The Japan Society Review 79
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 79 Volume 14 Number 1 (February 2019)

Welcome to the first issue of The Japan Society Review in 2019.
Thanks to our team of dedicated reviewers, we again hope tobring you details of the latest and most interesting publications,films and events related to Japan. As in previous issues, we will
maintain a balance between academic, non-fiction publications
and works of popular culture, including contemporary work andliterary classics, celebrated authors and new comers as well as
film, stage productions and other Japan-related events taking
place in the UK. This first issue of 2019 exemplifies this approachand presents five books that deal with a wide range of topics andstyles, from Japanese history to a tale of a world without cats.
The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia is anacademic work edited by Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov.
It examines the material, geographical and political disruptions
and impact of the Japanese empire in East Asia in the aftermathof Japan’s military defeat. Drawing from a variety of resourcesin different languages, the chapters included in the volume
explore issues such as the repatriation of Japanese personnel,
the question of prisoners of war and war criminals and thelegacies of Japanese management and administration in theformer colonies.

This issue also include three reviews of Japanese novels.
A Shameful Life is the new English translation of Dazai Osamu’s
Ningen Shikkaku, a first-person account of the struggles ofthe protagonist to find his place within the alien world thatsurrounds him. The Beast Player by renowned fantasy writer
Uehashi Nahoko focuses on the story of a young girl in an
imaginary world populated by dragons and other creatures.
The third novel reviewed is If Cats Disappeared From The World,
an ingenious story of a terminally-ill young man who contracts
with the devil to extend his life by making things disappear fromthe world, but struggles to remove cats from human existence.
Finally, we also include in this issue the review of thestage play Flight Paths, an ambitious project combining aerial
acrobatics, video installations, partially sighted performers andJapanese culture.
We hope our reviews will help to expand your interest
and curiosity about Japanese history and culture and you will
enjoy the reading of this issue!
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia edited by
Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov

2)

A Shameful Life by Dazai Osamu

3)

The Beast Player by Uehashi Nahoko

4)

If Cats Disappeared From The World by Kawamura Genki

5)

Flight Paths co-directed by Maria Oshodi & Kumiko Mendl

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Morgane Chinal-Dargent, Roger Macy, Harry Martin, Susan Meehan
and George Mullins.
Image: detail of the cover of If Cats Disappeared From The WorldThe Dismantling of Japan’s
Empire in East Asia
edited by Barak Kushner and
Sherzod MuminovRoutledge (2016)
ISBN-13: 978-1138187641
Review by Roger Macy
A widespread view has been that the Japanese Empire
became an entirely closed chapter after August 1945,
when it collapsed abruptly at the end of World War II.
Whilst historians, and in particular historians of Japan,
have been aware of isolated threads connecting before
and after 1945, the subject has gained renewed interest
through work in unexamined areas and access to closedarchives, particularly in the Soviet Union and China. This
renewed research was stimulated by a five-year European
Research Council-funded project, centred at Cambridge.
After a conference, a book of sixteen papers has been
produced, The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia:
Deimperialization, postwar legitimation and imperial
afterlife. It was jointly edited by Barak Kushner, reader
in Modern Japanese History at Cambridge and Sherzod
Muminov, then also at the FAMES faculty at Cambridgeand now lecturer in Japanese History at the University of
East Anglia. These authors in particular have been able todraw from material in a wide range of relevant languages.
But by adding translations of papers written in Japanese,they have been able to aggregate an impressive andinfluential addition to historical knowledge.
Being an academic book from Routledge, it is notcheap, but many readers could profit from time within
its covers. The book has a decent index, whilst thebibliography is contained within the notes for each chapter.
With the list of contributors sensibly in alphabetical orderby family name, any ambiguity in reading can be ironedout (although characters here would have been helpful).
Brief views of each chapter follow.
Kato Kiyofumi starts the volume with an overview
of events, ‘The Decline of the Japanese empire andthe transformation of the regional order in East Asia’.
Although the author wrote in English, his focussing on
Japanese historians makes his synthesis instructive. The
division of Korea along the 38th parallel is narrated as theaccumulation of events in the dying days of the Japaneseadministration, rather than a wartime great-power
agreement as has been narrated in Western sources, suchas by Bruce Cummings. It is enlightening to read western
motivations from an Asian perspective but sometimes I
thought his judgements too unqualified. For example, it
was not “unthinkable” that Great Britain, in 1945, ‘would
2

ever consider following the mantra of decolonization’. Au
contraire, it was Labour Party policy. But, given that the
UK’s military actions in East Asia in the 1940s were so far
from its thoughts, Kiyofumi can be forgiven for framing
this viewpoint.
A key point, that has rarely been emphasizedenough, is the effect on individuals of the precipitously
instant jump of Japan’s borders from that of an empire toa confined island-state. Part of the Potsdam pill that theJapanese government had to swallow in August 1945 was
the countervailing ethnic clearances that were alreadyunder way in Europe. The scale of this debacle in termsof millions in forced migrations is addressed by Araragi
Shinzo below. But there were also millions who stayed
put. How individuals were affected at the cultural level
when political and language barriers suddenly jumped
over them is beyond the scope of this volume. Kawashima
Shin, in ‘“Deimperialization” in early postwar Japan’, finds
another focus, examining the adjustments made, or not
made, by historians and institutions in the postwar Japanto the new reality. He then navigates through the different
ways Taiwanese who found themselves in postwar Japan
were categorized. Continuing to use Taiwan as a focus, heexamines the attitudes of Japanese historians themselves
and argues that, for different reasons, writers on opposite
ends of the political spectrum made ‘Taiwan: a colony
consigned to oblivion’.
Barak Kushner headlines his chapter, ‘Japan’s Searchfor postwar legitimacy’. But my reading of his wideranging research is that there was not so much a search
as an attempt to preserve legitimacy by not looking very
hard. It seemed the new borders of Japan formed a wall
against knowledge of the state’s conduct in the erstwhilecolonies. He summarises, ‘Unfortunately, the nationalamnesia about empire in the narrative [of reconstruction],
which the war crimes trials uncovered and revealed
both to the international community and to Japan itself,
demonstrates that this understanding of tragedy was
limited and did not include the damage that Japan visited
upon the rest of East Asia and the Allies’.
An implied comparison with adjustments inGermany is left to the last chapter of Kushner’s andMuminov’s book but the essential legal difference inthe two defeats is only implied and ought to be stated:
the German government was destroyed in 1945 andrebuilt institutionally from the bottom up; the Japanese
government had legal continuity of all its institutions andpersonnel. SCAP’s legal and actual position was to direct
the defeated Japanese government.
Driven by Allied public opinion, the first major focus
of SCAP, was to demilitarize and pursue war criminals.
Issue 79, Volume 14, Number 1 (February 2019)

But Kushner shows that, in the immediate post-defeat
era, the Japanese government competed with Allied
military authorities to prosecute war criminals. But they
had quite different objectives and in particular a different
understanding, or rather understandings, of ‘responsibility
for the war’. Kushner has left the competing narratives
around the defences at the Allied trials, much coveredby dramatists and their critics, to be examined by Sandra
Wilson below.
Kushner has a section on the ‘Media and Society’
but is hampered, like all researchers of the period, by
the paucity of records on the major mass media of theera, radio; and a section with this title might reasonably
acknowledge this. Fictional treatments of the period
at least allude to the wholesale broadcasting of theproceedings as casting a ‘dirty’ shadow. But indirectly, theresearch of Kushner and his co-authors only confirms thetransience of any ‘democratizing’ influence of radio, so
my quibble does not affect the main arguments.
Kushner, as an American (I presume) fairly introduces
a comparison with failures to come to terms with theaftermath of the American Civil War. This reviewer, as
British born, is, by similar reasoning, on thin ice in not
making comparisons with a tardiness in addressing theaftermath of the British empire.
In ‘The collapse of the Japanese empire and thegreat migrations’, Araragi Shinzo gives us an overview
of his research in short survey translated by Sherzod
Muminov. He has numbers for each of the migrationsin Japan’s modern era and, no doubt, reference to his
original work would clarify the sources for each number.
The numbers are staggering: the estimate is 6.6 million
Japanese required to remove back to the home islands, ofwhich 3.67 million were employed by the state, in militaryor civilian roles. Of agricultural settlers in Manchuria, only
about half ever survived to be repatriated. Millions of
non-Japanese also had to move. Araragi concludes bysaying that ‘The human migration caused by Japaneseimperialism and its total war have left an enduring legacyof pain and psychological wounds in many countries...’,and he makes more than a start in contextualizing thesemigrations and in considering for each to what extent
they were economic, forced or contingent. His willingness
to consider Japanese responsibility as a historian isadmirable, especially as his survey could have justified a
pre-qualifying phrase that migrations can and do happen
in the absence of imperialism. He also admirably abstains
from any kind of ‘not just us’ qualification; but British
readers should reasonably consider that aspect.
‘The campaign for the release of war criminals’ in theJapanese media, examined by Sandra Wilson, is likely toLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

be new information to any postwar Briton without accessto Japanese-language media, and so is valuable, andhelps the more recent viewer to see that the inflation of
a comfort zone in more recent media representations isnothing new.
Wilson says, ‘It would have been very difficult to
express open sympathy for war criminals between 1945
and 1952 or portray them in a positive light. In 1952 and1953, on the other hand, at least five popular movies weremade portraying the prisoners favourably’. The Thickwalled Room (Kobayashi Masaki, 1956), however, portrays
Japanese war conduct unfavourably, so I am not sure that
it is “evident” that the 3-year delay in its release is lay atthe desk of the U.S. government. Kobayashi’s film title iscorrectly transcribed as Kabe atsuki heya. However threeof the other four titles have errors in transcription. That of
Saeki Kiyoshi (not ‘Saiki’) is Arashi no naka no haha, Aoyagi
Nobuo’s is Montenrupa no yoru wa fukete, and Sasaki
Keisuke’s is Haha wa sakebi naku.
Her ‘conclusion’ goes on to new ground of Allied
attitudes to the later abandonment of trials and releasein 1958 of the remaining prisoners. This, without
instantiation, seems to generalise ‘the Allies’ in a waythat does not accord with my reading of British media orarchives.
Sarah Kovner’s account of ‘Allied POWs in Korea’also uncovers an area not usually heard about by Westernreaders. Mostly, Kovner narrates events before thesurrender. But this allows her to show the weaknesses inthe subsequent Allied trials, the lack of proportionality inthe incarceration of commandants of prisons relatively
well administered, as well as the path not taken in looking
at underlying causes of fair or brutal treatments.
Franziska Seraphim looks at ‘War criminals’ prisons in
Asia’. Recent visitors to Tokyo might, like me, be unawarethat the mall now developed as ‘Sunshine City’ is built
on the site of the notorious Sugamo prison which, in the
postwar era, increasingly concentrated those charged
or convicted of war crimes. Seraphim paints a picture ‘ofSugamo prison in Tokyo being the only visible reminderof Japan’s ‘vanished empire’. But Seraphim starts at the
Empire’s peripheries, relating how those further-flung
prisons were reported back to the postwar Japan.
In the rewarding kernel of the book, ‘Post-imperial
Japan and the Soviet versions of history and justice in
East Asia, 1945-1956’, Sherzod Muminov has researched
the Siberian internment at state and individual level,
bringing new sources to our attention. In this chapter, hefocuses particularly on the USSR’s role in the trials of warcriminals. He also focuses on the likely motives of Stalin
in the sudden decision in August 1945 to transport half3

a-million Japanese soldiers across the border and internthem there, for years of labour in trying and often deadly
conditions. This he characterizes as a reaction to an abrupt
curtailment of ‘loss of levers’ over Japan itself. Similarly,
after failed attempts to bring Japan’s bacteriological
warfare to the centre of the Tokyo trials, the USSR focussed
on trials of its Japanese internees under Soviet internallaw. Muminov marshals and summarizes his widespreadsources with a care that is difficult to give justice to by any
further condensation.
Urs Matthias Zachmann looks at influential thinkers
in the field of international law, showing some surprisingcontinuities between thinking before and after 1945.
Indeed, even by March 1945 a study of the United Nations
had been completed for an arm of the Foreign Ministry.
Kanda Yutaka looks at the particular case of Shiina
Etsusaburo following the opening of his diaries in 2012.
Linked to several postwar prime ministers, he was ‘theclosest of Kishi’s aides’ after the war, having acted for
him in Manchukuo previously. But Kanda shows that,
although Shiina kept his asianist mindset after the war, his
position continued to evolve, persuaded by the facts ofJapan’s economic rise. Shiina eventually proved an able
supporter of Ikeda’s economy-first policies.
Park Jung Jin examines the history of North Korea,
as it affected the repatriation of both Japanese left behindin 1945 and 1948, as well as those Koreans in Japan who
identified with the Communist regime. Just as in other
East Asian countries, there was a need and desire to keep
Japanese technicians after Japan’s abrupt collapse. Park
takes us through the frequent changes of policy both asregard individuals and groups as well as relations withJapan.
Erik Esselstrom recounts the story of the visit ofChinese Health minister LI Dequan in 1954 from Beijing.
Rather over-shadowed since, the visit of the PRC’s
Minister of Public Health was anything but obscure at thetime with a media frenzy reporting this visit at the heightof the Cold War. One needs to be reminded that as lateas this, the Chinese government had non-Communists
heading ministries. Li brought the long-awaited list ofremaining Japanese detainees in the PRC, and these men
soon started returning to their families who had been in alimbo of bereavement. But the reactions to Li highlighted
the complete array of Japanese political viewpoints at thistime, possibly also coloured by her gender.
Sato Takumi selects the general-interest magazine
Sekai as ‘a barometer of postwar thought’. Launched by
the relatively high-brow publishing house, Iwanami, themagazine reflected how pacifist viewpoints held themainstream throughout the post-war period.
4

Shirato Ken’ichiro finds the sinews connecting
another limb of Japan’s empire to its postwar throughthe broadcasting industry. He delves into the historyof the vertically integrated Manchurian Telegraph andTelephone Company. This powerful organisation also
managed broadcasting, unlike in other colonies, whereradio was under the control of NHK. Probably the mostimportant factor in the development of MTTC was that it
did not have a monopoly of the airwaves on the Chinese
mainland and had to reach out to appeal to its audience.
Entertainment programmes flourished, particularly in
Chinese, often using the voice of the singer Li Xianglan(to use one of Yamaguchi’s many names). One distinctive
characteristic of Manchukuo broadcasting, which it
shared only with Taiwan, was paid advertising andsponsored programmes. Although this disappeared at
the apex of spiritist polity, it was redeployed in Japanese
postwar commercial broadcasting often by personnel
with continuity of experience.
Michael Baskett sheds light on ‘Japanese Cold war
film exchange with China’. From the Japanese side this
topic has historically, if considered at all, been considered
an unbreached wall. This chapter brings back into theview the delegation to China, led by the well-known film
director Kinoshita Keisuke. The reactions of both sides aretantalising but Baskett also shows that competition for
influence in Asian markets was mediated through festivals
that had strong functional lines back to the colonial era.
The final chapter by Kerstin von Lingen briefly
surveys how Germany has come to terms with Nazi war
deeds from 1945 to 2015. Lingen shows that it has notbeen a straight inexorable line but demonstrates thatwaves of trials have been both the result and cause ofpolitical movements. As early as 1958, ‘a coordinating
legal body was established to systematically investigate
deeds in the former Nazi empire that stretched far
beyond the postwar borders of the Federal Republic’. A
new wave of trials started as late as 1999. Lingen states,‘These moves certainly help to distinguish Germany fromJapan, where no equivalent proceedings at the behestof the government have ever taken place’. The new trials‘sharpened the reputation of the Federal republic as acredible guardian of the law and to separate the current
government morally from previous regimes’.
I would only add that, as the trials in Germany havedried up with the deaths of the remaining suspects,
the divergence in the two nations’ regard of history has
only widened. I have seen nothing to compare with the
National Socialist Documentation centres which havebeen opened in major German cities.§

Issue 79, Volume 14, Number 1 (February 2019)

A Shameful Lifeby Dazai Osamu
Stone Bridge Press (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1611720440
Review by George Mullins

Ningen Shikkaku (translated as ‘A
Shameful Life’) still persists as one of the most widely
read and critically acclaimed novels in Japan. Ningen
Shikkaku has been previously translated into English by
Donald Keene (under the title of No Longer Human),but Mark Gibeau’s latest translation certainly provides arefreshing and interesting reconstruction of this Japaneseclassic. The short novella follows the inner confessionsof an outwardly jovial, but deeply troubled protagonist.
Readers are transported behind the façade of young
Oba Yozo, an alcoholic Tokyoite that fails to meaningfully
relate to the modernising world surrounding him. The
self-destructive behaviour of the protagonist seems toreflect writer Dazai Osamu own tormented world in thisdeeply confessional novel.
The book takes the form of a Japanese ‘I-novel’,
with a little plot or direction but a great emphasis on
the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist. The book
is comprised of three journals which lay bare the tragic
tale of Oba Yozo’s life. The journals acts as a first-person
account of the downward spiral of the protagonist. Eachjournal is increasingly more depressing and weighted
than the last, as Yozo struggles to find his place within
the alien world that surrounds him. The shortness of thenovel mirrors the fast paced destructiveness of Yozo’s
own life. Through the directness of the journal accounts,
we are placed in a privy position to witness the emotionalturmoil of this shameful life. Despite being a shorter
book, it possesses a high concentration of tragedy andemotional gravitas.
To begin with, a young Yozo is afraid of humaninteraction and cannot comprehend the social world
around him. He masks his insecurities by developing ajovial demeaner and becomes the entertaining classclown to all his peers. His feigned positive attitude,
however, results in feelings of guilt over a lack of truthful
to those around him. He becomes tormented by themask that he conceals his true emotions. As he grows
up, Yozo moves from his family home in rural Northern
Japan to pursuit a career as an artist in Tokyo. He is
attracted to the debauchery of the Tokyo lifestyle andbecomes an alcoholic. Alcohol becomes a way of nulling
his depressive thoughts and a method of escape from his
inner self. His relationships with women are strong andintense: he has many sexual encounters with prostitutes
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

and develops deep connections to many women. But
ultimately his self-destructive tendencies mean his life isdoomed to fail. He tragically attempts a double suicide,which fails and leaves his delicate life in shatters. He
also joins an underground Marxist group and develops
a morphine dependency. His destructiveness leads him
down a narrow path, and he ultimate squanders his
family wealth and is left in a miserable, isolated position.
The novel bleakly concludes with Yozo’s admission to amental hospital at the early age of 27. The charisma andartistic potential of the young man is ultimately wasted.
What is left is the depressing picture of the shell of the
man that was once Oba Yozo.
The parallels between Yozo and Dazai himself cannot
be ignored. Dazai’s own life was also one of tragedy andexhausting emotional turmoil. He himself struggled withidentity and depression, and he too developed intense
relationships with troubled women. Through morphine
addictions and alcoholism, he followed the same pathto hell as Yozo. Still in his 30s, Dazai and his lover, Torie
Yamazakai, tragically committed suicide together. Thiscame only shortly after the release of his masterful work,
A Shameful Life. It is therefore possible to see this novel
as a quasi-auto-biography: Dazai was spilling out his own
misanthropic and bleak world views into the emotionallydense novel. This certainly aids to the powerfulness andtragedy of this masterful work.
The novel manages to firmly place it’s context in achanging, post-Meiji period, Japan. The glitz and glamourof modern life is undercut with the sinfulness and anomyof Tokyo’s dark underworld. One can’t help but seeing
this contrast reflected within Yozo’s very being. The
positive outward persona of Yozo, contrasted with theinner turmoil festering within, is a powerful dichotomy.
Surely writers such as Mishima, in Confessions of a Mask,
took influence from this bleak portrayal of the duality ofJapanese social life. Massive changes may have led toincreased modernisation and a more European way oflife, but what impact did this have on Japanese culture
and people’s identities? Dazai, along with other influential
Japanese writers such as Kawabata and Tanizaki, attempts
to confront this issue. However, A Shameful Life is still
relevant beyond it’s contextual setting of modernising
Japan. The theme of the individual struggling to survive
in wider society is certainly a reoccurring phenomena,
both spatially and temporally, and therefore this novel
will still holds relevance for contemporary audiences. This
explains why it has been widely adapted in anime andlive-action form in Japan, and why the dark introspective
writer still has a large following to this day.
5

As the author notes in a brief conclusionary
statement, audiences may wonder why Dazai’s work
has been chosen to be re-translated in the 21th century.
Especially considering that an already fantastic translationof Ningen Shikkaku, provided by Japanologist Donald
Keene, exists. Aside from wanting to bring renewedinterest in Dazai’s penmanship, Gibeau stresses thedifferences between English and Japanese, and thelarge effect the translator’s interpretation plays in the
re-construction of a Japanese book. Each translator of
Dazai’s work will inevitably strive to illuminate different
themes and interpretations of the book. Compared toKeene’s famous translation there are differences: Gibeau
attempts to emphasise the voice of the protagonist Yozo,
resulting in powerful feelings of intimacy and directness.
Therefore, I believe Gibeau’s translation is a welcome
edition and supplies readers with a unique take on Dazai’s
compelling novel. I share Gibeau sentiments, believingthat A Shameful Life is an important novel, written with
an abundance of emotion and craftsmanship. 70 years
on, Gibeau’s translation shows that this captivating novelis still as relevant and powerful as it was on the day of its
initial release.§

The Beast Player

prestigious sanctuary for Royal Beasts, the airborne,
wolf-like creatures that guard the realm’s royal family.
Here she discovers her unique talent for animal care
and an innate ability to connect with the beasts
outside the strict and often harsh rules governing
the “traditional” methods of rearing. Charged withthe responsibility of nursing an infant beast back tohealth, Elin soon finds that she is able to establish anever-before-seen connection with the animal, setting
her apart from her peers at the school and putting her
in often precarious and complicated dilemmas whichtest her loyalty, morality and honesty.
Uehashi projects immense creativity andvision, creating a fantasy world of epic proportions.
She incorporates culture, history and ecology soauthentically that the story feels like a tangible
reality for the reader. The depth and definition of her
character creation makes the immense cast far moremanageable, with every individual helping to drive thestory forward.
Elin’s character is perhaps the most profound,with her humanity and unique ability to communicate
with the animals in a way that the other professionalcarers cannot fully understand leading to suspicion,competition and circumstances in which her
innocence and purity are at risk of being exploited by
the more sinister, self-gratifying motives of the othercharacters. Aside from the dramatic fantasy setting,this is fundamentally a coming-of-age story, following
Elin’s adventure from bleak beginnings to grand andunique achievement.
This literary contribution from Pushkin Pressis another wonderful piece of Japanese literature,
artfully translated by Cathy Hirano, exposing anothertalented and hugely popular author to a much wider,international readership.§by Uehashi Nahoko
translated by Cathy Hirano
Pushkin Press (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1782691679
Review by Harry Martin

The Beast Player is the long-awaited English translationof the famous Kemono no Soja series by renowned
fantasy writer Uehashi Nahoko.
Already widely popular in its native Japan, thestory has been adapted into a successful anime andmanga series as well as a multi-series publication.
Largely unknown in the international market, this newoffering from Pushkin Press brings a highly original,
fantastical newcomer into the global fantasy space,which will likely satisfy the most ardent fans of thegenre.
Set in a fantasy world born entirely of the author’s
imagination, the novel follows the story of Elin, ayoung girl born into a family of Toda stewards, Todas
being the revered serpent-like dragon creatures thatserve to protect the Lyoza kingdom. Setting the scene
with immediate effect, Uehashi depicts a landscape ofsmall rural villages amongst snow-capped mountain
ranges, lush forests and vast plains. Elin comes from aninsular world focused solely on the preservation andcare of these mythical beasts but possesses an innate
sensitivity and bond that the others cannot feel.
Elin’s mother is a beast doctor and cares for themost highly regarded of the Toda stock. Following adisastrous and unexplained series of deaths among
the prized beasts, her mother is held accountable andsentenced to death, thus setting the scene for the
coming story.
The novel follows Elin’s journey from abandonedorphan to rural apprentice and her later move into a
6Issue 79, Volume 14, Number 1 (February 2019)

If Cats Disappeared From
The Worldby Kawamura Genkitranslated by Eric Selland
Picador (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1509889174
Review by Morgane ChinalDargent
Kawamura Genki is not your typical contemporary
Japanese writer: he is a phenomenon. At not even 40,
this man of many talents has already demonstrated his
genius by writing several novels, essays and producing
internationally acclaimed films such as Your Name (Kimi
No Na Wa, Shinkai Makoto, 2016) or The Boy and theBeast (Bakemono No Ko, Hosoda Mamoru, 2015). More
impressively, his debut novel If Cats Disappeared From
The World published in 2012 has sold more than a million
copies in Japan and been translated in several languages
which makes it newly available in the UK and all over theworld.
In If Cats Disappeared From The World, Kawamura
tells the story of a postman in his thirties who discovers
that his days are numbered because of a brain tumour
which will cause his imminent death. Upon returninghome from his doctor’s appointment, our narrator
finds the devil sitting on his couch in the form of his
doppelgänger dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. This
strange character will propose to him a simple trade-oﬀ:
for each item that the young postman would be willingto make disappear from the world, he will gain one extra
day of life. While the protagonist agrees to separate fromobjects such as clocks or movies, he finds himself truly
conflicted when the devil decides to trade his life against
the existence of cats. Our narrator has lead a quite lonely
life since his mother’s death as he lives estranged from hisfather and broke up with his girlfriend many years ago.
Consequently, Cabbage, his cat, is the only living soul heshares his life with. From there, the young man begins totruly question his existence and the importance of theobjects and customs that humankind created and takes
us in his thoughtful questionings.
Behind this simple plot, this 200 pages long novel
reveals a deep reflexion on life and shares an importantmessage: the things we own sadly end up owning us.
Through the eyes of a young man on the brink of death,
Kawamura beautifies the meaning of life and its true
purpose which is to be lived to its fullest. Throughout theweek during which the story is set, the author manages
to questions the alienation of our modern societies
and the central place that consumption took in ourLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

lives over the will to truly experience things. When theyoung protagonist takes the decision to rid the worldfrom phones, Kawamura engages a real reflexion on theplace that technology took in our busy lives, a discourse
even more relevant in modern Japan which is widely
acknowledged as the cradle of high-tech.
Mobile phones have been around for only about twenty
years, but in just that short time they’ve managed totake complete control over us. In just twenty short years
something that we don’t really need has come to rule
our lives, making us believe that we can’t do without it.
When human beings invented the mobile phone, theyalso invented the anxiety of not having one. (Kawamura,
2012, 42)

This quote actually provokes the reader inquestioning to which other items of our lives this could
apply. The novel also explores the themes of family andlove. For a young man who has to accept the fatality of
his existence, the place of meaningful relationships andthe regrets that arise from not cultivating it oﬀers to thereader the opportunity to reevaluate their own lives.
In other words, Kawamura tells a story of love and loss
which makes the reader realise the incomparable beautyof life by confronting us to the inevitability of death.
Regarding Kawamura’s stylistic approach, the novel
shares a lot of its aspects with the legacy implemented
by major contemporary Japanese writers. The constantoscillation between trivial daily scenes mixed with
outbursts of surrealism surely reminds of Murakami
Haruki’s trademark when the omnipresence of cats
evokes the universe of Hiraide Takashi. Moreover, therecurrence of cultural references from music to films
contributes to immerse the reader into the universeof modern Japan. Eventually, Kawamura declutteredminimalistic writing style still manages to find a unique
way to blend humour and philosophical reflexions which
result in a poetic simplicity that the following quoteappropriately exemplifies:
Love has to end. That’s all. And even though everyone
knows it they still fall in love. I guess it’s the same with life.
We all know it has to end someday, but even so we act
as if we’re going to live forever. Like love, life is beautiful
because it has to end. (Kawamura, 2012, 72)

Eric Selland’s work should also be acknowledged
for managing to convey the subtleties of such style in his
English translation. In the end, If Cats Disappeared From
The World’s tremendous success (the book was alreadyadapted in a movie produced yet again by Kawamura
himself) surely finds its roots in the truly universal
7message it shares with the world. The novel is a smart
yet deep reflection over life, love and the capacity to
let go of what is not truly necessary to give meaning toour existences. If Cats Disappeared From The World is abeautiful story that each of us should read in order to bereminded of the significance and true value of life.§

Flight Paths
written by Glen Neathco-directed by Maria Oshodi & Kumiko Mendl
Review by Susan Meehan

Flight Paths brings together two pioneering theatrecompanies, Extant and Yellow Earth Theatre. Extant, theleading performing arts company and charity in the UK
managed for and by visually impaired professional arts
practitioners, was founded in 1997 by Artistic Director
Maria Oshodi. Yellow Earth Theatre is a British East Asian(BEA) touring theatre company led by Artistic Director
Kumiko Mendl and was formed in 1995 by five British
East Asian (BEA) actors: Kwong Loke, Kumiko Mendl,
Veronica Needa, David KS Tse and Tom Wu.
Amelia and Sarah step onto the set, a flightdeparture lounge. Have they arrived from Japan? They
seem to know a lot about Japan and Sarah can speaksome Japanese. They walk around purposefully withwhite canes and describe the space to each other. They
are partially sighted and, it turns out, enviably supple.
They are also incredibly down to earth, opinionatedand funny. Aerial silks dangle from the ceiling. Each silk
consists of two lengths of fabric rigged from the ceiling.
Through their story-telling, Amelia and Sarah
inhabit the realm of the goze, blind female shamisen
players who would travel around medieval Japanplaying music and retelling epic tales. They bring to life
the Tale of the Heike, an account of the 12th century
struggle between the Heike and Genji families forcontrol of Japan. The two women also weave in thestory of Hoichi, a blind biwa or lute player whose ears
were ripped off, as retold by Lafcadio Hearn, anotherrestless traveller of Greek and Irish heritage who ended
up in Japan in the late 19th century.
Amelia and Sarah accompany their story-tellingwith acrobatics, rather than with shamisen music orsinging. They deftly climb up the aerial silks, resembling
Cossack dancers as they pull up their knees to gainheight. They recount their personal stories as well as
those of Takashi and Victoria, blind artists from Japan
and Nigeria. Takashi is a UK-based Japanese viola
player. When he arrived in England his English wasvery limited, but he has forged a career as a free-lanceviola player. His presence is captivating even though
he is not physically on stage but present via film anda loud speaker disguised in a water bottle carriedaround and interacted with by the actors. Like Takashi,
Victoria is physically absent. We hear her tucking into
cake and slurping tea via a loud speaker also containedin another large water bottle. She is a deep thinker like
Takashi, but more expressive – as he would be the firstto acknowledge. She considers herself to be six years
old – the last age at which she could see. She sings
beautifully.
Sarah and Amelia develop a move called theStratford – this is Stratford Circus Theatre after all andAmelia and Sarah are attentive performers. Like thegoze, Amelia and Sarah name their art after the places
to which they travel and like the goze, Sarah learns
her art on the silk from Amelia through repetition andmuscle memory. The fall is fast and disorientating forthe performers and kept me, a mere observer, on theedge of my seat.
We suddenly hear the clash of metal and samurai.
We have been thrust into Lafcadio Hearn’s magicalstory. A samurai has come to take Hoichi to play forhis master. The sea rages and the ghostly fires of thedead Heike burn all around him. Sarah and Amelia
pull themselves up on the silks, tip themselves upside
down, do the splits, pull off a sideways pose, a plank, afigurehead and interpret the tearing off of Hoichi’s ears.
The repertoire is fast and breath-taking too. A series ofshamisen jingles can be heard in the background.
Amelia and Sarah are called to board the airplane.
They pick up their belongings and are off – to entertain
others I hope. They have bags of energy and lots oftravelling, living and sharing of stories to fulfil! Extant
and Yellow Earth Theatre have pulled off an ambitiousfeat, marrying acrobatics, partially sighted performers
and Japanese culture.§