Asian New York Film Festival

I really love this trailer for the Asian New York Film Festival. It describes itself as hypnotic and, honest, it's point-in-fact true. I don't know how much of this is available via Netflix.

Link to sponsor blog, Subway Cinema.

Google's new translation works for Japanese

I've started using Google's translation capability since my language skills are awful. And so far, I'm impressed.

Here's an example:  Yahoo's Japan portal page  translated:  Look at the results.

Here's a translation of the homepage of a news outlet, Miyanichi Press  The really nice part of the translation is that once you are on a translated page, it will translated a link off that page. The translation isn't perfect but it's very capable and clear.

Imagine the potential and what it might mean for bloggers, in particular, who want to reach out across language barriers.

Toyota Leaders: An Executive Guide

Vertical last month released The Toyota Leaders: An Executive Guide. From the title it sounds as if author Masaaki Satoan has produced an insiders guide, but Vertical's plug about the book is intriguing. The publisher writes that Satoan presents his case that Toyota’s strengths, including efficiency on the floor, cannot be understood or emulated outside the context of tradition—not Japan’s, but Toyota’s own.

New Japanese titles and notes

New book: The Blade of the Courtesans by Keiichiro Ryu. Published by Vertical, which has the first 26 pages online. It's described as historical fiction. The author, according to the publisher, was nominated for a Naoki Award, "The Blade of the Courtesans, late-blooming novelist Keiichiro Ryu (1923-89)’s debut work, instantly made him a doyen of historical fiction. Prior to his debut, he had been first an editor and later an acclaimed screenplay writer. "

Manga publisher Broccoli USA to close its doors, reports giapet.net Also reporting on this is Publishers Weekly  , which says the "shutdown of Broccoli comes in the midst of a U.S. economic downturn that is challenging book retailers of all kinds. But as Jones suggests, manga publishers may be feeling the pinch just a bit more. Manga, particularly shojo manga aimed at teen girls, is dependent on sales through the major bookstore chains—Borders and Barnes & Noble in particular—which are reporting drops in sales as well as drops in consumer traffic linked to the current distress in the broader U.S. economy."

An interview with Genichiro Takahashi, author of Sayonara, Gangsters, in the Vietnam publication, Thanhniem News. Excerpt: “The Vietnam War sparked an antiwar movement in many places in the world, including Japan. Murakami and I both took part in the movement, but we avoid the topic in our writing. Readers may sense its presence, but there is no proof of that... we focused on everyday issues and our feelings instead,” he added.

New book and review: "Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire" by David Mura. Chicago Tribune, which which writes, "set mostly in Chicago, attempts to dramatize the emotional vagaries and neurotic meanderings of a sansei (third generation Japanese American) named Ben Ohara. Ohara is a historian by profession, a man in quest of some definitive news about his father's death and his only brother's disappearance."

Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

A new work by Yasutaka Tsutsui has a great title, Salmonella Men on Planet Porno, that is inspiring some interesting review titles. Miami Herald: Naked fantasies with edge  and Harvard Crimson, 'Porno' Goes Absurdist.

The San Francisco Chronicle points out, surprisingly it notes, that this only the second work by Tsutsui to get translated. He has written more than 30 novels.


Of this collection of short stories, SFGates' Abby Pollak, who wrote the review,  says the work is uneven but completes her review with a strong recommendation :

Nonetheless, Tsutsui's fabulously morbid sense of humor, his obsessiveness and his wit make this collection sufficiently entertaining and disturbing to warrant our attention, especially today when the world as we know it has indeed tilted into the fantastical.

Christine Thomas, writing for The Miami Herald, also endorses this work and writes:

... each and every story sizzles with energy, teems with issues and sweeps you happily along into the fantasy. This collection is not for the faint of heart. Instead, like those admitted to Newdopia, you must be open and truly progressive to receive its infinite joys.

This collection was written in the late 1970s. Harvard's Rebecca Schuetz writes: Japan was nearly 30 years ahead of us, as usual.

Hikikomori in Japan and the U.S.

When I first read about the hikikomori, it didn’t seem as much as a social condition in Japan as a metaphor for problems in the United States.

Hikikomori is the term used to describe people who withdraw from life. They don’t work, remain in their rooms, often at home with their parents, and have limited access to people. Their parents may deposit meals at the door. It’s a very extreme way of life.

But in Washington DC, where I live, there is a form of hikikomori. These are people who live in small apartments, alone, and with jobs that don’t require emotional investment, and are in search of relationships they can never seem to find. Their extended families are miles away. You can live in these buildings for years without ever knowing, except in the most cursory way, your neighbors.

Both lifestyles are painfully isolated and diminished, and it’s from that lens I read Shutting out the Sun by Michael Zielenziger.

Zielenziger’s central argument is that hikikomori, who may number as many as 1 million people, is a symptom of a broader problem in Japanese society. He writes:

Beyond their own difficult conditions, the plight of the hikikomori reflects a physic impoverishment broadly visible across a wider Japanese spectrum. This can be seen in the drabness of its public buildings, the penury of its housing, the high costs rigorously engineered into everyday life, and the sheer ugliness of the physical environment set down even in its great cities, where neon signs, telephone wires, repulsive concrete apartment blocks and pachinko parlors obscure the ancient beauty of its historic landmarks. The sterility of its urban surfaces denotes the crisis of the spirit, and the stubborn hold of the construction state, which insist on tearing down and rebuilding nearly everything and anything.

Zielenziger's argument that hikikomori are a symptom of a broader social dysfunction is difficult to accept, despite his impressive amounts of evidence and observational abilities.

That said, there are some stark differences between the hikikomori and the people living isolated lives around me. Hikikomori are seemingly unprepared to live productive, independent lives; they haven’t acquired the skills and professional experience, in many cases, to support themselves. But the root of the problem is similar.

The Japanpundit, in recent piece about the hikikomori , points out a work by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, Welcome to the NHK, where he writes about his own experiences as a hikikomori. He blames his own personal cowardice.

Cowardice is an unexceptional realization, a harsh verdict made by someone who has fallen short of potential. But hikikomori are young enough to sense life's possibilities, and still capable enough of the opposite of cowardice: the heroic. Cowardice is the passionate verdict of the young, and not the empty and devastating realization of defeat that someone older may be coming to terms with.

At the root of hikikomori is a failure to engage and thrive. That's a problem that wears many masks. Someone in the U.S., who may lead a seemingly productive life can nonetheless share a devastating kinship with hikikomori. To argue that hikikomori is a symptom of a broader  impoverishment of Japan, opens the door for a similar assessment of the U.S.

Tokyo Nightclub Hostess expat's story

I haven't read Bar Flower, My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, by Lea Jacobson. (St. Martin's Press, 2008), but I have read a review of it by Mio Yamada at the Japan Times . I don't know how good the book is but I love this review. It's a perceptive and very well done and I have to believe it gives a sense of this journey of self awareness. The books is now on order. An excerpt:


This makes "Bar Flower" an odd piece of confessional work as Jacobson slips into her former inebriated self only to then step back and make astute societal observations in moments of sobriety. It's a difficult balance to keep, and on the rare occasion she loses it. But between the vodkas, her wit and insights make any uncomfortable moment more than worthwhile.

Another good review by A Girl Walks into a Bookstore, who writes: Jacobson’s knowledge and analysis of Japanese culture is spot-on. She details her drug addiction without feeling sorry for herself, and I found myself becoming emotionally invested in her heartbreaking story.