This was a very cute novelisation of My Neighbour Totoro. It wasn't exactly the same as the film. Satsuki is the main point of view character, and MeiThis was a very cute novelisation of My Neighbour Totoro. It wasn't exactly the same as the film. Satsuki is the main point of view character, and Mei seems very young. But there is a lot more about their Mother and her illness. Which adds a nice dimension of realness to the story. As well as some extra scenes. So definitely worth reading. ...more
I came across a gorgeous 1920s version of this for sale in Any ammount of books. It had rag paper and hand coloured illustrations. It was beautifull sI came across a gorgeous 1920s version of this for sale in Any ammount of books. It had rag paper and hand coloured illustrations. It was beautifull small press edition. At a time when homosexuality was still illegal in this country I like to think that this edition was treasured. The stories did have the gay stereotype that most of the stories ended up with the characters death, but that was more to do with Samauri honour requiring they kill themselves, rather than because they were gay. One story had a couple living togeterh in old age, which was sweet, except they were terrible misogynists. Normally I much prefer Chinese literature to Japanese literature, the prizing of scholars over warriors, but I really enjoyed these stories.
The version I read also contain poemsof the geishas which surprisingly I also enjoyed. They were translations of translations but I really liked their simplicity and beauty....more
A few months ago I discovered that Yesasia had a LGBT comics section. The comics were all from Hong Kong and mostly translations of Japanese comics buA few months ago I discovered that Yesasia had a LGBT comics section. The comics were all from Hong Kong and mostly translations of Japanese comics but I decided to get a couple to try. This was very cute. It was a Japanese manga with lesbian schoolgirls. It was very butch/femme but the butches were the servants, the butlers who had to serve the pretty girls. There were overtures of s&m and a LOT of jealousy. I will admit to getting lost a couple times while reading it. But I still enjoyed it a lot. Totally the opposite of the realistic queer books I usually like but lots of fun....more
I've never read a book on Japanese history before. But I have to do a presentation on Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time for my historicalI've never read a book on Japanese history before. But I have to do a presentation on Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time for my historical reresearchethods class in a couple weeks so I went ahead and read it this week. I thought it might be fairly enjoyable, I was looking forward to seeing how things changed over time by examining this one specific part of a culture and seeing how it's changes were a reflection of the changing society around it. But alas this was not the book that Ohnuki-Tierney wrote.
I know very little about Japanese history, except where it intermingled with Chinese history, particularly during the Tang. In her book the author refers to the great influence the Tang dynasty had on Japan, how the Japanese took a lot of the Chinese culture and adapted it as their own. The "highly developed Tang China between the 5th and 7th centuries" when the Tang did not start until the 7th century lasting from 618-906CE. Now when you're making the point that the Chinese had such a huge influence during this time period how hard is it to look up and find out the dates of the dynasty? I mean to be off by TWO HUNDRED YEARS, when the dynasty only lasted for 300 is inexcusable. The fact that Princeton Press published this and no one caught it is to say the least a little disconcerting.
The other thing she mentioned that I did know a bit about, and really not that much, but she talked about how in Greek mythology the hunter was viewed as the Male ideal and said how Hercules was "the prototype of man the hunter" forgetting or ignoring Artemis the GODDESS OF THE HUNT!
So reading this book and only coming across two things I did know about and having them be incorrect makes me a little concerned about the rest of the book. How much should I trust the statements that are made?
The book is "Historical Anthropology" she states how most historical anthropology focuses only on the recent past but she intents do look at the whole of Japanese history and have a much broader scope than that. She does go back as far as 800CE, but only devotes about 15 of her 130 pages to the far past, the majority of the book focuses on the present and the recent past. Unlike other anthropology books I have read there seems to have been no field work done for this book, being Japanese and being able to read Japanese seems to be her qualifications for writing. All her theories and ideas are based on secondary scholarship the majority of which is Japanese. It seems her intention with her book is to familiarize the Western audience with current Japanese scholarship, this she states in the beginning of the book, and this goal I would say she meets very well. However at the end of the book she wrwriteshat the book is for the Japanese, if this were true why is it not written in Japanese with a Japanese publisher, clearly this is a book she intended for Western audiences.
However, despite all the initial criticism I needed to get out of my system there were some quite interesting things that came out of the book. One of the most interesting things for me was in her look at cosmology and deities she identified a "Stranger Deity who was responsible for bringing wealth (often in the symbolic form or rice, though just as often not) to good and deserving people. This idea of the stranger Deity she said was a representation of the interactions between Japanese people and the other cultures around them, particularly the Chinese and later the Europeans. The idea of the deified other, quite a different idea, as a source of goodness and wealth does quite a lot to explain the adaptability of Japanese culture and the inclusion of foreign ideas. It's quite a removal to the more typical idea of the "foreign devil". I did quite like the idea of building a national identity in how your nation or people relates to another. Of course in discussing this nothing was said about the fact that for the most part international affairs was strictly the work of the elite.
She also went into a lot of detail about the importance of Imperial rites with the rice harvest, and the fact that rice was used to pay taxes for most of the Imperial era. She challenged the notion that rice was always the food of the Japanese people and said during this time most farmers grew the rice for taxation purposes rather than consuming themselves. It was also interesting to note that after the introduction of money as a currency money was considered "dirty" whereas rice wealth was always considered "clean". She attributed this to the divine nature of rice associated with the people. However I wonder if the fact that it was used for taxes and therefore how the Imperial elite measured their wealth, that it was in their interest to keep that type of wealth to be good.
I am conflicted about this book, I can see the things I should be presenting to the class about it, the way things are presented as discourses the strategies and approaches that she uses, however I'm not entirely sure how successful they were, I don't feel like I know much more about the Japanese people through time than I did before. I know a little more about the myths, a rite, and the fact that they didn't want to import Californian rice in the 80's and 90's. I feel that she spent more time demonstrating why it was a good metaphor to be using and not enough time actually using it. Now I have to return the book to the library for a week and then check it out and try and construct a decent 20 minute presentation on it. ...more
I bought the original French version of this comic and loved it, but it was only part 2. So I found the English version complete for 1p on amazon and I bought the original French version of this comic and loved it, but it was only part 2. So I found the English version complete for 1p on amazon and had to buy it. The art is just gorgeous! I really liked this historical ghost story. There are many spirits and other worlds and wronged lovers, and innocent people caught up in the middle of it all. Having read the beginning which explains what happened and why everyone is the way it is it made a lot more sense. Definitely one I'd very highly recommend....more
I enjoyed the third volume of this as much as the second. It was good to see people change allegiances and I enjoyed all the different confrontations.I enjoyed the third volume of this as much as the second. It was good to see people change allegiances and I enjoyed all the different confrontations. The art work is beautiful and the story was really lovely. I'm so glad I found this. I'm definitely going to have to get the complete collection....more
I found a copy of volume 2 and 3 of this BD at the French institute's book sale. I read this without having read volume 1 but I was still able to follI found a copy of volume 2 and 3 of this BD at the French institute's book sale. I read this without having read volume 1 but I was still able to follow the story. It was lovely with ghosts and demon children and dream worlds/alternate reality and women warriors kicking ass. Everything I love though set in Japan rather than China. The artwork was beautiful. I'm going to have to track down the first volume. ...more
The second story is probably my favorite of the first three, the pair go up against Shasti, a woman who was engineered to be the ultimate agent, grownThe second story is probably my favorite of the first three, the pair go up against Shasti, a woman who was engineered to be the ultimate agent, grown in a vat, given split personality and generally royally fucked over by the agency that made her. Eventually she manages to break free of her programming and go rogue. It's interesting as despite her evil she's a sympathetic villain, and all the flashbacks to the early days of the pair are interesting and enjoyable. Plus it has Kei quite drunk which is very amusing!...more
This was a comic that I really liked when I was a teenager. I barely remembered anything about it. But this version I think is much better than the onThis was a comic that I really liked when I was a teenager. I barely remembered anything about it. But this version I think is much better than the one I read when I was younger. It's set up as a direct translation of the Japanese, (to the point where the panel layout is "backwards" and while I've read quite a few Chinese comics in this layout doing so in English felt odd). I have to say it was much better than I remembered and much better than black magic. It was divided into four storylines. It was a strange brand of gritty distopian future with random humour mixed in. (The only thing that bothered me was the homophobic joke). It was kinda light on characterisation, more fighting and explosions. But Leona was much more interesting than I remembered, Uni Puma and Ana Puma a bit more disturbing. It was fun though I don't know if I'll bother ever reading it again so I'm glad I borrowed it from the library rather than buying a copy. ...more
I thought this book was ok. Diary entries between a married couple giving different perspectives on their rather unsuccessful marriage. That was kindaI thought this book was ok. Diary entries between a married couple giving different perspectives on their rather unsuccessful marriage. That was kinda interesting, though the husband was a complete idiot! I did kinda like the wife, though I can't really put into words why. For me I thought the ending ruined the book, it was too much explanation of what "really" happened which was answering questions that shouldn't have been answered and raising more. I think it would have been much better without that. My favourite parts were talking about the calligraphy and the brushes and paper used for the diaries. That probably means I didn't enjoy it that much but it was such a quick read it didn't really bother me. I must admit I've not got much interest in modern Japanese lit, though I do still want to read Tale of Genji. ...more
A friend of mine has long claimed that everything that dark horse touches turns to shit, and I must admit I'm inclined to agree with him. This was theA friend of mine has long claimed that everything that dark horse touches turns to shit, and I must admit I'm inclined to agree with him. This was the first Dirty Pair comics done for Dark Horse, having lost one of the two American writers. At first I really enjoyed this graphic novel, it seemed like they were trying to add some character depth to the pair, which started nice, but then ended up taking away what's best about them. In this book they enter a strange virtual reality, that turns out to be one twisted man's obsession with them combined with a desire to destroy the world. What's the strangest thing was that the pair didn't kill ANYONE, accidentally or not. There were no unintended mass civilian deaths, not even one! It seemed like they were attempting to write a more serious story, developing the characters while still attempting to leave plenty of visual "cheesecake" but it just didn't work for me and I missed the lightheartedness of the earlier comics. It was ok, but I don't think I'll be reading anymore. Still it was enjoyable to go back and re-read these comics after so many years. ...more
The third story sees the girls confined to a planet and assigned a reporter to improve their image with a sympathetic piece on them. I think of the thThe third story sees the girls confined to a planet and assigned a reporter to improve their image with a sympathetic piece on them. I think of the three this is the funniest story, particularly the way the reporter envisions the acts of destruction the girls go through. Though this does feel like the biggest difference between the anime comedy and the cyberpunk setting. The villains are pure cyberpunk, obsessed with sex and transferring themselves to different bodies through use of their cyberwear. At one point one of them seems to be using an ipad which considering this was written in the mid-late 80s is pretty cool! While not a great comic it was fun to go back and read these for the nostalgia. ...more
I was so excited to find a copy of this book that I bought it brand new, full price, from an actual bookstore. The Dun Huang documents are my favouritI was so excited to find a copy of this book that I bought it brand new, full price, from an actual bookstore. The Dun Huang documents are my favourite historical finds, an amazing collection of tens of thousands of Buddhist, Taoist and secular documents, written in Chinese and many central Asian languages found sealed in a cave at the beginning of the 20th century. They had been sealed up for almost 900 years and included both printed and hand written works. The find have been an incredible source for the study of Chinese and Central Asian history and religion. However, despite the British Library containing a huge collection of them (including the world’s oldest dated printed book) few people have heard of them. So I was SO excited when I came across this Japanese novel that had been written about them in the 60s. The novel was a fictional account of how the documents came to be deposited in the cave. One of the ideas that historians were debating at that time was that the scrolls had been hidden away because of an invasion (this idea has since been disproved). But this is the central idea of this story. It would be easy to criticise this as a Japanese retelling, in that the only religious documents mentioned are Buddhist and the book focuses nearly entirely on the military aspects of the story. It started very interestingly with a young scholar failing to take his exams and instead having a dream about the situation on the frontier. He ended up going to the frontier and fighting on both sides of the war, discovering Buddhism and hiding the scrolls away from the invading army. I quite enjoyed this book. The sections on the army and the battles got a little too long. The history was ok, but obviously not how the documents were hidden. The characters seemed not to be that detailed and there were hardly any women. But still it was an interesting version of the story. It ignored a lot of the most interesting things about the documents, that they were printed as well as hand written, that they were in various stages of disrepair, and that they were not simply Buddhist, which sheds further light on the intermingling of religion in China during this period. As the Buddhist monastery contained many rare Taoist scriptures. In fact all references to Taoism had been stripped out, down to the fact that it was a Taoist priest who discovered and sold off the documents at the beginning of the 20th century, he was mentioned by name, but not his religious affiliation. It should definitely be read as fiction not as history, but as fiction it was quite good. The pacing seemed a bit strange, if it had been a longer book this would have probably been more annoying but as it was quite short that was fine. I think it would be interesting to read a more recent Chinese novel about the events, but despite its shortcomings I still enjoyed this. ...more
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