book reviews


reviews

Agitator
	Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike by Tom Mes FAB Press 2003, 408 pp., $24.99 (paper) ...Unfortunately, just as few great men can choose their biographers, directors are at the mercy of their critics and Mes is all wrong for Miike. Mes takes on Miike as if he were Godard or some nouvelle vague auteur, always looking for symbols, references and big themes. Like a nutty scientist determined to prove a theory despite all the experimental evidence, he spends about three-quarters of this 400-page book arguing that Miike is an auteur.... Review in full
The Big Book of Sumo
	The Big Book of Sumo By Mina Hall Stone Bridge Press; ISBN: 1880656280 143 pages; 1,800 yen In terms of English-language books on sumo, Mina Hall's The Big Book of Sumo doesn't cover anything new, but it does provide a practical, up-to-date, informative beginner's guide to the ancient sport. Review in full \| Buy it!
The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen
	The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen by Eric Gower Kodansha International. 2,900 yen ...rather than offering slavish facsimiles of classic Japanese dishes (a shortcoming of Japanese restaurants the world over), Gower suggests ways of playing around with them, substituting American ingredients when necessary and even inventing whole new Japanese-style dishes. Gower's recipes are easily prepared and take little time. I've been cooking my way through them and have found them without exception to be fine.... Review in full
Classic Japanese Inns and Country Getaways
	Classic Japanese Inns and Country Getaways By Margaret Price Kodansha International; ISBN: 4770018738 287 pages; 2,300 yen A loving but by no means uncritical guide to 92 of Japan's best inns. The author collected over 70 inn guides in Japanese, but she says that Japanese commentary is too kind, too polite, and that the photographers involved tend to be less interested in taking photos which suggest what the inn is really like than in taking one beautiful (if perhaps misleading) shot. Ms. Price's extremely valuable guide is sure to open the doors to this dream-like aspect of Japan to a lot of people who never quite trusted the guides previously available. Review in full \| Buy it!
Common Japanese Phrases Translated and adapted
	Common Japanese Phrases Translated and adapted By John Brennan Kodansha International; ISBN: 4770020724 143 pages; 1,300 yen The Japanese language has set phrases for hundreds of situations. It is exactly prescribed what you should say when giving a gift ("This is a boring thing, but..."), when welcoming someone back from a trip, when asking someone to do you a favor, and even when asking for a loan to be repaid. ... The ideal Japanese conversational exchange ... is with a next-door neighbor, with whom there has been exactly the same exchange of pleasantries, word for word, every day for the past twenty years. Review in full \| Buy it!
The Dark Side: Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals
	The Dark Side by Mark Schreiber Kodansha International; ISBN: 4770028067 251 pages Mark Schreiber has made a career out of translating, researching and writing about the "other" sides of Japanese culture. He has translated the irreverent columns found in popular magazines, and has previously written about the often lurid history of post-war Japanese crime. In his latest work, "The Dark Side," he explores 400 years of Japanese crime, from the Tokugawa policing system to the sarin gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo. Review in full
A Dictionary of Japanese Food
	A Dictionary of Japanese Food - Ingredients and Culture By Richard Hosking Charles E Tuttle Co; ISBN: 0804820422 232 pages; 1,600 yen Food is always far more than mere sustenance: it is also community and culture. Eating patterns reflect and define the seasons, molding nations and forging identities. Know a people's diet and you will read their very soul. And nowhere is this more true than in Japan, where the growing, preparing, cooking, and eating of food seems so important (witness its command of television air time), it's almost a sacrament. That is why this book is such an ambitious undertaking. Richard Hosking has set out to map out, catalog, and provide definitions for almost every ingredient and cooking technique under the rising sun. Review in full \| Buy it!
Idoru
	Idoru By William Gibson Berkley Pub Group; ISBN: 0425158640 400 pages; 800 yen Shinjuku, Roppongi, Akihabara: these are all places that Tokyo dwellers know, but if you're interested in a glimpse of what they might look like in the next millenium then "Idoru" by the cyberpunk maestro William Gibson is well worth a read. Review in full \| Buy it! \| Buy the audio tape
The Insider's Guide to sake
	The Insider's Guide to Sake By Philip Harper Kodansha; ISBN: 4770020767 248 pages; 1,500 yen We are living, or so we are informed, in a veritable golden age - at least as far as nihonshu is concerned. Never before have there been so many innovative sake makers turning out such a prodigious range of premium-grade, individually crafted, distinctive local brews. Better still, never before have they been so readily available throughout Japan and, increasingly, abroad. And now - at last - we have an authoritative guide to help us in our exploration of this heady brew. Review in full \| Buy it!
Japan: A Budget Travel Guide
	Japan: A Budget travel guide By Ian L. McQueen Kodansha International; ISBN: 4770020473 656 pages; 2,600 yen This is an heroic effort to poke into every backwater however obscure, list every museum however insignificant, and note practically every bus schedule in the country however meandering the route. If by chance the bus schedule you need is not here, McQueen advises you to buy the 1,100-page national transportation timetable of trains, buses, planes, ferries, and cable cars so he can tell you how to read it. Review in full \| Buy it!
Japanese Design: A Collection
	Japanese Design: A Collection by Kenneth Straiton Weatherhill; ISBN: 0834804557 160 pages, 3800 yen What makes Ken Straiton's new book "Japanese Design: A Collection" fascinating is the way it allows the reader to visually compare and contrast the repetition of shapes with so many variations. In the first section, "flowing" (nagare), the patterns from raked sand, an algae-filled pool, carved lacquered wood, dyed cloth and gold-leafed "shoji" are brought together. This allows the viewer to see how the feeling of flow is developed in different mediums and materials, but with a surprising similarity. The conclusion a viewer draws has deep cultural implications. The patterns reveal intimately how Japanese culture expresses its sense of form. This is a thoughtful and thought-inspiring collection. Part of the measure of a photography book is not only that it can show what's hidden, too-familiar, or unexpected, but the degree to which it educates in a new way of seeing. Straiton's collection succeeds in all those ways wonderfully. Review in full
Kids' Trips In Tokyo
	Kids' Trips In Tokyo: A Family Guide To One-day Outings By Ivy Maeda, Kitty Kobe, Cynthia Ozeki and Lyn Sato Kodansha International Ltd; ISBN: 4770020406 364 pages; 1,900 yen Some people have a list of places to take visitors in Tokyo, tried and true, with routes marked, fares pre-bought and admission supplied. Even the most creative guides offer little for the 10-year-old visitor to Tokyo. So what happens when a nephew arrives for a three-week stint with his favorite auntie? Panic, generally. But there is now an antidote - Kids' Trips In Tokyo, a guide to family outings in the greater Tokyo area... Review in full \| Buy it!
Looking for the Lost
	Looking for the Lost By Alan Booth Kodansha Globe; ISBN: 1568360657 387 pages; 2,700 yen Sado: Japan's Island in Exile By Angus Waycott Stone Bridge Press; ISBN: 1880656213 207 pages; 1,400 yen These two books have a lot in common, so let's consider them together. Both are by Japanese-speaking Englishmen about their experiences trekking through the Japanese countryside, following the well-established literary tradition of taking a long hike in the Japanese outback and writing about it. A writer needs considerable confidence in the inherent interest of his itinerary as well as in his own long-term congeniality when he asks you to accompany him for what is in Waycott's case a week's walk around a remote island off the coast of Western Japan and in Booth's case three separate treks over several weeks. What is abundantly clear early on, though, is that Waycott is a considerably more chipper companion than Booth, who is continually complaining that his feet hurt and is incapable of passing the merest hole-in-the-wall without stopping in for a beer. Review in full \| Buy Looking for the Lost \| Buy Sado
Lost Japan
	Lost Japan By Alex Kerr Lonely Planet; ISBN: 0864423705 280 pages; 1,600 yen Alex Kerr, a 44-year-old American, has lived a life devoted to scholarly pursuits and the refinement of his aesthetic sensibilities. This is his story so far, told in a personal, hands-in-the-pockets way. Originally written in Japanese and awarded a prestigious literary prize, rendered into English it is completely engaging. The thread running through the book is that while the countryside of Japan twenty years ago was one of the most beautiful in the world, it is now replete with concrete retaining walls and power pylons and what's more, Japan's unique culture, austere and allusive, has been all but lost. But this is not really a book about paradise lost. Review in full \| Buy it!
A Lost Paradise
	A Lost Paradise by Jun'ichi Watanabe Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter Kodansha International, 2000. 372 pages In A Lost Paradise, two middle-aged lovers follow their passionate affair to its inevitable conclusion. The lovers, Kuki, 57, unpromoted at his Tokyo publishing company, an aging bon vivant, and Rinko, 37, stuck in a childless and loveless marriage but accomplished at ikebana, follow each other into an accelerating spiral of intimate obsession.... Review in full \| Buy it!
The Meaning of Ichiro
	The Meaning of Ichiro by Robert Whiting Warner Books, April 2004 ...This bushido attitude toward the game started when baseball was introduced into Japan in the 1880s and taken up by Ichiko, a Japanese high school that stressed endless repetition and physical hardship in pursuit of Seishun Yakyu ("spiritual baseball"). Indeed it was this orientation that led Japanese to the present-day 1,000 fungo drill (a fungo is a soft bat used for practice ground balls), where a player fields grounders for a veritable eternity.... Review in full
On Parole
	On Parole by Akira Yoshimura Translated by Stephen Snyder Harcourt Brace, 2000 244 pages On Parole captivates. In one simple, direct, very human story, Yoshimura carefully and accurately creates a detailed picture of the claustrophobic anxiety of life in Tokyo, where space, people, prices all serve as imprisoning walls. Review in full \| Buy it!
Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan
	Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan By Mark Schreiber Yen Books, Tokyo; ISBN: 4900737348 312 pages; 1,380 yen Long-time Tokyo resident Mark Schreiber, fluent in both Japanese and Mandarin, is a scholar of Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, and the weirder side of Japan, for example the Japanese fondness for life-size love dolls, which he detailed in a famous article in the Tokyo Weekender some years back. Now Schreiber, clearly egged on by his publisher, wades in to a full-scale investigation of sixteen of Japan's most notorious crimes of recent years. The book is clearly meant to be as unabashedly sensational as an old-fashioned pulp thriller - its cover splashed with blood - but in fact Schreiber does not naturally write in the gory genre. There is, for instance, so little wild speculation about the diabolical inner workings of the criminal mind that we don't get much of a feeling for who the people who did these strange things were really like. Review in full \| Buy it!
Tokyo City Guide
	Tokyo City Guide By Mayumi Yoshida Barakan and Judith Connor Greer Charles E Tuttle Co; ISBN: 0804819645 363 pages; 1,200 yen We should thank Tuttle for making available this new edition of Tokyo City Guide, easily the most detailed guide to the city in English. Its sections on language, etiquette, history, and how to use the telephone and toilet have no equivalent in a guidebook to, say, Florence ... When the first edition appeared, people marveled at the mass of information it made available about seemingly every conceivable activity and interest in which it was possible to indulge in Tokyo, from where to buy a shakuhachi or a kite or a writing brush to a list of the best art galleries along the Tokyo waterfront, from Love Hotels to the best place to go to practice Japanese archery. Review in full \| Buy it!
Tokyo Desire
	Tokyo Desire By Ben Simmons Shogakukan 2000; ISBN: 4096814016 159 pages; 2,800 yen This collection of crisp, color shots of Tokyo organizes itself around two principles: the diptych, a juxtaposition of two complementary images; and desire, of which there is no shortage in Tokyo. The photos are in fact arranged in fours, two on each facing page, and have been cleverly chosen to make the viewer meditate on the cross-commentary each photo provokes about the others. The result is a kind of visual koan, the verbal parables used in Zen to suspend the thinking mind in order to achieve more profound insight. Review in full \|
Tokyo for Free
	Tokyo for Free By Susan Pompian Kodansha International; ISBN: 4770020538 458 pages; 2,400 yen This almost 500-page book will give heart to potential visitors to Tokyo who are afraid that because Tokyo is so expensive, they will not be able to afford to indulge themselves in the city's everyday pleasures. Susan Pompian, one of nature's obsessives, is the perfect person to write a book like this. She has uncovered lots of larky things to do, like paying a (free) visit to the Cigarette Lighter Museum and to the Rubber Baseball Museum, that few reasonable people would be able to conceive of, much less ferret out. The book is reassuring to people a little apprehensive about the city - its cost, its bewildering street signs, its maniacally irregular layout. Review in full \| Buy it!
Tokyo X
	Tokyo X By Shunji Ohkura Kodansha International 2000; ISBN 4770027389 250 pages, 3,800 yen These gritty, grainy black and white photos have a rough, moody approach to filming the city. Ohkura investigates Tokyo with a Gen X point of view -- rebellious, suspicious, sullen and slightly paranoid. Ohkura's angles are often oblique, looking up, twisting around, or catching successive layers of walls, posters, and buildings. These contortions position the viewer very much in the city with all the claustrophobic contradictions of its alienating humanness. Review in full \|
Undesigning the Bath
	Undesigning the Bath By Leonard Koren Stone Bridge Press; ISBN: 1880656248 111 pages; 1,800 yen Leonard Koren, philosopher of the bath, has produced a meditation on the relation between Godliness, the beauty of natural materials (the mossier, the better), and warm water. Along the way, he lets us know he believes in the restorative properties of mud, mud, glorious mud. The book is an extended prose poem, laced with soft-edged analytical musings and interspersed with wonderfully evocative photographs of bathing experiences in Japan, Turkey, California and other civilizations that put a high value on periodic submersion. I've been reading a few pages before going to my local sento, just to get in the mood for my weekly soak. Review in full \| Buy it!
Water Walks in the Suburbs of Tokyo
	Water Walks In the suburbs of Tokyo By Sumiko Enbutsu and Mimi LeBourgeois Published by Tokyo On Foot, April 2000 74 pages with maps and illustrations; 900 yen The Sumida Crisscross Tokyo River Walks By Sumiko Enbutsu, Shima, and Muramatsu Published by Sumida Link, 1995 63 pages with maps and illustrations; 1,200 yen There is no better way to see Tokyo than walking, and no two better books to get you started than Water Walks and The Sumida Crisscross. Review in full
The Yakuza Movie Book
	The Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films by Mark Schilling Stone Bridge Press, $19.95 ...Miike on why Japanese films aren't that stimulating anymore: "There are enormously talented people outside the industry... game designers, manga artists, musicians, designers." Ishii on the legendary Battles Without Honor series: "I don't rate them that highly. The first one or two are all right, but after that they are hard to take." Mochizuki on the real yakuza: "When you see yakuza up close, you realize there aren't any good ones. The worst ones move up in the ranks." Review in full