I considered long and hard whether or not to post up a presentation I recently gave at a family reunion, because it's intensely personal, and at times neither logical or methodologically rigorous. It's a product of my private mental battle with the field of Japanese history, and my own family. But personal as it is, this is where I stand on Japan, China and History.
I've been running. Recently, I shelled out for a pair of new running shoes, not the 'heavy man's running shoes' that have been weighing my feet down like squishy anchors. These are the new Asics DS-XI which seem to approximate a beloved pair of trainers I had in Japan, but which seem to have been discontinued.
I'm a shadow that haunts these idyllic streets. When I run, I trace the same paths as every other suburb-dweller, but only when they're asleep or away at work. Nobody sees me, and I see nobody. Today, I clocked a mile at 5:31, my fastest time in 14 years. And nobody saw :P
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Burgeoning on the bough
Summer deepens in NJ; cucumbers are ready, and seem to grow an inch a day. Meanwhile, pears are languidly plumping themselves up on the bough. I can scarcely wait until September.
Novel 396 was intended to be Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, but I was forced to abort after only the first, "The Good Anna." I was much more interested in Truman Capote's dazzlingly wicked Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys. There's a half century between these two female character studies, and also a certain gender and orientation gap between Capote and Stein. Not surprisingly, there's not much to see in common between the two. In one sense, the stern, German scolding Anna, would be quite the match for the bewitching, impetuous, and ultimately damaged Holiday Golightly. Why do I feel like I've met various versions of Holly somewhere? And why does it seem like Murakami Haruki's various female characters tend to bear much in common with her? There's a silky dose of Sputnik Sweetheart in there. And perhaps Wild Sheep Chase as well. What is it with male authors and their fixation with call-girls? (I'm not fishing for a response actually, I know the answer instinctively.)
Stein on the other hand, is a bully with prose. The originator of the slightly deranged "a rose is a rose is a rose," she makes it her mission to bring the world back into our language, which has become so comfortably empty that we no longer see or smell the "rose" anymore. Her three lives thus are filled with the air of everyday real life, with all its cumbersome verisimillitude.
One more comparison before I sleep. Park Chan-wook's Old Boy is a pale shadow next to Lady Vengeance. Same auteur, same obsession with revenge, same arty cinematography. Yet, "The Monster" and Geumja are such completely different creatures. I won't reiterate my feelings about Lady Vengeance except to say that it has heart, humor and pathos despite its viciousness. I couldn't help thinking of Old Boy as lying within the precincts of the Hollywood "thriller" genre where an elaborate 'game' mysteriously unfolds between two competing males intent on bettering each other. As a 'game', it seemed emotionally thin despite its bewildering complexity, including wave upon wave of deception, (overly)dramatic revelation and the plot's strange reliance on hypnotism and suggestion. Silly and nightmarish at the same time.
Novel 396 was intended to be Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, but I was forced to abort after only the first, "The Good Anna." I was much more interested in Truman Capote's dazzlingly wicked Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffanys. There's a half century between these two female character studies, and also a certain gender and orientation gap between Capote and Stein. Not surprisingly, there's not much to see in common between the two. In one sense, the stern, German scolding Anna, would be quite the match for the bewitching, impetuous, and ultimately damaged Holiday Golightly. Why do I feel like I've met various versions of Holly somewhere? And why does it seem like Murakami Haruki's various female characters tend to bear much in common with her? There's a silky dose of Sputnik Sweetheart in there. And perhaps Wild Sheep Chase as well. What is it with male authors and their fixation with call-girls? (I'm not fishing for a response actually, I know the answer instinctively.)
Stein on the other hand, is a bully with prose. The originator of the slightly deranged "a rose is a rose is a rose," she makes it her mission to bring the world back into our language, which has become so comfortably empty that we no longer see or smell the "rose" anymore. Her three lives thus are filled with the air of everyday real life, with all its cumbersome verisimillitude.
One more comparison before I sleep. Park Chan-wook's Old Boy is a pale shadow next to Lady Vengeance. Same auteur, same obsession with revenge, same arty cinematography. Yet, "The Monster" and Geumja are such completely different creatures. I won't reiterate my feelings about Lady Vengeance except to say that it has heart, humor and pathos despite its viciousness. I couldn't help thinking of Old Boy as lying within the precincts of the Hollywood "thriller" genre where an elaborate 'game' mysteriously unfolds between two competing males intent on bettering each other. As a 'game', it seemed emotionally thin despite its bewildering complexity, including wave upon wave of deception, (overly)dramatic revelation and the plot's strange reliance on hypnotism and suggestion. Silly and nightmarish at the same time.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Snuff Film (Horror of Modernity)
Ok, to continue the haunted musings from my last post, I want to talk about animal babies. Cute, miniature versions of our furry friends, just re-proportioned in the perfect way to elicit even more of our cuteness reflex. Over the past few days I've started noticing how many babies there are around this NJ suburb. From my window I just saw a fat rabbit diffidently heading my way, hop by tentative hop. When it arrived within 5 feet of me (behind a reflective glass window, naturally), I noticed its objective; barely visible within a clump of grass was an oblong lump of brown fur with ears protruding from the anterior end. Yes, it was creeping up to check on a 'lil baby rabbit, still so young that it could only manage awkward, stumbling hops.
Yesterday, before the torrential downpour, I noticed a mockingbird fluttering within the rhododendron bush a few scant feet from my desk and computer. I was mid-thought about how the hell it got caught in there, when I noticed its rhythmic pecking motion; it was feeding a wee little birdy version of itself, itself perched on a lower branch. Oddly, there was no nest there, just a baby. Maybe they had been evicted by a deranged spouse; perhaps the bush was only a way-station on a long, lonely Exodus beyond cruel central NJ (more on that below).
Canadian Geese, those plump, brown-feathered avians with curving ebony necks, begin life just like chickens: covered in yellow fluff. Reminds me that "nature's first green is gold." A few years ago I was jogging beside the canal when I was cut off by a parent goose leading a column of goslings across the path. I jogged in place for about a minute to give them the space to dive into the water on the other side. A cyclist coming my way heeded these diminuative pedestrians and patiently waited as well.
But, our modern world isn't always that forgiving. Last week on the left-most lane on the NJ Turnpike (the HOV lane) I swerved off to the shoulder to dodge a similar line of downy goslings following Mother Goose. I was traveling with traffic, at about 65 miles an hour. In my rear-view mirror I saw an SUV behind me swerve slightly as well; I have no idea if it avoided an almost certain smushing. They had three lanes to cross before they would reach (polluted NJ) marshland. How on earth did they get to the middle divider of the Turnpike? How many made it?
Seen in a sardonic light, I was an unwitting participant in Frogger. In a less humorous light, I was party to one of the myriad ways we've contrived to kill nature. Our industrialized world is full of sharp surfaces, engines that crush and smash, poisons that kill over time. But we're mad because we think it's a proper trade-off for all the goods and services that we can now consume as a result.
D' (riding shot-gun) remarked that the (cute) row of geese reminded him of a Chinese movie about a fetching young duck-herding orphan, and her tribulations in a small village in Inner Mongolia. Yes, but that was a heart-warming domestic drama about human kindness winning over a selfish mother-in-law. This was a snuff film.
Yesterday, before the torrential downpour, I noticed a mockingbird fluttering within the rhododendron bush a few scant feet from my desk and computer. I was mid-thought about how the hell it got caught in there, when I noticed its rhythmic pecking motion; it was feeding a wee little birdy version of itself, itself perched on a lower branch. Oddly, there was no nest there, just a baby. Maybe they had been evicted by a deranged spouse; perhaps the bush was only a way-station on a long, lonely Exodus beyond cruel central NJ (more on that below).
Canadian Geese, those plump, brown-feathered avians with curving ebony necks, begin life just like chickens: covered in yellow fluff. Reminds me that "nature's first green is gold." A few years ago I was jogging beside the canal when I was cut off by a parent goose leading a column of goslings across the path. I jogged in place for about a minute to give them the space to dive into the water on the other side. A cyclist coming my way heeded these diminuative pedestrians and patiently waited as well.
But, our modern world isn't always that forgiving. Last week on the left-most lane on the NJ Turnpike (the HOV lane) I swerved off to the shoulder to dodge a similar line of downy goslings following Mother Goose. I was traveling with traffic, at about 65 miles an hour. In my rear-view mirror I saw an SUV behind me swerve slightly as well; I have no idea if it avoided an almost certain smushing. They had three lanes to cross before they would reach (polluted NJ) marshland. How on earth did they get to the middle divider of the Turnpike? How many made it?
Seen in a sardonic light, I was an unwitting participant in Frogger. In a less humorous light, I was party to one of the myriad ways we've contrived to kill nature. Our industrialized world is full of sharp surfaces, engines that crush and smash, poisons that kill over time. But we're mad because we think it's a proper trade-off for all the goods and services that we can now consume as a result.
D' (riding shot-gun) remarked that the (cute) row of geese reminded him of a Chinese movie about a fetching young duck-herding orphan, and her tribulations in a small village in Inner Mongolia. Yes, but that was a heart-warming domestic drama about human kindness winning over a selfish mother-in-law. This was a snuff film.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Memento Mori <- the reason I count down.
Novel 397 was Concrete Island, again by J. G. Ballard. The count-down continues.
Immediate points of comparison:
Woman in the Dunes
Robinson Crusoe
Empire of the Sun
Oh right, the third one is also by Ballard, so of course there are grounds for comparison. But what's intriguing is how their commonalities shine through all their obvious contrasts: how can a description of civilian detention centers in Shanghai during WWII be so thematically similar to a tale set in 1970s London? Concrete Island describes a man's ludicrous but meticulously contrived confinement on a wasteland 'island' hemmed in between newly constructed highways. Here, Ballard's prose reveals the same obsessive/self-destructive attachment to the place of confinement, in London as in Shanghai; vividly he describes the convoluted psychology that selects its own punishment, and stubbornly clings to it. You see a similar twisted obsession with one's bodily deterioration, and a mad yearning for death.
I believe that Ballard is in a sense repackaging the visceral insights of his wartime experience into a modern allegory.
The accident that throws him onto the island, the tribulations that obstruct his early attempts to escape, his ultimate fatalistic attachment to it, are first and last self-inflicted. On one level, they result from his indiscretion (driving too fast so that his car plummets onto the island in the first place), but on another, are a result of a wider culpability. This is a tragedy that oozes out of the modern life we have consented to living, the devices we have chosen to surrounded ourselves with, and the cold embrace of the city around us.
The novel ends on an eerie note, but therein perhaps we can draw some amount of comfort; all of this before our eyes is as fleeting as a dream on a spring night, teetering on the edge of collapse, and even in the most advanced city in the world the jungle is never far away. Perhaps it is only in the state of nature that we can clearly see what is truly necessary, and what is truly valuable.
Immediate points of comparison:
Woman in the Dunes
Robinson Crusoe
Empire of the Sun
Oh right, the third one is also by Ballard, so of course there are grounds for comparison. But what's intriguing is how their commonalities shine through all their obvious contrasts: how can a description of civilian detention centers in Shanghai during WWII be so thematically similar to a tale set in 1970s London? Concrete Island describes a man's ludicrous but meticulously contrived confinement on a wasteland 'island' hemmed in between newly constructed highways. Here, Ballard's prose reveals the same obsessive/self-destructive attachment to the place of confinement, in London as in Shanghai; vividly he describes the convoluted psychology that selects its own punishment, and stubbornly clings to it. You see a similar twisted obsession with one's bodily deterioration, and a mad yearning for death.
I believe that Ballard is in a sense repackaging the visceral insights of his wartime experience into a modern allegory.
The accident that throws him onto the island, the tribulations that obstruct his early attempts to escape, his ultimate fatalistic attachment to it, are first and last self-inflicted. On one level, they result from his indiscretion (driving too fast so that his car plummets onto the island in the first place), but on another, are a result of a wider culpability. This is a tragedy that oozes out of the modern life we have consented to living, the devices we have chosen to surrounded ourselves with, and the cold embrace of the city around us.
The novel ends on an eerie note, but therein perhaps we can draw some amount of comfort; all of this before our eyes is as fleeting as a dream on a spring night, teetering on the edge of collapse, and even in the most advanced city in the world the jungle is never far away. Perhaps it is only in the state of nature that we can clearly see what is truly necessary, and what is truly valuable.
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