The Japan Society Review 81
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 81 Volume 14 Number 3 (June 2019)

Welcome to the June issue of The Japan Society Review. The
Japan-related event of the UK summer is without doubt the
impressive Citi exhibition Manga マンガ at the British Museum.
Marketed as ‘the largest exhibition of manga ever to take placeoutside of Japan’, it aims to explore manga’s global appeal andcultural crossover, examining the origins and history, the main
genres, authors and characters and the role that this distinctive
form of Japanese popular culture plays in contemporary society
across the globe. Our reviewer Malene Wagner has visitedthe exhibition and gives us some insights into its content andapproach.
Beyond manga, other works of Japanese literature
have also reached us in translation, offering some excellent
choices for summer reading. The Penguin Book of Japanese
Short Stories is a varied and fascinating collection of 34 shortstories from across the literary spectrum and spanning nearly
150 years of modern Japanese literature. Edited by Jay Rubin
and introduced by Murakami Haruki, the collection is orderedby theme – e.g., ‘Japan and the West’, ‘Loyal Warriors’, ‘Men
and Women’,– rather than chronologically, leading to some
unexpected and stimulating connections.
This issue also includes two reviews of novels by Japanesewomen writers Kanai Mieko and Nakajima Kyoko. Both of them

are located in domestic settings in which the main protagonists
interact with family, friends and cats. Oh Tama!, written byaward-winner author, critic and poet Kanai Mieko, delves into
the dysfunctional lives of a cast of eccentric characters living in
Kanai’s own neighbourhood Mejiro, in downtown Tokyo. Tama
is not only the protagonist’s cat , but also embodies the notionof the unconventional family that is at the heart of this novel.
The Little House by Nakajima Kyoko are the fictional memoirsof Taki, a housemaid in suburban Tokyo in the early years of the
Showa era (1926-89). Framed by the well-crafted story of Taki’s
relationship with her employer’s family and their secrets, thenovel is filled with historical insight into the political and social
events of pre-war Japan.
Finally, but first in order of appearance, the opening reviewof this issue examines the academic study Electrified Voices:
How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern
Japan, 1868-1945. This volume approaches the cultural historyof Japanese modernity from the point of view of Sound Studies,reflecting on the role of auditory technologies and practices inmodern society and media.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, andRadio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 by Yasar Kerim

Editor

2)

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories edited by Jay
Rubin

Reviewers

3)

Oh Tama! by Kanai Mieko

4)

The Little House by Nakajima Kyoko

5)

The Citi exhibition Manga マンガ

Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Francesco Cioffo, Poppy Cosyns, Jill Dobson, Malene Wagner andRobert Paul Weston.
Image: Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889), Shintomiza Kabuki Theatre Curtain,
1880, displayed at the British Museum’s Citi Exhibition Manga マンガ

Electrified Voices: How the
Telephone, Phonograph,and Radio Shaped Modern
Japan, 1868-1945
by Yasar Kerim
Columbia University Press (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-0231187121
Review by Francesco Cioffo
Kerim Yasar, currently assistant professor of East Asian
languages and cultures at the University of Southern
California, is a scholar of eclectic intellect. He began
his studies as an ethnomusicologist and electronic/
experimental music, but soon transitioned into literatureand film studies in graduate school. This experience led him
to cultural history and media study, which represent thestarting point for this book.
Electrified Voices is articulated upon a key postulatethat appears to be surprisingly counter-intuitive in someacademic circles: ‘none of the senses is any more “base” or“noble” than another, and none is more “important” thananother in any absolute sense’. Yasar begins his narrative
about the ways in which modern auditory technologies
such as the telephone, the phonograph and the radio haveshaped ‘modern Japan’ (1868-1945) by asserting that ‘soundoccupies an important place in the economy of the humansensorium’ (p. 4). The study of modernity, in fact, has for longprivileged visual representative forms of cultural production
such as photography, cinema and cartoons.[1] This tendency
to privilege the visual has been challenged in the past
decades by the emergence of new fields of enquiry such
Sensory Studies, the history of smells and Sound Studies.
[2] Yasar takes the perspective of Sound Studies to analyze
modern Japan. At the core of this field is the rediscoversof the interactions between people and the soundscapesaround them, which, at the same time, shape and areshaped by social relations. Electrified Voices thus stipulates
that ‘sound is central to social and ritual life, and the ability toreproduce and transmit sound has radically altered humanbeings’ relationship to sound and thus to social life, including
economic and political life’ (p. 5).
The author argues that the newly introduced auditory
technologies represented a sharp technological rupture
with Japan’s past, while at the same time functioning as
vectors for a reformulation and thus re-popularizationof some of Japan’s oldest oral practices. Contradicting
popular narratives that portrait ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’
as two warring opponents, Yasar demonstrates how Japan’s‘residual orality’ (such as naniwabushi, narrative singing
accompanied by shamisen, kodan, storytelling based on2historical events, or heikyoku, recitation of the Tales of Heike)provided a receptive environment for the introduction ofauditory technologies (‘technologized orality’).[3] Traditional
forms of orality not only did not contrast with modernity,
but they were actually galvanized by it. Through newtechnologies, ‘residual orality’ experienced a renaissance,
while concomitantly transforming into new genres as theytransitioned into new media and distribution platforms.
The first half of the book (chapters 1, 2 and 3) focuses
more specifically upon sound and orality and the waysthat these interact with language and music. Furthermore,alongside the aforementioned main argument, this firsthalf also stresses another interesting insight: ‘media andmateriality do matter, that the materialities of media transformpeople, institutions and societies’ (p. 9). In chapter 1, Yasar
takes as case study the telegraph and the telephone, arrived
in the late 19th century, to argue that these technologies
were crucial in spreading phonocentric discourses (theassumption that speech and oral communication isinherently superior to written language) which informed
Meiji language reforms. In chapter 2, the author explores
the transition from premodern soundscape and tradition
music to urban soundscape with Western and Westernizedmusic. Thus making ‘indigenous musical tradition to bemade foreign on its own soil’ (p. 16). The third chapter takes
into consideration the emergence of the ‘sonic archive’ andthe changes in conceptions of copyright and authorshipthat arose from the appearance of technologies that turned
sound and voices into reproducible cultural artifacts.
The second part of the book (chapters 4 and 5) is instead
intended to explore the interactions of sound technologies
with the larger ‘media ecology’. Chapter 4, specificallyfocuses upon the acousmatic (body-less) voices from radio
sport broadcasting and those directing morning rajio taiso(radio exercises). He argues that the human voice assumeda ‘new materiality and cultural role’ that was used by theJapanese state for political and ideological goals. The author,
in Chapter 5, theorises radio drama as a distinctive narrative
genre, which played e significant role in developing soundeffects and voice acting (two key components of cinema,
television and anime as well). The final and sixth chapter
is divided in two main sections. The first part is dedicatedto theoretical debates about the uses and function of film
dialogue and soundtrack music, paying special attention to
the writings by film critics Nakane Hiroshi and Yasuda Kiyoo
and director Mizoguchi Kenji. The second part of the chapter
is instead focused on the development of a specific dialogue
style in jidaigeki (period dramas). It points out that period
drama (a ‘technologized cultural production’) generated its
own new language, although based upon a romanticizedunderstand of the past.
Issue 81, Volume 14, Number 3 (June 2019)Yasar’s contribution is an important first step in
expanding Sound Studies beyond its Euro-American focus.
In a field that has been criticized for its still prepondering
whiteness in terms of scholars and subjects studied, a focus
on Japan, the first non-Western nation to have undergone
a substantial process of modernization, is indeed helpful tocomplicate a certain positivism and to see how technologicaltransfers do not follow a fixed path and the responses to newtechnologies are always negotiated according to specificlocal conditions.[4] Thus problematizing the assumptionthat what happened in the US and in Europe in terms ofsociety-technology relationship can be used as a blueprint
for other cases.
One very interesting point raised by Yasar is thecentrality of sound and sound technologies in shaping the
kokutai (national body) and the Japanese imperial project.
Needless to say, it would be impossible for one volume tocover all aspects of the Japanese soundscape, yet it would
have been interesting to see how sound and orality werereceived and negotiated within the diversity of the Japaneseimperial society. When approaching modern Japan, it
is very crucial to bear in mind that the perceived racial
homogeneity of today was neither a historical fact, nor partof certain discourses about the Japanese polity.[5] Since theconquest of Hokkaido, the Ryukyu Kingdom, Taiwan, Korea
and parts of mainland China, Japan had expanded to be awide raging empire assimilating many ‘races’. As we open to
the possibilities of a different racial structure within Japan,
then it will be interesting to see scholars like Yasar fromSound Studies to ask more question about the interplay ofperceptions about races and the different soundscape thatthese create; as well as investigating the various ‘residual
oralities’ that were brought in Japan by its inter-imperial

The Penguin Book of Japanese
Short Stories
edited by Jay Rubin
Penguin Classics (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-0141395623
Review by Jill Dobson
In the two decades since the publication of The Oxford
Book of Japanese Short Stories (1997), Japanese literature
in English, a miniscule subset of the whole, has beentransformed not only in quantity but in the kinds of writing– and writers – made available in translation. Beyond
the blockbusting Murakami Haruki (an international
phenomenon rather than a mere author), writers suchas Ogawa Yoko, Kirino Natsuo, Kawakami Hiromi and theLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

networks. One interesting example might be, for instance,
the popular Korean anthem ‘Arirang’. It would be interesting
to use the analytical frameworks of Sound Studies to analyze
the evolution of this popular tune from a simple song, to anationalist anthem for Koreans, to finally become a rallying
anthem for the entire Japanese empire.[6]Notes[1] William O. Gardner, Advertising Tower: JapaneseModernism and Modernity in the 1920s (Cambridge:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2006).
[2] See the Journal of Sensory Studies; Constance Classen,David Howes and Anthony Synnott’s Aroma: The Cultural
History of Smell (London & New York: Routledge, 2014); theApril 2011 issue of the American Historical Review dedicatedto ‘The Senses in History’; as far as Sound Studies areconcerned, see Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural
Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham & London: Duke
University Press, 2003) and Noise. The Political Economy ofMusic by Jacques Attali (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1985).
[3] Yasar takes the terms ‘technologized orality’ and‘residual orality’ from Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The
Technologizing of the World (London: Routledge, 1982).
[4] Gustavus Stadler, On Whiteness and Sound Studies,
https://soundstudiesblog.com/.
[5] Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of “Japanese” Self-images.
Translated by David Askew. (Rosanna: Trans Pacific Press Pty.
Ltd., 2002).
[6] Taylor E. Atkins, ‘The Dual Career of ‘’Arirang”: The Korean
Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit’, in The
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 66. N. 3 (Aug. 2007).§author of the recent hit Konbini ningen (Convenience Store
Woman), Murata Sayaka, are being published by small
independents or mainstream literary imprints. While Japan’s
economic might has flatlined in the last two decades, its
cultural ‘soft power’ has grown, and Japanese literature intranslation is no longer dominated by the postwar ‘holy
trinity’ of Tanizaki, Mishima and Kawabata.
English-language publishers may be accused oflooking for the next Murakami or Kawakami, someone
who fits the ‘quirky’ image Western readers may have ofJapanese writers. The compiler of The Penguin Book ofJapanese Short Stories, Murakami’s long-standing translator
Jay Rubin, was allowed free rein in his selection, which
was only limited by the availability of copyright, and thisdiverse and fascinating collection of 34 stories is free fromany compulsory marketable ‘quirkiness’. Unusually, the3collection is ordered by theme – e.g., ‘Japan and the West’,‘Men and Women’, ‘Dread’ – rather than chronologically,leading to some startling and stimulating juxtapositions:Akutagawa’s classic story, the horrifying ‘Hell Screen’ (1918),
rubs up against Sawanishi Yuten’s frankly bizarre ‘Filling up
with Sugar’ (2013).
In ‘Japan and the West’, Rubin includes Tanizaki’s novella‘The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga’, the tale of a man who
is so torn between a cosmopolitan, Western city life of sherry,steak and foreign prostitutes, and his provincial life with a
traditionally refined Japanese wife, that he alternates between
two physically distinctive personas. This captures the cultural
dislocation of the Meiji and Taisho periods, when the breakneck
modernisation imposed by the state threw Japanese identity
into turmoil. This is also the theme of Natsume Soseki’s work,
represented here by an excerpt from Sanshiro, his gentle taleof a provincial youth heading up Tokyo to study and being
overwhelmed by the ‘modern’ sophistication of women,
starting with one he meets on the train, who makes him anoffer he is too innocent or gormless to take up.
In the section ‘Loyal Warriors’, Mishima Yukio’s‘Patriotism’ provides a chilling insight into the mindset
of a couple for whom joint suicide is both a duty and theultimate consummation of their passion. It is impossible toread the unflinching details without thinking of Mishima’s
actual suicide ten years later, and to wonder if his own
suicide lived up to his vivid, ecstatic imaginings.
Interestingly, the section ‘Men and Women’ includes
five women writers and only one man, Nakagami Kenji. Did
Rubin not think any male writer had anything noteworthy
to say about women (surely not) or does he simply not
categorise writing by men in the same way? Kono Taeko’s
short ‘In the Box’ relates an instance of microaggression
between two women in a lift; men don’t come into it. In thesame section, Tsushima Yuko’s ‘Flames’ is a subtle evocationof a single mother’s uncertainty as she waits, with increasing
ambivalence, for her absent husband to sign the divorce
papers, her state of mind mirrored by the number of deaths
she notices around her. Her sense of self is restored one night as
she and her small daughter watch a conflagration. Tsushima’s
reputation is undergoing a revival in the Anglosphere, thanks
to the efforts of her long-time translator, Geraldine Harcourt.
In Yoshimoto Banana’s ‘Bee Honey’, another woman on thebrink of divorce goes to Buenos Aires, an unfamiliar city where
she does not speak the language, to nurse her confusionand sorrow. Witnessing a procession by the mothers of thedisappeared, she reflects on her own mother back in Tokyo,
and her perspective shifts. Ohba Minako’s ‘The Smile of a
Mountain Witch’ is a retelling of the Japanese folk story of theyamanba (briefly a youth fashion trend as well) from the pointof view of the mountain witch who has chosen to suppress4

her nature and live among humans, providing a devastating
commentary on what society expects of women – complete
submission – along with the suggestion that all women arepotentially or secretly yamanba.
The first story in ‘Nature and Memory’, Abe Akira’s‘Peaches’, starts with a man’s clear, treasured memory ofhimself as a boy, walking with his mother one night witha pram-load of peaches. He has never questioned thismemory until his sudden awareness of one clashing detail –peaches in winter? – calls into question the entire incident,
and thereby his certainties about his family and himself,summed up by the final, unsettling image of the man as aboy, wheeling his infant self in the pram.
Ogawa Yoko’s quiet, elegant and disturbing fiction
has established itself in English translation. The latest
addition, ‘The Tale of the House of Physics’, is an unsettlingand densely atmospheric tale of a transient connection
between a little boy and a vagrant woman living in an
abandoned research institute. Amid the luxuriant androtting overgrowth of its grounds, a group of boys find
freedom to play without boundaries. The woman brags
to them that she used to be a writer, and they mock her.
One day, finally daring to enter the building on his own, thenarrator discovers that the woman has fallen ill from eating
mushrooms that have grown from the ground where theboys buried a dead weasel. Feeling guilty, the boy brings
soup to the woman. As she recovers, he writes down thestory she is muttering to herself: a fantastic story of an
atomic particle journeying through the universe, entirely
alone. The boy presents her with a clean copy, bound in a
cardboard cover. When she disappears from the house, andis forgotten, the book disappears with her. The whole story
is framed as the reminiscence of a retired editor, thinking
back over all the authors whose work he has midwifed. He
accounts The Tale of the House of Physics as the first bookhe edited. His transition from heartless little boy to someone
capable of sympathy and service, his main attributes as an
editor, may have come about through his encounter with
the nameless woman, although such an obvious inference
seems too crude for Ogawa’s subtle fiction.
Japan’s unique experience of atomic warfare isrepresented by two stories, one by Nagasaki author Seirai
Yuichi. ‘Insects’, first published in the collection Ground Zero,
Nagasaki, describes the long-term physical and spiritual
destruction wrought on the city’s Christian community.
The narrator Mitsuko, an elderly Christian woman, is
looking back on her life. At 15, she lost her parents and all
four siblings in the blast. Amid the awful aftermath, only
insects seem to survive and even flourish, starting withthe ‘bright green grasshopper’ who crawls up Mitsuko’s
mutilated leg in the opening scene. Disfigured, Mitsuko
Issue 81, Volume 14, Number 3 (June 2019)

only feels comfortable around others whose lives have beenblighted, like her colleagues at the printing factory where
she works. The exception is Sasaki, a former soldier whose
health and vigour awakens her desire. Her injuries make her
unmarriageable, although another colleague, Ozaki, whose
face has been shattered, seems to appeal to her sympathy:‘There were two types of people now: those whose lives had
been affected by the bomb and those who hadn’t suffered.’
Predictably, Sasaki marries Reiko, a cheerful younger woman
seemingly untouched by war or deprivation. Mitsuko nurses
her jealousy and infatuation for years, while Reiko treats her
as a friend, possibly out of pity. But Mitsuko has a secret: on
one trip back to Nagasaki, the now middle-aged Sasaki forces
himself upon her. She welcomes the encounter, her only
sexual experience. It turns out that the apparently devout
Sasaki does not believe in God: his faith was destroyed by
the bomb and he regards people as no better than insects.
He mocks Mitsuko for believing she survived by the graceof God: ‘We’re like your insects... God doesn’t keep an eye
out for every insect that’s born or dies... What makes you
think people are any better than bugs?’ Like Mitsuko, he
has been permanently ruined by the bomb, but invisibly so.
Mitsuko is sustained in her old age by the memory of theirsingle encounter and by the secret knowledge she has of
Sasaki’s true nature – that of a godless insect – which she
considers revealing to Reiko in a final, triumphant letter.
The story ends by returning to the first image of the large
grasshopper mounting the injured young Mitsuko as shelies in the rubble.
A review of anthology of 34 very different short stories
is necessarily selective; another reviewer would have madeother choices. In his introduction, Murakami Haruki compares
the collection to the New Year’s fukubukuro (lucky bag) soldby Japanese department stores. A reader prepared for the
new and unexpected will not be disappointed.§

Oh Tama!

significance gradually emerges. From her position on theside lines of the story’s action, she becomes a grounding
influence on Natsuyuki and his oddball band of associates,
while also embodying the notion of the unconventionalfamily that is at the novel’s heart.
Natsuyuki’s friends are drawn with varying degrees ofdetail, as they wander in and out of his modest apartment
in Mejiro. There is the pretentiously self-styled Alexandre, amodel and occasional porn actor, who at various points inthe story avails himself of Natsuyuki’s reluctant hospitality. An
unashamed intellectual lightweight, he objects to his friends’
tendency for niche cultural references and appears to float
through life having shrugged off the burdens of convention
and respectability. The latter’s sister Tsuneko – who, like
Tama, is pregnant – is the subject of much gossip among
Natsuyuki’s circle, as they debate who is most likely to be
her unborn baby’s father. The reader never meets Tsuneko,
allowing us to share in the atmosphere of intrigue and outrage
that surrounds her, without ever hearing her story first hand.
Spiritually twinned to some extent with the equally silent
Tama, Tsuneko represents the archetypal wayward woman
and the antithesis of the Japanese ideal. The hypocrisy ofthe male characters in their criticisms of Tsuneko suggests a
feminist undertone to Kanai’s writing here.
The central character of Natsuyuki is rather thinly
drawn, with Kanai inviting her reader to draw their own
conclusions about him, through description of his decisions
and the company he keeps. His fixation with the fictional
photographer and “unknown artist” Amanda Anderson– whose background and photographic style is related

by Kanai Mieko
translated by Aoyama Tomoko andPaul McCarthy
Kurodahan Press (2014)
ISBN-13: 978-4902075670
Review by Poppy Cosyns
From the pompous narrator of Soseki’s epic satire I Am A
Cat, to the elusive interloper in Hiraide Takashi’s poignant
novella The Guest Cat, Japanese literature has more than its
fair share of felines. Knowingly positioning her work within
the cannon of what translator Paul McCarthy calls “catliterature”, celebrated poet and novelist Kanai Mieko has
peppered this novel with little nods to classics of the genre.
To name a couple: a cameo from a cat called Lily, will ringa bell for those who have read Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s A Cat, A
Man and Two Women and the title is itself a play on Uchida
Hyakken’s ode to a missing cat, Oh, Nora!
The second in a series of works set in Kanai’s own
neighbourhood of Mejiro, in downtown Tokyo, this novel –which won Kanai Japan’s Women’s Literature Prize – delves
into the dysfunctional lives of a cast of eccentrics who live in
the area. Some of these same characters crop up elsewherein the series, though each novel has a standalone narrative.
As the story starts, freelance photographer
Natsuyuki Kanemitsu has a heavily pregnant cat called
Tama unceremoniously dumped on him by his friend, theaffected and slightly vacuous Alexandre. There is nothing
particularly remarkable about Tama, who Kanai presents asa typically aloof stray. As the novel progresses, however, her
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

5

in impressively believable detail – is perhaps the mostremarkable eccentricity we discover about our protagonist.
Natsuyuki is initially striving to be taken seriously andto appear relevant among his contemporaries in the art
world. He eventually concludes however, that he would
rather maintain this obscure finding as part of his private
fantasy and that to share it would only dilute the fascination
it holds for him. His eventual dedication to the care of Tamaand her litter of kittens appears to suggest that only throughthe nurturing of life, can these selfish and pretentiously
inclined characters, hope to find any way out of their
existential crises.
As with much of Kanai’s work, Oh, Tama! takes a
bit of getting into. Her experimental, almost stream-ofconsciousness style is abundant in examples of wordplay,

literary references and characters getting their wires crossed.
As an example, much of the chapter titled ‘Wandering Soul’ isgiven over to the characters’ unfocused ruminations on filmmakers Daniel Schmid and Jean-Luc Godard and novelist
Vladimir Nabokov. Translator Aoyama and McCarthy haveconquered the formidable challenge of communicating
Kanai’s famously skittish tone and love of the double
entendre and happily, once one has settled into the peculiar
rhythm of her prose, the novel becomes an enjoyable andoften very funny read. It must be said, however, that those
who like their fiction with a meaty plot to get stuck into,
had better look elsewhere. Kanai’s unremitting sense of
the absurd and the subtly drawn interactions between her
characters are what make this a worthwhile read, the plot isgossamer thin.§

The Little Housepractice was common at the time, particularly for large ruralfamilies of modest means. As early as seven, she writes, young
girls ‘either went to primary school or were sold off’ to Geisha
houses and brothels. Understandably, Taki counts herself
lucky. In Tokyo, she is relatively well treated in the employ ofseveral households, including a stint in the home of a famous
author. Under the Hirai’s roof (atop the “little house” of thetitle) the story coalesces around Mistress Tokiko, the beautiful
wife of a toy factory manager, and their son, Kyoichi. Taki’s
relationship with the Hirai family and its secrets — as well as
the discovery of her own — drive the novel. The tale is told
in Taki’s voice until nearly the end, when we arrive at a lastchapter that suddenly shifts the point of view. The result is a
final punch of imagery, dramatic irony and wistful regret thatpersists well beyond the boundaries of the book.
Of course, this last shift makes it difficult to discuss
the story in too much detail without spoiling the impact ofmany bittersweet moments Nakajima sets up throughout.
I will say, however, The Little House compares favourably

by Nakajima Kyoko
translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Darf Publishers (2019)
ISBN-13: 978-1850773160
Review by Robert Paul Weston
The Little House shares a title with a 1942 picture book by
American children’s author Virginia Lee Burton. In that story,
a small house, built on a hill in the remote countryside,
becomes intrigued and then engulfed by urban sprawl.
With age she feels shabby and forgotten, especiallysquashed between pompous mansions and indifferent
skyscrapers. Eventually, having stoically accepted she willsoon be demolished, the little house is surprised to findhope and renewal when the great-great-granddaughter ofher original builder comes knocking. The echoed title is no
accident. The famous children’s book (it was adapted as an
animated short by the Disney Corporation in 1952) plays apivotal role in Nakajima Kyoko’s novel, appearing as one of
the final clues to a poignant mystery that reveals the deftskill of a subtle storyteller.
On the surface, The Little House is a collection of
memoirs by Taki, a housekeeper and governess who spends
years in the service of the wealthy Hirai family. When thestory opens Taki is an old woman, recently commissioned
to produce a garishly titled, ghostwritten volume ofhousehold advice, “Granny Taki’s Super Housework Book”.
Following its success, the editors are ready for a sequel. Taki,however, wishes to write something more meaningful: an
autobiography.
She begins in 1930, still a young girl fresh fromelementary school but already leaving her family in northern
Honshu to serve as a housemaid in Tokyo. She recalls the6with other notable works that tackle similar themes. Fans ofKazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day or even Mishima Yukio’s
Confessions of a Mask will find things to like here.
Along with a delicately crafted story, The Little Houseis also filled with captivating historical insight into twentiethcentury Japan. Early on, Nakajima briefly focuses on
Japan’s preparation for the Tokyo Olympics and the GrandInternational Exposition, both planned for 1940. Meant tocelebrate the 2600th anniversary of the accession of Japan’s
first Emperor Jimmu to the throne, the Grand Exposition
featured events planned solidly from March to August ofthat year. Delegations from around the world were set toattend, which is to say nothing of the 1940 Tokyo Olympics,
meant to immediately follow in September.

Issue 81, Volume 14, Number 3 (June 2019)

Nakajima reveals how, in the minds of average
Japanese, it was easy for these internationally prestigious
events to overshadow distant wars in Asia and Europe.
Mr. Hirai, for instance, a successful toymaker, is particularlycaught up in preparation. He exuberantly begins designing
all the many sporting- and patriotic-themed trinkets hewill inevitably sell when the world’s eyes turn to Tokyo.
With the outbreak of war in Europe, however, the Japanese
government has little choice but to cancel both events.
Having said this, the book’s historical detail is notincluded solely for authenticity. It is not merely a way ofgaining the reader’s trust and sharpening the atmosphere.
It serves these purposes, certainly, but it is clear Nakajima
chose each detail to serve the story. Indeed, Mr. Hirai’s
exuberance — and especially his sudden need of talented
new toy designers — plays a pivotal role come the book’s
climax. Also worth mentioning is a second level of detail,that of food and cooking. Anyone familiar with Japanese
popular culture will be aware that food — its production,
preparation and consumption — pops up with unusual
frequency in books, film, television, manga and even music.
In The Little House Nakajima makes artful use of the trend.
Taki is a housekeeper, after all, expressly charged withfeeding the Hirai household. This results in passages of thenovel that are, quite literally, delicious.
Shortly after joining the Hirai family, Taki wishes to
explain ‘why the end of the year used to be such a busy
time.’ She goes on to list the many discrete ingredients andtimings required for a successful osechiryōri, the elaborate

New Year’s dish meticulously prepared days in advance ofJanuary 1. Later, after the war begins and certain ingredients
falter, the sudden arrival of visitors forces Taki to prepare an
impromptu meal with limited resources. ‘While the guests
enjoyed a drink with a couple of snacks of vegetables
simmered in soy sauce and whitebait boiled in sweetenedsoy sauce, I steamed some rice together with shellfish
preserved in mirin, ginger, and soy, and cut up some sardines
marinated overnight into bite sized pieces, coating them inpotato starch before deep frying them’.
Out of context (or perhaps to readers without ataste for Japanese cuisine), this listing of ingredients could
appear dull, but once again Nakajima’s details informthe story. Taki’s relationship with the Hirai family is one offormal service; food is her most sensual connection to thepeople with whom she spends her life. Taken this way, her
meticulous memory for kitchen work speaks volumes abouta character who, even at times unknowingly to herself,
expresses emotion and desire in the language of cooking,serving and eating.
The result is a slowly gathering weight of wistfulness
and dramatic irony, peppered with moments when readers
may come to believe they know Taki better than she
knows herself — and they may be right. Nakajima strikes atantalising balance between what each character knows andwhat readers may assume. The effect is a subtle suspense
every bit as varied and delicious as the grand first meal of
the year.§

The Citi Exhibition Manga マンガ
The British Museum (23 May-26 August 2019)
Review by Malene Wagner
As I set off to explore British Museum’s Citi exhibition Manga
マンガ , I am puzzled by my first encounter: the very British
19th-century heroine, Alice. Is she there to reassure methat all is not totally unknown and mad in this other kind of
Wonderland that is manga? Luckily, I quickly find myself inthe company of some very Japanese heroes such as Astro
Boy, Monkey D. Luffy (leader of the Straw Hat Pirates) andPikachu. And I bump into a range of Japanese monsters,
ghosts and goblins peeking out from the dimly lit gallery
who strangely reassures me that I am in fact no longer ‘athome’. Although still considered somewhat foreign andexotic by many of us in the West, some aspects of Japaneseculture have been adopted into mainstream Western culture– just think of sushi, sake and sakura. With this exhibition, thelargest one on manga held outside of Japan to date, British
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Museum shows that manga too has a place in modern-day
Western (pop) culture.
But what is manga exactly?
Some people will associate manga with Hokusai(1760-1849), Japan’s most famous artist whose Great Wave
has become a global icon beyond its Japanese roots. It
was with Hokusai that the term manga was made widely
known when he used it for the title of his drawing manualin fourteen volumes, Hokusai manga (北斎漫画), publishedfrom 1814 onwards. The meaning of manga in that context
was ‘random drawings’ or ‘pictures run riot’ reflecting the7content of the books’ weird and wonderful scenes of daily
life, nature and animals, the supernatural and not least
humans often depicted with a humoristic twist.
But, to many others, manga (マンガ) are modern-day
comic books or graphic novels, read by both children andadults, with subjects ranging from adventure to comedy, todrama, to horror, to mystery, to romance, to science fiction
and sports, even erotica, and the list goes on. There really is, as
one headline in the exhibition states, “A manga for everyone”.
That is not to say that the two kinds of manga are not related– they are! Both a visual narrative art form, they are historicallyand artistically connected; one could argue with roots goingback to the 12th-century Handscrolls of Froclicking Animals(Choju giga), displayed as a later copy in the exhibition.
The focus of the exhibition is manga as thecontemporary story-telling. We learn how to both readand draw manga and we are introduced to how manga is
produced in Japan today. A mock-up of the oldest mangabookshop in Tokyo (which closed only in March this year)
invites us into the everyday-life of manga consumers as we
can enter the ‘shop’ and read classics like Princess Knight or
1980s Dragonball or maybe one prefers Oda Eiichiro’s One
Piece, which broke the Guiness Book of World Records forthe most copies sold for the same title by a single author.

Left: Tezuka Osamu, Metropolis, 1949 ©Tezuka Productions
Right: Hoshino Yukinobu, Professor Munakata’s British
Museum Adventure, 2011 © YUKINOBU HOSHINO/SHOGAKUKAN INC.

The exhibition truly feels like a contemporary
manga universe. But we are reminded of its links to Edoperiod ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) and Meiji-era magazine
illustrations by examples throughout the exhibition
acting as an undercurrent to the modern-day manga. And
although it is tempting to compare the two, the classic‘masterpieces’ are best seen as context for the contemporary
manga drawings, not a literal equal. One example, is oneof Hokusai’s best works, the skeletal ghost Kohada Koheji,
part of the series Hyaku monogatari (One Hundred Ghost
Tales) from c. 1833. Rather than making a one-to-one visualcomparison, one can appreciate the influence of the comicand grotesque Edo-period ukiyo-e on today’s manga.
A highlight and truly unique piece of the exhibition
also manifests the historical undercurrent: a 17 x 4 metres

Kohada Koheiji from One Hundred Ghost Tales. Colour
woodblock, 1833 © The Trustees of the British Museum

big theatre curtain painted by pupil Kawanabe Kyosai (18311889) in 1880 for the Shintomiza theatre. The curtain features
scary and ghosts and demons – a returning theme in Kyosai’s
art works – but they are in fact popular kabuki actors of thetime, identifiable by facial characteristics and their family
crests (mon) featured above each figure. Another father ofmanga is Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989) with his hero Astro
Boy, known in Japan as Mighty Atom. The story of Astro Boy
was first featured in the monthly magazine Shonen in 1952
(and continued until 1968). Since then, Astro Boy has growninto an icon and he has become one of the faces of Japan’s‘soft power’ policy. For the Tokyo Olympics 2020, he will act
as one of the official ambassadors. He is proof that manga
is more than just entertainment but also an integral part ofJapanese culture, on both a national and a global scale.
This exhibition seeks to tell the story of modern manga,from its origins in late 19th-century Japan to its role as a global
phenomenon in today’s culture. For the British Museum
to take up a pop culture theme like manga is refreshing. It
would have been easy to make an exhibition focusing on thegreat ukiyo-e masters of Japanese art and only referencing
contemporary manga in the passing. Instead British Museum
has done the opposite and sheds light on a pop culture
phenomenon that has moved beyond its Japanese rootsand ‘role models’. Manga is a mad world. But in no way
too frightening or foreign. It’s really about not taking it too
seriously and just letting yourself fall down that rabbit hole(in true British style).
Manga マンガ opened at the British Museum on
23 May and will run until 26 August. Accompanying theexhibition is the publication Manga edited by Matsuba
Ryoko and Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, the main curatorsof the exhibition. It is published by Thames & Hudson incollaboration with the British Museum.§