Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 37

Sendai

When I was a child, I imagined that Sendai was the headquarters of a vast satanic conglomerate called Muramasa Industries, which spanned the globe and several neighbouring dimensions in a bid for mastery of the universe. In 1987, I wrote my Geography O-level paper on the little-known Muramasa Steelworks in Sendai, which I had entirely made up (it did not help that I accidentally drank a bottle of sake before going into the exam — I got a B, thanks for asking). When I left Japan in 1992, I...

Something for the Weekend…?

On the bullet train, I have been perusing the on-train shop brochure, which is a mental collection of Japanese inventions sufficient to make the average Innovations catalogue look like a collection of really useful items. Should the mood strike me at 200 miles an hour between Hachinohe and Sendai, I have the opportunity to ask one of the passing stewardesses to sell me a two-metre high bookcase. Or a dildo. I am quite boggled by the sort of things on sale, which seems to assume that all...

Clouds on the Hill

Ryotaro Shiba, a prominent writer of historical fiction, serialised the novel Clouds on the Hill (Saka no Ue no Kumo) from 1968 to 1972. He was a master at hunting down those people in Japanese history whose lives spanned crucial events and critical issues. In the case of Clouds on the Hill, he focussed on the Akiyama brothers, two boys from Matsuyama (see last blog entry) who witnessed the rapid modernisation of Japan, joined the new-look military, attained high military rank, one in the...

Graves on the Hill

A tram-ride away from the main train station in Matsuyama, set on the side of a hill, there is an array of 98 stone pillars, each bearing the name of a long-dead foreigner. All were Russian prisoners of war, held by the Japanese from 1904-5.

Some 4000 "Russians" were interned in Japan as the war went on. Louis Seaman, a reporter from the Daily Mail, was scandalised at how many of them weren't really Russians at all:

"The prisoners at Matsuyama were all from White Russia, mostly Finns and...

Manga Snapshots

For several years, I have been writing a column in Neo magazine called Manga Snapshot. Every month I take a different Japanese comics anthology magazine and literally take it apart, examining everything from the paper quality to the adverts. There are so many comics magazines in Japan that despite running now for four years, Manga Snapshot has yet to repeat a title. I've covered all the usual magazines for boys and girls and housewives, and the usual niches like romance and war comics, but...

From the People Who Brought You Pearl Harbor

WW2 has become a stripped-down fable of Star Wars proportions – a few brave heroes, taking on a force of terrifying evil against impossible odds. On the Good Side, the rag-tag hard-pressed Alliance. On the Bad Side, the dark empire, with its storm troopers and its nice uniforms. The good guys win, and the good guys are us.

This doesn't work in Japan.

Though Western sci-fi is still fascinated by the concept of an alien race with a god-emperor, a suicide religion, beautiful elfin women, and food ...

Inside the Shadow Factory

Jonathan Clements investigates the continuing fascination Chinese filmmakers feel for both the First Emperor and the man who tried to kill him.

It was a messy, scrappy struggle in a chilly hall, lasting less than a minute. A suicidal assassin pulled a knife out of nowhere and chased the ruler of the Qin dynasty around his throne. Bodyguards watched in frustration, forbidden on pain of death from mounting the steps to protect their leader. The court physician distracted the assassin by hurling ...

Wandering Ghost

Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn is a biography of the journalist and writer who eventually became a Japanese citizen, and who wrote so many books about the country before his death in 1904. For someone who witnessed Japan's passage into the modern age, and did so much to inform the West about it, Hearn is strangely absent from college reading lists. His name only cropped up once in my entire university career, and that was in a folktale that would have raised a chuckle from Hearn

The Deer Hunters

Hitting the doormat today, a trifle late thanks to Britain's third-world postal system, is my latest "Talking Book", Robin Hood: The Deer Hunters, featuring Sam Troughton who manages not only to play his character, Much the Miller's Son, but pretty much everybody else, including a remarkable impersonation of Jonas Armstrong.

The word count on a Talking Book is only just over 10,000 words, making it a glorified short story in terms of an author's output. But it's a short story that can be delivere

Political Noodlings

Oh, you'll miss him when he's gone! It was the beleaguered Taro Aso, back when he was Foreign Minister, who stood up to the French presidential candidate Segolene Royal when she suggested that manga was responsible for Japan's social ills. During the same period, it was Aso who pushed for "contents" (films, games, anime, manga) to be acknowledged as one of Japan's most virulent exports. When he became Prime Minister, he wooed the otaku vote by proclaiming his love for manga. It was Aso who suppo