Michael Pronko's Blog, page 17
April 15, 2016
April 9, 2016
Interview with Norm Goldman at Bookpleasures.com
A Conversation With Michael Pronko Author of Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo
By Norm Goldman
Published April 10, 2016
Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Michael Pronko author of Beauty and Chaos, Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens and his most recent tome, Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo. Michael has also contributed essays toNewsweek Japan, the once great Tokyo Q and Artscape Japan. He has lived, taught and written in Tokyo for eighteen years and is a professor at Meiji Gakuin University teaching American literature, culture, film, music, and art.
Norm: Good day Michael and thanks for participating in our interview.
Michael: Thanks for having me.
Norm: When did you first consider yourself a writer? What keeps you going?
Michael: One time on the train in Tokyo I saw a guy reading one of my articles in Newsweek Japan. I could see my name and the little illustration in his hands. Wow! I thought, he’s reading MY writing! On the train! I must be a writer! I wrote my editor and she said, “So? You thought no one reads it?”
But, just seeing that connection made it real somehow. But that’s just one sense of being a writer, the outward sense. As long as I can remember, I loved to write. After college, I traveled around the world for two years, working when I ran out of money. I kept a journal and when I filled one notebook up, I’d send it back to my parents to save for me. (They never disowned me, so they must never have read them).
That’s another sense of feeling like a writer, just the energy of words from your hand on the page (or screen, now). It’s impetuous and fun, but a bit shapeless and isolated, expressive but not connective. I run on both senses of being a writer and both keep me stoked in different ways.
Norm: How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing and what do you think most characterizes your writing?
Michael: Everyone is in constant dialogue with their past. That can really screw you up, but it can also be a creative tension that is highly productive.
Kansas, where I grew up, is a world, or two, away from Tokyo. But that upbringing, with all of its understandings about the world, is like kindling waiting to be lit. When that upbringing comes in contact with something new, like Tokyo, it creates a spark, and sets up a creative tension. Tapping all that inner confusion really colors my writing.
The seesawing between the weight (good and bad) of the past and the immediate reaction to the present is what characterizes these essays, and a lot of first person writing.
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Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Summarize your writing process.
Michael: I would say I write by paying attention. Children pay attention to everything, since they have not lost their filter. Teachers always say, “Pay attention now,” but what they really mean is pay attention to what we tell you to, and nothing else. So, to write better, I’ve had to re-learn how to pay attention.
And there’s a lot to pay attention to in Tokyo. It’s sensory overload. When I feel something strongly amid that overload, I jot it down. I take that and work around it, into it, over it, with words. I let that sit, sometimes for years, to let my unconscious, which is where intuition resides, do its work. Sometimes, I’ll pull up old notes and have an “Aha!” moment. Other times, I have to work for it.
There are logical parts of the process, but overall, I think it’s pretty sloppy. I guess words have both a logical, tool-like side, but also a musing, intuitive side. I respect both. I rewrite a lot, mainly because there are so many ways to rewrite, once for meaning, again for metaphor, then for coherence, clarity, length. I rewrite as many times as I have time, or energy, for. Thank god for deadlines and word limits, real or self-imagined.
Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was least useful or most destructive?
Michael: I read lots and lots of books on writing. Each was a piece of the puzzle, but an isolated piece. The puzzle can only come together in your own head.
I gradually learned to usefully extract what I needed from what I read. And not just from books, but also from “reading” a work of art, a film, the urban space, or even a passing conversation.
An expansive way of reading the world provides creative techniques, inspiration, material and a stronger mindset. I think least useful is listening to the internal censor-critic-superego-judge, which in my case seems like a full bureaucratic department in my mind. Learning to tell that destructive voice to get the hell out of the way is essential, because it can quash all creativity. Learning to love the daily grind of writing is also super-useful.
Norm: How long have you been living in Japan and what made you want to live there?
Michael: Tokyo’s interesting. That’s the main reason. I’ve been here about eighteen years now. I have a job at the university, so I’ll be here until I retire, at least.
Living in Tokyo, I feel like I’m traveling everyday, but also like I’m at home, too. I see confusing, but fascinating things all the time.
Maybe I was a little bored in America, because I often felt like I understood it too well. But that’s rarely a feeling I have in Tokyo. Life here is confusing, upending, and amazing, a constant barrage of reactions. I tell my students my whole life is like studying abroad!
Norm: In your most recent book, Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo you mention you may be very much in Tokyo, however, you would never be of Tokyo, which has never completely normalized for you. Could you elaborate?
Michael: When I was taking notes for this answer sitting on the train, I saw this grade school boy in front of me. He had on a uniform with a green cap and shorts (on a cold day), a huge book bag, a little pull string for his emergency cellphone call system, and he was easy in the crowd.
He was of Tokyo. Me watching him and wondering about him was me being in Tokyo. I let myself think of myself as a “Tokyoite” sometimes, but that’s still different from someone who grew up here, who feels all this is natural.
The essays are written from the point of view of being inbut not of Tokyo. The gap between the two produces insight. Of course, I am sometimes just in Tokyo, falling asleep on the train, teaching class, or out with friends, but writing needs a couple of points of view to work with. I write by being deeply present (in), but not complicit and unreflective (of).
Norm: What were your goals and intentions in Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
Michael: I’ve written over two hundred essays about Tokyo over the past fifteen years or so, so they add up. With this collection, I wanted to explain more of the unique, intense experience of Tokyo life, by getting down my reactions more fully. I think I managed that in these essays.
The essays in my other two collections looked more at urban structures and strange customs in a more anthropological, or observational, way. These new essays are more personal, like about the earthquake, and a bit more seasoned. Closer, I guess. I drew on a bit more poetry and a bit more philosophy. These new ones describe less and narrate more. But I still feel like there’s more to write, more goals and intentions left to aim at.
Norm: What did you enjoy most about writing this book of essays and what was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating the book.
Michael: Some of the essays were originally for magazine columns, so I had a deadline, word limit, overworked editor and Japanese-reading audience.
I enjoyed rewriting the essays without all those things hanging over me. I also rewrote parts of the essays thinking of a non-Japanese, non-Tokyo audience. So, that was fun to rethink how to explain Tokyo to another kind of reader. I was surprised by how much more explanation was needed for someone who has never, for example, eaten fermented squid intestines or been trapped on a super-crowded train too long. I was surprised to learn how complex Tokyo life really is. Those surprising things were a pleasure.
Norm: What would you like to say to writers who are reading this interview and wondering if they can keep creating, if they are good enough, if their voices and visions matter enough to share?
Michael: Keep writing. Ignore setbacks. I think everyone’s experience of life is well worth retelling, in either factual or fictional ways, or a mixture of both. Just being alive on this planet IS a story to be told. But you have to really feel that, and write it down, not just think about it and wonder if it could someday get on paper.
We’re so crushed by the forces of schooling, which tells us that everything will be graded. I say that as a teacher who distrusts grading. In society, so many things are demotivating.
Those demotivating forces, internal and external, just have to be set aside, worked around or kept at bay. When I worry about what others think, even without really knowing what they think, my writing slows down or stops. So, I try to focus less on “Am I good enough?” and more on “How do I get better?” Self-confidence is a really hard thing to get a hold of, but it helps the creative process immensely. It comes from focused practice.
Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your most recent work, Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo?
Michael: I’m linked in, google-able, facebook-ed and all the rest. Please join my mailing list from my homepage. Here’s a short list of where I virtually exist:
Norm: What is next for Michael Pronko?
Michael: Two detective mysteries set in Tokyo are written and heading toward the next steps. I’ll write two more books of essays, one about Tokyo people I know here, and another on traditional Japanese customs, objects, patterns and practices.
Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your books, but nobody has?
Michael: Unasked question: What train line do you usually take? Answer: The Chuo Line, it cuts right through the middle of Tokyo.
Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.
Review from Bookpleasures.com
Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo Reviewed By Norm Goldman of Bookpleasures.com
By Norm Goldman
Published April 10, 2016
GENERAL NON-FICTION REVIEWS
Author: Michael Pronko
Publishers: Raked Gravel Press 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942410-11-9
Michael Pronko has a natural talent to spin out words and astute perceptions in concise, steady and refreshing prose wherein every word counts and nothing is extra. This is quite in evidence in his most recent tome Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo where we are taken to various areas that few have seen and savored.
His approach to writing the essays about Tokyo and its inhabitants is an unexpected delight, both clever and insightful where he depicts not only the blemishes of Japanese culture but also the finer things it has to offer. On the other hand, as he mentions, he may be very much in Tokyo, however, he would never be of Tokyo which has never completely normalized for him.
Divided into five parts, the collection covers a great deal of ground and is drawn from Pronko’s later columns in Newsweek Japan that were published in the four years after the 2011 earthquake and emanate from his daily train rides, each devoted to a particular subject matter in a delicious random way providing readers with fascinating portraits of Tokyoites. A glossary at the end of the collection is provided translating some of the Japanese words that are sprinkled throughout the essays. As Pronko mentions, these words are better left in their original Japanese as they work better.
Quite impressive is Pronko’s familiarity with Tokyoites although he was born in Kansas City, which no doubt is a very different world. Incidentally, he has also lived in Beijing, China for three years.
One of the joys in reading these essays is that the language is precisely crafted. For example, Pronko is frugal with his adjectives but nonetheless draws lively, animated and sometimes comical pictures concerning a variety of topics. These are filled with details such as finding a language to converse that “can be confusing as interpreting the dance of a honeybee,” being stopped four times by the police while biking when wearing ratty jeans and a frayed shirt, watching a young woman trying to pick up her cell phone on a crowded train where people are packed like sardines, interpreting Japanese body language, the Japanese obsession with form filling, the skill in squeezing stuff into one place and learning space conservation, plastic recycling, getting lost in Tokyo where you need more than a map or GPS to find your way and a host of others.
One essay that I found particularly fascinating concerns the preoccupation with cleanliness where as Pronko states: “Forty million people in the Tokyo, Yokohama and surrounding areas should mean forty million producers of trash. Yet, it feels as if a giant vacuum cleaner and sponger are run over the city every couple hours.”
Another that I can personally relate to is, “The Language Dance.” I live in Montreal, Quebec where people converse both in French and English. Very often if you are an English speaking person you can start a conversation in French and wind up speaking in English as the person you are talking to speaks a better English than your French, even though French may be their mother tongue. Pronko describes this similar experience he encounters in Tokyo where he describes the ritual language dance which entails beginning a conversation about the weather in Japanese, then a few questions as to where he is from and why he is in Japan, and gradually, the other person inserts a word or two in English to kind of test the waters, and if he catches the hint and asks a question in English then they switch to English.
Splendidly produced, Pronko has provided his readers with an engaging view of Tokyo life and to quote him, “after living and teaching in Tokyo for many years he still feels that its careening meanings and beguiling contradictions continue to multiply and beg to be written about.”
Selected as Indie Groundbreaking Book April 2016
Link to Independent Publisher Magazine
INDIE GROUNDBREAKING BOOK
Motions and Moments
New Essay Collection Provides 42 Little Windows into Japanese Life
BY CRAIG MANNING / APRIL 2016
“E.M. Forster said, ‘How do I know what I think until I see what I say?’ But for me in Tokyo, I always wonder: How do I know what I see until I read what I wrote about what I saw.’
Just a few pages into his new anthology, Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo, writer and professor Michael Pronko provides some insight on why he’s now spent three books exploring the Japanese metropolis through the windows of short-form writing. In a way, Motions and Moments isn’t groundbreaking, if only because Pronko has done this before. The More Essays bit of the title is a reference to Pronko’s previous two essay collections about Tokyo: Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life and Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo, both published in 2014 by Pronko’s own Raked Gravel Press. Motions and Moments arrived in late December of last year through the same publisher.
The thing is, Pronko could write hundreds or even thousands of books about Tokyo and still barely scratch the surface. According to 2014 statistics, Tokyo is the world’s most populous city, with a population of more than 37.8 million people. In comparison, the second biggest city—New Delhi, India—only has a population of about 25 million people. New York, meanwhile, is about half the size of Tokyo, with a 2014 population just shy of 18.6 million. Needless to say, Pronko has a lot to write about.
The groundbreaking facet of Motions and Moments—and, I presume, the same quality that made his previous two essay collections award winners and reader favorites—is that Pronko takes the sweeping size, bustle, and chaos of Tokyo and makes it small, introspective, and personal. The introduction to the book, for instance, talks about eye contact and what it means in Japan versus what it means in the United States and other western cultures. The topic is a big one, something that could easily be blown up to formal research paper length. But Pronko keeps it conversational and even a little bit funny, starting the essay with an anecdote about a young Japanese woman who won a staring contest against him on the train. Since, in Japan, “downcast eyes express humility and respect,” Pronko finds himself baffled that Tokyo residents—particularly younger people—have begun to hold his gaze after 18 years of living in the city. “It’s a strange thing for a westerner to have western culture shock in the middle of Tokyo,” he muses.
Michael Pronko, a professor of American literature, film, music, and art at Tokyo’s Meiji Gakuin University, writes about Japan’s capital, but he is hardly a travelogue journalist. As he notes near the start of the collection, he views Tokyo less in terms of “objective information”—where to eat, where to shop, which sights to see—and more in terms of “subjective enticement.” The result probably isn’t the book you’d pick up if you were planning a trip to Tokyo and wanted to know how to spend your time, but it’s absolutely perfect for getting a sense of what it’s like to live in the world’s biggest city as a westerner.
Even if you’ve never been to Tokyo—as I haven’t—Pronko’s essays are engaging for how they capture the atmosphere and culture of the city. From struggles deciding which language to speak with locals to confusion about the city’s gift-giving traditions, Pronko’s essays provide dozens of glimpses into a life turned Japanese. There is a conversation about the virtues of ramen, an ode to futons, and a piece about how odd if feels to live in such a cramped and neatly packed city after years of experiencing American sprawl. In one essay, Pronko returns to New York on sabbatical and feels like he’s stepped into a post-apocalyptic thriller, so much denser is Tokyo’s population compared to the biggest city in the United States.
Such is the beauty of Motions and Moments: it tackles microcosmic moments and cultural trends that probably seem normal and mundane to those born and raised in Tokyo, but feel incredibly unique and notable to an “outsider.” Of course, not everything that inspires Pronko to put pen to paper on an essay is a microcosm. One entire segment of the book is dedicated to the aftermath of 2011’s cataclysmic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The 9.0 magnitude quake hit 232 miles from Tokyo, but was still strongly felt in the city and is strongly felt in these pages as well. As with every essay in this book, the earthquake pieces see Pronko finding the human truths in a subject that could easily be discussed with sweeping generality and platitude. Therein lies his talent as a writer, as well as the groundbreaking nature of his immensely readable work.
You can purchase Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo from Amazon.com, where the essay collection is available in both eBook and paperback formats.
Craig Manning is currently studying English and Music at Western Michigan University. In addition to writing for IndependentPublisher.com, he maintains a pair of entertainment blogs, interns at the Traverse City Business News, and writes for Rockfreaks.net and his college newspaper. He welcomes comments or questions concerning his articles via email, at manningcr953@gmail.com.
March 22, 2016
Review from Reading Other People
Posted on March 20, 2016 by READINGOTHERPEOPLE
Adding to the burgeoning variety of reviews that Reading Other People has been posting, Michael Pronko’s refreshing “Motions and Moments More Essays on Tokyo” can best be described as a cultural reveal on one of the most fascinating parts of the modern world.
The piece is collectively comprised of essays that brilliantly looks at fragments that, as a respective whole, help to identify and shed light on what life in Tokyo is really like. Instead of falling into the trap of focusing on the sensationalism of certain types of Tokyo life (I’m thinking the misappropriation by Americans of the Harajuku culture), Michael Pronko documents the many moving pieces of Japan’s capital city and sheds key insights and revelations into the ubiquity of Japanese living.
Among my favorites of the 42 essays is the state of cleanliness of Tokyo-ian construction sites where Pronko documents his experiences with the apparent constant state of cleaning in this mammoth city. In his words, it’s like Tokyo has been photoshopped for optimum beauty, including construction sites. Fascinating stuff. The author isn’t judging, analysing, or speculating here. He is merely an observer in a foreign country that operates on its own ideals and principles, and, simply put, is writing about what he sees without the rose-colored glasses that so often shades Western culture.
Link to Reading Other People review
March 6, 2016
★★★★★ from Doing Dewey
Review: Motions and Moments
March 6, 2016 DoingDewey Memoir, non-fiction 2
Title: Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo
Author: Michael Pronko
Source: from publisher for review
Links: Amazon|Indiebound |Goodreads
Rating:
Summary: I loved the way each of these short stories bring curiosity, wonder, joy to an everyday moment.
Although I suspect that Michael Pronko’s observations of Tokyo are possible in part because he’s an expat living there, I would be just as happy to read essays he wrote about any country. I enjoy learning about Tokyo, the little details of another culture that make it unique and that are only visible to someone who has lived there long enough, but what I really love is the way the author captures moments in daily life.
Every story in this collection reminds me of one of the author’s earlier essays about the way chopsticks let you hold up food and savor it, something I think he himself related to the way he writes. In each of these essays, the author holds up a moment in daily life and makes us stop and think about it, instead of just consuming it quickly. I wish I could look at my daily life with the care and lack of assumptions he brings to his. Reading his essays, I feel that even if he were writing about my daily life, about things that were mundane to me, he could bring a fresh perspective and a sense of wonder. Being able to share that perspective for a moment reading his essays makes me feel that sense of wonder and often a feeling of joy at the quirkiness of the world. It’s a very unique reading experience and one I’d highly recommend.
★★★★★ from Big Al’s Books and Pals
Friday, March 4, 2016
Review: Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo by Michael Pronko
Genre: Non-Fiction/Travel
Description:
A collection of essays on Tokyo originally written for Newsweek Japan and expanded and revised for the book.
Author:
Michael Pronko lives in Tokyo, Japan, where he teaches American literature, film, music, and art at Meiji Gakuin University. For more info about Mr. Pronko check out his website.
Appraisal:
Michael Pronko has that rare voice of one who has lived and studied long enough in an “exotic” environment to get it right, but is still able to present a fresh vision. As I have noted in an earlier review, I’ve lived in Japan for thirty years straight, not including a one-year stint as a Marine and three years as a copy editor for the Mainichi Daily News. I went to Mainichi right out of University of Texas J-school with a concentration in Asian studies and three years of Japanese language.
Reading Motions and Moments was in some ways seeing Japan in brightened light that had dimmed over years of familiarity. My thoughts on walking through throngs of humanity run to “It’s crowded. Deal with it.” Pronko makes walking in Tokyo, if not an art form, an accomplishment of some virtuosity. Perhaps I still haven’t learned properly as I find it can also be blood sport. In Shibuya station, I was in a hurry to make a train connection, saw a gap in the crowd, and quickly stepped into it. A young man coming from the other direction had the same idea and we banged into each other. I grunted and continued on my way only to be shoved from behind. I turned around to return the gesture, and we settled into a bout of accusations laced with words that literally mean “you” but are insulting when spoken to a stranger. A passerby stopped for a moment then explained to me that my speech was impolite. It became a humorously only-in-Japan moment as I found myself saying I knew my language was naughty, but in this case appropriate as I was having a fight with a ruffian.
Pronko’s eloquently droll writing style is all the more enjoyable as he presents oddities of Tokyo life with negligible hyperbole. “Every time I use a public toilet, it’s being cleaned.” Well, probably not every time, but any other wording would not have given a feeling of the frequency of such events.
I found that the chapter on plastic actually understated the complexity of trash. One might be forgiven for thinking a PET bottle was plastic garbage, but at least in my neighborhood, those containers are bagged separately and put out on the day for glass bottles and cans. PET bottle caps, however, are also sacked separately but are put out on the day for regular plastic trash, which includes the plastic labels that must be peeled off PET bottles.
I don’t find the “Language Dance” as awkward as described, but that may be because I seldom speak to strangers. Decades ago, I would often be shunned by store staff who, I suppose, assumed they would be expected to speak English. Now Japanese speaking foreigners are common, and most Japanese have no problem engaging in conversation. There are throwbacks to the bad old days, however. I was working for Bloomberg’s Tokyo bureau and had an interview with a Goldman Sachs quantitative analyst about an investment strategy involving extreme PE ratios. I asked if he preferred English or Japanese. He said he didn’t speak English, so Japanese it was. All is good. That evening in a Tai Chi class a substitute teacher, whom I hadn’t met before, nervously told me my foot wasn’t properly positioned. While I checked my foot, another student interpreted. The teacher thanked him profusely, and said she’d had trouble with foreigners in the past who couldn’t speak the language. I resisted the urge to ask the teacher, in financially technical Japanese, whether she agreed a specific filtering of stocks with PER’s in the upper/lower 5 percentile would produce profits with a long/short strategy.
Pronko writes that he finds Tokyo depressingly ugly after returning from Paris or Rome, which raises the question of exactly what cities he would find relatively attractive in comparison to those two. To be fair, he wants to contrast the hidden nooks of serene beauty in Tokyo to the overall appearance of the city, and he is hardly the only foreigner to call the city ugly. I think it’s a bad rap, perhaps because my first time in Tokyo was in the mid-1970’s when buildings in the Marunouchi business district were little more than rectangular-blocks no taller than seven stories. I find the transformation to aesthetically modern skyscrapers and a street lined with whimsical statuary, wine shops and sidewalk cafes extraordinary. In another part of town, Shiodome is a futuristic complex of quirky architecture with multi-level outdoor walkways connecting buildings and a railway station that seems to hover three stories above ground. Meanwhile, Paris keeps its one-room tenements with communal bathrooms and dingy paint hidden behind walls and locked gates.
One final contrast between the view of a Japan hand and an old Japan hand. Pronko writes that he enjoys the slowdown of life during the New Year break, which lasts three days or so. This past New Year’s Day, my wife and I were lamenting how busy the country remains these days and how we missed the time when Japan didn’t just slow down. It stopped. There were no convenience stores or supermarkets, which stay open year-round now. Retail shops and restaurants in the old days were mom and pop affairs and were shut. Period. If you didn’t stock up with three days of food, you went hungry. The only people working were railway employees and maybe a scattering of taxi drivers, firemen and policemen. If you needed a doctor, good luck. Days of preparation enhanced the spiritual gravitas of the period of relaxation, housecleaning and prayers for a new beginning.
Motions and Moments is Pronko’s third book of essays and is a wonderfully sensitive depiction of aspects of Tokyo life, but for readers who are interested in the grittier side of Japan, I know of no better source than the writings of the late Jack Seward (a fellow Texan and Japan specialist for military intelligence in WWII. He got the job for having learned elements of the language from Japanese cowboys while working on an Oklahoma ranch.) For anyone considering a move here, his book Outrageous Japanese should be required reading if for no other reason than verbal self-defense if you ever get shoved in a train station.
Rating: ***** Five Stars
February 27, 2016
★★★★★ from Self-Publishing Review
Review: Beauty and Chaos: Essays on Tokyo Life by Michael Pronko ★★★★★
Posted by: James Grimsby April 8, 2015
Beauty and Chaos: Essays on Tokyo Life (also subtitled as Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life; full title 僕、トーキョーの味方です in Japanese) is a collection of writings by Michael Pronko on his experiences of the past 15 years living and working in Tokyo, originally published in Newsweek Japan, collected together here.
Born in Kansas City, and traveling across the world to places like Beijing, Pronko sets his view on Tokyo with the eyes of a writer well-traveled, but with an American-raised core to his ideas, his once-fresh eyes, and his general outlook.
These aspects are important in the consideration of Beauty and Chaos as Pronko evaluates his new home through a mixture of being someone from the outside looking in, and as someone now rooted on the inside of the Tokyo culture. These kinds of working contradictions make up the core theme of the collection, painting Tokyo as a city full of them: both fast-paced and serene; traditionalist and cutting edge; beautiful and chaotic.
A palette of mixed binaries and oppositions is how Pronko paints the city, and does so vividly. The book endeavors to capture the subtle and the obvious in what makes Tokyo such a rich, appealing place to visit or live, and does so poetically. From the small pauses in the daily rushes with a drink from a vending machine, to the larger attractions and the blaring neon that informs the cover, all aspects form a series of images of the city that come together as a wonder-filled narrative of the area.
The book is equal parts journal and travel guide (travelogue, debatably), though mostly it stands as neither. The book is informed by experience, and describes emotions and phenomena common to the Tokyo lifestyle over must-see spots and travel tips. Furthermore, the book is in no way something made exclusively for those who have experienced life in Tokyo, as it maintains itself in a very easy to understand way, even to a complete foreigner.
The translation from original Japanese Newsweek for English reading is very successful, complete with gentle re-translations of common terms (along with a glossary, just in case) that fit the flow of every haiku-like sentence. Pronko illustrates his points with marvelous skill, most impressive in that his writing carries a distinct air of Japanese linguistic habits while remaining skillful and succinct in English. Truly the book is as the city it describes, an eclectic mix and a contradiction in of itself. It is clearly defined by its author without being so tied to his specific personality or life that there is a loss of purity to the experience.
For readers interested in Tokyo, in modern Japanese life and culture, or in simply reading a beautiful set of essays of a place you may or may never have been yourself, Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. Its essays are long enough to be cohesive and provocative while remaining short and sweet, never rushing points but never falling too far off track. The collection is masterful and unique, and well worth the time to read through.
Review from Midwest Book Review
Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
If Michael Pronko’s prior Beauty and Chaos captured the exquisite essence of the urban heartbeat that is Tokyo, then this follow-up essay collection, Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens, is its soul, offering up pieces of Tokyo’s psyche through the observations of a visitor who became immersed in its culture.
Ask Pronko about the process and he’ll say: “My editor keeps saying this book shows how well I’ve adapted to Tokyo, but I’m not sure that’s true. Maybe I have accepted some level of confusion and disorientation, and work around it, just to keep going. I have more Tokyo habits, and find myself reacting at times not like an American, but like a Tokyoite.”
Perhaps the bigger question here is: how has Tokyo adapted to Pronko? The answer lies within pages that reveal not only Tokyo’s heart and soul, but the process whereby visitors become not just observers, but participants in the city’s pulse.
Examples reflect diversity in such vignettes as ‘Apology Speed’, in which the author mirrors the essential politeness that is the hallmark of Japanese modern culture (“Perhaps the best sign of adapting to Tokyo life is apology speed. I’ll never be a native speaker, but I am already a “native apologizer.” On that day, and others, too, I had a sense of pride in doing something so correctly Japanese.”) or ‘City of Small Gestures’, which successfully captures the subtler nuances of the Japanese public persona (“Tokyo body language, slight as it is, keeps the social network flowing with as full and complex a range of meanings as in more openly demonstrative countries like America, where emotion is always on public display.”)
As chapters flow through Tokyo cultural experiences, readers receive a rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo’s underlying psyche, whether it be adaptations to rainy seasons, the new culture of youth dragging shopping in wheeled bags and disrupting unspoken public train etiquette and paths ofmovement, or how compact living in smallspaces is achieved.
This collection – along with Beauty and Chaos – should be required reading for any Westerner bound for Japan. It’s a powerful, intimate consideration of many aspects of Japanese culture that is difficult to locate elsewhere; much less in a series of lively inspections handily presented under one cover.
4 out of 4 Stars Online Book Club
Official Review: Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens by Michael Pronko
4 out of 4 stars
Review by ALynnPowers
Author Michael Pronko is a professor of American Literature at a well-known university in Tokyo. He has lived and worked in Japan for over fifteen years, and his articles have appeared in several popular Japanese publications. He has also appeared on television and radio programs to discuss his work. Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens is a collection of essays that were (for the most part) originally published in Newsweek Japan in Japanese, circa 2009. This is his second collection of essays to be released in English, with a third due out sometime this year.
Forty-eight essays appear in this book, all focusing on what it is like to live in the largest city in the world, from the perspective of a foreigner. Each essay is just a few pages in length, allowing for a quick and entertaining read. While the essays are grouped into four sections of similar topics, all of the essays are independent of one another. It’s easy to pick up this book, flip to a random page, and read an article in any order. There is a wide range of topics throughout the book, including: wearing white masks, opinion surveys, city noises, sweating in public, the bi-annual changing of the wardrobe, and bugs on the train, among many others.
It’s no secret what drew me to this book; as a resident of Tokyo, I was interested in reading what another outsider had to say on such a variety of topics. I was not disappointed. While a few articles were a bit different from my own personal experiences, it’s easy to overlook those differences as just a matter of perspective. For the most part, the way that Pronko depicts Tokyo life is spot-on, and other residents like myself can definitely relate. Other essays brought up topics I had never even considered before; my own view of Tokyo was further broadened as a result.
Some essays are more entertaining than others; for example, I wasn’t a big fan of the essay about maps or the one about energy drinks. My favorite essay, which had me inappropriately laughing out loud while riding the Tokaido Line early one morning on my way to work, discusses the subculture of foreigners in Tokyo and the correct way to react when running into another foreigner in a public space. You’d be surprised at what we do, but I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who does it.
Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens is so much more than just a guidebook to Tokyo. You can pick up any random book in the travel department of the bookstore and learn all about hot springs, famous shrines, and maid cafes. This book doesn’t have any of that; it actually plunges into the minuscule details of what it is like to be a Tokyoite. Because of this, I feel that this book is more for the residents of Tokyo than for tourists; unless you have experienced it for yourself, it might be hard to relate to the topics of the essays. Pronko also uses a lot of Japanese that doesn’t easily translate into English (or in cases in which the Japanese word is just better than its English counterpart). I tend to do this in my daily conversations with coworkers, so I loved seeing another English-speaker doing the same thing. Even if you don’t speak Japanese, have no fear! There is a glossary in the back of the book with these words explained.
A few random errors here-and-there throughout the book didn’t detract from the pleasurable reading experience at all. I give this book a rating of 4 out of 4 stars and recommend it to other Tokyo residents who need a reminder of why we love living in this city. Others who might be coming to Tokyo or who just have a strong interest in what it is like living in this amazing city would also enjoy this book.
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