I recently received an inquiry from a reporter in Sweden who is looking for someone to interview by telephone about popular young Japanese female writers. She says. . .

I’ve read several articles about young japanese female writers conquering the Japanese readers. Risa Wataya, Hitomi Kanehara, for example.

Now, I’d like to do a short piece on this I’m looking for somebody who I can interview - on the telephone - about these new young writers and what they write about, and - who is English-speaking. (Since I don’t speak Japanese, unfortunately.)

Anyone out there knowledgeable enough to take this on?

If you are interested, please contact me at jp(at)japundit.com.

Has anyone out there read this?

Amazon has a synopsis that says. . .

Julian Cope, eccentric and visionary rock musician, hip archaeologist and one time frontman of Teardrop Explodes, follows the runaway underground success of his book “Krautrocksampler” with “Japrocksampler”, a cult deconstruction of Japanese rock music. “Japrocksampler” reveals what really happened when East met West after World War Two and the mayhem that ensued and is a must for anybody interested in modern music and Japanese culture. It explores the clash between traditional, conservative Japanese values and the wild rock ‘n’ roll renegades of the 1960s and 70s and tells the tale of the seminal artists in Japanese post-war culture, from itinerant art-house poets to violent refusenik rock groups with a penchant for plane hijacking. The book concludes with enticing reviews of Julian’s Top 50 Jap Rock albums.

What do you all think of the title Jap Rock Sampler?

According to author Julian Cope, the top two bands of the era he describes are Les Rallizes Denuses and Shinki Speed & Glue. Has anyone ever heard of these groups?

Comments?

Thanks to Tony Kiernan

While we’re waxing nostalgic about Japanese music, crazed rocker Julian Cope has recently published his Japrocksampler (to compliment his earlier but now out of print Krautrocksampler), which, according to the British New Statesman, details the time when:

Tokyo, 1969. The Spiders, the Mops and myriad other identically suited “Group Sound” beat combos making post-Beatles guitar pop are on the decline, as politicised foku geira (folk guerrilla) figures such as the camouflage-clad Dr Acid Seven gain popularity. The city’s Shinjuku district becomes Tokyo’s Haight-Ashbury, filled with young people following the futen ideal - a uniquely Japanese take on the west’s drop-outs, hippies and psychedelic wanderers.

A JAPUNDIT reader who is also a long-term resident of Japan sends in the following passage by Helmut Schoeck in his masterpiece Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior:

In primitive societies, “No one dares to show anything that might lead people to think he was better off. Innovations are unlikely. Agricultural methods remain traditional and primitive, to the detriment of the whole village, because every deviation from previous practice comes up against the limitations set by envy.”

And then asks if it makes us think of any society in particular. . .

Editor’s Note: The following review of Ben Hills’ book was written in February but circumstances did not permit its posting at that time.

Diana and her glamour and angst are gone. Charles and Camilla have wed. Wills shows no sign of marriage any time soon.

But wait. There’s that other royal couple. The one in that far away country. Wasn’t there something in the news about how Princess Masako of Japan is seen as something of a Diana figure?

I’m guessing- and yes, I confess to speculation here - that this is partly how the new book, “Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne” by Ben Hills was born. I say this because as the book traces the early lives of the royal couple - Princess Masako and Crown Prince Naruhito - references to Charles and Diana are thrown in, particularly at the beginning.

It’s hard not to read this book, originally written and published in an English speaking country (Australia) as an attempt to introduce an English speaking audience starved for royal gossip to an enticing new subject. And what a subject it is.

Don’t know how long this link will be good, but go here to see an interview with Ben Hills, author of Princess Masako - Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Scroll down and click Pressures on Princess Masako.

Then you can make up your own mind whether or not Mr. Hills is Rosemary’s baby.

Ben Hills, the author of Princess Masako, Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne, a controversial biography of Crown Princess Masako that is scheduled for release in Japanese in September, has received death threats over the book. Publisher Daisan-Shokan also has been subjected to protests by right-wing nationalist groups.

Hills said he has received several email death threats, via his website, in the lead-up to the Japanese publication. “They were saying things like, ‘Die white pork!’ They were quite racist,” Hills said.
The emails were sent anonymously, Hills said, adding that the senders did not identify themselves as part of any organization.

Kodansha Ltd., which was originally set to publish the Japanese version, pulled out after the contents of the book were criticized by the Japanese Imperial Household Agency. Daisan-Shokan agreed to publish the Japanese version in the spirit of free speech.

In an email written to Hills, which Kyodo News has obtained, the publisher’s president, Akira Kitagawa, said a Japanese ultra-nationalist group visited company’s office on Aug 10 and demanded the publication be pulled.

“Just now, two black cars with ultra-nationalistic slogans on them are parking besides the building where my company address is. They are shouting hysterically, ‘Stop the publication of Princess Masako’ with huge loudspeakers,” the email said.

“Policemen are just watching them and let them do as much as they want to do. This is how your book is getting more and more popular in Japan before being published,” Kitagawa said.

Publication of the Japanese version is also being resisted by more respectable segments of the Establishment. Asahi Shimbun reportedly has refused to carry an advertisement for the book because it is disrespectful to the royal family.

Hills said he was deeply disturbed by the recent events.

“The Japanese establishment is just trying to censor my book and it really is quite outrageous. It’s censorship pure and simple,” he said.

As for how the book will be received in Japan once published, Hills said he hopes readers will make up their own minds.

“The Japanese will be able to read it and judge for themselves. To me, it’s really not important whether they like it or they don’t like it. They have got to read it and make their own minds up. It’s obviously going to be a controversial book. It criticizes some sacred cows,” he said.

Thanks to remora and robin

After the furor on this blog (and elsewhere) over a racist comic being sold in Japan, I thought maybe some of you guys could help out with a similar problem in the UK.

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is calling on high street books to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves over claims it is racist. Complaints about Tintin in the Congo have led to Borders and Waterstones moving it to their adult section.

A spokeswoman said the book contained “words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ’savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles”.

Borders said they are committed to let their “customers make the choice”.

Joking aside, I’m sure the Tintin book is not as bad as the afore-mentioned one that was being sold in Japan. But does that mean there is an “acceptable limit” of racism that one can retail?

Or is it not a problem because Belgium itself was fairly racist in the colonial era?

Is moving a book like this to the adult section enough?

Should it be completely banned, or is this a rather daft and overly reactionary campaign?

One has to remember that this is a children’s book, even if some adults still enjoy reading it. Personally I think that the CRE is overreacting - I’m not sure I would even support it being moved to the adult’s section. For one thing, a child could still buy the book if he/she went to look for it. For another, people need to learn how to detect and deal with racism. Sweeping it under the carpet won’t make it go away.

She’s back!

Hillary Raphael, who divides her time among a dozen 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 Backpacker.

The subtitle says it all: “New York, Seoul, Phnom Penh, Sapporo, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Mexico City, Maputo, Tokyo, mon amour”.

It’s a story about gorgeous redhead with a dead Japanese boyfriend, a dominatrix mentor, and a flair for threesomes.

Got that? And her name is Helena, whose only real interest is travelling to new corners of the globe where she can smoke hash and hear techno.

160 pages of pure fun!

Hikikomori by Ellen Kennedy and Tao Lin claims to be the first novel about hikikomori published in English.

You can read it in its entirity here.

Two books I’ve recently finished reading offer portraits of women in contemporary Japan, but come to very different conclusions about their prospects.

There is the eponymous subject of the Ben Hill’s biography, Princess Masako.

“There is no happy ending to this story . . . . as the fourteenth anniversary of their wedding loomed . . . there was nowhere to go, no alternative to Masako continuing to sacrifice herself for the sake of her country’s outdated imperial institutions—and her father’s family honor . . . She will live to regret the rainy summer’s day that she surrendered to well-meant notions of duty and honour and gave up her life for her country.”

Oh, the oppressive Japanese and the poor women who live in that society.

Then there is the thesis of Veronica Chamber’s excellent new work of non-fiction, Kickboxing Geishas (Note to the publisher: Why did you put a non-Japanese woman on the cover? Or am I missing something?). From the flap copy.

“Forget the stereotypes. Today’s Japanese women are shattering them—breaking the bonds of tradition and dramatically transforming their culture . . . the . . story is that of legions of everyday women . . . who have kicked off a revolution in their country.”

You must have read the previous post by alexpappas about the “CIA Recruited Japanese War Criminals” story. Like that one, this is not really about USA even though some gaijin in Japan may be involved. But mostly adding some further details to that post about things that were definitely happening in Japan at that time.

But it does seem incredible that “The informants, many of whom were held as war criminals after Tokyo’s surrender and subsequently released, operated under the patronage of Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, a German-born, monocle-wearing admirer of Mussolini, a staunch anti-Communist and, as the chief of G-2 in the occupation government, considered second in power only to his boss, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.” [Associated Press]

But there’s a new book filling in some further detail to the same period. First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War was compiled by Anthony Weller, son of George Weller, the Pulitzer Prize– winning war correspondent for the Chicago Daily News.

In September 1945, four weeks after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, George passed himself off as a senior American officer and filed a series of dispatches and photos documenting the material and human devastation. Unfortunately, General MacArthur censored the dispatches, and Weller’s account remained unpublished until his son found the carbon copies sixty years later.

MacArthur had a pretty tight grip on information at the time, since journalists were not allowed anywhere near Hiroshima or Nagasaki–in fact, they weren’t even allowed to visit Tokyo. I think they were allowed to see basically only what MacArthur and Willoughby wanted them to see. The Publishers Weekly review says:

The first Westerner to tour the city’s ruins, Weller talked with doctors at the makeshift hospitals and scoured the countryside in search of the POW camps scattered across southern Japan over several weeks. Weller’s dispatches from Nagasaki are riveting even at this late date, though they are only a small part of the book. His extensive interviews with POWs mostly reinforce what we already know about their brutal treatment. The book also offers an account of one of the so-called “death ships” that carried POWs from the Philippines to Japan, and a 1966 essay on Weller’s experiences in Nagasaki.

Booklist says “The account is, at first, curious. Weller describes the destruction of the city in a detached, unemotional manner; however, once he visits the shell of a hospital and views the suffering of children with acute radiation burns, his mask of objectivity falls away. Weller graphically recounts the slow, painful agony of children dying from radiation poisoning, yet he does not engage in guilt-ridden breast-beating over America’s crime.”

Like Publishers Weekly concluded, “On balance, Weller’s dispatches are a welcome addition to the historical record.”

But it must have been a strange time, with monocled Nazis occupying the country, preventing any accurate information from leaking out, and hiring war criminals as spies who figured they could make more money being yakuzas anyway! It’s a wonder the master plan for Japan’s future didn’t work out permanently as intended–or did it?

Now that the saga of the Gyogaku No Gaijin Hanzai Ura File (Shocking Foreigner Crime Underground File), the campaign against it, and even the publisher’s statement about it is old news, THE JAPAN TIMES has finally gotten around to covering it.

Though it provides a pretty extensive recap on this stale old story, it makes not a single mention of the Japan-based English-language bloggers who were so instrumental in keeping the story alive while it was unfolding and forcing Family Mart and other stores to remove the publication from their shelves.

Read the article here.

I recently wrote an email to Ben Hills, author of Princess Masako–Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne, to tell him about the discussion we are having here. I even invited him to drop in and take part if he felt so inclined. Understandably, he politely declined the invitation, but he sent back the statement below which he had previously issued to various wire services.

In his reply to me, Mr. Hills also had the following to say:

I would invite your subscribers to check on the history of the Chang book, and to note the remarkable similarities to my case. The book was a worldwide bestseller, a Japanese publisher agreed to translate it and publish it in Japan, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington called a Press conference to denounce its “innacuracies” (which no other historians in the world had noticed in their favourable reviews of the book) — and, lo and behold, the Japanese publisher declined to go ahead with the publication, citing “errors.” Sound familiar?

He also said but that he would be happy to reply to resonable questions from JAPUNDIT readers that are sent to him through me, so here is your chance. Please use the comments below this note to ask any questions you might have about the Mr. Hills or the the book, and I will be happy to send them along.

Kazunobu Kakishima, editor at Kodansha, denied the company was scrapping the Japanese translation because of the government’s protest.

The decision, he said, came after Ben Hills refused to acknowledge making factual errors during an interview with a Japanese TV station.

“We have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to maintain trustworthy relations with the author and thus we were forced to cancel the book.”

Three other publishers in Japan have contacted Hills, according to the AP report, and one of them might publish the book later.

Stay tuned.

For those who are still interested in the content of the the Foreigner Crime File book that caused so much trouble a short while back, someone has scanned the whole thing and posted the pages here.

Also, the publisher has issued a statement spelling out their position on the whole matter, which you can read here.

On the Japanese side, the “foreign criminal” is a beast who lurks everywhere and wants nothing more than to destroy Japanese people and their way of life. Whether it’s a North Korean agent kidnapping our daughters or a Chinese thief invading our homes, many Japanese are convinced that foreigners should be treated with suspicion and fear.

This attitude makes it impossible to have an informed conversation about where real foreign criminals come from, or the reason they commit their crimes. In fact, one of my goals in publishing “Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu” was to help begin a frank discussion of the issue.

On the other side, many foreigners consider any suggestion that they engage in lewd or criminal behavior to be an unacceptable insult. This can be seen quite clearly in the reaction our magazine elicited in the Western media, and especially in the online community. The army of bloggers who bullied FamilyMart convenience stores into removing “Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu” from their shelves have decided for everyone else that this book is so dangerous that it cannot be read.

Thanks to Peter.

It has been reported all over the news today, about Ben Hills, who recently wrote a book about Princess Masako and her life in the Imperial family. One Japan-based reporter who was misquoted in the book, along with others, apparently, wrote this open letter about the issue back in December.

Oops. Just like some conspiracy writers in Japan, who have authored strange books about the Hebrews, along comes a chap in South Korea who has done something similar.

One of South Korea’s most prolific and leading authors, Professor Lee Won-bok, in a new book from his series, Monnara Iunnara (Distant Countries and Neighboring Countries) –which studies countries in a comic book format and for the last 20 years have sold over 10 million copies to South Koreans — has published images in his book that reportedly echo classic Nazi canards about Jews like those found in Der Sturmer and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by recycling various Jewish conspiracies like Jewish control of the media and world finance, Jews profiting from war, and even the reason for the 9/11 attacks was due to the Jews. Or something like that. Maybe our Japundits in Korea can explain all this in the comments section.

I doubt there is any real antisemitism in South Korea since there are so few Jews living there.