Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Apologies for the radio silence around these parts in recent days. It’s been a busy, fun couple of weeks since last I posted here.

I was in Tokyo for six days last week, meeting with other scholars and visiting archives and bookstores. I also had a chance to get together with the good people at Byakuya Shobo, the publishing house that will be bringing out the Japanese translation of Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop next month. It’s the same team that was responsible for the Japanese edition of Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler a few years back.

Along the way, I also attended Day 10 of the May sumo tournament. I was disappointed that the new Kakuryu bento lunchbox was sold out by noon, but had an enjoyable day at the Kokugikan nonetheless. I also saw a couple of current films while in Japan: Waga haha no ki, adapted from Inoue Yasushi’s semi-autobiographical novel about a novelist’s relations with his aging mother and featuring a very strong cast headed by Yakusho Koji and Kiki Kirin; and Rentaneko, an engaging independent film by Ogigami Naoko (of Kamome Shokudo fame) about a young woman who rents out cats to lonely people. It’s a low key, often humorous, meditation on the pleasures and agonies of repetition in everyday life. Mark Schilling’s review for the Japan Times can be found here.

I flew back to Chicago last Saturday and was immediately plunged into adventure: trying to negotiate my way from O’Hare International Airport to the South Side through a maze of traffic closures in effect because of the NATO Summit.

This past Monday night, we took the whole family downtown to see the reunited Beach Boys in concert at the Chicago Theatre. Once again, the commute was a challenge: the Metra trains didn’t start up at 6:30 as promised, and Lake Shore Drive was still shut down. After some hasty improvising, we managed to get there in time. The show was terrific fun. The first half was heavy on early surf numbers, but things really came alive after intermission. Highlights included a lovely version of “Disney Girls,” a plaintive “In My Room,” and the final encore number of “Fun Fun Fun,” when Brian Wilson came out from behind the grand piano to (at least temporarily) strap on a bass guitar and resume his original position in the band.

My fifteen-year-old daughter, who takes her singing seriously, complained that they were using Autotune to correct pitch on the vocals. I pooh-poohed the idea, but when I got home and did some Googling, I found out that many Beach Boys fans are up in arms about the same issue. Either way, it was a fun and historic show, as Greg Kot noted in his review for the Chicago Tribune.

The group’s celebrations of California surf and car culture framed the opening set, but it was Part 2 where the music cut deepest. It began with the core quintet gathered around Wilson’s piano for a mission statement: “Add Some Music to Your Day.” Then it reclaimed the beauty of the band’s more melancholy and complex late ‘60s and early ‘70s work. “Heroes and Villains” melted into intricate, multi-part harmonies that brought smiles to the faces of the participants as Wilson waved his arms with uncharacteristic vigor. “Good Vibrations,” with its plush harmonies and outer-space sound effects still sounded futuristic. [...] In turn, the Beach Boys made falling in love sound both sacred and tragic – their joy tinged by sadness, their despair lifted by hope. And sometimes, as suggested by Brian Wilson’s performance Monday of “Sail On, Sailor,” it becomes too much to bear.

A couple of other odds and ends:

The Atlantic has a nice story by Patrick St. Michel about the trend toward hits by young children in J-Pop, including a mention of my new book. You can read the article online here, and if you haven’t yet checked out “Make Believe Melodies,” St. Michel’s fine blog on contemporary pop music in Japan, you should do so right now.

JERO, the African-American Enka singer who was raised in Pittsburgh singing Misora Hibari numbers with his Japanese grandmother, will be making his New York debut in a concert/talk appearance at the Japan Society next month. Details here. It’s been a while, so to refresh your and my memories, here’s his wonderful 2008 debut single, “Umiyuki” (Ocean snow):

It’s going to be a busy weekend.

Friday, I’m planning to head downtown to catch Kids These Days, a terrific group that combines hip hop, jazz and R&B, in their set at Columbia College’s “Manifest” festival: 5:40-6:30 p.m. “Under the Big Tent” at 1001 S. Wabash Ave. There will be free music performances all day as part of the event.

Then on Saturday it’s the big “Atomic Age II” conference at the University of Chicago, with guest speakers including Kyoto University nuclear physicist Koide Hiroaki (one of the few specialists in the field willing to speak critically about Japan’s nuclear power industry and the government’s role in promoting it), Muto Ruiko (a prominent anti-nuclear activist from Fukushima), and Robert Rossner, professor of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Physics at the University of Chicago and former Director of the Argonne National Laboratory. Last year’s conference was enormously informative and energizing, and I am hoping for more of the same on Saturday.

Sunday, we’ll be visiting Site A/Plot M Disposal Site, the final resting place of Chicago Pile-1, Enrico Fermi’s first nuclear reactor. It was originally located under the grandstands of Stagg Field (currently the site of Regenstein Library) here at the University of Chicago.

In the midst of this flurry of activity, the May sumo tournament gets underway Sunday at Kokugikan in Tokyo. Yokozuna Hakuho is the favorite going in, but sumo has been pretty unpredictable as of late. I have a ticket to attend day 10, and I can’t wait. It just might take my mind off the seemingly unending miseries of the 2012 Minnesota Twins. After a dreadful 2011, Twins fans came into 2012 buoyed by one slender hope: that this season couldn’t possibly be as bad as last.

Hah!

Last week, we attended a terrific sold-out show by Rodrigo y Gabriela at the Chicago Theatre. For the most part, I agree with Greg Kot’s concert review in the Chicago Tribune. The concert began with the duo backed by a band of supporting musicians from Cuba–but a bad mix often drowned out the guitars, especially Gabriela’s. The band departed the stage after five or six numbers, and then we got to the highlight of the show: two excellent, versatile guitarists strutting their stuff, and I do mean “strut.”

Another highlight was the occasional patter between songs. Rodrigo went first, and then a few numbers later Gabriela stepped up to the mike. She apologized that she might be repeating things Rodrigo had already said, “but I never listen when Rodrigo’s talking.”

The band came back for the final set of numbers, and the sound was much better this time around. The concert came to a rousing conclusion with “Tamacun,” followed by an extended encore (including a teaser version of “Stairway to Heaven,” the group’s viral video hit).

I like “Tamacun” quite a bit, but I also notice a strong resemblance to another song: the Southern All Stars’ 1996 hit “Ai no kotodama.” Or am I perhaps just hearing the shared Latin roots of both bands?

You can decide for yourself. Here’s Rodrigo y Gabriela performing “Tamacun”:

And here are the Southern All Stars with “Ai no kotodama.”

I flew into New York City on Wednesday afternoon. Right after checking into my hotel, headed over to the Barrymore Theatre on West 47th to catch “Death of a Salesman,” directed by Mike Nichols with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Willy Loman. Hoffman’s portrayal has elicited a wide range of reactions, from gushing celebration (e.g. John Lahr’s review in the New Yorker) to puzzled dissent (e.g. Chris Jones’ review in the Chicago Tribune).

After seeing the production, I understand the uneven reaction. There’s a mannered quality to Hoffman’s acting here: several times in the evening, he falls silent for four or five seconds, and it’s not clear what’s going on behind Loman’s blank face: confusion, doubt, rage? If you can accept the mannerisms, you begin to accept Hoffman’s Loman, even as you never quite identify with him. The supporting cast is generally strong, and the set uses the classic original design by Jo Mielziner. But ultimately I find myself thinking that I don’t much like this script. It’s celebrated as one of the great American plays, and yet I find it forced, humorless, and altogether too pleading in its earnestness. I find my response odd. I’m usually a sucker for Cold War liberal humanism and its middlebrow masterpieces: I could sit and watch Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals all day. But Arthur Miller leaves me cold.

Thursday morning, I headed over to the Japan Society to catch the excellent “Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920–1945″ exhibit. The show is, I think, mistitled–perhaps intentionally, to capture the attention of a certain audience who might not come if it were more properly called “Japan’s Modern Moment.” But lots of excellent pieces–in particular sculpture and (a pleasant surprise) covers of popular sheet music books for harmonica players. The show continues until June 10.

Thursday’s lunch brought me to Mariella’s Pizza, just south of Columbus Circle. The guys behind the counter provided a theatrical experience rivaling what I’d seen the previous night on Broadway, and the pizza was pretty good, too. Then I caught a cup of coffee and lively conversation with a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years who was full of entertaining stories, as usual.

Thursday evening, I gave my lecture at the Donald Keene Center at Columbia University: “Rethinking Natsume Soseki’s Theory of Literature as World Literature.” Nice turn out for the talk, and lots of good questions and comments afterward. That was followed by a very enjoyable dinner with Columbia faculty and grad students. Thanks to all who came out for the event.

Friday morning, I headed to the Asia Society for its remarkable exhibit, “Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857.” I’d just been reading Aamir Mufti’s “Orientalism and the Institution of World Literatures” (.pdf file here) in which he discusses the importance of the Fort William College project in the formation of modern cultural identities, both European and Asian, and now in the exhibit I was seeing the remarkable artistic legacy of the final century of the Mughal empire. The exhibit runs through May 6.

Friday was lunch at Shake Shack on W. 77th, followed by a pleasant walk through Central Park with a couple of old friends (the weather was perfect throughout my trip) and then I was off to LaGuardia Airport and back home to Chicago. I got a little reading done on the flight, but mostly listened to tunes: Charlie Mingus, Aimee Mann (we talked about her Magnolia soundtrack on our stroll through the park), and Kids These Days.

It was, in sum, a lovely three days and only strengthened my long-standing desire to spend a year or two living in the City. Someday.

This past weekend, we hosted a remarkable event here at the University of Chicago: “What March 11 Means to Me: A Symposium in Honor of Norma Field.” A large audience turned out both days to hear a remarkable array of speakers from Japan reflect on the ongoing disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan.

Ryusawa Takeshi, former editor-in-chief for the Heibonsha publishing house and currently one of the central figures in the East Asia Publishers Conference, was the first speaker on Saturday. He reflected on the role of liberal, progressive journalists in the 1950s in disseminating the doctrine of “Atoms for Peace” in Japan and traced the fascinating history of the benign-sounding word genshiro　(原子炉), the Japanese term for “nuclear reactor” that might more literally be translated as “atomic hearth.”

He was followed by Yokoyu Sonoko, a child psychologist and a leading voice on such issues as bullying and hikkomori syndrome (social withdrawal syndrome), who spoke on the mental health costs of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. Her talk included a number of moving stories about how families and individuals already struggling with psychological difficulties tried to cope with the disaster. She also described the rising incidence of PTSD and other forms of anxiety in the months following 3/11. She concluded by speaking about the sense of “hopelessness” shared by many in today’s Japan and on the possibilities for building new connections based on it–especially in response to the very real danger of fascism in today’s Japan.

The last speaker on Saturday was Takahashi Tetsuya of the University of Tokyo, one of Japan’s leading contemporary philosophers and a native of Fukushima Prefecture. He spoke quite movingly of his childhood in the region and his concerns for its future. Using the example of the recent People’s Tribunal trial of Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) and its management, he unpacked the complexities of the kinds of responsibility we need to consider in remembering 3/11. Of course, primary responsibility lies with what Takahashi called the “nuclear mafia,” the business and governmental figures who promoted the myth of absolute safety while neglecting to secure adequate safety measures. But those who allowed themselves to be deceived also bear some degree of responsibility, as do those who had remained indifferent while enjoying the benefits of cheap electricity generated by what Takahashi has called the “sacrificial system” of contemporary Japan.

Komori Yoichi of the University of Tokyo, one of today’s leading scholars of modern Japanese literature and one of the prime figures in the movement to preserve the anti-war Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, was the first speaker on Sunday. He provided a moving account of his and his family’s personal experiences on 3/11 and the days that followed, arguing for the importance of claiming the embodied experience of sense perception (taiken) of the ‘event’ as a kind of experience (keiken) shared with others through language and dialogue. He situated the events of 3/11 against the history of postwar Japan and of his own lifetime, going back to his birth at the time of the Lucky Dragon Incident and the initial promotion of “Atoms for Peace” as an American Cold War ideology.

Amamiya Karin, a well-known activist in the “precariat” and anti-nuclear movements, was the final speaker. She talked about her experiences traveling in the Fukushima region and the kind of unreal reality people now encounter there–when, for example, Tsutaya video rental stores now also offer to lend Geiger counters for personal use. She focused in particular on divides opening up among the affected populations–resentment, for example, that those who lived within the mandatory evacuation zone get greater compensation than those living just outside of it. As a result, the focus of popular anger is shifting away from TEPCO and the government to fellow victims. But she also discussed tactics being used in recent demonstrations to bring together disparate strata into a single, unified force, and showed videos from several recent protest marches.

It was a memorable event and a great tribute to my colleague, Norma Field. She will be retiring from the University of Chicago at the end of this academic year–though we know she will remain an active force for many years to come. Without her, there’s no way we could have brought together all of the people who made the symposium such an intense and inspiring occasion.

Postscript: Here’s local television station WGN’s coverage of an event commemorating the Fukushima disaster last Sunday right after the symposium, including interviews with Amamiya Karin and Norma Field.

Next week marks the first anniversary of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan. In recent days, we’ve been learning that the situation was in fact far more dire than the government or Tokyo Electric were willing to admit at the time. It’s come out recently that the Japanese government was even considering an unthinkable scenario: evacuation of Tokyo. The New York Times:

in the darkest moments of the nuclear disaster, Japanese leaders did not know the actual extent of damage at the [Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power] plant and secretly considered the possibility of evacuating Tokyo, even as they tried to play down the risks in public.

Just today, a newly issued scientific report concludes that the total amount of radiation released into the ocean near Fukushima was likely much greater than previously estimated. The Asahi Shinbun:

A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say. [...] The figure, which represents about 20 percent of the discharge during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas.

The disaster touched our own family in many ways. My wife was born and raised in Sendai, a city in the center of the affected region. I have lived there on three different occasions. In the early morning hours of March 11 last year, we watched in horror live pictures of the tsunami sweeping over neighborhoods that we know well. Fortunately, none of my in-laws were injured or killed. We did lose some very dear friends, though. And in the year since, we have watched old classmates, colleagues, and friends cope with the loss of children, spouses, parents. Their resilience has been nothing short of astonishing.

We are marking the anniversary with a number of events here at the University of Chicago. Earlier in the year, we hosted an exhibit of photographs from the region, highlighting the scale of the disaster and the enormous energy that has gone into the rescue and recovery efforts. (The same exhibit will be on display at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, March 4 through April 15: details here.)

On March 9 (7:30 p.m., Coulter Lounge in International House), we’ll host a free public screening of an acclaimed new documentary, “Fukushima: Memories of a Lost Landscape” (『「相馬看花」-奪われた土地の記憶』) with director Matsubayashi Yojyu in attendance. Details are available here.

Then, on March 10-11 we’ll host a major conference in honor of my colleague, Norma Field, who will be retiring from the university this summer. “What March 11 Means to Me: A Symposium in Honor of Norma Field” will feature five prominent public intellectuals and activists from Japan, each speaking on the personal and pubic dimensions of the disaster and its ongoing impact. The line-up of speakers is simply amazing:

A schedule for the event and profiles of the participants can be found here.

Finally, on May 5 we will be hosting “Atomic Age II: Fukushima,” with two very special guests from Japan: Koide Hiroaki of the Kyoto University Reactor Research Institute, a scientist who became something of a public hero for his willingness to speak frankly about the risks of nuclear power, and Muto Ruiko, an activist in anti-nuclear citizen movements from Fukushima. Details are available here.

Remarkable progress has been made in recovery over the past year. People from the region I’ve talked to express deep gratitude for the support they’ve received from around the world. But the disaster continues: rebuilding efforts in the tsunami-affected region have barely begun, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster is still unfolding, despite glossy governmental declarations that the situation is under control. Shutting down the reactors and decontaminating the area will take decades. It will take many years to assess the real human cost, too: I dread thinking about what rates of cancer incidence in the region will look like six or seven years from now.

I hope you can join us for some of these events. Please keep the people of Tohoku in your thoughts. One way we can help is to make sure that we all learn the lessons that the disaster is trying to teach us.

My new book, Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop, has just been published by Columbia University Press. It’s available in paperback through your local neighborhood bookstore, and there’s also a Kindle e-book version. Readers in Japan can order it through www.amazon.co.jp. You can also order it directly from the publisher here.

Stay tuned: I’ll soon be adding a web feature over at www.bourdaghs.com including sound samples and other online resources relevant to the book.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, here’s Kasagi Shizuko (the heroine of chapter one) performing her signature number, “Tokyo Boogie Woogie”:

Everyone else is sharing this recent video, so I suppose I should follow suit. Here’s a North Korean accordion band turning in a fine rendition of a-ha’s “Take on Me.”

For fun, here’s a piece I originally posted here in October 2009 about my own East Asian encounter with a-ha:

Newspapers in the West and in Japan are reporting that the Norwegian rock group a-ha have announced they will disband next year after a farewell concert in Oslo. Back in 1985, they had one of the first really cool MTV videos with “Take On Me,” and they’ve soldiered on since. Remembered here in the States as primarily a one-hit wonder, they’ve always had a solid following in Japan.

In 1987, my wife worked briefly at the front desk of the Plaza, one of the best hotels in Sendai. It was where touring musicians usually stayed when they passed through town for a show. A friend of mine used to own a ramen shop in front of the Plaza, and his walls were lined with signed photographs of pretty much every artist you can imagine, Japanese or Western, who had dropped in for a late night snack after the show. One of my favorite stories about his shop is the night Bob Dylan stopped by–and the high school kids working the late shift behind the counter didn’t recognize him.

Anyhow, in 1987 I was going to stop by the Plaza one evening to pick up Satoko after work and take her out for dinner. I get to the hotel and see maybe a hundred teen-age girls milling around outside, as well as a handful of police officers keeping an eye on the crowd. That’s when I remember that a-ha are in town for a concert that night. It’s kind of fun, I think.

So I keep walking toward the front entrance of the hotel. Suddenly there’s a stirring in the crowd and I realize: here I am, blonde, tall, moderately handsome, and about the same age as the guys in the band (in fact, I was born the same week as guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy). Every teen-age girl in the crowd has spotted me and I can feel them wondering: is he one of them?

The moment lasts for maybe three seconds. Then, all at once, everyone realizes that I’m just an ordinary bloke. I continued on my way into the hotel, picked up Satoko, and we had a lovely dinner. But for a few seconds there, it was a-ha and me.

The last six or seven years, I have relied exclusively on a single make of ballpoint pen: the black Super-GP, preferably size 0.5, manufactured by Pilot. Whenever I travel back to Japan, I buy up a handful. I like their grip, their ink delivery, their basic feel. The one design flaw is the cap, which after extended use tends to get loose and fall off. Everything else about it is simply perfect.

I always carry two, in case one gets lost or malfunctions. A bit compulsive, I know, but sometimes it pays off. Last Thursday night, I arrived in Seattle for the annual MLA convention and rode the Downtown Airporter shuttle bus to my hotel. A few minutes before arriving, I felt one of the ballpoints slip out of my pants pocket. A second later, I heard the sound of plastic hitting the bus floor. The shuttle was moving, though, and it was quite dark inside. I felt around the floor with my shoe and then, when we stopped in front of my hotel, swept the area with my hand, but the pen was nowhere to be found. At least I had a spare, which I used to take notes all weekend at the conference.

Last night I flew back to Chicago. After the plane landed at O’Hare and taxied for what seemed like half an hour, we finally reached the gate. I waited for the rows of passengers in front of me to disembark, then made my way down the aisle, briefcase in hand. About halfway to the exit, I spotted it: sitting on the floor of a now-deserted aisle in the economy section, a black Super-GP 0.5 ballpoint. I patted my pocket to see if perhaps my other pen had dropped out, but it was still there. I of course reached down to scoop the pen off the floor, and now I have two again.

It really is a fine ballpoint. I recommend it to you. Apparently, it even knows how to find its way home when it gets lost on the other side of the continent.

Last week the University of Tokyo’s Center for Philosophy hosted a symposium on “Globalizing Natsume Sōseki’s Theory of Literature,” commemorating the publication of the English translation of Bungakuron (1907), Sōseki’s remarkable attempt to construct a fully scientific theory of “literature” complete with mathematical formulas and graphs, one that was supposed to be valid at all times and in all places.

In her talk, Noami Mariko (University of Tokyo) spoke on the role of emotion (small f) in Sōseki’s theory, in particular the indirect experience of emotion by the reader of fiction, tracing through the ways Sōseki put this theory into practice in his 1912 novel, Until the Spring Equinox and Beyond. Joseph Murphy (University of Florida) also explored the relation of Sōseki’s (F+f) formula to his fiction, especially the early story “Tower of London,” and talked about the missing, perhaps subconscious, possibility of (non-F, non-f) as an implicit possible permutation of the formula.

In the afternoon sessions, Atsuko Ueda (Princeton University) situated Bungakuron in the context of late nineteenth century literary histories, as well as the tradition of rhetoric studies that Soseki relied on–and the implications his transcending the categories of national language and national literature holds for contemporary area studies scholarship. Saitō Mareshi (University of Tokyo) raised the question of what kagaku means in the context of Bungakuron: science or discipline? He also traced Sōseki’s use of keywords from the Chinese literati tradition of rhetoric, looking in particular at what was at stake in Sōseki’s switch from that vocabulary to the mathematical language of (F+f). I followed with a talk exploring Bungakuron as a theory of world literature, reading Sōseki against his contemporary Rabindranath Tagore, as well as Pascale Casanova’s more recent attempt to theorize a “world republic of literature.” The final speaker, Komori Yōichi (University of Tokyo), explored the specific scientific contexts on the work, noting its connections to early twentieth century atomic theory, as well as the productive gesture Sōseki made in creating a horizon in which embodied sense perception and intellectual understanding were synthesized into a single entity within the bracketed space of (F+f).

We had lively discussions throughout the day, and the symposium was very well attended. My thanks to the organizers, my co-presenters, and to all who participated.

In the meanwhile, the Modern Language Association has announced that the volume has won the 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature. From the award citation:

Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), provides English language readers with major critical works by Japan’s foremost novelist of the twentieth century. Sōseki aspired to a grand and systematic explanation of literature, focusing on literature’s effects on readers. Based on the cognitive psychology of his day, his account explores how the content of the literary work generates emotional responses. Michael K. Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, and Joseph A. Murphy have done a superb job of supplying the contextual information necessary for today’s non-Japanese reader to appreciate the subtlety and significance of Sōseki’s work.

On top of that, the Japan Times newspaper has just named it one of the “Best Books of 2011.” It’s gratifying to see this project, begun with my colleagues six or seven years ago, reach fruition in this way. Our goal from the start was to get people reading and talking about this remarkable book, and it feels like we’ve accomplished that.