Travel Book Review ~ Wrong About Japan - A Father's Journey With His Son

Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey - A Father's Journey With His Son. First Published 2005. 158 pages. We usually have a copy of this book in stock, click here to see if one is available now.

If I have a critisism of modern travel writing is that too many authors are short of things to say. Rather than keep things compact they stretch their material to yawning point. Peter Carey on the other hand is one of Australia's finest novelists, and strips this travelogue down to it's barebones making a very quick and enjoyable read. In 2002 Carey travelled to Japan with his teenage son, Charlie and explore the world of anime, Japanese culture and the father-son generation gap.

As with all my reviews, I could blab on endlessly about the how good the book is, and you would have no reason to believe me because I would really like to sell a copy to you; so I select a favourite passage or two from the book and leave it up to you...

Anime as a window to Japanese culture...

Of course some anime are original, some are shallow, and many are downright silly but even the really silly ones soon began to seem like artifacts worthy of cultural investigation. For instance, a Japanese clog is called zgeta and it usually sports two of those devices, which I can only call a "heel"—one at the place its name would lead you to expect, the other at the toe. Why then was that warrior in the anime wearing a clog with just one crazy little stilt, neither at the heel or toe, but at the balance point of the clog? This must mean something, even in a silly doodle. I found a reference to the strange clog in Basho. It didn't solve the mystery but I began to develop the first of my many misunderstandings, imagining that Basho's ascetic rural Buddhists wore these clogs because it made walking more difficult. So as my son read manga and glued himself to anime, I began to wonder if we might enter the mansion of Japanese culture through its garish, brightly lit back door.

Later I solved the "heel" puzzle when we talked to a venerable clog maker in Tokyo. "Ah," he said, "you mean a 'one tooth/ " He then explained that a "one tooth" was easier and safer to use in uneven mountain terrain; it was easier, not harder, to walk on.

The "Real Japan"...

Even before I got down into the little lanes of Shinjuku, before I walked amongst the perfect Japanese Elvises in Harajuku, before I met Hisao-the-left-handed, who made the most ex-traordinary chisels on the planet, it was here, on the Ikebukurosen, that I decided to write a science-fiction screenplay, just so we could shoot it in Tokyo.

"It's so American," said Jack. "I didn't come all this way for this"

"Well, what do you want?"

"I want to see the Real Japan."

I knew what he meant, of course—temples, tea ceremony, Kabuki—but I teased him for it and was doubtless a very irritating companion for the next two weeks.

"No Real Japan," said Charley. "You've got to promise. No temples. No museums."

"What would we do?"

"We could buy cool manga."

"There'll be no English translations."

"I don't care. I'd eat raw fish."

"What else?"

"And slimy things. I'd eat everything."

"What if we interviewed some anime direc-tors?" I asked, trying to figure out how to pay the airfares.

"Could we talk to Tomino?"

"Who's he?"

"Only the director of Mobile Suit Gundam"

"We could talk to people about what all the weird stuff really means."

"Could we meet the guy who did Godzilla?"

"Maybe, I don't know"

As the weeks passed, the fantasy hardened into a plan and Charley spent a lot of time eating raw fish and revising the lists of anime directors and manga artists he required me to interview

"Maybe," I suggested, "you can ask them questions, too."

"Maybe," he said doubtfully "Can I have an ice cream?

I was not without contacts in Japan. I wrote first to Paul Hulbert, who was then working for my Tokyo agents. Given their distinguished list of liter-ary authors, I expected he would have little knowledge of cartoons and comic books, so I told him what Mobile Suit Gundam was and why I was interested in such a lowly subject.

"Perhaps," he replied, "I should explain a little about myself." Yes, he was a literary agent, of course, but he had previously worked at Kodansha, a large Japanese publishing house that produced many best-selling manga, including most of the Mobile Suit Gundam series. "During my time there, I worked with manga and anime creators, and in my final year was involved in the production of an eight-hundred-twenty-five-page authorized encyclopedia of the Gundam saga called Gundam Officials"

So I began to understand that the fringe cult in New York City was a huge business in Japan, where 1.9 billion manga were sold in 1995—a staggering forty percent of all magazine sales. Everybody in Japan read manga, except those just born or about to die.

Paul said he would certainly arrange an interview with Mr. Tomino, the originator of the Gun-dam series.

"Could I have my photograph taken with him?" Charley asked.

"Sure."

He bought a map of Tokyo and marked "weird" things with purple stars and "cool" things with silver circles.

Igorance is bliss...

When, the night before, Charley and I stepped out into the warm blue Asakusa night, he asked where we were going.

"Well find something nice to eat/31 said.

"Have you got a map?"

"No."

"Then you don't know where we are?"

We wandered blindly along lanes so narrow that the driver of a Toyota had to move parked bicycles in order to pass through. Meanwhile, I realised I couldn't tell the difference between a restaurant and a house of ill repute. Nor did I know that we were staying in the heart of Japanese pop culture, of Kabuki, kodan, manzai, rakugo, kamishibai, all the hundred forms of Japanese story telling, several of which were directly connected to the birth of manga and anime.

Entering the wide street we would soon name "Drunk Street," we walked between the pachinko and off-track betting parlours and discovered a large covered arcade with many restaurants. Here we stood, staring at the plastic food in the window. Not a word of English in sight.

"I don't think this is a good area, Dad."

I did not doubt him, but we were hungry. "It's fine," I said.

"This is not a good area."

Heedless, I led him inside a restaurant. Immediately we were sent back to the window to study the plastic food. Then we were joined by a raffish gen-tleman, roughly sixty years old, with grey slicked-back hair, baggy light-coloured trousers, a pair of very loud yellow braces, and a tie of equal volume. His face had a smooth, rather pampered quality.

"Perhaps you like the soup," he said, "or you might have the shrimp, see, very nice." He smiled, then used the five-fingered point. "Or you can have this together with the shrimp. Eat both together."

"Okay" said Charley

"Also there is the buckwheat noodle."

"I'll just have the noodles," said Charley

"Or perhaps you like the rice. There is also sashimi, but not cooked. Very Japanese. What you like?"

"The noodles, thank you."

Our benefactor then arranged a superior table, and instructed the waiter in detail, a beer for me and a cola for Charley.

"See," I told my son, "these are very nice people. This is a good place." At the same time I was wondering if he was noticing the girls in geisha costumes as they tripped down the front stairs and set off into the night, singing their charming little singsong good nights like canaries in a cage. Were they really geishas? Of course not.

"Ah, you use chopsticks very well," said our protector as he reappeared.

Charley, who has never liked being the object of scrutiny, said nothing.

"Yes," our protector said at last, "that is one very good way to eat this dish." He paused. "Also another way. You can put the shrimp in with the soup if you like."

Charley nodded, but he hadn't asked for the shrimp and he was not about to eat it now.

"Ah yes," our guide said politely, "the way you are doing it—this is a very good way, too."

When he had gone, Charley leaned forward.

"Dad, you know where we are?"

"Where?"

He rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing, Dad. Not now."

Only when we stood in the arcade, looking out through the summer rain at the desolation of Drunk Street, did my son tell me what was on his mind. "Did you look behind you?"

"What was behind me?"

"Did you see the chef? He was like a sumo wrestler. He was scary He had bright orange hair. And the guys around him, they were really scary too."

"I didn't notice."

"Did you see the girls coming down the stairs?"

"Of course. They were geisha."

My twelve-year-old rolled his eyes. "Dad, this is what they call an Entertainment Area."

Irony about a subject he couldn't possibly comprehend? "In any case," I said hurriedly "the old man was very nice to you. He reminded me of my own father."

"That would be funny"

"Why?"

"Because he was a yakuza."

"You think he's a gangster because he has a loud tie?"

"And those suspenders."

Frankly I thought Charley had seen too many subtitled gangster movies, but when, the next day, we met up with Jerry and Etsuko, they thought he was probably correct.

Together we finally left Asakusa, heading north.