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.

Kageki Shojo: Kumiko Saiki

Adventures in the world of shojo continue! I’ve been noodling a little longer (lingering, loitering, getting side-eyes from suspicious shop clerks) in the shojo sections of bookstores these days, trying to see past the dazzling displays of tiresome and heteronormative romances (I’m sorry, romance-loving friends. Girl/Boy falls for boy/girl who doesn’t even notice her/him is just so dull to me. I want stories about people doing things other than falling in love and trying to get the attention of their crush) and dig deep into the possibilities shojo has to offer me. On one such trip to the bookstore, I ducked into an aisle to one side to avoid the curious gazes of actual shojos perusing the shelves. And lo! Awaiting me there was Kageki Shojo, an honest-to-goodness delight and a gem of a series. Why did none of you tell me what a great artist Kumiko Saiki is?! I could have been reading her work for years already instead of only stumbling upon it now.

Fortunately, it’s never too late for great books. And now that I’ve finished all five available volumes of Kageki, I can go back through Saiki’s catalogue. She’s been making manga since 1999! She’s got a lot of books for me to devour. My future right now is very bright, my good chums. I mean, when even the legendary shojo artist Riyoko Ikeda is blurbing her books, you know you are in for some very delicious treats. (Seriously! Can you imagine being a shojo artist and having praise from Ikeda printed on the obi for your book?? I would have the vapours and be calling for smelling salts.)

Arigatotte Ietanara: Yukari Takenami

I found a new bookstore! That in and of itself is perhaps not the biggest deal. As I mentioned only last week, this is Tokyo and there is a bookstore on nearly every corner. But not every bookstore is equal. Some are too small to carry much beyond the latest issue of One Piece and the most recent Akutagawa Prize winners. Some are overly niche-y in a niche I have no interest in, like the Shosen Grandé in Akihabara and its “train lovers’ holy land.” Naturally, I will still happily wander through the aisles of such bookstores—just being surrounded by all those pages with their many messages is so comforting—but my favourite bookstores are, of course, the ones that cater to my own weird nerdiness. Sometimes, all a bookstore needs to be is really big. But every so often, I will stumble across a cosy little place that offers maximum discovery potential in the minimum of space, which is the case of the bookstore I found last week in Koenji.

Half the small shop was taken up by manga, most of it pretty standard, but the random stuff was so deeply random! I was greeted by so many titles I’d never even heard of. And they had sample readers for more than half of those manga, so you can check out all these random treats and see if any of them suit your refined palette. The other half of the place was mostly bunkobon, with a smattering of art, philosophy, and other bits and bobs (I got a book about Japanese women’s prison! Yes, we’ll be talking about it at some point in the future!). And the shop itself was warm and inviting with wood shelves everywhere in islands instead of aisles and a raised section that allowed you to look out over the rest of the shop like a queen surveying her queendom of books. I was very happy there, and it is now where I want my ashes scattered when I die.

Momo no Kikikajiri: Machiko Kyo

As always, my favourite thing about being back in Tokyo is being able to pop into a bookstore whenever and wherever I want, unlike in Toronto, where I have to make a specific trip to find books. But Tokyo is just littered with the things. Books everywhere! My second favourite thing, though, might be getting to go to tiny art shows in tiny event spaces. I always like to stop in at the Sanyodo on the corner when I’m in Omotesando; they usually have an exhibit by an artist I’ve never heard of on the second floor. Plus books on the first floor! Vanilla Gallery in Ginza is always good for strange erotic art and half the time (it seems) they’re having an Usamaru Furuya show. But mostly, I end up popping in on random shows that get tweeted into my timeline from some part of the Japanese twittersphere. Sometimes, I have no idea what part that might be, but other times, it’s an artist I follow. Which is obviously the most exciting kind of random show.

The recent Machiko Kyo show at Title was one such exhibit. It closed a couple days after I arrived, but I managed to fight back my jetlag for long enough to make the trek to Ogikubo and look at some of her original pages for her Sennen Gaho + 10 Years. It was perhaps the tiniest of tiny art shows I’ve ever been to; there were maybe twelve pieces on display. The larger part of the small space was taken up with merchandise, which is the way of all Japanese shows. And like a good consumer, I did my part, picking up yet another clear file (what am I going to do with all these clear files??) among other things, but they also had a solid selection of Kyo’s back catalogue set out. We all know that my brain is a fan, so there wasn’t much there we hadn’t already battled. But then my eyes caught sight of Momo, a full-colour treat that was serialized at Hanatsubaki and wrapped up earlier this year. A treat my brain had not battled yet. So naturally, I grabbed the two slim volumes and headed to a café to dig in.