The Japan Society Review 93
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 93 Volume 16 Number 3 (June 2021)

The opening review of our June issue explores thefascinating life and career of Herbert Ponting, thephotographer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra
Nova expedition to the South Pole. Ponting’s travels inJapan during the Meiji period are likely to be of particularinterest to readers and resulted in several photographic
series and publications including his Japanese memoirs In
Lotus-Land Japan.
Another captivating yet very different figure in
Japanese culture is the yamamba, the mountain witch, partof a widely recognised “old woman in the woods” folklore.
Reviewed in this issue is a new collective publication
examining the history and representations of this female
character in terms of gender, art and literature among
other topics.
Two reviews in this issue focus on literary works
recently translated into English. An I-Novel by Mizumura

Minae is a semi-autobiographical novel using fiction tonegotiate issues of nationhood, language, and identity
between Japan and the US. The Decagon House Murders
by Ayatsuji Yukito is a murder mystery story which follows
the universal conventions of this classic genre, whilebringing to it a distinctively Japanese approach.
This issue ends with a review of a publication on
Japanese wild food plants written by journalist Winifred
Bird. From wild mountain and forest herbs to bamboo
and seaweed, from Kyushu to Hokkaido, this guide offers
detailed information on identification, preparation andrecipes to discover and taste this part of the Japanesenatural world.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Herbert Ponting: Scott’s Antarctic Photographer andPioneer Filmmake by Anne Strathie

2)

Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch
edited by Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich

3)

An I-Novel by Mizumura Minae

4)

The Decagon House Murders by Ayatsuji Yukito

5)Eating Wild Japan: Tracking the Culture of Foraged
Foods, with a Guide to Plants and Recipes by Winifred
Bird

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Cameron Bassindale, Katie Croft, Laurence Green, Susan Meehan
and Riyoko Shibe.
Image: A view of Fuji-san from a distance, across Lake Motosu,
with kaia grass in foreground (Photograph by Herbert Ponting© A. Strathie).

Herbert Ponting: Scott’s
Antarctic Photographer andPioneer Filmmakerby Anne Strathie
The History Press (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-0750979016
Review by Susan Meehan
Herbert Ponting, the photographer on Captain Robert
Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to the South
Pole (1910 to 1913), is the fascinating subject of Anne
Strathie’s latest book, Herbert Ponting: Scott’s Antarctic
Photographer and Pioneer Filmmaker. This completes her
Antarctic trilogy. The book was due out in 2020, the 170thanniversary of Ponting’s birth but, as with many eventsplanned for 2020, it was delayed because of Covid-19.
The book is an unmatched account of Herbert Ponting’s
life, the result of meticulous research.
As Strathie says, ‘Herbert Ponting createdunparalleled visual records of Antarctica and of Scott’s
last expedition and great scientific endeavour, a legacy
which alone guarantees his place in photographic andfilm history’ (p. 207). Much less known, however, he also
left behind thousands of evocative images of Japan,
and three Japan-themed books. ‘From the advent ofphotography in Japan until the end of the Meiji period, heis the best photographer to have worked in that country’.
[1] In 1907 he was even awarded the Imperial Order of
the Precious Crown (7th class), also bestowed on otherjournalists who had reported on the Russo-Japanese War.
It was rather magical and somewhat incongruous toimagine Ponting regaling Captain Scott and team (29 May
1911) with a magic lantern show of Japanese gardens,
temples, hot springs, volcanoes, and geisha that he’dphotographed during his many travels in Japan. Scott,thoroughly captivated, went on to borrow Ponting’s
recently published memoir, In Lotus-Land Japan (1910)(see the review of this book on Japan Society website).
In 1922, Strathie also tells us, Ponting’s friend, the artist
Frank Beresford, gave a lantern slide lecture about his
Japanese paintings to the Japan Society of London.
Beresford supplemented his talk by also using some of
Ponting’s slides. It so happened that Ponting had justrevised In Lotus-Land Japan and took the opportunity ofBeresford’s talk to present a copy to the Japan Society,another nice touch and connection for Japan Society
members and enthusiasts.
Asked to describe Ponting, Strathie depicted him
as an obsessive photographer, a great raconteur, a very
good writer, incredibly hard working, someone who
2

could laugh at himself, and a complicated man.[2] She
certainly brings to the fore all these aspects of Ponting
in her punctiliously researched biography. As well as
following in his footsteps, she undertook a serious
amount of archive research, and managed to locate avast amount of Ponting’s scattered correspondence andmany of his photographs.
Herbert Ponting was born in 1870, two years
after the Meiji Restoration and 19 years after the Great
Exhibition at which Queen Victoria discovered and was
delighted by stereoscopic photographs. These were to
entrance Ponting as well. Strathie is excellent at evoking
the times Ponting lived in. He began work at a bank in
the great port city of Liverpool in 1888, while living inSouthport with his family. She mentions the increasing
trade with Japan in the 1880s and Liverpool’s importanceas a trading and shipping hub. Liverpool was also a worldof exhibitions and artists, and at that time, following the
re-opening of Japan to trade in the latter half of the 19th
century, Japanese art and design had also become very
popular. She also touches on the British craze for Gilbert
and Sullivan’s The Mikado from its emergence in 1885.
Strathie really sets the scene for the future tug of Japan.
Ponting dreamt of going to the United States, which
was the centre of photography, and in December 1892,
with the financial support of his father, a well-regarded
banker, he travelled by ship to post-Gold Rush California,
settling near Auburn, a small town in the foothillsof Sierra Nevada, California. Here he ran a fruit farm,married, had children, and seriously turned his attention
to photography. Keen to realise his dream of becoming a“camera artist”, as he liked to describe himself, he began
submitting photos for competitions and exhibitions withconsiderable success.
His first significant break came in 1900, when hewas commissioned by CH Graves, a stereoview company,
and by the magazine Leslie’s Weekly to travel to Asia.
The stereoview company wanted to update its popular
stereoviews of Japan, and the magazine wanted him tocover the Philippine-American War as well as the Boxer
Rebellion in China.
Ponting felt in his element in Japan. A perfectionist
himself, he appreciated the skill and perfectionism of
the Japanese craftsmen he encountered, and he formeda very positive impression of the Japanese whom heregarded as extraordinarily polite, honest and very
clean. He was also spellbound by Mount Fuji, which
he photographed from every conceivable angle. The
composition of Hiroshige’s prints – almost like stage sets
– were an inspiration for Ponting’s stereoviews as were
Hokusai’s A Hundred Views of Mount Fuji.
Issue 93 Volume 16 Number 3 (June 2021)

Ponting would return to Asia and Japan many times
during the first ten years of his career. Underwood andUnderwood, the biggest stereoview company in the world,
commissioned him to return to Japan to supplement their set
of Japanese photographs. He also worked as correspondent
for Harper’s Weekly, covering the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-05, and went on to travel around Japan, India, China,
Korea, Java, and Burma. A skilled cameraman, he became aregular contributor to Graphic, the Illustrated London News,
Pearson’s and Strand Magazine.
During 1905 and 1906, he collaborated with K
Ogawa, a leading Japanese photographer, to lovingly
produce his books Fuji San, which contained 25 viewsof Mount Fuji, and Japanese Studies – comprising 52
images accompanied by captions and poetry. Both books
demonstrated his flair for narrative camerawork.
Between 1909 and 1910, Ponting was incredibly
busy putting the finishing touches to his Japanesememoir, In Lotus-Land Japan, while also preparing for the1910 Japan-British exhibition at White City, Shepherd’sBush, at which he exhibited many enlargements of his
photographs. Mission accomplished, he then turned his
attention to the “Great White South”. A chance meeting
led to Ponting being hired as the 1910 Terra Nova
expedition’s photographer. This was Captain Scott’s
second attempt to reach the South Pole.
On Antarctica, Ponting set up his own hut, completewith a dark room, and began sending the iconic photosof Scott and team, for which he is so well known, back to
the UK. His images of Mount Erebus, the most southerly
live volcano, and of Emperor penguin colonies, icebergs
calving, and orcas presented a magnificent window onto
the South Pole. After 14 months at Cape Evans, Antarctica,
in February 1912 Ponting boarded the Terra Nova to sailback to the UK with more than 1,700 photographic plates.
(Captain Scott would continue to the South Pole with amuch reduced team of men. Strathie painstakingly tells
the story of Scott’s party and how they were pipped to thePole by Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen and team).

Ponting went on to spend a large amount of time on
the lecture circuit, giving cinema talks of his photographs
and films of Antarctica, thereby keeping alive the memoryof Scott and his Polar Team. Photographs and film fromhis voyage to Antarctica were shown in 1962, the 50th
anniversary of Scott’s arrival at the Pole. In 2012, during
the Terra Nova expedition’s centenary period, Ponting’s
work again became much sought after. It was featured
on television programmes, in exhibitions, and in films
reissued by the British Film Industry (BFI).
With little in the way of finances, all assiduously
elucidated by Strathie, Ponting also had a go as aninventor, but with little success. He invented a small
movie camera which he hoped would catch on, but
Kodak outclassed him by bringing out a more versatilemini-projector and camera.
Strathie has done a wonderful job of bringing toour attention the life of this remarkable, restless, risktaking “camera artist” and lyrical writer. There is so much
more detail to read in her masterful tome, especiallywith respect to his time in Antarctica, and also about
the other, colourful Terra Nova expedition members.
Strathie’s book made me seek out Terra Nova expedition
member, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account, The Worst
Journey in the World (1922) – the name says it all, andBeryl Bainbridge’s gripping novel based on Scott’s Polar
Team, The Birthday Boys (1991).
While Strathie’s book was delayed by a year, happily,a plaque to Herbert Ponting was unveiled in Salisbury(the city of his birth) during 2020. It is great to see that his
memory and legacy is once again being celebrated.
Notes[1] Bennett, Terry, “Photographers, Judo Masters &Journalists: Herbert George Ponting, 1870-1935”, in Japan
Society’s Biographical Portraits, vol. IV, part 5, pp. 303-304.
[2] Talk by Anne Strathie for the Royal Photographic
Society, Wednesday, 28 April 2021 on her book Herbert
Ponting: Scott’s Antarctic Photographer and Pioneer
Filmmaker.§

Yamamba: In Search of theJapanese Mountain Witch

woods” folklore – can be traced back to the Muromachi
period (1336-1573), a time of rapid population growthwhen merchants and villagers began to travel more
frequently into the mountains. Solitary women who
had moved to the mountains, driven by illness or inseek of solitude, became more visible to the wider
population, inspiring stories of fear and hope as
merchants met both helpful and hostile women
during their travels. Tales emerged associating the
Yamamba with fertility, nature, and temperamentality,

Edited by Rebecca Copeland andLinda C. Ehrlich
Stone Bridge Press (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1611720662
Review by Riyoko Shibe
The Yamamba – the mountain witch, crone, or hag,part of the widely recognised “old woman in theLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

3

from devouring men, to endowing travellers with gifts,
to birthing thousands of children at once.
Through creative writing and scholarly analysis,
Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich’s anthology
examines mythologies around the Yamamba.
Incorporating voices from Japan and the USA, theanthology shows how the Yamamba, ‘less constrainedby the tradition, customs, and social norms expected
for a woman’, reflects not just disgust and rejectionof women who dismissed these expectations, butalso shows how these women enacted agency intheir rebellion of these norms. The Yamamba is thus
located in old and new folktales, as well as in real-life
manifestations such as in the gyaru subculture of the
1990s.
One example of the Yamamba explored in theanthology is the Noh play, Yamamba, written in the
1400s. Ann Sherif interviews the Noh performers
Uzawa Hisa and Uzawa Hikaru, who bring the depth,
physicality, and contradictions of the Yamamba to
the fore. Hisa recalls during her lessons that she wastaught ‘that the yamamba embodies an unimaginableamount of energy... it should be like a mountainmoving... The performer has to conceive of that levelof strength and energy’.
Underlying the book is the notion that
the Yamamba’s sex must be “female”, given her
associations with fertility, her unconventional lifestyleand rejection of typical beauty, and connection withnature, delusion and attachment. Echoing this, Hisa
reflects that ‘if the yamamba were a man, it would
be a very boring play... [lacking] in the scale or weight
implicit in the demon role’.
In the interview, the discussion hints towards
broader commentary on gender fluidity, adding a
new dimension to discourse around the Yamamba’s
gender. Sherif probes the Noh performers on their
viewpoints on twenty-first century perspectives on the
topic, and they observe that performers of Yamamba
do not perform her as a woman. Hisa states that ‘whatis important is where the energy comes from, not who
the character is’, and so, ‘when we perform Yamamba,
we don’t think of it as performing woman … The
performer can’t conceive of it that way’.
However, the discussion does not movebeyond this, and the question remains: how does
the Yamamba fit into twenty-first century – andhistorical – conceptions of gender? A complementary
chapter would be welcome, perhaps exploring
how the Yamamba’s sex and gender have cometo be understood, and how gender is challenged,
4

or reinforced, by these manifestations. Without
such chapters examining themes brought up ininterviews and short stories, the anthology remains
slightly unbalanced, romanticising the Yamamba, her
mythologies, and the discourses which surround her.
A similar critique can be made of Laura Miller’schapter, ‘In A Yamamba’s Shrinebox’, which briefly
touches on how the mythology manifested in the
kogyaru or gyaru subculture and fashion trend of the
1990s. Young women who challenged mainstream
beauty norms were nicknamed Yamamba for theirappearance: they wore short skirts and bleached theirhair, while their makeup consisted of bright eyeshadow
and lipstick, with white paint around the eyes andmouth emphasising deep tans from tanning salonsand creams. Thus, we learn that while Yamamba wasused as an insult, the use of the word shows both how
women rejected gender expectations by embracing
alternative fashion and makeup trends, and also how
they were rejected from society for this style, suffering
abuse from men repulsed by their image.
Contention appears when Miller describes theprocess of fake tanning: emulating Black American
culture, and also driven by their wish to reject Japanese
beauty norms, gyaru darkened their skin throughintensive tanning. The colourism and racism of thispractice is not mentioned and appears to be actively
sidestepped, with Miller translating the nickname
derived from skin darkening, ganguro, as ‘face black’,rather than the more common translation of ‘blackface’.
With dark-skinned and/or mixed-race Japanesepeople suffering harassment and discrimination,
darkening one’s skin through a perverse appropriationof “coolness” can only be looked on critically. Failure
to mention this context builds an uncritical, overromanticisation of the Yamamba mythology, and alsofeels outdated given the plethora of literature andcultural commentary on the practice of blackface ingyaru culture.
A final critique would be David Holloway’s shortstory on Aokigahara, suicide and the Yamamba. To
K, a student in Japanese Studies, ‘the Japanese justseemed comfortable with suicide’, and inspired by‘the legacy of seppuku on the battlefields during the
middle ages’, K sets out to Aokigahara to kill himself,
only to be saved, in some sort of way, by an encounter
with the Yamamba. It is unclear what the story brings
to the anthology beyond reinforcing outdated tropes
tying suicide to a Japanese historical legacy and an
innate Japanese sensibility. While it seems that links arebeing drawn with an ancient mythology and a newer
Issue 93 Volume 16 Number 3 (June 2021)

‘flashpoint of curiosity and controversy’, Aokigahara,
the chapter nonetheless comes at odds to the othercontributions, as the relevance of the Yamamba, aside
from the general relationship with forests and nature,is unclear.
Without venturing beyond an introduction
to the mythology itself, the anthology remains at aslightly superficial level: more in-depth analysis could
complement the interviews and creative writing
pieces, while commentary could have included morereferences to wider literature on the subject. Despite
this, the anthology is a creative exploration and richintroduction to key texts and artists exploring the
Yamamba.§

An I-Novelof personality that warms you to the narrator withevery passing page.
And what a narrative voice this novel packs.
Ostensibly told over the course of a single day, weare presented the thoughts and communicationsof Mizumura’s self-insert narrator Minae - a bookish
Ivy League PhD student on the verge of completing
her final oral examinations - as she converses withher sister Nanae - an aspiring artist - over the phone.
The passage of time becomes elusive as we dip backinto memories of the sisters’ childhood; brought fromJapan to New York in their teens due to their father’s
job transfer, they by necessity must quickly learn
how to fit into an American high school education an experience encompassing not just the obvious
learning of a new language, but also a whole way of
being, of inhabiting, a nation so different in custom
and manner from their own.
Set as it is in the peak years of Japan’s economic
boom - the bubble years of the 1980s in which thecountry’s economy saw it reigning supreme as part ofa new global re-ordering of monetary power - manyof the novel’s most fascinating, amusing insights spinfrom the Mizumura family’s status as part of Japan’s
wealthy elite translocated as expats to America. Here,their middle-to-upper class values must be negotiatedas part of communities not quite sure how to placethem - a world in which the status of migrancy andwealth still seem very much mutually exclusive. In
conversations with their mother, the topic inevitably
turns to marriage - or more specifically, marrying ‘well’.
Here, above all, money dominates. Elsewhere, theyobserve a Manhattan wracked by crime, homelessness
and crumbling buildings. A fancy restaurant they visit
in its midst seems like a paradisal oasis in comparison.
More widely, we are shown a world on the cusp ofchange - as Minae’s account draws closer to the presentday, she notes how chopsticks, once a curiously alien
concept to most Americans, are already becoming acommon, innocuous part of the background.
Their domineering mother becomes symbolic of ageneration of parent-child relationships amongst Asianby Mizumura Minaetranslated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Columbia University Press (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-0231192132
Review by Laurence Green‘I don’t especially want to be an American, and you
always wanted to stay Japanese much more than I did...
In any case, you and I can never be Americans. We’ll
only be Japanese Americans... Or Asian Americans’.

It is this negotiation between two ideas of nationhood,
two concepts of ‘belonging’ - encompassing bothlanguage and identity - that lies at the heart of
Mizumura Minae’s An I-Novel. It is the book’s full title,
as presented in its Japanese original - An I-Novel from
Left to Right - that reveals the conceptual frameworkat the heart of the piece. Unlike most Japanese novels,
which are written from top-to-bottom, and right-toleft, Mizumura’s semi-autobiographical piece, firstpublished in Japan in 1995, instead reads from leftto-right, and blends Japanese script together with theEnglish language, sometimes alternating even within
the same sentence.
This, of course, presents an obvious challenge
for the translator, but it is to Juliet Winters Carpenter’s
credit that this wholly English incarnation - where the‘original’ English interjections are instead presented inbold typeface - maintains a remarkable consistency of
tone throughout; seamless to the point of perfection.
While the reading experience is of course transformed,
and one might imagine never quite achieves theimpact of a bilingual reader alternating between
Japanese and English, the bold segments have aremarkable effect of ventriloquising the speech of
the characters they represent. This lends the book, formuch of its length, a striking Americanism - so much sothat it often ceases to feel like Japanese literature. How
much of this is Carpenter’s remarkable translation andhow much is present in Mizumura’s original is hard to
detect - but it all adds to a wholly encompassing force
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

5expatriates in America; enrolling the two daughters ina gruelling regime of ballet and piano lessons. As thebook notes bitingly at one point, speaking for all those
whose youth resembled this experience; ‘their mothers
are living out their dreams through them’. The novel’s
obsession with class, while perhaps never overtly heldup as a central theme as readily as language or race is,leads the book in moments to feel like a kind of 1980s
Japanese take on E. M. Forster’s Howards End. Hung as
it is around the lives of two sisters - one scholarly andpensive, the other spirited and idealistic - the book’s
own dismantling of what it means to ‘connect’ in aforeign language and culture is so entrancing because
its status as a thing of halves - both Japanese andAmerican/English - allows it ultimately to speak to allwith a singular clarity. This is the collective wisdom of
two sisters who have inhabited both the physical andmental space of both nations responsible for forming
who they are today, and as such can - with a withering
eye for accuracy - nail home the merits and demeritsof each.
The book’s conclusion ultimately brings us fullcircle, returning us to much of the imagery and snatchesof lyricism presented in the opening pages. As the lastof Minae’s phone calls to her sister concludes and shecomes to ponder again her choice to return to Japanafter finishing her PhD, we are tipped once again into
the book’s most ‘literary’ moments. These sections bookending the flashbacks that make up much of its
middle movement - are arguably the densest, mostheavy-going of the novel. Emotionally charged, theylack some of the breezy simplicity that characterise
Minae’s recollections of her youth, but in hindsightoffer a kind of catharsis - it is only in understanding
the journey that Minae has taken to reach this pointthat the sheer need for her to write, to express herself
in the written format and become a novelist, really hits
us right in the heart.
An I-Novel is not the first of Mizumura’s works
to be released in English. A number of her otherbooks - all also translated by Carpenter - have beenpreviously released; chief among them A True Noveland Inheritance From Mother. In some ways, it is easy
to imagine An I-Novel falling into the same easy spaceof quiet acclaim - cherished amongst fans, scholars
and students of Japanese Literature and becoming afoundational text for future study. But truth be told,
despite this new translated edition coming from anacademic publisher, such is the exceptional quality ofthe prose, the easy confidence in which it lures in thereader, it really owes itself to broadening its audiencebeyond the readily converted. Just as contemporary
female voices in Japanese literature such as Kawakami
Mieko have slowly but steadily blazed a trail for
impassioned literary encapsulations of womanhood,breaking down the walls between languages via
concerted word of mouth, so too does the time feelright for Mizumura’s extraordinary writing to strikehome with the wider reading public.§

The Decagon House Murders

First published in 1987, The Decagon House
Murders had a huge part to play in revitalizing thehonkaku, or orthodox sub-genre of murder mysterynovels in Japan. Its place in the Japanese canon, withregards to mystery novels, cannot be understated. But
from another perspective, the parallel between thisnovel and Agatha Christie’s seminal work And Then
There Were None is also made plainly obvious. Indeed,
it is worth noting that Christie’s novel was released
under the title Dead Island (死人島) in Japan. What’smore, mid-way through, a character makes explicit
reference to the events unfolding being similar to
Christie’s novel; a clever postmodern move by Ayatsuji
to remind the reader to approach the book as a mystery
to be solved and not merely a story to be read.
The book opens with the inner thoughts of aderanged character, staring into a choppy sea hellbent on passing ‘Judgement’. From there, we follow
seven students of the K- University Mystery Club as

by Ayatsuji Yukito
translated by Ho-Ling Wong
Pushkin Vertigo (2020)
ISBN-13: 978-1782276340
Review by Cameron Bassindale
Despite revitalizing the classic murder mystery genre in
Japan, and developing a cult following in the process,
The Decagon House Murders is the first of Ayatsuji
Yukito’s works to be translated into English. This is
surprising considering how steeped the novel is in
the Western “whodunit” tradition. And yet, the world
Ayatsuji crafts is also distinctly Japanese. The result
is a lyrically woven natural setting, combined withthe page-turning suspense emblematic of a quality
murder mystery. This makes for a captivating read,
culminating in an ending as satisfying as it is shocking.
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Issue 93 Volume 16 Number 3 (June 2021)

they travel to the desolate island of Tsunojima, thesight of a gruesome murder-suicide six months earlier.
Instantly, the cogs in the reader’s mind begin to whir;
the puzzle Ayatsuji has crafted is beginning to takeform.
On the island, the group settle down into the
Decagon House, designed by Nakamura Seiji who
died in the brutal murders. The group, who go bynames drawn from Western murder mystery greatssuch as ‘Ellery’, ‘Carr’ and ‘Agatha’, spend much of
the first night exploring the ruins of a burned-down
mansion that was the sight of the murders. In the
Decagonal hall, they postulate on various theories,
and generally get excited for a week of hypotheticals.
These conversations serve Ayatsuji’s purpose, which is
chiefly to frame the events of the book not as a novel
but as a puzzle. By and large the dialogue between
the characters is instrumental, to aid the reader
in their personal unravelling of the plot. At times,
Ayatsuji could be accused of under-developing thepersonalities of the affectatious group of students.
Clunky turns of phrases are not uncommon. However,what The Decagon House Murders lacks in convincing,engaging dialogue it makes up for in cerebral twists
and turns.
As the group begin to recognize the danger they
face, on the mainland former Mystery Club member
Kawaminami (or ‘Doyle’) receives an ominous letter.
Signed off by the deceased Nakamura Seiji accusing
the club of murdering his daughter, this letter sets inmotion a series of events that propel the plot forward
at breakneck speed. From this point, the split narrative
between Kawaminami’s investigations on themainland and the carnival of death on the island makethe reader ponder and doubt each development.
This book’s greatest asset then is in its structure. As
the amateur sleuths on the island try to figure out
which one amongst them is the murderer, and thoseon the mainland begin to unravel the grizzly past of
the Nakamura’s, the reader is left both clued up andmystified. Therein lies the genius of Ayastuji’s cultclassic. Even with the benefit of a narrative structurethat lets the reader in on far more information thanany one character in the novel, you are unlikely to everfeel certain throughout the book that you know who
did it. And if you do, chances are you will be proved
wrong.
As the bodies begin to pile up, and the list ofsuspects shortens, a lesser mystery novel may struggle
to hold the reader’s imagination. In the latter stages,
Ayatsuji really comes into his own. As the book builds
towards its crescendo, the descriptions of the natural
surroundings become poetic and ominous, in the
tradition of the greatest Japanese literature. The useof pathetic fallacy as the book reaches its climax is
expertly done, painting a vivid, brutal image. And then,the solution to the novel’s puzzle unfolds in a way soingenious and logical it can stand shoulder to shoulder
with the very best mystery novels. If you wish to reada book that will grip, shock and engage you in equalmeasure then you need to look no further than The
Decagon House Murders. As authors like Murakami
Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana have given the British
reading public a real taste for a certain type of Japanese
fiction, the release of Ayatsuji Yukito’s debut novel may
signal the arrival of a new wave of Japanese mysterynovels onto the British market. I believe the literary
scene in this country would be all the better for it.§Eating Wild Japan: Tracking
the Culture of Foraged
Foods, with a Guide to
Plants and Recipes

Japanese experts to compile the first English language
book on this topic.
Previously a journalist for the Japan Times, Bird
became fascinated with wild forage plants whilst
living in rural Japan. Her interest is in the culture offoraging as much as the food it supplies. As such, theconnection between people and plants is prioritisedin this book; whilst it gives clear practical guidance, it
is not a field guide or reference text. Each of the five
primary chapters tell the stories of a different plant orplant group: wild mountain and forest herbs; horsechestnut; bracken; bamboo and seaweed. This isfollowed by a guide to other common forage plants,
which gives detailed information on identification,
preparation and recipes. Bird gives some substituteby Winifred Bird
Stone Bridge Press (2021)
ISBN-13: 978-1611720617
Review by Katie Croft
I have been wanting to read a book on Japanese wild
food plants for such a long time that I have, in idle
moments, thought of trying to write it myself. Luckily
for everyone, journalist Winifred Bird has done all thehard work of researching, translating and learning from
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

7

plants for readers outside Japan but unfortunately,
most of those are North American rather than European
natives. The final section of the book is a collection ofrecipes for all of the plants mentioned. For those of us
that are more fluent in botanical Latin than Japanese,
there is also a directory providing the Japanese, English
and botanical names for common edible plants. This
will be vital for many readers, as Bird primarily uses
the Japanese names for plants. For those, like me, thatare not familiar with more unusual plants like yomogi,
oubayuri, hotokenoza, onigurumi, umizomen and soon, the liberal use of Japanese becomes a bit dizzying.
I found myself frequently turning to google alongside
the text, to make sure that I knew which plant I was
reading about.
Bird spent three years travelling across Japan tomeet the people that are still foraging for the plants
in her five main chapters. Her journey took her from
Kyushu to Hokkaido, and she writes evocatively of thewild places she discovers and the relics of traditional
culture within them. Some of the plants and stories
will be familiar to those with experience in Japanesecuisine but others are likely to be a surprise and I foundthat I was learning more about Japanese history than
one would expect from a book about food.
Bird travels to Shiga prefecture to one of the few
places where Japanese horse chestnuts (トチ, tochi) arestill harvested and processed. In their fresh state, horsechestnuts (conkers) are highly toxic, in opposition tosweet chestnuts, which are familiar autumn fare in thewest. It takes at least two weeks of processing to rendertochi edible, after which they are used to make tochimochi, a rice/horse chestnut cake. Once a major foodstaple, there are now very few people that have theskills to process tochi and it is rare delicacy. A similarstory is told of bracken (ワラビ, warabi). Young bracken
fronds are a ubiquitous spring delicacy, but in Iwate
prefecture it was common practice to make a calorierich starch from the roots until the mid-20th century,
when industrial agriculture removed the need tosearch for food in the hills. As Bird explains, the cultural
history of these plants mirrors Japan’s cultural history
and sociological changes.
Although this is a warm and inspirational book,
Bird’s underlying message has a haunting warning.
As wild food’s place in diet has changed from being a
primary calorie source to a luxury addition, the quality,
variety, sustainability and security of the nation’s diethas decreased. As the skills and knowledge of foraging

have declined, so society’s understanding and respect
for the land around them has reduced. Bird argues
that detachment from wild food – human’s original
food – is directly linked to the destruction of thenatural environment and the resultant loss of local
community and culture. Although she does not discuss
it at length, this pattern feels all too familiar in theUK, where industrial agriculture, processed food andsupermarkets have replaced our knowledge of local
plants and connection with our natural landscape.
Bird writes with clear passion for plants andpeople and so these important environmental andsocial issues are lightened with optimism. She meets
activists who have been saving horse chestnut
trees from the axe, reinstating wild food culture andreviving the satoyama landscape. She also takes time
to compare the history of foraging culture in mainland
Japan with that of Hokkaido’s native Ainu people, forwhom wild food is still the heart of their culture. The
lessons from the people she meets are that, althoughforaging culture and human knowledge of the naturalenvironment is at a critical point, it is not too late. Thereis inspiration to be found here, whether you travel toJapan or not, to reconnect with the plants and food ofyour local area.
Despite the fact that the recipes are centredon wild foraged plants, I anticipate that UK residents
would be able to make many of them by harvestingfrom the Japanese plants that are commonly grownin gardens. Bird includes dishes made from day lilies,
the Japanese angelica tree (Aralia elata), Japanese
spikenard (Aralia cordata), the royal fern (Matteucia
struthiopteris), the ostrich fern (Osmunda japonica),and gingko. For anyone with a weedy garden, she also
includes tips on preparing Japanese knotweed, mare’s
tail (Equisetum arvense) and bracken, which sounds
like a much better method of control than a strimmer
or glyphosate. Many of the leafy greens she uses could
also be substituted with plantain, dandelion, wild
garlic, chickweed and other readily available British
plants. Due to time and seasonal restrictions, I have
only been able to try one of the recipes detailed in thebook: a version of tochi-mochi using sweet chestnuts
as a replacement for their more difficult-to-source
cousins. There are no photographs for the recipes so I
can’t tell you whether my rustic looking mochi turned
out as they were supposed to, but they certainly tasted
good.§