Some famous Americans are embarrassed to Be Big in Japan.
Read lack of taste, intelligence and technical finesse taken for granted with Being Big Elsewhere like Europe and the US of A.
Asians wear mousey dark suits, part their oily hair at the side, have buck teeth and dark glasses and sing karaoke and fight each other at bargains for designer items and stand in long lines for Broadway musicals, Sting concerts and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
So Being Big in Japan is really Nowhere at all, except for the money obviously.
But Being Big Somewhere gets complex if you aren't part of the mainstream and must place yourself in such a way to get to the funding/reputation/Crumbs of the Pie that make those outside the mainstream acceptable to the mainstream under its standards.
Not caring about Being Big Anywhere is to be free of all that nonsense.
And then Japan _ like the California desert or what Europe was for Dexter Gordon or the bottom of the sea where dolphins play _ can offer relief.
I'm earning an honest living fortunately in a way that has something to do with writing and the public good.
And I do the right thing in my responsibilities to my family, my conscience and society.
When I have free time, I write poems.
I'm spending what time I have on Earth in a way that makes sense to me.
Wanting to Be Big is Very Small.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Turning Japanese
Being a character in a book is flattering if the writing happens to be as good as "Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei" by David Mura (1991: Anchor-Random).
Excerpts:
Across the boulevard, a Japanese woman strode straight toward me, wearing a dark coat, a black skirt, a black jacket, black stockings and long silver earrings. Her hair was permed, her face small, oval, a dimple like mine on her right cheek. Her lipstick was bright coral.
"Are you David Mura?" she asked.
"How did you know me?"
"Well, you said you'd be wearing a black coat and carrying a black shoulder bag."
"I wondered if you could pick me out as an American."
In many ways, Yuri looked like most of the Japanese women around us, but she possessed a flash that somehow wasn't present in the others. Perhaps it was her lipstick, or the energy of her small frame. Young Japanese women seemed to fold into themselves when they greeted each other. It wasn't just the gesture of bowing, it was the way their bodies always seemed to be stepping backward as they talked or giggled. Yuri had looked me straight in the eye and thrust out her hand in greeting. Her eyes and smile carried a wry, suspicious air. "Be forewarned," they said. "Nothing gets past me." Certain minority women in America have this toughness, this unwillingness to waste time with bullshit. Sometimes it's strength, sometimes bitterness, sometimes both. With Yuri, I couldn't yet tell.
She suggested a tempura restaurant nearby. Walking among the Japanese crowds, we talked in English. But I didn't feel self-conscious as I sometimes did with Susie. Yuri and I both belonged, and did not; we shared a dual privilege. Even our clothing matched; I was also dressed in a black coat, black pants, white shirt.
The walls of the resturant and the booths were paneled in pine. There was a tatami room in back. We sat in a booth. Yuri ordered in Japanese. I wondered if it seemed strange to the waitresses that the woman was ordering, or that we were speaking English to each other. By this time, I could read enough kanji to get by on basic menus, and I could order for myself. Still, I was relieved to let Yuri order.
...
Nodding, she told me that many Sansei males she knew in San Francisco felt insecure about their sexuality _ they just didn't feel attractive.
"And then, of course, they see white boys picking up on the Asian women ..."
Still, Yuri didn't always feel sympathy for the Sansei males. Many of them held traditionally Japanese chauvinistic values. They often felt that Japanese women, with their daikon legs _ short and thick like a Japanese radish _ square hips, and small breasts, lacked the beauty ahd glamour of white women. I felt pangs of self-recognition, and yet I was also relieved to know other Sansei men had similar uncertainties about their identity.
As Yuri and I talked, I thought how ironic it was that I had had to come to Japan before I could learn how other Japanese-Americans in my generation were dealing with their background. Oh, I had read Japanese-American novels and poetry, but they sometimes felt distant, almost mythical, unconnected to my experience in the white Midwest. Certainly Yuri had her biases, but she didn't try to hide them. I felt an easy camaraderie with her. I knew she had praised my work in an article in San Francisco Poetry Flash. And something in our sensibilities resonoated with each other. I admired her willingness to speak out, to stand apart from the group.
The poems she showed me that afternoon confirmed that we were mining the same territory. It wasn't just that they dealt frankly with sexual matters, or that her father appeared to have a temper like my father's down to the occasional violence of his rages. No, there was a plunge beyond the acceptable and well-mannered, a sense of sexuality as destructive and violent, as representing a dark limit of human relations where rage reveals itself, a sense conveyed by images which left both the reader and the writer hovering on the edge of shame, anger, obsession.
Excerpts:
Across the boulevard, a Japanese woman strode straight toward me, wearing a dark coat, a black skirt, a black jacket, black stockings and long silver earrings. Her hair was permed, her face small, oval, a dimple like mine on her right cheek. Her lipstick was bright coral.
"Are you David Mura?" she asked.
"How did you know me?"
"Well, you said you'd be wearing a black coat and carrying a black shoulder bag."
"I wondered if you could pick me out as an American."
In many ways, Yuri looked like most of the Japanese women around us, but she possessed a flash that somehow wasn't present in the others. Perhaps it was her lipstick, or the energy of her small frame. Young Japanese women seemed to fold into themselves when they greeted each other. It wasn't just the gesture of bowing, it was the way their bodies always seemed to be stepping backward as they talked or giggled. Yuri had looked me straight in the eye and thrust out her hand in greeting. Her eyes and smile carried a wry, suspicious air. "Be forewarned," they said. "Nothing gets past me." Certain minority women in America have this toughness, this unwillingness to waste time with bullshit. Sometimes it's strength, sometimes bitterness, sometimes both. With Yuri, I couldn't yet tell.
She suggested a tempura restaurant nearby. Walking among the Japanese crowds, we talked in English. But I didn't feel self-conscious as I sometimes did with Susie. Yuri and I both belonged, and did not; we shared a dual privilege. Even our clothing matched; I was also dressed in a black coat, black pants, white shirt.
The walls of the resturant and the booths were paneled in pine. There was a tatami room in back. We sat in a booth. Yuri ordered in Japanese. I wondered if it seemed strange to the waitresses that the woman was ordering, or that we were speaking English to each other. By this time, I could read enough kanji to get by on basic menus, and I could order for myself. Still, I was relieved to let Yuri order.
...
Nodding, she told me that many Sansei males she knew in San Francisco felt insecure about their sexuality _ they just didn't feel attractive.
"And then, of course, they see white boys picking up on the Asian women ..."
Still, Yuri didn't always feel sympathy for the Sansei males. Many of them held traditionally Japanese chauvinistic values. They often felt that Japanese women, with their daikon legs _ short and thick like a Japanese radish _ square hips, and small breasts, lacked the beauty ahd glamour of white women. I felt pangs of self-recognition, and yet I was also relieved to know other Sansei men had similar uncertainties about their identity.
As Yuri and I talked, I thought how ironic it was that I had had to come to Japan before I could learn how other Japanese-Americans in my generation were dealing with their background. Oh, I had read Japanese-American novels and poetry, but they sometimes felt distant, almost mythical, unconnected to my experience in the white Midwest. Certainly Yuri had her biases, but she didn't try to hide them. I felt an easy camaraderie with her. I knew she had praised my work in an article in San Francisco Poetry Flash. And something in our sensibilities resonoated with each other. I admired her willingness to speak out, to stand apart from the group.
The poems she showed me that afternoon confirmed that we were mining the same territory. It wasn't just that they dealt frankly with sexual matters, or that her father appeared to have a temper like my father's down to the occasional violence of his rages. No, there was a plunge beyond the acceptable and well-mannered, a sense of sexuality as destructive and violent, as representing a dark limit of human relations where rage reveals itself, a sense conveyed by images which left both the reader and the writer hovering on the edge of shame, anger, obsession.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Remembering Sachiko Yoshihara
As a poet, I have always been lucky although I was too young back then to know it.
Sachiko Yoshihara, a pioneer Japanese feminist poet who founded La Mer magazine, came to one of my readings, which was at a small dark pub.
She sat so beautiful and proud at the bar.
And she shouted: "Get her a bourbon," as soon as I finished reading one of my poems which had "Jack Daniels" in it.
"Your poetry is strong," she told me, looking straight into my eyes. "You are strong."
I was one of her kind, and I should never forget it or doubt it because Sachiko Yoshihara, who knows such things, having been there and done it first, is telling me that this is true.
She drank and drank at the bar, and later that night collapsed forward on to the counter, and fell asleep, all alone.
It's too late now, but how I wish I had talked to her more, hugged her and told her how strong and beautiful she and her poetry were, and how lucky I was to be bestowed that praise from a poet like her.
Sachiko Yoshihara, a pioneer Japanese feminist poet who founded La Mer magazine, came to one of my readings, which was at a small dark pub.
She sat so beautiful and proud at the bar.
And she shouted: "Get her a bourbon," as soon as I finished reading one of my poems which had "Jack Daniels" in it.
"Your poetry is strong," she told me, looking straight into my eyes. "You are strong."
I was one of her kind, and I should never forget it or doubt it because Sachiko Yoshihara, who knows such things, having been there and done it first, is telling me that this is true.
She drank and drank at the bar, and later that night collapsed forward on to the counter, and fell asleep, all alone.
It's too late now, but how I wish I had talked to her more, hugged her and told her how strong and beautiful she and her poetry were, and how lucky I was to be bestowed that praise from a poet like her.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Hiromi Ito in English
Mikiro Sasaki once told me that as a poet I was "Hiromi Ito in English."
He meant it as a compliment, the way he always has, so much like a poet, to-the-point short-on-words observations.
He probably doesn't remember having said this any more than he remembers me or my poems.
Some years back, when Ito was far less famous than she is today, though she was already a star, I translated some of her poems in English while I was still living in San Francisco.
She loved my translations and she asked for more although I ran out of time and never followed through with what could have been a very interesting collaboration.
My poem is in one poetry anthology Ito is in:
"other side river," California: Stone Bridge Press, 1995.
I also had an opportunity to chat with Ito at a cofee shop when I came to live in Japan.
She told me that her menstrual periods would begin right before or during her poetry readings even though she wasn't due for that cycle.
Then she said, "Yuri-san you're the first person I've told this to who didn't act surprised."
Well, I just thought it made perfect sense.
Poetry is so erotic, hormones, lightning nerve shots, thought/speech going haywire, your uterus would want to bleed out of cycle, naturally.
She also told me she was afraid of Shuntaro Tanikawa's eyes _ they have that flicker from inside of someone who is trying to take, she said, visibly shivering.
Like all artists, Tanikawa is the kind of person who never stops being curious, and perhaps that energetic ego-centric desire was what repulsed Ito.
Ito also talked about how she couldn't eat properly when she loved a man.
Food/sex/womanhood/reproduction/desire/ are all wrapped in one.
It is true, when you stop to think about it, eating, having sex, living day by day make utterly no sense and are rather grotesque and terrible.
When you stop too long to think about it, like after you come off an illness, it takes such an extra conscious effort to carry out the act of eating _ lift the fork, stab the mush, cut, carry to mouth, open mouth, close, open/close, open/close, swallow.
And imagining what's happening to the food once it hits your blood-curdling feces-filled organs is nothing but a childhood nightmare.
He meant it as a compliment, the way he always has, so much like a poet, to-the-point short-on-words observations.
He probably doesn't remember having said this any more than he remembers me or my poems.
Some years back, when Ito was far less famous than she is today, though she was already a star, I translated some of her poems in English while I was still living in San Francisco.
She loved my translations and she asked for more although I ran out of time and never followed through with what could have been a very interesting collaboration.
My poem is in one poetry anthology Ito is in:
"other side river," California: Stone Bridge Press, 1995.
I also had an opportunity to chat with Ito at a cofee shop when I came to live in Japan.
She told me that her menstrual periods would begin right before or during her poetry readings even though she wasn't due for that cycle.
Then she said, "Yuri-san you're the first person I've told this to who didn't act surprised."
Well, I just thought it made perfect sense.
Poetry is so erotic, hormones, lightning nerve shots, thought/speech going haywire, your uterus would want to bleed out of cycle, naturally.
She also told me she was afraid of Shuntaro Tanikawa's eyes _ they have that flicker from inside of someone who is trying to take, she said, visibly shivering.
Like all artists, Tanikawa is the kind of person who never stops being curious, and perhaps that energetic ego-centric desire was what repulsed Ito.
Ito also talked about how she couldn't eat properly when she loved a man.
Food/sex/womanhood/reproduction/desire/ are all wrapped in one.
It is true, when you stop to think about it, eating, having sex, living day by day make utterly no sense and are rather grotesque and terrible.
When you stop too long to think about it, like after you come off an illness, it takes such an extra conscious effort to carry out the act of eating _ lift the fork, stab the mush, cut, carry to mouth, open mouth, close, open/close, open/close, swallow.
And imagining what's happening to the food once it hits your blood-curdling feces-filled organs is nothing but a childhood nightmare.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Abnormalities
It was with a chuckle shaking his brawny body that Kenji Nakagami told me _ as though he was letting me in on a good secret _ writers aren't "normal" ("futsu") people.
"Don't you believe what he says," he said of another writer, Haruki Murakami. "He is a writer _ not a normal person."
The idea that writers may not be "normal" wasn't something I had thought about until then.
And he said it with a conviction that also had not occurred to me: That it's better to be abnormal.
Normalcy wasn't desirable.
It was boring.
It was ordinary.
Perhaps in the West, standing out from the crowd is considered a virtue.
But in Japan, being different is a stigma.
I had never wanted to be different, and I was always sad I could never blend in anywhere _ not being white in the U.S., being too Americanized among Japanese.
Abnormality is a special place to be, Nakagami was saying, waving his big glove-like hand in a Tokyo alley after our interview, smiling, totally not normal, totally unique, totally disarming, totally convincing, forever caught in that photo-shot moment, in my mind, more than 15 years after his death.
Hailing from the proud Buraku, his works have more in common with the multicultural works of America in an intense and mysterious way than with what we are accustomed to identifying with Japanese fiction.
If we were happily normal, maybe we would never have become writers.
And maybe we aren't really writers at all.
Just rejected because of our abnormalities, doomed to the darkness that makes us crazy and furious in crawling out to that blinding ideal with our writing.
"Don't you believe what he says," he said of another writer, Haruki Murakami. "He is a writer _ not a normal person."
The idea that writers may not be "normal" wasn't something I had thought about until then.
And he said it with a conviction that also had not occurred to me: That it's better to be abnormal.
Normalcy wasn't desirable.
It was boring.
It was ordinary.
Perhaps in the West, standing out from the crowd is considered a virtue.
But in Japan, being different is a stigma.
I had never wanted to be different, and I was always sad I could never blend in anywhere _ not being white in the U.S., being too Americanized among Japanese.
Abnormality is a special place to be, Nakagami was saying, waving his big glove-like hand in a Tokyo alley after our interview, smiling, totally not normal, totally unique, totally disarming, totally convincing, forever caught in that photo-shot moment, in my mind, more than 15 years after his death.
Hailing from the proud Buraku, his works have more in common with the multicultural works of America in an intense and mysterious way than with what we are accustomed to identifying with Japanese fiction.
If we were happily normal, maybe we would never have become writers.
And maybe we aren't really writers at all.
Just rejected because of our abnormalities, doomed to the darkness that makes us crazy and furious in crawling out to that blinding ideal with our writing.
Monday, February 4, 2008
The Naked Summer
A movie about a summer dance workshop led by Dairakudakan.
Metamorphosis is probably the most exciting event to witness, and that's exactly what happens in "The Naked Summer," a film that documents what happens to about 30 youngsters who take a Butoh dance workshop led by Akaji Maro of Dairakudakan in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture, in 2003.
They jog, cook meals, giggle.
But something extraordinary is about to happen.
Exercises in Butoh are designed to teach the novice the methodology of the dance by confronting those Butoh moments of existence.
Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Butoh, is supposed to have said that Butoh is the dance of a corpse.
Students of Butoh were told, as the legend goes, to become a horse, or become a dog, or feel as though their body were covered with ants, and question why your head should be on top of your neck, to achieve the slow, tense and jagged movements that characterize Butoh _ the self-proclaimed antithesis to Western dance.
Watching the youngsters tackle the assignments is fascinating:
_ Feel the space around your body, touching every fingertip, air moving like gel.
_ Sense a tragic accidental moment, even something minor striking, like a splinter piercing your foot.
_ Run and keep laughing.
_ Walk slowly, sliding your feet across the ground, while keeping your head level.
They practice and practice with a passion that's laughable in its purity. They grimace, stretching and squeezing their facial muscles. They squirm on the floor like worms. They flap their arms, bend their bodies repeatedly, they do lifts until their backs hurt. They collapse on the floor in exhaustion.
But in the act of doing, zenlike, they become Butoh dancers.
The weeklong workshop culminates in an evening performance at an outdoor theater.
When the boys get their heads and eyebrows shaved off, the transformation is almost complete.
The youngsters cut cloth, using patterns, and sew bikini panties _ the sole items of costuming.
By the time they nervously don makeup, painting their bodies with gold paint, they are already strangers, animals from hell trapped in sinewy bodies of Buddhas.
The movie juxtaposes footage of the professional troupe's performances with scenes from the workshop.
And that's an eye-opener.
Having watched the novices struggle akwwardly with the simplest Butoh moves that we have seen so often performed effortlessly by the professionals, we now appreciate with more intensity the experienced dancers' chiseled bodies and controlled movements.
Maro's body at 60 has never been so stunningly beautiful as we watch him smile, crack jokes, lecture and gaze on with wisdom at those who are trying to take up this legacy of Japanese postwar art.
We know he knows he is running out of time to leave that understanding to the young, and we witness Maro's recognition of his inevitable death and his sense of urgency.
We are also struck by how unique, definitive and awesome Butoh is as an art form and how it is relevant to the world today and the future these youngsters inherit.
Still, the movie, directed by Kenji Okabe, intentionally doesn't bother to give the participants' names, backgrounds.
They are blurs of faces.
They came and they lived a week as Butoh dancers and they will never be the same.
That's the story this movie wants to tell.
A regular documentary might have gone back, asking some of them for a reaction, demonstrating their return to the everyday.
Instead, the movie simply shows another summer has come _ jogging and exercising under the sunlight is another batch of kids who has come to be reborn as Butoh dancers.
Metamorphosis is probably the most exciting event to witness, and that's exactly what happens in "The Naked Summer," a film that documents what happens to about 30 youngsters who take a Butoh dance workshop led by Akaji Maro of Dairakudakan in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture, in 2003.
They jog, cook meals, giggle.
But something extraordinary is about to happen.
Exercises in Butoh are designed to teach the novice the methodology of the dance by confronting those Butoh moments of existence.
Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Butoh, is supposed to have said that Butoh is the dance of a corpse.
Students of Butoh were told, as the legend goes, to become a horse, or become a dog, or feel as though their body were covered with ants, and question why your head should be on top of your neck, to achieve the slow, tense and jagged movements that characterize Butoh _ the self-proclaimed antithesis to Western dance.
Watching the youngsters tackle the assignments is fascinating:
_ Feel the space around your body, touching every fingertip, air moving like gel.
_ Sense a tragic accidental moment, even something minor striking, like a splinter piercing your foot.
_ Run and keep laughing.
_ Walk slowly, sliding your feet across the ground, while keeping your head level.
They practice and practice with a passion that's laughable in its purity. They grimace, stretching and squeezing their facial muscles. They squirm on the floor like worms. They flap their arms, bend their bodies repeatedly, they do lifts until their backs hurt. They collapse on the floor in exhaustion.
But in the act of doing, zenlike, they become Butoh dancers.
The weeklong workshop culminates in an evening performance at an outdoor theater.
When the boys get their heads and eyebrows shaved off, the transformation is almost complete.
The youngsters cut cloth, using patterns, and sew bikini panties _ the sole items of costuming.
By the time they nervously don makeup, painting their bodies with gold paint, they are already strangers, animals from hell trapped in sinewy bodies of Buddhas.
The movie juxtaposes footage of the professional troupe's performances with scenes from the workshop.
And that's an eye-opener.
Having watched the novices struggle akwwardly with the simplest Butoh moves that we have seen so often performed effortlessly by the professionals, we now appreciate with more intensity the experienced dancers' chiseled bodies and controlled movements.
Maro's body at 60 has never been so stunningly beautiful as we watch him smile, crack jokes, lecture and gaze on with wisdom at those who are trying to take up this legacy of Japanese postwar art.
We know he knows he is running out of time to leave that understanding to the young, and we witness Maro's recognition of his inevitable death and his sense of urgency.
We are also struck by how unique, definitive and awesome Butoh is as an art form and how it is relevant to the world today and the future these youngsters inherit.
Still, the movie, directed by Kenji Okabe, intentionally doesn't bother to give the participants' names, backgrounds.
They are blurs of faces.
They came and they lived a week as Butoh dancers and they will never be the same.
That's the story this movie wants to tell.
A regular documentary might have gone back, asking some of them for a reaction, demonstrating their return to the everyday.
Instead, the movie simply shows another summer has come _ jogging and exercising under the sunlight is another batch of kids who has come to be reborn as Butoh dancers.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
People Who Know Pain
The World is divided bet-
Ween two kinds of People
The Winners and the Losers
The Takers and the Givers
The Famous and the Forgotten
The Loved and the Unloved _
Those who don't care and
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
when your tongue rolls, the
tips of my nipples, piercing
knife of betrayal
Vincent Van Gogh
John Coltrane
Garcia Marquez
Toulouse Lautrec
Billie Holliday
Richard Wright
Kenji Miyazawa
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
baby foxes dance,
leaving paw marks in the snow,
fairy tale of joy
Hermit, victim,
Outcast, untouched,
Untouchable
They travel faceless
Shadows on the subway
Mute, unconnected,
Unknowing of their own Pain
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
bitter memories grow
a cancer pomegranate
bleeding and rotting
I'd rather shelter that Pain alone
A powerless nobody,
Ashamed, shunned,
Stench of insignificance,
Laughing the idiot's laugh,
Running forgotten errands,
Dying before living like other
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
a zillion light years
the planet pulsates timeless
soundless universe
I'd never be that superior someone who
Conquers, fornicates, lynches,
Deposits paychecks, plans careers, gives advice,
Forms opinions, writes reviews,
Weighs pros and cons, wins awards,
Attends receptions, discriminates,
Never knowing, shrugging off, how painful
People's Pain can be
People's Pain can be
Ween two kinds of People
The Winners and the Losers
The Takers and the Givers
The Famous and the Forgotten
The Loved and the Unloved _
Those who don't care and
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
when your tongue rolls, the
tips of my nipples, piercing
knife of betrayal
Vincent Van Gogh
John Coltrane
Garcia Marquez
Toulouse Lautrec
Billie Holliday
Richard Wright
Kenji Miyazawa
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
baby foxes dance,
leaving paw marks in the snow,
fairy tale of joy
Hermit, victim,
Outcast, untouched,
Untouchable
They travel faceless
Shadows on the subway
Mute, unconnected,
Unknowing of their own Pain
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
bitter memories grow
a cancer pomegranate
bleeding and rotting
I'd rather shelter that Pain alone
A powerless nobody,
Ashamed, shunned,
Stench of insignificance,
Laughing the idiot's laugh,
Running forgotten errands,
Dying before living like other
People who know Pain
People who know Pain
a zillion light years
the planet pulsates timeless
soundless universe
I'd never be that superior someone who
Conquers, fornicates, lynches,
Deposits paychecks, plans careers, gives advice,
Forms opinions, writes reviews,
Weighs pros and cons, wins awards,
Attends receptions, discriminates,
Never knowing, shrugging off, how painful
People's Pain can be
People's Pain can be
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
