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May 03, 2024
 

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David Cozy
For David Cozy's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2011
Oblivion is a soldier's reward
Shigeru Mizuki's "Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths" begins with a gallery of the faces of each of the 30 main characters.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 19, 2011
Oh, where is the city of dreams?
Illuminated manuscripts, Persian and Mughal miniatures, Victorian novels enriched by illustrations from the likes of Cruikshank and Phiz: Illustrated texts have a long, rich and varied history.
CULTURE / Books
May 29, 2011
Legends of the Middle Kingdom
THE MOON OVER THE MOUNTAIN AND OTHER STORIES, by Atsushi Nakajima. Translated by Paul McCarthy and Nobuko Ochner. Autumn Hill Books, 2010, 175 pp., $15.95 (paper) Orientalism, that essentializing exoticization of the East is, we all know, a deplorable thing — but those of us who have been drawn to Asia know something else, too. We know that it was often the crudest Western representations of Asia and Asians — the Chinese restaurant with the cheesy decor and dishes as outlandish (compared to mom's meatloaf) as chop suey — that sparked our interest.
CULTURE / Books
May 8, 2011
Unfractured folk tales, and fantastic fables
SPECULATIVE JAPAN 2: "The Man Who Watched the Sea" and Other Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy. Kurodahan Press, 2010, 269 pp., $16 (paper) A good anthology, particularly one that aims to provide an overview of an unfamiliar subset of a nation's literature, should not please all its readers all the time.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 24, 2011
Of monsters and men: Godzilla's stable master
MASTER OF MINIATURES, by Jim Shepard. New York: Solid Objects, 2010, 51 pp., $12 (paper). Jim Shepard's "Master of Miniatures" is a masterful miniature, a small container filled with substantial events and substantial pleasures. Based on the life of Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects man who made it possible for us to enjoy Godzilla destroying Tokyo, it's the story of that destruction, the seismic destruction of Tokyo in 1923, the aerial destruction of Tokyo in World War II, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and also the destruction that those catastrophes wreak on Tsuburaya's marriage.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2011
The protocols of freedom
THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The Practice of the Wild. Edited by Paul Ebenkamp. This is a companion to the film "The Practice of the Wild," directed by John J. Healey, produced by Will Hearst and Jim Harrison with San Simeon Films. Counterpoint, 2010, 160 pp., $28 (cloth/DVD) Snyder has been, at least since the publication of "Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems" in 1969, among America's — and the world's — most important poets in the sense that his concerns have never been trivial, and that he's able to address those concerns in poems that are, in every way, satisfying.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 20, 2011
Recollections of an intrepid Meiji traveler
NEW CHRONICLES OF YANAGIBASHI AND DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO THE WEST, by Ryuhoku Narushima. Translated and with a critical introduction and afterword by Matthew Fraleigh. Cornell University East Asia Program, 2010, 392 pp., $49 (paper) The most interesting thing about Ryuhoku Narushima (1837-1884), author of the "New Chronicles of Yanagibashi" and "Diary of a Journey to the West" is how much this scholar, journalist, traveler and writer got up to.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2010
Shikoku shrines: journey through a lost world
Itsue Takamure, born in 1894, grew up to become a remarkable woman: a pioneering feminist scholar — one whose work remains controversial — and an anarchist, though her progressive thinking did not prevent her from collaborating with Japan's militarist government during World War II.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 19, 2010
Final word on the year's best reading
In making available this account of Japanese who are forgotten, by an author who, in English, is unknown, translator Jeffrey Irish has done us a tremendous service. Anyone interested in how things used to be in rural Japan will want to read ethnologist Tsuneichi Miyamoto's tales of his travels on foot up and down the archipelago, and will relish the stories he gathered. The past, we learn, really is a foreign country. Miyamoto's journey into that foreign place, his visits with its forgotten people, exquisitely told and exquisitely translated, goes onto the short shelf of essential books about Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 17, 2010
The illustrated life and times of author Kenji Miyazawa
The surprising thing about Ko Yano's biography of Kenji Miyazawa is not that he's done it in the form of a comic book, but rather that this manga biography appears to be the only book-length life of Miyazawa available in English.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 19, 2010
Dastardly doctor with a mean scalpel and a heart of gold
It is probably not excessive to say that every Japanese male between the ages of 15 and 40 knows Black Jack, the outlaw surgeon who features in the series of comics that Osamu Tezuka created in the 1970s and early 1980s — comics that remain (thanks in part to movies and TV) popular today.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 15, 2010
Plumbing the depths of a suicide obsession
When Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in literature, chose to become a writer rather than a teacher or literary scholar, his mentor at Tokyo University told him that it would be necessary for him to continue his studies on his own.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 11, 2010
Everything you always wanted to know about Japanese schoolgirls (but were afraid to ask)
Don't be put off by the overly busy — and, yes, overly kawaii — cover of "Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential."
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2010
Pulp fiction raunch with a happy ending
Yoshihiro Tatsumi was, when young, a fan of Mickey Spillane, the poor man's — the very poor man's — Raymond Chandler, and Spillane's fingerprints are all over "Black Blizzard," a page-turner in the best pulp style, published in 1956.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 13, 2010
Quest for meaning of life in rural Japan
Great men will, often thanks to their depredations, force themselves on our attention.
CULTURE / Books
May 16, 2010
A splendid tour through the 'real' Tokyo
It is likely that as many people will appreciate Donald Richie's "Tokyo Megacity" as a tasteful addition to their living room decor as will open it, and that most who do open it will assiduously avoid Richie's text in favor of Ben Simmons' photographs.
CULTURE / Books
May 2, 2010
Sex, drugs and rock and roll, plus lots and lots more sex
With "Big in Japan," an erotic coming-of-age novel set in Japan, M. Thomas Gammarino has joined the likes of Jay McInerny ("Ransom"), Brad Leithauser ("Equal Distance"), and countless other non-Japanese writers who spend a little time in Japan when young, and then — surprise, surprise! — write novels featuring non-Japanese who spend a little time in Japan when young. So well-trodden is the novelistic path Gammarino has chosen, in fact, that it is almost as if he is working in a rigorous and established literary form.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2010
Treason for the most patriotic of reasons
The subtitle informs us that this is a "casebook" — that is, not a monograph on the Sorge spy ring, but rather a miscellany of pieces around that topic. Happily, the assembled parts are not the hodgepodge they might have been, but instead a kaleidoscope of views that resonate well together. In his introduction, editor J. Thomas Rimer explains that he wants the casebook to provide "an account of the lasting cultural significance [of] events associated with the notable case of Richard Sorge, the Soviet spy active in Japan before and during World War II."
CULTURE / Books
Feb 21, 2010
Laying it all out on the table
Hiromi Ito's poetry is often described as "shamanistic," and indeed, according to translator Jeffrey Angles, when she performs her poems she sometimes "sits on the floor like a shamaness and raps on a drum." That sort of thing, along with the insistence — often asserted but seldom supported — that oral poetry is more authentic than poetry on the page, can grow tiresome pretty quickly. Unless, that is, the poet doing the drumming has real talent. Hiromi Ito, no bongo-beating poseur, does.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 24, 2010
Eschewing the cheerlessness of modern-market memoirs
Those who have read Donald Keene's 1996 memoir "On Familiar Terms" may wonder whether it was necessary for him to bring out another that covers much the same ground. One suspects that Keene published "Chronicles of My Life" simply because he had been asked to write a series of columns about his life for the Yomiuri Shimbun (they also appeared in English in the Daily Yomiuri) and that, having done so, he was reluctant to let them go to waste. "Chronicles" is, therefore, too much of a rehash to be called an important memoir, but Keene is such a skillful writer that, even though the tales he tells are familiar, the elegance of the telling makes them a pleasure to read.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.
Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there
Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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