Shelf Life Book Reviews

This post is about as cliche as this picture

Have you ever held your library card in hand and wondered what you could learn about yourself if you could see your lifetime list of borrowed books? This happened to me the other day. I thought of all the different kinds of books I’ve read over the last 19 years (I’m only 23)—picture and alphabet books as a little girl, fairy tales and chapter books as an older child, Star Wars novels, philosophy, history, religion, and recently, non-fiction and biography….my list is pretty expansive, and I would wager my book count would be in the thousands by now.  

But then I realized that there has been a steady thread of my reading list, at least throughout my teenage and adult years. That thread is called Japan. The people, the history, the culture, the language; I’ve spent a decade soaking up every bit of knowledge I can about this island nation, and most of it was done through that wonderful institution, the Public Library. It’s a topic I never get bored with because it’s a topic that turned into a life passion.  

Through the eccentric use of technology, I recently spent a significant amount of time combing through the online catalogs of the Fort Worth and Brazoria County libraries—the two most significant ones in my life—trying to answer the question , “just how many books about Japan have I read?” I think most people, or at least most dedicated readers, probably have a similar motif they could find in their own life, but I bet very few have actually spent the hours required to try and reconstruct that list. It was an interesting process, and not only did it rekindle good memories in me of different times in my life, it revealed surprising patterns.  

Combing through an online card catalog also had the distinct advantage of generating a ready-made book list. Not only did I remember the books I’ve read in the past, I also came up with a list I can always turn to on a topic I know I like and find books at my local library. Pretty handy, huh?  

Although the catalog does not lie, memories do. I may have forgotten books that failed to show up in my keyword search, or are no longer part of the library’s collection. I may have forgotten that I read something (that was, in fact, part of my impetus to start what would become Shelf Life). So it’s not foolproof. I am choosing to exclude the hundreds of dollars I have spent on manga, because although you can learn a lot of Japanese culture that way, there is no electronic database for me to rely on. It also creates a problem in the counting system—does each volume count in a series, or does only the series? I am also choosing to include books about Japanese-Americans. This is not insensitivity or naiveté on my part. Rather, it has deepened my knowledge of the culture by providing an interesting contrast between those living in the country and those tied to it living without it, just as reading about historical Japan has lent a richer hue to my experience reading about modern Japan. I’m also including articles I read in researching my thesis (also about Japan). Finally, I am also excluding the language books I’ve acquired in my attempts to learn Japanese, simply because I don’t think they are fair to include in a list of books-for-pleasure.

So, with those parameters in mind, here is the list:                                                       

1. Favorite fairy tales told in Japan – Virginia Haviland
2. Momotaro; a Japanese folk tale retold – Grace Huxtable.
3. The Snow Wife – Robert D. San Souci
4. Audrey Hepburn’s neck : a novel – Alan Brown.
5. Little Sister – Kara Dalkey
6. The Nightengale – Kara Dalkey
7. The Heavenward Path – Kara Dalkey
8. Princess Masako, Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne – Ben Hills
9. Kana de Manga – Manga University Writers
10. Japanese Lessons: A Year in a Japanese School Through the Eyes of An American Anthropologist and Her Children – Gail Benjamin
11. The Commoner – John Burnham Schwartz
12. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
13. The Teahouse Fire – Ellis Avery
14. A Year in Japan – Kate Williamson
15. Red Chrysanthemum : a thriller – Laura Joh Rowland
16. The Samurai’s Wife – Laura Joh Rowland
17. Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
18. Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan – Aimee Major Steinburger
19. Plum wine : a novel – Angela Davis-Gardner
20. Bento Box in the Heartland – Linda Furiya
21. Christianity made in Japan: a study of indigenous movements – Mark R. Mullins
22. The Picture Bride – Yoshiko Uchida
23. The Big Wave – Pearl S. Buck
24. Geisha: A Life – Mineko Iwasaki
25. Zen and the Art of Tea – D. T. Suzuki
26. Silence – Endo Shushaku
27. Madame Sadayakko : the Geisha who Bewitched the West  – Lesley Downer
28. Zen and Shinto: The Story of Japanese Philosophy – Fujisawa Chikao
29. Shinto: Origins, Rituals, Festivals, Spirits, Sacred Places. – C. Little Scott
30. Christianity Transplanted. In Perspectives on Christianity in Korea and Japan – Mark R. Mullins
31. Japan Unbound – John Nathan
32. An Introduction to Japanese Society – Yoshio Sugimoto
33. Zen and Japanese Culture – D. T. Suzuki
34. God is Rice – Masao Takenaka
35. When the Bamboo Bends: Christ and Culture in Japan – Masao Takenaka
36. Religions in Japan: Buddhism, Shinto, and Christianity – George Cobbold
37. “A Tapestry of Japanese Religion.” In Introduction to World Religions – Christopher Partridge
38. A History of Modern Japan – Richard Storry
39. “The Claims of Christ Versus Competing Claims of Society.” In Can the Gospel thrive in Japanese soil?
40. “The Foreign Missionary Faces Japanese Culture. ” In Can the Gospel thrive in Japanese soil?
41. “Perspective: Magic, Ancestors, and Indigenous Christianity.” – Mark R. Mullins
42. “A Cry For Macedonia: Mission and Ministry in Japan.”
43. “Salvation in the Japanese Context” in Missiology
44. “The Foreignness of Christ: The Problem of Nihonism.” In Can the Gospel Thrive in Japanese Soil
45. “St. Francis Xavier’s Encounter with Japan.” in Missiology
46. Japan: Obstacles to the Gospel.” In The Christian Century
47. Bound – Donna Jo Napoli
48. A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine – John Nelson
49. Real World – Natsuo Kirino
50. Bar Flower – Lea Jacobson
51. Japanese Legends
52. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms – Gail Tsukiyama
53. Tales from Japan – Helen and William MacAlpine
54. Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star – William Johnston
55. Autobiography of a Geisha – Sayo Matsuda
56. Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China, and the United States – Jospeh Tobin
57. Iemoto: The Heart of Japan – Francis Hsu

I’m a little surprised at this list. I really thought it would be longer; reading and writing in preparation for my thesis certainly made me feel like it was much longer than this. As I said, though, this was an excellent opportunity to find out even more books available to me so I’m sure it will be growing quickly.  

I noticed that the majority of books available are written by Americans; this is not just true of my particular case, but reflects the proportion of translated verses native works available for public consumption. I have a theory as to why. Not only are books written by Americans cheaper to produce (no translation necessary), they are also more emotionally accessible. The few works I’ve read written in Japanese and translated are very subtle and usually very dark.  I think they are harder to sell to the mainstream.  

It’s easy to also notice that an overwhelming majority of books are about WWII, be it as historical novels or analytical pieces. You may notice a conspicuous absence of them from my list, as WWII is a thorny topic for an American in love with Japan. I won’t go into great length about my feelings, but I do feel that the proliferation of books about this subject—both pro and anti American—has a profound impact on our countries’ relations today. Likewise, both the books I’ve read about the royal family and the one that implicated the topic indirectly were quite negative in their commentaries.  

The second most common topic is definitely geishas. I suspect this is in part because of the runaway success of Arthur Golden’s novel, but I think it may also underline our culture’s sexual fascination with the Far East, which I feel is a direct product of our stereotypes through the centuries. 

 I was also very interested to note that when focusing on Christianity in Japan, there is shockingly more to say about ancient Kirishitans in the 17^th century under St. Xavier and the Portuguese than there is about modern Christianity. From a secular point of view, this is not all that odd; less than 1% of the country claims to be Christian, and there is the eternal taint of colonialism on mission work. However, from a Christian point of view, this is very odd. Japan is one of the least reached cultures, but in our own libraries (I accessed materials from the largest theological library in the country) there is very, very little written about cross-cultural evangelism strategies or techniques. It just flames the desires of my heart to go even more, but until then, I will travel there almost daily in my bookshelf.

In my mind, and in the minds of many fellow Westerners, few things conjure up Japan as strongly as the word geisha (except for maybe Hello Kitty, sushi, or efficiency). My personal fascination began, like many my age, with Arthur Golden’s bestselling novel. But since then, I’ve come across a wide variety of opinions on the matter, from Minako Iwasaki’s passionate refutation of misconceptions to this, a humble, moving true story of one geisha, not particularly famous, whose life was far from the glamorous, grand visions we in the West dream.

Context: key to understanding everything, including geisha

Genre: nonfiction, memoir

Plot: Sayo Masuda started life out as a child slave. Born in the early 1920s, she experienced rural Japanese life’s cruelty from an early age. Even as an adult, she suffered misfortune after misfortune, heartache, loss, and the wrenching agony of poverty, but through it all she matured into a woman of wisdom and deep kindness, especially towards children.

Structure: The translator’s preface serves as a much-welcome introduction to the memoir. Each of the 9 chapters are further broken into subtitled sections of varying length. Chapter 1 covers her life before entering the geisha house, and each of the subsequent chapters after that describe the flow of her life up until about 35 or 40. There are several pictures included of some significant places mentioned in the book, and it closes with an afterword and a substantive section of translator’s notes.

Execution:  Whatever your preconceptions of geisha are when approaching this book, put them out of your head. This is not the story of classically-trained women in an elegant world or strangely moving artists who walk the line between sexuality and beauty. Sayo Masuda’s was a more common story: a girl of extreme poverty forced into indentured servitude at local hot springs, living hand-to-mouth. Unlike the geisha of Tokyo or Kyoto, geisha in the rural areas in this time period were much closer to prostitutes. More than anything, Sayo taught me that geisha always have been, and always will be, very much dependent on context in order to truly understand.

Sayo never enjoyed much happiness. Her life was continually marked by disappointment, heartache, poverty and despair. However, even though she was on the brink of suicide twice, she managed to come back from death’s edge with a renewed spirit. By the end of the book she had been transformed into a storyteller with tidbits of insight and wisdom into the everyday lives of her countrymen. In fact, that’s what shocked me the most about this strangely entrancing memoir: her ability to rise above circumstances without complaining or self-pity.

Even more impressive was her voice. It was so clear, so frank! It was earthy and real, stripped of the courtly elegance so many in the West have come to expect from Japan.  It’s completely free of the melodrama one would expect from someone who endured so much tragedy in life. But she wasn’t telling this story for the sake of pity (actually, she first wrote it down as an entry into a magazine contest), but to keep others from falling down the same horrible road she found herself on.

Theme: Suwa, geisha, poverty, memoir, women’s literature

Read this if you’re more interested in hearing a story from the Japanese countryside than from Kyoto or Tokyo

3 out of 5 stars

Other works:
Sayo Masuda suffered greatly for this memoir, and has finally come to a place in life where she is interacting with those who know nothing of her disquieting past. It is unlikely she will ever write again.

If you liked this, you  might also like:
Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country
William Johnson’s Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

I probably won’t be posting a Saturday stack this week. Wednesday my Nick and I made a trip to the library which was supposed to be more about taking books back and killing time, but as usual turned into taking a rather large amount home as well. Now I have so many I feel almost guilty about depriving the other patrons and will thus diligently try to get through them this weekend rather than be tempted by newer titles I’d be sure to acquire. But anyway, on to the revivew.

While I would hardly describe myself as a full-blown foodie of the highest gourmand demands, I do enjoy food at a level I think is slightly higher than average and consider myself a decent cook. I like to prepare good food that isn’t too pretentious or fussy (though that can be fun in small doses). Most of all, I’m in that gray area between enthusiastic amateur and novice professional.

Ironically, my food-loving tendencies come out more in my choice of restaurant, books, and television programming more than my actual kitchen output (blame it on the newlywed budget). Hence me reading the memoir for a chef of a restaurant I’d never eat at. I may not like his food (or his prices) but that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy hearing about the life of a chef.  

Genre: nonfiction, memoir

Plot: Anthony Bourdain began his culinary life as a drugged-up kid trying to earn his chops among other equally drugged men. 25 years later, he’s an easily recognizable name in gourmet-level food discussion, and known for his ability to make those Top Chef snobs soil themselves in terror. This memoir paints a rough, very rough, sketch of how he got from A to B.

Structure: Following an introduction, 25 chapters are divided in a cute-but-meaningless “menu” of first course, second course, etc. An afterword follows, which was probably the best part of the book.

Execution: Let me say right off the bat that Bourdain is a knowledgeable, engaging, rough-around-the-edges, amusing writer. The book was fun to read.

But beyond his skill as an engaging voice, Bourdain was not an exceptional writer. Decent, sure, but not great. My biggest beef (ha, what a pun) was the overall sloppiness apparent in the lack of purpose and audience.

Was it a memoir or a exposé? Hard to tell. Some chapters were clearly autobiographical, meant to show how he first came to love food, what inspired him to be a chef, etc. But some chapters were clearly meant to be more about the particulars of the restaurant business, and jumped around in time. The result was a frustratingly incomplete timeline punctuated by anecdotes.

Who was Bourdain writing for? Equally mysterious.  In the introduction, Bourdain said he was writing for fellow chefs first and foremost. Most of the work reflected that, offering little to no explanations for culinary terms (I had to google just about every paragraph). But maddeningly, one of the last chapters in the book was dedicated to revealing common restaurant terms! Additionally, there were 2 other chapters addressed point-blankly to home cooks or aspiring chefs. The result was a rather irritating mix of professional jargon and pandering, the likes of which I did not appreciate.

Also, I’m not sure who his editor was but I hope they were fired. There were jarringly obvious typos, numerous enough to be of real concern. Take for example this sentence, and see how many times you try to re-read it to make sense of it: “What scent it had was not of fish, but of seawater and the cigarettes of fishmongers, I had never seen, or even imagined, many of the creatures I saw.” Page 288, bottom.

My conclusion was that as much as Bourdain likes to scoff at Food Network chefs for using the power of their name to move product, I can’t help but wonder if he’s guilty of the same. If this had been strictly a book about his upbringing and training and professional experience (like Under the Table), it would have been much more readable. Likewise, if it had been a volume addressed to home cooks to show them what the REAL kitchen world was like that would have been good too. Even a travelogue of his various culinary adventures (a book version of No Reservations) would have been well received. But this hodgepodge literary pot-au-feu ultimately left me hungry.

Theme: Bourdain, cooking school, Bourdain, restaurant working, crack, Bourdain

Read this if you are a much more dedicated foodie than I am and willing to put up with some major structural flaws.  

2 out of 5 stars

Other works:
Well it looks like I might be satisfied by Bourdain after all. It turns out that in addition to dedicated food-travel books (A Cook’s Tour and No Reservations), he’s also written Nasty Bits, a follow-up collection of provocative/humorous anecdotes, some food-themed mysteries (Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo), a fictional investigation (Typhoid Mary) and a cookbook (Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook).

If you liked this, you might also like:
Katherine Darling’s Under the Table
The (Anonymous) Waiter’s Waiter Rant
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love