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David Cozy

For David Cozy's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Books

Jan 17, 2010

Seen in a Beijing minute

Jonathan Tel, in "The Beijing of Possibilities," reminds us that megalopolises such as Beijing are inexhaustible, and therefore offer endless possibilities. In good ways and bad, they never cease to surprise. One is much more likely to see, for example, a gorilla pedaling a bicycle through urban streets than through country lanes.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 29, 2009

Perfectly rendered rural disquiet

RED SNOW, by Susumu Katsumata. Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 248 pp., $24.95 (hardcover) Comic books and graphic novels are treated, nowadays, with a level of respect that would have been unthinkable when they were purchased more often in drugstores than in bookstores. Indeed, it is no longer controversial to say that such works can be art, and that as such they are as worthy of our attention as film, music or literature.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 8, 2009

Cha's genius remains at modern vanguard

EXILEE AND TEMPS MORTS: Selected Works, by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Edited by Constance M. Lewallen. University of California Press, 2009, 277 pp., $24.95 (paperback) Pablo Picasso was a poet and a good one, but it would be a tragedy if his literary work had somehow diverted attention from his achievement as an artist.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jul 12, 2009

Drifting through life; in a good way

When an American journalist, remarking on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's growing popularity in the United States, suggested that the manga master must be similarly well-known in his own country, Tatsumi laughed and explained that there are not, at present, any venues in Japan willing to publish his work. That being the case we must be particularly grateful to his Canadian publisher, Drawn & Quarterly.

CULTURE / Books

May 31, 2009

The good, the bad and the ugly: 12 offbeat visions of Japan

Of the 12 "visions of Japan" gathered in Future Fiction's "Love Hotel City," Steve Finbow's "Shadowings" is among the most interesting. In it he explores the relationship between a character who appears in a comic and the artist who draws that character.

CULTURE / Books

Apr 12, 2009

Dark thoughts and macabre tales

As a boy, Edogawa Rampo was, as he relates in one of the essays included in this collection, a devotee of popular fiction. Entering the fantastic twists and turns of his stories we are soon lost in them just as, when boys and girls ourselves, we became the characters in the romances and adventures we devoured.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 29, 2009

Between modernism and modanizumu

When reading William J. Tyler's anthology, "Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938," one realizes that "modanizumu" (modernism) is a very broad term. It seems to mean, for Tyler anyway, any work produced during the years he designates that is not absolutely reactionary in its style or concerns. Thus readers who are hoping for Japanese fiction that, in Ezra Pound's phrase, "make(s) it new" may be disappointed to find that Tyler's expansive definition of modernism allows him to include work that simply deals with the new: the "fashion, mores, and manners" of the years with which he is concerned.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 29, 2009

Between modernism and modanizumu

MODANIZUMU: Modernist Fiction From Japan, 1913-1938, compiled and edited by William J. Tyler. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 605 pp., $47 (cloth). When reading William J. Tyler's anthology, "Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938," one realizes that "modanizumu" (modernism) is a very broad term. It seems to mean, for Tyler anyway, any work produced during the years he designates that is not absolutely reactionary in its style or concerns. Thus readers who are hoping for Japanese fiction that, in Ezra Pound's phrase, "make(s) it new" may be disappointed to find that Tyler's expansive definition of modernism allows him to include work that simply deals with the new: the "fashion, mores, and manners" of the years with which he is concerned.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 15, 2009

From a master of versatility

The last page of Donald Richie's most recent offering, "Botandoro," reveals that he has, in his long and productive life, published no fewer than 35 books. The word "prolific" is unavoidable.

CULTURE / Books

Feb 15, 2009

From a master of versatility

BOTANDORO: Stories, Fables, Parables, and Allegories — a Miscellany, by Donald Richie, edited and with an introduction by Leza Lowitz. Printed Matter Press, 2008, 272 pp., $20 (paper) The last page of Donald Richie's most recent offering, "Botandoro," reveals that he has, in his long and productive life, published no fewer than 35 books. The word "prolific" is unavoidable.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books / BEST OF BOOKS: 2008

Dec 14, 2008

Ready for a little Yuletide reading?

FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions)

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Nov 30, 2008

Drawing new life out of an old story

RED COLORED ELEGY by Seiichi Hayashi, translated by Taro Nettleton. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 235 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Here's a rough synopsis of the plot of Seiichi Hayashi's "Red Colored Elegy": A young couple, committed to their art, struggle to keep themselves, their art, and their love alive. This will strike no one as wildly original. What is surprising, however, is that, despite its hoary story line, "Red Colored Elegy" is a success.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 7, 2008

Takashi Hiraide's 'Walnut' is tough nut worth cracking

FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu. New York: New Directions, 2008, unpaginated, $17.95 (paper) When a fan of the neglected American genius Guy Davenport wrote to tell him that she admired his ability to express himself, his response was: "Yick!" Davenport's reaction — somewhere between bemusement and horror — upon learning that anyone could so misunderstand his art, and, indeed, art in general, seems apposite in considering the work of Takashi Hiraide whose "For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut" has more in common with the cool integrity of the best work of poets such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Guillaume Apollinaire — modernists, one and all — than it does with versifiers who appear to believe that writing is a way for them to work through the emotions that wash over them when, say, the sun sets behind bare trees, the seasons change, or a dog dies. Readers willing to leave all that warm fuzziness behind will enjoy the linguistic and conceptual fireworks, the wit, and the mystery that make Hiraide's Walnut a poetic page-turner.

CULTURE / Books

May 25, 2008

Abu Ghraib stirs memory of a prisoner of conscience

BLACK GLASSES LIKE CLARK KENT: A GI's Secret From Postwar Japan, by Terese Svoboda. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2008, 225 pp., $14 (paper) In most of the developed world, for most of the post-World War II era, the notion that torture might be OK was about as open to discussion as the notion that adulterers should be stoned or that Africans should be enslaved. Now, however, torture is back on the table, and even thinkers as mainstream as Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz refuse to categorically rule out its use.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 30, 2008

Hatching out some teaching blues

TONOHARU: Part One, by Lars Martinson. Minneapolis: Pliant Press, 2008, 128 pp., $19.95 (cloth) This account, in comic-book form, of an assistant English teacher's experiences working at a junior high school in the Japanese outback is not bad. Neither, however, is it as good as it might have been, or, indeed, as good as it might one day be — when parts two, three, and four are finished. It is disappointing not because it is poorly done, but because it is incomplete.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 9, 2008

Picture-perfect sending off of a wartime Shanghai

FAREWELL, SHANGHAI, by Angel Wagenstein, translated by Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova. New York: Handsel Books, 384 pp., 2007, $24.95 (cloth) The adjective "cinematic," when applied to a novel, is usually meant to suggest that the book describes bounces from one action-crammed scene to the next in a manner abrupt enough to delight those who find it difficult to concentrate on one thing for longer than 30 seconds.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 30, 2007

Certain 'connotations' of Asian Americans

SHORTCOMINGS, by Adrian Tomine. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2007, 108 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Comic books are respectable enough now that it is no longer necessary to attempt to burnish their image by renaming them "graphic novels." Neither is it necessary to remind readers that comics can be art and, as such, can be as rewarding (or dull) as paintings, novels and songs. We can move beyond such fretting to consider more interesting questions such as one that is sure to arise for those readers who purged illustrated books from their libraries at about the same time they boxed up their baseball cards and Barbie dolls.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 2, 2007

Transcending boundaries with writer Yoko Tawada

Facing the Bridge by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. New York: New Directions, 2007, 186 pp., $14.95 (paper) WHERE EUROPE BEGINS by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky and Yumi Selden, preface by Wim Wenders. New York: New Directions, 2007, 208 pp., $14.95 (paper)

CULTURE / Books

May 13, 2007

Opening the shutter to internment

IMPOUNDED: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, by Dorothea Lange, edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, 205 pp., $29.95 (cloth) Reviewed by DAVID COZY On Feb. 14, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed "Executive Order 9066, which gave to the military power to designate areas from which 'any and all persons may be excluded' . . ." and thus "some 120,000 Japanese Americans — two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens . . . — were forcibly and summarily removed from their homes and placed in concentration camps for the duration of the war."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 19, 2007

Works beyond Osaka's sun

If your knowledge of Taro Okamoto's work begins and ends with the sculpture "Tower of the Sun" that he created for the 1970 Osaka Expo, a visit to "Taro Okamoto and His Contemporaries in the Post-War Era," now at the Setagaya Art Museum, is in order.

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

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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