TOKYOMANGO

Must Read: Dog Man, a Story About Akitas

I just finished reading a book called Dog Man by journalist Martha Sherrill. It's a simple biography of a man named Morie who spends his life in the mountains breeding Akitas. It was one of the best stories about Japan that I've read in a long, long time.

Sherrill follows the lives of Morie and Kitako Sawataishi from the moment they met in wartime Tokyo to their present day life as elderly mountain dwellers. While it has a seemingly simple plot on surface level, it's one of those books where, when you're done reading, you think, wow. This book works on so many levels. There isn't a single fluffy adjective or expression of emotion anywhere, and it's written with the snappiness of good magazine journalism—yet you'll find yourself close to tears at the end of several chapters. Morie, the husband, is a super Asian patriarch who makes decisions without consulting his wife and hardly shows any emotions. But he has one gigantic soft spot that he dedicates his life too, and that's the Akitas.

Johnny Bunko, A Career Guide in Manga Format by Dan Pink

Last month, I worked briefly with journalist Dan Pink on his book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. It's a fun, insightful career guide written in manga format authored by the guy who wrote the manga feature in Wired a few months ago. (I just wrote the sound f/x that are scattered throughout.) I recommend it even if you already have a cushy job you like, because the illustrations are fantastic and the advice is indispensable. Well, that, and Dan Pink is an awesome writer (he was Al Gore's speech writer a decade ago!) and if you can't get through a magazine article to save your life then you can at least read this manga.

Get your copy here.

Tezuka's Phoenix Manga Now Available on DS

I've always wanted to read Osamu Tezuka's classic manga anthology, Phoenix, but it goes for volumes and volumes and would take up too much room in my bag. Well, now, a company called Compile Heart has collaborated with Tezuka Productions and Nintendo to create a DS software that includes the graphic novel in its entirety. It's in Japanese, of course, but what a genius idea to put novels on a DS cartridge, right?

If you prefer the English version in print, it's been published by Viz Media.

Link

The Four Immigrants Manga

Anyone interested in manga, Japanese humor, Asian-American history,or immigration should pick up a copy of The Four Immigrants Manga. It's a series of comic strips drawn and written by Henry Kiyama at the turn of the 20th century. Kiyama was a young Japanese man who came to San Francisco with three of his friends in search of work and a better life. What he finds there isn't exactly what he expected.

Kiyama's adventures span from mishaps with his rich white employers to surviving the great earthquake to finding a picture bride. Sure, it's funny. But it's also a great insight into the experience and resilience of Japanese immigrants of that era.

Author and translator Fred Schodt discovered Kiyama's work over half a century after it was written, and got permission from his descendants to publish it in the US. Amazing stuff.

After the Quake: A Theater Performance Based on a Haruki Murakami Book

After the Quake was originally a short story collection written by Haruki Murakami shortly after the Kobe earthquake. The Berkeley Repertory Theater put together two of the short stories into a 90-minute theater production. Pretty neat. I had to see it, so I took the Bay Bridge to the East Bay and decided to check it out.

One of the stories was about a love triangle and a girl who had nightmares about the earthquake man. Another story was about a strange frog who predicts a giant earthquake below Tokyo and recruits an uber-ordinary bank employee to help him save the city. Both were executed beautifully with a simple, modern set and really good actors.

Anyway! This performance ends on Sunday, so if you're dying to see it like I was, you better make your way to Berkeley ASAP!

 

In the Miso Soup: Sex, Serial Killers, and the Japanese Psyche

Sex, serial killers, and the psyche of Japanese youth. That pretty much sums up Ryu Murakami's awesome 1997 novel, In the Miso Soup, which came out as a translated paperback in the US last spring.

The protagonist of the story is Kenji, an ordinary Japanese guy in his twenties who gives red light district tours to foreigners. He speaks good English, knows all the sex club owners in the area, and has a forgiving girlfriend who waits around at his house while his clients are getting off. He makes good money doing it, and hasn't had much of problem—that is, until he gets a phone call from an American named Frank. In this page-turning thriller, Murakami takes us on a journey through blowjob bars and batting cages in the back streets of Kabukicho AND through the twisted mind of this scary American man, who has these random dark psychotic moments and a horrendous New Years Eve killing spree. The story is peppered with Murakami's insightful analysis of Japanese culture and youth, so really, it's a psycho thriller, a lesson in Japanese culture, and engaging entertainment all in one book.

I finished it in one day.