Iconologies de Michel Maffesoli

De son dernier livre Iconologies (Albin Michel), à SeniorActu.com (n.d.) :

En 2008, c'est Michel Maffesoli qui décrypte notre francité, et un peu au-delà, dans un abécédaire qui va de l'Abbé Pierre à Zidane, en passant par Chabal, le loft, Sarkolène et les tatouages.

Michel Maffesoli croit déceler dans les mythes actuels l'avènement d'une société dionysiaque au détriment de la vision prométhéenne qui gouvernait le monde jusqu'aux années soixante.

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Il écrit : « le plaisir d'être est certainement, la catégorie essentielle des mythologies postmodernes et des icônes qui les expriment ». « Ici et maintenant » régit notre société. L'auteur, sarcastiquement démontre et démonte ce qui la fonde. Il se garde bien d'en porter un jugement de valeur mais donne une signification, sinon un sens, à ce qui crée à travers nos habitudes et notre environnement, un nouveau « contrat social ».

Donald Richie : Beauty of the beasts, mythological and real

Review of A Brush with Animals : Japanese Paintings 1700-1950, by Robert Schaap, with essays by Willem van Gulik, Henk Herwig, Arendie Herwig-Kempers, Daniel McKee and Andrew Thompson. Leiden: Society of Japanese Arts (distributed by Hotei/Brill), 2007, 206 pp. with 275 color illustrations, $117 (cloth), $81 (paper), at The Japan Times (13.07.2008) :

This is the catalog of an exhibition at the Rotterdam Kunstahl organized to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the International Society of Japanese Arts, most members of which are museums or private collectors. The theme was Japanese animal imagery, some 250 years of it, with an emphasis on works by artists of the naturalistic Shijo School. Many of the works have never before been reproduced.

Emphasized also is the vast variety of animals that figure in Japanese iconography. Here are whole collections of birds, of fish, the ox of Zen fable, along with more fabulous beasts of the imagination.

These creatures originally came from various sources. Some, such as those traditional symbols for felicity and long life, the crane and the tortoise, came from the classic works of Chinese literature, as adopted by the Japanese ruling classes, eager to emulate things Chinese. Others (the Zen ox, for example) came from Buddhism, and others yet from native sources, or from Japanese adaptation.

One still much with us is the Jikkan Junishi, the sexagenary cycle of the ancient Chinese calendrical system. This is broken down into subcycles of 12 years, each of which is represented by an animal. Even now people think of the date of their own birth not only in terms of the imperial reign date and that of the Gregorian calendar, but also by what zodiacal beast they were born under — Year of the Rat, Year of the Dragon, etc.

Rue89 : Japan Expo, une mégafoire sur le pays des mangas

Ecco :

Goldorak, gamers & geeks à gogo. Catch & cosplay, comics & ciné. Fanzines & figurines, J-music et jeux vidéo. Et le manga "Death Note"… Chacun de ces mots-clé désigne un produit, une activité ou un type d'individu en rapport avec Japan Expo, le festival français sur le Japon et l'Asie qui s'achève dimanche au Parc des expositions de Villepinte, près de Paris. Ou, si l'on préfère, à l'Olympia parisien, qui verra Miyavi, nouvelle sensation du rock japonais, donner un concert (complet) en guise de clôture.

Autrement dit, les heureux possesseurs d'un ticket seront avisés de déguerpir de Paris-Nord sitôt que Ra:IN (où officie un membre de X Japan, groupe "mythique" de l'archipel reformé et initialement programmé à l'exposition) aura cessé de déverser son rock années 1980 sur les festivaliers.

Née en 1999, JE (sans article!) étend son impact à chaque nouvelle édition: plus de 100 000 visiteurs devraient être recensés pour cette cuvée 2008, contre 80 000 l'an dernier. L'événement aura duré quatre jours au lieu de trois, et accueilli trois satellites (Azikult, le festival des loisirs asiatiques, Kultigame, celui des cultures ludiques et Kultima, celui de l'imaginaire) sur 70 000 mètres carrés loués à 300 exposants venus de onze pays différents.

Comment est le Japon devenu "le pays des mangas" en France ? J'en veux savoir.

Donald Richie : Fearless bluestockings in Japan

Review of The Bluestockings of Japan : New Woman Essays and Fiction From Seito, 1911-16, edited by Jan Bardsley. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2007; xii + 308 pp., $70 (cloth), $26 (paper), at The Japan Times (06.07.2008) :

In 1911 a new publication appeared in Japan. It was singular in that it was written, edited and published entirely by women, and that it was named after an 18th-century English all-women salon (Seito is the translation of Blue Stocking). Few Japanese readers could have appreciated this connection, but this did not prevent the response to the new journal from being surprising.

The first issue, 1,000 copies, was sold out in a month, and the modest editorial offices were flooded with more than 3,000 letters asking for memberships, subscriptions and personal advice. And the success continued — a complete set of Seito consists of 52 issues and thousands of pages. At its height the magazine was selling 3,000 a month and was sold in bookstores or by subscription all over Japan.

Here women authors wrote in every available genre. There were classical waka, haiku, experimental modern poetry; sketches, stories and the popular kanso, impressionistic essays; and a large amount of dramatic criticism. The writers had been inspired by recent Japanese productions of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House." There was also an amount of translation: stories by Anton Chekhov, essays by Havelock Ellis, writings by Western women (Emma Goldman, Olive Schreiner) related to what became known as the fujin mondai, "the Woman Question."

"Seito" is pronounced "Sei-toh" ; and written 『青鞜』 in Kanji.

Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud : Portrait du linguiste en passeur de frontières

Revue de Gérard Dessons, Émile Benveniste, l’invention du discours, Paris : Éditions In Press, 2006, 220 pages, à Fabula Acta (23.06.2008) :

Le titre choisi par Gérard Dessons a de quoi arrêter un instant l’attention du lecteur, la juxtaposition des deux segments et l’ellipse qu’y fait résonner la virgule ouvrant la voie à des interprétations diverses. Si « l’invention du discours » peut apparaître comme un trait définitoire donnant, par apposition, la mesure de l’entreprise linguistique de Benveniste, un certain flou référentiel n’en demeure pas moins à l’entour du mot « discours ». En effet, outre les nombreux débats suscités par son acception en tant que catégorie linguistique — et dûment rappelés au fil de cet ouvrage (pp. 57-71) —, ce terme est également susceptible de désigner, en l’occurrence, l'empreinte épistémologique et stylistique laissée par Benveniste lui-même dans ses écrits, sa manière de penser et de formuler les problèmes. La résolution de cette énigme tout à la fois syntaxique et sémantique — selon une union postulée par la systématique édifiée par Benveniste au fil de ses travaux — est apportée implicitement dès le chapitre introductif dont le titre, « L’art de penser », fournit également un éclairage des plus précieux quant au point de vue affiché :

Penser désigne [alors] cette activité intellectuelle qui se définit comme l’invention simultanée d’un objet (de pensée) et d’une manière. [...] Penser est une œuvre d’art quand, à la manière d’un poème, ce qu’on pense est indissociable de la manière dont on le pense. (p. 10)

On sait l’importance que revêt la notion de manière dans la pensée et les écrits de Gérard Dessons¹ pour qui le mot « nomme indissociablement une forme et l’historicité d’une pratique » comme il le rappelle au terme de son exploration (p. 204). L'avant-dernière étape de celle-ci, « Vers une poétique du discours », propose d'ailleurs un élargissement de la réflexion aux champs connexes du style et du poétique, élargissement qui vient également rappeler les prémisses selon lesquelles l'écriture de Benveniste est définie comme « une aventure heuristique, une façon d'explorer poétiquement l'inconnu de la théorie » (p. 15). De ce point de vue, comme de bien d'autres qui se trouvent méthodiquement exposés tout au long de l'ouvrage, les écrits de Benveniste manifestent bel et bien une capacité d'invention qui constitue leur signature propre...

Pierre Alex : Shibuya / Under Control

Merveilleux !! De la Revue des Ressourves (23.06.2008) :

Chaque fois que je débarque à Shibuya, je me dis : "Je suis à Tokyo".

Il y a tout. Les écrans géants qui diffusent la publicité en continu ; les magasins sur quatorze étages, où les Japonaises dans le vent trouvent les fringues qui seront à la mode la semaine suivante ; la foule massée le long du trottoir en attendant de traverser. Shibuya, c’est Tokyo, c’est le Japon, c’est le monde. La mecque du consumérisme. La cathédrale gothique du capitalisme.

Mais attention, ici, c’est le capitalisme à l’ancienne. Pas de concessionnaire porsche, de magasin dior ni de "concept restaurant" aux saveurs sophistiquées. Ici, la classe moyenne vient boire un verre après le travail, flamber un peu au pachinko, pousser la chansonnette dans un karaoke. Shibuya est somme toute un quartier populaire. On est loin du luxe "premium" d’Omote Sando, loin de la fausse discrétion "business" de Ginza. Ici, on vient pour s’amuser et dépenser son argent. Le capitalisme à l’ancienne, c’est celui qui se contentait de neutraliser les masses.

Donc, je me dis que je suis à Tokyo. Et ça tombe bien parce que le quartier dans son ensemble me le répète sans arrêt. Depuis le vendeur à la criée de téléphones portables, jusqu’à la tour "109", chaque élément du décor est une caricature de lui-même. Et dans une surenchère permanente, on invente de nouveaux clichés, prêts à l’emploi, aussitôt dilués dans la marmite géante des clichés qui font que Sibuya est Shibuya. Le rapport des Japonais à l’image, à l’image de l’image, a atteint au fil des siècles un raffinement qui confine à l’absurde. Et c’est de cet absurde que naît la véritable splendeur de Sibuya.

Au sein de cet abîme, il existe des codes. Il y a toujours des codes ; des systèmes. La loi. L’ordre. Moins on le voit, et plus il existe. Je propose donc une promenade dominicale, au fil des rues de Shibuya et de mes réflexions approximatives sur la sécurité, l’ordre et la beauté.

Voir son blog.

Carole Goldberg : It takes a nerd to pen a history of nerdism

Review of Benjamin Nugent, American Nerd : The Story of My People (Scribner's), at Philly.com (08.06.2008) :

He traces nerdy characters back to Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Augustus Fink-Nottle in P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves (1934). And he makes the case that nerd-aversion has literary roots in Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein - not in the monster, but in his coldly science-mad maker, Victor.

He also traces loathing of nerds to their early incarnation as scholarly so-called "greasy grinds," denigrated by adherents of "muscular Christianity," who valued physical prowess, courage in battle, athleticism, and other manly attributes.

Nugent links this celebration of physicality to the rise of industrialism, anti-Semitism, and prejudice against Asians. He also finds intriguing overlaps between nerdy behavior and aspects of Asperger's disorder.

His mining of the history of nerds turns up shiny nuggets, such as the influence on nerd solidarity of pulp-fiction publisher Hugo Gernsbach of Amazing Stories fame.

But strangely - or perhaps not, because he's venturing into emotional expression - when he writes about debate teams, middle-aged sci-fi fans, medieval-life reenactors, and others in nerd-approved pursuits, the book wanders a bit.

Nicholas Rankin : George Hogg, Cheerful Schoolboy

Review of James MacManus, Ocean Devil : The Life and Legend of George Hogg (Harper Perennial), at TLS (13.06.2008) :

In the summer of 1937, twenty-two-year-old George cashed in a legacy to join his idealistic Aunt Muriel on a peace mission to Japan, just months after the Japanese army had invaded northern China from Manchuria. He arrived in Shanghai in February 1938, shortly before W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, as recorded in their Journey to a War. Like them, Hogg moved inland up the Yangtse River to Hankow with Chiang Kai-shek’s Government as the Japanese army pushed west, waging the total war that would kill 15 million Chinese by 1945. But unlike the self-publicizing littérateurs and conflict tourists, Hogg stayed in China until he died. He wrote pieces for AP, UPI and the Manchester Guardian, but mostly worked for the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Co-Operatives, founded in Shanghai in 1938. Later condemned by the Chinese Communists as “humanitarian imperialism”, and investigated by the FBI as a “Red” front, the co-operatives’ fund-raising arm was an acceptable way for wealthy Westerners, such as the Chinese-born media mogul Henry Luce, of Time, LIFE and Fortune fame, to funnel aid to Chinese people in the name of democracy. Both corrupt Nationalists and devious Communists, often more eager to destroy each other than to confront the Japanese, spared the co-operatives where they were useful, but were intensely suspicious of their motives and actions. The co-operatives’ abbreviated name in Chinese, meaning “work together”, entered the English language as the expression “gung-ho!”.

The heart of this always interesting book is the period when George Hogg became the headmaster of a wrecked school at Shuangshipu. Amid a mountainous population cretinous with goitre, he took command of his horde of scabby waifs and orphans, battling for their health and hygiene, growing food, teaching practical skills, setting up and running a cotton-ginning machine, boosting the morale of city and country children through physical fitness and the endless singing of English and Chinese songs. As the war approached, he moved the entire school 700 miles during the winter to set up another Gordonstoun on the edge of the Gobi Desert.

Matthew Taunton : Perverted Politics

From New Statesman (12.06.2008) :

The alternative to transgression need not be a return to the dreaded - and often unfairly caricatured - Victorian morality. Actually, nobody is more dependent on these kinds of rules than the person who lives by breaking them, as Bataille himself realised, opposing the sexual revolution for this reason. And there are cases in oppressive societies where contravening laws and conventions is not just worthwhile, but the duty of the responsible citizen. But this is transgression as a means, and not an end in itself.

Those who dissent from the critical orthodoxy are labelled "conservative", as if being uninterested in cyborgs, pornography and vampirism were tantamount to a betrayal of socialist principles. Yet writers such as Terry Eagleton - a Marxist who bemoaned the ubiquity of PhD theses on "the literature of latex or the political implications of navel piercing" - or Ashley Tauchert, a feminist whose important new book, Against Transgression (Blackwell), debunks many of the myths around the subject, can hardly be described as figures of the right.

As Eagleton and Tauchert both argue, there is something narcissistic and deeply conservative about revelling in transgression. In Tauchert's words, to do so is "reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling"

Jonathan Rosen : Paradox Among the Petals

Review of Robert Pogue Harrison, Gardens (Chicago), at WSJ (07.06.2008) :

The rabbis of the Talmud counseled that if you are planting a tree and someone tells you that the Messiah has come, you should finish planting your tree and then go out to investigate. Robert Pogue Harrison implies something similar in his rich and beguiling "Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition." Gardens, though they offer peace and repose, are islands of care, he writes, not a refuge from it. That is why they are important, since care is what makes us human.

Mr. Harrison reaches back to the earliest Babylonian gardens, pauses to consider the vast gardens of Versailles, and writes as well about the gardens of the homeless that spring up in the middle of inner cities. But "Gardens" is less a history than it is a work of literary criticism, with extended discussions of Dante and Ariosto and Boccacio and a superb reading of Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" (1947). Mr. Harrison writes that Lowry's novel -- about the last day in the lives of an alcoholic British consul in a small town in Mexico and his unhappy wife -- "shows, in almost allegorical fashion, that the fall from Eden is a continuous, ongoing event. For him, it shows that long after the original sin, we continue with active will to repeat our expulsion and tumble into our own self-chosen inferno." Writing literary criticism allows Mr. Harrison to give his large ambitions full rein, since, as he rightly observes, "human culture has its origin in stories, and its ongoing history is one of endless storytelling."

Alida Becker : Behind the Wall

Review of Simon Winchester, The Man Who Loved China : The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. (HarperCollins), at The NY Times (08.06.2008) :

On a winter evening in 1938, Joseph Needham, one of Cambridge University’s most brilliant scientists — and one of its most avid skirt-chasers — lay in bed with a Chinese microbiologist who was also a colleague of Needham’s extremely tolerant wife. Enjoying a post-coital cigarette, he asked her how its name might be rendered in Chinese. His diary records that she obliged by guiding him through the ideogram for “fragrant smoke.” Charmed, he instantly resolved to learn this fascinating language. It was the first step in a project that would absorb Needham until his death in 1995, turning him into one of the foremost Western authorities on China, dedicated to reminding the world that the Middle Kingdom’s decline into backwardness and turmoil had been preceded by centuries of extraordinary creativity — including crucial inventions like gunpowder, printing and the compass, all mistakenly thought to have originated elsewhere. The vehicle for these and countless other revelations was to be a work “addressed,” as Needham put it, “to all educated people.” The first volume of “Science and Civilisation in China,” published in 1954, has never gone out of print. Eighteen volumes were released during Needham’s lifetime; there are now 24, with more still to come.

Despite its hyperbolic new subtitle (apparently the original, “Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece,” was considered too tame), Simon Winchester’s biography, “The Man Who Loved China,” presents a low-key, often beguiling view of a man who hardly beguiled the postwar American authorities — or, for a time, his own countrymen. A committed socialist and Communist sympathizer, Needham lent his authority to a dubiously documented investigation whose report, issued in 1952, concluded that the United States had used biological weapons in Manchuria and North Korea. Blacklisted by the Americans well into the 1970s and denounced for his political naïveté by the British establishment, Needham retreated into the scholarly realm, where his accomplishments did much to restore his good name.

Jennifer Potter : People, plants and the British psyche

Review of Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin, Flower Hunters (Oxford), and Andrea Wulf, The Brother Gardeners : Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (Heinemann), at TLS (04.06.2008 Issue) :

Plants and gardens are a peculiarly British obsession, and these two books seek to explore its botanical and imperial roots. In The Flower Hunters, Mary and John Gribbin give us potted biographies of mostly British plant hunters, making an arbitrary “First XI”. Andrea Wulf, in The Brother Gardeners, is both more personal and more rigorous. Surveying one century rather than two, she sets out to show how the botanical (and horticultural) revolution of the eighteenth century turned Britain into a nation not of shopkeepers but of gardeners. In her eyes, six men share prime responsibility: three Englishmen (the merchant Peter Collinson, the gardener Philip Miller, and the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks), two Swedes (Carl Linnaeus again and his protégé Daniel Solander) and one American (the farmer and plant collector, John Bartram). For Wulf, scouting the world for exotic plants is merely the beginning; much more interesting is the effect this had on the British psyche.

Both books tell their stories through people rather than plants, and each sets the scene with a prologue featuring an earlier figure. For Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin, it is the seventeenth-century naturalist John Ray, who brought order and logic to the natural world and placed plants at the forefront of the Scientific Revolution. But aside from a topical reference to Charles Darwin, the bicentenary of whose birth falls next year, it is hard to see why the Gribbins have elected to relate lives that have already appeared in similar collections. The most interesting stories here are the least familiar, among them the journeys of Francis Masson and Carl Peter Thunberg to South Africa, and Thunberg’s travels to Japan that draw on unpublished material by Catharina Blomberg of Stockholm University.

Yôji Yamamoto enchante Pékin

Ecco. Il paraît vieilli, moi aussi.

Philippe Pons : Une tradition japonaise

Son article sur les business mangas est très bon. Mais on peut remarquer une petite erreur : Shintaro Ishinomori n'existe pas, c'est Shôtarô Ishinomori. M. Pons doit confondre Shôtarô Ishinomori avec Shintarô Ishihara.

Wikipedia (en) et Wikipedia (fr).

Laetitia Kugler : Jean Rouch est un autre

Revue de Maxime Scheinfeige, Jean Rouch (CNRS), à nonfiction.fr (29.05.2008) :

Dans la préface qu’il donne à l’ouvrage de Maxime Scheinfeigel, Michel Marie qualifie cette dernière de “rouchienne de la première heure”. Elle avait en effet fait sa thèse sur Moi, un noir et signe aujourd’hui un ouvrage complet sur son réalisateur. Précisant de façon programmatique que “l’on a sans doute trop souvent jusqu’ici évalué l’importance de son œuvre seulement à l’aune de l’anthropologie filmique et [que] l’on a éventuellement négligé de voir en elle ce qui la désigne comme une œuvre de cinéma à part entière”, l’auteur n’a de cesse de démontrer, au fil du livre, que Jean Rouch est un véritable cinéaste. Ethnologue et cinéaste, une histoire de double... duplicité que vient renforcer un second questionnement : dans l’œuvre de Rouch, quelle est la part échue du document et quelle est celle de la fable ?

En analysant la carrière du cinéaste et ses films de manière précise et détaillée, Maxime Scheinfeigel fait pénétrer le lecteur dans l’univers de Jean Rouch, à la découverte d’une œuvre cinématographique cohérente et de l’accomplissement d’un cinéaste ethnologue.

Blaine Harden : A Far Cry From Home

Please welcome Jero.

Ovi Magazine features "Me"

Announcement :

What comes to mind when you think of me? Not me, but the theme 'me' because this is what we asked the Ovi team and you can now read their overwhelming response in a 52-page free magazine.

'Me' is Ovi Magazine's 21st theme magazine and you can download the PDF free from our site - no registration or subscription necessary.

Ovi Magazine has also recently celebrated the posting of its 3,000th contribution and we invite you to take a look at the orange corner of the web, with daily articles, columns, opinions, cartoons, poetry and artwork in many languages.

www.ovimagazine.com
Ovi Magazine… we cover every issue.

Please go enjoy the magazine site.

Nicholas Wroe : The History Man

Interview with David Peace at The Guardian (10.05.2008) :

Peace was born in Yorkshire in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Wakefield, where his parents were primary schoolteachers. Since 1994, however, he has lived in Tokyo - "it's probably helped that, for the most part, I have Yorkshire as was, not as is, in my head" - and the first book he bought in Japan instructively illustrated the potential of multiple viewpoints.

"I didn't know too much about Tokyo before I arrived, but I had seen Kurosawa's film version of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Rashômon" and so bought the author's collected stories. But the one that really caught my eye was not "Rashômon"; it was called "In a Grove", which is essentially an account of a rape and murder told from six different and conflicting perspectives. It's stayed with me ever since."

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Peace published his first book set in Japan last year. Tokyo Year Zero is the first part of a trilogy based on infamous crimes in war-devastated Tokyo in 1945. There were a lot of false starts with the Tokyo books, largely because recent Yorkshire history kept impinging on him. "The way it works is that I have these boxes full of research that get bigger and bigger and nearer to my desk. Tokyo was pushed out of the way by Brian Clough."

He has "at least" five books already planned for the future, on subjects ranging from the plot to overthrow Harold Wilson and the rise of Thatcherism to the Yorkshire and England cricketer Geoffrey Boycott, as well as a return to the Yorkshire Ripper story - "which is actually not really about him, but more about the general harrowing of the north".

Interview with Wang Suya

Here it is. She came from Innter Mongolia to Japan and is now studying solar thermal energy. She talks about why and how she became interested in Global Warming and started commenting on Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog everyday. What intrigues me is when she tells about her green life :

QUESTION: In your everyday life in Japan, how do you try to live a "green" life and reduce your carbon footprint?

WANG SUYA: This is a good question. I asked my husband to stop driving me two extra train stations every day, so this saves is some gas mileage every month. I also bought an electricity switch for my company computer to save electricity. I have also joined my company's eco-family activity to input our electricity, gas, water, gasoline bill every month. These are my small private, personal steps to be more green here in Japan.

Rght. I guess that most Japanese are doing the similar things. And even trash classification and recycling (embarrassing, yup). My family seldom drive a car, and we ride a bike as usual (we don't have much money, in fact). Really small steps, though.

Cahier Lyotard

La revue Europe annonce :

A l'occasion des dix ans de la disparition du philosophe Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998), la revue Europe consacre un cahier spécial Numéro de Mai 2008 Signé Lyotard sous la direction d'Aliocha Wald Lasowski.

Le présent numéro de la revue Europe réunit, en hommage à Jean-François Lyotard, et sous la direction d'Aliocha Wald Lasowski, une série de contributions et de textes inédits qui, par leur diversité, attestent de la vitalité et de la prégnance dans la réflexion actuelle sur l'art, la littérature, la psychanalyse, l'histoire, de la pensée de Jean-François Lyotard qui, en effet, n'a cessé avec sa manière propre de lier les aspects esthétiques aux préoccupations éthiques et aux enjeux politiques.

Sommaire :

Aliocha Wald Lasowski : Signé Lyotard (p. 254-260)
Jean-François Lyotard (texte inédit) : De bons vieillards que j'ai connus (p. 261-263)
Gilles Deleuze (texte inédit) : Lettre à Jean-François Lyotard (commentée par A. Wald Lasowski, p. 264)
Anne Tomiche : Le philosophe, l'oeuvre littéraire et la psychanalyse (p. 265-273)
Avital Ronell : Ravages de l'impossible (Traduit de l'anglais A. Wald Lasowski et R. Harvey, p. 274-283)
Robert Harvey : Témoinité (p. 284-296)

http://www.europe-revue.info/

En relation avec Lyotard et Deleuze.

Peter Backhaus : KY-style Japanese: Express yourself alphabetically

KY for "kuki yomenai" ; JK for "joshi kosei" ; IW for "imi wakaranai" ; MM for "maji mukatsuku" ; CB for "cho bimyo", and more, the author reports at The Japan Times (22.04.2008).

Ah, yes, based on the Hepburn system.

Donald Richie : Helping newcomers settle in Japan

Review of Arudou Debito and Higuchi Akira, Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants and Immigrants to Japan, at The Japan Times (20.04.2008) :

In this important and necessary book the authors address migrants and immigrants to Japan in saying that "we believe that your life in Japan should be under as much of your control as legally possible." That it sometimes seems not to be, is the reason for their having written this handbook.

One of the reasons that your life can seem not under your control is ignorance — your own. It is this that the "Handbook" remedies by offering needed information — in English and Japanese — on most of the problems encountered by the newcomer.

There is nothing sinister in the fact that this book is necessary in Japan. Something like it is necessary in most countries. Transparency to newcomers is not a fact of life — natives have been known to disregard their own laws, and bureaucracies thrive on the red tape they can produce.

In Japan the kanji-curtain can cloak the facts and there is, as in all governments everywhere, a tendency toward the status quo and a dependency upon precedence. All of this, however, is vulnerable to informed investigation. This is what the "Handbook" offers — a practical illumination of the relevant laws of Japan and a hands-on approach to enforcing them.

This book is bilingual (English/Japanese), published by Akashi Shoten. See Debito.org.

Kai-Ming Cha : The Historical Roots of Manga

Interview with Brigitte Koyama-Richard on her study, One Thousand Years of Manga (Flammarion), at PW (08.04.2008) :

PW Comics Week: Most books on manga—Fred Schodt's Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics or Paul Gravett's Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics—point to World War II as the starting point of Japanese comics as we currently know them. But you go all the way back to the 12th century. Why did you decide to start there?

Brigitte Koyama-Richard: I read the thoroughly researched and interesting works that you cite with great interest. I believe that both authors are contemporary manga specialists, which would explain why they focus on post-World War II manga. In Japan, however, the specialists agree that the roots of manga actually date back as early as the 7th century and my book One Thousand Years of Manga includes examples that date from that period to the present. My primary goal was to start from the origins and to show the evolution of drawing and caricature over the course of centuries in order to give the readers a visual panorama to help them understand not only the origins, but the originality of manga and to further their understanding and appreciation of Japanese culture.

PWCW: You are a professor of comparative literature in Japan. Do you use manga in your class? How did you come upon this project? What made you want to pursue it and does it dovetail with your teaching?

BK-R: My courses are mostly about Japanism in which I explain the influence of Japanese art on Western art, literature, fashion, etc. After presenting the history and production of prints from the Edo era, we go on to look at the ways they have influenced Western art. If the students are interested in the prints they feel much closer to manga. Having seen many exhibitions on the origins of manga and read many books on the topic, I decided to introduce this subject to my courses and to write this book.

By studying the origins of manga, my Japanese students gain a new perspective on the art of their country. They have a better appreciation of Japanese art from the past few centuries and instead of merely reading manga, they turn a more attentive eye to their graphic aspect.

Thierry Hoquet : La culture manga et ses fétiches

Voici la réaction française d'Azuma Hiroki, Génération otaku. Les enfants de la postmodernité (Hachette Littératures), à La Vie des Idées (09.04.2008) :

Ce sont ces thèses qu’examine le livre d’Azuma : les liens entre la postmodernité et le Japon vont-ils dans le sens d’un snobisme ou, au contraire, ne peuvent-ils échapper à l’animalisation qui caractérise le mode de vie des Américains aussi bien que celui des Russes ou des Chinois ? Le cas de la culture otaku sert de prisme à Azuma pour analyser les prétentions du Japon à exemplifier ce snobisme de l’avenir.

La question qui se pose aux créateurs de mangas est de savoir s’il faut encore raconter des histoires pour séduire les consommateurs et, surtout, de savoir comment s’y prendre. La fin des « grands récits » qui marque la postmodernité ne signifie pas que les consommateurs de jeux ne soient pas encore en demande de « petits récits ». Mais sous quelle forme ? Azuma propose ici le concept d’« éléments d’attraction » (moé) : les oreilles de chat ou les antennes de Di-Gi Charat sont de tels « éléments » et tous les personnages ne semblent être désormais que des assemblages d’éléments attracteurs, des éléments disponibles sur un marché et à ce titre infiniment décomposables et recomposables.

Les otaku connaîtraient, selon Azuma, un processus d’« animalisation » dans le mode de satisfaction de leur désir. Sans nécessairement verser dans la pornographie, l’otaku n’a donc rien du snob élaboré, supposé propre au Japon de la postmodernité ; et s’il est, malgré cela, postmoderne, il n’échappe cependant pas à l’animalisation. Cela explique d’ailleurs le titre japonais Dobutsuka suru Posutomodan, c’est-à-dire « animaliser la postmodernité ». Loin d’être une attitude snob, la culture otaku serait simplement une manière presque animale de satisfaire facilement des besoins. Il n’est peut-être pas le mode culturel qui permet d’échapper à ce que Kojève appelait l’animalisation, mais Azuma nous montre que la culture otaku n’en constitue pas moins une forme culturelle à part entière. Ce livre passionnant a l’immense mérite de lever partiellement le voile sur les débats complexes qu’elle suscite au Japon.

Voir le blog de M. Azuma, Kajougenron (ja).

Heller McAlpin on John Nathan's memoir

Review of John Nathan, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere (Free Press), at The LA Times (30.03.2008) :

No surprise to his students, Nathan is a practiced storyteller. "Living Carelessly" is an engaging chronicle of his passionate lifelong involvement with Japan. It offers a vivid picture of Japanese culture from someone who infiltrated it intimately -- studying at its top university, marrying Japanese printmaker Mayumi Oda, fraternizing with its best writers and documenting lunch-box workers, rice farmers, Kabuki actors and Sony founders on film. Yet despite this intimacy, Nathan confesses repeatedly to finding the Japanese character "elusive" and "imponderable," "an intriguing and lovely mystery."

"Living Carelessly" is also a candid confessional portrait of a man so driven to prove his artistic talents (to himself and others) that his achievements in several realms fail to satisfy him. Nathan, it turns out, is no easier on himself than he was on his students. He blames himself for the failure of his first marriage after 17 years and repeatedly highlights his arrogance and insouciance in business matters and personal relationships, noting that "tranquillity . . . has continued to elude me."

He sets the tone on the opening page, introducing himself as an unlikely devotee of the Japanese, the grandson of a reporter for the Jewish Daily Forward named Nathan Stupniker: "I am a hulking man with a hairy chest, parboiled hands, and a basso profundo voice in which I have a predilection for sounding my own horn. In short, there is nothing delicate about me -- allow me to say, nothing apparent -- yet delicacy is thought to be definitive of the Japanese sensibility." This wry self-portrait squares so perfectly with my memories that I had to laugh.

Carl Cassegard on Yoshimoto Taka'aki and Karatani Ko'jin

From Japan Focus (04.03.2008) :

Abstract

This paper traces the emergence and development of the idea of “exit” as a form of resistance or challenge to the system in the writings of Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin. I show that the rhetoric of exit as resistance grows out of the climate of political disillusion in the aftermath of the political activism of the 60s as a strategy for finding a potential for popular resistance. With Karatani’s attempt to create a social movement, NAM (the New Associationist Movement), the rhetoric shifts from emphasizing a defense of withdrawal from the “public” in order to elude control, towards emphasizing exit as an offensive weapon to be used actively by social movements in confronting the system. Today the idea of exit remains an important influence among activists and intellectuals associated with social movements. At the same time, there is a dilemma, which stems from its paradoxical attempt to mobilize political disillusionment and withdrawal from public involvement into a political force.

Also see Karatan''s lecture at Stanford Univ. : "Beyond the Trinity of Capital, Nation, and State", at YouTube (25.01.2008).

Anne Coudreuse : 'L'art d'aimer' en ses nouvelles formes

Revue de Stéphanie Loubère, 'L'art d'aimer' au Siècle des Lumières. Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (SVEC), à nonfiction.fr (06.03.2008) :

Une somme très érudite

Ce livre très documenté et très informé provient d’une recherche sur la postérité de L’Art d’aimer d’Ovide. Le titre ne rend pas compte de l’intégralité du travail qui suit les réécritures, les imitation et les traductions de L’Ars amatoria au Moyen Âge ("on a inauguré l’expression d’aetas ovidiana, l’âge ovidien, pour les douzième et treizième siècles" avec André le Chapelain, Drouard de La Vache et Guillaume de Lorris), à la Renaissance (Pierre Le Loyer) et au dix-septième siècle, avec la réaction burlesque de Dufour de La Crespelière (1662) et L’Herato-technie du sieur D.L.B.M. (1650), l’échec moraliste de Nicole, le manifeste galant de Ferrier de la Martinière, l’hypostase philosophique de Michel de Marolles et l’intérêt indirect de Martignac.

À la fin du XVIIe siècle, Ovide fait l’objet de traductions anonymes et d’imitations. "Avec ces traductions, nous entrons dans un âge où l’art et la manière vont constituer les plus grands mystères de l’amour. Pour les sonder, Ovide s’imposera comme guide et précurseur. L’érotique, plus que jamais, devient une esthétique." S’appuyant sur les travaux de Michel Foucault, Stéphanie Loubère a défini ce terme dans son introduction : "Sera érotique pour nous tout texte traitant de l’amour, sous quelque forme que ce soit, et une érotique désignera tout système constitué rassemblant un savoir amoureux." Elle précise un peu plus loin : "Nous bornerons comme Ovide notre exploration des arts d’aimer à cet amour que l’Encyclopédie distingue, parmi tous les autres, comme l’amour des sexes. Notre corpus concerne donc des textes où l’amour en question est l’amour des amants, un composé variable de sentiment et d’acte – ce que la modernité désignera par le terme de sexualité." Elle fait le relevé de tous les types d’œuvres qui entrent dans la définition des arts d’aimer : "hétéroclites à première vue, elles ont en commun un esprit et un projet similaires, héritiers de l’ars amatoria. Elles affirment clairement l’existence d’un savoir amoureux, qui peut être transmis (c’est-à-dire enseigné et étudié), elles prétendent exposer un système qui réponde à la double vocation théorique et pragmatique de l’art, et elles limitent leur projet à l’exposition méthodique de ce système, qui doit se suffire à lui-même : de ce point de vue élargi, on peut donc définir les arts d’aimer comme des œuvres de didactique érotique explicites et autonomes. […] C’est sans doute à travers les arts d’aimer que s’expriment de la façon la plus intense le désir de savoir et la volonté de maîtrise quasi obsessionnels dans l’érotique des Lumières."

Maria Hermínia Amado Laurel : Cartographies littéraires de Paris

Revue de Paris, cartographies littéraires, Paris, Editions Le Manuscrit, coll. « Sciences de la Ville », 2007, à Fabula Acta (06.03.2008) :

Les 13 et 14 octobre 2005 s’est tenu à l’université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, le colloque intitulé « Paris, cartographies littéraires », organisé par l’UFR « Lettres, Arts, Cinéma » de cette université en collaboration avec la Fédération de recherches « Sciences de la Ville ». Les communications proférées à cette occasion sont maintenant disponibles pour un public plus large aux éditions Le Manuscrit, dans une publication soignée, dirigée par Crystel Pinçonnat et Chantal Liaroutzos, maîtres de conférences en littérature, comparée et du XVIe siècle, respectivement, à Paris 7.

Le caractère transdisciplinaire de la rencontre donne le ton au livre publié. La nature composite de l’objet d’analyse – Paris - s’y prêtait tout aussi bien, la forme changeante de cette ville ayant séduit le cœur de ses admirateurs tout autant que la malveillance de ses détracteurs au fil de l’histoire, et ayant donné lieu aux formes d’expression les plus diverses.

La réunion de spécialistes en provenance de domaines tout aussi ciblés que les sciences humaines et sociales, qui donnent la parole à des littéraires et à des comparatistes, à des historiens et historiens de l’art et du spectacle, à des sociologues, des philosophes et des philosophes de l’art, mais en provenance aussi du domaine de l’architecture (des chercheurs de l’École d’Architecture Paris-Val-de-Seine intègrent les réseaux de recherches de la Fédération « « Sciences de la Ville »), s’intéressant à des univers théoriques propres, et à des périodes chronologiques diverses, illustre de façon novatrice et réussie l’expérience de l’approche multifocale d’un objet d’étude complexe, tant par sa nature que par la richesse et la diversité des études dont il a été l’objet auparavant. Renonçant à l’étude exhaustive de l’objet en analyse, pari inatteignable, de même qu’au parcours topographique, idéologique, patrimonial ou chronologique habituel des sites auquel le lecteur insouciant pourrait s’attendre, ce livre privilégie la mouvance des regards  et stimule la capacité du lecteur à se créer des circuits d’errance au gré des associations que son encyclopédie personnelle ou son imagination créatrice lui procurent, à partir des textes lus et de ceux, en nombre considérable et reconnus par la critique, dont les références bibliographiques sont inscrites en note de bas de page à chaque article.

Kosukegawa Yo'ichi : 'Izakaya' are more than just plain pubs

A nice report on Mark Robinson and Japanese "izakaya" culture, at The Japan Times (07.03.2008) :

The book will be released in March in Europe, in April in Southeast Asia and in May in the United States and Australia.

Robinson believes izakaya may become one of the biggest Japanese cuisine trends internationally since the sushi bar.

"There is a big trend toward small-plate dining," he said. "Izakaya are on the verge of becoming a significant Japanese culinary export."

Robinson said foreigners may find it a "challenge" to visit an izakaya for the first time, especially if there is no English menu and no English-speaking staff.

But he noted, "Even Japanese people are sometimes a bit nervous about entering a new izakaya."

The book advises first-time izakaya-goers to stick their head inside the "noren" (split half-curtain) hanging over the entrance and hold up a few fingers to indicate the number in their party. Once seated, a good way to start the evening is by saying, "Toriaezu biiru wo kudasai" (Beer for now, please).

After that, it is time to peruse the izakaya's food offerings, and it will not be long before "you will be getting something to eat and having a good time," Robinson said.

Right. The Michelin Guide Tokyo is none of my business.

See Wikipedia (Eng) and Amazon.co.jp.

Marjorie Alessandrini : Le noble art du kimono

Revue de Sophie Milenovich, Kimonos (Seuil), à Impressions d'Asie (29.02.2008) :

«Les femmes en kimono sont toujours des visions fugitives. Elles surgissent dans la foule, puis disparaissent, au détour d'une rue, laissant un sentiment d'impalpable, d'irréel. Elles sont une évocation de la beauté éphémère si chère aux Japonais.» Styliste fascinée par le travail de Yojhji Yamamoto, Sophie Milenovich a passé deux ans au Japon pour résoudre l'énigme de la construction d'une robe ou d'un kimono, comprendre le troublant mystère de la relation Orient-Occident. Celle-ci semble parfaitement résumée par la différence de représentation du corps féminin: dans la tradition occidentale, l'idéal a toujours été «à l'image du sablier» tandis qu'au Japon «c'est vers le tube parfaitement cylindrique que l'on tend». Quand il est bien porté, le kimono, posé en équilibre sur les épaules de manière à laisser apparaître la nuque - haut lieu de la séduction, au même titre que, chez nous, la vision d'une paire de jambes - donne lieu, selon Yohji, à une apparition aussi émouvante que le sillage d'un parfum.

Le livre de Sophie Milenovich est illustré de photos de ces beautés qui passent, sur les trottoirs, dans les magasins. Mais aussi de reproductions de peintures et d'estampes, de croquis expliquant les techniques de couture du col, l'art de plier et nouer la large ceinture ou «obi». L'auteur, qui a nourri son propos de mille et une rencontres, livre également les conclusions de ses recherches historiques, voire anthropologiques. On y apprend notamment que selon Leroi-Gourhan, les vêtements se diviseraient en deux groupes: les vêtements droits et les vêtements coupés. Dans la première catégorie il classe les rectangles enroulés autour du corps de certains peuples et de nombreuses ethnies. Dans la deuxième, les vêtements occidentaux. Mais le kimono, pièce d'habillement à bords droits croisés, comporte une bande de tissu coupée en biais qui sert à réaliser l'encolure. C'est donc un vêtement d'une simplicité trompeuse, comme l'est la culture japonaise. Comme le montre d'ailleurs sa représentation dans la peinture occidentale (en particulier chez «Bonnard le Nabi japonard») et le travail d'adaptation de couturiers comme Madeleine Vionnet.

Valérie Stiénon : L’invention de la flânerie au féminin

Revue de Catherine Nesci, Le Flâneur et les flâneuses. Les femmes et la ville à l’époque romantique, Grenoble, ELLUG / Université Stendhal, coll. « Bibliothèque stendhalienne et romantique », 2007, 430 p., à Fabula Acta (25.02.2008) :

C’est à une double clé de lecture déjà largement éprouvée que recourt Catherine Nesci pour étudier la question fondamentale de l’insertion de la femme dans le paysage urbain. D’une part, il y a la Ville, tout à la fois espace physique, motif romanesque, symbole de la modernité et surface sémiotique engageant un certain rapport au savoir. D’autre part, il y a le Flâneur, tour à tour personnage littéraire, type social et métaphore de la création et de l’apprentissage. Incarnation anticipée du sociologue et du sémiologue métropolitains, il est doublement caractérisé par un regard panoptique et une circulation vagabonde qui font de lui un analyste du social jouissant à la fois de la distance et de l’implication nécessaires pour déchiffrer les agglomérations sociales. Il préfigure également l’enquêteur, appelé à la postérité qu’on lui connaît dans le roman policier et, plus largement, dans toute une littérature indiciaire. Si Catherine Nesci rend à Walter Benjamin l’hommage dûment mérité par la paternité de ces utiles concepts, on regrette toutefois que n’apparaisse nulle part la mention de la nécessité d’un réexamen critique de cet héritage1 dont l’autorité et le rayonnement ont longtemps retardé les critiques et qu’il aurait été préférable de resituer dans le champ d’une critique idéologique et d’une analyse thématique requérant révision et actualisation.

S’appuyant sur ce legs benjaminien qui aurait gagné à être davantage historicisé et réévalué, C. Nesci forge une catégorie anachronique, sans référent réel stable et n’apparaissant pas dans les dictionnaires d’époque, mais qui présente une pertinence particulière pour son étude, en tant qu’instrument conceptuel d’intellection de la modernité parisienne et comme figure à la fois centrale, significative et structurante. Il s’agit de la flâneuse, à distinguer tant de la simple promeneuse occasionnelle que de la prostituée. Cet angle d’approche permet à l’auteur de l’essai de rendre compte d’une érotisation de l’espace urbain dans lequel les femmes ne sont admises que comme figurantes effacées d’un décor en toile de fond alors qu’elles déterminent en réalité la ville des hommes en « leur présentant l’image en miroir de leur statut de possédants. » (p. 29), assumant de la sorte une fonction de marquage et de différenciation sexuelle et sociale.

Modris Eksteins : Drowned in Eau de Vie

Review of Peter Gay, Modernism : The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond (Norton, 2007), at LRB (21.02.2008 Issue) :

In his new book, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, the inordinately prolific and widely admired Peter Gay has much to say about the creativity of the moderns but surprisingly little about their negativity. He conceives of Modernism in older terms as principally an intellectual and artistic grouping bent on liberation rather than as a broader frame of mind distinguished by ballooning malaise and irony. While he shies away from definition because of the contradictory manifestations of Modernist effort – how does one reconcile Thomas Mann and Andy Warhol? – he can’t help but see the Modernist instinct as essentially an affirmative urge. Two-thirds of the way through his book, Gay states bluntly that ‘liberalism’ was the ‘fundamental principle of Modernism’.

But whose liberalism is he talking about? Surely not the free enterprise aspirations of the beastly bourgeoisie. Nor can he be referring to the socially conscious progressivism that arose in the later 19th century and urged a politics of compassion, moderation and compromise. In fact the heyday of Modernism, from roughly 1890 to 1930, corresponded to a mounting crisis of liberalism, in both social thought and politics. The two dispositions, Modernism and liberalism, were if anything adversarial. Modernism was all about destroying restraint, pushing to the edge, living life dangerously. Modernism was an extremism of the soul in an age of extremes. Gay makes little mention of the role of illness, abnormality and neurosis in the Modernist mindset. ‘One can take pride in going as far in crime as . . . in virtue,’ a character in Huysmans’s Là-bas exclaims. For Thomas Mann art was the equivalent of illness. To emphasise the liberal characteristics of Modernism requires a highly selective approach, and even then Gay’s idiosyncratic portrait gallery is hardly a cheerful and optimistic place. It is full of sneering manic depressives and churlish mystics. In order to cram some of them, like Knut Hamsun, into his box and then to be able to close the lid, Gay has to create the category of anti-modern Modernist.

Michel Temman on the press club system

From Kakahara Kanako's report on the symposium organized by The Japan Times and The Tokyo Univ., "on the roles English-language newspapers play in promoting globalization in East Asia", at The Japan Times (17.02.2008) :

In the keynote speech, Michel Temman, Japan representative for Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based defender of the freedom of the press, criticized the exclusive nature of Japan's journalism culture.

Temman said the "press club" system, set up in government offices and political party headquarters where only major media organizations are allowed to join, hinders foreign and freelance journalists from gathering information.

"Despite harsh criticism from foreign correspondents and other foreign organizations, the Japanese government shows no interest in reforming this archaic system," Temman said.

De RSF (29.05.2002) :

"Alors que le monde a les yeux tournés vers le Japon à l’occasion de la Coupe du monde de football, Reporters sans frontières souhaite attirer l’attention sur la nécessité urgente de réformer le système des kisha clubs (clubs de la presse officiels) qui entrave la liberté de la presse dans l’île", a déclaré Robert Ménard, secrétaire général de Reporters sans frontières. Il a demandé au Premier ministre, Koizumi Junichiro, d’user de son influence pour transformer les kisha clubs en centres de presse ouverts aux journalistes indépendants et aux correspondants de la presse étrangère. "Alors que des milliers de journalistes étrangers sont au Japon pour couvrir la Coupe du monde, il est très choquant que les correspondants de la presse étrangère soient exclus de la majorité des clubs de la presse qui organisent le système médiatique depuis près de cinquante ans", a souligné Robert Ménard.

Tomoko Otake : Bridging an East Asia divide

A long interview with Yang Yi at The Japan Times (03.02.2008). I got interested in her when she was one of the last nominees for the Akutagawa Award. And thanks to Mis Otake, who asked her many things.

Two things intrigued me the most when I read this interview last night. After graduating from university, she started working at a Chinese-language newspaper. Mis Yang recalls :

What was your first story about?

I don't remember; it was part of my job. I had to write so many of them, and I was writing under different names every time, so I don't even remember which are mine (laughs).

Were you told by the newspaper to change your pen names?

Well, Chinese-language newspapers (in Japan) are very different from Japanese ones because they have a very low budget. They can't hire many reporters, so reporters would also work as editors, and contributions from outside writers are also limited.

At that weekly newspaper I was in charge of editing five pages per week, so I had to make one page a day. I had difficulty filling the space, especially when there were few contributions from the outside — and most of those were of low quality. So I thought it would be quicker to write something myself rather than spend ages fixing up such articles. But because I didn't want people to think that the same writer was writing every week, I wrote under many different names so it would look as if we had lots of writers! (Laughs.) Back then, I wrote not only fiction but also essays, poems and even stories about fashion trends. I made up the trends myself because I really didn't know what the latest fashion was.

And Mis Yang explains how she learned Japanese :

Did you speak Japanese when you first came here?

No. But it was so much fun. At my Japanese-language school, I learned new things every day, so after school I really wanted to practice my Japanese. I would grab any Japanese person as a conversation partner. I would go up to ojisan (middle-aged men) working at bicycle-parking sites, and I would talk to them, even when I had nothing important to say. So the ojisan were pleased and chatted with me a lot. On my way home, at the supermarket I would try to strike up a conversation — even though you really don't need to talk at supermarkets. I would grab someone and say, "Give me a discount!" But Japanese people don't bargain (laughs). It's embarrassing when I think about it now, but back then I was audacious.

So did you learn Japanese through everyday conversations like that?

Yeah, I spoke to everyone casually. Chinese people are brazen at times, you know! (Laughs.) I took an Odakyu Line train every day, but Japanese passengers are very quiet. In the rare cases when I heard somebody talking on the train, I would lean over and try to listen to what they were talking about. In the beginning, I couldn't understand anything. But gradually, I began to hear a few words, such as kino (yesterday), and when I could understand even a few words in their conversation I was elated. It made me excited throughout the whole day. I'm that simple (laughs).

Is it usual for foreigners to learn Japanese this way ? I'm going to buy her novel tomorrow but her writing is down-to-earth, I guess.

Stephen Mansfield : Journal of an uncommon traveler

Review of Bruce Roscoe, Windows on Japan : A Walk through Place and Perception (Algora, 2007), at The Japan Times (03.02.2008) :

On the premise that speed blunts the mind, New Zealander Bruce Roscoe decided to make his journey on foot, following a route across the waist of Japan, from the port city of Niigata to Yokohama. By walking, he would discover that "Time isn't lost but found."

Where the late Alan Booth's "Japan walks," collected in "Looking for the Lost," describe the writer's disillusionment at the sight of beauty and quintessence evaporating into industrial ether, Roscoe's inquiries, though not uncritical, generally conclude with a resigned, even grudging acceptance of the way things are.

Many of the towns and rural areas he passes through are little short of blighted. Roscoe discovers a country where "subordination, not coexistence" with nature is the depressing norm. Approaching the city of Takasaki, he comes across the base of a stream, "concreted and strewn with rubbish — plastic drink bottles, vinyl bags — and a white cat lay dead on the footpath. Old futons, tins, and household waste smothered a house at roadside. Other garbage half-buried a car." Crossing a bridge north of Kogetsu, he admonishes that "it's best not to look underneath." Roscoe may not offer much to the prospective tourist, but a great deal for those interested in a journey of inquiry.

Donald Richie : Making Japan 'borderless'

Review of Japan and Its Worlds : Marius B. Jansen and the Internationalization of Japanese Studies, edited by Martin Collcutt, Kato Mikio and Ronald P. Toby. I-House Press, 2007, 300 pp., ¥2,858 (cloth), at The Japan Times (27.01.2008) :

This collection centers on the major themes running through work: historiography; the changing frameworks for interpreting Japan's modernization; the rapid transition from feudal order to industrial power, and the relationships between Japan and its various worlds.

"Becoming borderless" was a major ambition in Jansen's work and this theme is discussed in papers by Patricia Steinhoff, and M. William Steele, as well as Havens and Mitani. Jansen's interest in the differences between "local and national" is reflected in essays by Patricia Sippel and Henry D. Smith II. The latter's paper is about Jansen's interest in the historical figure about which he wrote one of his finest works, "Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration." Of it Smith writes of "the continuing regard of Ryoma's courage, ambition, and self-reliance — precisely the qualities that attracted [Jansen] to Ryoma from the start."

One of the most interesting sections of the book concerns "Japan and its worlds," the way in which the two react to each other. There are essays by Ronald P. Toby, F.G. Notehelfer, Martin Collcutt, Tao De-min, and Ben-Ami Shillony. The latter's paper is a fascinating account of changes in the way that the Showa Emperor has been viewed. It discusses the way in which revisionist groups in the United States and in Japan have seen him and his role in the Pacific War.

Japan's Wild Scientific Genius : Minakata Kumagusu

Roger Pulvers illustrates Dr. Minakaa's life and work, at Japan Focus (20.01.2008) :

Let’s start with the most intriguing question: How did a person born in Wakayama in 1867 become a pioneer in his field of biology, recognized as such around the world? This is a time when Japan was barely emerging from 250 years of self-imposed national isolation, a policy that created a scientific and technological gap with the West of immense proportion. And one more question: How could a man like Minakata, eccentric, feisty and volatile to the point of being wild, turn himself into one of the most respected, even worshipped, figures of the Meiji intellectual establishment?

Minakata Kumagusu was born in 1867 as the second son in a family that ran a general store (zakkaya) in Wakayama City. Eventually he would have five siblings. Stories of his intellectual feats as a child are legendary. It is certain that, while in primary school, he did have the ability to throw himself into a task and keep at it for weeks on end. He copied out several lengthy classics, including the 40-chapter Taiheiki, word for word. His early diaries show a marked talent for drawing, both realistic and imaginary. It was when still in primary school that he began making comparisons between Western and Japanese concepts and myths.

Ang Lee, Lust, Caution

Lust, Caution is released in France today, now I've realized (Télérama). And Le Monde has two reviews : by Thomas Sotinel and Jean-Luc Douin. Ang Lee dit, selon Sotinel :

"Pour moi cette période est un trou noir, visuellement", explique le cinéaste en parlant de la seconde guerre mondiale. Présenté dans les manuels d'histoire comme la "dernière guerre juste", ce conflit avait provoqué en fait l'éclatement du Kuomintang entre les partisans de la lutte contre les Japonais dirigés par Tchang Kaï-chek et la fraction collaborationniste de Wang Jingwei, qui forma un gouvernement dans la zone occupée, à Nankin. Pour explorer cette zone sombre, Ang Lee a pris pour guide la romancière Eileen Chang, née à Shanghaï en 1920 et morte à Los Angeles en 1995. Issue d'une famille aristocratique, elle s'est mise à écrire très jeune et ses textes les plus populaires (aussi bien à Taïwan qu'en Chine) ont été écrits pendant l'occupation.

"Cette période a suscité sa mode, sa culture, rappelle le réalisateur, et Eileen Chang était liée au régime. Son amant, qui est devenu son mari, était le responsable de la propagande du gouvernement. Elle a publié dans des journaux qui défendaient la paix avec le Japon et a été longtemps traitée de collaboratrice pour cette raison."

"A black hole, visually" -- Is it like Holocaust in Godard ? Ah, no, I guess that it's different. Lee indicates the lack of his own memory and Godard, the absence of images, radicalement. Somebody will think better, I hope. I don't have enough time.

Bertrand Le Gendre : Le Japon expliqué à l'honnête homme

Revue de Jean-Marie Bouissou (dir), Le Japon contemporain, (Fayard-CERI), au Monde (11.01.2008) :

L'une et l'autre ont façonné le Japon moderne, loin des clichés qui ont longtemps eu cours en Occident : Hirohito en jaquette, le rituel du thé, le bouddhisme zen, les estampes japonaises, les films d'Ozu... A rebours de ces stéréotypes, ce livre nous montre le "vrai" Japon. Celui des ouvrières de Sony, des micropropriétés paysannes, des conurbations postmodernes, des politiciens claniques, des yakuzas (le crime organisé) à la puissance pâlissante et des teenagers excentriques à la crête fluo.

Que de chemin parcouru depuis 1945 lorsque les Américains envisageaient de destituer Hirohito, symbole des symboles de l'impérialisme nippon... S'ils y ont renoncé, c'est que l'empereur incarnait la continuité et la cohésion du pays, à l'heure où le communisme menaçait de s'étendre en Asie. Aujourd'hui encore, cette absolution hâtive, cette impasse assumée, empêche les Japonais de regarder leur passé en face, donc d'établir des relations normales avec les pays qu'ils ont asservis, la Chine et les Corées en particulier. Symptôme de cette ambiguïté, l'Archipel n'est constitutionnellement ni une monarchie ni une république. Mais une démocratie que l'on désigne sous le nom de "pays Japon".

De la bombe à la bulle, l'histoire de ce "pays Japon" se confond avec sa fulgurante expansion. Un miracle ? Plutôt un retour aux sources. Le "modèle" japonais, sur lequel repose ce spectaculaire rétablissement, n'a pas surgi ex nihilo. Ses racines remontent à l'époque Meiji, les années 1868 à 1912 au cours desquelles l'Archipel a basculé du féodalisme à la modernité.