Haikasoru

A Small Charred Face

August 11, 2017 by Ash Brown

Author: Kazuki Sakuraba
Translator: Jocelyne Allen
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421595412
Released: September 2017
Original release: 2014

Kazuki Sakuraba is a fairly prolific author in Japan, having written numerous short stories, essays, and novels; sadly, only a small handful of those have been translated into English thus far. Although Sakuraba is probably best known as the creator of Gosick (which, I’ll admit, I still need to actually read), my introduction to her work was through Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuhchibas, an award-winning, multi-generational epic which I thoroughly enjoyed. When Haikasoru, Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint, announced that it would be releasing Sakuraba’s A Small Charred Face with a translation by Jocelyne Allen in 2017, I immediately took note. I was previously unaware of A Small Charred Face, originally published in Japan in 2014, and I’m not especially interested in vampire fiction, but with Sakuraba as the author, Haikasoru as the publisher and Allen as the translator–a winning combination with Red Girls–it instantly became something that I wanted to read.

The Japanese town in which Kyo lives is bathed in blood, a hotbed of organized crime, murder, and vice. With a population willing to avoid looking too closely at the surrounding bloodshed, resulting in a plentiful and readily accessible supply of food, it’s the perfect place for the Bamboo, vampiric creatures originating from the deep mountains of China, to secretly coexist with humans. Carnivorous grass monsters but human-like in appearance, the Bamboo are extremely powerful and resilient but vulnerable to sunlight, never age but are still mortal. Up until the point he meets one, Kyo was never quite sure if the stories he heard about the monstrous Bamboo were true or if they were just told to frighten children. Confronted with the immediacy of his own impending death while only ten years old, his mother and sister having already been killed by a group of hitmen, Kyo is unexpectedly rescued by a Bamboo. Mustah, impulsively acting in blatant disregard for the rules of his own kind by taking him in, saves Kyos’ life and in the process changes it forever. But even while Kyo, Mustah, and Mustah’s partner Bamboo Yoji form a peculiar, tightly-knit family, it will never be entirely safe from the dangers presented by humans or the Bamboo alike.

At its very core, A Small Charred Face is about the curious, complex, exhilarating, and often fraught relationships that evolve between Bamboo and humans. The novel is divided into three distinct parts–three tangentially related stories which can all be connected to Kyo and his personal experiences with the Bamboo. In some ways the stories are able to stand alone, but the references they contain make them more powerful when taken together as a whole. The first and longest section, “A Small Charred Face,” focuses on Kyo’s life with Mustah and Yoji. The two men are fascinated and enthralled by his humanity, at times treating him as something akin to a pet but also raising him as family while protecting him through his adolescence. To Kyo, Mustah and Yoji are his saviors, parents, and something even more which is difficult to define. The second part “I Came to Show You Real Flowers” serves as an epilogue of sorts to the first, following another Bamboo who becomes incredibly important to Kyo as well as a young woman who plays a crucial role late in his life. Finally there is “You Will Go to the Land of the Future,” a story which delves into the history of the Japanese Bamboo. Linking back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it traces the tragic origins of the Bamboo’s strained relations with humans and the strict, harshly-enforced rules implemented to guard their society and existence.

A Small Charred Face opens with the brutal aftermath of the rape and murder of those close to Kyo with him facing a similar fate. It is a horrific, gut-wrenching scene, but the story that follows becomes surprisingly beautiful. Though still punctuated by moments of extraordinary violence and devastating heartbreak, A Small Charred Face is a relatively quiet and at times even contemplative work. The relationships shown are intensely intimate, with love, desire, and devotion taking on multiple, varied forms. The characters struggle and frequently fail to completely understand one another–the worldviews, life experiences, and fundamental natures of humans and Bamboo occasionally at odds–but the strength of the connections that they form regardless of and in some cases because of their differences is tremendously compelling and affecting. There’s also an inherent queerness to the stories that I loved. It’s perhaps most obvious through Yoji and Mustah’s partnership and the fact that Kyo spends a significant portion of his life presenting himself as a girl for his own safety, but many of the novel’s essential underlying themes explore found family, the need for acceptance, and what it is like in one way or another to be a hidden outsider within society. While A Small Charred Face resides firmly within the tradition of vampire fiction, Sakuraba’s contemporary take on the genre is still somewhat unusual and unexpected; I enjoyed the work immensely.

Thank you to Viz Media for providing a copy of A Small Charred Face for review.

Genocidal Organ

October 9, 2015 by Ash Brown

Author: Project Itoh
Translator: Edwin Hawkes
U.S. Publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421542720
Released: August 2012
Original release: 2007

Although Genocidal Organ was the third novel by Project Itoh to be translated and released in English, in Japan the book was actually his debut work as an author. My introduction to Itoh’s fiction was through the award-winning Harmony, his first novel to be translated into English, which I greatly enjoyed and found to be an intelligent, thought-provoking work of science fiction. I was also greatly impressed by his two short stories: “The Indifference Engine,” collected in The Future is Japanese, and “From Nothing, With Love,” found in Phantasm Japan. Thus, reading Genocidal Organ, released by Viz Media’s Haikasoru imprint in 2012 with a translation by Edwin Hawkes, was an obvious choice for me. The publication of Genocidal Organ in Japan in 2007 established Itoh as a talented author to watch out for. Sadly, he died two years later at the age of thirty-four from cancer. But Itoh and his work haven’t been forgotten. In 2014 it was announced that three of his novels, including Genocidal Organ, were to be adapted as feature-length animated films.

Ever since the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, American citizens have more or less willingly given up their privacy and freedoms in order to feel safer from perceived terrorist threats. Much of the world has followed suit and there are very few places left where a person isn’t closely monitored and recorded, the immense amounts of data and metadata collected being saved indefinitely, waiting to be complied at a moments notice. In order to maintain this life of extreme hyper-surveillance there are people who must deal in death. Clavis Shepherd is one such man, an assassin who is a part of the Special Operations of the United States Military. He has killed countless people in service of his country—men, women, even children—but his recent missions have all had one target in common, an American linguist by the name of John Paul. Time and again the man seems to manage to slip away just before Shepherd’s unit arrives, leaving behind one developing country after another devastated by civil war and genocide.

Genocidal Organ is a novel that is absolutely saturated with death. It’s something that Clavis cannot escape in either his personal or professional life, whether he’s asleep or awake. Killing other people is his job and aided by modern science and medicine he is largely able to accept that, but his work is still tremendously damaging psychologically. But it’s not until Clavis had to make the decision whether or not to remove his mother from life support after she was in an accident that mortality really became personal to him. From there, his mental stability begins to steadily unravel as he is haunted by all of the death that he has seen and the death for which he has been responsible. Genocidal Organ can be horrific and tragic, gruesome and visceral. Clavis has been both a participant in and a witness to some truly terrible things—war and genocide that lay waste to entire countries and populations and all that accompanies that devastation. And, as an assassin for the government, he knows that he’s not an innocent bystander in how events unfold.

First and foremost, Genocidal Organ is Shepherd’s own personal narrative as he struggles to come to terms with his role as an assassin, but his story is couched in a much larger one dealing with global policy and international politics. Itoh has successfully incorporated many different genre styles in order to create a compelling and cohesive novel. In addition to all of the action and espionage, there are also the mysteries surrounding Paul as the “King of Genocide,” and an exceptionally strong philosophical and intellectual bent to the story as Genocidal Organ examines the worth of life and cost of freedom. Itoh presents an incredibly insightful perspective of the Untied States as a world power. Although it is perhaps more critical and frank than most American authors would likely attempt, the perspective is one that still feels surprisingly authentic. (It’s also very clear that Itoh was particularly well-versed in Western literature and popular culture.) Ultimately, though at times heavy-handed, Genocidal Organ is a fascinating and engaging novel of the near future; I remain convinced that Itoh was an author of exceptional talent.

Gene Mapper

June 27, 2015 by Ash Brown

Author: Taiyo Fujii
Translator: Jim Hubbert
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421580272
Released: June 2015
Original release: 2013

Gene Mapper is Taiyo Fujii’s debut work as an author. Originally, he was employed in design and software development, a background that to some extent informs Gene Mapper. In 2012, he self-published the novel as an ebook and it became a bestseller, catching the attention of Hayakawa Publishing, a major Japanese publisher of science fiction. Fujii subsequently expanded and revised Gene Mapper for release by Hayakawa in 2013. It was this edition of Gene Mapper that became the basis for Jim Hubbert’s English translation of the novel released by Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint Haikasoru in 2015. In addition to being a bestseller, Gene Mapper has also been critically well-received. Although ultimately the novel didn’t win, Gene Mapper was nominated for both a Seiun Award and a Nihon SF Taisho Award (which Fujii would later earn for his second novel Orbital Cloud). I was thus very happy to have the opportunity to read an early review copy of Gene Mapper.

Mamoru Hayashida is a gene mapper specializing in style sheets for color expression and design. Although he works as a freelancer, many of his recent projects have been for L&B, one of the leaders in distilled crops, a science in which plants have been designed from their DNA up to produce bountiful harvests with high nutritional value that are resistant to disease and pests. The problem of world hunger has been solved because of distilled crops, but there continue to be people who are skeptical of these synthetic creations, believing them to be unnatural, unethical, and unsafe. When SR06, an advanced strain of Super Rice that Hayashida helped to design, begins to inexplicably mutate, it seems as though those criticisms may be justified. In order to investigate and hopefully put a stop to the impending crisis before the media and the rest of the world finds out about it, Hayashida is first sent to Ho Chi Minh City to hire Yagodo, an expert Internet salvager, and then to the SR06 fields in Cambodia along with his agent Kurokawa. It’s only after they are there that they discover just how dire, and dangerous, the situation really is.

Gene Mapper falls into the category of realistic near future science fiction and it is an excellent example of that subgenre. A few elements initially drew me to the novel, specifically the developments and applications of new agricultural and biotechnologies, but the more I read the more I found to capture my interest, such as the implications of the collapse of the Internet (an event that occurred before the beginning of the story proper) and the prevalent use of augmented realities of varying types. Some of those new technologies and systems are unnecessarily over-explained towards the beginning of the novel, bogging down the story, but soon the details become better integrated into the narrative and Gene Mapper begins moving along quite quickly. Although human society in Gene Mapper is still believably imperfect, Fujii’s vision of the future and the role of technology in it is largely a positive and optimistic one. While the potential for technological developments to be used for great harm is a recognized concern in the novel, those same advancements are also shown have the potential to be used to greatly benefit humanity. The tension between those two possibilities is one of the driving forces behind the novel.

What makes Gene Mapper such a thought-provoking and engaging work is the importance placed by Fujii on technology and science and how people interact with them. The novel’s exploration of the tremendous potential presented by new technologies as well as it’s examination of related concerns and fears is extremely relevant to issues being discussed even today. I grew up in a farming community and so am well aware of the debates and controversies surrounding the use of genetically modified crops and other advanced agricultural technologies. Gene Mapper presents one plausible future based on logical extensions of current genetic, agricultural, and information technologies without ignoring the dangers that they present or how they impact society in both positive and negative ways. Just as in reality, scientific advances in Gene Mapper don’t exist in a vacuum. There are personal and societal interests as well as business and commercial interests at work in the direction that the future will take. Missteps have been and will be made, but innovations will continue as long as humanity is able to survive them. Gene Mapper argues that in time solutions will be found to old problems and new challenges will arise as a result.

Thank you to Viz Media for providing a copy of Gene Mapper for review.

Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas

May 30, 2015 by Ash Brown

Author: Kazuki Sakuraba
Translator: Jocelyne Allen
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421578576
Released: April 2015
Original release: 2006
Awards: Mystery Writers of Japan Award

Kazuki Sakuraba is probably most well-known as the creator of Gosick, a series of light novels which would later be adapted as a manga series, an audio drama, and an anime series. Two of those novels were released in English by Tokyopop. After her success with Gosick, Sakuraba would go on to write and publish mainstream novels and essays as well, several of which would earn her awards and nominations for her work. Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas is one of those novels. Originally published in Japan in 2006, Red Girls won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2007. That fact caught my attention as I have thoroughly enjoyed other novels that have won that particular award, as did the striking cover design of the English-language edition of Red Girls. The novel was released in English in 2015 by Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint Haikasoru with a translation by Jocelyne Allen. Although Red Girls is the third novel by Sakuraba to have been translated, it was actually the first one that I read and was my introduction to her work as a whole.

For a time, the village of Benimidori, found in the western reaches of Japan’s Tottori Prefecture, was largely controlled by two rival families: the Akakuchibas, known as “red above” and who operated a steelworks factory, and the Kurobishis, known as “black below” and who were prosperous shipbuilders. While the Kurobishis were nouveau riche, the Akakuchibas were an old, upstanding family, and so quite a stir was caused when a young mountain girl who had been abandoned in the village was selected to marry the family’s heir. That was Manyo, a clairvoyant whose ability to see the future would help guide the family through a number of crises, including the tragic death of her firstborn son. The responsibility to carry on the Akakuchiba name then fell to her daughter Kemari, a wild young woman who would also die young, leaving behind a daughter of her own. By all appearances, Toko, unlike her mother or grandmother, seems to be an ordinary girl, but she is the only person to whom Manyo confessed a closely kept secret—she once killed someone.

Red Girls is divided into three parts, each one respectively devoted to the retelling of the lives and legends of Manyo, Kemari, and Toko. Eventually it is revealed that Toko is the novel’s narrator, recording the stories that she has been told by and about her mother and grandmother in an attempt to identify the person whose death Manyo claims to be responsible for. People associated with the Akakuchibas have a tendency to die in unexpected or peculiar ways, and so Toko knows of several individuals who could have been potential victims. As with any family story passed on from one generation to the next, there is a certain amount of fiction and embellishment that is added to the retelling of events. As she investigates the unusual circumstances involved in the various deaths, Toko must also closely reevaluate everything that she has been told about her family, teasing apart the stories in order to determine what exactly is the truth, what has been exaggerated, and what details continue to remain hidden and unsaid.

In addition to providing an intriguing mystery that Toko feels compelled to unravel, the narrative found in Red Girls serves another, very important purpose. It is a way for Toko to come to terms with the history of the Akakuchiba family and her position within it, allowing her to take her place in a line of powerful matriarchs. It’s not something that she is initially prepared to do, feeling inadequate when compared to her grandmother and mother and their various accomplishments. Red Girls also situates the legend of the Akakuchibas—and a legend it is, full of peculiar and fantastical elements—within the greater context of Japan’s economic and social histories. As Japan changes over time, so must the Akakuchiba family and its members, and so must the way they think about themselves, their relationships, and their stories. Red Girls is a tremendous multi-generational epic, sometimes strange and sometimes mysterious, but always engaging and oddly compelling. I enjoyed the novel immensely.

Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark from and about Japan

March 20, 2015 by Ash Brown

Editor: Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington
Publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421571744
Released: September 2014

Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark from and about Japan, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, is the second anthology of short fiction curated specifically for Haikasoru, the speculative fiction imprint of Viz Media. Phantasm Japan, published in 2014, is a followup of sorts to the 2012 anthology The Future is Japanese. A third anthology in the loosely-related series, Hanzai Japan, is currently being complied. I rather enjoyed The Future Is Japanese and so was looking forward to the release of Phantasm Japan. The anthology collects twenty-one pieces of short fiction, including an illustrated novella, from seventeen creators in addition to the two introductory essays written by the editors. Most of the stories are original to the collection, although a few of the translated works were previously published in Japan. Much like The Future Is Japanese, Phantasm Japan promised to be an intriguing collection.

With a title like Phantasm Japan I had anticipated an anthology inspired by yokai and Japanese folklore. And while the volume does include such tales—Zachary Mason’s “Five Tales of Japan” (tengu and various deities), James A. Moore’s “He Dreads the Cold” (yuki-onna), Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s “Ningyo” (mermaids and other mythological beings)—it incorporates a much broader variety of stories as well. The fiction found in Phantasm Japan is generally fairly serious in nature and tone and all of the stories tend to have at least a touch of horror to them, but they range from historical fiction to science fiction and from tales of fantasy to tales more firmly based in reality. Pasts, presents, and futures are all explored in Phantasm Japan. The authors of Phantasm Japan are as diverse as their stories. Some make their homes in Japan while some hail from the Americas, Europe, or other parts of Asia. Many are established, award-winning writers while others are newer voices. In fact, Lauren Naturale’s “Her Last Appearance,” inspired in part by the life of kabuki actor Kairakutei Black, marks her debut as a published author of fiction. I also personally appreciated the inclusion of both queer authors and queer characters in the anthology.

Other than being a collection of fantastical stories, there isn’t really an overarching theme to Phantasm Japan. However, some of the works do explore similar concepts, but use wildly different approaches and settings. In addition to the stories influenced by traditional lore, like “Inari Updates the Map of Rice Fields” by Alex Dally MacFarlane, there are those that reflect more contemporary concerns like Tim Pratt’s “Those Who Hunt Monsters” which mixes online dating, fetishism, and yokai. Ghost of various types make appearances throughout Phantasm Japan, from the supernatural haunting of Seia Tanabe’s “The Parrot Stone” to the biohazard-induced hallucinations of Sayuri Ueda’s “The Street of Fruiting Bodies.” Joseph Tomaras’ “Thirty-Eight Observations of the Self” is in part reminiscent of stories about living ghosts. Possessions are seen multiple times in the volume as well. In “Scissors or Claws, and Holes” by Yusaku Kitano, creatures are intentionally invited into a person’s body in order to exchange memories for visions of the future while in Jacqueline Koyanagi’s Kamigakari a consciousness is shared by a man and something that isn’t human as a result of an accident.

One of the recurring themes that I found particularly appealing in Phantasm Japan was the power of memories and stories to shape, create, define, and redefine reality. In Gary A. Braunbeck’s “Shikata Ga Nai: The Bag Lady’s Tale,” a tailor from a Japanese-American internment camp is responsible for passing on centuries worth of history. In “The Last Packet of Tea” by Quentin S. Crisp, an author struggles to write one last story. Project Itoh’s “From Nothing, With Love” (which re-convinced me that I need to read everything that he has written) is about a very specific cultural touchstone and the life that it has taken on. As with any short story collection, some of the stories are stronger than others and different stories will be enjoyed by different readers. Some contributions to Phantasm Japan are readily accessible to just about anyone, such as Nadia Bulkin’s “Girl, I Love You” and Miyuki Miyabe’s “Chiyoko,” but then there are more challenging works like Dempow Torishima’s exceptionally bizarre and grotesque novella Sisyphean. As for me, I enjoyed Phantasm Japan as an anthology. I liked the range and variety in the stories collected, and my reading list has certainly grown significantly because of it.

Good Luck, Yukikaze

January 21, 2015 by Ash Brown

Author: Chōhei Kambayashi
Translator: Neil Nadelman
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421539010
Released: July 2011
Original release: 1999
Awards: Seiun Award

Good Luck, Yukikaze is Chōhei Kambayashi’s second Yukikaze novel as well as his second novel to be released in English. A sequel to Yukikaze–which was originally written in 1984 before later being revised–Good Luck, Yukikaze was published in Japan in 1999 after being serialized between 1992 and 1999. Like Yukikaze, Good Luck, Yukikaze was translated into English by Neil Nadelman and released by Haikasoru, Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint. The English edition of the novel was published in 2011 and also includes a concluding essay with commentary by Maki Ohno. The Yukikaze novels are some of Kambayashi’s most well-known and respected works. Yukikaze wold earn Kambayashi a Seiun Award when it was first written and Good Luck, Yukikaze would receive the same honor after its publication as well. I found the first Yukikaze novel to be thought-provoking and so looked forward to reading its sequel. A third volume in the series also exists, Unbroken Arrow, however it has yet to be translated into English.

Despite humanity’s best efforts the war against the JAM, a mysterious alien force, has continued for more than three decades. Although the end of the fighting is nowhere in sight, some progress has been made, especially in regards to the technology, computers, and weapons that humans employ. But those advances could possibly lead to humanity’s obsolescence and are a threat to its existence. Rei Fukai was one of the best pilots in the Special Air Force, but he was left in a coma after his highly advanced fighter plane Yukikaze took the initiative and ejected him during battle against his will. Eventually he awakens, bu he continues to suffer from the immense psychological blow–Yukikaze was the only thing beyond himself that he trusted and he was betrayed and discarded; he struggles to come to terms with all that has happened to him. Meanwhile the war goes on, as does Rei’s personal battle against the JAM. Like it or not, he and Yukikaze have caught the invaders’ attention.

When I read Yukikaze it took a few chapters before the novel was able to completely engage me, and so I wasn’t initially concerned when Good Luck, Yukikaze failed to immediately grab my attention. I kept waiting and waiting for the moment when it would finally all come together for me, but that moment never seemed to arrive. In fact, I found myself growing more and more frustrated with Good Luck, Yukikaze as a novel the more that I read. If I hadn’t already had some investment in the story and characters from reading the previous novel, I’m not sure Good Luck, Yukikaze would have been something that I would have been interested in–at least as fiction. The problem was that, despite a few intense action scenes, very little actually happens in Good Luck, Yukikaze. The characters seem to spend most of their time talking in circles, over and over again, interrupting the flow of the narrative. I approached Good Luck, Yukikaze expecting a novel, not a philosophical treatise.

Even though Good Luck, Yukikaze can be a bit of a slog at times, and even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it as a fictional narrative, the tremendous ideas, concepts, psychologies, and philosophies that Kambayashi explores through the novel are undeniably fascinating and thought-provoking. Good Luck Yukikaze challenges the characters’ and readers’ understanding of the nature of reality and what it means to exist. In the novel, Kambayashi examines the often tumultuous relationship humanity has with the technology and it has created, and speculates on the direction that relationship is taking as humans struggle to maintain control and autonomy. Computers have become so incredibly advanced that the line between true consciousness and artificial intelligence is blurring. One of the central questions posed by Good Luck, Yukikaze is if it even matters if there is or isn’t a difference between the two, or if functionally it’s simply the next logical evolutionary step.

The Battle Royale Slam Book: Essays on the Cult Classic by Koushun Takami

May 11, 2014 by Ash Brown

Editor: Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington
Publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421565996
Released: April 2014

Battle Royale has recently seen something of a revival in North America in recent years. Koushun Takami’s controversial novel was originally published in Japan in 1999. Both the novel and its manga adaptation illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi first appeared in English in 2003. The novel was released again with a slightly revised translation and additional supplementary material in 2009 by Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint Haikasoru. (This tenth anniversary release was my introduction to Battle Royale.) However, it wasn’t until 2012 that the film version of Battle Royale and its sequel Battle Royale II: Requiem received an official release in the United States. And now, in 2014, we’re seeing the releases of a new English translation of Takami’s novel by Haikasoru, the recent Battle Royale: Angels’ Border manga illustrated by Mioko Ohnishi and Youhei Oguma, and The Battle Royale Slam Book: Essays on the Cult Classic by Koushun Takami, which is also notable for being Haikasoru’s first foray into nonfiction. Takami’s original novel left a huge impression on me, so I was very excited to read all of these new Battle Royale releases.

The Battle Royale Slam Book, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, collects sixteen essays (seventeen including the introduction by Mamatas) which examine various aspects of the entire Battle Royale franchise. The core of that franchise is of course Takami’s original novel, but The Battle Royale Slam Book also explores many of its manga and film adaptations as well. The contributors to the volume include award-winning writers, academics, fans, and many others from around the world–the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and even Japan itself are particularly well-represented. I was specifically excited to see an essay by Toh EnJoe included in the volume, but the rest of the lineup is great, too: Nadia Bulkin, Carrie Cuinn, Raechel Dumas, Isamu Fukui, Sam Hamm, Masao Higashi, Brian Keen, Gregory Lamberson, Kathleen Miller, Konstantine Paradias, Jason S. Ridler, Adam Roberts, John Skipp, Steven R. Stewart, and Douglas F. Warrick. All of their essays were written specifically for inclusion in The Battle Royale Slam Book.

The Battle Royale Slam Book includes several types of essays ranging from academic ruminations to literary and film criticisms to the authors’ more personal experiences with Battle Royale in all of its iterations. The topics of the individual contributions are also varied, though some recurring themes do emerge. Many of the essays focus on some of Battle Royale‘s most controversial aspects, such as extreme violence and the deaths of school-aged youth, gender portrayals and sexism, and so on. Other essays position Battle Royale within a greater context, exploring its place within and relationship to not only Japanese popular culture but Western popular culture as well. School literature, professional wrestling, teen films, and other similar subjects are all addressed. The volume also examines the historical context of Battle Royale and its themes. The Battle Royale Slam Book shows how the Battle Royale phenomena has been influenced by, uses, and challenges literary and genre conventions in addition to showing its impact and continuing influence on individual people.

Several assumptions are made with The Battle Royale Slam Book, primarily that the readers are adults already familiar with Battle Royale, have a basic understanding of the novel’s premise, or have been exposed to at least one of its adaptations. It’s also helpful but not absolutely necessary to have some grounding in literature and film, and especially with speculative fiction and horror. The Battle Royale Slam Book will probably appeal most to those who are already interested in or who have already experienced Battle Royale in some form. Though the contributors don’t hesitate to point out the flaws and challenges presented by the Battle Royale novel, manga, and films, it is very clear that they are all either fans or are fascinated by the material and the responses to it. There is criticism to be found, but in general the volume tends to take a positive approach. The Battle Royale Slam Book was written for people like me who want to learn more about Battle Royale, its influences, and impacts. I found The Battle Royale Slam Book to be utterly fascinating and would highly recommend the volume to similarly minded individuals.

Yukikaze

April 9, 2014 by Ash Brown

Author: Chōhei Kambayashi
Translator: Neil Nadelman
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421532554
Released: January 2010
Original release: 1984
Awards: Seiun Award

Chōhei Kambayashi is an award-winning, well-respected, and popular author of science fiction in Japan. His novel Yukikaze is one of his best known works and has even been adapted into a short anime series. It is also his first book to be translated and released in English. Originally published in Japan in 1984, Yukikaze would go on to win a Seiun Award in 1985. Kambayashi revisited and slightly revised the novel in 2002 in preparation for the volume’s sequel Good Luck, Yukikaze. Neil Nadelman’s translation of Yukikaze, published by Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint Haikasoru in 2010, is based on this 2002 edition. Haikasoru’s release of Yukikaze also includes two very interesting essays about the novel by Ran Ishidou and Ray Fuyuki. Haikasoru also released an English translation of Good Luck, Yukikaze. Kambayashi has written a third volume in the series, Unbroken Arrow, which has yet to be translated.

Rei Fukai is one of the best pilots that the Faery Air Force has, surviving numerous encounters with the JAM, an alien force threatening humanity’s very existence. It has been more than three decades since the JAM first appeared on Earth. They were quickly pushed back to the planet from where their invasion was launched, however the prolonged war against the JAM continues with no obvious way to secure a complete victory. Survival is Fukai’s primary order and goal. A member of an elite squadron associated with the Special Air Force, his mission is to collect and record massive amounts of data about the JAM and their tactical capabilities. He is to return with that information no matter what, even if that means leaving his comrades behind to die. Because of this, he and the others in his squadron have earned the reputation of being cold-hearted bastards. Outside of himself, the only thing that Fukai believes in, cares about, or trusts is the Yukikaze, the highly advanced fighter plane that he pilots.

Kambayashi addresses several themes in depth in Yukikaze: what humanity’s purpose is within the context of war, what it means to be human or inhuman, and perhaps most strikingly what the impact of the convergence of human intelligence and the technology it develops could be. Yukikaze is an engaging war story, with kinetic and hazardous air battles that have terrifying implications, but like all great science fiction the novel is also incredibly thought-provoking. The members of the Faery Air Force, and especially those in the Special Air Force, are primarily made up of criminals, those with anti-social tendencies, and other people who are unwanted or have no place back on Earth. They are treated more like expendable resources than they are like human beings. The war and the fighting is so far removed from those living on Earth that they are mostly oblivious to what is occurring on Faery. Protecting Earth is a thankless task for those engaged in the war, people who have very few ties to the planet left but who have no better options other than to fight.

Considering all of this, it isn’t that surprising that Fukai and some of the other pilots would prefer their planes to people. I’ll admit, as unsociable as Fukai can be, I did like the guy. It did take me a couple of chapters to really settle into Yukikaze, but by the end of the novel I was completely engaged. A large reason behind that was because of Fukai and his development as the novel progressed as well as the evolution of the Yukikaze. In the chaos of war, Fukai’s relationship to his fighter is one of the only stable things remaining in his life, but even that begins to change. The members of the Faery Air Force are often called inhuman and compared to machines. At the same time those machines are becoming more and more advanced, raising the question of whether humans are even necessary anymore. The war against the JAM that humanity is waging may not be the only battle of survival that it should be concerned about fighting. After an interesting but somewhat clunky beginning, I was actually quite impressed with the depth of Kambayashi’s ideas in Yukikaze. I look forward to reading its sequel.

The Future Is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan

July 8, 2012 by Ash Brown

Editor: Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington
Publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421542232
Released: May 2012

I have been impatiently waiting for The Future Is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, ever since the anthology was first announced. I already adore Viz Media’s Japanese speculative fiction imprint Haikasoru and will buy and read anything it publishes. However, I was particularly excited about The Future Is Japanese because it is Haikasoru’s first original publication. (I also hope that it isn’t the last.) I was thrilled when the book was finally released in 2012. The anthology collects thirteen stories from creators both East and West (primarily Japanese and American). All but two of the stories were being published for the first time. Just looking at the table of contents I was very pleased with what I saw. Most of the contributors to The Future Is Japanese are already award-winners in their own rights; those whose works with which I wasn’t already familiar I at least recognized by name. As an added bonus, the book’s cover illustration is by Yuko Shimizu, one of my favorite artists. The Future Is Japanese had a lot going for it from the very start.

After a foreword by Masumi Washington and an introduction by Nick Mamatas, The Future Is Japanese begins strongly with Ken Liu’s short story “Mono no Aware,” a meditation on impermanence wrapped in a science fiction tale of humanity’s survival at the edge of space. The next two stories were probably my least favorite in the collection although there were moments in each that I enjoyed tremendously. “The Sound of Breaking Up” by Felicity Savage starts as one story and ends up being an entirely different one. This frustrated me because I was more interested in the first. David Mole’s mecha tale “Chitai Heiki Koronbīn” ends too abruptly for my taste and seemed like it should be the introduction to a longer work. (Granted, one that I would like to read.) These are followed by “The Indifference Engine” by Project Itoh which explores war, hatred, and prejudice. Originally published in 2007, the story confirmed the fact that I want to read everything written by Itoh. The next story was one of my personal favorites in the anthology, “The Sea of Trees” by Rachel Swirsky, a haunting tale about death, ghosts, and letting go. Toh EnJoe’s story “Endoastronomy,” which follows next, has a philosophical and intellectual bent to it, something I enjoy about and have come to expect from his work.

The next selection, “In Plain Sight” by Pat Cadigan deals with the complications caused by artificial and augmented realities. The Future Is Japanese continues with “Golden Bread” by Issui Ogawa. I happen to be fond of Ogawa’s longer works and was not disappointed with his short story. Next is Catherynne M. Valente’s contribution, “One Breath, One Stroke” which is about yokai that live close to the human world. Written in a delightful but fragmented style, the work creates more of a mood rather than a cohesive story. Ekaterina Sedia’s near future and slightly melancholic tale “Whale Meat” follows. Next in the anthology is a selection from the extremely prolific Hideyuki Kikuchi. I actually preferred “Mountain People, Ocean People” over many of the other works of his that I have read. Following next is “Goddess of Mercy” by Bruce Sterling, one of the longer stories in the collection it is about the pirates and darkness that settle on Tsushima island after Japan is destroyed. The Future Is Japanese concludes with “Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds” by TOBI Hirotaka. Originally published in 2009, the story won a Seiun Award in 2010. A complex story featuring a digitization project that has unexpected consequences, “Autogenic Dreaming” particularly appealed to my information science background.

As with most short story collections, how much a reader will enjoy each individual work in The Future Is Japanese will depend on personal preferences. Although I wasn’t blown away by the anthology, personally I found The Future Is Japanese to be a very satisfying read. The short story can be a difficult form to master, but even the works that I found problematic had their strong points. The stories do all tend to be serious in tone, but the collection covers a nice range of speculative fiction from fantasy to science fiction to horror. The Future Is Japanese also has a good balance between Western and Japanese authors. Appropriately enough for the anthology’s theme, even the Western works show Japanese influence, whether stemming from the writers’ personal interests or from the creators having lived in or visited Japan. Overall, The Future Is Japanese is a solid anthology that was well worth the wait.

Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse

October 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

At some point in your travels through high school English, a teacher probably made you read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” a short story about a rural community that routinely sacrifices one its members to ensure a good harvest. I remember writing a paper about “The Lottery” my freshman year. Like many of my classmates, I critiqued the story’s dramatic aspects — the shocking twist, the ethics of the townspeople’s ritual — and neglected to say much about Jackson’s prose. Re-reading “The Lottery” as an adult, it’s obvious what I missed the first time around: Jackson’s singular ability to make the banal sinister through the selective presentation and repetition of seemingly inconsequential details.

Consider “The Summer People,” a short story from 1950. Jackson lavishes considerable attention on the title characters’ day-to-day activities such as buying groceries in town; one might reasonably infer it was a slice-of-life story about New Yorkers experiencing mild culture shock in backwoods New England. By the story’s end, however, it becomes clear why Jackson documented the Allisons’ routine in such detail; the townspeople have been observing the Allisons, viewing every gesture or action as a further violation of the unspoken agreement between residents and summer people that the out-of-towners go home by Labor Day. We don’t know what, exactly, happens to the Allisons for breaking the contract — Jackson leaves that to the readers’ imagination — but we’re left feeling deceived and unsettled, as if we ourselves had been the target of the year-rounders’ wrath.

It seems fitting, then, that Japanese horror novelist Otsu-ichi was nominated for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Award, as he has a similar flair for transforming ordinary situations into extraordinary ones. In “Yuko,” the second entry in Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse, for example, a young woman takes a job working for a childless couple, one of whom is bedridden. A small but noticeable change in their nightly dinner routine arouses her suspicion that something is amiss between her employers, setting in motion a chain of events that culminate in a scene of comic horror.

The title story, too, pivots on a few carefully chosen details, as two children conspire to hide the corpse of a playmate who fell to her death. Throughout the story, Otsu-ichi describes the children eating ice cream, a simple motif that seems, at first, to be offered as evidence of the children’s struggle to conceal their guilt by engaging in normal activities. In the final pages of the story, however, that seemingly benign habit is cast in an entirely different light, forcing us to reconsider everything we’d believed about one of the story’s secondary characters.

Only the third and final story of the collection, “Black Fairy Tale,” deviates from this pattern, instead offering a mixture of urban legend and B-movie horror in book form. It’s an ambitious story, with several interlaced threads, including a dark fable about a crow who befriends a blind girl, and a teenager who loses her eye and her memory in an accident, only to have them replaced with a murder victim’s. There’s also a subplot involving a serial killer who carries out ghastly experiments on people, transforming them into monsters and holding them captive in his basement. Though Otsu-ichi skillfully maneuvers among the various storylines, maintaining sufficient suspense throughout the story, “Black Fairy Tale” is a less rewarding read than “Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse” or “Yuko,” both of which rely more on psychological manipulation than cheap shock tactics to scare the reader; Otsu-ichi’s descriptions of the killer’s surgeries elicit a visceral, immediate response, to be sure, but prove less unsettling or memorable than the behavior of “Summer”‘s true villain.

Good horror operates on a deeper level as well, showing us how greed, hypocrisy, and conformity tear at the very fabric of society. I think that’s one of the reasons we continue to read Jackson’s work; stories like “The Lottery” and “The Summer People” offer a window into the conservative, conformist culture of the 1950s, that brief moment before the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, the Pill, and the Vietnam War radically altered the American landscape. Jackson’s characters live in terror of upsetting the status quo; their greatest fear is to be exposed as an outsider or an outlier of any kind.

The pressure to conform to parental and peer expectations — a frequent motif in contemporary Japanese comics, cinema, and literature — plays a similar role in Otsu-ichi’s “Black Fairy Tale.” Nami, its amnesiac heroine, is an obvious example. Before her accident, she was a model student, musician, and daughter, basking in others’ approbation; when a head injury robs her of the the ability to do well in school or play a Chopin ballad, her peers and parents begin to ostracize her, writing her off as a shy, inept loser. Throughout the story, she wrestles with her desire to reconcile her new and old personalities; only by embracing and acting on the memories left behind by her left eye’s previous owner — a loner and a college dropout — does she begin to appreciate the possibility of living the life she chooses, rather than the one her parents had planned for her.

Would Jackson have recognized the parallels between her work and Otsu-ichi’s? Aside from Otsu-ichi’s occasional detour into Clive Barker-esque excess, I’d say yes; Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse is a solidly crafted collection of psychological horror stories, the best of which prove as spooky and thought-provoking as “The Lottery” and “The Summer People,” not least for the way in which Otsu-ichi finds the uncanny in the everyday.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

SUMMER, FIREWORKS, AND MY CORPSE • BY OTSU-ICHI, TRANSLATED BY NATHAN COLLINS • VIZ (HAIKASORU) • 300 pp.

Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse

October 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 6 Comments

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

SUMMER, FIREWORKS, AND MY CORPSE • BY OTSU-ICHI, TRANSLATED BY NATHAN COLLINS • VIZ (HAIKASORU) • 300 pp.

Harmony

September 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint in 2009, with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror (e.g. Otsuichi’s ZOO) to teen-friendly fantasy (e.g. Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story and The Book of Heroes) to science fiction (e.g. Issui Ogawa’s The Next Continent and Hosume Nojia’s Usurper of the Sun). Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies — that is, countries that operate by rule of medicine, rather than rule of law — are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after nuclear holocaust destroyed North America and destabilized the international balance of power by flooding the Third World with an abundant supply of nuclear weapons. In the chaos that ensued, countries which successfully developed the medical technology to treat radiation sickness supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced nations descended into guerilla warfare. The new admedistrative powers transformed the World Health Organization (WHO) into a global peacekeeping force tasked with monitoring other nations’ ability to “ensure their populace a lifestyle that [is] sufficiently healthy and human.” The key to that lifestyle is WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps close watch over individuals’ health, guiding them away from potentially harmful choices — fatty food, alcohol, cigarettes, distressing literature — repairing cellular damage, and providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s behavior and current medical condition.

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Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior. Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp; as Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal.

It’s a shame these third-act discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. For most of the book, Itoh manages to dramatize the conflict between public and private without speechifying or shortcuts, using Tuan’s role as a WHO agent to explore the nature of admedistrative rule. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Harmony

September 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In 2009, VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror to teen-friendly fantasy and science fiction. Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after a nuclear holocaust destroys North America. Countries which successfully developed a cure for radiation sickness have supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced societies have descended into a perpetual state of guerilla warfare. Keeping the peace is the World Health Organization (WHO), which is tasked with monitoring world’s well-being. Their mission sounds benign, but WHO’s “peacekeeping” efforts smack of Big Brother: they use WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps tabs on what people eat, do, and say while providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s medical condition.

Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp. As Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal. It’s a shame these discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

All You Need Is Kill

August 9, 2010 by Ash Brown

Author: Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Translator: Alexander O. Smith
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421527611
Released: July 2009
Original release: 2004

I really don’t remember exactly when and where I first heard about Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s All You Need Is Kill but after I did it seemed to keep popping up everywhere I looked. It was even picked up by Warner Brothers to make into a live-action film. All You Need Is Kill was originally published in Japan as a light novel in 2004. The English edition, translated by Alexander O. Smith, was one of the very first books to be released by Viz Media’s Haikasoru imprint in 2009. I haven’ read much military science fiction but All You Need Is Kill certainly is that, complete with alien intelligence and battle suits. What particularly caught my interest in the novel was that the main character, Keiji Kiriya, dies during his first battle only to wake up in his bunk thirty hours before over and over again.

The battle on Kotoiushi Island would be pivotal in humanity’s war with the Mimics. If lost, the rest of Japan would follow, along with the technology that made it possible to fight against the constantly evolving invading force. Keiji is a Jacket jockey in the United Defense Force’s 301st Armored Infantry Division which was sent to reinforce the island. He doesn’t even make it through his first battle. Or his second. Or his third. Somehow stuck in a time-loop he is forced to live and die in the same battle again and again. The only thing he can do is learn to fight a little better and hope to survive a little longer each time. Rita Vrataski, member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, has killed more Mimics than any other person in the world. Known as the Full Metal Bitch, not that anyone would call her that to her face, she is formidable, efficient, and scary as hell on the battlefield. She is also one of the last hopes remaining to end the war and may be the only person who can help Keiji escape his fate.

Although All You Need Is Kill is primarily entertainment and not overly serious, Sakurazaka still works in some environmental, technological, and social commentary. At least for me, the story also had a convincing emotional impact. Repeatedly living through the horrors of war, your own death, and the death of your friends and those around you changes a person and Sakurazaka captures this quite well. I like Keiji a lot and was most interested in his story, told in the first person. The third quarter of the book, written in the third person, focuses on Rita and the background of the war with the Mimics. While interesting and certainly important, especially in understanding Rita and her history, I still looked forward to getting back to Keiji. Which is not to say that I didn’t like Rita, because I did. I liked most of the secondary characters as well; Keiji’s bunk-mate and veteran Yonabaru in particular amused me as much as he tended to annoy others in his platoon. I also appreciated the fact that not everyone was assumed to be straight (although pretty much all of them were.)

The translation Smith has done for All You Need Is Kill is great–it’s straightforward with a good flow that hits hard and fast. There is also a nice use of repeated phrases to emphasize the time-loop that Keiji’s stuck in. The original light novel was illustrated by Yoshitoshi ABe and it’s a pity that none of his art was included in the Haikasoru edition beyond the cover–I really would have liked to have seen more of his work. I enjoyed All You Need Is Kill even more than I was expecting to and was impressed by how much action and story Sakurazaka was able to fit into such a relatively short work (it comes in at just under 200 pages.) I’m really looking forward to picking up his only other work currently available in English, also released through Haikasoru, Slum Online.