I went into Freed of London dance shoes and accessories shop in Cecil Court last week to buy myself a pair of soft jazz shoes (my days of pretending I knew what I was doing in pointe ballet shoes are over) and nerded over technical terms with the very knowledgeable staff within (all trained in dance themselves). Which reminded me of how my first celebrity crushes were ballet dancers and, long before I had posters of rock stars on my bedroom walls, I had ballet posters.
Vaslav Nijinski in his iconic role in Le Spectre de la Rose, 1911
Rudolf Nureyev in La Bayadere, image credit: Francette Levieux. I actually had the honour of seeing Nureyev perform in Vienna as a child, and have never forgotten his jumps and charisma.
I also saw Sylvie Guillem in both classical and modern roles once I moved to London. Here she is rehearsing with Laurent Hilaire for In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.
Darcey Bussell in Apollo.
Carlos Acosta from Cuba, back in his Royal Ballet dancing days.
Romanian ballerina Alina Cojocaru, at the Prix de Lausanne
If you want to see more outstanding pictures in this vein, then this article from My Modern Met will introduce to some of the best photographers working with ballet dancers today. I leave you with two ballerinas whose names I was sadly unable to identify photographed by Omar Z. Robles on the streets of New York.
Last week I had an extremely busy moment of socialising and attending literary events, even by my standards. It was great fun and didn’t result in a complete physical and mental collapse on Sunday – maybe I’m regaining a little bit of my extrovert bubbliness and stamina, which was so much part of my youth.
Monday 30th September was International Translation Day and I attended an event organised by English Pen at my old workplace Senate House, University of London, in Bloomsbury. There were some sobering reflections on what happens to translators’ income when the so-called ‘day job’ of commercial translation (which covers their living expenses and allows them to take on literary translation projects) disappears, as it is replaced by AI. Or why translators do not get paid for all the additional work they do in scouting, negotiating, promoting a translated book: ‘Nobody’s (officially) asking you to do that work, so why pay for it – although everybody wants you do that work, especially for those languages that do not have strong national funding support.’
I also thought this statement was quite interesting: ‘People in publishing are not necessarily prejudiced or racist themselves, but bias kicks in when they think about what their readers might want. They get identification confused with empathy, for example assume that a book about black people by a black author could only appeal to black readers.’
But there were also moments of joy, such as the recognition that small indie presses are the ones often doing all the heavy lifting (and producing more interesting work) in translated fiction. There was also the unveiling of the mentees for the Emerging Translators programme.
I rounded off the day watching the film Comrades: Almost a Love Story at the NFT, as part of their Maggie Cheung season. Despite its melodramatic flourishes and implausible ending, there was a lot of wit, charm and beauty, as well as depiction of the life of mainlanders coming to Hong Kong in the hope of making a fortune and their yearning (for love, money and success). Plus two charismatic leads: Leon Lai as the rather naive country bumpkin and Maggie Cheung as the ambitious wannabe entrepreneur.
On Tuesday I attended the full-day cabaret organised by the Indie Press Network for its members at the British Library. There were panels on distribution (always SUCH a headache for publishers, especially as many of the big distributors have closed shop over the past few years), printing, diversity and inclusion, connecting with booksellers and sustainability. This latter topic in particular was a bit of an eye-opener for me, so many things I hadn’t fully considered before, or didn’t even know about.
A huge thanks to Will Dady of Renard Press (pictured above chairing a panel) and Damo from Indie Novella for organising and hosting the event. Although we had similar tales to tell about the challenges of publishing with rising costs amid diminishing audiences and review space in the media, it was also incredibly inspiring to see how engaged and passionate all these independent micro-publishers are.
Buddhist text in original Sanskrit with Chinese translation interspersed between each column of text.
On Thursday I saw the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum with the lovely Barbara Nadel. With our shared passion for Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, this was the perfect exhibition for the two of us to discuss how globalisation and adoption of foreign cultural practices are things that have been going on for so much longer than people think. A well-curated and interesting (often sobering) exhibition, although very crowded, so maybe wait for the buzz to die down a bit. And a great opportunity to catch up with Barbara and discuss the changes that the screenwriter made to her books for The Turkish Detective series (which I loved watching – highly recommend for the setting, the charismatic actors and the music). Try listening to the opening track here (nothing like the more folksy Turkish music I was familiar with previously):
Another Maggie Cheung film beckoned that evening, namely Clean, directed by her former husband Olivier Assayas, her last full-length film role and one for which she won the Best Actress Award at Cannes. Mostly notable for the way Maggie easily switches from English to French to Chinese, and also sings.
Finally, on Saturday I attended ChilternKills Crime Festival, now in its second year. Huge kudos to organisers Paul Waters and Tony Kent (and their wives) and to all the authors who agreed to give their time and efforts for free, for a charitable cause. I attended the Fresh Blood panel and really liked the sound of all the books by debut authors Tina Payne, LJ Shepherd, Roxie Key and Louise Minchin. Natalie Jamieson and Phil Williams did a live edition of Bestsellers podcast with authors Erin Kelly, Cally Taylor, Vaseem Khan and Tony Kent, which was great fun, while the Supernatural panel with SJ Holliday, Stuart Neville, Alex North, Craig Robertson and Matt Wesolowski got rather spooky. Although most of them said they don’t believe in ghosts, poltergeists and demons at all, they went on to tell rather strange and chilling stories of coincidences or something unexplainable. Last but not least, two former cops turned authors, Graham Bartlett and Neil Lancaster, were pitted against practising barristers Nadine Matheson and Imran Mahmood by author Anna Mazzola, and I’m happy to say that both sides had some fantastic, almost unbelievable stories to share.
From l to r: Anna Mazzola, Neil Lancaster, Graham Bartlett, Nadine Matheson and Imran Mahmood.
I was also very happy to see Ian Rankin once more (I’d talked to him briefly at Quais du Polar, not that I expect him to remember), and to thank him for the support he has shown for Corylus Books. He read and loved the very first book I translated Sword, and even included it in his list of top reads for 2020. But he is generally so generous with his time, unstinting in his support of both new and established authors, and always with a witty, yet thoughtful answer. A real good egg!
It’s time for the monthly #6Degrees of Separation meme hosted by Kate: we start with the same book and then link it with whatever quirky association comes to mind, all ending up in different places. This month we start with Long Island by Colm Toibin, a sequel to his novel about a young Irish immigrant woman, Brooklyn, which I read when it first came out but which didn’t leave me with a very deep impression, so I don’t think I’ll be reading this one.
However, my first choice is the most famous novel set on Long Island, namely The Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald. It remains one of my favourite novels, saying so much in a relatively small number of pages. It also features one of the most recognisable and poignant final paragraphs in English-language literature, so my next link is to one of my favourite openings in English literature, which I may have mentioned before on this blog (I do apologise if that is the case). Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means not only has the most pithy first sentence, but in just one paragraph manages to perfectly describe the post-war London setting with all of its atmosphere, ending with a sarcastic twist.
From the devastation of post-war London to the ruins of post-war Japan and a book that I read quite recently perfectly fits the bill: Laughing Wolf by Tsushima Yuko. A book that has a bit of a fantasy and YA feel and yet is also quite sinister and certainly historically accurate.
I’ll stick to the post-war period and move to Germany now with The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers – well, strictly speaking, it is set just on the cusp of Germany losing the war, but still unsafe for seven men who break out of a concentration camp and are then systematically hunted down by the Gestapo and their collaborators.
This is not a book cover, but a poster for a theatrical adaptation of the book, but it just looks so lovely, I had to include it.
After such grim subject matter, let me move to something more cheerful, and the link is a number in the title. I could have gone with several books by Jules Verne, but one of my all-time favourites was Around the World in 80 Days (which I guess just shows how much I dreamt of travelling and encountering other cultures even as a child).
For similar ‘travelling around the world’ reason, I was very fond of the Tintin series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. I can’t remember which one of them was my favourite as a child (probably Destination Moon or Tintin in Tibet) but after living in Geneva and seeing first-hand the places where Tintin and Milou chase villains, I now claim that L’Affair Tournesol (aka The Calculus Affair in English) has a special place in my heart.
So I’ve travelled from Long Island to London, to Japan, to Germany, and ended up in Geneva after a hasty trip around the world. Where will your six degrees of literary separation take you?
Izakayas are informal, unpretentious Japanese pubs or taverns, usually specialising in one type of menu and sharing dishes (while drinking). They focus more on the food and drink than the decor, and some of them can be more plasticky than wooden. However, for our weekly dose of escapism, I’ve chosen the more upmarket or ‘snazzed-up’ versions.
This is more on the traditional end, with bar stools where customers can drink on their own and strike up conversations. From Pinterest.
This is at the other extreme of the scale, very contemporary and sleek. I know which one I’d feel more comfortable in. From Frameweb.
The Iyaya Iazakaya fits the mental image we might have of this type of bar from Japanese films. From Japan Times.
Some fancy lighting in this izakaya designed by INT Design.
Santora Izakaya in Taipei, designed by Studio Wu (Santora means Three Tigers)
Jason Atherton has opened an izakaya bar in Clerkenwell, London.
This has felt like a very long month, because I’ve been to so many different places and done so many varied things.
I’ve already shared my month of reading with very brief reviews last week, and I only have one more book to add, Another Person by Kang Hwagil (transl. Clare Richards), which will get its own review perhaps later this week.
I also shared some of my pictures and memories from my trip to Romania. What I didn’t share was that I also attended two literary events, together with Edith Negulici, a playwright whose work I’ve translated (and want to continue to translate). The first was Austrian journalist and author Anna Goldenberg, who talked about her grandparents’ experience of the Second World War in Vienna. She was somewhat nervous about the then upcoming elections in Austria, and having seen the results after this past weekend, I’m now worried too. (The right-wing FPÖ was in first place, although it doesn’t have enough seats to form a majority government, so will need to form a coalition with another party.)
The second event took place that same evening, with author Heather Morris (renowned for her bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz) launching the Romanian language edition of her book Sisters Under the Rising Sun, about ANZ nurses stuck in Japanese POW camps in the Pacific during the Second World War.
Edith and I standing behind Heather Morris, holding up the translation of her book.
I then went to the shores of Lake Geneva, to celebrate my friends’ Silver Wedding Anniversary. In both cases, it was so nice to be back in places I’ve loved, and to realise that my mind does a very good job of remembering all the good things about my life in a certain place and very little of the bad things.
The view of Lac Leman from my friends’ garden.
Back home, it was a busy old time, catching up with my sons’ childhood friends before they all left for university, work or Thailand.
And yes, we still insist on those embarrasing height comparisons…
Despite all of frantic packing and double-checking of lists, my younger son managed to forget some of his essentials and I had to drive to Loughborough once again to deliver the remainder of his stuff. At least I got to stop in Oxford on the way back and catch up with a dear old friend and colleague from my Ph.D. days, so we could talk about Japanese religions and plan to maybe do a mini-pilgrimage of the temples of Shikoku in the future.
The river was very high in Oxford and several playing fields were flooded. Quite atmospheric, although of course a bad sign.
It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish AI generated interior design imagery, but I hope all of the below are real, soothing and escapist though they may be. It’s been a tiring month, September, so I could really do with a spa treatment at home.
It’s the wood that makes this type of decor so soothing – not sure it will look so good when it gets moldy though, from lorddecor.com
You know you’re onto a good one when you can see steam coming out of the little pool you’re about to step into, from remodr.com
OK, I’m cheating a little bit, because this is a real onsen spa, not a private bathroom – but just look at the view. From JapanInsides.com
Another professional spa rather than a private one, with multiple pools, all at different temperatures, from lovelyharbor.com
Just in case you think I’m too Japan-biased, here is a Western example, from So Habitat.
Last but not least, a desert-inspired bathroom, although the fireplace confuses me a little. I guess it gets cold even in Nevada. From Luxury Bathrooms.
This month I’ve been reading some of the books acquired in Romania as one might expect, but also remained quite firmly ensconced within East Asia. This has taken the form of books written by authors from that region (Toward Eternity by Anton Hur from Korea), or books set in that region (Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley and Goodnight Tokyo by Yoshida Atsuhiro) or, my favourite category, subversive books by Japanese women authors (I’ll write more about them shortly) and am currently about to start reading a (potentially subversive?) book by a feminist Korean woman author entitled Another Person.
My appetite for reviewing, however, has been greatly reduced, not just because of my travels or the many tasks I’ve had to do since getting back from my brief holidays. So I thought I’d do some mini-reviews in chronological order of reading, while these books are still relatively fresh in my mind.
Kashimada Maki: Love at Six Thousand Degrees, transl. Haydn Trowell, Europa Editions, 2023
This is the kind of book that I can’t quite make out upon the first reading, except that it leaves me puzzled and in a swirl of complex emotions (much like the main protagonist) and makes me want to reread it. Set mostly in Nagasaki, and, as the author explains, inspired by the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is at the most superficial level about a love (or should that be lust?) affair between a housewife who has run away from her family and a young Russo-Japanese man (the Russian connection feels random but becomes more meaningful later on). On a deeper level, it is about trauma and accepting one’s wounds and bad memories, rather than trying to push them away. I think readers will either love it or hate it, there seems no middle ground in the opinions on Goodreads. I am more in the ‘love it’ camp, and in fact found it more intriguing than previous works by Kashimada. Despite its brevity, this is a very rich, layered book, although I found the translation at times a little confusing – perhaps deliberately so.
Nick Bradley: Four Seasons in Japan, Doubleday, 2023
This book (or at least the publishers and cover designers) have clearly jumped on the bandwagon of ‘cat on the cover of a title proclaiming quite loudly to be about Japan’, as this is what appears to sell well at the moment. I’ve always been sceptical of books written by foreigners set in Japan, because they often are filled with all conceivable clichés. A bit like that relentless trickle of books about living in the south of France… This is a novel rather than a memoir, however. In fact, it’s a novel within a novel. Flo is an expat translator living in Tokyo, who’s reached a low point in her life, but finds herself charmed and then obsessed with a book she finds on the underground. We get extracts from the book for each season, and they’re about a grandmother and grandson learning to live together (and accept each other) in a small town close to Hiroshima. The story itself is somewhat predictable, and there are probably too many explanations of Japanese traditions for my taste. Interestingly enough, the framing plotline left me rather cold, although you might expect me to feel a lot of empathy for the struggles of an expat. After reading this book, I found the letters a university friend wrote to me from Japan, where she went to study and work – and her struggles seemed far more challenging and poignant. Nevertheless, this novel provided a pleasant enough way to while the time on the airplane flying to Bucharest.
Anton Hur: Toward Eternity, HarperVia, 2024
I just can’t seem to get enough of translators writing their own novels (or memoirs). Their books are almost guaranteed to be thoughtful, multi-layered and written with a great sensitivity towards language. Anton’s book is no exception: a fascinating future technology premise – curing cancer by replacing the defective cells with nanites, tiny robots that make the person virtually immortal, but also trying to make AI more human-like by teaching them an appreciation of poetry. Written as a series of diaries or documents left behind by various protagonists, the first part is at heart a love story – what are we prepared to do to cling onto a loved one, and what is it that truly makes up a person’s identity and what we love about a person, while the second part jumps into a future where soldier clones are commonplace, yet even they seek to find out what, if anything, makes each one of them unique.
There are action scenes and a mystery to keep readers entertained, but what I liked most about the book where those beautifully-written passages asking fundamental questions about language, humanity, the possibility of understanding each other and ourselves.
I suddenly realized that I understood the words like I’d never understood them before… Words that were not simply bits of cross-referential information but each a thing of living, breathing, tactile emotion. I felt these words against my skin as if they were physical objects, or as if they were light passing through the prism of my body and shattering into the spectrum. Had I ever truly understood any word before, ever? How could I have claimed to have made a study of poetry or that this study had made me human when I had never understood what it mean to feel words?
Yoshida Atsuhiro: Goodnight Tokyo, transl. Haydn Trowell, Europa Editions, 2024.
For fans of the TV series Tokyo Diner, this is a very similar set-up. Linked short stories that at first seem entirely disparate yet all come together and resolve themselves by the end. All set in nocturnal Tokyo, in the ‘witching hours’ between 1 am and dawn, with a diner run by three women friends in the background, a taxi driver, detective, a call centre operator, an employee in the prop department of a film studio and an antique store shop owner keeping bizarre hours keep meeting, intersecting, interfering and finding out more about each other. It was a pleasant enough read, but not particularly memorable (I struggled to remember any of the stories after a week), and fits very squarely into the ‘feel good, charming’ reads from Japan that seem to be so popular currently. Apologies, I seem to have less patience for them than most readers, but am glad that it’s giving Japanese to English translators so much work (and money, hopefully).
Ioana Pârvulescu: Aurul pisicii, Humanitas, 2024.
Ioana Pârvulescu is one of my favourite Romanian women writers currently writing. You too can develop a taste for her highly inventive books of historical/fantasy fiction, two of which have been translated and published by Istros Books. This one is very different, a love story set in the present-day, following a couple over twenty years or so, but of course, this being Ioana, the conventional love story then takes a strange turn. In the afterword, the author says that she began writing this story while she was in her twenties and still living under Communism, and only returned to it in 2022. It’s about the passage of time, time being, as she believes, the essential component in a love story, and it’s only how, in middle age, that she felt capable of writing a love story that avoids falling too much into sentimentality or, on the contrary, becoming too cynical and trite. Oh, and it does feature a cat – the title itself literally means ‘Cat’s Gold’, which is a much kinder way to refer to pyrite, aka Fool’s Gold in the English-speaking world.
t. s. khasis: Placerea spectacolului (The Pleasure of the Show), Tracus Arte, 2023
A poetry collection by an award-winning poet from Arad, Romania, born in 1975. I’m translating a couple of his poems for a volume of contemporary Romanian poetry so I wanted to find out more about him and his style. It’s a bit too cynical, try-hard and macho for my taste, aspiring to the style and lifestyle of the Beat Poets, if I’m not mistaken. But there are glimmers of beauty here and there, and I hope I can do those justice when translating.
Takase Junko: May You Have Delicious Meals, transl. Morgan Giles, Hutchinson Heinemann, 2025.
This book isn’t out yet, but I begged for a proof copy from the publisher, since I really like the translator and also love reading about Japanese office culture (having suffered through it myself) and food. This novella won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2022 and has been somewhat of a bestseller in Japan and it’s easy to see why. It tells the story of Nitani, a young salaryman dispatched to a new office, where he struggles to come to terms with the implicit rules about food and displays of power in the corporate environment. He’d far rather eat his pot noodles alone, rather than attend the mandatory lunches or drinking sessions with his boss. The only person who seems to understand him and also attempts to resist this culture of conformity is Oshio, an efficient young woman, who despises the ‘poor me’ persona of the hapless Ashikawa, a young woman who avoids late hours and any additional tasks by bursting into tears and currying favour by bringing in baked goodies for her colleagues. Oshio and Nitani are drinking buddies and complain about the pressures of work, the emptiness of life outside work (when you don’t really have much time for it) and relationship expectations… and yet, when it comes to it, will either of them have the courage to break free of those expectations? It’s a sad indictment of Japanese working culture, and the ending made me even sadder. Although a relatively simple story, this is perhaps the book that stayed most with me from this month’s reading. (But also Love at Six Thousand Degrees)
He imagined his life working there for another, what, forty years. How he might be moved to another branch in that time, but wherever he went there’d be someone like Ashikawa there; how he’d have to work with them, day in day out; how many more days, how many more hours’ worth of work he would have to shoulder for someone else.
Tell me all you like that eating a proper meal means taking care of myself and that eating pot noodles and ready-made side dishes is like self-abuse, but would working, doing overtime, going to the supermarket before it closes at ten, then making and eating dinner really be a better way to take care of myself?… Cook, eat, wash up, and before you know it an hour’s gone by. I only have two hours after getting home before I have to go to sleep, and if I use one hour on eating, then in the remaining hour I have to take bath and brush my teeth, then I only have half an hour to live my life! Would you still eat then? For your body? For your health? That’s not eating to live, is it?
Tudor Ganea: Vreau să aud numai de bine (I only want to hear good news), Polirom, 2024
An interesting young writer from the port town of Constanta, and the town features once again in his latest novel, about high school friends who are invited back to their home town twenty years later by the mother of their friend who died at a young age. When they show up on her doorstep, however, the whole thing seems to have been some kind of joke or set-up. But they take the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with each other, reminisce, and find their way back to what is important. It sounds a little predictable, but it is so well written, with punchy dialogue, so much local and historical flavour (of the 1990s and early 2000s), and packs so much social commentary in, that I was never bored. Just like with Ioana Pârvulescu, this book feels like a departure for Ganea, a far more realistic book than his previous ones, which tended more toward sci fi or surrealism.
Charlotte Printz: Im Netz der Lügen (Web of Lies), dtv, 2024
This is the sequel to the first Nightingale & Co dectective agency book that I’ve translated for Corylus. The first book Nightingale & Co will be published in January 2025 and leaves some issues unresolved, so of course I was curious to see what happens next.
Although I was born in Bucharest and spent many formative years of my life there (from the age 14 to 24), I was never a huge fan of Romania’s capital city. Too crowded, too dirty, too hot in summer, too full of slushy black snow in winter, and Bucharest people have a reputation for being rude and impatient. Pretty much like any big city, then! However, I quite enjoyed my latest visit there (despite the ongoing family and admin issues) and could imagine spending a couple of weeks there every year, especially in May or October, when it’s at its prettiest. I had a bit of a wander around the university area of town, where I spent many a happy day in my youth (also, many a sad or dangerous day, but you forget those when you get all nostalgic, don’t you?).
The Faculty of Letters (to the right), containing mostly female students, was and still is nicely ensconced between Maths, Geology and Architecture (all of them mostly male students at the time).
We spent many a peaceful afternoon at the ‘bar’ of the Architectural Institute, with its leafy canopy.
The library of the Faculty of Letters was a favourite spot, although I spent the majority of my time at the main University Library or the Central State Library, which had more of the books I needed.
Happy to see some of the iconic Art Deco buildings being cleaned and renovated in the centre of town.
The beautiful neo-Hausmannian building belonging to Coana Mita Biciclista (Madame Mita the Cyclist), a famed courtesan at the turn of the 20th century. She was one of the first women to be seen riding a bicycle through Bucharest, hence the nickname.
Another iconic building: the interior of Cafe Capsa, a cafe that reminds me of Vienna, opened in 1852, where all the great artists and writers of the time congregated.
The area around the main university building always was and still is full of bookshops, this one is within the Architectural Institute…
…and specialises in art books
Above all, I had fun exploring all the hip new cafes that seem to open up every month in Bucharest. This one on Henri Coanda Street also has a vintage clothing store attached.
I won’t be at my desk this Friday or the next (so this is a scheduled post), but at the end of August I had the opportunity to go to Dulwich Picture Gallery to see this remarkable exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints from three generations of the Yoshida family. My photos can’t really do justice to these works, but over the past hundred years the Yoshida family (father, mother, two sons, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter) have reinvigorated and innovated the art of printmaking. Most of the prints are on loan from the Fukuoka Art Museum (one more reason to go to Fukuoka!) and I was very pleased to see that the exhibition catalogue has all the Japanese names written correctly (i.e. surname first, first name last).
The founder of the printmaking dynasty Yoshida Hiroshi was actually adopted into a family of artists (since they had no sons to inherit the business) and ended up marrying one of the daughters. The entire family were very keen on travelling, and this print from 1926 is of the Matterhorn.
Yoshida Hiroshi was also a keen mountaineer and this is Mt Hotaka in Nagano, his favourite mountain, the third highest Japanese peak. He even named his second son after it (Hodaka)
Another mountain, reflected in the river Itoi. Hiroshi often experimented with day and night versions of his landscapes, using the same woodblock but adjusting the colours when printing.
Although Hiroshi’s themes are more traditional, his colouring style was quite innovative, often using more than 30-40 layers (up to 100 in some cases) of colours, while the 19th century ukiyoe prints have 10 on average.
Hiroshi’s wife Fujio was very successful in her own right, one of the first women artists in Japan to study Western style painting, although she gave up exhibiting her work for about ten years after she lost one child and had another recovering from polio. These later works, close-ups of flowers, remind me of Georgia O’Keefe.
Yoshida Toshi, their older son, introduced new techniques and subject matters. This embossed rendition of the Tenryuji Temple gardens in Kyoto is particularly striking for its vibrant colours and shapes tending towards abstraction.
The two tigers camouflaged in the field was not only designed but also carved by Toshi himself.
The younger son Hodaka was more influenced by Paul Klee, Joan Miro and pop-art, and his abstract paintings had not been seen in Japanese prints before.
Hodaka married multitalented Chizuko and this early print of hers entitled Jazz shows her passion for music and dancing.
Chizuko combined photolithography with woodblock printing to create this dreamy view of Shinjuku from the Tokyo Metropolitan Office Building (highly recommend the 360 view of Tokyo you can see from there for free).
Unfortunately, I cannot show you pictures of the creation by the youngest (and last, sadly) generation Yoshida Ayomi, because her work is actually room-sized, created especially for the final room of the exhibition – an immersive experience of sakura blossoms.
August has been a mellow, lazy month of house guests and spending time with my sons. A sort of staycation but with bits of work and house decluttering thrown in for good measure. And I’ll admit that I completely understand why I previously had so much time for reading, now that so much of my time seems to be swallowed up by TV watching.
However, I did read some memorable books for #WITMonth, with Laughing Wolfbeing perhaps the one I am most likely to reread. I also enjoyed Time of the Flies, was intrigued by The Besieged City and was slightly repelled by Blood Red, although I also appreciated what it was trying to do. I was far less impressed with the smug memoir I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, while XOXO was that sort of charming but ultimately bland YA love story whiles away the time while travelling but doesn’t stick in your mind (it also made me realise I could never write YA fiction). As a diaspora writer myself, I very much enjoyed Bad Diaspora Poems by Momtaza Mehri, and may well discuss some of those poems in more depth later on. Interesting to note that all of the seven books I finished reading in August were by women authors.
I was also quite an active consumer of cultural events this past month. I saw the Yoko Ono exhibition at the Tate Modern, where I was impressed by her iconoclastic innovation and willingness to experiment, but much preferred the Expressionist exhibition, which I saw for the third time. An unexpected highlight was the exibition Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmakers at Dulwich Picture Gallery – it was far more comprehensive than I’d dared hope for and I’ll share some of the images in my Friday Fun post later this week. I also greatly enjoyed seeing Anton Hur in person again, this time as a writer rather than a translator, presenting his first novel Toward Eternity at the Korean Cultural Centre. I am currently reading it and finding it a fascinating and quite moving story.
I also saw several films at the cinema – two earlier Wong Kar Wai films, Days of Being Wild and As Tears Go by, both infused with that indefinable quality of wasted lives and longing for something different that is what I so much enjoy about this director. Ashes and Diamonds is considered one of the masterpieces of Polish cinema, but I much prefer Wajda’s Birch Wood or Man of Marble or Man of Iron.Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris was charming but lightweight, a bit Mary Poppins-like, the Minghella Talented Mr Ripley is as beautiful as ever, while Cabaret gets more and more sinister upon every rewatch. (I also can’t help but think of Gwen Verdon’s influence on this film ever since I saw the recent biopic about her.) While I’m getting a little weary of OTT K dramas, I’ve discovered the slice of life, cleverly written genre, some infused with a lot of nostalgia, like Reply 1988and Twenty Five Twenty One, while others are great critiques of office politics and Korean society, like My Mister, or quirky self-ironical depictions of drama tropes (and the messiness of real-life love affairs) such as Be Melodramatic.
Plans for September? The usual back to school (and serious work) feeling that I get every year. But first, a trip to Romania and Geneva, leaving the boys to fend for themselves for a bit before they go back to university.
findingtimetowrite 