School Study Guides

19

Japanese Book News

Number 17

transcends the usual flummery of

most books on coping with those re-

alities and provides an insight into

her own humanist position.

Kogoeru kiba [Frozen Fangs].

Nonami Asa. Shinchôsha, 1996.

197\136 mm. 382 pp. ¥1,800. ISBN

4-10-602745-3.

This is a mystery novel about a

deadly wolf-dog cross, more wolf

than dog, loose in Tokyo and the mo-

torcycle-riding policewoman on its

trail. In the story’s climax, she chases

the beast across the metropolis along

the maze of inner city freeways. With

this kind of action, it is no surprise

that the book outpaced stiff competi-

tion to capture the prestigious Naoki

Prize, awarded for fiction high in en-

tertainment value.

The trouble begins at a family

restaurant, late at night. One cus-

tomer bursts into flame and burns to

death. The cause of the fire is traced

to chemicals stashed inside the vic-

tim’s belt. More intriguingly, strange

bite marks are found on his remains.

A series of murders follows, and two

detectives from the Metropolitan Po-

lice Department’s riot squad, the

woman and a middle-aged man, are

put on the case.

In male-first Japan, police work is

an especially male-dominated do-

main. Against this real-life back-

ground, the mold-breaking character

of a woman who is not only a police

officer but a detective is one of the

key elements of the novel’s appeal.

The author thus joins several women

writers who have come to fore re-

cently, in Japan as in the West, in the

field of mystery novels. Readers of

this novel will be eager to see more

by this promising storyteller.

Nishi e no shôdô: America fûkei

bunka-ron [The Westward Urge].

Ara Konomi. NTT Shuppan, 1996.

188\118 mm. 214 pp. ¥1,300. ISBN

4-87188-617-4.

In this author’s view, from their first

intercontinental migration, European

Americans have had an urge to move

westward so strong it almost seems

genetic. American culture is in many

ways a product of this impulse, but

the scars of what it trampled on and

discarded along the way remain

etched upon the face of American

culture itself.

The author, a scholar of American

literary history, focuses on five his-

torical loci that bear witness to these

darker aspects of the American past:

the giant sculptures of Mount Rush-

more, a stark reminder of the virtual

extermination of the Native Amer-

ican peoples; Washington D.C.’s in-

clination toward close ties with the

Europe it had supposedly abandoned;

the phenomenon of Ellis Island, the

checkpoint all European immigrants

once had to pass through to enter the

New World; the even more notorious

Sea Island, where Negro slaves were

“unloaded”; and the Mississippi

River, at once the boundary and the

conduit between the east and the

west.

Using these key coordinates, the

author sketches a portrait of America

that spans the fields of literature, art,

history, and geography. From the

standpoint of an Asian and a woman,

she probes the shadows of America’s

past precisely to find a sense of hope.

Her prose style, refined and tinged

with a note of pathos, is a pleasure to

read.

Sôkyû no subaru [Stars in the Fir-

mament]. 2 vols. Asada Jirô.

Kôdansha, 1996. 194\131 mm. 352

pp.; 414 pp. ¥1,800 each. ISBN 4-06-

207497-4; 4-06-208039-7.

In the late nineteenth century, Qing-

dynasty China entered a period of un-

precedented turmoil. Beset from

without by flagrant struggles of self-

interest among the world powers, in-

cluding Japan, it was also torn from

within by popular revolt. With polit-

ical control held by the Empress

Dowager, a woman known to history

as a power-craving tyrant, the Qing

dynasty, the last of China’s imperial

regimes, thus declined amid extreme

chaos.

Such is the setting for this histor-

ical novel about two close friends

who wind up in opposing factions

within the Qing regime. To escape

poverty, Li Chun-yun castrates him-

self to become a eunuch in the Em-

press Dowager’s court. Liang

Wen-xiu, meanwhile, passes the top-

level jinshi public examination to be-

come a high-ranking official in the

government. The story, on one level

of the friendship, aspirations, and ri-

valry of the two men, and on another

of the power struggles within the

dying regime, is told in vivid and

elaborate detail.

Born in 1951, the author writes

novels while making a living in a

number of jobs. An epic presented in

two volumes, this work, which he

says treats the theme of how things

are destroyed, bears the touch of a

unbridled imagination, but it makes

fascinating reading with many high

points including an intriguing new

portrayal of the Empress Dowager.  

Cover design: Shinchôsha

Cover design: Okamoto Issen Design Studio

Cover design: Tada Kazuhiro

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20

Japanese Book News

Number 17

Computer Magazines for Women

Computer magazines targeted at

women are popping up as publishers

seek to capitalize on the diversifica-

tion of the hitherto predominantly

male market of Internet and software

users.

Maclife Lisa, a monthly launched

last October by computer-book pub-

lisher BNN, carries the catchphrase

“Edited For Women.” Presented with

fashion-magazine-style models on

the cover, it deals with such themes

as overseas shopping via the Internet

and the hottest CD-ROM products on

overseas markets. Pasokon sutairu

bukku for Women [Personal Com-

puter Style Book for Women], pub-

lished last May by Gijutsu Hyôron-

sha as a supplement to its Pasokon

kurabu [Personal Computer Club],

sold so well that it was upgraded to a

quarterly in its own right in

November. Targeting women in the

twenties-to-forties age bracket, it

covers such topics as online shop-

ping, creating New Year’s cards, and

using multimedia resources to find a

job.

Personal computer-related periodi-

cals have appeared in a steady stream

since 1995, but as the main market of

men in their twenties and thirties

reaches saturation, publishers are

eager to see whether or not computer

magazines for women will catch the

rising wave of Internet and software

demand.

Manga Go International

Major Japanese publishers are getting

serious about exporting manga comic

books and magazines, particularly to

other countries in Asia. Whereas the

domestic manga market is beginning

to top out due to Japan’s declining

birth rate, climbing income levels

and recent improvements in copy-

right protection are generating attrac-

tive markets in neighboring Asian

countries.

Last August, industry leader

Kôdansha published four volumes of

its manga book series Gon, about a

young dinosaur, in twelve Asian

countries and regions, including

South Korea, Taiwan and Hong

Kong. The publication was simulta-

neously released in partnership with

overseas publishers, with the same

cover designs being used in all of the

target countries. Kôdansha has also

sold publishing rights for a number

of serial manga stories, such as

Kindaichi shônen no jikenbo [Cases

from the Files of Boy Detective

Kindaichi] to publishers in some

twenty countries in Asia and else-

where.

Shûeisha is also syndicating manga

stories to comic magazines in other

countries, including Taiwan, Hong

Kong, Thailand, and South Korea.

Since March last year, Shôgakukan

has sold publishing rights for Me-

gumi no Taigo [Taigo of “Eye”

Class], Ranma Half and two other

manga stories to children’s comics in

Thailand; and in July published the

manga book Oretachi no fîrudo [Our

Field] in Hong Kong in collaboration

with a local publisher there.

Manga exports took off around

1992, but have shifted into higher

gear lately thanks in part to the intro-

duction of copyright law in Taiwan,

the genre’s largest overseas market,

and in part to the burgeoning of mar-

kets in Thailand and Malaysia.

Passing of Endô Shûsaku

Endô Shûsaku, eminent writer and

recipient of the Order of Culture,

died last September 29. He was 73.

A Christian, Endô wrote numerous

works on such themes as human be-

ing’s relationship with God and the

meeting of Japanese and Western

cultures. Endô received a degree in

French literature at Keiô University

in 1950, and then left to further his

studies in France, becoming the first

Japanese Catholic to study abroad in

the postwar era.

After returning to Japan Endô as-

sociated with a group of writers that

included the late Yoshiyuki Junno-

suke, Yasuoka Shôtarô, and Miura

Shumon, and in 1955 he emerged

onto the literary stage with the 

Akutagawa-Prize-winning novel

Shiroi hito [White Man]. Notable

among his subsequent novels are

Umi to dokuyaku (1957; tr., The Sea

and Poison, 1972), about the vivisec-

tion of a captured American pilot by

Japanese doctors during World War

II; and Chinmoku (1966; tr. Silence,

1969), which portrayed a European

Catholic bishop struggling to main-

tain his faith while hiding from the

anti-Christian persecution in seven-

teenth-century Japan. Both works

were later made films.

Renowned abroad as well as in

Japan, Endô was occasionally ru-

mored to be likely to win a Nobel

Prize. His rich literary legacy in-

cludes lighter novels such as

Obakasan (1959; tr. Wonderful Fool,

1974), period novels such as Samurai

(1980), and numerous essays.

Women Writers Take on Aging

As the aging society nears full flower

in Japan, there has been a stream of

books by women writers on the topic

of getting older. Two compelling

works on aging gracefully that were

published last autumn are author

Tanaka Sumie’s Oi wa mukaeute

[Meeting Old Age Head On]

(Seishun Shuppansha), and Ikikata

jôzu wa oi jôzu [Living Well Means

Aging Well] (Kairyûsha), by critic

Higuchi Keiko. An overwhelming

majority of authors of books on aging

are women over forty, suggesting the

poignancy the subject holds for many

mature Japanese women, who often

bear the responsibility for looking

after their aged parents, in-laws, and

husbands.

Although the trend toward such

books may be traced to the United

States, differences in content and ap-

proach are marked between the two

countries. Whereas the Japanese

works tend to be projections of what

to expect of life after sixty, the

American ones mostly address the

special concerns of menopausal

women around the age of fifty, such

as Erica Jong’s Fear of Fifty and Co-

lette Dowling’s Red Hot Mama, both

published last year in Japanese trans-

lation by Shôgakukan and Tokuma

Shoten, respectively. This contrast

reflects attitudinal differences be-

tween the two societies, with married

people in the United States generally

continuing to identify themselves pri-

marily as men and women, and those

in Japan tending to recast themselves

in the role of mother or father.

Events and Trends

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