Mitsubachi no Kiss: Toru Izu

Now that I’m back in chilly Canada, wrapped in my customary layers of scarves and sweaters in this strange transitional period from summer to fall when it can be twelve degrees one day and twenty-five the next which makes getting dressed every day a terrible guessing game that I always lose so I’m glad I work from home and can generally avoid the weather, it’s time to cut Mount Bookstoberead down to some kind of manageable size before I head back to Tokyo in a couple months and fill my shelves right back up. Because this cycle of reading and buying books is apparently my true calling in life, and getting paid to translate some of them is the closest I can get to simply being paid to stay home and read books, with business trips to bookstores to replenish my supplies.

But so many great books are being released in my absence from the overcrowded city, including the latest Juza no Ulna, making me bite my nails in anticipation. After seeing Izu in conversation with Yumiko Shirai earlier this summer as part of the Media Arts festivities, I am more invested than ever in that bizarrely human sci-fi manga with lovingly rendered footwear and the rounded curves of Ulna’s hint of a second chin. Fortunately, past me knew that future me would be in this terrible position at some point, and she went ahead and bought some of Izu’s past work to slip into the pile of unread books for just such a moment, a new edition of Izu’s debut work Mitsubachi no Kiss.

Satsujin Shussan: Sayaka Murata

Over a delicious vegan lunch one recent sweltering day, my Japanese counterpart (freelance translator of comics into Japanese, random arts interpreter, staunch feminist, fujoshi—we are basically the same person) brought up the idea of vulnerability in contrast to all the powerful posturing and random attacking that seems to happen both on- and off-line these days, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It’s been nagging at me in a way I find hard to put into words exactly. We’re all pulling up our big kid pants and trying to front like we’ve got it together, or we’re on top of things, or we’re better than someone somehow, or just trying to act like we don’t cry during motivational sports commercials (it can’t be just me, right?) when maybe what we need is to step right off of that high horse and admit that we’re barely functional or lonely or in need of some actual help. (Note: This is not a cry for said help, so please don’t put your Cardigan of Worry on. At least not for me. Look around you, though. Someone might need a kind word or two on a postcard from you.)

Perhaps these thoughts are unconsciously steering my reading choices. I’ve been picking up books on people in vulnerable places, work that gives other people gentle and kind consideration, stories that not only dip into but linger in the sphere of the domestic. And this is perhaps where Sayaka Murata shines brightest. Although I loved her Akutagawa prize winner Conbini Ningen (now available in English translation! Run out and get it and support good books in translation!) and its convenience store setting, I’m perhaps even more besotted with her 2014 work Satsujin Shussan and its deep dive into the doubly vulnerable world of pregnancy and murder. Doesn’t get more precarious than life or death!

Kaban Toshokan: Seimu Yoshizaki

I found a section in a bookstore a while ago that was books about reading, and it seemed to me to be the most meta thing ever. Reading a book about reading. But of course, it only makes sense. Reading is a fascinating thing we’ve taught our brains to do, so naturally, there would be people out there in this world ruminating on this little mental trick. And there are so many angles to approach reading from; the topic’s inexhaustible, really. By the time I walked away from that books about reading section, I was wondering why I’d never seen such a section before, not to mention why I’d never read anything about reading. With a brain that battles books on the regular, you’d think I’d be devouring books about reading, if only to up my game.

But the sad fact is a lot of those books about reading are academic in nature, and my eyeballs tend to roll right out of my head when I’m confronted with that kind of empty verbosity. (Until people stop using bloated synonyms like “utilize”, I refuse to acknowledge the readability of the denser academic texts.) (And yes, I know #NotAllAcademicTexts.) Where are the user-friendly books on books? Where are the manga?? It turns out they are hiding on a shelf in the bookstore. Because the Japanese comics industry is nothing if not thorough. There’s a manga about everything! And perusing the shelves one day, I noticed a sample dangling from the shelf with the intriguing title Kaban Toshokan, or as the English subtitle would have it, “Stories of the Library in a Bag.”

Colorless Girl: Honami Shirono

These sultry summer days have me wanting to hide indoors and keep myself safely air-conditioned and sweat-free. Being a freelancer is a great help in this mission, since I rarely have to go out during the day. I can sit comfortably in my tiny, chilled box of an apartment and peck away at my keyboard, translating all the great books people keep hiring me to translate. But being a freelancer also means that I’m in that little box of an apartment 24-7 if I don’t go out, and at some point, cabin fever starts to set in. I remember that I haven’t spoken to another human being in a couple days. The cupboards start to look bare. My friends send me desperate Lines, begging me to come out. But these are minor issues, easily overcome if you’re an experienced freelancer like me. No, when it truly become impossible to bear, when I absolutely must leave my cool comfort is the moment I run out of books to read. (Insert keyboard of doom sound here.)

Naturally, this is a situation that never happens to me in my Canadian digs. Mount Bookstoberead is always there, growing ever taller, threatening to topple over and murder me in an unguarded moment. But my Tokyo apartment is smaller and always temporary, so I try not to buy more than I can read at any given time. This is generally a sound policy. In the terrible, record-breaking heat of this year’s summer, however, it is a sweaty one. Forced out into the blazing sun, I skitter to the bookstore armed with parasol and water bottle, praying the sunstroke doesn’t strike me down in my mostly prime. Thankfully, the time outside is limited; bookstores are plentiful in this burning land. One such venture into the human breath heat led me to Colorless Girl, an unexpected treat that I then stayed inside to read, nicely chilled. (I know people without AC, and honestly, I don’t know how they are still alive this year. It was thirty-nine degrees in Tokyo! At seventy percent humidity! This kind of weather literally kills people.)

Metamorphose no Engawa: Kaori Tsurutani

August is Women in Translation month, so really I should be posting something by a women in translation, preferably translated by a woman, too. But I am over here in Tokyo, where all the books are still in their native Japanese, waiting for some kind publisher to license and translate them into English. Which makes it kind of hard to write about a translation this month. You might argue, however, that since I myself am a woman and a translator, every month is WIT month here at Brain vs Book, so there’s no need to really go out of my way in August. And while that is technically correct, it seems like a bit of a copout, especially since I am not actually writing about my own translations here, but rather random books I happen to be reading.

So to make this a bit more WIT and less noodle-y thoughts, I will take the opportunity now to give a shout out to a couple of my recent publications: King of Strong Style, the autobiography of pro wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura, which you really need on your shelf if you are into pro wrestling even a little bit. And even if you are not, the book contains many hilarious photos that provided endless delight for me while I was working on it. And That Blue Sky Feeling by Okura and Coma Hashii is a gay coming-of-age story in which new kid at school meets gay kid at school and starts thinking about sexuality in a real way for the first time in his life. It’s thoughtful and honest and sweet as hell, if only for the main character who is naïve in the best way. And let me also remind you that Brain favourite Conbini Ningen by woman author Sayaka Murata was just released in English as Convenience Store Woman, and was translated by my pal and fellow woman Ginny Tapley Takemori. These should be a good start to your WIT month reading.

Moratte Kudasai: Niboshiko Arai

So often these days, the world seems like a blazing dumpster fire in the middle of a heatwave in summer. The stench! The nightmarish heat! The constant and baffling dehumanization of other human beings for no apparent reason at all! And sure, we all want to (and should) work to make things better for ourselves and our fellow members of a society that is crumbling into the dark void of a bottomless ocean. But all the gloom and doom that greets us every time we open Twitter can really eat away at the soul and make us contemplate never interacting with the world again.

So a holiday like 801 is especially critical in these trying times, a reminder that there is still something pure and good in this world. And that is hot guys making out with other hot guys for our voyeuristic pleasure. Thus I invite you, my fellow fujoshi, to step away from the Nazis on Twitter and the mansplainer who is a Facebook friend of your mom’s friend’s friend who inexplicably replies to your innocuous comment about the recent heatwave to tell you climate change is a liberal conspiracy, and walk into the warm and welcoming world of hot man sex. Let these horny dudes wrap you up in a gentle and possibly sticky hug.

Amagi Yuiko no Tsuno to Ai: Yoko Kuno

Being in town for the latest round of the Japan Media Arts Festival meant that the whole song-and-dance was more on my radar than in other years. I always notice who the winners are and give a little high five to myself when artists I love win, but that’s generally the extent of my involvement. But it’s actually a whole thing, with events and talks around town and even a big exhibition at the National Art Centre, which is a lovely place to visit on its own, so any excuse to head out that way is a welcome one. This year, two artists I am particularly fond of won prizes—Aoi Ikebe for her Nee, Mama and Toru Izu for his Juza no Ulna—and there was even a conversation between Izu and Brain super fave Yumiko Shirai, and you know I was so there for that. They got into some of the nitty gritty of Ulna, including the secret behind the care Izu shows all the shoes in the book. (Spoiler: he is really into shoes.)

And all of this good fun is free! If you find yourself in Tokyo in the month of June, take advantage of government-sponsored art action. The coolest part is that you will probably discover some new stuff that you can fall in love with through these awards and the various related events. Like, I’d seen Amagi Yuiko kicking around the bookstore before, but it didn’t really register with me until I saw pages from the work as part of the Media Arts Manga Division exhibit. And those pages definitely intrigued me enough to pick up the book the next time I came across it. To be fair, I should have grabbed it the first time I saw it. It’s published by Beam and has an intriguing title and cover, a combination which has never let me down in the past.