Tokyo Buddha
I (HEART) Lord Buddha is a well-written, very sexy and very Tokyo first novel by Hillary Raphael.
Set in the late 1990s in, yes, Tokyo, the novel tells a very interesting story of a group called “the Neo-Geisha Organization”, and yes, as you might have guessed, it’s a kind of sex-and-death cult with hedonist ideology. Aum? Not quite.
In this case, the cult is led by Hiyoko, a leggy gaijin charmer “with a penchant for Eastern philosophy and drug-fuelled sex binges,” as the cover notes state. And her followers? Most of them are foreign women working in Tokyo’s hostess bar business.
The author’s style is experimental and not your grandmother’s Oldsmobile, if you catch my drift. Highly recommended for people have lived in Tokyo before or are living there now. Other people might not understand.
This is a first novel that reads like manga, sounds like hard techno, and feels like some kind of fetish. Weighing in at 192 pages and retailing for around US$15, it’s a work of postmodern chick-lit literature worth looking into. If Raphael ever sells the movie rights, look out Hollywood! And Japan!
Well, your discription of the book is interesting to say the least, I’ll give it a look.
April 12th, 2006 at 6:16 amyawn…
April 12th, 2006 at 9:31 amSeriously though,maybe Michiko Kakutani (NYT)will
April 12th, 2006 at 10:21 amcome through with a review..can’t wait.
“Michiko Kakutani Is a Lousy Critic” some say
[It doesn’t have quite the same ring as Dale Peck’s infamous line, nor does Ben Yagoda’s curent Slate column carry the same bite — but nonetheless, he finds that she is unworthy. “Kakutani doesn’t offer the stylistic flair, the wit, or the insight one gets from Kael and other first-rate critics; for her, the verdict is the only thing. One has the sense of her deciding roughly at Page 2 whether or not a book is worthy; reading the rest of it to gather evidence for her case; spending some quality time with the Thesaurus; and then taking a large blunt hammer and pounding the message home.”
Question: who is Michiko Kakutani, remora?
April 12th, 2006 at 2:09 pmWell, Peter Carey (Booker Prize winner)/”Wrong about Japan” probaly asks himself the same question :- Who the hell is Michiko Kakutani!(after she gave him a stinking review in NYT)- I doubt whether she would be any gentler with a first time author. Or maybe she would. Who knows?.
April 12th, 2006 at 2:34 pmKakutani gave Jay McInerney’s Ransom an enthusiastic review back then and that’s hardly the best book about Japan by a foreign author, I must say.
April 13th, 2006 at 12:42 amTokyo Buddha
April 13th, 2006 at 1:20 amA Hipshot…”The common belief is that controversy sells.__controversy can be positive or negative but usually it is associated with negativity….”Shahrazad Ali (author)…I agree… Ishihara-san utilizes this strategy almost on a daily basis, and I believe he has a film deal too!! (back to sleep)…
April 13th, 2006 at 6:49 am[...] A kind of a follow-up to Danny Bloom’s post, Hillary Raphael’s second novel, Backpacker, is due out later this year. The promo site for the novel, Tokyo Mon Amour (Backpacker Sex) allows readers to contribute their own stories of, well, backpacker sex. You can also read an excerpt from the book here. [...]
April 13th, 2006 at 6:17 pmHillary writes via email:
1. my collaboration with norwegian genius Torbjørn Rødland has borne
fruit in the form of a huge book, WHITE PLANET, BLACK HEART, published
in germany by Steidl. you can see it here:
2. my forthcoming novel, BACKPACKER, has been excerpted in a british
anthology, out this month on Snow Books. you can see it here:
fireflies & green tea jello,
Hillary
June 14th, 2006 at 3:00 pm[...] cities around the world, including Tokyo, where the seed for her first book I Love Lord Buddha (reviewed here on Japundit) came from, has a new book out titled [...]
July 12th, 2007 at 4:04 pm