a little chin music
by Bruce Rutledge | October 23, 2008
Donald Keene’s memoirs, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (Columbia University Press, 2008), have an understated eloquence that befit the modest, witty and profoundly knowledgeable professor. This is one of the best books I’ve read about a person intimately connected to — and in a sense, between — two countries.
In Keene’s case, of course, those two countries are Japan and the US; even today, the octogenarian splits his time between New York City and Japan, typically teaching the spring term at Columbia, then spending the rest of the year in Japan. Though his love for that country is deep, he is a man of two cultures, as is revealed when friends prompt him to spend his last years in a Japanese retirement home. He confesses that one of the reasons he can’t do that is the thought of having his coffee and croissant replaced by a bowl of miso soup every morning.
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by Bruce Rutledge | May 5, 2008
Political analyst Minoru Morita was a fixture on a Fuji TV morning news program until several years ago. He would appear clad in kimono and deliver his erudite political commentary, which was typically laced with ancient proverbs and historical observations. But Morita, now 75, was also a harsh critic of the once wildly popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. While the rest of the media fawned over the “lion-maned” prime minister, Morita had a different interpretation:
“In my view, Koizumi was the most irresponsible and frivolous prime minister in Japan’s postwar history.”
Not one to mince words, Morita went on TV in the late summer of 2005 and called the dissolution of the Diet by Koizumi “unconstitutional.” Here’s how Morita describes what happened next in his upcoming book, Curing Japan’s America Addiction:
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by Bruce Rutledge | February 29, 2008
In case you missed it, The New York Times featured the latest fad from Japan — cellphone novels — on its front page recently. The gist of the piece was that cellphone novels republished as books have begun to dominate the best-seller lists in Japan. Five of the 10 best-selling novels of 2007 were originally cellphone novels. Twenty-one-year-old cellphone novelist Rin’s first novel sold 400,000 copies last year. “My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” she told the Times.
Will Americans soon be reading Grisham on their phones or getting weekly updates of the latest Stephen King novel via text message? We may laugh at the idea, but then again, I remember plenty of my fellow countrymen scoffing at the idea of Americans sending text messages nearly10 years ago, when the trend swept Japan.
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by Bruce Rutledge | January 8, 2008
“Pictures of a Foreign Residence in Yokohama,” Yoshikazu, 1861
Original found at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
I was recently asked by the No. 1 Shimbun, the magazine for the Foreign Correspondents Club in Japan, to write a piece that examined whether English newspapers such as The Japan Times could survive the digital shift. I’ve included a slightly edited version of the piece for my column this month:
English newspapers have been serving the expat community in Japan since July 22, 1861, when an Englishman named H.W. Hansard first published the Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertizer for the several hundred English-speakers living in the port city.
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by Bruce Rutledge | October 25, 2007
Is a cellphone novel still a novel? Does a book have to be made out of paper, cloth and glue to be considered a book? These are the sorts of questions I ponder as the digital shift changes the rules in book publishing from day to day.
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by Bruce Rutledge | August 10, 2007
On a cool spring morning in Seattle, French maids, robots, a variety of superheroes and a slew of jaded, Goth-like figures draped in black trench coats converge on the Convention Center. They look completely out of place on the streets outside, and several passers-by in more conventional weekend garb stop to stare. Their stares are not particularly friendly, nor do they seem intimidated. Some register bemusement, others disdain.
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