We here at wheniwasoneandtwenty do not wish to gloat, but we are having a very productive Sunday. The dishes are done, the bed is made, and the laundry is rushing around in bubbly circles. Moreover, the moment we lifted our collective head from the pillow this morning the theme and form of our next poetic project (the one to follow Takaaki) instantly coalesced in our collective mind: it will be modeled on Dante's Inferno. It will be a terza rima view of Hell (the Family Circle) from the point of view of a bewildered child. The tentative title is The Vent. More about that in March.
While we are waiting for the laundry to finish, We thought we would pause to talk a bit about what is currently on the wheniwasoneandtwenty bookshelf, a mysterious place in the minds of many of our readers.
Today we are reading Botchan, by Natsume Soseki, perhaps our favorite Japanese author. Botchan is a blunt, belligerent, but extremely decent and good-hearted lad from Tokyo. After college, this poor young physicist travels to a small seaside castle town in Shikoku (th
e smallest island the main Japanese archipelago) to teach mathematics to boys. The essential story which plays out in the life of Botchan (a name which may be translated as 'Young Master') is a microcosm of the internal tensions dividing rapidly modernizing Meiji from ancient Japan. The question posed by the book: how can a society modernize without losing its essential character? How can an individual? And what is lost in the translation? In some ways, the struggle for Botchan's heart reminds us of our own internal struggle, but in reverse: as a boy from fly-over country tries to adapt to the insular intellectual life of New York.
Alas, as anyone knows who has tried to make the evolutionary leap from laughing lemur to learned lounge-lizard, the price of admission to the smart-set is high. However, the rewards for the ambitious courtier can be great. Still, to our minds at least, there seems to be only so much of one's person which one can be expected to repudiate, so much conformity of thought one can adopt without erasing one's existence entirely.
More than anyone else, it is important to be at home with one's self--not comfortable, we wish to emphasize, but at home: there is a difference. Botchan recognizes that he is a bit thick-headed, but he tries not to be such a dunce. This is what distinguishes him from his preposterously pretentious peers. I like that. One should always have work to do.
Now, back to the laundry.
No poetry today. I have been spending every waking moment studying Japanese, preparing for my trip to Tokyo later on this month. When I went to Japan last year, I couldn't speak a word and I felt completely lost.
I have determined that this time will be different. I will not have so much trouble with what is on the menu. I would like to have a conversation with Takaaki's friends over sashimi. I want to make sure I can order enough katsu. I want to book train tickets to Hakone. I think it would be nice to be able to say more than "please" and "thank you"—although you can get pretty far in Tokyo, I have noticed, if you can deploy onegaishimasu and domo arigatou with the right amount of dexterity. These are magic words in Japan. They open doors—shoji. Even so, Magic is a difficult art to practice, in any language. But I think it may be hardest to master in Japanese. There are three 'alphabets' in Japanese: the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, and kanji—the imported Chinese characters adapted for Japanese use in the Middle Ages. Right now, I can read my blue shampoo bottle—that part which says shampoo, anyway, in katakana— and I can understand snatches of lyrics in a few Japanese songs. I watch at least one hour of Bleach a day, and I am getting better at distinguishing phrases. But it is hard. I am more or less at the hiragana and katakana stages of development. This would probably place my mental age at about 4 or 5. I can count to 13 in Kanji—on very good day.
...
Still, I don't give up. Japanese literature has always been
something of a hobby with me. Mishima Yukio was my introduction to that. The book was Confessions of a Mask, I purchased it in June 9th, 1992, at 3:43 pm, at Glad Day Bookstore, on Boylston St, in Boston. Very often I use receipts for bookmarks, and the receipt remains with the book as long as I own it. It is a very convenient technique for marking your place in Time, and for constructing a mental history of yourself, should you ever be asked to do so by the Authorities.
I think my eye was initially drawn to Mishima's Confessions for one very particular, but very superficial reason: the torso featured on the cover—a samurai version of the St. Sebastian motif.
We all know what happened to poor St. Sebastian, and what Mishima did to himself, but I am less sure what happened to me when I read that book fifteen years ago. I think it was then that something about Japan first began stirring in my imagination.
It can take years for the effect of words to sink into your imagination. And with some authors—most authors—the words never do. Most words are dropped again as soon as they are picked up off the page. You hear something beautiful you hadn't noticed before—perhaps the furnace ticking on— and you forget where you were in the last paragraph. At least, that is the case with me.
I think Mishima more than Godzilla was my introduction to Japan. And after Mishima, I moved on into the mysterious world of Akutagawa, Murakami, Lady Murasaki, and others. 
Then I met Takaaki.
My favorite Japanese author is probably Soseki Natsume. There is something very funny and very dark about this man's sense of humor, something sinister. There are times that I feel like his stories were specifically crafted to entertain me, which is preposterous.
Kokoro is Soseki's most profound work, I think, and Botchan his most congenial, but I think my personal favorite is I Am A Cat. Half Tristram Shandy, and half I, Claudius, and altogether Japanese, it presents a cat's eye view of the world, from the birth of one lonely kitten until his untimely death.
Don't get me wrong. I do not enjoy I Am A Cat because I especially enjoy the company of cats. I am not really a cat person. In fact, I think my relationship with felines bears an
eerie resemblance to my relationship with men—Mankind, I mean. I am allergic Him as a collective presence, but I intensely love individuals.
That must be why we get along so well, I think.
