into a cloud of vagueness. But in a meeting Monday, Kiyohiko Nishimura, Yale-trained economist, former Tokyo University professor, and deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, gave one of the most lucid and useful explications of the credit crisis and its aftermath that I've heard—and I've heard a lot of them. And even more surprisingly, it was pretty optimistic.

And this one on the cool biz craze:

But I soon solved the mystery of the failing air conditioner. Japan has eagerly embraced technology and practices that will reduce emissions and combat global warming. It invented hybrid vehicles, has extensive mass-transit systems, and uses wind power. In 2005, Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, a pioneering female politician, was seeking ways to slash energy use. And she came up with the Cool Biz campaign. The idea: Government would cut energy bills by keeping thermostats in its buildings at 28 degrees Celsius—82.4 degrees Fahrenheit—during the summer. It quickly produced results and was adopted by the business establishment as well. Since Japan's energy mavens realized that simply unbuttoning a shirt collar can make people feel about 4 degrees cooler, dressing down became part of the Cool Biz mentality. (Here's an ABC News story on the phenomenon.) The only people we met with this week wearing suits, ties, and cufflinks were Americans—diplomats at the embassy and the boosters from the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.

Moneyball: NBA Edition

A friend pointed me in the direction of Michael Lewis piece about Shane Battier the "No Stat All-Star" in The NY Times. Another terrific piece from Lewis:

Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together. And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I’ll bet he’s in the hundredth percentile of every category.”

The Blind Side

I think that when talking about Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side it is almost impossible not to compare it the equally fascinating baseball book Moneyball. But even though there are many parallels between the two books, the Blind Side has a dimension that is entirely its own-it makes a big statement about wealth and opportunity. The book starts out explaining how innovators of the NFL football offenses, like Bill Walsh, created fast attacking pass first offenses that were being disrupted by the left side (quarterback’s blind side) pass rushers personified by the like of Lawrence Taylor. He makes a set piece of the end of Joe Thiesman’s career at the hands of LT on Monday Night football.  I think he does an admirable job of setting up the importance of left tackles and why they make so much money these days. Then we get another story of a poor black boy, a freak of nature with impressive physical size and skills, that is adopted by a wealthy Memphis family. I can’t do justice to the narrative thread that Lewis weaves. The strength of any of his books is based on his ability to tell an entertaining story.

Osaka Mizushobai

Like every city in Japan, Osaka has lots of pubs, snack bars, and cabarets. I like the convenience store parody of Mini-Stop below.

 

Audio Book Club: John Cheever and Flannery O'Connor

Slate's audio book club did something different by choosing two famous American short stories: Cheever's much anthologized "The Swimmer" and one of O'Connor's signature stories-"A Good Man Is Hard To Find." I appreciate Cheever, but O'Connor is definitely one of my favorite writers of all-time-this might be her best story after "Good Country People." Check out the podcast.

Osaka Favorites

Takoyaki is an Osaka institution. baby octopus baked in batter with beer-very tasty. We also had the famous local Okonomiyaki, a kind of savory pancake -like concoction (see below). I was on this conference with my friend and Meiji colleague Robert.

Fun Home

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is a fascinating graphic novel. I first came across an excerpt in one of The Best Non-Required Reading collection-I’m guessing 2007 from the publication date of the book. Bechdel has an interesting story to tell about her dysfunctional family and atypical upbringing. Bechdel comes out as gay only to learn that her father, an English teacher and director of the family funeral home, was gay. He died a few weeks after this revelation-Bechdel isn’t sure that it was an accident. It is a very literate memoir with great drawings. It is yet another example of how entertaining and well-written graphic novels can be.

Osaka 2009: Namba/Shinsaibashi

I attended another conference in Osaka Sunday. These pictures are from the Namba/Shinsaiashi area.

American Fictions

Elizabeth Hardwick has been known as one of the great critics of the last 50 years on par with someone like Edmund Wilson. The New Yorker’s James Woods listed her as an influence. So I recently read a collection of her work called American Fictions. It had some very intriguing essays on writers from a broad spectrum of America’s literary canon: early masters like Melville, Wharton and James-lesser know feminist stars like Margaret Fuller, Djuna Barnes, Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Mary McCarthy-not to mention many of my favorites that span the years before contemporary writers and these include O’Neil, Fitzgerald, Nabakov and the a fore mentioned Wilson. Some of the more recent and contemporary stars included Roth, Mailer, Cheever, Capote, Updike, and Didion. She has inspired me to go back and read the early stories and novels of Richard Ford as well. I also enjoyed her essay “Seduction and Betrayal” which discusses these elements in great works of literature.