Lost In Translation

Sydney Day Two: New Town & Sydney University

A historical building in the New Town area.

Chorizo eggs at a cafe in New Town.

Australia's premieum coffee Campos.

More murals along King Street in New Town.

The brew tanks at Youg Henry's, a new craft beer brewery in New Town.

Ain't it the truth.

We also had a tour of The University of Sydney where Edward is stuydying pyschology.

Nice view.

Sydney Day One

First of 10 days in Sydney, Edward and Jeleesan's house in the suburb of Belmore about 30 minutes from downtown.

This is the local Lebanese pizza place, it seems there are a lot of Lebanese, Greek, and Koreans living in the neighborhood.

Strathfield (square), another local suburb that I passed through on my way to buy a suit for the upcoming wedding at a suburban outlet mall.

After completing my shopping I did a short tour of Newtown, there were several interesting murals on the route as well as many restaurants, cafes, and specialty shops.

Here's Sydney Park, apparently a former brickyard.

Red sunset.

A historical church spotted on my journey.

At the end of the day I met up with an old Tokyo friend, Mari, and Edward at The Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel.

The Human Condition

The Human Condition (1961) is an anti-war masterpiece by seminal Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi. It is a sweeping epic that was adapted from a novel by Junpei Gomikawa. It was made into six parts that amount to 9 hours and 47 minutes of film and was released in three stages over five years of production all told. Tatsya Nakadai got his first starring role in this trilogy and would go on to become a favorite of Kobayashi (i.e. Harikiri and Kawaidan) and later Kurosawa (i.e. Kagemusha and Ran). It is the story of Kaijji a left leaning humanist. In the first installment, No Greater Love (1959). He agrees to work at a remote mine in Manchuria to boost production through his theory that if the workers are treated humanely the production will increase in exchange for a military exemption. This allows him to marry his girlfriend-knowing that he won't be conscripted and leave her a widow. Kaiji is at odds with the corrupt and inhuman treatment of the Chinese labor by his mining company. It was shocking to me that this film could have been made without protests by right wing fanatics or fear of studio heads worrying about Japan's image. It clearly shows that Japanese companies used forced labor in China as well as "comfort" women and that many were war profiteers. At the end of this film, he has failed and has his military exemption revoked so that he is conscripted into the army.

The second film, Road To Eternity (1959), picks up with Kaiji in basic training where he excels but is berated by the veteran soldiers and given the most difficult duties by the brass, because he is under suspicion for leftist sympathies. In spite of this, Kaiji is an excellent soldier and expert marksman. He considers deserting with another soldier under suspicion of leftist sympathies, but doesn't think it will ultimately lead to a return to his previous life with his wife Michiko. When a weak soldier commits suicide after intense bulling from the corporal in charge of training Kaiji demands disciplinary action and it is refused. Later during the attempted escape of his comrade, he refuses to save the drown corporal who has gone after him. Later, he wakes up in a hospital and is soon transferred to his company on the front. The new commanding officer is an old friend and asks Kaiji to train the new recruits--Kaiji agrees on one condition: that they are separated from the artillery veterans who dole out arbitrary and brutal beatings regularly. Kaiji is often at the end of such beatings for his men. In order to avoid conflicts between the two groups, the new recruit group is sent on a month long trench digging detail. A new war breaks out and they are over run by Russians and their tanks. At one point Kaiji has to kill a Japanese soldier with his hands to prevent being detected by the Russians--he will live to see another day as this film ends.

The final part of the film, A Soldier's Prayer (1961), opens with Kaiji and a few stragglers on the run. Along the way they pick civilians and several die from hunger, poisonous mushrooms, and suicide. Once they emerge from the forest they are besieged by peasant forces and must continue on as a few of the group are killed by the peasant forces. From there they encounter a group of fifty Japanese army holdouts who are attempting to resume combat in alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, whom they believe will be supported by American forces, in a civil war against Russian-backed Communist Chinese. Kaji, a believer in pacifism and socialism, rejects this strategy as misguided and doomed to failure. Eventually, Kaji and a group of Japanese soldiers, whose number has grown to fifteen, fight through Russian patrols and find a encampment of women and old men who seek their protection. It is here that they surrender rather than put the group in danger of death or retribution if they fight. And here the series comes back to a forced labor camp for POWs and many of the themes from the first film are revisited. Kaji and his protégé Terada resist the Japanese officers who run their work camp in cooperation with Soviet forces. While such resistance amounts to no more than picking through the Russian's' garbage for scraps of food and wearing gunnysacks to protect them from increasingly colder weather, Kaji is branded a saboteur and judged by a Soviet tribunal to harsh labor. With a corrupt translator and no other means of talking to the Russian officers with whom he feels ideological sympathies, Kaji becomes increasingly disillusioned by conditions in the camp and with Communist orthodoxy. When Terada is driven to exhaustion and death by harsh treatment from the collaborating officer Kirihara, Kaji decides to kill the man and then escape the camp alone. He ends up collapsed in a snow storm speaking his wife's name.

This trilogy is a masterpiece, but exhausting in the amount of human suffering and injustice depicted. It still astounds me in that there seems to have been little protest at the way most Japanese were depicted in the film, perhaps the pacifist feelings were still strong or perhaps those who committed atrocities or exploitative actions were not cynical enough to deny that they had happened. It seems many of those doubters today are people born after the war and seek selective proof--recently the mayor of the second largest city, Osaka, claimed publicly that there was no proof that the Japanese forced women to be "comfort women" during the war. It is also fascinating to me in a historical sense, since I haven't read much about the Chinese occupation or clashes with the Russians--that being said Max Hastings' book Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 is on my virtual shelf. The Criterion edition contains a fourth disc with informative interviews with director Masaki Kobayashi, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, and admirer, director, Masahiro Shinoda--who also interviewed Kobayashi in the first interview on the disc.

McSweeney's 39

 

McSweeney's 39 is handsome hard bound volume with some great inserts of photos of people running in various settings by former MTV VJay Tabitha Soren (and current wife of Michael Lewis). However, the real attraction of this volume is that it contained stories by some of my favorite contemporary writers and more than a few surprises. I sold on the promise of a new Karen Sisco (from Out of Sight) story, "Chick Killer," from Elmore Leonard, fiction from Spokane native Jess Walter, "Anything Helps," an essay, "Politics and Conscience," from one of my political heroes Vaclav Havel, and a poem, The Neolchileans,"  from Roberto Bolano, of whom I have only read prose by. All of these satisfied my curiosity. However, I wasn't expecting such a strong collection with several excellent other pieces.There were only a few pieces that did not interest me-so overall it is one of the stronger collections I've read recently.

The two nonfiction pieces by Tom Barrash, "The Shah's Man," and Jennie Erin Smith, "Benjamin Bucks," were among the best in the book. "The Shah's Man" was a fascinating profile of former Nelson Rockefeller protege Bobby Armano who ended up as the Shah of Iran's right hand man. It follows his ousting from Iran and rise of Khomeini as well as the subsequent battles for recognition and support than end with death in exile. Along the way he is given exile by Panamanian President Jose Torrijos, who had a stake in having Carter remain President since Regan was unlikely to relinquish control of the Panama Canal to Panama. Smith's piece about a Mormon reptile smuggler is also a strange and fascinating story told from several exotic locations around the world about a subject that I had never considered before.

There were several other short stories that I enjoyed as well. For example, E.C. Osondu tells the story of a lonely widow that is taken advantage of while in holiday in Gambia Africa. The predators are "Bumsters" African men who live off rich female travelers. Benjamin Weissman has an entertaining and frequently funny story about family, death, and tarantulas in "Louella Tarantula." Abi Maxwell tells the story of two young Swedish girls coming to America to very different fates in "Giant Of The Sea." "Carlos The Impossible" is a mythic tale of a bull that cannot be defeated.

Nara Yoshitomo: a bit like you and me...

The recent exhibit at the Yokohoma Museum of Art is by Yoshitomo Nara whose sculpture ""Big White Ghost" is pictured above. My first exposure to his art was through album covers he made for artists like Shonen Knife and The Ramones (there was homage to them in one of his paintings "Hey Ho, Let's Go"). Not long after that he wa one of the featured artists in the collaborative "Super Flat" exhibition I saw at the Henry Art Gallery on the UW campus in 2000. Then in 2004 I saw his exhibition entitles "From the Depth of My Drawer" at the Hara Art Museum in Shinagawa. This time he added large metal sculptures to his repertoire and had many interesting paintings as well. Some of the drawings looked like they were dashed off in no time though. I liked most of his large scale paintings and those that were painted on wood surfaces. One of the more interesting ones was called "Can't Wait 'till Night Comes" which featured one of his child-like characters revealing a single vampire fang. I don't think the paintings/drawings on cardboard were as effective-they looked tossed off as well. However, Nara reveals humor with pieces like the room that had a shelf of Jesus statues with miniature bags over the heads with eyes drawn in. Another painting of a decapitated Hitler read "He's Bad, I'm Good." There were some odd blank spaces on the walls, which makes me wonder if he was supposed to have created more for the exhibition. The accompanying exhibition had several of his earlier works among classic and contemporary paintings from all over the world and with quite a few famous names like Picasso, Bacon, and others.



Sausage and beer cart in front of the museum-inspired by one of Nara's paintings.

Cultural Conundrums: Cupid's Arrow

Kate Elwood's Daily Yomiuri latest column looks at cultural differences about describing love:

It is said that the Meiji novelist Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) told his students the proper way to translate "I love you" into Japanese was "Tsuki ga kirei desu ne" (The moon is beautiful tonight). The remark ascribed to Soseki points to the wide divergence in ways of giving voice to matters of the heart, and the potentially daunting task for both translators and prospective cross-cultural honeybuns in making sense of amorous dynamics. Things have naturally changed since the Meiji period (1868-1912), but differences remain in how love is experienced and expressed nonetheless, as the studies of Chieko Mulhern, a scholar of Japanese literature, and Janet Shibamoto Smith, a linguistic anthropologist, reveal.

Both researchers have analyzed differences between Harlequin romance novels and Japanese home-grown stories of a similar ilk. As Mulhern points out, Harlequin romances, which entered the Japanese market in 1979, were extremely popular right from the start. By 1985, close to 2,000 Western romances had been translated into Japanese. In 1982, Sanrio created its own "New Romance" line and sought original manuscripts from Japanese fans. Mulhern emphasizes that these indigenous works "blossomed out of Western seeds" and were by and large uninfluenced by Japanese literary conventions. And yet, they were not exactly replicas of the Western model. Mulhern compared the 26 New Romances that had been published by Sanrio up until 1988 with their Western counterparts and found intriguing divergences.

Particularly interesting is the downgrading of the importance of the heroine's isolation, often a key facet of Western romances. While in the latter the heroines are often thrust into a cold, uncaring world as a result of the death of a parent, in almost half of the domestically produced tales of love that Mulhern examined both parents are alive and on good terms with the female protagonist. Moreover, in almost a third of the novels the heroine's mother serves as a devoted and supportive confidante. Similarly, while the Harlequin heroines are typically lacking in close friends, reinforcing their emotional dependence on the main male character, in more than half of the Sanrio novels the heroines have at least one good friend.

Mulhern's analysis further points to a stronger sense of self-esteem among the home-grown heroines. Unlike in the Western romances in which as a rule the female character defines her worth in terms of her relationship with a man until she is forced to reconsider following a distressing event, in the Sanrio novels the women are well aware of their own value, and derive satisfaction and confidence from their work, which often involves foreign travel. They seek a fulfilling romantic relationship, but it is not the be-all and end-all matter that it is for the heroines in the corresponding Western novels.

Shibamoto Smith made a similar comparison of romantic novels written by Japanese authors and Harlequin romances translated into Japanese, focusing particularly on one novel from each genre. Her findings make plain some other interesting disparities in the heroines' paths to ultimate happiness with their very own Mr. Right. One difference relates to the inevitable obstacle to the relationship, which provides much of the impetus for the plot. Shibamoto Smith observes that in the novels by Japanese writers, romantic impediments are usually not related to a potential partner's personal traits, such as infidelity or indifference, but rather concern his family or other uchi ("in-group") circumstances. On the other hand, in the Harlequin romances, the barrier to love typically takes the form of a conflict between the two lovebirds rather than some kind of external setback. Because of this, the burgeoning love between the two often suffices to eradicate the hindrance to the relationship.

Another difference found by Shibamoto Smith relates to descriptions of how those pierced by Cupid's arrow feel and how their love is manifested. In the Harlequin novels, the characters undergo a tremendous amount of physical reactions as a result of their attraction--they have difficulty breathing; their hearts throb; blood boils; bodies melt, tremble violently, and burn; and faces are flushed.

Not a lot of this stuff happens in the novels by Japanese writers. The characters do tremble, although not violently, and there is a bit of blushing. Conversely, these heroines' hearts are "tickled," and they sweetly lean against their lovers or cling to them, sometimes desperately. Additionally, while the Harlequin characters look intensely at each other, bite their lips, and so on, the Japan-created protagonists mostly look away from each other at crucial moments.

The American humorist Helen Rowland (1875-1950) commented "Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common sense."

Pather Panchali

Pather Panchali (1955) is the first film in the Apu triology (Aparajito and The World Of Apu are the others) directed by Satyajit Ray and is widely considered among the greatest films of all time. It is a considerable achievement knowing that Ray had never directed a film prior to this, his cinematographer had never filmed one, his child actors had not even been tested for their roles, and it is the first soundtrack effort by now famous Ravi Shanker.  It is a simple tale of a family's struggle to survive in a rural village in India. The artistry lies in the way Ray frames the shots, edits the scenes, the performances from the cast, the time and place that is captured in film--sometimes in almost a documentary-like style, and the impressive soundtrack provided by Shanker. I can easily understand the film's reputation now.

Recent Dining Adventures: August 2012

I recently moved to Ebisu and there is a plethora of dining options and I've been coming to the neighborhood to dine for years. One of the top rated dining attractions according to Bento.com is Cardenas Grill. So recently while a friend was in Tokyo from out of town we made a visit. It has an impressive high ceiling interior with low lighting and stylish decor. We opted for the course menu, which was reasonably priced at ¥4800 and consisted of the following: capraccio of the catch of the day, followed by a mango pottage, foie gras, grilled white fish, and fillet of steak, and dessert. They served bread with maple syrup butter throughout the meal.I don't remember the exact way that the menu items were prepared, but much of it was inventive and fusion inspired and in small portions. My only complaint was that the drinks service was slow-those drinks should be replaced immediately during the meal and we had to wait for the coffee to accompany the dessert.

The first time I visited Devil Craft it had just opened and was fully booked on a Tuesday, so all we could do was stand in the aisle on the first floor and try a beer or two. They have 20 beers on tap. It is mostly small batch craft beer mainly from Japan and the US. This time I had Diamond Knot Industrial IPA from Mukilteo in my home state of Washington, which was fine, but I think these days I prefer lighter less hoppy beers like Pilsners. So next I tried the North Island Wheat, a beer from a microbrewery in Hokkaido, which was more of what I was looking for to go with the heavy pizza. For appetizers we had Utsunomiya gyoza, spicy buffalo wings, and a Greek salad--all of which was serviceable. But what we came for was the Chicago style pizza and went with The Abe Froman, ¥2,400 for a large that fed 3 people easily. It had mozzarella, parmesan, provolone, Devils’ Original marinara sauce, sausage, pepperoni, and salami. It did not disappoint, I haven't had Chicago style in a long time, so I forgot that there's more sauce than cheese, which is good since it is sometimes overdone in the US. The crust was crispy and sturdy. I'm glad I gave it a second chance.

Points In Time

Points In Time by Paul Bowles, one of the most overlooked American writers, is a fascinating little book that brings mysterious, exotic Morocco to life. The brutalities of the desert tribes come alive in the stories as does the lyricism of Bowels's language.

The Most Beautiful

The Most Beautiful (1944) is Akira Kurosawa's second film and a documentary like propaganda film at that. It is included in the Criterion Eclipse Series 23: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa (Sanshiro Sugata / The Most Beautiful / Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two / The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail). Already Kurosawa is employing techniques he would master in his classic masterpieces years later. He uses techniques like cutting action forward to be more efficient with story telling. He also uses short cuts for flashback sequences that suggest the past rather than relive it. The story is basic. It is about a precision lens factory that is staffed by women who make great sacrifices to keep up with production for the war effort. Many consider it one of Kurosawa's minor works, but already his genius is showing. It is also of note that after the film he married one of the actresses from the film,Yoko Yaguchi.