3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan

[Ed. note: Today's post has nothing whatsoever to do with Two Dudes' avowed SFF mission. However, after attending a presentation and book signing by Japan expert Richard Samuels on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and then after tearing through his new book about it, I couldn't restrain myself from writing a lengthy reaction. I have personal stakes in both the disaster and its aftermath, so this remains an emotional issue. I don't have any other outlet at the moment for this, so for now it goes here, inappropriate or not. To readers not interested, I recommend skipping this long article. There will be no science fiction today.]

3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan
Richard J. Samuels

On the morning of March 11, 2011 (Pacific Standard Time), I arrived at the office, logged onto my computer, and absently opened Firefox in a side window while I brought up the day’s work. Then I realized what had happened in Japan and ignored that work for the rest of the day, instead staring in increasing horror at the news playing out on my monitor. I watched the earthquake and tsunami, and later the nuclear meltdown, bring not just my second home to its knees, but the region I refer to as “my Japanese hometown.” (I will spare the personal details, except to say that at least one former residence was assuredly washed away.) Some weeks later, I wondered publicly if this would be my generation’s Black Ships, the event that would finally shake Japan out of its inexorable decline and galvanize the populace to face boldly their problems, as Commodore Perry’s arrival and the end of the Pacific War had done before. I was not the only one.

Richard Samuels is one of the foremost Japan experts of his generation, widely respected and hugely influential in the Asian Studies community. By his own account, he shelved a long running project in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, arranged a sabbatical to Japan, and commenced his year of research there fully expecting to document the profound change that must inevitably follow a catastrophe of this magnitude. 3.11 is his account of what is actually happening in Japan, detailing the political change, or lack of it, as the Japanese struggle to make sense of the tragedy and define a narrative that both explains the paths leading to the disaster and a way forward. It is not, to me, a hopeful tale, but does contain a few bright possibilities.

Samuels focuses on the three political arenas most affected by the quake: the status of the Self Defense Force (SDF; Japan’s euphemistically named military), energy policy, and the relationship between federal and local governments. The first two were my bread and butter in grad school; the last I hadn’t thought much about. Each of these areas had advocates forming three camps; Samuels labels them “put it in gear,” “stay the course,” and “return to the past.” (In common terms, these are progressive, conservative, and reactionary, respectively.) Undergirding these are three major tropes of Japanese self-image: Leadership (or the lack thereof), Vulnerability (“Japan is a small island nation poor in natural resources yada yada yada”), and Community. If this seems like it could get confusing in a hurry, rest easy. Samuels’ organization and narrative keep everything clear from start to finish.

To illustrate, let’s look at how two people fit into this bracket. First, me. The SDF is one of the few institutions that left Tohoku almost universally praised. Their bravery and reliability in helping the disaster victims were above reproach; I am happy to see the Japanese finally accept that they have a military that can be something other than power-crazed xenophobes. This does not mean that I support further expansion, a move towards more aggressive policies abroad, or any such saber rattling, but I do think that the Japanese can put their troops to good use in peace keeping and relief operations. This puts me firmly in the “stay the course” camp, not advocating any particular change in policy.

Energy is even more complex. I grew up near the world’s first nuclear power plant, so I am pretty sanguine about that sort of thing. I realize that Japan’s industrial might, and thus its economic well-being, is based primarily on nuclear power, with the only reasonable alternative to import and burn more fossil fuels. On the other hand, regulatory failure and corporate malfeasance are as much to blame for the Fukushima meltdown as natural causes; the subsequent disintegration of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was both deserved and gratifying. Clearly, Japan needs to fire up its renewable energy efforts by resurrecting policies that self-serving corporate interests have stymied. This puts me just barely into the “put it in gear” crowd, favoring as I do the progressive approach to energy, even as I am comfortable with the reality of nuclear power.

Finally, local governance. I don’t really have a horse in this race, beyond a vague loyalty to the Kansai area in opposition to whatever stupidity Tokyo might be exporting at the time. I’m not much of a States’ Rights advocate, but neither do I deny the relevance of the locals. Toss me into “stay the course” again, since I don’t really know what else to do. (Note that my ambivalence here is not universal. Samuels introduces many people who care very deeply about this, and who have very good ideas. There is a rousing debate about this subject going on, I’ve just never been a part of it.)

For contrast, I will cite my wife. She is in many ways very typical of a large segment of Japan. My wife has no use for violence, weapons, the military, power projection, American bases, the works. The SDF might have been valiant in disaster relief; if so, she might say, let’s turn them into engineers and farmers and send them out to help that way. Article Nine of the Constitution (the part that outlaws war) is basically holy writ and should be held inviolate. These opinions are a text book “return to the past” viewpoint, one that advocates returning the SDF to its pre-Nakasone and/or Koizumi state. The Tohoku disaster is a clear illustration of what the military should be used for, not a case for more cruise missiles and Aegis destroyers.

Nuclear power fares similarly. My wife was galvanized by the anti-nuclear protests and wants to see the whole program shut down. When I explained that Japan can’t power itself any other way, she responded that maybe it’s time for Japan power itself down. To her, if Japan must import power or rely on obviously dangerous technology, maybe the Japanese need to find a quieter lifestyle that can be sustained purely by native resources. Again, “return to the past.”

Her opinions about local governance are about as strong as my own, but the idea that the communities have gotten too big, too spread out, and have lost that Special Something that binds a neighborhood together seems to hold a certain allure. I’m not sure that she goes far enough to join the “return to the past” crowd, but she’s certainly not on the front lines of change.

The genius of 3.11 is the way Samuels maps this grid over a vast array of actors, through politics, business, the non-profit sector, the media, and everyday people. Veteran Japan observers will have no trouble keeping up, but newcomers will also be fine if they trust in Samuels’ narration. The Japanese political continuum is baffling if one comes at it from a US left-right perspective (the two might as well be mutually incomprehensible), thus the necessity of the three tropes of Leadership, Vulnerability, and Community to act as guideposts along the way.

The very heart of the book is also clearly illustrated by the examples here. My position on each issue is almost exactly what it was before the earthquake. My wife’s is too. In fact, Samuels finds only one person in the entire book, Prime Minister Kan, who changes his mind on anything. Certain voices have been amplified and certainly some positions have evolved, but by and large, everyone in Japan is precisely where they were before any waves crashed down on Tohoku. In the end, when all of the power vectors are added, subtracted, and averaged out, Samuels finds that Japan is firmly in the “stay the course” camp for each issue. To many of us hoping for so much more, it is a discouraging conclusion, but after reading cover to cover, I don’t see how it could be any other way.

In spite of all, Samuels is consistently upbeat. (This holds true for his other writing as well.) Where I see a country utterly bereft of leadership, an educational system incapable of producing bold thinkers, and an electorate too self-absorbed and apathetic to take action, Samuels sees incremental change and gradual progress. I wish I could share his optimism, but we may yet both be right. The Tohoku disaster nudged public opinion and catalyzed some action, but its greatest effects appear to be in those topics Samuels covers. The biggest problems facing Japan, a looming demographic implosion and the social institutions exacerbating it, will only be changed by a grassroots-based tidal wave of opinion, not an actual tidal wave. It is my own fault that I got carried away in my initial exuberance for progress.

3.11 is not a theoretical or conclusive work. It is not here to put forth analytical frameworks or give authoritative answers. (Too soon for both, though for different reasons.) I consider it an essential book in 2013 however, because I doubt there is any other English source that even approaches the stupendous amount of research and information that Samuels marshals. For the time being, it is the definitive account of post-quake Japan; any book challenging for 3.11‘s crown in the near future will be hard-pressed to survive even the first round. It is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in Japan.

SFF Review Gender Balance Part II

I hadn’t planned on following up the last post, but the comments (and links therein) got me to thinking more. In particular, this post on Dribble of Ink attracted some heated discussion and forced me to catalog the more detailed bits of my opinion. Let me make it clear that nothing I write here is an exhortation. Instead, this is the logical progression in my head from one position (apathy) to another (cautious activism) that works for me. It may not work for anyone else, and that’s just fine with me.

The most common response to musings on the gender balance seems to be, “I choose what I read based on what I like, not the gender (or anything else) of the author. It works for me, I’m happy with my reading choices and I’m not discriminating against anyone.” This is usually followed by some variation of the hoary “none of this should matter anyway, because we’re supposed to judge books (or movies, or science papers, or whatever) by the content, not by some form of affirmative action.” Both of these are valid points, but they depend on one being a certain kind of reader, and on an assumption of underlying equality. Again, I’m not blowing up anyone else’s reading experience here or calling a great many well-intentioned readers bad names. In fact, I happen to believe that the book-centered SFF community is a tolerant, gentle, and altogether inclusive bunch of people, even while Greater Geekdom is a fetid, slimy bog of Prehistoric social attitudes.

That said, my own position as a reader dictates certain things. Everything else that I will say is based on two givens. First, seeking a greater balance in reading choices is not the same thing as altering final opinions of a book based on some factor unrelated to the book. Just because I think I should read more books by women does not mean I feel like I should give books positive reviews because they were written by women. This seems like a no-brainer, but I see a lot of arguments that conflate the two. Second, while we are making considerable progress equality-wise, only the densest of us would proclaim the battle over when The Patriarchy is still clearly in control of everything, both in the genre and in the rest of the world. If any readers have a bone to pick with these two baselines, I recommend reading no further and leaving no comments. It won’t end well for any of us.

The crux of the matter, for me, is the kind of reader I have chosen to be. If I am reading purely for fun, then I feel no compulsion to break out of my comfort zone. There are plenty of other things in life that I consume more or less indiscriminately, because I have no investment in the Platonic Ideal of whatever that is. Clothes, for example, or ice hockey. I had been, until a few years ago, a casual consumer of science fiction, reading for escape and amusement; I would no more seek out authors to make a statement than I would pick up a romance novel. To this reader I say, “Have at it! Enjoy what you read! Do whatever works for you!”

Now however, I see myself as a student of science fiction. I profess to be engaged in science fictional dialogues across time and space, excavating symbolism from the meta-contextual substrate, illuminating the threads of cliché woven throughout the grand tapestry of genre, and other such pompous hoo-haw. Imagine how deflated I was to realize that mostly I’m just reading a bunch of words written by English speaking white dudes. I feel a bit like I am writing a pretentious food blog focused primarily on Pizza Hut and Long John Silver’s. Not to put down some of what I’m reading, of course, since those white dudes are cranking out amazing books, but there’s so much more I’m missing!

Dialing up the pretentiousness even more, this blog makes me, in some small and insignificant way, an advocate for SFF. Even if the only person whose view of the genre I am shaping is my mom, that’s still one person who might skip over worthy stuff because I didn’t go to the trouble to seek it out, or worse, decided to skip it because the author didn’t fit my comfort zone. I doubt that every blogger feels this way, nor should they, but I feel some responsibility to be on the vanguard. From the first, I have tried to do this with Japanese books, but those aren’t expanding my personal horizons. As a (painfully obscure and self-appointed) part of the genre institution, I’m just propping up the privileged class if I don’t search for and amplify the marginalized voices. Self-important? Perhaps. But if someone doesn’t make an effort, how many writers will never get a chance?

I’m not instituting any quotas, I won’t harangue other bloggers, and I’m not going to force myself to read stuff that I’m not interested in. (Hello there, urban fantasy and crappy supernatural pulp!) I am however going to think a bit more about the choices I make to read and review, and make an effort to try things that others might not. At the end of the year, I’ll take stock again and see if anything has changed. After all, as a working musician, I know exactly what happens to those voices that the mainstream ignores.

 

SFF Review Gender Balance

I was clued in today to a post on Strange Horizons detailing the gender breakdown of SFF reviews and reviewers. Considering the rabid cesspit of racism and misogyny that is geekdom, it comes as no surprise that everything skews male. The numbers made me wonder about Two Dudes and how we measure up here. I assumed that things would be pretty heavily male here also, considering that that I (Pep) do most of the posting and my core reading is done in Hard SF. Of all the genres and subgenres of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Hard SF is the most traditionally male, except for perhaps right wing military SF. Obviously the posts on here are 100% written by men, but that is mainly because I can’t find any women who will write for free. Neither Dude has any objections to women writing for Two Dudes (despite the name) and would actually love the contrasting views. In terms of review subjects though, we have no such constraints. This is the 151st post on the site, with the following numbers:

Male authors: 105
Female authors: 17
Misc. posts, movies, announcements, etc.: 29

This is a bit of a shock. I knew that I read more books by men, but I thought that women would make up more than 15% of the reviews here. I don’t personally care much who writes my books, but numbers like this imply that I am indeed favoring the masculine side of SFF, however unconscious it may be. I don’t think of myself as part of the problem of misogyny in the SFF community, but I may not be part of the solution either. I try to bring up gender issues in my posts, encourage my daughter to explore science, and fight back against stupidity when I see it, but if I’m not supporting the women writing SFF by reading it and talking about it, I fear I’m not helping enough.

I’m not sure what to do about this. Without looking, I would guess that the majority of my 2013 Must Read List is also male. It may be time for a bit of self-reflection, a second look at my reading plans for the coming months, and some thinking time about how my underlying assumptions of SFF may be helping or hurting the rest of the community.

 

Jagannath

Jagannath
Karin Tidbeck

I’m going to make a hash out of this, but I have to give it a go anyway. Most of what I write about is both quality and engages with questions that I find interesting. (Politics and economics, for example, or the Singularity, or exploding spaceships.) Some of what’s left is bad and begging to be mocked. Both of these are easy to write about; words practically flow onto the page like the mighty Amazon River once I get going. Other books though, are a bit like that quiet kid back in high school who looked perfectly normal, but once in awhile would say something completely out of the blue that made everyone think, “Wait, is (s)he ok? That was brilliant, but is one of us going to suddenly turn up dead one morning at his/her hand?” Jagannath is exactly that book.

In more mundane terms, Jagannath is a short book of short stories, thirteen of them in 134 pages. Tidbeck is from Sweden, so one might compare this book to a Volvo, if the Volvo were beautifully constructed, delicate and graceful, with all sorts of innocently sinister tics and quirks, and without those big mother headlights in front. On second thought, Jagannath is almost nothing like a Volvo; something tells me that Ikea and meatballs are also comparison non-starters. The stories are, however, often based on Scandinavian folk tales and maintain the dislocated feel caused by exaggerated days and nights that come with the seasons in that distant clime. I’m not exactly in midnight sun territory here, but it is far enough north that I can see the psychological changes that follow the early nights of winter and the long, long days in summer. The connection between endless nights and twilights and the weirdness in the stories is sometimes overt, sometimes implied, but almost always present.

I think that my favorites of the collection are the opener, “Beatrice,” and “Brita’s Holiday Village.” I would be hard pressed to explain why these stand out more than the others, since the collection as a whole demonstrates a consistent level of quality. All of the stories worm their way into the reader’s subconscious, causing random flashes of ghostly weirdness. Nothing in the book qualifies as a taut, page-turning yarn; instead the stories move elegantly from reality into something very strange, leaving the reader with a furrowed brow and a, “wait, how did we end up here?” The effect is rather like someone looking at a seemingly charming Edward Gorey picture and saying, “Well this is cu… hey! Is that bear eating the children?”

So far, I have only made comical (offensive?) Scandinavian caricatures, without offering much in the way of analysis or critical appraisal. Sadly, things aren’t going to get any better, because Jagannath defies easy categorization. The only other comparison I can make is to Mozart’s chamber music: transparent miniatures of impeccable craftsmanship that, if not always to my taste, are well worth an in-depth study. Hopefully that is enough to convince everyone to check out what will likely be a touchstone collection of 2012.

Rating: Let’s go all the way with Sweden and this particularly insane goal against Brave England.

Parasite Eve

Parasite Eve
Sena Hideaki

 I read about this book in a post here, on one of the few blogs I’ve found that reviews much Japanese SF. Her description pretty much guaranteed that I would check this book out, though it failed to live up to the zany expectations engendered by the review. I was looking forward to a homicidal Lady Part stalking through the halls, doing awful things to misguided scientists. Tragically, this is not quite what happens. Anyway, Parasite Eve was published in Japan in 1995. It appears to have been a cultural phenomenon, spawning a (probably bad) movie adaptation and a smash hit video game sequel. It was finally translated and published here in 2005 by Vertical Press, one of just a couple reliable sources for Japanese SFF in translation. I’m a bit puzzled why this became so popular, for reasons that we’ll delve into further.

The big take home from Parasite is to not trust our mitochondria, since we have no idea what it’s really up to. This is a promising start to a horror tale, but Sena buries the lede under 170-some pages of Too Much Medical Information. For the first time, I finally understand how a regular person feels hacking through Hard SF. As the entirely too detailed descriptions of surgeries, organ transplants, inner workings of cells, and the life of biologists piled up, I found myself skimming more than is healthy. Biology has never been my thing and Parasite didn’t change my mind. There are occasional interesting bits here and there, as the mitochondria take over lovely, sheltered, and doomed Kiyomi’s body, give random people hot flashes, and occasionally dispense creepy, orgasm-y feelings to Kiyomi when her husband says the word “mitochondria.”

On the other hand, way too much time is spent talking about 14 year-old Mariko, the real loser at the end of the book, who gets dead Kiyomi’s kidney but has massive hang-ups about her new organ. Her featured chapters may be a grudging nod to characterization, or maybe just a way to build pathos, but mostly they made me not like poor Mariko. Her typical salaryman dad also gets some attention, but the narrative is mostly dominated by Toshiaki: the lead scientist, aforementioned husband, and “hero,” who is downright bizarre in his obsession with cultivating his dead wife’s liver cells. By page 200, it’s hard to like any of these characters, with only Toshiaki’s dutiful graduate assistance garnering any sympathy. (The last is, like grad students everywhere, merely present to be exploited by everyone and everything. A sad lot, grad students.)

From here on out, expect spoilers. Things finally pick up a bit for the last 50 or so pages. (A good thing, too, or Parasite would be the most boring book I’ve ever seen.) This is where I expected the Vengeful Lady Part to appear and start raping everything in a paroxysm of slime and fire; Sena meets me halfway. First to go is the grad student. (Of course.) I will give Sena some credit here – the grad student breaks not a one of the usual Thou Shalt Nots for females in horror, though she is tall. As I said above, she’s basically the only likable character of the bunch. Pure too, as far as I know, which is supposed to keep her safe in Weird Horror Parallel Reality. So there’s a surprise. Regardless, she gets taken over by rampaging mitochondrial goop, poor girl. All of this excitement is too much for the evil mitochondria, who begins to form herself into a slimy, woman-shaped “Eve.” In the unquestioned highlight of the novel, and probably the hardest to film for public release, Eve starts by making herself from the goop a brand new lady part, a finger, and a single boob. Um…. yes. Brilliant.

Toshiaki wanders over after some other weirdness and, in a massive disappointment to me, is pursued by a squishy and runny Eve who has now formed herself fully into Kiyomi shape. Eve shapeshiftingly rapes the holy heck out of Toshiaki in a scene that had me snorting awkwardly on the bus, glad that nobody could see what I was laughing at. I was disappointed that Eve went all the way to human shape here, rather than stomping around as Kiyomi’s naughty bits, but at least she was shape changing and slimy while harvesting Toshiaki’s potent seed. Now able to create some weird, mitochondrial-human hybrid, Eve escapes through the sewer. Toshiaki gives chase, but Les Miserables this is not.

Meanwhile, Mariko is having horrible nightmares and her kidney is bouncing around inside her in a most unkidney-like fashion. Eve pours herself through the sink, tosses a doctor against the wall, and enflames two nurses. This sets Sena off on a random, multi-paragraph tangent about, what else, spontaneous combustion. Toshiaki and Mariko’s dad arrive in time to extinguish the doctor’s hands, which Eve lights on fire as she makes off with Mariko’s unconscious body. They miraculously figure out exactly where Eve might go and give chase, despite several people being in various stages of recovery from massive burns, rape, and shock at seeing a monster run off with a nubile 14 year-old whose kidney is trying to escape, Alien-style, from her body.

This brings us to the ickiest part of the book, when Eve debates how to best insert her fertilized egg inside Mariko’s womb. Fortunately for Eve, this is Japan, where the correct answer to most questions is “rape,” so she doesn’t have to think for long. Eve makes some necessary adjustments to her equipment, then Sena tells us much more than we ever wanted to know about how this sort of thing might happen. Thanks, Sena! The men are naturally horrified by it all, and even moreso as nine months of pregnancy condense themselves into about that many minutes; before they can say, “Holy hideous and hostile hybrid, Batman!” Eve and Toshiaki are proud parents. Normally, this would be the end of the world as we know it, but some detail of biology that I don’t really understand means that the mitochondriac love child literally needs a man, so she merges with Toshiaki in a creepy daddy-daughter pairing that kills them both off in some sort of inappropriate-yet-parental ecstasy.

At this point, a now conscious Mariko, apparently unaware that she has been violated by a monster and forced to carry its now dead baby to term, smiles at her dad and says, “Everything is ok now, the kidney is really mine.” And they all lived happily ever after, even the grad student.

So yeah, where do I start? Pacing and characterization and stuff are not egregiously bad, but I really can’t figure out why this book among hundreds set off a firestorm. It’s really boring for a long time. I guess enough people made it to the last set pieces, since those do have enough pyrotechnics to offset the preceding drudgery. I have no idea how this got turned into a movie without some massive story changes. Japanese studios didn’t have the budget or technology in the late 1990s to make some of this work, to say nothing of the waggling, marauding genitalia. Still, the end was fun and it made me laugh. (That may not be what Sena had in mind, but I don’t see how the reader can take this seriously.)

What is more troubling is Sena’s portrayal of women. The dude has a serious Madonna-Whore complex going here; some of his descriptions of Eve made me cringe. The ladies are either pure, shy, and/or uninterested, or they are brazen, rape-machine hussies. Well, one hussy. It’s pretty clear what nice girls don’t say and do in Sena’s world. At the same time, he unabashedly turns Ye Olde Male Gaze on his victims. Among others, I now know far more than I want to about Mariko’s young (underage), wholesome body. Note to prospective authors out there: I used to teach junior high school girls. Please don’t attempt to make me think about them in that way. It just gives me the willies and makes you look gross. Finally, there is the end of the book, when the strong, forceful woman who attempts to overthrow the system is thwarted by her own, male-needing biology. Three cheers for the Three P’s of Japanese Society: Patriarchy, Pederasty, and raPe. (OK, so that is a little clumsier than I might have hoped. Sorry.)

Final recommendations? Let’s go with hilarious, but sometimes cringe-worthy, fun. Well, fun leavened with 170 pages of biology infodumps. If the gentle reader only wants to consume the best fiction out there, give this a pass. However, much as I have been known to occasionally crave Taco Bell and corn dogs, some readers may periodically wish to read something grotesque and offensive, with side orders of nurse combustion and rape-happy goop balls. If this is so, do I have a book for you.

Rating: Gotta go with the Japanese Women’s National Team being forced to fly economy to the 2012 Olympics, but only if there are too #%^% many snakes on that plane.

Invasion of Astro-Monster

Invasion of Astro-Monster

We finally signed up for Netflix. It took me several days to clear out enough space in my evenings to actually take advantage of this, but at long last it was time for a movie. I had initially planned on starting a new anime series, but instead had a sudden craving to see rubber monsters stomping on cities. Because I don’t know all that much about monster movies, my selection was more or less at random. Something called Godzilla vs. Monster Zero seemed a good choice for the evening, so in it went. The correct title of the movie according to IMDB is Invasion of Astro-Monster, though it has been called a number of things in a number of countries.

I am not a connoisseur of B movies, or of movies at all really, so my reflections on this will lack profundity and insight. It will have to suffice however; I can only hope this is worthy to be my final 2013 Vintage SciFi Not-a-Challenge contribution. (There may yet be more, but knowing my writing speed lately, I’m not counting on it.) And SciFi this is, in the truest sense of the word, since Toho Studios decided to cash in on two lucrative movie genres: giant rubber monsters and alien invasions. Sitting in on the brainstorming session for this would have been hilarious: “What can we do this time to spice things up a bit? We’ve already had multiple monsters battling each other, and our Tokyo sets are getting a bit bedraggled.” “What if aliens invade while the monsters fight?” “By Jove, you’ve got it!”

So off our brave heroes go in a 60s vintage rocket ship, to Planet X which has been discovered just past Jupiter. Good thing for the heroes that Jupiter is a quick jaunt from the Earth, since they don’t appear to have packed a lunch. Less fortunate is the fact that Jupiter appears to be a carved, wooden disc hanging in a cheap starscape. Let’s not nitpick though, instead getting straight to the aliens wearing, of course, silvery suits, strange helmets, and killer wraparound shades. They had me at hello. The aliens need help with a giant monster of their own, so they ask to borrow Earth’s. This eventually leads to my favorite scene in the movie, where tacky flying saucers hover above a lake in Japan, pull up Godzilla and Rodan with levitation rays, then tow the two off to Planet X.

I really shouldn’t mock this too much, so I’ll mention some positives. The movie does its best to stay science fictional. In spite of the battling rubber monsters and the aliens in funny hats, the heroes are scientists trying to solve their problems in scientific ways. Looking back, this was the single biggest surprise of the movie. Humanity triumphs not because they punch harder or shoot faster, but because people found the root of the problem, applied knowledge and engineering, and in true Campbellian fashion, built an answer. Crazy. I must also give credit to a couple of visual moments. Yes, Jupiter was pretty hilarious when it first popped up, but there were a couple of shots of rockets and monsters on the eerie surface of Planet X, Jupiter looming cinematically in the background, that were striking. I was genuinely surprised at the artistry.

But those were just moments. For the most part, this is unintentional hilarity from start to finish. Bad dubbing, bad acting, cheap effects, massive plot holes, Godzilla dancing a jig, questionable gender messages, the works. The biggest disappointment for me was the relative lack of destruction. Rubber monster fights were sacrificed for story and aliens, so the total screen time of model houses and cars being smashed was disappointingly low. I enjoyed what I saw, but ultimately wished for more. Less talking between people I don’t care about and more buildings being demolished make for a happy movie reviewer. Oh well.

My final recommendation? It’s a solid rubber monster movie. Anyone who likes that sort of thing will probably enjoy this one too. (Fans of Japanese B movies probably already own the Blu-Ray.) The SF elements make it an interesting study, but I wouldn’t highlight this as a can’t miss film. I wish I had the academic chops to put this in a cultural or cinematic context; sadly that will have to wait until I’ve seen a few more. For now, I have to content myself with Mystery Science Theater 3000 imitations instead.

The Navidad Incident

The Navidad Incident
Ikezawa Natsuki

The Navidad Incident reminds me why I should read mainstream literature once in awhile. I have thought from the first publisher’s announcement that this is an odd title for Haikasoru to publish, especially considering the balance of their catalog. Navidad, inasmuch as one can assign genre to a book like this, is better considered fantastic literature or magical realism than SF or fantasy. Ikezawa shares more in common with authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Jose Saramago, or, inevitably, Murakami Haruki. (Not to say that Navidad would ever be mistaken for a Murakami novel, but the authors are countrymen and genre-mates, so anyone with a limited knowledge of Japanese lit will probably try to draw connections.) It is also part of the Japan Literature Publishing Project, which means that the Japanese government thinks that this particular book deserves to be out in the world. I am intensely curious how Ikezawa’s novel found itself being published by the SFF wing of an anime/manga monolith. (Haikasoru’s parent company is Viz Media, purveyor of all sorts of crazy Japanese stuff in translation.)

A final bit of introduction. Navidad won the Tanizaki Prize, one of Japan’s most prestigious mainstream literature awards. I think that its namesake, Tanizaki Junichiro, would approve of the choice. Tanizaki and Ikezawa share a similar outlook, a resigned yet sympathetic view of humanity. Like the motley international cast filling Navidad, Tanizaki’s characters often seemed to reflect the idea that we humans are a flawed bunch, only occasionally rising above our own banality, yet still deserving empathy and another chance to make something worthwhile of ourselves. Considering a selection of main characters: a corrupt president, a brothel owner, an alcoholic gay couple that may or may not be super spies, a WWII vet who becomes a right-wing Japanese politician, and a renegade tour bus, it is borderline miraculous that the reader feels any sympathy whatsoever with anyone, let alone be drawn deeply and unforgettably into their world. Well, except for the bus. The bus is pretty easy to like.

On to the book itself. Navidad is the product of a very specific and limited time period. Published in 1993, Ikezawa was looking at a world in which the Cold War had just suddenly and surprisingly ended, the US was unchallenged as the world’s lone political and military superpower, and Japan, not yet realizing that The Bubble had burst and the end was nigh, was riding high as the number two world economy and entertaining illusions of Asian leadership. China was but a twinkle in Deng Xiaoping’s eye, George Bush was admitting problems with “the vision thing,” globalization had yet really set in, and nobody knew what the world would look like now that the godless communists had fallen. The book, and the fate of its characters, is tied to the shifting currents of geopolitics, with the Republic of Navidad a very small, very insignificant, piece on the board. It could not be written now, not in a post 9/11 and post 2008 Recession world.

Said Republic is three fictional islands in the South Pacific, once a Japanese colony during WWII, and now a nominally independent nation. Mathias Guili is the current President of Navidad, but he rose to, and has maintained, power under shady circumstances. He is hardly a ruthless dictator, but he is quite open with his corruption. Guili’s fate, and those of the islands, are hopelessly intertwined with global politics, as Japan and the US half-heartedly woo Navidad’s support. Ikezawa paints a subtle, well-informed picture of the world Japan-leaning Guili finds himself in. I was surprised to find such a nuanced portrait of international relations, not normally a topic one expects to see in all its convoluted glory in the pages of a prize winning novel.

The plot splits in two early on, with most of the time devoted to Guili’s story. The parallel narrative follows a bus full of Japanese war veterans that vanishes into the ether, then has rumored misadventures. On the surface, the main plot is fairly serious, if strange, while the side story is just strange, but there is an underlying unity of purpose that becomes clear later on. Guili’s world is both a surprisingly vivid recreation of South Pacific life, or what I imagine South Pacific life to be, and a supernatural tale occasionally involving ghosts, cults, clairvoyance, and inscrutable machinations that might be supernatural, or might just be dudes in suits somewhere in a government office. Ikezawa never fully commits himself to fantasy, though it would take a stretch to attribute all to an unreliable narrator, least of all the whole bus thing.

“But Pep,” one might ask, “what’s it all about?” That is indeed the million dollar question, for Navidad is a superficially placid novel. There is no mounting and inexorable narrative momentum, no gripping action set pieces, and no real Bad Guys to perilously thwart unless one counts the main viewpoint character, who has plenty of flaws but still engenders more sympathy than is perhaps comfortable. Beneath the gently swaying tropical fronds however, Ikezawa is poking at some big questions. Some are Japan specific, only visible to those plugged into Japanese political discourse, but others are global in nature. Some are captive to the early post-Cold War era, but many remain relevant in spite of the changes of the last twenty years.

Most prominent is the question of whether a state can chart its own destiny in the international arena. Navidad is an insignificant piece on the board, with a population that can fit in a football stadium and the economic power of my neighborhood. Better to become a client of a superpower! No, we can play them off each other to our advantage! Bah, a pox on all their houses! Ignore the imperialists! And so on and so forth. Various diplomats, politicians, and everyday people voice their opinions throughout the book. It is no coincidence that this debate has played itself out repeatedly in Japan over the last two centuries.

Related to this is Japan’s role in the Pacific. While the common image of diplomatic Japan is a waffling and clumsy entity, Ikezawa’s Japan is smoother and more devious. I suspect that this is closer to the truth than people want to give Japan credit for, but I also think that the era comes into play here. Twenty years down the line, things are very different in Asia and Japan can no longer present itself as the presumptive leader. Be that as it may, Ikezawa is, at best, ambivalent about Japan’s Pacific ambitions, real or imagined. He deliberately ties Japan’s economic diplomacy to wartime empire building and seems to question the bottom line difference between physical invasion and the economic and cultural imperialism that happens so much now. Navidad’s dialog about national destiny acts as a proxy for Japan in the past; the final impression I receive is Ikezawa subtly urging his fellow Japanese to reassess Japan’s place in the world, the unspoken assumption that economic might is both desirable and necessarily expansionist.

Finally, and this is somewhat spoilery, Ikezawa uses the missing bus to pose a final question to Japan. When the war veterans return from their odyssey, they find themselves free of the past, able to look ahead to a life that no longer relies on the war for meaning and direction, and much happier because of it. This is a question that comes up in Norma Field’s masterful In the Realm of the Dying Emperor, itself inseparable from the same era as Navidad. (A side note: Field’s book is non-fiction and asks difficult questions, but evokes Japan like almost nothing else I have ever read. It took me within minutes from my sofa in the damp Pacific NW winter to mid-summer Kyoto when I opened it up. Necessary reading for the would be Japanophile. And now back to our regularly scheduled program.) I don’t know how this resonates today, as the war generation is passing along with its cultural relevance, but Ikezawa is very clearly telling Japan to let go of the past and settle its war issues. This is especially poignant now, as we Japan watchers are seeing that window close and the chances of reconciliation fade away.

I’ve been digging around in the undergrowth here, ignoring the joys of the story somewhat in favor of the political goodies buried within. Coming up for air however, I have to credit the story’s quiet power. Despite the lack of pulse-pounding action, it is a compelling character sketch set to a swaying tropical rhythm. Guili and his crew have stayed with me in the way the best characters do. I may not count them as people I admire or want to have barbecues with, but I am glad to have been let into their world for a short while.

Rating: As this is an unconventional book for us to review here, I will use an unconventional rating, comparing this not to football, but to Michael Torke’s Tahiti album. Like Navidad, it can be enjoyed as an outsider’s breezy take on the South Pacific. Also like Navidad however, there is much to be enjoyed beneath the surface.

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