Quirky Books

Saying Yes To Japan, Cafe Haiku, Angry White Pajamas, Roadside Japan,   Dogs and Demons:  Tales From the Dark Side of Japan, Japan Swings, A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, Boku no Kotorichan, The Lady and the Monk, Japan Inside Out, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), The Ronin, Strange But True Stories From Japan, The Broken Commandment

SAYING YES TO JAPAN
By Carl Kay and Tim Clark
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Dozens of books and magazine articles appear every year critiquing Japan and its people, and most of them have one thing in common. Although they are quick to point out what’s wrong with Japan, they either lack ideas for improving things, or are suggesting solutions that fail to take into account the needs and wants of the Japanese people who would have to implement and live with them.

 That’s why Saying Yes to Japan by Tim Clark and Carl Kay is different. It’s a book that has looked at one of Japan’s most serious problems, inefficiencies in Japan’s service economy, and proposes practical, workable solutions for fixing things. Clark and Kay present jaw-dropping examples of corruption, waste and poor business practices; things like routine bribes to doctors by patients, bank personnel using calculators to add up figures and input them into Excel, real estate agents colluding with landlords to charge exorbitant rents, and doctors that refuse to release patients’ files so that they can get a second opinion.

 Listing problems like these is where most books would stop, but Clark and Kay have gone to the ground to find entrepreneurs who have seen inadequacies in the service sector, and figured out ways to profit from them by providing better services.

 The first section starts out analyzing the problems that everyone knows about – service that stresses politeness, useless gifts, and rewards efforts over results and in-depth knowledge, lack of efficiency, protection of weak, inefficient industries, and fear of risk taking. Although these have all been discussed before, Kay and Clark present them well, and have dug up some really disturbing facts and examples to support their case with, like the postal savings system employee who visits an elderly widow at her home so that she doesn’t have to come to the post office, which seems really nice until you realize that she is only getting a $15 dollar annual return on a $25,000 dollar investment.

 Where Saying Yes to Japan really shines, though, is in its case studies. You start out reading horribly depressing tales of people who were not told they had cancer, or of the government setting policies that intentionally cripple the used housing market because their biggest campaign supporters are housing developers and construction firms. Instead of just stopping and leaving you depressed like other books do, though, they then cite examples of people who are fighting the system – like the story of the music industry executive whose doctor refused to give him his chart so that he could consult another physician inspiring him to start a hospital ranking service that has been influential in making the medical system more patient friendly. All the people described in the book are outsiders – foreigners or Japanese people from outside the industry being described, who bring in unique perspectives and talents and are not bound by the rules and self-interest that creates inefficiency and corruption in traditional companies and organizations.

Although Saying Yes to Japan is a great book, it is not without its flaws. Like many writers which are trying to make a point about an issue not many people know about, Clark and Kay tend to heroicize their subjects, telling Horatio Alger type stories about how “so and so fearlessly overcame the odds to turn his company into a multi-million dollar success story”. At times one wonders about some of the people in the book, especially Steven Gan, whose debt collection business is described in rather glowing terms for six pages. At the end of the chapter, however, Clark and Kay inform us that their success story, Gan, has been arrested for not having the proper licenses to engage in debt collection. Perhaps there should have been a chapter about the dangers involved in trying to buck the system as well.

 Saying Yes to Japan is a book that everyone should read. Books like Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr also point out Japan’s problems, and are very important books, but they may leave one feeling depressed and wanting to go home. When Saying Yes to Japan points out problems and then talks about people who have made millions of dollars overcoming them, one finds oneself beginning to see the hassles and inconveniences of everyday life here as opportunities instead. It wouldn’t be surprising if a few readers don’t go on to become millionaires themselves someday.
 It is available at Kinokuniya bookstores, and can be ordered online from http://www.vertical-inc.com/sayingyes.html or http://www.amazon.com.

CAFE HAIKU
By Zembu Nometa and Jeffrey Goldsmith

 There are a lot of reasons why a person might not like haiku. Maybe you never quite figured out exactly why it was so important that a poem has to have exactly 17 syllables. Or perhaps you were slightly traumatized by your grade four teacher screaming "There is no seasonal imagery in your poem! Another 'F' Mr. Jacob!". And if you live in Japan and you may have seen normally intelligent, down-to-earth people making pretentious fools of themselves quoting Matsuo Basho and going on about frogs jumping into ponds as soon as anyone mentions the word haiku.

 Cafe haiku could have been a really awful book, but it's not. It makes haiku fun, and it's totally non-pretentious. The reason it's good is that the haiku aren't your typical, boring, "No one travels - Along this way but I, - This autumn evening" style poems. They're original, funny and clever. My favourite is:
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Hi there, Nicotine.
Would you like one? Oui, bien sur.
Devilish cafe friend.
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 The book is a collaboration between photographer Jeffrey Goldsmith, and an anonymous poet writing under the pseudonym of Zenbu Nometa (Zenbu Nometa means 'I drank it all'). It's just a guy that really loves photography and coffee who goes around taking beautiful black and white shots of cafes in San Francisco, and a poet living in Japan who has a really good sense of humor working together to produce something creative and beautiful.

  The photos are just as well done, making everyday objects like spoons and swizzle sticks into objects of beauty, and showing aspects of cafes that you've probably never noticed before. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that although there are a lot of photos of people in them, you never see an entire, unblurred face or body, or an complete building or room. Not showing people's faces causes you to notice other things about them - their posture, their accessories, and their individual body parts or facial features, and showing only parts of the cafes has a similar effect on your perceptions of the buildings and atmosphere.
 
 The publisher, Caffeine Society Press, is sponsoring a series of '*Cafe Haiku Slams', at cafes and on the radio, and the book is available from Amazon in the States or Rechercher Cafe in Japan. For more information, visit: http://caffeinesociety.com/cafehaiku/index.html

ANGRY WHITE PAJAMAS: AN OXFORD POET TRAINS WITH THE TOKYO RIOT POLICE
By Robert Twigger

    It would be easy to be turned off this book by the odd title and slightly cheesy photo of the empty martial arts uniforms in Karate poses on the cover, but Angry White Pajamas really is worth a read.  It's about a man who studied at Tokyo's   famous Yoshinkan Aikido school for a year and completed its instructors' course, one of the most intense martial arts programs in Japan.  The author, a poet, has a wonderful writing style, and as you read, you really feel as if you are with him on his year-long Aikido odyssey.  He describes the characters so well that you feel as if you know them (although come to think of it, this may be because I went to the Yoshinkan dojo for a while and actually did meet some of the people). 
   This book is a must read for anyone thinking about coming to Japan to study martial arts and will appeal to anyone who is interested in modern Japan.  It  exposes the ugly side of Budo, which often extends to life in Japan in  general; not just the discrimination that foreigners face, but the pointless shouting and brain-washing, over-emphasis on hierarchy, antiquated training methods, poverty, visa-hassles, and the shady characters that you end up coming into contact with.  A lot of people have criticised him for being too negative, but in my opinion, he has rather courageously exposed the ugly side of martial arts training here.   When he relates how he was returned to favour with an instructor who (he claims) had been picking on him by offering to carry the man's suitcase, or how the senior instructors almost never lit their own cigarettes because there was always a student who wanted to do it for them, you really have to question the way teachers treat their students.  Are they teaching them humility and building their spirit, or are selfishly abusing their position of power?  There are a lot of descriptions of "dojo politics" and instructors beating up on their students not to build their spirit, but because of personal grudges.  These practices are wrong and it is important that people know about them.  It may very well be true that Robert Twigger is cynical and a complainer (although I thought he was a nice guy the few times I met him), and he admits that he was not as diligent a student as some of the others.  We can see that he probably did provoke some of the people whom he thought were picking on him, but sometimes these sorts of people are necessary to expose problems.
     Despite all of his criticisms, the author clears loves the Yoshinkan dojo and mostly, this book should be taken as what it was meant to be, a funny, colourful account of an interesting person who did something that not many people get a chance to experience.
     One of the most shocking things about Angry White Pyjamas is the ways it exposes the corruption that permeates Japanese society.  Tokyo's finest don't come off very well in this book, and you get the impression that if you have a friend who is a policeman, you can get away with anything in Japan.  Twigger also talks about Aikido's ties with Japan's right-wing radicals, and we learn a lot about money and power-politics inside the dojo.
Robert Twigger also really brings Tokyo to life and  we see both its charm and its dark-side.  Anyone who has ever lived there will probably want to read this book because of all the memories it will bring back.   Although it is not a central part of the book, his account of sharing a one room apartment with three other guys and living a life of poverty in Tokyo is really wonderful and funny, as are the strange characters he met teaching at a Tokyo High School, especially the woman who eventually hired him to be her personal bodyguard when she travelled to Mexico.
       Another of the books strong points is that it is a great introduction to the writings of the famous Zen Master, poet and swordsman, Yamaoka Tesshu and the famous Samurai text, the Hakagure. 

ROADSIDE JAPAN by Kyoichi Tsuzuki  Roadside Japan is a sort of a coffee table book, but I can't imagine what kind of person would actually keep it on their coffee table, because it's filled with pictures and descriptions of sex museums, tacky swan boats, the 66 million nose ring burial ground, derelict buildings, the hell museum, the erotic science fiction museum, the tackiest hot spring spas in the world, roadside art, urban ugliness, and the poison gas museum.   Kyoichi Tsuzuki is a journalist and photographer who writes a regular column called Chin Nihon Kiko (Roadside Japan) for Spa!, a popular weekly magazine.  He drives all over the country searching out tourist attractions that are off-off-off the beaten track and this book is a collection of the most interesting ones.  Roadside Japan is clearly a labour of love, and the author uses his photographs to both celebrate the kitschy, quirky attractions featured in this book, and criticise the urban ugliness that dominates Japan.

Here are a few highlights from the book: 

*The Sixty-Six Million Nose-Ring Burial Mound in Kibitsu Okayama
"This Nose-Ring Burial Mound was created in 1925 to spiritually redeem all the cows slaughtered for the previously foreign dietary habit of beef consumption."
*Chichigami-Sama (Goddess of Breasts) Shrine in Okayama
"The darkened interior of the worship hall is hung with countless ema "votive plaques" of  all different sizes, some ungainly big, some small.  But instead of the usual painted imagery of the Twelve Animals of the Chinese Zodiac, these are affixed with cloth or papier-mache breasts."
*Izu Gokurakuen (Paradise Park) in Yagashima, Shizuoka
"Based on the Ojo Yoshu "Japanese Book of the Dead," some three-hundred mannequins large and small depict such scenes as the crossing of the Triple-Path River onto the Further Bank of Retribution, the Rag Hag (an old woman who strips the dead of their clothes and weighs them against tree branches to weigh their sins), the Courtroom of Hell Judge Yamantaka, the Sis Realms of Rebirth, the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, the Hell of Vivisection,
Black-Rope Hell, the Hell of Blistering Heat..."
*The Sex Museum in Ise, Mie
"Inside, the museum is divided into four main sections--Greek Mythology, Animal Paradise, Yin-Yang Shrine and Health and Hygiene--each with its own unique appeal.   Although the roadside sign outside proclaiming Horse Coitus Show--Live Performances Daily tells everything about the taste.  but since they do keep a stable of 30 stud stallions (and 1 mare) for their shows, at least you know they're serious.  They also have "Japan's one and Only 3-D Porno Cinema," in case nothing else gets you in the mood."
*Toadland Tourist Park in Tsukuba, Ibaragi
"In Toadland Tourist Park right next to Mt Tsukuba Shrine you'll learn all there is to know about toads.  Throughout the park loudspeakers play the toad oil jingle non-stop.  There's a giant 5m statue of a toad, a splendiferous fountain filled with croakers, a Scientific Reference Center with shelves of frog species in formaldehyde, and photo-opportunity tableaux all dotting the hillside."

 One warning. This book costs 4,800 yen.  I've never bought a book that expensive before, and I agonised about paying that much for a while, but now that I have it, I definitely think it was worth it.  There are several editions of this book, one of which is compact, two-volume set written in Japanese only, which has a few things that aren't in the English version and costs slightly less.  The English version is bi-lingual and has larger pictures but less attractions, although there are so many that you won't feel like there is anything missing and the book still weighs in at well over 400 pages.

DOGS AND DEMONS:  TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF JAPAN
By Alex Kerr
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 I have lived in Japan for many years and thought that I was finished with the famous love, disillusionment and acceptance phases that people go through when they come to Japan, but after reading Dogs and Demons: Tales From the Dark Side of Japan, I have found myself back in the severely disillusioned stage. When I read about how the bureaucracies are purposely destroying the environment by pouring millions of tons of concrete every year and how the government continually lies to the people about how unsafe their nuclear reactors are and refuses to punish corporate criminals who have knowingly killed or sickened thousands of people it made me angrier than I have ever been since I came to Japan.
 In Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr has found the courage to say explicitly something that has been at the back of my mind for years but which I found difficult to admit to myself: that Japan has been turned into the ugliest country in the world; how it has become a concrete wasteland with some of the laxest environmental and health regulations in the developed world.   

    Kerr is angry not because of Japan's problems, but because of it's leadership's bloody-minded refusal to admit that problems exist, let alone do something to fix them.  When he talks about how the government purposely waited until most of the people in the famous Minamata lead poisoning case were dead before they agreed to pay out a measly $30-80 000 per person, and refused to prosecute the companies responsible; the appalling lack of safety regulations and punishments for corporate criminals; the way the country has purposely mutilated its environment and the house of cards that Japan's banking and financial sectors have become with unbelievable debts, unrivalled corruption, and insane business practices it's hard to accept that these things are actually true, but they are. 
       This is a painful book to read, and sometimes I felt like I didn't want to turn the page, because I was dreading what horror story would be on the next page, but then I realised that if I put the book down, I would be just as guilty as the people who are running the country.  This may be one of the most important books every written about Japan and I consider it a must read for everyone who lives in this country, Japanese or foreign.

JAPAN SWINGS: POLITICS, CULTURE, AND SEX IN THE NEW JAPAN
By Richard McGregor

 If you're a Japan-basher, this book is a must read as it will supply you with an almost endless supply of ammuntion for your battles with Japanophiles.  Written by Richard McGregor, an Australian Journalist who spent years in Japan, this book provides the low-down on all the scandals, corruption, monopolies, bloody-minded politicians, right-wingers, human-rights violations, sexism and conformity that Japan-bashers love to hate.   
  McGregor's topic is the collapse of the bubble economy, and how it has affected Japanese business, government and culture.  One of the most interesting sections of the book is the chapter on "Money Politics", which tells the unbelievable story of Prime Minister Tanaka's involvement with right-wing groups, and his use of them to silence political opponents.  "The Nanny State" which tells about the ways Prime Ministers become pawns of bureaucrats, and about why Japan's courts have a 99% conviction rate is also fascinating.  In the "Bad Girls and Mummie's Boys" chapter, you will read nearly unbelievable stories of women passively accepting sexual harassment and cases of gender-based discrimination being routinely swept under the carpet.Although Japan Swings seems to focus rather obsessively on Japan's problems, and could have been a much better book if it had talked about some positive changes as well, it is definitely worth reading.

A PALE VIEW OF THE HILLS
by Kazuo Ishiguro

 A Pale View of the Hills is a challenging, hauntingly sad story about a mother's relationship with a daughter who has recently committed suicide.  The story is set in the England of the present, but the heroine, Etsuko, is remembering back to a summer just after the end of the Second World War in Japan. There is a dark sense of forbidding throughout the entire novel, and although there is almost no action, the reader is held in constant suspense as he or she wonders about what will happen to the heroine's mysterious friend and daughter and about what the connection between the heroine's reminisciences and her present situation have in common. The story is beautifully told and his writing style is superb, but the reason that I think Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most interesting authors writing today is that, unlike those of so many lesser authors, there are no heroes or villains in his books.  The characters are some of the most realistic and memorable creations you will find in any work of literature, and his use of the "unreliable narrator" is one of the most brilliant and thought-provoking literary devices ever conceived.  The term "unreliable narrator" means that you cannot take for granted anything that the narrator tells you, because the narrators are often either lying to themselves, or living under illusions about themselves and their relationships to those around them.  Nothing in the story is black and white, and the characters are so realistic that it is easy to forget that they are not real people.  Read this book slowly, think about everything the narrator is saying, and compare it to what the other characters are saying and to what the narrator has said before.  This is a book that really gets inside your head and if there is any justice in the world, it will inspire other writers to stop filling their books with stereotypes and charicatures.
  The book has a surprise ending, the significance of which is missed by many readers, so read carefully and if you still don't understand, be prepared to read the book a second time, as I did.

THE LADY AND THE MONK
 by Pico Iyer  The best book that I have ever read about Japan is The Lady and the Monk by Pico Iyer.   Every page is filled with fascinating insights into Japanese culture, and his prose is hypnotically beautiful.
  The Lady and the Monk is the story of how Pico Iyer, my favourite writer, spent a year in Kyoto researching Zen.  He was interested in the conflict that Monks had between between their religion and their attachments to the world, particularly the way that Monks always seems to fall into hopeless love affairs with beautiful women.   In an ironic twist, Iyer himself fell in love with a married Japanese woman and life began to parallel his research as he found himself torn between his study of Zen and the woman he loves. Pico Iyer describes, and is fascinated by the Japanese idea that the most beautiful things in life must have an element of  sadness in them, and this story of his doomed love affair is beautiful in the Japanese sense.   Pico Iyer is also the author of Video Night in Kathmandu, a book about the effects of Western culture on Asian countries, one of the funniest and most interesting books you might ever want to read.  It has a fascinating chapter on Japan too.

JAPAN INSIDE OUT
by Jay and Sumi and Harold Gluck

 This is no formulaic Lonely Planet-style guidebook written by Tony Wheeler types, who don't live in the country, don't speak and read the language, give their books pretentious names like, "travel survival kit", and fill half their books with inane information like, "The friendly ladies at the admission desk lend foreign visitors a file with English information" or boring anecdotes about how they got lost trying to find the hotel.  It is the only decent guidebook that I have ever found for Japan.
 Japan Inside Out is special.  The Glucks know practically everything about Japan.  Japan Inside Out is comprehensive (over 1300 pages written telegram style to save space) and every page has obviously been written with tender loving care.  The Glucks, who have been in Japan since 1951, truly love the country, but have been here long enough to see through the cliches and truisms that other guidebook writers fall for.  Their book is truly a labour of love, and is indispensable for anyone who really wants to see more than just Kyoto and Tokyo.
 Japan Inside Out  is the only guidebook that will help you find the Grave of Jesus Christ in Aomori, explain those funny hand positions on the Buddha statues, or tell you where you find the snake shop in Tokyo. Japan Inside Out gives you background about everything.   Armed withJapan Inside Out,  you won't have to wander around a temple thinking, "Gee, I bet this place might be interesting if I knew something about its history, architecture, or its religious importance."  There are interesting anecdotes and stories about everywhere you might want to visit.
 For the budget traveller, Japan Inside Out is full of good information about cheap places to stay and eat.
 Although it was written in 1990, making its information about accommodation and restaurants is untrustworthy, I will never travel without it again.

MIDARE GAMI (Tangled Hair)
by Yosano Akiko

        To punish
        Men for their endless sins,
        God gave me
        This fair skin,
        This long black hair!

  Imagine writing that in turn of the century Japan, at a time when women were considered to be barely human and feminism was unheard of!  Yosano Akiko's beautiful poems broke with tradition and spoke of love, the emancipation of woman, and the pleasures of the flesh.  Attacking conventional morals, she glorified the female body and defended sexuality, but there is more to her poems even, than that.  The title, Midare Gami means "tangled hair" and is a typically oblique Japanese expression that, despite its indirectness, is utterly fraught with nuance and meaning.  Tangled hair refers not to hair that is messy or untidy, but to hair tousled by love making and is a constant theme in her poems.  Yosano Akiko brought new meanings to the term, and used it to connote female emancipation and sexual freedom.
  Although Yosano Akiko is important in Japanese literary circles because she wrote about things that no one had ever dared to write about before, her poems are more than just historical curiosities.  They are hauntingly beautiful, and her choices of images are incredibly vivid.
  She says so much in so few words, that one can spend days thinking about a simple three or four line poem no matter how many times one reads her work, one can always find new things that one had not seen before.  It is fascinating to read the thoughts of a woman who truly lived her life for love and art, and who was constantly struggling to come to grips with the conflict between one's ideas about the way that life ought to be and the way it really is.  Her poems about being betrayed by men who go off to have affairs, or the sad verses about women waiting for men to come home, or the lamentations on the emphemerality of beauty and youth are unforgettable.  As Pico Iyer discusses in his book The Lady and the Monk some of her best poems have to do with the conflict that the monk faces when he is torn between his love for a woman and his quest to escape from the longings and desires of the material world.  Take, for example, this poem:

         Pale handsome priest,
        Can you not see
        The girl lost in dreams
        By the tree of pink blossoms
        This spring evening?

  Here are a few more of her poems.  If you would like to read more, they can be found in Tangled Hair:  Selected Tanka from Midaregami by Yosano Akiko and translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, available from the Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company.

THE RONIN
by William Dale Jennings

  The Ronin tells the story of a masterless samurai who lives a violent, debauched life, raping and killing, until one day he is made aware of the enormity of his crimes. As a sort of penance, he decides to dig a tunnel through a mountain which can only be crossed by a high and dangerous pass.
  The book is based on a Zen koan (a problem which cannot be solved by logic, on which practitioners of Zen meditate in order to find enlightenment).
The Ronin is a fascinating book and many years later, I am still troubled by the tough questions that it posed, such as: are we only good because we have to be; is there justice in revenge; and can human beings ever really make up for the terrible things that they do?
This was my favourite book when I was in high school and although now that I am older and can see that there are a lot of weaknesses in the book, I still say that it has the best ending of any book I have ever read and highly recommend it.

STRANGE BUT TRUE STORIES FROM JAPAN
by Jack Seward

  Remember Commander McBragg, the old man from the Underdog show, who told tall-tales that included lines like, "So darkie...you're a cannibal are you?"  Well Jack Seward makes him look positively modest, and politically correct as well. Seward is an old-fashioned man with old-fashioned beliefs and prejudices and reading his books you get the feeling that he still thinks of himself as an explorer living among the enigmatic, heathen Japanese. Strange But True is filled with macabre stories about mass suicides and armless geisha, credulous retellings of old myths like the Hachiko story, and a bizzare conspiracy theory about Japan having tested a nuclear bomb during the closing days of World War Two.  I bought this book for 300 yen in a used bookstore, but feel like I paid far too much for it.

THE BROKEN COMMANDMENT
By Toson Shimazaki

  The Broken Commandment is the sort of book that will make you feel as angry as you did when you read books like The Grapes of Wrath,  or Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.  It's a story about injustice, and tells the story of a Burakumin  (a caste of 'untouchables' who are still widely discriminated against.  Click here for more information) hiding the secret of his birth from his community.  The hero of the story, Ushimatsu Segawa, is a teacher at an elementary school in Nagano prefecture, but is afraid that he will lose his job and be exiled from the village if it is found out that he is a Burakumin.   The 'broken commandment' of the title refers to his promise to his father never to reveal his secret to anyone.  He is torn however, between his fear of being found out and his admiration for his favourite writer, a man  who is proud to be a Burakumin and campaigns actively for their rights.  When he meets the man, he is overcome with guilt and shame because he has been living a lie for so many years.  The two villains in the book are a corrupt headmaster who is jealous of Segawa's popularity among the students, and a politician who is afraid that Segawa will tell people that his wife is a Burakumin.
  Toson Shimazaki, the author, is an excellent writer and has created a very interesting and believable main character.  His writing is clear and engaging, and the translator has produced an excellent text that sounds natural and flows much better than most books which have been rendered into English.  If the book has any weaknesses, it is the cartoonish villains who do not compare well with the well-drawn and three dimensional hero. 
  There is also a very interesting introduction by the translator, which gives some interesting history on Burakumin and the life of Toson Shimazaki, but if you don't like spoilers save it for last because he gives away the ending!

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