Only a Blockhead

Cicadas

In Japan, as the skies clear and the heat builds at the end of July, wherever there are trees, the daylight hours are accompanied by a loud, high-pitched background hiss, urgent and relentless. The constant hot buzz is punctuated by harsh, strident miii miii miiiiiiiis that lasts for several seconds, tone gradually falling before beginning again. This manic scream, this avalanche of sound, is the soundtrack of high summer.  

If you didn't know, you would wonder what was making all that noise. There is a story of a 19th century English visitor marveling at a "singing tree" until his hosts explained that it was the sound of cicadas that had crawled out of the ground and up the tree where they sat, filling the day with their ubiquitous whistling and whirring.

The sound of cicadas is towering cumulus clouds. It is sweat running. You can't hear cicadas when you are in an air-conditioned building, and you don't need to because you have turned your back on summer. Still, the din tugs at the hearts of city folk when they go outside and walk past a park or playground or an old grove of trees around a shrine. Or sit in a chilly living room watching a TV drama about summer in the country.

As shadows lengthen and the heat subsides, the miii miiis fall silent, and another cicada comes into play, overlaying the continuing high-pitched hiss with gentle bursts of ululant trilling. This sound is cooling, melodic, refreshing, accompanying you on your way home as evening falls.      

I write listening to these sounds, wrestling them into words. Of the reasons I love living in Japan, cicadas top the list. During my years here, they have burrowed their way deep into my heart.

noonday cicadas
liquid hiss
aural heat

--Julian

Reading, on a Jet Plane . . .

If, in the next month or so, you climb into a big metal tube with JAL written on the side and wings attached you may find in the seat-pocket against which your knees are jammed the August issue of the in-flight magazine.  And if your  book was not long enough or sufficiently diverting , if you refuse to watch a movie in the air which you wouldn't watch on the ground, and if you couldn't get the flight attendant to give you enough booze to knock you out, you may, in desperation, flip through that in-flight magazine to a review by me of two books: The Anime Encylopedia and The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film.

Below is the first paragraph of that review as I originally wrote it.  The editor, who understands the heterogeneous nature of those who populate steel tubes with wings on them much better than I do, prodded me into making several changes, and then made still more changes himself, so the published lead is quite a bit different than this one:

Those who believe that anime (Japanese animation) begins and ends with Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli will be astounded to find that The Anime Encyclopedia runs to more than 800 entry-packed pages.  Likewise, anyone under the impression that, since the passing of titans like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese film industry has produced little worth watching will be pleasantly surprised by the many intriguing movies discussed in The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film.  Very different in format and intention, these tomes succeed in making readers aware of celluloid (and computer-generated) pleasures which they may otherwise have missed.

--David

Cranes

The Changing View

From my apartment window, I look out and I see that I am surrounded by huge orange cranes. Lots of noise. Lots of construction. They are always tearing buildings down and putting up new ones here in Kawasaki. I used to walk down a street in Tokyo, a regular route on my way to the station; I hadn't used that street in a while, and last week when I walked down it, it had completely changed. Where am I? I thought. It's a little eerie when your world changes so quickly. 

This new building, in the picture, will be a thirty five floor apartment building.  This view is from my floor, the 22nd. Usually the noise from the trains going by is also very loud--especially on mornings when I try to sleep in. I think this new building going up nearby will dampen the noise of the trains a little, similar to a sound barrier, but it will also cut the view. Perhaps in the far off distance, above the new building, you can see some Yokohama skyscrapers? On clear days you can even see the sea, and the brilliant white bridges traversing the water.

Sometimes cities are quiet. You can go to a city on a weekend, when the offices are closed, and it feels so calm. Ever go to a financial district on a Sunday afternoon?  It’s a little spooky.

--Mark

Summer

After a month of cloud, for the second evening in a row the half moon hung in a clear sky after sunset. To look up at it was to see the wheeling bats high above the green paddy fields, feasting in the insect-rich air. Late last night cycling home, I was--surely there's no other explanation--hit with a light, glancing blow in the shoulder by a bat not paying attention.

On the way to work, I pass a farmer's rows of melons shielded by nets. The young helmet beetles fly out of the woods in search of food, are caught in the netting and hang, slowly pawing the air. City kids go to the store to buy their beetles. Country kids ask the farmer. The kids, now on holiday, keep these pets in plastic cages where they gorge on watermelon rind all summer and are fodder for entries in summer homework diaries.  

After weeks of resenting the humidity, rain and mold, people have begun complaining about the heat. The past month takes on a cool delight in retrospect. Ever conservative, the weather bureau finally announced this week that the rainy season is over in Southern Japan. Can Kanto in Central Japan be far behind?

--Julian

Harryolotry II

Daniel Green, at The Reading Experience, writes:

I must confess that the shrillness of some recent attacks on detractors of Harry Potter and the attendant capitalist feeding frenzy takes me somewhat aback. I also confess that the logic behind these attacks mostly eludes me.

More here.

Though I'm sure Simultan can take care of herself, it's still nice to have someone as eloquent as Daniel stand up for readers like Simultan (and me) who would rather read, to quote her list:

• Don Quixote
• La commedia divina
• Tristram Shandy
• The Tale of Genji
• The Story of the Stone
• Gravity's Rainbow
• a thousand other less famous, but extremely good works

than the latest (or, in my case, any) Harry Potter.

—David

Obscurantism

This is a post about a situation in which I am involved but which I will be forced, out of respect for the privacy of individuals and institutions involved, to describe in only the most general (read: vague) terms.  Will engaging in this sort of writing under constraint qualify me for a weekend membership in the OuLiPo?

I was charged with seeing that someone for whom I was responsible completed a piece of work.  She (I'll use the feminine pronoun, but don't jump to any conclusions) did not complete that piece of work, and therefore was penalized. 

Members of another institution who feel responsible for her and have taken up her case clearly contain multitudes;  they have no trouble at all holding two opposing beliefs in their heads: 1. there is nothing wrong with the work, and 2. I am to blame for what is wrong with the work.

If the person in question had accepted when her work was first rejected that she had made a mistake and set about redoing her work properly she would be finished now and have moved on to other things.  As she and that institution which has made itself her protector have elected instead to spend the last several months attempting to prove both items one and two (above), she is no closer to finishing the work, and no closer to distancing herself from a situation which cannot be pleasant for her.

It's certainly not pleasant for me to have to justify myself again and again to my superiors and to her institutional protectors.  (Neither, however, is it difficult to do so.)

(I was even forced to forgo a long-anticipated night at Inaka to deal with this nonsense.)

This post will be considered a success if you have no idea what I am writing about.

If you are able to understand what this is about (and you didn't know already) contact me immediately.  The post will have to come down.

—David

The Boundaries of Service (or Wrenchless in Shonan)

As an expat of 25 years and counting, I long ago stop noticing differences between where I used to live (UK Midlands and West Coast USA) and where I live now (Shonan area of Japan). It takes a trip to another country or the intrusion of an alien culture to make me aware again. Last week culture intruded.

As part of the plan to lose 5 kilograms over the summer, I ordered an exercise bench, and the model I chose was imported from the US. When it arrived and I started assembling it, I found it had no tools for tightening the bolts. This would be unheard of in Japan. The kits I've bought here unfailingly include wrenches of the right size.

The bicycle ride to the hardware store gave me time to reflect on what might be called the boundaries of service. When selling something in Japan, the vendor includes any tools that might be needed to get it up and running. This extends to slipping a pair of wooden chopsticks, plastic fork, spoon or straw into the plastic shopping bag--everything you buy being bagged as a matter of course--when you buy food or drink to go. Chances are you are going home and have your own utensils, but because you might be eating on the run, the tools are included.

The wastage of chopsticking and bagging and the effort of saying no thank you to chopsticks or bag are always a mild irritant. But the inconvenience of the wrenchless bench made me reconsider and appreciate the customer-friendly concept of service behind the annoying exterior. If the practice becomes ecologically unsustainable, plastic baggery will be phased out, for people in Japan are as pragmatic as anywhere else. But the boundaries of service will remain because, as I further reflected (the ride to buy wrenches being a long one), they are part of an even larger cultural force. The mission that is life in Japan, should you choose to accept it, includes anticipating other people's needs and expectations and as far as possible meeting them. Put another way, the boundaries of an individual's existence extend beyond the individual to include the people around you.

In Japan, we are all more or less responsible for screwing up each other's loose bolts.

--Julian

Growing up in Libya

On a recent trip to Nagasaki, I read In the Country of Men. Here is a short review:

In the Country of Men

In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar, is the story of a young boy growing up in Libya,
soon after Gaddafi came to power in 1969. Progressives around the boy, including his
father, are involved in a secret movement to push the country toward democracy.  The
father's actions must remain highly secretive because the eyes of the government are
everywhere. From the boy's point of view, we see many inconsistencies between his
home life, and the society at large. Matar writes beautifully; at times giving us comic
energy in the bleakest of situations. There is also beauty in the physical description of
the landscape of Libya. This is an incredibly sad, important story. Highly recommended.

--Mark

Harryolotry

I've always been skeptical about the claim that Harry Potter has turned countless youngsters on to the joy of books.  It seems to me that, as is so often the case, it's America's finest news source, The Onion, that unearths the truth of the matter.  See a bit of their take on it at Scott McLemee's excellent blog, Quick Study.

Ron Charles, writing in the Washington Post, is also less than enthusiastic about the Harryolotry.

---David

How German is it?

Reviews of the (mostly Germanic) books I've been reading of late:

The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Could one use a little girl as bait for a child-killer if apprehending that killer would mean saving the lives of other little girls?  That's the question this taut thriller ponders in prose that is squeaky clean and that glistens with cynicism about Dürrenmatt's countrymen, the Swiss.

Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl Schorske: In seven discrete essays which hang separately as well as they do together Carl Schorske gives us a tour of Vienna at the turn of the last century.  Klimt, Freud, Schindler, and Kokoscha: all your favorites are here, and Schorske, except for his tendency to over-psychologize things, is an able tour guide.

Facing the Bridge and Where Europe Begins by Yoko Tawada: Don't let the name fool you; there's still a Deutsch connection.  Tawada, who is Japanese, writes in both her native language and in German, and has won literary prizes for work in both languages.  These two collections help one to understand why.  Challenging, funny, and entirely original, Tawada is a treasure.  I wrote about these for the Japan Times, and will probably post the  review sometime after the print version appears.

At least some of the above, in addition to my earlier reading of Buddenbrooks, are in preparation for my trip to Central Europe for which I'll be setting out in a little over a month.  I'm saving Berlin Noir for the flight over.

—David