MURAKAMI HARUKI: 'THE STRANGE LIBRARY" AND THE RETURN OF THE SHEEP MAN

Murakami’s latest book in English is interesting for a number of reasons: its brevity, its pictures and the return of an old, favourite character the Sheep Man. Its shortness means that the plot is quite simple. Whilst the idea that reading makes the brain creamy to the taste might put some children off reading, it is a dark fantasy in which parallel worlds are jumbled up and what belongs in this world one minute doesn’t belong the next. As his pet starling dies in order to secure his release from the strange library so too his mother passes away soon after he notices “shadows gathering around her.”   

The pictures are also very much part of the story. As the narrator reads the diary of an Ottoman tax collector and becomes the tax collector he experiences the sights and sounds of Istanbul. The book transports him to another time and another world despite having no knowledge of the language. The pictures come from the books in the library and they illustrate events in the narrative as they unfold.

Finally there is the character of the Sheep Man. It is impossible not to read this story and to have flashbacks from Pinball 1973 and the Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dnce etc. The whipping he receives at the hands of the old man in the strange library perpetuate the his ongoing struggles. The sacrifices he continues to make his equanimity all the more endearing. This is a story for the fans who fell in love with this character and never want to let go…

ANDO HANAKO x KYARY PAMYU PAMYU

Oshin the perennial favourite on Japanese television seems more and more incongruous in this era of the empowered female. Think Kyary Pamyu Pmayu the queen of the Harajuku girls and female gender identity in Japan does not look like there will be a return to the self-sacrifice embodied in the Oshin narrative. Whilst Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is the latest in a long line of examples of the New Japanese Woman, the NHK production about Ando Hanako, the Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables, shows that there is a still a fascination for the traditional Japanese female stereotype. The NHK story has Hanako growing up in a poor farming family with no education until her father comes home and sends her to primary school. From there she is sent to a girls school in Tokyo where she is forbidden to speak Japanese. Typical of the era, the rules were strict but for those who adapted the rewards were great. Of course Anne of Green Gables had a powerful impact on young women all around the world. Simone de Beauvoir has written at length about the importance of this book to her during adolescence. This is the spirit with which the New Woman in Japan in the early twentieth century was imbued. The character of the New Woman developed (or degenerated, depending in your point of view) into the shojo of which the Harajuku girls are the latest manifestation. Interestingly, the spirit of Oshin is, however, not dead. Apart from the ongoing television series directed at those nostalgic for the traditional hard luck story of being born female in Japan, there is a group of mothers, survivors of the earthquake and tsunami in the Fukuoka region, who have made the news with their nuigurumi made from socks, named Onoko. These soft toy monkeys are sold to raise money for the victims of natural disasters. Supporters of the campaign include the actor Tsugawa Masahiko who starred in many of the late Itami Juzo's films. People who buy them hold parties and take toys on holidays and photograph them in famous locations. In this way traditional values and virtues of sacrifice and hard work endure in the age of digital technology and are propagated on social media displacing to some extent the idol culture and the slavish devotion to individualism that it promotes.

'THREE SISTERS': JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL 2014

'Three Sisters' was screening at ACMI as part of the 2014 Japanese Film festival.  It was a reasonably full house and after a short introduction it was into the film. The big screen was luxurious and lush compared to the flat screens that people's houses were filled with these days. The film walks a fine line between drama and comedy and somehow the women who ran the confectionary business Toraya in Kagoshima managed to keep their failed relationships with men in perspective. Except for the youngest sister Sakae, who was struggling to let go of the married men with whom she was having an affair. Namie, who has walked out on her husband in Tokyo, returns to the family home in Kagoshima but hardly has time to settle down before her husband arrives to ask her for a second chance. There is little encouragement for him at first but as time goes by the family warm to him and Namie slowly reconsiders her position. Or does she? She has prospects with a young publisher who has shown an interest in he as she tries to get her career going as an illustrator.

 

After the screening both producer Nishida Seishiro and director Sasabe Kiyoshi took some questions from the M.C. and the audience. They were asked questions such as whether the film reflected contemporary Japanese society? They were also asked if there were any problems with their portrayal of divorce in Japan?

"No" one of them replied through the interpreter. "In fact, the further south you go in Japan, the higher the divorce rate gets."

The audience laughed.

Then there was the scene at the airport when Namie wife meets her husband in the nick of time before he catches his plane. Whilst there is no indication that she will stay with him there is a lingering moment where the camera is focussed on her eyes. This is a scene filled with a pregnant but unspecified meaning teasing the audience to guess as to whether she will pursue a relationship with the young publisher or whether she will she return to Tokyo to be with her husband? Whilst the film left this open, current trends in Japanese society would suggest this is the last good-bye.

 

Producer Nishida suggested the film explores what is meant by family, and what is meant by marriage? The film also pays homage to his hometown in Kagoshima. The film is set at a time when small family businesses were closing down and being replaced by large shopping malls. Asked how it hard it is to get funding for film projects, he explained that he was able to get funding from local government, businesses and individuals after he explained that he wanted to film the local matsuri (festival) and introduce it to the world.