Our arthouse cinema's Studio Ghibli fest means I finally got to see Only Yesterday (original title Omohide poroporo, "memories trickling"). This is one of the two Ghibli movies that haven't been distributed in the US even though Disney has the rights -- probably because of the discussions of menstruation sparked by an elementary school health class.

Briefly: Taeko is a 27-year-old single Tokyoite in 1982 who is take a two-week vacation working on a relative's farm (her brother-in-law's sister's), which brings up memories of fifth grade and a frustrated summer trip to the countyside. As the movie progresses, the memories start to literally intrude on her present life, with her younger self and classmates appearing around her as part of flashback transitions. (Once, girl!Taeko peeks around a adult!Taeko's train berth, sees the audience, gasps, and hides again.) Eventually the reason for why that age in particular becomes clear, as her adult self is, like her early adolescent self, also on the threshold of a life change that she's not at first conscious of.

Ghibli is known for its lush landscapes, but this? -- this has the best backgrounds I've seen in a Ghibli movie. A gorgeous and fluidly animated work of cinema. Part of this is driven by the director's soapboxing on the importance of Japanese agriculture, organic farming, and the purity of rural life -- which gets, um, a little heavy-handed. That part is, actually, the movie's main flaw. (Significantly, the entire adult!Taeko story was added by the director/scriptwriter -- the original manga was just a memoir of childhood.)

Otherwise, it is a very good movie. Adult!Taeko is believably wise in some ways and still fumbling in others, girl!Taeko is indeed in early adolescence, and Toshio is adorkable and almost deserves her. And the climax, especially the moment when girl!Taeko shyly shakes her older self's arm, physically interacting for the first time, is moving. As is the final image of girl!Taeko looking after adult!Taeko, having been left behind because the memories are no longer needed.

It deserves to be better known.

---L.

Book VIII is poems of partings of various sorts. This was a standard genre in Chinese tradition: close male friends bidding each other farewell, especially as one left to take a new post (Chinese officials were rotated regularly, to reduce the chance they'd build local alliances), and the results are frequently lachrymose.

The Kokinshu includes these sorts of poems from a range of public and private occasions, but also mixes in farewells by lovers -- never a common genre in China -- and even chance encounters. The result is a diversity of tone (or least, more diversity than the previous book -- I know, not hard) and a distinct and unexpected progression.


( Kokinshu VIII:365-405Collapse )


And so the book of partings ends with informal words after momentary meetings -- a far cry from the formal banquets of the start. Next up: the logical consequence of farewells -- traveling. Expect it in six weeks or so.

(Index for this series)

---L.

What I've recently finished since my last post:

Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi ("the someday demon's black rabbit") volume 1 by Kagami Takaya, a sorta-kinda vampire novel -- I guess? I went in with low expectations, but was pulled through by strong writing and a protagonist I actually cared about, despite some troperiffic character attributes. Maybe it was how the amnesiac romance was handled? I'm not continuing on, though, as the set-up at the end suggests a more boilerplate high-school fantasy series (and more stupid bickering) -- and indeed, 20 pages of the sequel were enough to pot-shot it into the DNF bin. Ah, well.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaô ("great demon king in the very back," I think?) volumes 1-2 by Shotarô Mizuki -- kinda like Harry Potter crossed with Angel Densetsu, if that has any meaning for you. When Our Protagonist Akuto Sai, who is strong, kindhearted, and somewhat dense, is admitted to the national magic academy, the sorting hat aptitude test claims future profession he is best suited to is demon king -- and the last demon king, a century ago, lead the country into civil war. Cue hijinx as Akuto tries to prove he's not this generation's Big Bad while everyone else sets out to either preemptively take down this Threat To Society or use him for their own purposes. Cue also lots of clothing damage and rounds of girls coming out of invisibility spells without spare clothes at hand. Also, aspects of the magic deal with consent issues that, as yet, it is not clear the author is aware of (and are indeed disturbing). These problems aside, it's a less stupid waste of time than many other series.

Tiassa by Steven Brust. I'm not sure how I feel about Paarfi narrating even a portion of a Vlad story, even if this finally gives us an extended description of Vlad's appearance. I'm also not sure this volume would work as a series entry -- various portions are direct sequels to four other books, while another is a direct prequel to a fifth, plus there's several continuities from the Khaavren Romances. But we do finally learn a bit about What Is Up with Devera and the main timeline gets moved forward a few more years with signs that Vlad, at least, is moving on (though Godslayer still hasn't woken up). Not the best Vlad book, but not Athyra and a fun read.

Poems of Places volume 30, covering the Americas exclusive of the United States. And in conclusion: Conquistadors = bad bad bad (though Columbus was heroic), North American military adventures in Latin America = ambivalently good, First Nations in Canada = completely invisible (even if they weren't they'd be nothing compared to the plight of the Acadians). Ooo-kay then. (For those keeping score, I've read 13 of 31 volumes.)

Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems ed. Lisa Russ Spaar, an almost attractive little book with a decent range of selections, including translations from all around the northern hemisphere. "Almost" because the designer inexplicably gave body text over an inch of right margin, so that far more lines of ordinary iambic pentameter are wrapped than is needful. Also, I should not have been surprised that Philip Larkin's "Aubade" is one of the best poems. Good for late nights, tho'.

Also, did finish Birrell's Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China, yay. Interesting, especially in the commentary.

What I'm reading now:

The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers, the first Charlie Chan novel. This is surprisingly well-written for a 1920s mystery, and indeed takes so long to get to the murder it initially reads as a decent mainstream novel, one that has things to say about Eastern attitudes towards the West that I am sympathetic toward. Chan, though -- oh dear. The author clearly signs the character as an anti-racist statement and mostly follows through on this intention, but every time Chan speaks, I cringe: he fractures English in ways that do not match the patterns of Chinese people I know speaking English as a second language. (It's not even consistent, either -- Biggers has him sometimes using an article, but when it is inappropriate.) The biggest surprise, though, is to learn Chan is a detective in the Honolulu police department: this simply never comes up in the pop-culture transmission of his character. The depiction of the Hawaiian blend of cultures is also of interest.

Song 24 (having finished 20-23) of Poly-Olbion -- I am disappointed in how little fenny goodness there is in the Norfolk section, though the digression into the technicalities of hawking after waterfowl was worth the price of an over-long hymn to Neptune as sung by nereids. Also, the long descriptions of every single battle in civil war between William I and Henry VII was very long, and the description of coursing greyhounds after hares was all too short. I am amused, however, by Drayton's audacity in having a prosy bore of a hill (some rivers even beg him to shut up already) recapitulate the entire poem -- not just the poem so far, but through to the end. Am currently bogged down in the Midlands by a catalog of every English saint through history.

Kokoro Connect volume 4 -- which is actually painful kinda to read, what with one of the protagonists slipping into undiagnosed depression and the others flailing around trying to figure out what to do. Am halfway through, but not reading it quickly.

Li Po and Tu Fu being selections translated by Arthur Cooper. The rambly introduction is not as good or well-written as A.C. Graham's for Poems of the Late Tang and the translations are of variable quality, but the translation notes are excellent. Cooper chose a fairly tight English form to match the tightness of the Chinese originals, producing interesting tensions that he does not always fully control. Also, I sometimes find the lineation distracting, though I generally see why he does it. Am about halfway through the Li selections.

What I might read next:

For sinologia, after "Li-Tu" I'm wavering between a recent translation of The Book of Songs and more Du Fu. Aside from that, who knows -- I've been jumping about a bit, with many things not holding my attention.

---L.

Our local arthouse theater is doing another Studio Ghibli festival -- this time focusing the non-Miyazaki movies. Last night, we saw Whisper of the Heart, my favorite Ghibli movie not directed by a Miyazaki (tho' Hayao wrote, storyboarded, and produced it). It has a lot of good things to tell young creative artists, especially writers. I love love love that the novel Shizuku writes is, based on the snippets we see, a hot mess. One that, now that she's finished it and so knows she can finish a novel, she can sit back and revise. And, yanno, go back to studying for exams. Also, somehow being a stalker with a library card manages to be more charming than ye typical teenage stalker with a crush.

What particularly struck me this time through was the translation of "Country Roads" that Shizuku does for her friend in the school choir. Her first version is more-or-less literal (to order of a few miscontruals), and also stilted and even more trite than the original, as she herself recognizes. For her revision, she aims for lyrics that match the spirit and the general situation of the original, and gets something that's much better. (This is even obvious in subtitles.)

No lessons for older creative artists to learn here, nope ...

(Eventually, I'll have something more coherent to say about Only Yesterday, which I finally saw, beyond "ohmygawdsthesceneryporn." But not quite yet.)

---L.

So according to this and several other Japanese-to-English dictionaries, a mantô is a "ninja weapon disguised as a pair of garden shears." This, of course, demanded immediate investigation. As in, hello what?

However, the usual ninja reference sites don't seem to know about it, nor do ninja weaponry stores offer to sell any. None of the main online Japanese dictionaries know about it either, nor Japanese Wikipedia. The bulk of the first couple pages of searches in Japanese are ... all Japanese-to-English dictionary sites. (Searches in English are overwhelmed with noise from Spanish hits.) Hmmm. And, hmmm.

There are a couple Japanese hits that claim to know of this thing and even a couple images, one even more or less claiming that it's used exactly how you'd expect: for infiltrating a castle while disguised as a gardener. So while I'm not fluent enough to evaluate webpage reliability in Japanese, it looks to not be a complete invention of a translation dictionary compiler, propagated outward. But I can't completely rule out feedback from same.

Has anyone ever heard of this? Anyone have an All Things Ninja Reference Book? Or a ninja joke?

(Found because I was looking up 萬, an outdated kanji for 10,000 used in one of the two ways of writing the word.)

---L.

Three exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin links:

Tastuo Horiuchi, Excel spreadsheet artist. (via)

US founding fathers in pin-up poses. (via)

Photographs of daybreak from the top of Mt. Fuji. (more)

---L.

(in the darkness / I close my eyes / and try to listen to / the brightness of the stars)

"Nothing breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure" is a very ugly statement.

Proof of water action on Mars. Which is to say, some preliminary findings have been confirmed.

Recent results from CERN are bringing up deep questions of what kind of universe we live in, and increasingly it looks like it we might be in one branch of a multiverse, each with slightly different laws and constants, with ours one of the few where it all works out that life can happen.

(all via)

Oh, and regarding the current leader in the last post's poll, the translation I have was first published in Beijing in 1979 and has a hilariously full-on Marxist introduction. That alone may make it worth reading.

---L.

As I ponder what long-haul novel I want to read next, I realized I could also ask for your opnions.

Poll #1916973
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

Which thick slab should I read next?

Mind, I'm not promising to read the winner, but it'll certainly be a factor.

---L.

Speaking of signal-boosting janni, she's started an interesting series of guest posts called Writing for the Long Haul by writers who've been publishing more than ten years talking about, well, what it takes to keep being an author. The intro post has a better explanation. I was especially taken with Kathi Appelt's post, and look forward to further installments.

TV Tropes takes the bait and lists out all the lampshades in the trailer for "Movie Title". Warning: TV Tropes link.

From NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission, 15 minutes of a 120-mile-wide shot across 6000 miles of the Earth: The Long Pan. As Kottke puts it, "Feel free to put on some Sigur Rós while you watch" -- I recommend the first half of ( ). (via all over)

---L.

Though before we get to that, you all should go watch the book trailer for janni's Faerie After, the final book of the trilogy. It is, of course, for linking around, if you feel like it. And possibly even, if available in your area, get a copy at the retailer of your choice, now that it's out.

Got that? Good.

What I've recently finished since my last post:

Between pre-occupied with deadlining at work and heavy travel both weekends, not much: The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf -- another read started months ago, and I finally read the last handful of reviews.

(DNF: Gosick volume 1, giving up three-quarters of the way through when I realized I just didn't care.)

What I'm reading now:

I think the only other prose I've touched is 1/3 of Kokoro Connect volume 4 and about 2/3 of the stories of Georgette Heyer's Pistols for Two, the latter mostly during take-offs and landings.

By way of Chinese verse, am nearly through Birrell's Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China. By way of travel verse, finished part 19 of Poly-Olbion -- only the one, but we're heading into Norfolk, so I've some fenny bits to look forward to -- and started volume 30 of Poems of Places, being Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. By way of Victoriana, alternated between The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (~halfway through), The English Poets starting post-Landor, and more of Browning's Dramatic Lyrics.

And by way of sequential art: 1) Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender by Kompan, Timpano, et al., picked up at Phoenix Comicon, based on the life of Korean admiral (and general badass) Yi Sun-sin, with a focus on his role in the Japanese Imgin invasions. Just getting started, actually. 2) Umi no Misaki volumes 1-12 by Kô Fumizuki. I've no excuse for this one: harem story with a Shinto overlay of a setup.

What I'll read next:

Who knows ...

---L.

Last year at Phoenix Comicon I folded a Chinese zodiac. For this year, to improve on this, I clearly had to do the same in foil:



ETA: Click to embiggen.

Wasn't all I did, but it was the work I was proudest of. It also caught the most attention.

---L.

Your assignment:

Adam is an unlucky everydude still trying to get the hang of this sudden "being alive" thing, Eve is a type A tsundere, Lilith is miss tall, dark, and snarky who isn't helping smooth things over -- GO.

---L.