Kojima Nobuo – “American School”

Kojima Nobuo (小島信夫) wrote the short story “American School” (アメリカンスクール) the same year as “Stars” (星). The similarities in tone and approach are readily noticeable. Although written in 1954, the story is set in 1948 in the midst of the US occupation of Japan. It centers on a visit of a group of Japanese teachers of English to a school run by the Occupation forces, hence the title.

The characters are archetypes and the lampooning of the contemporaneous social realities is representative of Kojima’s satiric approach. Personal relationships between the characters drive the story, the majority of which centers on a group march to the American school. Isa, a cowardly fellow who is scared to death of speaking English—yes he is an English teacher—wants only to be left alone. Yamada, a sycophant to authority and overweening jackass to everyone else, is above all an opportunist (there is a similar character in “Stars”). Yamada sees Isa as a non-hacker and desires to publicly humiliate him. Isa, in turn, despises Yamada. Michiko, the only woman in the group and very popular with the Occupation forces, sticks close to Isa, for a variety of reasons. The most apparent reason is that he has something she wants.

Word of the Day – Shinkō Narikin

Here’s a good one:

新興成金（shinkōnarikin）= “nouveau riche”

Those that can read the kanji for their meaning will get it right away, it’s fairly literal:

新: new

興: by itself means “entertain” or “revive” or “interest,” but in combination with the above graph, “developing/emergent”

成: become

金: $$$

Endo Shusaku — The Sea and Poison

The Sea and Poison 海と毒薬 (1958, serialized in 1957)

Endō Shūsaku – 遠藤周作

Translated by Michael Gallagher

There are two types of sins, we are often told—the sins of commission and the sins of omission. The former are the committed through immoral actions, the latter through the failure to exercise moral actions. The former is simple enough; if you murder someone you are guilty by your action. The latter is more subtle; what if you did nothing to stop the murder? Edmund Burke once said something about “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” He might have liked this book.

Kojima Nobuo’s – “Stars”

Kojima Nobuo’s (小島信夫) 1954 short story “Stars” (星) is first of all a humorous read. On the surface its wit expertly pillories the system of rank in the Japanese military during WWII. Like most good humor, however, this story functions on more than one level. The protagonist, a second-generation Japanese-American by the name of George Sugihara, is unfortunate enough to be visiting his grandfather in Japan during the war, and is drafted into the army. The story follows the insecure George (Jōji), who is routinely disparaged for being American, on his journey from buck private to PFC. [Note that there were more than a few cases of Japanese-Americans being drafted in the Japanese army during WWII, see Iwao Peter Sano’s 1,000 Days in Siberia.]

The story quickly becomes a theatre of the absurd.

Shiho Fukada’s Kamagasaki

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/showcase-101/

Shiho Fukada is an amazing photojournalist. I highly recommend her work. In this particular spot from the NYT, she focuses her lens on Kamagasaki, an area in Osaka that used to be known as “labor town,” but has recently been dubbed “welfare town.” The economic downturn put a stop to much of construction work in Japan, rendering most of these day laborers unemployed. Please see the slide show and story on the NYT Lens Blog or on Fukada’s personal website.

The Blue Bird (Aoi Tori)

The Blue Bird (Aoi Tori) 青い鳥  2008 – Nakanishi Kenji

****/5

Bullying has been a widely acknowledged problem in Japan, and this isn’t the first movie to explore it. But Aoi Tori, based on a novel by Shigematsu Kiyoshi, does something most other movies dealing with this issue fail to do. It explores the gray areas, between outright physical violence against and the virtuous defense of the weak, in which many instances of bullying probably occur.

Abe Hiroshi (who has a few outstanding roles in TV dramas and won the Mainichi Film Concours award for his role in this movie) plays Mr. Murauchi, a stuttering substitute teacher who comes to a school in the aftermath of bullying incidents, which the entire school wants to forget. Murauchi actively dredges up those memories, forcing the students to reassess their own responsibility in the matter they’d rather move past.

This film is worth watching and I don’t want to give anything away. Not because there are any plot twists or clever tricks the directors pulls—there aren’t any—but because watching the story gently unfold is better done without much knowledge of the relationship of each student to the incident in question. I am not a fan of heavy-handed message-driven movies, but I can say I enjoyed this one. And you probably will, too.

Notes:

The director, Nakanishi Kenji, won the special mention SIGNIS Award for this film in his directorial debut.

Do not confuse this film with a TV drama of a similar name, but an entirely different story.

Traces of A City

This 15-minute documentary, titled “Traces of a City,” focuses on Masaaki Tanabe’s efforts to digitally reconstruct his hometown–Hiroshima–as he remembered it before the destruction of the atomic bomb. Well worth watching, won’t take much out of the day. But it does speak to memory, nostalgia, and the concept of furusato, or “hometown,” which plays an important role in Japanese culture.

Since WordPress does not allow java, check it out at Mainichi.

Chasing Sheep – Uniting Self

羊をめぐる冒険[1] by　村上春樹

A Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami Haruki

Essay by Michael Ignatov

A Wild Sheep Chase (1982) deals primarily with time, and specifically the past, as its central concern. Many of the other constituents of the thematic web of this novel are either subsumed in or directly related to the problem of the past.

The past must be understood as a place where time stands still—a frozen moment of time that can be accessed through the cottage in Hokkaido’s frozen landscape. Here time grinds to a halt (238-9), and it is here that Boku learns the dangers of letting himself be consumed by the past—by living in the past one fails to live presently. Murakami takes up this idea again a decade later in South of the Border, West of the Sun.

Word of the Day – Issaigassai

I came across this expression today. Could not find it anywhere, so had to ask around.

いっさいがっさい – apparently it is synonymous with 全部. In other words, “all.” Of course, issaigassai is much more colloquial than zenbu.

It’s official, Japan is out of recession

AFP reports that Japan is out of the worldwide recession by virtue of a 0.9% growth in GDP in the 2nd Quarter of 2009 (April-June). Although the number looks slim, it is viewed as a ray of hope considering that the previous saw negative growth above 3%, making it a 3.7% growth, if annualized. This development may raise the question: If Japan’s economy experiences a more significant upward trend by the end of the month, will this play a significant role in the upcoming Aug. 30 elections? Surely the LDP will attempt to spin this as reflective of their responsible stewardship of the reigns of governance, but it be too little too late? Will the voters buy it? Will this ray of economic hope become a ray of political hope for the LDP?