Iwa ni Hana

This has to be the funniest series I came across since Usavich – only the comedy is obviously a camouflage for a deeper message about life at large and a prelude to a bittersweet ending.

I think I made a new year wish some years ago that Director Shinbo Akiyuki (新房昭之) would make a come-back artistically and quit wasting his tremendous talent on mindless projects. I am pleased to see that Arakawa Under the Bridge is the challenge he undertook and passed with flying colours. I liked the story so much that after watching all 13 episodes of the first season, I also checked out up to Vol. 10 of the manga by Nakamura Hikaru (中村光), and below are some desultory comments with spoilers.

Arakawa Under the Bridge (荒川アンダー ザ ブリッジ)

1) At the very beginning, the story struck me as being a clever mix of:

• Little Mermaid - Nino rescued Kou’s from drowning in the river and asked him to make her fall in love.
• Kaguya-hime / tennyo tales – Nino has bad memory and may forget Kou if they are parted only for a day. This may foreshadow that Nino will likewise forget Kou when she departs from earth – as tennyo are traditionally said to forget about their earthly life the moment they regain their robe of feathers.
• Tannhäuser - A knight spent a year in a subterranean realm called Venusberg, where he worshiped the goddess Venus. He left it behind to return to God, before eventually returning to Venusberg again. (By the way, Neil Gaiman also created a TV series called Neverwhere inspired by the Tannhäuser legend, and the story is similarly about an underworld of weird individuals.)

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The cover image of Vol. 61 of the magazine "Manga Erotics F"

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1) In the spirit of trying something new in the new decade, I have decided to also blog in Japanese. The address is here.

There are many motives behind this. One of them is that I think it makes more sense to talk in Japanese about books (such as most novels of Kyōgoku Natsuhiko) which will probably never be translated into English. Another is that I recently came across some very impressive blogs in the Japanese blogosphere of people writing kanshi [漢詩], or poetry in the classical Chinese style. That reminds me of all the poetry I write in the classical Heian style which I hide in the drawer. I should try to post them from time to time.

When I was at university (that was a university somewhere in North America, by the way), the way they taught Japanese in the upper years was very old-fashioned. There was no “practical” course like Business Japanese whatsoever. The upper years were spent mostly in learning classical Japanese and – only marginally and as if in a fit of afterthought – modern Japanese literature. That… was the beginning of the slippery slope for me. (I hear that they changed the curriculum right after I graduated though.)

Give me time, and soon I will be blogging in Russian and Korean too (which I am learning just to survive at work).

2) One thing that disappointed me recently was that Nokemono to Hanayome was completely sold out on the first day. I could not get a copy even though I had placed an order. For all the talk of how the manga industry is going down the toilet, it has been years since I last heard of a manga being sold out on the first day.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of Ikuhara “Utena” Kunihiko.

Ikuni has also written about this news on his blog. Let us hope that they will reprint it soon.

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Cover image of the Jan 2010 issue of Comic Beam showing an illustration of "Choukoudou Shujin" by Yamakawa Naohito.

Choukoudou Shujin [澄江堂主人]

News reached me that the manga artist Yamakawa Naohito [山川直人] is launching a new series entitled Choukoudou Shujin [澄江堂主人] on the monthly manga magazine Comic Beam.

When I looked at the illustration on the left, my gut reaction was: “This is just what Chūzenji Akihiko would look like if Yamakawa-sensei were to draw a portrait of him.” Then my second thought was: “Well, since Chūzenji Akihiko was modeled in part after Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, maybe this manga is inspired by Akutagawa after all.” After researching on the internet a bit, it turns out that my gut feeling was right, “Choukoudou Shujin” was indeed one of several literary names by which Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was known.

Details on this manga seem to be scarce at the moment, but I am pleased to see Yamakawa-sensei continuing with his unique trademark medieval-engraving-like drawing style from his previous works such as -

Koohii mou ippai [コーヒーもう一杯]

This is a 5-volume manga series comprised of individual short stories that all have to do with coffee one way or other. Each of them is bittersweet with a philosophical bent. I have always thought this would be the sort of manga that the writer Murakami Haruki [村上春樹]* would have drawn if he were a manga artist. (Or least Murakami in his The Elephant Vanishes phase. I have fallen behind on his more recent works such as 1Q84 but have been told that his artistic/literary style had changed a lot.)

Anyway, my favorite story by far in Koohii mou ippai goes like this:

A man comes home one day and finds the cat he used the keep two years ago waiting for him. The cat has grown up and is apparently running his own successful business. The cat wears a suit and has a handful of employees by his side. They exchange news while drinking coffee, and the cat finally reveals that it has come to watch a movie called Coffee and Cigarette with him. The man is of modest means and has no DVD player, so the cat dispatches one of his underlings to fetch a DVD player at once, and the two of them sit down to watch the movie. During the movie, the man notices that the cat has fallen asleep. The cat apologizes and the man reckons that the cat must be tired from overwork. The man remembers that two years ago, the cat was still only a child, and he wonders what would be the human equivalent of two years in a cat’s life…

I think it is a unique story that illustrates basically the same concept as Shinkai Makoto’s Byousoku 5 Centimeter – that people live and grow at different speeds. On a personal level, it is a theme that I feel more profoundly than anything else. (I often feel like that cat when I meet with people from the past.)

In any case, I recommend Yamakawa-sensei’s works without reserve. Even if you cannot read Japanese, the unique, engraving-like artstyle is a still pleasure to look at. There is always a touch of the fantastical in the artwork, just like the stories themselves. Here are some random pages I scanned after the jump:

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Cover image of Vol.1 of "Nokemono to Hanayome"

I was in luck today. I managed to pick up the current issue of KERA, which is running a special on the manga Nokemono to Hanayome [ノケモノと花嫁]. I have been making noise about it on this blog because the story is written by Ikuhara “Utena” Kunihiko [幾原邦彦] and illustrated by Nakamura Asumiko [中村明日美子]. True to Ikuhara-sensei’s style, the story seems allegorical and endlessly intriguing. Below is my rough translation of the plot summary published on KERA:

Sera Hitsuji and Hagumaduka Itaru are a pair of eloping lovers. They are running away from the police and a group called “Moeru Kirin,” which is formed by children with the aim of rebelling against adults. They stop at a church they happen to pass by, and try to have a wedding there. In the church, there is a priest with bizarre tastes, and two young girls called Maronie and Miyutan who are in middle of their confession. The priest makes Hitsuji and Itaru unconscious out of his own bizarre tastes, and Inumori Eiji and Sera Shougo come to the church with a special order from “Moeru Kirin” to “ensure the safety of Hitsuji and Itaru.” Hitsuji (who has run away from the priest) tries to return to Itaru, but is taken away by Shougo. Itaru escapes with the help of Maronie and Miyutan. However, the kidnapped Hitsuji is confused in her memory, seems to take on another personality altogether, and has forgotten about Itaru. Meanwhile, Itaru has recovered from his wounds with the help of Maronie and Miyutan and tries to help Hitsuji to escape. At that time, back at “Moeru Kirin” Tonakai rebels against Togawa Gin (who tries to wield absolute power), and helps Itaru to search for Hitsuji. While the four of them are searching for Hitsuji, they hear Hitsuji’s cry from an abandoned factory. Hitsuji remembers Itaru again when she sees him. When Itaru tries to help Hitsuji to escape, Eiji beheads Itaru. Just when everyone gets confused, Gin says meaningfully that “he is not dead for sure.” In the midst of confusion, Shougo tries to escape with Hitsuji and is attacked. He vanishes into thin air from the scene just like Itaru before him. Maronie etc are caught by “Moeru Kirin,” and are sentenced to be burned to death by Gin.

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There ought to be a word for Japanese films in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens.

A screencapture of the official website of the film "Yamazakura" (山桜), based on a novel written by Fujisawa Shūhei (藤沢周平).

A while ago, I was watching Yamazakura (2008), an above-average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. Before that, I was watching The Invitation from Cinema Orion (2007), an average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. There are many other Japanese films in which the love story is characterized by what never happened (I mean this in a positive way). These films are a genre in themselves.

History’s sense of black humour

Before I go on, I would like to take a moment to mention the two people – Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I think it must be history’s sense of black humour that just when all the traditional barriers to love such as class, wealth, religion, race and nationality fell apart to a large extent (though not entirely) after the WWI, this pair came along and turned “freedom” itself into a barrier to love.

Personally, I found their idea of “freedom” dubious, but I suppose one must give them credit for managing to turn “freedom” into a prison. I say it is a prison because it seems that under their credo you have the freedom to do what whatever you like… except for the freedom to refrain from doing whatever you like.

Love and harmony

The Japanese humorist Harada Munenori [原田宗典] once mused in his writing that the translation of “love” as ai [愛] back in the Meiji era was a mistake; instead, the more correct expression should have been the word wa [和], or “harmony”. So instead of a girlfriend asking her boyfriend, “do you love me?” [愛してる?], she would ask, “do we harmonize?” [和してる?] and he in turn would reply, “yup, we are harmonized” [うん、和してるよ]. And instead of saying things “love will save the world,” you would say “harmony will save the world”.*

The below is just my opinion. If you look at the word wa, it is comprised of the words for “thousand” [千] and “mouth” [口]. In other words, harmony is made of a thousand voices. Naturally, these thousand voices may all say different things. This makes me think of Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, a manga series I have been reading. You can read more my introduction of this series here.

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Tankouban release of Nokemono to Hanayome [ノケモノと花嫁]

Illustration of "Nokemono to Hanayome"

To those of you who wonder what ever happened to Ikuhara “Utena” Kunihiko [幾原邦彦], I gathered from his blog that a tankouban of his manga collaboration with Nakamura Asumiko [中村明日美子] is to be released in December. This manga is serialized so far on a fashion magazine called KERA. I will be sure to place an order and write more on this when the time comes.

Ikuhara-sensei’s blog entry with a photo of this announcement can be found at: http://www2.jrt.co.jp/cgi-bin3/ikuniweb/tomozo.cgi?no=504

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Cover image of Vol.5 of "Ôoku" by Yoshinaga Fumi. On the cover is the third female shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.

Ôoku must be the first shoujo/josei manga in which the heroine (or at least one of the heroines) had been raped, killed the rapist and given birth to a stillborn child from the first time you see her.

The story is currently being serialized on the manga magazine Melody and it is a historical fantasy set in an alternative Edo era in which:

• The male population had been decimated by an infectious disease, leaving Japan with a male-to-female ratio somewhere between 1 to 4 and 1 to 5.
• Japan implemented the close country policy in order to conceal this demographic crisis from foreigners.
• Gradually women took over the labours of men, and men were free from labour, became very sheltered and had only one contribution to society (ie. reproduction).
• The shogunate came to be headed by a lineage of female shoguns and the Ôoku (the shogun’s harem) was filled by men as i) a reserve military force to protect the shogun in the event of war and ii) to mate with the shogun.

I know you are probably thinking that this must be some sort of escapist fantasy, but I can endorse my name that it is not. It is more like apocalyptic fiction about a demographic crisis that spans across generations. In that alternative world, women for the most part live their lives without fathers, husbands and sons. The female shoguns in the story do find something like romantic love with men (though it seems to me that it is not really in the pattern of what is typically recognized as romantic love – I mean this in a positive way).

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A rare cover image of the magazine "Manga Erotics F" dated 2004 by Fujiwara Kaoru (藤原薫), a very talented josei manga artist who unfortunately seems to have stopped production of new works these days. Her fine sense of aesthetics, stylish drawings and thought-provoking stories will be missed.

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