Murakami Haruki speaks at the University of Hawai’i

Last week was a good week for super high-profile visitors to our campus. Murakami Haruki, quite possibly the most popular living Japanese author the world over, has been here this term (or this whole school year?) as a “writer-in-residence” with the East Asian Languages & Literatures department. I’ve read and very much enjoyed several of his novels, but I cannot say that I really know that much about him. I guess, I’ve gathered over the last several months, that he seems to be somewhat reclusive. There are rumors that he has something against the Japanese media, and for that reason does not do many (or any) public appearances in Japan, book signings, or the like, and that he tends to avoid the limelight in general. He has been quietly visiting Japanese language and literature classes on campus all year, but up until a few weeks ago, I had not heard anything about any larger public talk, and was given the impression that he most likely would not do one, since it wasn’t something he tends to do. Even at the talk, once he did agree to do it, he seemed quite strict about his personal request – not the venue’s policy, but Murakami’s direct request – that there be no photography or recording of any kind. I was amazed that he was willing to take time to sign books afterwards. I hear that he doesn’t do booksignings in Japan, hardly ever. Huge thanks to Miz Yvette for sharing with me one of her books to get signed – I didn’t bring one, as I didn’t have one to bring (I don’t read fiction during the school year) and didn’t expect there to be a book signing.

Murakami spoke briefly about his thoughts on the process of writing, and such. I had hoped for this to be longer, and more insightful – for this to be the main part of the event. I would have loved to be able to come here and share with you new insights into how to interpret and appreciate his books, or into who he is as a writer. But, I’m afraid I couldn’t really follow most of what he was saying. His English is nearly flawless. That was not a problem. But the content of what he was saying was just hard to follow. Something about being fascinated by beautiful yet completely useless, absurd structures such as the idea of a bridge under water? I’d hoped that someday, years from now, I would find myself in a conversation about Murakami, and could be able to say, “oh, I heard him speak once, and I gained this great insight about his work,” or “.. and he had this great quote. He said…” But, alas, there was none of the that.

The main event of the evening was a reading of two of his decades-old short stories, written around the time of his first marathon, the 1983 (I think) Honolulu Marathon. He read each story in Japanese, alternating sections with Prof. Ken Ito, a literature professor here at the University of Hawaii, who read from an English translation. I thought Murakami should have spoken more slowly, and more clearly, but my advisor said he had no trouble understanding him, and that the speed and style of his reading gave it appropriate energy, character, and drama. So, I guess this says more about my waning language skills than anything else…

The first story, “Mirror” (Kagami), is a sort of ghost story, featuring a school security guard who is attacked by his own reflection in a mirror. The story itself was a bit meh, though Murakami, as usual, reveals his brilliant insights into the strangenesses of everyday life, as he talks about the question of which one is real and which is the reflection; the protagonist expresses his anguish and fear as he finds himself following the actions of the man in the mirror, rather than the reverse. I particularly liked the framing device for this story, which reads as though you have broken into the middle of a much longer story or scene of people sitting around each telling different ghost stories. This is the only one written down and published, but it starts out in media res, if I have my usage of that term correctly, with the protagonist talking about how everyone else has already shared their stories, and he himself has never actually seen a ghost, nor had premonitions, but he did have this strange experience this one time…

The second story I found much more interesting and rewarding. Tongariyaki, awkwardly translated as “Sharpie Cakes,” is a story about a fictional commercial brand sweet or pastry, akin, I imagined in my mind, to Twinkies, though perhaps Murakami had something more traditional in mind, like taiyaki. (Tongari means ‘pointy’, and yaki means ‘grilled’, so, it’s a sort of nonsense word that sounds like it could be a real pastry / treat). I definitely suggest reading the story yourself, and I apologize to just summarize and ruin the ending here, but, essentially, it is about a man who proposes a new type of tongariyaki, a new, updated, version of the classic pastry, and while the staff of the tongariyaki company like it very much, they take him and his creation to a secret room in the company compound, which is full of crows. A very particular kind of crow, which only eats tongariyaki, and only “real” tongariyaki. If his creation is not accepted as being a valid variation, a valid type of tongariyaki, the crows will tear him apart. The story being so weird and fantastic, and humorous, I didn’t quite make the connection until after the reading ended, and Murakami added some extra remarks. My friend turned to me and said “I’ve got some crows like that in my life. They’re called my thesis committee.” It’s true. Substitute scholarship for the tongari cakes, her or I for the protagonist, and the thesis committee for the crows. Or substitute fiction writing for the cakes, Murakami for the protagonist, and publishers & critics for the crows. This is how it has to be because this is how it has always been done, and this is the way we have always liked it. And if we don’t like it, we tear you apart. …. Oh, how I wish I could just write what I wanted to write, and not have to worry about it being accepted.

There was a brief Q&A, in which I think the most interesting question was one about Murakami’s opinions on the quality of the published translations of his works. The fellow who asked the question has published his thoughts on the whole event here. Murakami answered something to the effect of that, so long as you enjoy it, it’s a good translation. Everyone laughed. But the next audience member to speak said that she has read several of his stories in both English and Japanese, and that they read as very different. Maybe this is just a function of the texture, the flavor, the atmosphere, the cultural nuance of the language – but maybe the two versions really are that different. I think it doesn’t really address the question to say “so long as you enjoy it, it’s a good translation.” I could read a story by George RR Martin and enjoy it quite thoroughly, but that doesn’t make it a good translation of a Murakami novel – that makes it a very enjoyable story that’s entirely different from what Murakami wrote in Japanese. … I think he was just disinterested in answering questions, and more to the point, disinterested in revealing anything more about himself, his attitudes, his insights. Which was a shame. That’s truly what I came there for – yes, the special opportunity to simply say that I have seen him speak, have shaken his hand, have spoken to him directly, however briefly – but also for the ability to gain some new or different insights into who he is, his attitudes, his thoughts on writing. His thoughts on culture, or on politics.

Ah, well. shou-ga-nai, as they say. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading some more of his work this summer.

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Early History of the Book in Japan – A Brief Overview

I spoke in my last post about a symposium on Chinese Rare Books at which Dr. Soren Edgren of Princeton University spoke extensively. Dr. Edgren also shared some bits and pieces about the history of the book in China, and of the introduction of the book to Japan.

Left: A Chinese bamboo book, open and unfolded to display the contents. This copy of The Art of War (on the cover, “孫子兵法”) by Sun Tzu is part of a collection at the University of California, Riverside. The cover also reads “乾隆御書”, meaning it was either commissioned or transcribed by the Qianlong Emperor. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons & used under the Creative Commons license.

Likely the earliest format of written materials in China that we might describe as a “book” was that of bamboo strips bound together, as seen in the image above. A famous example of this comes from the excavation of the Han Dynasty tomb of the Marquis of Dai and his wife “Lady Dai,” at Mawangdui. I had always assumed that such bamboo strips would be folded together like Tibetan books, which also with very long, narrow pages. However, Dr. Edgren suggested that, instead, such documents would be rolled up, like a bamboo sushi-making mat.

“The world’s earliest complete survival of a dated printed book” is a Chinese work, dated to the 15th day, 4th month, of the 10th year of the reign of Emperor Yizong of Tang, or, on the Christian calendar, May 11, 868. This copy of the Diamond Sutra is today in the collection of the British Library.

It was around this time, or a few centuries earlier in fact, that Buddhism was first introduced to Japan via China and Korea, and along with it, the technologies and styles of printing and bookbinding. The oldest extant Japanese printed works today are copies of the Hyakumantô Darani, or “One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers,” produced in 764-770. But I guess those don’t count as “complete dated works,” so the Chinese Diamond Sutra from a century later counts as the oldest. In any case, as with so many other things, older forms of bookbinding survive today in Japan while in China they continued to develop and/or be phased out.

Dr. Edgren noted that, sadly, many Chinese, especially younger people, have very little interest in Japanese collections of Chinese books or other artifacts, mistakenly believing that everything Chinese in Japan got there as the result of WWII-era looting, and that, essentially, one need not leave China to find anything one is looking for – if it exists, there will be examples of it in China. China is, after all, a huge, massive country, with a very long history, tons of artifacts, the Middle Kingdom, the Center of the World. In fact, there are a great many examples of Chinese books, artworks, and other artifacts which made their way to Japan in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and earlier, through (more or less) peaceful amicable commerce, diplomatic gifts and the like. Also, China has seen much turmoil over the centuries, and much development and change in its cultural forms – many things do indeed survive in Japan that have been lost in China, and in fact there have been found examples of objects in Japanese collections that are no longer extant in China at all, such as, to take just one example, early 17th century Chinese erotica books, with certain specific types of multi-color printing techniques, or particular uses of gold or silver that are not seen in any examples extant today in China.

I have already mentioned the 8th century Hyakumantô Darani and 9th century Diamond Sutra, but, returning to the matter of the introduction of the book to Japan and jumping back in time, the Analects of Confucius is known to have been first introduced to Japan via Korea around the 3rd century CE. By the 6th-7th centuries, books, in one format or another (probably mostly orihon? I guess?) were certainly being introduced into Japan, through trade, and especially in the hands of Chinese Buddhist monks traveling to Japan, and Japanese Buddhist monks returning from China.

Shôtoku Taishi is credited with writing a manuscript annotated copy of the Lotus Sutra, known as the Hokkei Gisho, in 615 CE. This manuscript remains extant today, the oldest extant copy of any Japanese text; it was held at the Hôryû-ji temple in Nara for roughly 1000 years, before being presented to the Meiji Emperor in the late 19th century. A number of Chinese texts from around the same time remain extant in Japan as well – many of these are of types not found in China, adding to the diversity of types of texts available (i.e. not only political or religious texts) for researchers to better understand Tang Dynasty documents.

During the Heian period (794-1185), monks such as Saichô and Kûkai, today exceptionally famous and significant historical and religious figures, founders of some of the most prominent Buddhist sects in Japan, traveled to China and returned with various religious texts. The monk Chônen, who traveled to China in 983-986, brought back the first printed copy of the full Buddhist canon to be seen in Japan.

A similar set of objects, the Tripitaka Koreana (Korean printed, i.e. not handwritten manuscript, copy of the full Buddhist canon) and Fuzhou Tripitaka are still held today in the Kyoto temple of Nanzen-ji, along with the 14th century Yuan Dynasty lacquer trunks in which they were originally shipped to Japan.

Printed books began to really take off in China in the Song dynasty (960-1279). I don’t know that much about this period in detail, and I have a hard time imagining publishing, distribution, and literacy being as widespread in 10th-13th century China as in, for example, the extremely vibrant and truly early modern (read: developments in transportation and communication, a certain level of urbanization, etc.) Edo period in Japan (1600-1868), but in any case, by the standards of the 10th-13th century, and certainly as compared to earlier periods, the Song dynasty can definitely be said to have seen a dramatic expansion of publishing and of relatively widespread access (within the cities at least, and within the upper classes) to printed matter.

In 1248, the Japanese monk Tankai had printed in Kyoto a copy of the 「梵網経菩薩戒」, or Brahma’s Net Sutra, which he obtained in China in 1244. This 1248 copy, today in the collection of the New York Public Library, is quite possibly the only remaining copy of a no longer extant Chinese original. The document includes a colophon which explains the document’s own origin, i.e. that Tankai traveled to China in 1244 and printed this copy in Kyoto in 1248.

Later, the Zen temples of Kyoto and Kamakura would produce printed reproductions of Chinese works (mainly religious texts). These came to be known as “Gozanban” (五山版), or “Five Mountains Versions,” as the top five Zen temples in Kyoto, and the top five in Kamakura, were known as the “Five Mountains” or “Gozan.”

Many Chinese books also entered Japan during the Muromachi period (1333-1573) as a result of the vibrant trade between the Chinese port of Ningpo and the Japanese port of Sakai. In 1533, a Sakai merchant family published a commentary-free copy of the Analects of Confucius, for which the blocks are not only still extant, but still in quite good and usable condition; they are stored at the temple of Nanshûji in Sakai.

Around the same time, the Ashikaga gakkô, a Confucian academy established in the 7th or 8th century in what is today Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, generated a great demand for Chinese books, as Deputy Shogun (kantô kanrei) Uesugi Norizane (1410-1466) worked to restore and revive the school.

Skipping ahead, after the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, the Manchu Qing Dynasty banned many books, for one reason or another, and banned books began flowing into Japan. Though the Tokugawa shogunate never managed to establish any formal diplomatic relations with the Qing (mainly because of Japan’s refusal to kowtow to Chinese superiority/authority within the traditional Sinocentric world order tribute system), by this time unofficial or illegal trade was booming in Nagasaki, as it would continue to do throughout the Edo period.

Dr. Edgren’s lecture left off there… As we get into the Edo period, the Japanese domestic publishing industry takes off. Chinese books continue to be imported, along with Western materials via the Dutch, and other materials as well. I am not sure exactly when it ramps up, but at some point in the Edo period, Japan begins publishing more books than any other country in the world (in terms of number of titles, if not sheer volume of fascicles printed, bound, and sold), a position that I believe it continued to hold continuously through to the present day. Entire academic books have been published on the history of the book in Japan, and I have yet to read them, so that will have to be a story for another day.

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Chinese Rare Books Project – Dr. Soren Edgren

There’s been so much going on to write about, and I’ve sorely neglected actually doing the writing. Forgive me. Here’s a start on catching up.

The Freer Sackler hosted a symposium a few weeks ago (around July 11-15) on Chinese Rare Books. The 13th was the only day of presentations in English, so I attended only that day. Another presenter, Li Yonghui, was supposed to present that day as well, but had to return to China a day early, so Princeton professor Dr. Soren Edgren generously stepped up to the plate, giving four hours of talks.

The first hour was largely about the history of Chinese books, and the different types of binding, which, though fascinating, is also rather lengthy and complex and well-documented elsewhere. Perhaps one of these days, as part of my reportage on my current Japanese Books Digitization Project internship, I’ll put together a post on such things. Better yet, maybe I’ll just link to an already existing page that does a better job of it than I ever would.

Dr. Edgren is the head of the Chinese Rare Books Project (which, strangely, I can’t seem to find any homepage for, with a basic simple Google Search), which has been working to develop and implement standards for cataloguing Chinese rare books, and assembling a database/catalog, which has now been fully integrated into OCLC/WorldCat, and is also available in a Chinese language version.

*NUMBERING VOLUMES

As a result of being invested in the subject of Chinese books from the point of view of cataloging, Dr. Edgren touched upon a small number of issues with translation and terminology. The main one being the question of “volumes,” with which I have myself long had difficulties as well. Chinese and Japanese books often use the character 巻 (J: kan, C: juan) to refer to “volumes,” but just as often as not, these are not physically separate volumes, but more like chapters or sections. Or, sometimes, a single 巻 can be divided among separate physical volumes, or, to use a more obscure but more precise English term, “fascicles.”

A fascicle is a distinct physical object, what we would most commonly call “a book,” with its own front and back cover; a fascicle is what you would count if you were counting how many books are on a shelf. Go to the library or the bookstore, and you’ll likely find The Lord of the Rings, just to take an example, sold both as a single, really thick, fascicle, and as three separate “volumes” or “books” – Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King each in its own fascicle.

In the case of Chinese and Japanese books, sometimes a single book will contain sections labeled 一巻、二巻、三巻、and sometimes separate books will be labeled something like 一巻上 and 一巻下 (“first kan, first half” and “first kan, second half”). Most versions of The Lord of the Rings that I have seen in Japanese have been printed in this way – each of the three “books” in the trilogy published as two or three “volumes,” that is, fascicles, labeled as 上 and 下, or 上, 中, and 下, for a total of seven to nine fascicles total for the three “books.” Then there are cases where books are labeled as 一編、二編、三編, a completely separate character, related to the word 編集する, meaning “to compile,” and often used to mark the name of the editor or compiler of a text. There are numerous other such issues, originating from the complexities of the use of a wide variety of different terms.

This is pure speculation on my part, but based on my experience with such materials, I imagine that the difficulties derive chiefly from the matter of rebinding and recompilation. Books are constantly being recompiled into new editions, or simply rebound, for example, in the case of three thin fascicles being rebound into one thick fascicle with a fancier, hardback cover. The number of volumes (i.e. chapters, sections) in a classic text is set in stone, so to speak, but the number of fascicles it may be published in is variable. The “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (三国志, J: Sangokushi), for example, contains 120 chapters, which let’s just say are numbered as 巻 (I’m not sure what character is traditionally used to number them). These 120 巻 have been printed and reprinted, however, in a gazillion different formats, including the 75-volume (read: 75-fascicle) illustrated set from the 1830s-40s that we photographed a few weeks ago. So, do we call this a “120-volume text in 75 volumes”? I suppose in this particular case, the word “chapters” solves the problem well, but that’s really not so easily the case for many other examples…

Stay tuned for another post, in which I’ll share points from Dr. Edgren’s talk on the history of the introduction of the book into Japan.

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Digitizing Edo Period Books

Well, as I don’t think I’ve mentioned at all, I am in DC this summer, interning at the Freer/Sackler Galleries (aka the National Asian Art Museum, and part of the Smithsonian). As of today, I am in my fifth week at the Freer. (Wow, has it been that long already?)

I have been hesitant to post anything since I really don’t know what is and is not cool to share, and wanted to err on the side of caution. Museum work is of course not a matter of national security, but even so, museums’ reputations are fragile, and while the actual art objects themselves may be public domain on account of their age, museums, just like any other institution or organization, like to have control over their own publicity, public image, publications, etc.

But, I have checked with the curator, and there are various aspects that I can freely share.

The museum recently (a few years back) obtained a collection of over 2000 Edo period woodblock-printed books (along with some from Meiji and later). It’s an amazing collection, including some books that seem, as far as “we” know, to be the only extant copies, and ranging from popular literature to books of poetry to books related to kabuki.

We interns are here to take part in something a great many libraries and museums are focusing on these days – digitalization (digitization?) of the collection. So, basically, we’re photographing every page of every book, one by one, in order to make them more available to researchers and the general public, through a publicly-accessible online database which will eventually go up. We’ve got a great system and equipment, devised by Akama Ryô-sensei of Ritsumeikan, who is essentially leading the vanguard in Digital Humanities in Japan, and who gave a talk at our Kabuki Symposium at the University of Hawaii back in November. We received an intense two-day tutorial from Akama-sensei our first two days, and have Dr. Matsuba Ryoko, one of his leading proteges or disciples, as it were, working with us all summer overseeing the process and helping guide us through all our questions and difficulties. Matsuba-san specializes in kabuki and kabuki prints, so you know she’s my kind of person. She also presented at the Kabuki Symposium, and is easily one of my favorite up-and-coming scholars, in the sense that I am very interested in her research, impressed by her work, and eagerly looking forward to her future publications and presentations. I am very excited to be working with her and developing good personal & professional ties, networking, with her this summer.

Right: A complete set of seventy-five volumes of an 1830s-40s illustrated version of the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”

The project may sound quite tedious, doing nothing but turning pages and clicking the shutter over and over and over again all day. And, yes, it is kind of exhausting, if only because of the focus it takes, and the way the room is lit (mostly dark, the only lights being really bright ones pointing directly at the books). But, actually, the books themselves are really fun and interesting, and I’m beginning to notice and appreciate all kinds of things I might not have ever noticed or appreciated before. Ukiyo-e, and especially the monochrome illustrations in books, can start to look quite monotonous after you look at too many of them. But, looking at these books, there are so many wonderful little touches that you start to enjoy. Things that seem innovative and interesting, even if they’re not really. Elements of the picture extending beyond the frame (I saw today a picture of a decapitated head flying out of the frame, the body spurting a fountain of blood), lettering in gold ink, slight touches of color on just one element of a picture, the use of black to indicate night or shadow in just one section, a great variety of calligraphic or other writing styles, including characters in white described in black outline, or characters meant to look like they were carved in stone… A range of techniques as inventive as any you’ll see in American comicbooks, or sometimes even more intriguing and exciting – after all, any standard narrative of the history of comicbook art in Marvel/DC comics will tell you that it wasn’t until the 1980s that certain techniques began to be used, such as breaking out from square panels, the use of splash pages, etc. And while few if any Edo period books are really anything resembling panel-based sequential pictorial storytelling (i.e. “comicbooks”), they do display many of these techniques, including especially the beautiful and dramatic use of splash pages.

I’ve also started to learn a bit about how prints and books are made, techniques, what they’re called, and perhaps most importantly, how to recognize them. Close-looking has never really been one of my strong suits, but in deciding how to best photograph a volume (or, rather, a particular page), we have had to keep our eyes out for silver and gold foil, mica, and other shiny or sparkly treatments; karazuri and other embossing techniques; and the like. Telling the difference between an “original” print and a later reproduction, or between a print and painting, is an important skill of the curator, art historian, or connoisseur, and we’re starting to pick up those skills doing this.

Right: Various sizes of chitsu (帙), a cloth-covered stiff box for Japanese books, secured with small “teeth” of bone or ivory, or more commonly today, plastic.

There are a great many things in this collection to be excited about, one of which happens to be a complete set of the Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 三国志) in 75 illustrated volumes, published in the 1830s-40s. While nearly all of the books in the collection are either in traditional Japanese-style boxes known as chitsu, or in more modern/Western wrappers of acid-free board, these 75 volumes are stored in their own wooden box, labeled in Japanese calligraphy 「三国志全部　七拾五冊入」 (“Complete Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 75 volumes”). I don’t know the age or provenance of the box, but whether original (i.e. 150 years old) or not, it certainly seems purely Japanese, and “authentic.” (Meaning, I don’t presume to know anything in real detail about how Japanese traditionally stored books in the Edo period, but certainly nothing about this arrangement screams Western or modern. Nothing stands out as incongruous.)

It will be a year at least, probably 2-3, before these books are available online, but the museum’s current plan is to create an online catalog, publicly available, in which every page of every one of the 2000 or so books is available. I hope in the coming weeks to post more about individual books I come across, and other thoughts related to the project, but I especially look forward to being able to share these images with you.

EDIT: A brief official description of the project from the Freer-Sackler website.

All images in this post, with the exception of the depiction of the chitsu, are my own photos, taken myself. I apologize for the poor quality of the images of the books & wooden box, taken with my iPhone.

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Kyoto International Manga Museum

A few days ago, I finally visited the Kyoto International Manga Museum. It’s a gorgeous museum, quite clean and sleek and well-put-together. It all looks quite new, as well it should I suppose, since it only opened in 2006, on the grounds of a former primary school.

The school folded under perfectly normal circumstances – as is happening all over Japan, and as happens around the world to one extent or another, sometimes there just are not enough children in a community to merit a need for as many schools as there are, and so schools are merged and old school buildings are either destroyed or repurposed. While Tatsunoike Elementary School is hardly a historical monument – no more historical than any other elementary school built and operating since the early Meiji period – I am quite glad that they kept its structure intact, repurposing it rather than tearing it down. The school atmosphere really suits a manga museum quite well, and helps make one feel like a child again, a bit. Piano music piped throughout the building, very similar to the light music reminiscent of the innocence of childhood expressed in Joe Hisaishi’s soundtracks for various Ghibli movies, contributes to this feel.

(The museum also maintains one room as an exhibition on the history of the school, and plaques throughout the museum explain what certain rooms were used for back when it was a school. The principal’s office is maintained just as it was, I guess, more or less, as a showpiece, and the Museum Director’s office is in the Vice Principal’s office.)

On the other hand, I thought the environment and atmosphere a bit sad, in that reverse backwards sort of way that bright, happy music and scenes can be quite sad when the children are gone. Like parts of movies when someone remembers all the wonderful times that were had in a place now destroyed, or with a person now gone. An elementary school devoid of children is a pretty sad place, the cheery music only adding to that feeling, 逆に, rather than dispelling it. Or maybe that’s just me…

In any case, I could have loved this museum’s design and architecture if it were a brand-new shiny steel and glass building in the ultra-modern mode. But I love it just as much if not more like this, with hardwood floors and steps, at least one room lined with tatami (oh how I love that smell), and the furnishings and such in the (closed to the public but visible through the hall windows) principal’s office and such.

…

The museum consists primarily of shelves and shelves and shelves of manga – roughly 50,000 in all, with another 250,000 volumes in the closed stacks. Though there are some permanent exhibits and temporary exhibit halls, the chief thing to do at this museum, it would seem, is to sit and read manga. A quite enjoyable way to spend a day, I must say, if a bit unorthodox for a museum (if it were a library, there wouldn’t be an admission fee, and there would be a way to take out books; so, really, it’s more like a manga café).

I was, admittedly, disappointed at this, as I don’t read much manga. I never felt particularly confident about my ability to read manga, since they have so much casual language and weird sound changes (much like how Japanese people might have trouble with words like “gonna” that don’t really represent “going to”, or the way things are misspelled to indicate the pronunciation of different accents), and so many strange words and jargon words referring to the magic or spaceships or whatever it may be for a given series. But… after not even trying to read any manga for a number of years, I picked one up (the first volume of Ranma 1/2 – natsukashii na!), and made my way through the first chapter, moving quickly and smoothly, and smiling all the way. Spending a few hours at the museum could be a fine way to get through series without having to buy all the volumes yourself… it’s a fine atmosphere for reading – clean, brightly lit, welcoming – though there’s no food or drink, and nowhere to really lay down and stretch out.

In any case, the one main permanent exhibit hall is really quite well-done. The walls are lined with manga organized chronologically, so one can skim the selections and sort of get a sense of how manga developed and changed over time. Actual exhibition displays address a number of fundamental questions and themes relating to manga, including some that we really take so much for granted, it’s great to see them addressed. First, there is a display or two or three on the history of manga. I was most pleased to see that the museum does not take a stand on where manga starts, since basically any answer one could give would be controversial and debateable. Does it start with the Chôju giga, a 12-13th century handscroll depicting anthropomorphized animals and something resembling an early relative of the speech bubble? Or does manga start with ukiyo-e prints? Or with kibyôshi illustrated novels? Or Hokusai’s sketchbooks that he just so happened to call manga (漫画, lit. something like “rambling, aimless, wandering pictures”)? Or does manga start in the Meiji period, with the introduction of satirical political cartoons from the West? That the Manga Museum didn’t set themselves up for being argued against by taking a stand on any one of these was a very smart move in my opinion.

The exhibits also address standards, symbols, and forms, pointing out that a lot of things we take for granted in comics are in fact quite artificial. The convention of the speech bubble, as opposed to the narrator’s speech which goes in a box, for example; and the ways thought bubbles are shown differently. In American comics and cartoons, we show that someone is asleep by having Z’s float in the air above his head; in manga, a small bubble (of snot?) emerges from the character’s nose to indicate they’re asleep. All kinds of lines and marks and symbols appear on or near people’s faces to indicate certain emotions, and lines and shapes can be used in other ways to indicate speed of motion, or great power… A small hands-on bit of the exhibit lets you mix and match eyes, noses, mouths, and other features to sort of show how versatile manga style can be, I guess, and yet how remixed. It’s amazing to realize just how much a certain mouth or a certain nose indicates a certain character type, and yet also how combining a different set of eyes with that same mouth or nose can change the impression of the character type completely.

The exhibit highlights a manga from the 1970s called “Bakabon,” which apparently was quite experimental in how things were rendered inside the panels. Sometimes he would use no words; sometimes no pictures; sometimes a scene would be laid out as if it were drawn as a picture, but just with words placed in different parts of the panel, where the images should be. Characters changed size and art style dramatically, highlighting the artificiality of the medium, but its versatility and value as well. Of course, any expert of American comics (whether he be a scholar or just an obsessive fan) could tell you quite a bit about innovation in the way the panels themselves have been used by various artists over the years, something that goes on in manga as well, but doesn’t seem as dramatically emphasized or as extensively used, even.

A kami-shibai performance rounded out the day; somewhat related to manga, kami-shibai (紙芝居, lit. “paper play” or “paper theatre”) was a street entertainment mainly in the early postwar period. Scenes would be drawn out on separate cards, and a storyteller would show each card as a visual aid while telling the story, serving both as narrator, and delivering all the characters’ lines, in different voices of course. I had never seen kami-shibai before, and actually had a very different impression of it, thinking it was more like shadow puppets, when in fact it’s a bit more like an anime with only one frame per scene.

I hope to post soon a separate post about the Murata Range exhibit that was up in their temporary exhibits gallery.

For now, then, I suppose that’s it. There is of course some controversy over the founding of the museum, since I gather it was sort of the pet project of a politician who is no longer in power… and while the especially strong prominence of manga in concerted, intentional, efforts by the Japanese government to represent the country and its culture, and to exert soft power, etc etc, is certainly bizarre and controversial in its own ways, I think it is great that such a place exists for those researchers who are in fact researching pop culture phenomena… And for the wider public as well, of course.

I’m glad I went and checked it out. If I were living here more permanently, I really might actually make a habit of spending time there, reading through another volume or two or three on each visit, slowly making my way through series without having to buy them myself.

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Noh utaibon

The first in a series of posts about things in my own collection, meager though it may be.

Roughly a year ago, I made my way to the Ôi Racecourse (大井競馬場) in Tokyo, where can be found one of the largest flea markets in the city. A gentleman was selling a few old books, in pristine condition, for only 100 yen each. I asked him what kind of books they were, what they contained, but he didn’t know. The majority of the pages were printed reproductions of calligraphic handwriting, and were quite difficult to read. He pointed out to me, however, the publication information in the back cover, which clearly indicated that the books were printed in the 14th year of Taishô – i.e. 1925. I eagerly bought two, though he showed me that he had the whole series of 10 or 15 volumes. Not knowing what they were, and suspecting that they could be exceedingly boring financial records or the like, I stuck to what I had.

Looking at them again, and showing them to a friend, some time later, we discovered that they are in fact Noh utaibon (能謡本, lit. “Noh chant-book”); that is, compilations of Noh plays from which actors practice chanting.

There were hints, of course, that I had not picked up on; though, to my credit, I hadn’t heard of any of the plays before, so I can’t expect myself to have recognized the titles on the cover. Still, there is before each play a page or several of modern movable type printed pages listing the roles, what type of masks are used for them, the setting, a summary of the play, etc. In addition, the author is listed on the back as being Kita Rokuheita (喜多六平太); Kita being one of the major schools of Noh, I might have picked up on this.

But anyway, let’s delve into the text.

Sadly, I cannot seem to find the Japanese text in order to share it with you; if anyone knows of a good resource, I’d be most appreciative. Still, here is the section of Royall Tyler’s translation, from “Japanese Nô Dramas” (Penguin Books, 1992) which corresponds to the first page of this utaebon. For anyone studying Japanese, it may be a fun exercise to look at the calligraphy, and knowing roughly what the words ought to be, based on the translation, puzzle out the Japanese.

(Myôe and companions): Thither the moon, too, makes its nightly way
thither the moon, too, makes its nightly way:
then I will seek the land where the sun goes down

(Myôe): You have before you the monk Myôe of Toganoo. My heart is set upon travelling to China and India, and I must therefore go before the Kasuga Shrine to bid the god farewell. I am just now on my way down to the Southern Capital.

(Myôe and Companions): Mount Atago
and Shikimi-ga-hara detain us no more
and Shikimi-ga-hara detain us no more
…

While bunraku books are published in a reproduction of the handwriting of the great playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, I do not know whose handwriting this is. You can see the marks to the side of the characters; like trope in the Torah and other Hebrew texts, this is a guide to the pacing and pitch of the chanting. There are no hard & fast musical notes here that say “chant a B flat” or something like that, just subjective ups and downs, highs and lows. Some kanji have the pronunciation written next to them as a guide. For example, the top character of the last (leftmost) line on this page is 山, meaning “mountain”, and normally pronounced as yama or san; here, though, the furigana characters トリ are written to the right, indicating that it should be read tori instead. Other marks are used as well, to help indicate tempo, such as the katakana トリ (tori) next to the kanji 山 (“mountain”), the top character of the last (leftmost) line on this page. As my good friend Hanna points out, “It means that that part of the text corresponds to a half measure of musical notation that can be more easily seen in drum scores. A full measure is 8 beats (though far more flexible and organic than western music), and a tori, therefore, 4 beats.”

The name of the play – 春日龍神 (Kasuga ryûjin, “Dragon God of Kasuga”) – and page number are written on the edge of each page.

Having taken a course later in the year in reading calligraphy, with an amazing sensei whose name I sadly do not remember, I can now pick out quite a number of characters here and there. What look like scribbles, unique to this person’s handwriting, are in fact very standardized calligraphic forms of the characters. Rather than waste space, though, by just sort of listing individual characters I can make out, let’s move on.

I wish there were a good way in this blog/website static format to follow along the words of the calligraphy, comparing each in turn to the printed (i.e. modern typeface) Japanese and to the English translation. If this were a PowerPoint presentation, I could just point with my mouse or laser pointer, or I could make a gazillion slides of the same image, inserting red lines or circles on each to emphasize a different character.

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NYTimes – “An Ancient Book Still Enthralls Kyoto”

The New York Times is a bit behind the times, as usual, when it comes to articles on Japanese culture. I was in Kyoto & Uji back in May, seven months ago, and celebrations relating to the supposed 1000th anniversary of the Tale of Genji had been in full swing for months… and only now does the Times put out an article on the subject.

Still, it’s a pretty nice introduction to the Genji, and a peek at a few of the things that were going on in the Kyoto area last year in celebration, along with some nice but not stunning photos. It is a shame they didn’t publish this earlier, it being a Travel section. It would have been good info for tourists to help them plan a trip to Kyoto during the festivities, though it is too late now.

Across Japan, the anniversary has been marked by music festivals, parades, a chrysanthemum-doll competition and a hairstyle show featuring looks popular in Lady Murasaki’s time. In Kyoto, the festivities have included “Genji”-themed poetry readings, moon-viewings and even performance art, which I have chosen.
…
A walk through central Kyoto in November underscored the novel’s lasting power. Posters of the ingénue Yuki Shibamoto, the face of the national celebration, gazed from windows in office buildings and bridal shops. At the Museum of Kyoto, visitors inspected illustrated scrolls and painted screens from across the centuries depicting Genji’s exploits, and they walked out with playing cards and refrigerator magnets bearing images of Japan’s own Casanova.

(Photo at the top of the page my own. Taken in Uji Station.)

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New (old) version of the Genji discovered

How fortunate, what a lucky chance, that in this, the 1000th anniversary of the year generally accepted as that in which Murasaki Shikibu completed her epic Genji monogatari, a version of the text older and more complete than any before uncovered should turn up.

Here’s the article at the Asahi Shinbun’s English website: Discovery of ‘Genji’ text causes a stir. I was hoping that the International Herald Tribune would carry the story, as they so often do Asahi stories, since the Asahi does an atrocious job of keeping online archives of their articles accessible.

But, moving on. As the article says, the Tale of the Genji, oft claimed to be the first example of a “novel” in world history, and easily one of the most famous, most well-known, if not most widely-read classics of Japanese literature, is currently only known from versions written in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, and later, centuries after the original was completed. Even the earliest of these is believed (and now, I suppose, known) to contain a great many edits and changes from the original. Indeed, the version which we now know is believed by many scholars (though many disagree) to be incomplete.

This new discovery, dated to the mid-Kamakura period (so, mid-13th century), does not solve all the mysteries or provide all the answers. In fact, I’d imagine it raises more questions than it answers. It does contain many bits missing from later versions.

I’ve never read the Genji (I’d have to read it in translation; that’s a great undertaking as is), though it is on my list (a very long list it is, though, I must admit). I’m curious to see what more comes out of this discovery. I hope that I have the fortune to be informed as to developments in the research.

Another article about another recently discovered Genji manuscript, from Sankei News: 鎌倉後期の源氏物語写本見つかる (10 March 2008).

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