Doraemon : Gadget Cat from the Future (Selection 6) by Fujiko F. Fujio (Shogakukan)

If you love Japanese anime or have lived in Japan, then you would be familiar with the blue robot cat named Doraemon and you would know the robot cat’s most famous gadget is its dokodemo door or “4 D (fourth dimension) pocket”. The manga was first serialized in 1969. The chapters were then collected in forty-five tankobon volumes, tankobon being a Japanese word now used in English to refer to cartoons collected in one volume from the weekly and monthly manga magazines. 

The manga was adapted into an anime three times. The first time in 1973, then again in 1979, and finally in 2005. There are over forty anime films as well including two computer generated full-length features as well. The merchandise spawned from the manga and anime series is still a multi-billion industry that continues to appeal to children and adults alike. 

I did not realize at first that Doraemon : Gadget Cat from the Future was part of a series published by Shogakukan English Comics. I would have started with the first volume but as these stories are not collected in chronological order, it doesn’t matter which volume to start with. Also available in English are ten volumes of the story originally published by Tento Mushi books which includes the Japanese text outside the picture frames. The Tento Mushi series follows the same order as the Japanese manga. 

There’s a bit of history concerning Doraemon as well. As mentioned, Doraemon is a robot gadget cat from the future and was born on September 3, 2112. Hard core Doraemon fans will know that the blue robot cat was originally yellow and also had ears even though the backstory was written long after the manga debuted. 

In the storyline as Doraemon was napping, a mouse nibbled off his ears. When Doraemon saw himself in the mirror, he turned blue from the shock. As to why Doraemon travels back in time from the future? It was to help Nobita, a ten-year-old Japanese school boy who at heart is a good boy but is very lazy, gets bad grades at school and is terrible at sports. His future grandchild, Sewashi Nobi, sends the cat to take care of Nobita so future generations will have a better life. 

Surrounding Nobita are his classmates Shizuka, the main female character and also the love interest of Nobita. Gian, a big bully who often steals toys or other items from Nobita and his friends. He often gets his own comeuppance for his actions though. Then there is Suneo, a spoiled rich boy who likes to show off how rich he and his family are. 

In this collection of Doraemon stories, Nobita is once again bullied by Gian who steals his ice cream cone, gives it a lick, then says Nobita can have it back. But as it was licked by Gian, Nobita doesn’t want it. He cries to Doraemon to do something about it. 

In another episode, Suneo brags that his family is going to ride on a steam locomotive. When Nobita finds a ticket for the Milky Way Express that Doraemon drops. Nobita invites his friends who at first don’t believe him, but they all get into a little trouble when they discover there is no way to get back home.

There are a total of fifteen stories in this collection and its main aim is to help Japanese learners of English by providing them with a one point English lesson. Doraemon remains as popular today as it was after its debut and there is even a Fuji F. Fujio museum in Kawasaki where you can see Doraemon’s development along with other works by the manga artist. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Samurai and the Prisoner by Honobu Yonezawa, translated by Giuseppe di Martino (Yen On)

The Samurai and the Prisoner by Honobu Yonezawa is the English translate of [黒瘻城] (Kokurojo) which was originally published in the Japanese language in 2021 by Kadokawa Books. The translator, Giuseppe di Martino is an Assistant Language Teacher for the JET program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program). 

Yonezawa is mostly known for writing his young adult mystery series Kotenbu which is also known as The Classic Literature Club series. The series would be adapted into a television animation program and the first book in the series, Hyokka would be adapted into a movie starring Kento Yamazaki and Alice Hirose. 

The Samurai and the Prisoner is a more adult-oriented story blending historical fact with fictitious mysteries occurring during the Siege of Itami. Araki Murashige, a samurai lord is defending his castle against the forces of Nobunaga Oda, a daimyo during the Sengoku Period or Warring States Era in Japan. The time is the winter of 1578. It is four years before the Honno-ji Incident resulting in the assassination of Oda. 

Murashige, who once was an ally of Oda, betrayed him and sided with the Mouri who were also fighting against the Oda forces. Oda had sent an envoy named Kanbei Kuroda, one of Oda’s chief strategists, to convince Murashige noto to defect; however, Murashige went against bushido protocol and instead of killing the envoy there and then and sending his head back to his master, he imprisoned Kuroda in the dungeons of the castle.

As Oda’s forces are closing in on Aroka Castle, Murashige continues to hold them off while waiting for reinforcements from the Mouri or Ishiyama Hongan-ji armies who never arrive. As Murashige’s men continue to protect the castle, a string of mysterious incidents occur and it appears the only one who can help Murashige solve them is the one man who’s wasting away in the dungeon - Kanbei Kuroda.

The first incident involves a young boy who is killed on the castle grounds. His death spurs rumors about “Divine Intervention”; however, Murashige is a warrior. Although he commanded his retainers to detain him and lock him in a room, he is mysteriously killed. Murashige recognized the wound as an arrow wound, there was no arrow to be found. 

Reluctantly, Murashige visits Kuroda in the dungeons to get his advice on how to solve the mystery. Murashige believes that Kuroda cannot resist showing off his deductive skills but speaks to Murashige in riddles. It is later that Murashige understands why Kuroda only gave him a hint because to help Murashige would mean to betray his own master. 

Three other mysterious deaths occur, one in each season of the year. Murashige finds himself consulting with Kuroda after every  incident since none of his men can answer his enquiries. But, does Kuroda really help Murashige? And if so…why? 

Yonezawa’s blend of historical fact and detective fiction will entertain its readers in highlighting the actions and thoughts that took place during the Warring States Era. The conflicts between the The only two flaws in the story being the translator’s assumption that the reader is familiar with Japanese history and the use of archaic words in English such as thee, thou, prithee which stem the flow of the story. The plot twists at the end of the book may surprise you as well. ~Ernie Hoyt

世界の路地裏１００ (Sekai no Rojiura 100) by Nozomu Kato, pictures by P.I.E. Tsushinsha (PIE Books) Japanese text only

There was a time when I was hooked on picking up photography books. I enjoyed looking at pictures of mostly landscapes and beautiful scenery. I bought a series of books published by PIE Books titled 世界の名景・絶景 55 (Sekai no Meiki・Zekkei) which translates to “Famous and Spectacular Views of the World”. Each book had a theme -  waterside views, landscapes, sceneries with buildings, scenes seen in a movie, legendary scenes, and sceneries around unexplored areas and featured fifty-five different spots. There are more in the series but these were the titles I bought; however, when I purchased the books, my Japanese reading ability was still below par so I could only enjoy the pictures and could only guess at what might be written.

After living in Japan for nearly thirty years and studying Japanese on my own, my reading ability has improved to the point where I can read manga without furigana and have even managed to read some novels as well. It still takes me a long time to complete  a novel but I thought I would revisit a book my wife bought me for my birthday. 

The book I received was 世界の裏路地１００ (Sekai no Uraroji 100). This translates to “The Back Alleys of the World”. Various photographers working for PIE News Agency, a Japanese publisher, traveled the world and instead of taking photos of the most well known tourist attractions, they traveled through the back roads and alleys of ten countries around the world.

The majority of countries featured in the book are in Europe - France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and England. The other two countries featured are Mexico and South Korea. The photos are both in color and in black and white. Text is provided for each country and was written by Nozomu Kato. 

A major portion of the photos were taken in different cities in Spain including Altea, Mijas, Sienna, Cordoba, Sevilla, Frigiliana and Barcelona. The second most featured country are the islands of Greece. Most forms of public transportation are forbidden. The book gives you a chance to armchair travel around the islands of Skyros, Rhodes, Mykonos and others. 

Featured cities of France include Lyon and Nice. In Italy, you will travel the canals of Venice and the backroads and alleys of Sienna. You will also enjoy the views of the island of Burano. 

There are a few pictures taken in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, and a few views of old downtown Seoul in South Korea. In London, England, you won’t find any pictures of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, or Windsor Castle but you will get to check out the facades of different English pubs. It will make you want to go in for a pint. 

Some readers might not consider photography books as a “real” book but most of them include texts to describe the places and things that are pictured. It may inspire you to take your own pictures while on vacation as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled abroad but reading and looking through this beautiful photography book has reinstilled my interest in visiting new places I’ve never been to. It also makes me long to travel back to my hometown as well.　~Ernie Hoyt

No Longer Human : Complete Edition by Usamaru Furuya (Kodansha)

Recently, I decided to revisit a Japanese classic. However, it is a graphic novel written by Usamaru Furuya but is based on the Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human (reviewed August 4, 2022). I was expecting the same bleak story in manga form but was in for quite a surprise. 

Although the main characters remain the same, the story is told through the eyes of the manga artist Usamaru Furuya and the story is updated to the present era. The story opens with Furuya talking to one of his employees saying he hasn’t come up with an idea for the next serial. As he surfs the Internet, he comes across something called “ouch diary”. An anonymous reader wrote, “I got depressed reading it. But I can’t stop reading it. Take a look!”. A URL was provided and the title was No Longer Human. 

An “ouch diary”? Curiosity piques the manga artist’s interest and he clicks the URL. What pops up is the title “Yozo Oba’s Albums” and there are three pictures of Yozo. One at age 6, another at age 17, and the last at age 25. 

The artist first clicks on the age 6 picture. His first impression is that Yozo must be from a wealthy family but he couldn’t help noticing that the smile on Yozo’s face seemed to be fake and all he could say was “What a creepy kid”. 

Usamaru then clicks on Yozo, age 25 and can’t believe his eyes. He says out loud, “He’s 25 in this one? He looks like an old man. His face is totally lifeless”. He also clicks on Yozo, age 17 and is taken for another loop. He inadvertently says, “Wha…What a handsome young man”. Usamaru thinks to himself, “What could have happened to him between these three photos. The guy’s name is Yozo Oba and his diary is titled No Longer Human. 

The book is divided into twelve entries and Usamaru clicks on the first one titled Yozo Oba and is greeted by the line - “I’ve lived a life full of shame.” The first section, Yozo Oba writes about his high school years playing the class clown because he wanted people to like him. He then writes about going to an art prep school where he meets Masao Horiki who becomes his friend and mentor in wining, dining, and general debauchery. 

As Usamaru continues to search the Internet for material for his next serial manga, he keeps going back to Yozo Oba’s diary, No Longer Human. What he says of Oba’s diary is “He revealed his actions and inner thoughts in surprisingly vivid detail…”

Usamaru reads through until the end of the diary he finds an afterward written by Yozo’s friend Masao Horiki. Horiki found out that Yozo was taken into custody by the police after they found him wandering the streets and coughing up blood. After an examination he was arrested and indicted for drug use and sentenced to probation and put in a rehabiliation facility. This is where Horiki rekindles his friendship and would visit Yozo quite often, but one day, Yozo just disappeared. 

Horiki explains why he posted Yozo’s diary without his friend’s consent and pleads with any readers that if they know his whereabouts to contact him. In the manga, Usamaru Furuya writes that he regretted reading the diary until the next morning, then went to bed. However, he could not get Yozo Oba out of his head. 

In the manga, Usamaru decides to go in search of Yozo Oba or to at least confirm if he really existed or not. He does discover that there really was a Yozo Oba and that he may still be alive somewhere…

Usamaru Furuya’s adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s novel may also seem to be a bit bleak but it is not quite as depressing as Dazai’s original. His drawings really draw the reader into the story of Yozo Oba’s life. At times, his diary reads like a desperate call for attention. Oba’s utter lack of self-esteem and self-worth are depressing and reading about his downward spiral will make you want to re-evaluate your own life to help you determine if as Yozo Oba says, “Human beings terrify me!” ~Ernie Hoyt

Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto, translated by Don Knotting (Hanover Square Press)

What does a person do when all their only ambition is to do nothing? For Shoji Morimoto, the solution is to do nothing as an occupation. Through Twitter, he makes it known that he is available for any situation where another person is needed, just so long as he is required to do nothing. He began this pursuit in 2018 and has done nothing for other people over 4000 times since then. For this, he charges only his travel expenses, asking that any food or drink required during the appointment be covered by the client. Later he puts the client’s request and a summary of his response to it on Twitter, which is his only form of advertising. At the time this book was written, he received three requests a day for his service. Within ten months of launching this enterprise his Twitter followers went from 300 to 100,000. Apparently he has found a Japanese need and is quite busily filling it.

Who asks for a person who will do nothing? Artists of all kinds--writers, manga illustrators, musicians--ask Morimoto to sit with them, silently, while they create. A marathon runner wanted him to stand at the finish line, waiting for the entrant to complete the race. Others ask that he attend court proceedings as an onlooker, meet them at an airport, wave them off as they leave on a train. One endearing request is that he join another man to have an ice cream soda, something the client is too embarrassed to do on his own. Another job results in a spectacular hangover when Morimoto is asked to sit in a park while the client drinks a can of chu-hai (a shochu highball). “Summer, nighttime, a park, alcohol…I got pretty drunk,” he confesses in a tweet.

Others have more complex requests. One woman wants to talk about her girlfriend, whom she hasn’t revealed to her family or friends. A patient in a hospital asks for a visit in the suicide risk intensive care unit she’s been placed in. A man divulges at the end of his time period that he used to be a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Another wants Morimoto to spend a day with him in his home because he’s never shared it with another person. He confesses when the day is over that he had been released from prison where he served a sentence for murder.

This is an occupation that requires a lack of personality, evaluation, advice, or judgment. Morimoto is careful to keep his responses neutral, sticking with “Uh-huh” and “I see.” His role, as he sees it, is to fall between “friend” and “stranger” during his times with a client. He serves as a sort of quasi-friend to the person who’s engaged his services. Between the two of them there’s no emotional history and no demands of reciprocity--which is why one woman asks him to have dinner with her at a very expensive restaurant. If she asked a friend, that person would feel obligated to do the same for her.

Because Morimoto approaches his work as a blank slate that the client fills as they wish, the obvious question is will he eventually be replaced by a robot? Not in Japan, he says, where people suffer from “AI fatigue” and yearn for human contact, even for something as simple as receiving a reminder message. 

Since he charges nothing, how does he survive? From savings garnered from his brief foray into financial trading is what he claims, although a Reuters article quotes him as saying that when he first began as Rental Person, he charged 10,000 yen (about $71) per rental.

Although he initially depended heavily upon Twitter for exposure, Morimoto has been featured in manga, has inspired a TV series, and, according to the author information that appears on the final page, he’s written other books. Not too shabby for a man who claims he does nothing.~Janet Brown

The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (G.P. Putnam's Sons, release date February 13, 2024)

Tucked away on a street near Kyoto’s Higashi Honganji Temple lies a hidden restaurant. No sign directs customers to it. A one-line advertisement in Gourmet Monthly gives no contact information, only two names: The Kamogawa Diner and The Kamogawa Detective Agency. For those who manage to find this place, they discover that it has no menu but the owner serves whatever food he has cooked for that day on the finest of lacquerware and Baccarat crystal plates. Clearly this is no ordinary diner.

Although the food is made from the best ingredients, what draws customers to search for this place is the  detective agency. Each one of them is haunted by a dish they had in the past, with flavors they’ve been unable to replicate or find in any other restaurant and with memories they hope to relive if they can only find the exact replica, faithful in every detail. 

This is what the Kamogawa Detective Agency promises its clients. After learning every piece of information that is remembered about where and when they had this food and any detail they recall about its taste and presentation, the owner scours Japan for it, tracking down every minute clue that has been given to him. If he succeeds, he charges nothing but what the client wants to give.

The stories told by the six customers in this book are charming and resonant. One man wants a simple meal that his dead wife used to make for him. A woman hopes to eat a dish she once left unfinished because her date unexpectedly proposed marriage to her as their meal was put on the table. Another hopes to restore her ex-husband’s vanished memory, stolen by dementia, if she can feed him the food that once only he was able to make. Since everyone in the world has a particular culinary memory that they would love to taste one more time, these people are ones readers can easily take to heart--but they aren’t the core of this novel.

Hisashi Kashiwai is a Kyoto dentist with a passion for food and the skills of a forensic kitchen detective. He is aware of every detail that makes a dish extraordinary and he divulges them all. Whether it’s the way water drawn from different regions can change flavors or how pouring tea over a helping of rice can enhance the taste, Kashiwai generously divulges these little secrets. His descriptions of the meals served in the diner or tracked down by an indefatigable expert dominate this book. If you aren’t a devotee of Japanese cuisine, you will be by the time you finish reading about all the dishes Kashiwai describes so well,

None of his choices are haute cuisine. They’re simple dishes that people eat as everyday meals but the ingredients used to make them turn them into unique culinary art. Hishashi makes the regional differences in Japanese cooking something to yearn for, along with the use of ingredients that are only available in their particular season. Slivers of taro in mackerel sushi, taro found only in a small village, elevates the flavor as nothing else can and canned meat, cooked cleverly, can rival the finest Kobe beef. 

Kashiwai is also a devoted lover of Kyoto. Sprinkled among the luscious descriptions of food are quick glimpses of the gingko trees that turn the city to gold in the fall, the mountains that loom white in the winter, the courtyards filled with spring cherry blossoms, and the mists and shadows that bring mystery to the streets in the rainy season. “There was nowhere like Kyoto to make you really notice the changing of the seasons,” one client observes as he approaches the diner, and Kashiwai reveals the magic of his hometown in a few quick sentences.

Although The Kamogawa Food Detectives is being compared to the series that was launched by Before the Coffee Gets Cold, (Asia by the Book, February 2023), Kashiwai published this two years before the Coffee series began. He’s followed it with The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, a sequel that’s not yet available in the U.S. which gives promise of a series in the offing.

More dishes? More intriguing ingredients? Sign me up for a Kyoto food tour, please, Mr. Kashiwai!~Janet Brown

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase, translated by Alison Watts (Scribner)

There have been a number of confirmed cases of animals saving their owners or becoming so loyal that they wait for them even if their owners have died. The most famous being the story of Hachiko, an Akita dog that waited for its owner, Hidesaburo Ueno, at Shibuya station for over nine years after Ueno’s death. 

Although Seishu Hase is known in Japan for mostly writing Yakuza crime novels, in his book The Boy and the Dog, he has written a story about a dog named Tamon that makes a five-year journey across Japan to find his beloved owner. 

The book was originally published in the Japanese language as 少年と犬 (Shonen to Inu) in 2020 by Bungeishunju Limited. It won the Naoki Award in 2020. This edition, translated by Alsion Watts, was published in English in 2023 by Scribner. 

It’s six months after the massive earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit the Tohoku area of Japan on March 11, 2011. At a convenience store in Sendai, a man named Kazumasu, sees  a ragged looking dog standing on the corner of the parking lot. The dog is still there after he makes his purchase. The dog was sitting there just staring at him. 

The dog looks like a German shepherd mix and since there seemed to be no owner, Kazumasa decides to take him home. He notices the dog’s collar with only the dog’s name on it - Tamon, named after Tamoten, a guardian deity. Kazumasa lives with his sister and their mother who suffers from dementia. She sometimes forgets the name of their children. When Kazumasa visits his mother with Tamon, she immediately calls the dog Kaito. 

Although their mother seemed to be happy and in good spirits whenever “Kaito” was with her, Kazumasa knew he needed to make more money so he could help out his sister and be able to put their mother in a home. He accepts a job as driver for a couple of foreign criminals and brings Tamon with him on the job. The job goes without a hitch and the foreign thieves believes that Tamon is their good luck charm. 

Kazumasa’s lucky streak came to an abrupt end. Kazumasa and the three foreign thieves were being chased by a group of Yakuza and Kazumasa crashes the getaway van into a wall. Tamon and only one of the thieves survives. A man named Miguel.  

This is only the start of Tamon’s journey. Tamon will travel with the thief to Niigata who plans on stowing on a boat to leave Japan. He can’t take Tamon with him and Tamon is then brought home by a man who was training in the Japanese Alps when Tamon chased a bear away from him. The runner found Tamon continues his journey and is taken in by a prostitute named Miwa who finds him in the mountains of Shiga Prefecture. 

The day Miwa found Tamon was the day she killed her boyfriend. She decides to turn herself in and lets the dog go. Tamon is then taken in by a man who lives alone on the mountain but continues his journey south. 

In Kagoshima Prefecture, a small boy named Hikaru lives there with his parents. The family moved after the devastating quake. The experience was such a shock to him as he lost his friend Tamon. Since then, the boy has been unable to speak. 

Will Tamon and Hikaru ever be reunited? Can an animal and human be soulmates? Seishu Hase makes you think so. The story will make you believe in miracles. ~Ernie Hoyt

Tezcatlipoca by Kiwamu Sato, translated by Stephen Paul (Yen On)

Tezcatlipoca was originally published in the Japanese language in 2021 by Kadokawa Corporation. It won the Naoki Prize, a prestigious Japanese literary award and was heralded as one of the best mysteries to read by a number of other publications. It was translated into English and published in February of 2023 by Yen On Books. 

It is one of the most astonishing and disturbing novels you will ever read. It blends Aztec mythology and culture with a dose of the mystical and supernatural along with drug cartels, the Yakuza, organized crime syndicates, and illegal activities of the present. The story will take you from the drug cartel war zones in Mexico to the bustling city of Jakarta, Indonesia and ending up in the Kanto area of Japan. 

In order to truly understand the story, it may help to study up on the gods of Aztec culture. Tezcatlipoca is the God of Providence and is considered one of the four sons of  Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, two major deities known as the “Dual Gods”. The name Tezcatlipoca is usually translated as “smoking mirror” from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The festival celebrating Tezcatlipoca is called Toxcatl and involves a human sacrifice.

The story centers are three very different individuals. A Mexican drug lord on the run whose empire is taken over by another cartel, a neglected child who grows up to commit a terrible crime and is locked away for an extended period of time, and a Japanese heart surgeon who loses his license and becomes an illegal organ broker. 

Koshimo, the child of a Mexican mother and Yakuza father grows into a big strong teenager and when he finds his drunken father beating his mother, he easily overpowers him and breaks his neck with his bare hands. His mother was having a flashback of her brother being killed by a narco so she also attacked but Koshimo hit her with one hard slap and she was dead. He casually walked down the stairs to the first floor hardware store and asked the owner to call the police. Koshimo was only thirteen-years-old. 

September 2015, a newspaper article reports that the latest drug war is reaching its final stage after two years of fighting. As with the hometown of Koshimo’s mother, Sinaloa is now the battleground between old Los Casasola and replacing them will be the Dogo Cartel. “The amount of cocaine that crosses the border won’t change. And neither will the United States’ status as the biggest market place”. 

Valmira Casasola is the only surviving member of Los Casasolas. They’ve been ousted by the Dogo Cartel and Valmira has been fleeing for his life. However, he plans to start from scratch to build a new empire and vows to take down the Dogo Cartel as well. He has been in on the fun for quite a while but ends up in Indonesia working at a food cart that sells cobra satays. 

After their Catholic father died, Valmero and his three brothers were indoctrinated into the belief of their abuela, Libertad, who was a firm believer in all of the Aztec gods. As an adult, Valmiro also became more enamored with his indigenous heritage. His food cart in the market was just a cover for selling illicit drugs on the side so he can make contacts to build up his empire again. It is here that he meets a Japanese man who calls himself Tanaka. 

Tanaka or Suenaga as we find out later is an organ broker for a Chinese gang and a militant Islamic organization. However, his main desire was to go back to the operating room in a clean environment. He didn’t want to become just any back alley doctor. He believes his skills could be used in a more productive way.

The two men, former drug kingpin and disgraced heart surgeon, form a plan to corner the market on illegal heart transpants. They presented their plan to the Chinese gang and to an officer of the militant group and a nefarious web of evil was about to be loosed upon the world. What evil will befall the world? Only the God Tezcatlipoca might know the answer. ~Ernie Hoyt

君たちはどう生きるか (Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiruka?) by Genzaburo Yoshino, manga by Shoichi Haga (Magazine House) Japanese text only

The latest Studio Ghibli animation film borrows its Japanese title from a 1938 novel of the same name by Genzaburo Yoshino. However, the film is totally unrelated to the story. I read an updated version of the book in manga form in its original language. The title 君たちはどう生きるか (Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiruka) translates to ”How Will You Live”. The manga was drawn by Shoichi Haga and was published by Magazine House in 2017.

Although it is written in the manga format, about a third of the book is text only with no pictures. The story is set in 1937 in Tokyo. The main character is a fifteen-year old junior high school boy named Shoichi Honda, whom everybody calls Koper (short for Copernicus in Japanese). 

The story opens with Shoichi lying in bed with a fever. He wishes his fever would get worse. He can’t forgive himself for his cowardly action. He tells his uncle, a former editor who has recently moved into his neighborhood, everything that happened and is wondering why he is suffering so much.

Shoichi tells his uncle that he saw his friends being bullied by upperclassmen but he did nothing to help. He feels he betrayed his friends. The following day, his uncle hands him a single notebook. 

Shoichi’s uncle explained to him in the notebook the reason for his suffering is because Shoichi is trying to follow the right path. Shoichi knows what he did was wrong and believes his friends would be unforgiving and yet he knows he must do something to make things right with them. This is just a prelude to what his uncle writes to him in the notebook. 

The story then goes back to the beginning when Shoichi’s uncle moved into town. After helping his uncle move, they take a tram and go to the roof of a department building. Shoichi looks down on all the people and says to his uncle that they all look like molecules. After they get back home and part ways, his uncle says his great discovery today that people are like molecules was similar to Copernicus and thus he was given the nickname Koper. 

The book is mostly a coming of age story as Shoichi, or Coperu, makes new discoveries and learns more about human nature. His uncle continues to write him messages in the notebook about each and every discovery that Shoichi makes. Shoichi tries his best to understand what his uncle is trying to convey and in the end he writes his own response to his uncle’s words. He made a resolution as to how he will live his life in the future.

After reading the book, the thought that crossed my mind the most was what would I do if one of my uncles gave me a notebook with philosophical meanderings that are more than two pages long. I think I would set the notebook aside and not read it. I even asked one of my junior high students if they read the book in its entirety. The response - “Only the manga parts”. 

The manga form does make it a lot easier to understand and the book itself asks the readers at the end, “How will you live?” It is only up to you to decide.~Ernie Hoyt

The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated by Lucy North (Faber & Faber)

Natsuko Imamura is a Japanese writer who has been nominated three times for the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award. She won the award in 2019 for novel むらさきのスカートの女 (Murasaki no Skirt no Onna). 

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is the English translation of her Akutagawa Prize winner. It was published in English in 2022 by Lucy North, a British translator of Japanese fiction and nonfiction who also has a PhD in modern Japanese literature from Harvard University. 

The narrator of the story lives near the woman in a purple skirt. The woman being watched always wears a purple skirt which is how she got her name. The narrator has already found out where the woman in the purple skirt lives. She has also kept a diary of the woman in the purple skirt’s schedule; when she works, when she doesn’t work. Where she goes, where she sits in the local park. The woman tells herself she wants to get to know the woman in the purple skirt. She wants to become friends with her. 

Why the woman in the yellow cardigan wants to get to know the woman in the purple skirt is a mystery. It’s a mystery to herself as well. She thinks it would be strange to just go up to the woman and say, “I want to be friends with you”. She just wants to talk to her and tells herself, “it’s not as if I’m trying to make a pass at her”. 

The woman in the purple skirt doesn’t know she’s being watched. Even if she did, it appears that she does not give a care in the world. The narrator calls herself the woman in the yellow cardigan. As the woman in the yellow cardigan realizes that the woman in the purple skirt has been out of a job for a few months, she leaves a job offer magazine where the woman in the purple skirt will surely find it. 

A few days later, the woman in the purple skirt is hired by a company. lt happens to be the same hotel where the woman in the yellow cardigan works. The narrator continues to watch the woman in the purple skirt throughout her entire training period but has yet to introduce herself. 

The narrator almost didn’t recognize the woman in the purple skirt because she came to work wearing different clothes. At first the new employee was very timid and her voice wasn’t loud enough to satisfy the Hotel Manager. However, as the months pass, she becomes quite adept at her job. Her co-workers start talking to her more frequently and she is often invited out for lunch or for drinks after work.

The narrator has yet to introduce herself so she could become friends with the woman she formerly called the woman in the purple skirt. The woman was really good at her job and she was also very friendly with the Hotel Manager. Soon, rumors spread that she is seeing the Hotel Manager who is a married man. The other workers are also surprised at the speed of her promotion and also find out she is getting paid more than they are. 

Her co-workers who were formerly kind to her now began to ignore her and when the head of the Housekeeping Department suggested that some of the hotel’s employees were taking towels and other amenities from the rooms, the first one to be blamed was the former the newest employee. After being accused of stealing by the others, she left the hotel in tears.

The narrator goes to the woman’s apartment to see if she is okay. She notices a familiar car in front of the apartment as well. It is the Hotel Manager. The woman lives on the second floor of a pretty dilapidated building and when she and the Hotel Manager have a scuffle, the Hotel Manager falls down the stairs and looks to be dead. 

The narrator finally rushes to the woman and tells her she will take care of everything. She believes it was fate that she can help the woman leave this town. She would quit the hotel herself and they could become traveling companions. The narrator plans everything out very carefully, leaves a note and some money for the woman to leave first, saying she would meet her later. But not everything turns out as planned.

Imamura’s story reads like a thriller but the protagonist doesn’t seem to want to hurt the person she’s been stalking. It is one of the creepiest horror stories without any blood that you may ever read. It is up to the reader to decide what happened to the woman in the purple skirt. It’s also hard to consider the narrator as a villain as she doesn’t want to harm her obsession. She only wants to become friends with her. Yes, you should beware of strangers who want to become your friend. ~Ernie Hoyt

Finger Bone by Hiroki Takahashi, translated by Takami Nieda (Honford Star)

Hiroki Takahashi is a Japanese writer who was born in Towada City in Aomori Prefecture. Finger Bone is his first novel. It was first published in Japan with the title 指の骨 (Yubi no Hone) in 2015 by Shinchosha Publishing and was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award. Takahashi would win the Prize in 2018 for his book 送り火 (Okuribi).

Finger Bone is a war novel. Most war novels are often about battles or covert operations. The protagonist usually does something heroic and is rewarded for his efforts in helping to win the war. They are rarely told from the perspective of the losing country’s soldiers. This is a story told in the first person by an unnamed Japanese soldier. 

The soldier is stationed on the island of Papua New Guinea in 1942. The Imperial Japanese Army is on the retreat but since the soldier has no radio, he still believes that Japan is winning the war. In his pocket, he carries the finger bones of a dead comrade. However, on his march to his next destination he is wounded and sent to a field hospital. 

Before the soldier makes it to the field hospital, he was is to another facility built in a palm grove. There were men sleeping on stretchers suffering from the effects of malaria. Some of them might have been dead already. 

Once he makes it to the field hospital, he is witness to what he thought was kind of cruel. Whenever the medics did their rounds and one of the patients didn’t answer, the medic would slide a piece of wood under the dead soldier’s hand and cut off his finger.

Another soldier told him, “That’s a lucky man to have his finger taken for his family like that”. He was told, “Die in the jungle all alone, and all the family gets back home is three stones”. 

As the soldier recovered, he was able to walk around. Sometimes he and two other of his comrades would walk a little ways away from the hospital, always keeping an eye out for the enemy. They were confronted by a black man one time, but the man turned out to be a native and wasn’t hostile to the soldiers. One of his comrades was able to speak a bit of the native language and they were taken to the native’s village. 

However, the second time they saw one of the natives, they did not speak or exchange words. The unnamed soldier didn’t know why and shortly after that incident, the soldiers at the field hospital got their orders to move. That is when the unnamed soldier realized that Japan was losing the war and that most of the island was under Allied control.

The soldier wanted to keep his promise to his comrade and was determined to take the finger bone he had in his pocket to his friend’s home in Japan. Will the soldier survive the war? Will he be able to keep his promise? 

It’s often been said that “in war, no one wins”. This book illustrates that point. Those soldiers who died serving their country had families. Well, so does the enemy. It’s a sad fact that Japan’s militarism during World War 2 led to untold suffering for their soldiers, and for the soldiers fighting against them.

Unfortunately, as long as there are people with different values and ways of thinking, war seems to be inevitable. I wish it weren’t true but conflicts continue in places such as the Middle East and in Central Asia. North Korea testing their ICBM missiles is no light matter either. 

If only every country in the world could follow the message of John Lennon’s song “Imagine”, the world might be a better place. ~Ernie Hoyt

Idol, Burning by Rin Usami, translated by Asa Yoneda (Canongate)

Idol culture in Japan is a multi-billion dollar business. The Golden Age of idols is said to be the seventies with artists such as Momoe Yamaguchi and Akina Nakamori. The end of the seventies was the rise of idol groups such as Pink Lady, Candies, and Wink.

In the mid-eighties, an idol group with a large number of members was conceived by producer Yasushi Akimoto. He was the mastermind behind Onyanko Club, a group that consisted of fifty-two original members. Each member was assigned a number as well so fans could easily follow their favorites.

The nineties would see a revival of idol groups with a large number of members, the most popular being Morning Musume, produced by former lead singer of Sharan-Q, Tsunku. The group was formed on a television audition program called Asayan. The production company Hello! Project also produced groups such as Country Musume, Coconut Musume, Berryz Koubou, °C-ute, and Melon Kinenbi with most groups consisting four to eight members.

However, the 2000’s would see the rise of AKB48 and all its offshoots, once again produced by Yasushi Akimoto. The concept of the group was “Idols you can meet”. Their homebase was in Akihabara where the group had their own theater. Every year, an “election” would be held and fans would vote for their favorite members. The member with the most votes would be chosen for the center position for the next single. 

Fans continue to support their favorite members, not only in idol groups, but actors, voice actors, anime characters, sports figures, and a whole host of others. The current term being used is 推し (oshi), meaning your favorite. One of the most popular manga and anime series now is 推しの子 (Oshi no Ko) which roughly translates to "My Favorite”.

Idol, Burning takes the life of the superfan to a different level. Akari is a high school student who has only one passion in her life and that is her oshi, her idol. His name is Masaki Ueno and he’s a member of popular idol group Maza Maza. 

However, Akari’s world was being turned upside down. Her oshi was on fire. The news media said that Masaki punched a fan. Akari didn’t know if the news was true or just a rumor but the Internet was ablaze with people criticizing the star while others like Akari, continue to support him. 

In a news segment, Akari’s oshi admits to punching a fan but said it was a private matter between him and the victim. The Internet was soon inundated with comments about him after the interview.

Akari sees a number of negative comments on the Internet such as , “Who the f&*k does he think he is?” and “I’ve been going to his shows for years but I’m done. If you’re a brainwashed cult-follower victim-bashing the woman you’re not right in the head”. Of course there were some positive comments as well such as, “Learn your lesson and come back soon. We’re here for you Masaki”. 

Masaki Ueno had been Akari’s oshi for about a year. Everything centered around supporting him. She spent that time collecting as much information as she could so she felt she could predict most of his answers at a Q&A corner of his fan meetings.

She summed up her feelings by writing on her blog for other Masaki fans - “there is nothing you can really do about a fireball, is there?”, referring to the comments on the Internet after the incident. “The blaze gets fanned from all directions, and just when you think they’re starting to die down, someone tosses on more fuel, in the form of old tweets or photos, and sends the flame in a new direction”. 

Shortly after the incident, Maza Maza held a press conference to announce that the group would disband and that their upcoming concert would be their last. Masaki also announced that he would be retiring from the entertainment business.

Akari is now at her wits end as her life only held meaning because of her oshi. All the money she made from working part-time went to going to his concerts, buying his goods, and supporting him as any hardcore fan would. The support of her oshi borders on obsession. What will Akari do now that she has nothing to live for?

Rin Usami’s story is not only a coming-of-age story but also a parable about superfans and their oshi. Usami says in an interview, “To those who are not interested, the act of pursuing an idol can easily be dismissed as ‘only a hobby’ or ‘an unhealthy obsession’”. She further elaborates by saying, “But for some of those who do pursue an idol, it can become a reason to live or even be their salvation”. She wrote the book from the perspective of a superfan as she believes most people do not completely understand them and believes they are widely misunderstood. 

The main point of Usami’s story is for the reader to imagine what they would do, if the “meaning” or the “backbone” of their life were to disappear. How would they survive? What would they do? 

Imagine if you are a hardcore fan of former California Angels’ superstar Shohei Ohtani. What will do now that he is going to become a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers? Will the Internet go on fire because he decided to change teams?

In the age of SNS, there is no telling what people will say. However, if Shohei Ohtani was your oshi, even if he changed teams, wouldn’t he still be your oshi? It’s something to think about.~Ernie Hoyt

If an Elephant Loses Weight, It is Still an Elephant by Aftab Seth (Keio University Press)

Aftab Seth was the Indian ambassador to Japan from 2000 to 2003. He also spent a year as an exchange student at Keio University from 1962 to 1963 and also served in the Indian Embassy between the years 1970 to 1972. He once again returned to Japan in 2004 to become the director and professor of the Global Security Research Institute. 

After coming to Japan in 2000 as Ambassador to Japan, Seth was inundated with requests for interviews by different magazines and newspapers. He also met a number of editors from different newspapers as well. He was asked to summarize his discussions with various journalists by the Yomiuri Shimbun who later published the article. He was then approached by Shodensha (a publishing house) who asked him if he would consider writing about his experiences in Japan from the time he was an exchange student and to give his opinions on the current state of the nation. 

Seth had a series of interviews with the publisher starting in April or May of 2001 and was completed in October. The notes and manuscripts from those interviews became a book that would be published in the Japanese language in December of 2001. 

The English edition of If an Elephant Loses Weight, It is Still an Elephant was edited and revised as “there were several elements in it which would not be well known to non-Japanese readers and therefore would be of little relevance and even somewhat redundant”. Seth amended the text “keeping in mind a wider non-Japanese audience that may be interested in the English version”. 

Seth based the title of the book on a Hindi proverb - Agar Haathi dubla hoga to kitna dubla hoga to describe the Japan that he saw when he returned to the country as Ambassador. The proverb translates to “If the elephant is lean, how lean will it be?”. The author chose the title for this book because “despite 10 years of flat , or even negative growth in the economy, this is still a country with enormous reserves of wealth”. Seth further elaborates by saying that “while the Japanese elephant may be somewhat slimmer, it is still quite robust” He uses the elephant as a metaphor for Japan’s economy and says, “So while the Japanese elephant may have lost a little weight, it is still unmistakably healthy”. 

Seth arrived in Japan for the first time in 1962, a mere ten years after the Occupation of Japan ended. The country was having an economic boom as Tokyo was chosen as the site for the 1964 Summer Olympics. His second stay in the country was in the seventies when Japan was still experiencing economic growth. The World Exposition was held in Osaka in 1970. Plans for a new international airport were being discussed and Japan was on its way to its Bubble Economy. 

Seth’s third extended stay in Japan was in the 2000. The bubble economy had burst and the country was suffering a long period of recession. However, Seth believes that Japan will recover from any problems it may face. He has seen the change in the country by living here at different times and he always finds the spirit of the Japanese people to be positive for the most part. 

As a long time resident of Japan and someone who has lived here continuously for nearly thirty years, it’s more difficult to see the vast changes that Seth saw. Of course you would expect big changes in ten or twenty years time. For me, the economy seems to be taking another downturn as the yen has lost a lot of its value. There was a time when the exchange rate was 360 yen to the dollar. The current rate is now 147 yen to the dollar. At this rate, I may not be able to enjoy visiting my home country. I can only hope that as the Japanese people have prevailed through many hardships that the yen will become strong again so I won’t lose any money when going home! ~Ernie Hoyt

Funaosa Nikki : A Captain's Diary by Hirochika Ikeda, translated by Richard F. Szippl (Chunichi Publishing)

In Edo Era Japan (1600 - 1868), there have been many tales of ships drifting away from the mainland. However, due to the isolationist policy of the Tokugawa government at the time, Japanese ships were only made for coastal trade. If the ships get caught in a storm, they are often blown off course or damaged beyond repair. The ships were not built for trans-ocean travel and many of the drifters have been rescued by Americans, Russian, and Englishmen as well. The survivors of these drifters often spent many years abroad before making it back to Japan. 

One of the best-known of these sea drifters was a man named Manjiro Nakahama who was rescued by an American whaling ship. Manjiro and four others were shipwrecked on the island of Torishima, one of the southernmost islands of the Izu Islands which are all part of Tokyo Prefecture. Only nine of the islands are inhabited. Torishima was one of the uninhabited islands. The five men were rescued by an American whaling ship and were taken to Honolulu.

Manjiro was only fourteen-years-old at the time. He wanted to stay with the ship so the captain of the whaling vessel, Captain William H. Whitfield took him back to the U.S. where Manjiro would study English. Manjiro would later return to Japan and become a translator and interpreter after the opening of Japan to the rest of the world

Funaosa Nikki : A Captain’s Diary is the story of a lesser known account of a ship drifting at sea. Led by a man named Jukichi, he and his crew of thirteen men were blown off course during a storm and drifted for seventeen months on the Pacific Ocean before being rescued by a British merchant vessel captained by Captain William J. Pigot. At the time of their rescue, the only remaining survivors were Jukichi and two of his crew.

As noted in the book’s subtitle, this is “Jukichi’s Four-year Odyssey across the Pacific, through California, Alaska, Kamchatka, and back to Japan, 1813-1817”. It was written by Hirochika Ikeda after he met Jukichi ten years after his ordeal. Many stories were already written about Jukichi’s experience but Ikeda was “more interested in the account of the year and five months he spent adrift than in the strange things in foreign countries”.

Ikeda listened to and made a record of Jukichi’s story which resulted in this book. He had intended to only share it with his family. He wanted them “to appreciate just how fortunate they were, being able to live without want, without starving or freezing, unlike people such as Jukichi, who have suffered such extreme and tragic hardships”. 

One must take into account that Ikeda wrote this forward to the book in the fall of 1822. The first English translation of Funaosa was done in 1984 by Katherin Plummer in the journal Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.

Richard F. Szippl, a long time resident of Japan, was approached by Dr. Muramatsu Suzuki who asked for his cooperation in translating the book as one of former high school teachers discoverd the original manuscript in the year 2000. The new edition was to be published on the occasion of the 2005 World Exposition which was to be held in Aichi Prefecture, Jukichi being a native of the area.

Although the title translates to A Captain’s Diary, the book is not written in diary form. It is written in the style of a story “as told to” someone. It may seem like a tall tale as Jukichi relates to Ikeda how his ship’s rudder was damaged in a storm and then set adrift. He relates how his crew thought about taking their own lives and how he tried to remain positive in such a dire situation. 

Jukichi’s experience on the high seas is just as interesting as are his stories he tells of eating pork and beef for the first time, of meeting other foreigners, such as the Russians and Americans. His return to Japan seemed to be more tragic as the isolationist goverment held him under suspicion and often received the same treatment as a common criminal would. 

It is an inspiring story of surviving against all odds. One man who had to face the wrath of nature, the near mutiny of his crew, and of his own despair. And yet, something or some power pushed him to survive at all costs and make it back to his home and to his wife. It is a story that will make you appreciate what you already have. No matter how bad things may seem, there are always others who have suffered more than we can imagine, like Jukichi. ~Ernie Hoyt

Romaji Diary and Sad Toys by Takuboku Ichikawa, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda (Tuttle)

Takuboku Ichikawa was a Japanese poet born in 1886 in  Iwate Prefecture, near current day Morioka City at Joko Temple where his father was the head monk. He moved to Shibutami, also in Iwate Prefecture, a year later. He died at the young age of twenty-six from tuberculosis. 

He is mostly known for writing tanka, a genre of Japanese classical poetry. Unlike haiku which follows an on of 5-7-5, on being a phonetic unit, tanka follows a 5-7-5-7-7 on pattern. However, Ichikawa became famous for breaking with tradition as many of his tanka does not follow the standard pattern, nor does it deal with classical subjects. Ichikawa wrote his tanka to describe the mundane, the ordinary, he wrote them as a diary in poetry form.

Romaji Diary and Sad Toys is actually a collection of two books in one volume. The first half of the book, Romaji Diary, originally published as ロマジ日記 (Romanji Nikki) was a diary the Ichikawa wrote between the months April and June in 1909 before his death. 

The latter half of the the book, Sad Toys, which was originally published in the Japanese language as 悲しき玩具 (Kanashiki Gangu), is a collection 194 of Ichikawa’s tanka translated into English by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda. 

Ichikawa had been living in Tokyo for a year when he started writing his diary. He had yet to send for his family because he didn’t feel he would be able to support them. It appears Ichikawa wrote his diary as a means to leave the stress he felt from what he thought were his own shortcomings. 

In one his earliest entries, he writes, “Why have I decided to write this diary in Roman letters? What’s the reason? I love my wife, and for the very reason I love her, I don’t want her to read it.” Many of his entries are full of contradictions. He goes on to write, “I love her is the truth, and that I don’t want her to read it is equally true, but these two statements aren’t necessarily connected. 

Ichikawa continued to write his diary until his wife and daughter came to Tokyo to live with him. Reading his diary, you can feel his frustration at not being able to achieve what he set out to do. He is often cynical and self-loathing. He often praises his wife but then in another entry, wonders why he even got married. 

The latter half of the book, Sad Toys, is a collection of Ichikawa’s tanka. In this edition, the publisher includes the Japanese original which were all written in three lines. The translators not only provide the English equivalent of each tanka but have also included their own interpretations and explanations of each to make it easier for the reader to understand them.

As with his Romaji Diary, his tanka are also little stories about himself, how he felt at a certain time, what his exact thoughts were. Some of the tanka are about his friends, others are about his family, and there are a few about a woman he became very infatuated with although their friendship remained platonic. 

As a recent resident of the Tohoku area of Japan, I have become quite interested in regional authors. Not as many of their works have been translated into English with the exception of Osaumu Dazai. If you want to expand your knowledge of Japanese literature and want to read more than just Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, or Soseki Natsumi, you may find the works of Takuboku Ichikawa to be an interesting alternative. You might even think of it as a breath of fresh air. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Girl with the White Flag by Tomiko Higa, translated by Dorothy Britton (Kodansha International)

The Girl with the White Flag was originally published as 白旗の少女 (Shirohata no Shojo) in 1989 by Kodansha. It is a memoir of Tomiko Higa’s experiences she had during the last days of World War 2. She was only seven-years-old when war came to her town. It is the story of how she and her siblings became refugees in their own country and how she became the focus of international attention when a photographer named John Hendrikson took her picture coming out of a cave carrying a white flag. 

Tomiko Higa was born and raised in Shuri, Okinawa which is now part of Naha City, the capital city of Okinawa Prefecture. She was born in 1938, the youngest of nine children. her mother died three weeks after she turned six years old. It was March 19, 1944. Her two eldest sisters were already married and had moved out of the house. Her two older brothers were serving in the Imperial Army, one in China, the other working on the mainland. That left Tomiko, her two older sisters Yoshiko and Hatsuko, and her older brother Chukuyo at the family home.

American soldiers landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945. A month later, bombs and shells began to fall near Tomiko’s house. Their father gathered his children together and told them, “If by any chance there is an enemy attack in this immediate area while I am away and I can’t get back, you will each have to decide for yourself what to do”. He left it up to his oldest daughter to look after her younger brother and sisters. It would be the last time they would see their father. 

Yoshiko, the eldest of the five, said that they should follow their father’s instructions and head south. They managed to scrape by with a little food and spent their nights in caves which are abundant in Okinawa. Some of the places they stayed were already full of refugees and in some caves there were the remains of human bones.

As the children continued to walk south, they made a stop to rest. They dug holes in the ground to sleep in. Tomiko and her brother made more of a hollow, just big enough to hold their bottoms. They were awakened just a few hours later by soldiers who told them there would soon be fighting in the area. As Tomiko tried to wake up her brother, she noticed that he was sleeping with his eyes wide open. 

Yoshiko, the oldest sister, took the cloth that was wrapped around his head and “saw that his head had a hole in it and there was blood all over the back of his head and on his shoulders and down his back”. It was explained later to Tomiko that her brother was hit by a stray bullet and probably died instantly. 

As they fled Komesu, Tomiko, who had always held Chukuyo’s hand, clutched her sister’s dress as they continued to flee to the south. However, when she looked up, she was staring into a stranger’s face. She looked for her sister Yoshiko and Hatsuko but could not find either one of them. Now, she really was all alone. 

As Tomiko continued to head south, going from cave to cave, calling out for her sisters, people would either tell her to be quiet or leave. Some even threatened her with death. One of the final caves she came to was occupied by an elderly man and a blind woman. Tomiko also noticed something strange about the man. “Both his arms had been amputated at the elbows and both his legs at the knees”. 

It was these two invalids who probably saved Tomiko’s life. It was the two who made the white flag for Tomiko to hold high when coming out of the cave. She was led to a beach where there were other women and children and she was reunited with her sisters.

This is one of the saddest but most inspiring stories you will read about children surviving the horrors of war. Thanks to her father’s strict upbringing, her brother’s knowledge of edible plants, and the kindness of strangers, Tomiko was alive and well. She would also meet John Hendrickson, the man who took the picture forty-three years ago. If only all wars could end with such a happy ending. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Dark Side : Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals by Mark Schreiber (Kodansha International)

Japan has an image of being a very safe country. People say you can leave your bag or wallet on the train and nobody will steal it. The image most people have of Japanese people is that they are very polite. Then along comes Mark Schreiber to dispel many of those myths. 

Schreiber is a long-time resident of Japan and has worked as a freelance journalist and translator. His first book was Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan which was first published in 1996 by Tuttle Publishing. 

The Dark Side : Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals makes a nice companion piece to his first book. It is based on his series titled Crime and Punishment in Old Japan which he wrote for the Mainichi Daily News, publisher of one of Japan’s English language newspapers. 

In this book, Schreiber goes back in time and starts with the crimes and criminals from the Edo Era (1603-1868) and explains the roots of Japan’s legal system and judiciary process starting with the age of the Shogun, the Tokugawa reign. He takes us through the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the Taisho Era (1912-1226), and ends the book with crime stories from the Showa (1926-1989) and Heisei (1989-2019) Eras. As the book was published in 2001, stories from the Reiwa Era (2019-present) are not included. 

According to Schreiber’s research, the roots of Japanese law date back to the Tokugawa era. In 1635, The Shogunate created the Roju, a group of five senior councilors from large fiefdoms, who served the Tokugawa shoguns. Below them was the Hyojosho, a judicial council that included three main departments, the JIsha bugyo which oversaw the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. The Kanjo bugyo which was the treasury department, and the Machi bugyo, an office similar to that of the mayor or governor. It was the Machi bugyo that was responsible for ordinary civil and criminal cases.

One of the first criminals in seventeenth century Japan was a man known as Hirai (or Shirai) Gonpachi. He was a member of a low-ranking samurai family but had a very quick temper. A fight broke out between a couple of dogs owned by Gonpachi’s father and another samurai named Honjo Suketaro. The samurai said something offensive to Gonpachi’s father and when Gonpachi learned of that, he became very angry. He forced his way into Suketaro’s home and killed the man with a sword. He then became a fugitive and an outlaw but eventually turned himself in. Of course he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was only twenty-five. 

As with any society, it isn’t only men who are criminals. Feudal Japan had their fair share of women who committed crimes. However, as women were considered second-class citizens, the courts were more lenient with them. They didn’t suffer from branding or flogging. They were usually let off with a kitto shikari, a severe scolding. More like a big slap on the hand. 

The Meiji Era opened the country to foreigners so it goes without saying that more crimes were committed against the unwanted visitors from nationalistic samurais. However, the Western world was better armed and the Shogunate Era came to an end. The introduction of Western ideas was soon adopted as well. The West helped to change Japan’s feudal legal system. No longer was beheading a punishment for the convicted, nor was the displaying of the severed head. 

The Taisho Era lasted only fifteen years but another problem sprouted for the country during this time. It saw an increase in juvenile crime. However, instead of condemning these youths to death, a man named Kosuke Tomeoka set up a training school and farm in Hokkaido to reform them. His work is similar to Father Edward Flanagan’s creation of Boys Town, official known as Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home who believed “children had a right to be valued, to have basic necesseties of life and to be protected”.

Going into the Showa and Heisei Eras, Schreiber introduces the reader to a few notorious criminals. One of the most famous was Tsutomu Miyazaki. a serial killer who preyed on young girls. Between August 1988 and June 1989, he killed four girls, ages four to seven. After he killed them, he molested their corpse, then dismembered them and also consumed some of their flesh. He was caught, convicted, and then executed on June 17, 2008.

In the Heisei Era, one of the most abhorrent crimes took place on Tokyo’s busy subway system. Members of the Doomsday Cult, AUM Shinrikyo, led by Shoko Asahara, released sarin gas on three different lines of the Tokyo Metro causing thirteen fatal casualties and injuring thousands of others. Fortunately, Asahara and most of those responsible for the sarin attacks were caught, tried, and convicted. Asahara was executed by hanging on July 8, 2018. 

Japan is currently in the Reiwa Era and one of the most shocking crimes was commited during this period. The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot and killed on July 8, 2022 in Nara Prefecture during a political event. How could this have happened? Where did the perpetrator get a gun? Why were the secret service so slow to respond? Although the suspect was apprehended, it reinforces the dangers of crime and criminals and the need for precautions against such people.

It doesn’t matter what era, what country or even what religion is invovled. As long as there are people with differing views, conflicts and wars will continue. The wish for World Peace may be an idealistic fantasy but it is something worth striving for. ~Ernie Hoyt

Totto-chan's Children : A Goodwill Journey to the Children of the World by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton (Kodansha International)

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi is a Japanese actress, a popular television talk-show host, and is the author of the acclaimed book Totto-chan : The Little Girl at the Window (reviewed on December 14, 2019). In February of 1984, she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), currently known as United Nations Children’s Fund whose main purpose is to provide humanitarian and developmental aid to children all over the world. She held the position until 1996. 

Totto-chan’s Children is the story of her travels to countries in Africa, Asia, and other nations to visit the people who are most at risk from malnutrition, disease, and conflicts - the children. Originally published in 1997 by Kodansha as トットちゃんとトットちゃんたち (Totto-chan to Totto-chan Tachi). The title is a play on words. Totto-chan was what Kuroyanagi called herself when she was a child. Totto is also the word for “child” in Swahili, one of the official languages of Tanzania which was the first country Kuroyanagi would visit as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. 

Kuroyanagi’s visited Tanzania in 1984. The country was suffering from a severe drought. It hadn’t rained since 1981 and because there was no rain, no crops could be grown. “Everyday, nearly six hundred children under the age of five were dying of starvation and disease”. 

Kuroyanagi thought she knew a lot about starving children being a child growing up in wartime Japan. Her visit to Tanzania opened her eyes to what real starvation is. She met children who could neither stand, nor walk or talk. However, none of the children she met shed any tears or said anything. Later in the evening she was told by a village chief who told her, “Adults die groaning, complaining of their pain, but children say nothing. They simply die silently, under the banana leaves, trusting us adults”. 

Her travels to Asia would take her to Cambodia and Vietnam in 1988 where she would see the children who suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime. Children whose parents were killed, malnourished children because there was no powdered milk or anything nourishing for the kids to eat. Many of the nurses themselves were orphans and did not know how to take care of babies.

In Vietnam, she visited a night elementary school. She was told there about a million school-age children in Ho Chi Minh City. Of these, “about sixty thousand either bravely went to work each day to contribute to the household economy, looked after their younger siblings or helped with the housework and, therefore, could not attend elementary school in the daytime. The night elementary schools were for their benefit”. 

An elementary night school for children. Americans would be hard-pressed to understand a need for such a facility. It may not seem as strange to the Japanese, where many elementary school students attend night classes at cram schools after their regular school. 

In 1990, Kuroyanagi visited Bangladesh, known at the time of this writing, to be one of the poorest nations in the world. In this country about nine hundred thousand children under the age of five die each year. She visited the country after it suffered a severe flood wiping out nearly one-third of the nation. Many of the children were afflicted with diarrhea or diarrhea-related diseases. However, what really surprised Kuroyanagi were the children. She says, “There was not a child who had become lethargic and spiritless. They bubbled with the will to live”. 

Kuroyanagi also visited Iraq in 1991 shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf War. In this conflict which most of us have seen on television, we have not seen the real tragedy of war because the ones are most affected are the innocent children and news programs usually don’t focus on the aspect of the conflict.

Every country Kuroyanagi visits is inundated with children in need. Fortunately, UNICEF continues to do what it was intended to do, that is to help children in need all around the world. It’s a sad state of affairs that throughout the world, war, conflict, disease, famine, and starvation continues. We are often left to think, “How can I be of more help?”, “Is the more I can do?”

The book does provide a reference for those wishing to contribute to UNICEF through Tetsuko Kurayanagi’s goodwill ambassador account in Tokyo. ~Ernie Hoyt

Kwaidan : Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn (ICG Muse)

Lafcadio Hearn was born in Greece on the Ionian island of Lefkada. His mother was a native of Greece and his father was a British Army medical officer. It was as an adult that Hearn moved to Japan to work as a newspaper correspondent. He fell in love with the country and managed to get a teaching position in Shimane Prefecture where he would meet and marry his wife, Setsuko Koizumi. He then became a Japanese citizen and took on the name Yakumo Koizumi. 

He is mostly known as the first foreigner to introduce Japanese literature to the rest of the world. His book Kwaidan is a collection of Japanese ghost stories, some of which have a Chinese origin. It was originally published in 1904 as 怪談 (Kaidan) in the Japanese language. 怪談meaning “Ghost Stories”. He appears to have made a play on words with the English title as kowai means “scary” and dan meaning “story”, “conversation”, or “talk”.

In the introduction of the book which Hearn wrote in 1904, he says most of the stories were taken from old Japanese books. He mentions that some of them have their origins in China but “the Japanese storyteller, in every case, has so recolored and re-shaped his borrowing as to naturalize it”. 

The lead story, Mimi Nashi Hoichi is a very popular story. Almost every Japanese person knows it. It is about a blind minstrel named Hoichi who could play the biwa, a Japanese lute, and was really good at telling The Tale of Heike. Especially his rendition of the Battle of Dan-no-Ura.

He made his home at a temple with a friendly pirest. His skill was so great that he was called to perform in front of a noble samurai when the main priest was absent. The nobleman was so pleased with his performance that he sent his servant to call upon Hoichi again.

The priest thought there was something strange about Hoichi’s behavior and had some of his servants follow him the next day. They discovered Hoichi playing his biwa in a cemetery in front of the tomb of Antoku Tenno, Japan’s 81st Emperor whose grandfather drowned him when he was only seven during the Battle of Dan-no-Ura. He did this so that the enemy wouldn’t capture the child emperor.

The priest told him he was bewitched by ghosts but he would protect him by writing sutras over Hoichi’s entire body. He was to remain silent and motionless when called upon again. The servant of the nobleman, who we now realize is also a spirit, called upon Hoichi but was angered because Hoichi did not answer him. The sutras the priest wrote rendered his body invisible. The only part of Hoichi’s body the servant could see were Hoichi’s ears. He ripped them off to show his master that the ears were the only part of Hoichi that he could find. 

When the priest returned to see a bloody and injured Hoichi, he admonished himself and apologized to Hoichi telling that he neglected to write any sutras over his ears. However, the priest nursed Hoichi back to health and Hoichi became a famous musician. 

Other stories include Yukki-Onna which is about a woman who is dressed in white and breathes cold air onto sleeping men and takes their lives. Riki Baka is about a simple boy whose mother wished and prayed that he would be reborn into a happier life. 

It’s a great introduction into Japanese folklore. Not all the stories are ghost stories but they are strange. Aside from the bizarre stories, Hearn has included three essays on insects - butterflies, mosquitoes, and ants, and how they relate to Japanese and Chinese beliefs.

The ghost stories are fun and might seem a little quirky to the Western reader and while I enjoyed the insect essays, I thought it was an interesting concept but a bit hard to absorb. ~Ernie Hoyt

Shutting Out the Sun : How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation by Michael Zielenziger (Vintage)

Michael Zielenziger is an American journalist who spent seven years as the Bureau Chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers based in Tokyo. Before he moved to Tokyo, he worked as the Pacific Rim correspondent for the San Jose Mercury News. As Zielenziger moved to Japan in 1995, a few short years after the bubble economy burst, he was witness to disturbing social trends that may affect the future of Japan. 

Shutting Out the Sun is the story of the social trends and how Japan got to be the way it is. He argues that “Japan’s tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution”. Some of the trends he focuses on are the “hikikomori” and the “parasite singles”. 

Zielenziger says the purpose of this book is not to focus on politics or economics but “to unravel the unusual social, cultural, and psychological constraints that have stifled the people of this proud, primordial nation and prevented change from bubbling up from within”. 

He first focuses on the hikikomori, “young men who lock themselves in their rooms and find little solace in the larger society”. The other social trend he explores are the parasite singles, women who continue to live with their parents, refuse to get married, and choose not to have any children. 

Zielenziger starts off his book on Japan’s lost generation by sharing the story of Princess Masako who in 2004, eleven years after her marriage, disappeared from public view. The Imperial Household Agency acknowledged that the Crown Princess was currently suffering from an “adjustment disorder” whose symptoms are described as sleeplessness and anxiety. Although she is a woman, you could argue that she was the first person to become a hikikomori.

The hikikomori, mostly males who have chosen to withdraw from society, lock themselves in their rooms,  sometimes for months or years, and never come out. Zielenziger says they cannot be diagnosed as schizophrenics or mental defectives. “They are not depressives or psychotics; nor are they classic agoraphobics, who fear public spaces but welcome friends into their own home”. 

What leads these men to become recluses who seem to be afraid of their own shadows. The majority of the hikikomori that Zeienziger was able to interview all mentioned feeling alienated or different. Many of them were bullied in school or at work because they did not conform to the majority way of thinking. As Japan stifles individuality and creative thinking, those who do are usually ostracized, ignored or bullied. 

The other social disorder which became prominent after the bubble economy burst are the parasite singles. A term coined by a sociologist named Masahiro Yamada which he used in 1999 to describe “women who shop avidly, travel abroad on fancy vacations, and prefer to ‘live for the moment’ rather than marry or start a family. 

The reasons the women gave Zielenziger for adamant refusal to marry and have children is the fact that the “Japanese system is not fully prepared for both men and women to work while having children. It’s the woman who raises the child”. She tells Zeilenziger she would have to choose between her baby and her job and she is not ready to give up her career. 

Another reason why many women refuse to marry and have children is because of the “feudal attitudes that still govern marriiage and family life, the crippling economic costs of child-rearing, and a pervasive pessessism endemic to the nation ''. 

This attitude still holds true today. Japanese men want their wives to quite their jobs so they can keep house and raise children. It’s the same attitude of American males in the fifties when men believed that women should be barefoot and pregnant.

Until the nation as a whole changes its way of thinking, the social disorders of hikikomori and parasite singles are not likely to fade away. It’s currently 2023 and Japan doesn’t seem to have made any progress to keep up with the trend of globalization.

I’ve been living in this nation for almost thirty years but even I know I will always remain an “outsider” in this “closed society”, no matter how well I can speak the language and understand the country’s customs. 

As sad as it may be, I tend to agree with the author who concludes that “a nation unwilling to acknowledge - or adapt to - its internal dislocations ends up closing like a clam shell to preserve what it has”. ~Ernie Hoyt