The Japan Society Review 77
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 77 Volume 13 Number 5 (October 2018)

The October issue of The Japan Society Review includes avariety of topics and authors showing the diversity of Japanrelated publications, which have arrived at bookshops andlibraries this year. On this occasion, the Review concentrates
on Japanese literature, cinema and food aiming to also cover
the wide-ranging interests of our readers.
The issue opens with a review of the most recent
novel by Murakami Haruki, Killing Commendatore, an epic
work in which the renowned author breaks from first-person
narration for the first time in almost ten years. Our reviewer
Beau Waycott explores the narrative, characters and style of
Murakami’s novel reflecting on its achievements and failures.
The Bear and the Paving Stone is a collection of three works
by award-winning author Horie Toshiyuki. A celebrated
scholar of French literature, Horie sets two of the stories inFrance, often emphasising the emotional memories of theprotagonists. The titular story won the Akutagawa Prize in
2000. A more recent Akutagawa-winner (2016), Murata
Sayaka’s Convenience Store People, closes the literary
section of this issue with the story of an unconventional
female character who has been working in a convenience
store (konbini) for eighteen years. Written in a simple
register, but touching complex issues related to the labour

economy, consumerism and social expectations for women,
Convenience Store People is the first translation of a novel
by Murata.
Regarding Japanese cinema, this issue includes thereview of an academic volume examining the life and careerof female actor and director Tanaka Kinuyo. As Kate TaylorJones details, Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female
Subjectivity studies Tanaka’s work, not only in her outstanding
career in front of the camera, acting for celebrated directors
such as Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro or Kinoshita Keisuke,
but also in her pioneering role as a film director. Tanaka
directed six films between 1953 and 1962 and was the only
female director during the post-war golden age of Japanesecinema in the 1950s.
To conclude, our review of Robata: Japanese Home
Grilling sheds lights on a popular form of Japanese grilling
originating from the Hokkaido region. Written by chef andfood consultant Silla Bjerrum, this cookbook is a perfect
introduction to Japanese cooking, while simultaneously
teaching the history and theory behind robata.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Killing Commendatore by Murakami Haruki

2)

The Bear and the Paving Stone by Horie Toshiyuki

3)

Convenience Store Woman by Murata Sayaka

4)

Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity
edited by Irene González-López and Michael Smith

5)

Robata: Japanese Home Grilling by Silla Bjerrum

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Harry Martin, Niraja Singh, Kate Taylor-Jones and Beau Waycott.

Killing Commendatore
by Murakami Haruki
translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted
GoossenHarvill Secker (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1787300194
Review by Beau Waycott
Breaking from first-person narration for the firsttime in almost ten years, Murakami Haruki’s Killing
Commendatore is an epic novel that fails to capture
the wry poignance and fully immersive settings of his
earlier works. Whilst there are passages of charming
and warm prose, as well as some promising nods tocontemporary politics, Murakami’s end product seems
disconnected, sterile and, above all else, unconvincing.
The protagonist (who is, in a true trope of
Murakami, unnamed) is a 36 year-old portrait painterliving in Tokyo, whose stable life is suddenly shaken
when his wife announces her infidelity and issues adivorce. Feeling numb and bewildered, the painterembarks on a month-long expedition around Hokkaido
and the Tohoku region, spending time alone in various
onsen (hot spring bath houses), izakaya bars andunmaintained ryokan hotels, seasoned with infrequent-yet formative- and spontaneous rendezvous.
Returning to Honshu, he settles on the hilltop house ofan acquaintance’s father in rural Odawara, Kanagawa
Prefecture. Settling into the slow and static lifestyle ofa recently-separated luddite, he spends the majorityof his time, much like before, in isolation: reading;cooking; examining artworks, and, for the first time inalmost a decade, painting for pleasure, rediscovering
styles of art he last practised at art college, far removed
from the naturalistic and impersonal portraits he has
exclusively created for so long.
The opening chapters are lucid, engaging andvery promising, with Murakami’s precise interminglingof the metaphorical and the literal; the prosaic and thesterile; the surreal and the mundane all culminating toholistically characterise the protagonist in Murakami’s
exact and practised style. Murakami breathes new life
into his fascination with bildungsroman, subverting
the genre in the protagonist’s early characterisation by
allowing him to question -and then rediscover- bothartistic style and inspiration not in adolescence, but in
middle age.
It is whilst living in this house that the protagonist
discovers the painting of the previous owner, Amada
Tomohiko, who is a well known painter, renowned
internationally throughout the art world for his deft skill
2

following traditional Japanese styles and techniques(although old age has now reduced Amada to life in a
residential home, incapable of logical conversation or
thought). The piece, entitled ‘Killing Commendatore’,
depicts a killing scene from Mozart’s Don Giovanni,contextualised in what appears to be Japan’s Asuka
Period (552-645). Following this, an enigmatic andmysterious neighbour of the protagonist appears,
Menshiki Wataru, who disrupts the protagonist’s (andplot’s) new equilibrium by bringing frequent social
visits to the house, and the subsequent multipleof narrative changes. Most notable, a seemingly
unconnected nightly aural assault begins to take placeon the protagonist, with a bell, presumably a piece ofancient Buddhist memorabilia, ringing throughout thesmall hours nearly every night.
Connecting all of these events is the titular
two-feet-tall Commendatore, who appears to havemanifested himself out of the painting, completewith hooded Japanese garb. This is, perhaps,
Murakami’s biggest mistake in the novel; whilst theCommendatore serves a very clear purpose in termsof the text’s narrative, Murakami fails to even attempt
to create a credible inter-plot mythology, or justify any
reasoning behind sudden and unexplained periodsof magical realism. Moreover, much like in The WindUp Bird Chronicle, the plot is contextualised throughhistorical events, with Murakami attempting to draw
together seemingly isolated characters through past,collective events. Whilst the historical nods in Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle are transportive, taking the action out ofthe present and into the past, in Killing Commendatore
they are exclusively significant expositionally, merely
adding often insignificant details to narration.
However, nods to events such as Kristallnacht or
Nanking are perhaps the closest Murakami has evercome to political in his novels, and do provide bothan interesting perspective in which to view the author
and his works, and the exciting possibility of morepolitical commentary to come.
In terms of narratology past the first five chaptersor so, the work is something of a shambles. The entiretyof the plot becomes retrospective: we learn from thefirst lines that the protagonist will spend only ninemonths in Odawara, and eventually reconcile with hiswife. As such, the extreme detail given to relatively
insignificant events later in the novel seem almost
superfluous; for example, the protagonist makes
over a dozen visits to where the bell was found, more
often than not just to conclude nothing has changed.
Murakami is widely known for his remark ‘My lifetime
Issue 77, Volume 13, Number 5 (October 2018)

dream is to be sitting at the bottom of a well’, andKilling Commendatore (along with many of his othernovels) is testament to this, with great detail given to
negligible trips to a well in Amada’s garden.
This leads to the real problem of the novel: it seems
Murakami has made no selection in the inclusion of
events and details whatsoever- absolutely everything is
included. Unlike in Murakami’s earlier works, which led
to his international stardom, such as Norwegian Woodor Pinball, or even the twentieth-century American
literature from which he draws so much inspiration(with Menshiki in Killing Commendatore apparently
written in partial homage to Jay Gatsby), there is no
judicious adoption of only truly necessary scenes ofdescriptions. Even more frustratingly, the protagonist
evolves very little throughout the plot, and finishes
the text in almost precisely the same place in which

he started. Indeed, by the novel’s end the protagonist
writes of his return to the suburbian abyss ‘That’s
the kind of life I wanted, and that’s also what people
wanted of me’.
Overall, Murakami fans will probably feel frustrated
with this novel. It starts off incredibly promisingly, only
to wallow in overdescription that leads to no significant
change or evolution of character. Whilst Murakami’s
classic style does penetrate through the bulk of thetext, be that his excellent mixture of sentence lengths,
or warped yet gripping comedic elements. I don’t feel
many followers will be overjoyed with this publication.
It is worthwhile to remember, though that this new
novel does bring the promise of a newly politicised andperhaps more outspoken Murakami, always a quiet
and underpublicized individual, which is something I
believe all fans can rally behind.§

The Bear and the Paving
Stone

two old friends soon strays into more intense waters
via discussions of literature, philosophy, and history.
The second story, ‘The Sandman is Coming’, tells of aman joining a woman on an unassuming beach walkwhich later transpires to be on the anniversary of her
brother’s (and his friend’s) passing. The third and final
story, ‘In the Old Castle’, is of a slightly darker nature.
Again set in France, the narrator reminisces about
when he and his friend decided to break into a castle
ruin, with sinister results.
Horie’s writing is superficially relaxed as all
three stories initially present themselves in a far more
simplistic light than the complex themes which lie
beneath. Unifying the three stories is Horie’s creativeemphasis on memory, where he abruptly interrupts
the narrative with the resurgence of a past sensation
which momentarily consumes the present with potent
and powerful emotions. In The Bear and the Paving
Stone the past is summoned through the characters’conversations about a famous French lexicographer
and the narrator’s friend’s photographs, which conjure
up images of Nazi death camps and the effects of theSecond World War on his Jewish heritage and personal
identity.
In the ‘Sandman is Coming’ there is an
overwhelming sense of nostalgia and loss as thenarrator and deceased friend’s sister share a melancholy
moment on the beach, reminiscing about the sandcastles they used to build in their youth. Here Horiedraws on the Japanese concept of impermanence, thebittersweet beauty of transience and how nothing ismeant to last, both sandcastles and life. The narrator’sby Horie Toshiyuki
translated by Geraint Howells
Pushkin Press (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1782274377
Review by Harry Martin
Pushkin Press’ recent publication of novellas translated
from contemporary Japanese authors has contributed
some fantastically unique and original works to theEnglish language library. The Bear and the Paving
Stone is a collection of three works by award-winning
author Horie Toshiyuki. The titular story, winner ofthe Akutagawa Prize in 2000, consumes most of thevolume, with two shorter pieces supporting the main
theme but nevertheless managing to impart their own
unique offerings.
Horie, a renowned scholar of French literature,
has contributed four titles in total to the Japanese
literary scene, this being one of his more recent
contributions from 2000. I have not read enough of his
work to establish a comprehensive sense of his overall
style; however this novella suggests a thoughtful,
conscientious writer who initially beguiles with a soft,
easy tone before later revealing much more solemn
and profound themes.
The title story follows a Japanese writer visiting an
old friend in Northern France, taking in some familiar
Normandy sights such as Mont Saint-Michel and the
local community in which his friend now lives. Whatinitially seems to be an unassuming reunion between
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

3

memories of his adolescence and the feelings he felt
for both sister and friend remain all too relevant in thepresent time.
‘In the Old Castle’ begins with the narrator’sreceipt of an old photograph taken ten years earlier,when he visited a friend in France. This provokes a vivid
recollection of the adventure he and his friend embarked
upon; breaking into an old castle ruin. Although theshortest of the three stories, this concludes the novellaand manages to encapsulate the flavour of the wholevolume in its closing statement; how humanity isalways trying to escape the unpleasant memories that
accompany us through life.
The masterful way in which Horie has managed
to interweave these three short stories is in itself amotivation to seek out more of his work. The notion of
the past conflicting with and influencing the present
is a universal sensation that we have all experienced;
reading this book might offer an opportunity tomeditate on some of our own lost memories, andconsider how these may have affected the decisions
and paths we have chosen in life.§

Convenience Store Woman

eight managers and an incredibly high turnover of parttime staff, but Furukura remains a constant, working
five days a week for 18 years. However, her family have
many concerns about her: aged 36, living in a rotting
and cramped apartment, alone, never having shown
signs of romantic interest, and working a dead-end
job with poor pay and no progression. Even Furukura’s
personality is contrived and essentially superficial,with her mimicking everything from fashion sense toinflection whilst speaking from co-workers.
It is only when a lazy and selfish worker, Shiraha,appears in the convenience store that real change
comes into Furukura’s character. At first, she isinfuriated by his androcentric lectures on the Stone
Age and evolution of mankind, but soon finds much
more infuriation in his disrespect for the store thatis the very centre of her life, seeing his indolence
as a personal attack on her love for the Smile Mart.
However, after Shiraha is dismissed from the store,
Furukura is forced to re-examine all the choices she
has ever made whilst at the store, and consider new
ideas towards employment, marital status, family andhappiness.
For me, the major paradox of the novel isthe Smile Mart itself. The konbini is a haven ofsynesthesia: the ever-present cry of “Irasshaimasé”;
the smell of floor cleaner; the cold chill of the barley
tea refrigerator. Murata has expertly characterised acentral location that is a microcosm of so many things,
such as the uniformity expected of Japan’s labour
force, or the Japanese preoccupation with cleanliness(be it superficial or otherwise). Overall, however, I
would argue that the main allusion is to the nature ofcapitalism- Murata believes it is an economic system
driven not by producers, but by consumers. Furukura’s
pride in her arubaito (part-time job) shows the
hypocrisy of Japanese expectations towards women:
whilst unmarried women are seen as outcasts and notby Murata Sayakatranslated by Ginny Tapley
Takemori
Portobello Books Ltd (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1846276835
Review by Beau Waycott
Murata Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman is a bookof deftly crafted paradoxes that hold a haunting
mirror up to both Japanese and Western societies.
The protagonist, Furukura Keiko, is a numb character
depicted in bare and swift language, yet is one of
the most intriguing personas I have read in recent
Japanese literature. Aged 36, Furukura is single and has
been working at the poignantly named ‘Smile Mart’convenience store for over 18 years, having joined
whilst a university undergraduate.
Furukura has always been a social outcast,recalling how, even as a child, she has always helda laissez-faire attitude towards conventional public
behaviour, instead preferring simply to act according toa strange and deeply personal set of morals seemingly
based on utilitarian violence. She doesn’t understandwhy it is not acceptable to hit a classmate over thehead with a shovel in order to break up a fight, nor why
her mother’s friends are shocked when she suggeststhat she uses a dead pigeon to cook her father yakitori
as a celebratory meal. Her family encourage her to try
counselling to “cure” whatever is wrong in her head,but the counsellor assumes time will naturally lead
Furukura to normality.
Moving onto life as a university student, she makes
no friends, and ends up finding sanctuary in a newlyopened Smile Mart konbini, where she sees herself witha clear purpose and goal, be it encouraging the sale ofcorndogs on a promotional deal, or devoting herself to“cleanliness crackdown time”. Over time, the store sees4

Issue 77, Volume 13, Number 5 (October 2018)

fulfilling their societal duties, their quest for validation
through work is often manifested not in high-powered
careers, but as a exploited labour force seen as cheapand disposable.
As Marx once wrote, in order for workers tofeel obliging and happy in the exchange of theirlabour, they need to see elements of their personality
externalised in the products or services they provide;
they need “to see themselves in the objects they havecreated”. Murata clearly affirms this view, with Furukura
seeing her job not as a means of employment but asa means to ‘maintain [herself] as human’. Moreover,she doesn’t just see herself in the store’s products,
but she knows the store’s products are herself, with abeautifully written passage detailing how, with a basic
knowledge of biology and a diet restricted to that ofdamaged stock and meal-deals, over the course ofher employment Furukura’s physicality has becomecomposed entirely from products of the store. Murata
encourages a Marxist interpretation of the text not justby suggesting or affirming it, but by actually taking apolitical theory of externalisation and expanding it tointernalisation, both literally and metaphorically.
Thanks to Ginny Tapley Takemori’s accessible yetholistic translation, having knowledge of Japaneseculture adds much depth to the book, from occasional
native interjections -‘hai!’- to Murata’s sardonic namechoices, such as ‘Keiko’, meaning (when written, as in
the original Japanese, with the kanji combination ‘恵子’) ‘happy (or blessed) child’, leading you to question
whether the situation Furukura finds herself in really isa blessing or a curse, and quite how much convenience
these stores actually add to our lives. Even Takemori’s
translation of the title is a political choice, as the native
title (konbini ningen) literally means “convenience
store people” and not “Convenience Store Woman”.

Whilst I am unsure if Murata was involved in thetitle’s translation, this specific choice seems to reflect
the character of Furukura herself: whilst most would
consider the Smile Mart a place of community, workers
and customers alike, the title suggests that Furukura is
an insular and self-gratifying person.
Convenience Store Woman is a rewarding
read, and raises many questions in its flat prose andsubtle allegories. Many complex ideas are suggested
during the plot, all poignant around the world, be it
the type of society Japan imagines during and after
the slow process of depatriarchiliastion, to native
attitudes towards Asian migration into Japan. Murata’s
combination of prose and plot is similar to Murakami’s,
examining the mundane and relatively static life of aprotagonist to celebrate all there is to human existence,from the subtly heart-warming to the suddenly
devastating. Written in a simple register that will
leave you both smiling and infuriated, you may often
wonder why you are continuing to read the novel atall. After all, the protagonist is largely a removed andunchanging character, and the plot takes place oververy few locations. The true beauty of Murata’s work is
only found a few hours after reading; with an endingthat hangs from the cliffs of ambiguity, you are almost
forced to consider the fate of Furukura, and every
other person sharing even one of her qualities. You
are bound to an examination of your own life, and toacknowledge that you yourself encourage capitalism,
and consumerism, and exploitation, and repression,
simply by your very being. Murata’s main authorial
decision is the use of aposiopesis over the novel’s final
pages, telling you not just to spend time reading herbook, but answering the questions she has raised overthe past 176 pages.§

Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation,
Stardom and Female
Subjectivity

Ichidai Onna, 1952). I was fascinated by the film but
more specifically the lead actor – the luminous andhighly talented Tanaka Kinuyo. Tanaka is, of course,
one of the most well-known Japanese female actorsof all time but, to date, English language scholarshiphas been somewhat neglectful in considering her
extensive contribution to the history of Japanesecinema. This collected edition by Irene González-López
and Michael Smith is a timely and important addition
to the field of study. In Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom
and Female Subjectivity, the editors have bought
together a series of scholars who all seek to explore
different aspects of Tanaka’s life and career.

edited by Irene González-López
and Michael Smith
Edinburgh University Press (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1474409698
Review by Kate Taylor-Jones
Senior Lecturer in East AsianStudies, University of Sheffield
One of the first Japanese films I ever saw as a young
teenager was Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu (Saikaku
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

5

The need for such a book can be found the threemain areas that the book contributes to – star studies,authorship studies and of course, the much wider fieldof Japanese Film Studies. Working in the film industry
from 1929 to the mid-1970s, Tanaka made films withall the great directors of the era including Ozu Yasujiro,
Mizoguchi Kenji, Naruse Mikio, Kinoshita Keisuke,
Kurosawa Akira and Ichikawa Kon. She was the star of
many of the most notable Japanese films ever madeincluding Woman of Tokyo (Tokyo no Onna, 1933),
Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho Dayu, 1954), The Ballad of
Narayama (Narayama-bushi Ko, 1958) and Red Beard(Aka-hige, 1965). She was also notable for being one
of Japan’s first women directors, making six features
film between 1953-1962. The aims and objectives ofthis book are lofty but admirable, ‘to make a case forher to be recognised as a pioneer both for her work
as an actress and for her trailblazing oeuvre as afilmmaker’ (1). To answer this aim, the book is divided
into seven chapters, the first half exploring Tanaka asan actress and the second her filmmaking career.
The book begins with a slightly stilted opening
by Furukawa Kaoru, the honorary president of the
Tanaka Kinuyu Memorial Hall. Following on from this,the first two chapters by Lauri Kitsnik and Alexander
Jacoby explore how Tanaka’s star images intersectedboth with contemporary debates on femininity
and Tanaka’s own developing star image. Kitsnik’s
exploration of Tanaka’s early work is based aroundthe employed neologism of idiogest – a focus on therepertoire of performance signs, character types andimages that surround a star body. As Kitsnik concludes,
Tanaka’s early roles were far more contradictory andcomplex than her mature adult star images would
suggest. From troubled young mother to modern
girl to tomboy, Tanaka’s early films refuse to confine
her to one specific role or category and speak to thewider debates on femininity taking place in Japan
during this period.
Jacoby’s chapter focuses on the more wellknown stage of Tanaka’s career, the 1940s-1950s thatwould see her star in films such as Army (Rikugun,1944), Life of Oharu and Ugetsu (1953). In these film,
Tanaka most often plays a self-sacrificial motherbut as Jacoby argues, a focus on specific aspects ofthe film, in this case, the endings of the films of thisperiod reveal the ability that “the star as auteur” hasto challenge and alter meanings. Following on from
this, Michael Smith focuses specifically on one film
My Love has been Burning (Waga koi wa moenu,
1949). Tanaka’s longstanding creative partnership6with Mizoguchi would often reflect on the gender
politics of the period. As Smith argues, a close readingof Tanaka in My Love has been Burning allows adisruption of the mainstream reading of Tanaka’slater roles as a personification of the traditional
conservative femininity or Yamato Nadeshiko.
For me, the second half of the book is the mostinteresting. The lack of output of female directors
in East Asian means any scholarship as womenas filmmakers is to be welcomed. Irene GonzálezLópez and Ashida Mayu’s chapter explores Tanaka’s
directorial film outputs, not via a focus on debatesof the auteur but rather to explore her films ascommercial vehicles that were enmeshed in thesocial, cultural and structural film system of the time.
Focusing on Love Letter (Koibumi, 1953), her mostwell-known and successful film, González-López andMayu explore how the film text operated, both on
and off the screen, as a vehicle for the negotiation of
the post-war social experience.
This multi-layered approach is then continued in
Ayako Saito’s fascinating chapter on the relationshipbetween Tanaka and Tanaka Sumie, the female
screenwriter who worked with Tanaka on two of her
films, The Eternal Breasts (Chibusa yo eien nare, 1955)
and Girls of Dark (Onna bakari no yoru, 1961). Saito’s
chapter seeks to firstly provide a critical evaluation of
Tanaka’s films in the context of the broader debate on
Women’s Cinema in the post-war period. Secondly,
via a study of both texts and modes of production tosuggest that Tanaka, far from confirming patriarchal
narratives, in fact, sought to challenge and debate
female representation on the screen. The chapter
offers insight into the relationship between the two
Tanaka’s via an examination of both the scripts andthe end film product that resulted.
Alejandra
Armendáriz-Hernández
chapter
focuses on Tanaka’s 1960 film The Wandering
Princess (Ruten no ohi, 1960) and locates this film
within the broader context of 1960s Japanesecinema. The Wandering Princess focused on the lifeof Saga Hiro who entered into an arranged marriage
with Puije, the young brother of the last Emperor of
China, Puyi. Puyi of course for most of his reign wasnothing more than a puppet of the Japanese Imperial
forces and The Wandering Princess, as ArmendárizHernández notes, is located as part of the post-war
reflections on the imperial past. These reflections
were dominated by ‘narratives of suffering, war guilt
and colonial nostalgia’ (165) and, due to the desire toreconfiguration reconfirm Japanese masculinity afterIssue 77, Volume 13, Number 5 (October 2018)

both defeat and occupation, focused on the maleexperience. Tanaka’s film not only focused on a female
narrative but as Armendáriz-Hernández exploredcontained female input at all levels of production.
The end film product may not have challenged postwar memories in any radical way, and certainly did
not offer any atonement for Japan’s imperial past, butwhat makes it valuable to scholars is the attempt toprovide a ‘genuine female subjectivity in the postwar Japanese cinema’ (180).
This focus on the female subject is continued
with Yuka Kano’s final chapter on Girls of Dark.
Kano’s study of lesbian images and desire in Girls of
Dark yields a fascinating exploration of the potential
women’s communities and spaces that Tanaka’s
film present. As the chapter explores, both the films
narrative and visuals offer the potential for both
female desire and subjectivity, not only at the level oftext but once again via Tanaka’s working relationships
with other women, namely the original novel writer
Yana Masako and screenwriter Tanaka Sumie. With
the interplay of both text and context, Kano places
the film inside wider debates on Women’s Cinema,and she concludes that ‘in the connecting andnegotiating with different women’(200), Girls of Dark

becomes an important addition to wider debates on
diversity and gender in Japanese cinema.
With a focus on questions of gender, production
and authorship, this collected edition will make afascinating read for several interlinked areas of film
studies outside of a focus on Japanese film. The bookserves to situate Tanaka not only in her own careerand life but as part of a wider debate on women in
Japanese cinema. Furukawa’s few opening pages’
hint at, but never elaborate on, several elements of
Tanaka’s childhood and early start in the industry.
If I have one main criticism of this book is my wish
that this section had more information and detailto it. I can appreciate the need to include someone
who is so intimately involved with the preservationof Tanaka’s history in this study, but as an opening
chapter it presents more issues than it answers andI would have liked to seen this contextualised anddiscussed more. The later chapters, with a focus onother women who worked with Tanaka, are, for me,
the big draw and opens up several avenues of researchthat I hope other future scholars will follow. As with allcollected editions, some chapters are stronger thanothers but all play a vital role in bringing new insights
to the career of Tanaka and the films she both madeand starred in.§Robata: Japanese Home
Grilling

is Japanese cuisine involving a fusion of sushi androbata. Originating from the Hokkaido region of Japanand roughly translated as ‘fireside cooking’, robata is a
‘Japanese style of grilling food in delicious skewered
morsels of fish, shellfish, meat and vegetables’. Raw
and cooked dishes are served alongside one anotherwith a focus on sharing in a kind of Japanese versionof tapas.
The underlying premise of Bjerrum’s cookbook is
to encourage the reader to adapt this style of cooking,which has traditionally been the preserve of restaurants,
at home using good quality seasonal ingredients with
an emphasis on sharing food. The dishes themselves
are designed to be equally successful whether you arecooking on a traditional robata grill, outdoor barbequeor simple oven grill.
Traditionally robata cooking has been done overbinchotan charcoals. Bincho coals known also as whitecharcoal are made from a heavy dense species ofoak, with the finest coals coming from Minabe in the
Wakayama prefecture of Japan. The beauty of bincho
coals for grilling is that they are chemical free, almost
smoke-free, burn at higher temperatures than normal

by Silla Bjerrum
Jacqui Small LLP (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1911127345
Review by Niraja SinghIn May this year, the Japan Society held a successful
supper club, showcasing the food and cooking ofrenowned chef and food consultant, Silla Bjerrum,
co-founder in the late 1990s of London’s first sushi
delivery service, Feng Sushi. The menu was based onher new cookbook Robata: Japanese Home Grilling
published in April. Bjerrum’s recipes convey theimportance of achieving umami (the fifth taste) inrobatayaki through a very fast and pure form of grillingat high temperatures using natural flavour-enhancing
ingredients such as soy-based sauces, miso, andshiitake mushrooms.
Japanese food has become a global phenomenon,
with local sushi restaurants found in almost every
corner of the world. A newer variation of this trend
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

7charcoal and there is an absence of moisture fromthe bincho, hence their popularity with chefs, as thispreserves the flavourful juices inside while keeping
the food crispy on the outside. Yakitori is anotherpopular form of grilling over binchotan coals, but amain difference is that robata has its roots in fish andvegetable dishes, whereas yakitori originally consistedof chicken and vegetables.
Bjerrum provides detailed instructions on how to
set up a DIY robata grill at home, including the typeof starter chamber in which to burn the coals initiallybefore transferring to a drum or brick barbeque. For amakeshift robata grill in the oven, the trick is to createa mini pit high enough for skewers not to touch thebase of baking sheet. Again, Bjerrum gives ample
details on how to create this for the home oven. She
masters a hugely accessible range of recipes, which
are specifically adapted to home cooking.
Barbeque grilling in the West tends to be very
meat centric, whereas Bjerrum argues that ‘robata
is about delicacy, provenance and combining a
selection of ingredients to create a nutritious, wellbalanced meal’. Bjerrum herself does not stick
wholeheartedly to the orthodox robata method,
but adds her own experimental twists to create
unique recipes. For example, robata grilled mussels
dressed with miso flavoured butter for deep umami
flavour or yuzu chicken, which is marinated in a
mixture of yogurt, honey and yuzu that tenderizes
the meat beautifully before grilling. More traditional
Japanese fish robata dishes such as miso black cod orclassic yakitori (chicken cooked on skewers) are also
included in the recipes, as are a wonderful selection ofvegetarian dishes such as nasu dengaku (miso glazed
aubergines), goma (sesame) spinach, okra robata,and portobello mushrooms stuffed with shimeji andshiitake mushrooms. She also sets out an array of side
dishes, sauces and salads, which can accompany any
selection of grills from the book.
The cookbook is organised by type of robata
based on ingredients, which creates an easy-to-use
guide for newcomers to Japanese cuisine and is agreat reference for the more experienced chef. For

Robata grilled fish and seafood

fish lovers, sea bream with wakame salsa and summer
pickles of lemon and courgettes, Chilean sea bass withchoy sum and onion relish, and soft-shell crab on crab
rice are all delicious recipes to try.
The recipes are not only easy to follow, but
the book itself is beautifully curated; Keiko Oikawa’s
photographs perfectly capture Bjerrum’s mouthwatering food. Her cooking is a perfect introduction to
Japanese cooking while simultaneously teaching you
the history and theory behind robata. Do not be put off
by the multitude of traditional Japanese ingredients,
as they are relatively easy to find. Many are available in
the local supermarket, and others readily sourced from
speciality Japanese stores, which like sushi restaurants
are burgeoning.
All in all, this cookbook will appeal to thosewith an interest in not only Japanese food, but also
concerned with the provenance and seasonality ofingredients and taking their cooking to a higher level,
as these have always been at the core of Bjerrum’s
cooking.§

Interested in writing for The Japan Society Review?

Please write to alejandra.armendariz@japansociety.org.uk with examples of your work and information about your knowledge of and interest in Japan.