Arcade Mania! The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers by Brian Ashcroft (Kodansha)

I grew up in the late seventies and early eighties and one of my favorite pastimes was playing video games at an arcade. I remember the first time my friend and I saw our first video game - “Pong” at a neighborhood pizza restaurant. Although a very simple game, we must have played that game for over an hour. When I was a university student at the University of Washington, I worked part-time at a place called the College Inn Cafe and located diagonally from the cafe was a 24-hour video arcade called [Arnold’s] which I also frequented. However, with the advent of home systems, the video arcade soon became a thing of the past. 

Imagine my surprise when I spent the summer of 1980 in Japan and discovered there were video arcade cafes. These shops didn’t have arcade games where you stood and played. They were built into the tables themselves. You could order coffee or soda, have a sandwich and while eating and drinking, you could play video games at the table. I thought that was so cool. Another fad was also just beginning in Japan at that time. Something called karaoke. Who knew then that that would become a worldwide phenomena.

In 1995, I moved to Japan and wasn’t surprised to not find any video cafes but taking its place were game centers. These were not one building video arcades like there were in the States but some of them could be two, three, or even four story tall buildings filled with a whole range of games to play.

Now Brian Ashcroft did his own research and wrote the book Arcade Mania : The Turbo-Charged World of Japan’s Game Centers. Turbo-charged might be an understatement. Ashcroft’s detailed account of the rise and popularity of the Japanese game centers will make you want to experience the sensation yourself. Unlike the pachinko parlors with its noise and smoky atmosphere, the game centers in Japan are more family-friendly. 

The game centers in Japan are well-organized. if it’s a multi-story building, on the first floor you would usually find an assortment of crane games. In Japan, these crane games are called “UFO Catchers”, although the term has been discontinued sometime in the mid-2000s. What draws people to these games are the different types of prizes they could get. Many of the prizes are limited editions of popular characters. Other prizes may include snack foods. A national crane game championship is held every year as well. 

In the nineties, another craze started at the game center. Sticker picture machines. In 1995, a twenty-nine year old woman named Miho Sasaki, who was working for a Japanese arcade game developer called Atlus saw that home-video editing machines could superimpose titles on pictures and print them out. This gave her an idea. She recalled “her own love of cute stickers when she was younger and how she’d put them all over her notebooks”. Her idea was to mix girls’ love of stickers and their love of taking pictures of themselves. Blending them together, she thought up the idea of the sticker pictures, but her bosses initially rejected her idea.

At the time, fighting games were all the rage at game centers and her bosses were salarymen in suits and they thought the risk was too large and that a sticker picture machine in a game center would look out of place. However, three months later when Atlus had a new boss, Naoya Harano, he saw the potential of such a concept and thus the Print Club was born. Or as they say in Japan puri kura and by 1996, puri kura was all the rage, especially among high school girls. 

The crane games and sticker picture machines are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Japan’s game centers. Ashcroft fills in the reader with the introduction of shooting games, rhythm games, fighting games, and games of chance. He further explores the game center world by talking about dedicated cabinets - “games that are housed in a specific casing and are built especially for the arcade experience”. 

It's been nearly thirty years since the introduction of the sticker picture machines but they are still as popular as ever. Crane games continue to draw in children and adults alike. Now, there are game centers full of retro games that you can still play. These places appeal to adults who find them nostalgic and remind them of their childhood. For kids, there are now card-based games - “a mash-up of playing arcade games and collecting cards”. 

The video arcade may be a dinosaur of the past in the U.S. but the game centers in Japan are still thriving and will probably be here to stay for another twenty or thirty years. If you ever make it to Japan, aside from seeing temples and shrines, you should set foot in a game center to see what it’s all about. ~Ernie Hoyt

Japan : The Toothless Tiger by Declan Hayes (Tuttle)

Currently, with the weakness of the yen against the dollar and with North Korea continuing to test their missiles over Japanese terrain, Japan’s future is looking pretty bleak. Back at the beginning of the 21st century, author Declan Hayes had already made a number of predictions about Japan’s future. I decided to read his book Japan : The Toothless Tiger, which was originally published in 2001 to see if any of his predictions had come to fruition. 

Now that it is already 2024, you would think a lot of the material would be dated but what he said back in 2001 may still hold true today. “There is a specter haunting Japan and Asia: the specter of Chinese communism”. Hayes mentons two main points concerning his argument. “The overt, military one that her vast defense forces pose and the covert diplomatic one undermining America’s key alliance with Japan”. 

Hayes argues that it is in Japan’s best interest to rearm itself in order to defend its territories. While in theory, it may sound reasonable but it goes against the principles of Japan’s constitution. Throughout the book, Hayes says that Japan needs to build up its military. He argues under the assumption that the U.S. 7th Fleet which is headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan, will eventually sail home to Hawaii and without the protection of the U.S. Japan would easily fall into the hands of China. However, his assumption is not supported by any facts.

China has always been a threat to Asia and the world at large. Hayes says once the 7th Fleet leaves the vicinity, “China will eventually incorporate Taiwan and the islands of the South China Sea into her vast kingdom”. He further argues, “China’s resulting hegemony will put severe strain on the weakest link in America’s Asia defense strategy - Japan, the toothless tiger”. 

Hayes claims that because Japan has become a “toothless tiger”, North Korea often tests its missiles which enter Japanese terrirtory and China’s navy often enters Japan’s waters without compunction and because Japan is a toothless tiger that country can only “toothlessly grin and bear it and hope that things do not get worse”. 

Hayes' main focus seems to be the threat of China but he says it isn’t only China that Japan needs to be wary of. Japan must also build better relations with its neighbor South Korea. Japan’s history of military abuse in both China and South Korea cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Hayes also mentions that until the current government of Japan officially recognizes its crimes committed during the second world war, the relationship between the nations will continue to stand on thin ice. 

His suggestion is a very slippery slope. Although it was the Occupied Forces that wrote up the Japanese constituion, it emphatically states that Japan renounces war and will not build up its military might so that it would repeat history. Japan is the only country in the world to be attacked by two atomic bombs and the country saw what devestation it could cause, not to mention its after effects of the radiation fallout. 

It is now 2024 and the U.S. Fleet has not retired to Hawaii. Japan has also renewed its alliance with the U.S. that will continue to protect Japan and Asia and will also curb the threat that China poses. The U.S. government has also officially announced to China that if it tries to take Taiwan by force, the U.S. will protect Taiwan and will attack China in its defense.

The threat of a world dominating China continues, as does the threat of North Korea. However, to insist that Japan rearm itself and build up its military goes against everything the Japanese government stands for. As long as relations between Japan and the U.S. continue, Japan will continue to be a toothless tiger but one that has power and assertive ally on its side. ~Ernie Hoyt

Searching for Billie by Ian Gill (Blacksmith Books)

Louise Mary Newman, Marylou Newman,  Louise Gill, Billie Lee—with so many different personas for one woman, no wonder her son found it a challenge to find who she really was. Since his mother handed Ian Gill in his infancy to a baby nurse in Shanghai, proclaiming “That was the end of my mothering days,” the eventual reunion between Billie and Ian was undoubtedly a bit difficult for both.

The enigmatic and dazzling figure whom Ian struggled to understand began life in true fairy tale fashion. A stranger left her at the front door of an Englishman and his Chinese wife, a couple living in Changsha. Pretty and smart, Louise Mary, called Mary Lou throughout her girlhood, was destined for great things, her father told her, right up until the moment that he left his family for another that he had established

At sixteen, in a household that was now close to destitution, Mary Lou left her expensive school in Shanghai that her mother could no longer afford and began a career that would eventually take her to the greatness her father had predicted. In time the infant of unknown parentage would be given an MBE by Queen Elizabeth, becoming a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Gill painstakingly recreates his mother’s eighty-nine years of life in almost agonizing detail. Beginning with her father’s parents emigration from England to Hong Kong and following the bureaucratic career of Billie’s adoptive father far more diligently than is necessary, at last he begins to unfold the meteoric rise of his mother’s colorful life. A woman who was friends with Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s closest adviser, the American adventuress Emily Hahn, and the Chinese author Lin Yutang, Billie’s brilliance caused her to rise from secretary to a position of international importance and kept her alive through imprisonment in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation of that city.

Gill’s family history flares into a fascinating narrative when he describes the circumstances that led to his birth. In the harsh conditions of Hong Kong’s Stanley prison camp, Billie, now the wife of a British soldier, went through a living hell when her young son died. As she began to recover, she was certain her mental health depended on having another child.

An affair with a handsome journalist brought about a pregnancy. Billie, despite severe malnutrition, carried her baby to full term, throughout her time at Stanley, onto a ship that would carry her to New Zealand after the Japanese surrender, and into a Wellington hospital. There she gave birth to the baby she had longed for, an event she never would have survived if she had still been within the confines of the prison camp.

Billie’s astounding luck pervaded her entire life and coupled with her brains, brought her to an impressive career at the United Nations. However intimate relationships weren’t her specialty. Although she had several long and devoted love affairs, none of them were permanent. And although Ian was a byproduct of her stunning ambition and determination, their bond only becomes close after Billie’s son grows to adulthood.

Searching for Billie is a book that demands persistence. It sinks under unnecessary details and lingers far too long upon family members who are extraneous. However through the slog, Billie shines like a submerged diamond, irresistible and worth all the effort it takes to rediscover her life.~Janet Brown

Under the Naga Tail by Mae Bunseng Taing, with James Taing (Greenleaf Book Group Press)

Mae is eleven when Apollo 11 puts men on the moon, a feat that captures his imagination and makes him feel he’s living in a new era when anything is possible—even for a boy living in rural Cambodia. But as he nears the end of his adolescence, another era closes in upon him, his family,  and his country, one that begins with Year Zero.

Cambodia has been in turmoil for several years, with “freedom fighters” battling the puppet government of the U.S.-backed Lon Nol. Popular opinion sides with the insurgents because they purportedly will restore King Sihanouk to his throne. Mae’s father is a firm believer in this theory, even when a woman emerges from the jungle, fleeing in terror for the nearby Thai border. 

“Monsters…barbaric monsters…that’s what they are,” she tells Mae’s family as she recounts the atrocities committed by the rebel forces, “You must leave.” But Mae’s father is positive that “the freedom fighters were defending the honor of the king.” He had already fled one country, leaving China to find peace and prosperity in Cambodia, and he was certain it was unnecessary to do this again. He and his eight children are staying put, even though it’s a short journey from their home to Thailand.

Within the first twenty pages of Under the Naga Tail, his decision becomes engulfed in horror that becomes impossibly and dreadfully more intense with every passing chapter. Although the rebel forces prevail and are greeted with cheers and hope, they immediately close the border and kill three “Thai thieves” in a public execution that the entire community is forced to watch. Then they evacuate the area, claiming it’s a temporary measure to avoid American bombs. Mae and his family would never go back to their former home and many more wouldn’t live to return to what once belonged to them.

The savagery that engulfs Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 is unmitigated by liberating troops from Vietnam who have no room for compassion. Across the border, where Mae and his family seek the safety of Thailand after barely surviving four years of starvation and forced labor, there’s no sanctuary waiting for them. According to C.I.A. reports, forty-two thousand Cambodians were removed from refugee camps by Thai troops and were taken to the sacred mountain of Preah Vihear. From there they were forced to climb down the other side of the mountain, back into Cambodia. Ten thousand of them were never seen again.

Scant mercy is given to the Cambodians who are displaced and subjected in the years between 1975 and 1979—not offered by the liberators nor by the country that could shelter them. The atrocities of the Pol Pot Time and the cruelties of its aftermath are revealed in excruciating detail, disclosed as Mae and his family live them. His account is appalling and soul-wrenching and guaranteed to enter your dreams.

The miracle of his survival, with almost all of his family, only occurred because of strength and courage that goes beyond all human limits. If this book is painfully difficult to read, only imagine the agony that came as a son wrote the words his father used to resurrect a hell on earth for the world to see and remember. Under the Naga Tail shows the bare bones of history that are all too often veiled in statistics and sanitized by bureaucratic reports. It turns readers into witnesses who just might help to change present-day crimes against humanity.~Janet Brown

Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey's 1920s Hong Kong, Macau and Canton Sojourns (Blacksmith Books)

Before Fu Manchu, the Dragon Lady, the Yellow Peril, and the benign cliche of Charlie Chan, there was Harry Hervey. A young prodigy who published his first piece of pulp fiction when he was sixteen and whose stories were frequently found in Black Mask magazine after his early debut, Hervey published his first novel at the age of 22. Caravans by Night: A Romance of India was followed a year later by The Black Parrot: A Tale of the Golden Chersonese and apparently gave Hervey a financial windfall that took him to the part of the world that he had profitably imagined.

In 1923, Hervey voyages to Hong Kong where he immediately begins his search for corners of that city that would be “rich in the atmosphere of Cathay.” Fortunately for him, he has a local contact, a wealthy, cultured Hong Kong resident whom he had met in New York. Chang Yuan becomes Hervey’s guide and mentor, giving him an introduction to “a race that had always seemed inscrutable to me.” Together the two explore the “nauseous effluvia” and “fetid gloom” of Chinese opera theaters, the “gorgeous wickedness” of Macau’s gambling halls, and make the acquaintance of the “queer, impassive little dolls” who sing in restaurants as wealthy gentlemen have their suppers. “It was inevitable,” Hervey says, “that we should visit an opium house,” a place he finds “as colorless as naked lust.”

In between these forays into the parts of Hong Kong that Hervey finds “very wicked and very pleasant,” Chang Yuan delivers interminable lectures on Chinese history and politics. These are so meticulously recorded that it becomes impossible to believe they’re not the puerile thoughts of Hervey himself. This theory is almost confirmed when Hervey describes Chang as “uncommunicative,” which would preclude his monologues that take up many of the pages in his Hong Kong chapters.

Without Chang Yuan’s companionship, Hervey seems daunted by Canton, which he describes as “too stupendous and too indefinite to be sheathed in words.” He certainly doesn’t explore it with the enthralled energy shown by Constance Gordon-Cumming, forty-four years earlier. However he has a focus for this visit. Fascinated by Sun Yat Sen from childhood, he manages to gain an audience with his hero, whom he terms the Doctor of Canton, a man whose “personality submerged words.” The words recorded by Hervey speak of the threats posed by Europe and Japan and of the “militarists of the North (who) wish to Prussianize China.” The interview ends with Sun Yat Sen declaring the necessities of having only one currency and one language shared by all Chinese, which Hervey later dismisses as “splendid dreams.”

This reprint of two chapters from Hervey’s Where Strange Gods Call: Pages Out of the East seems a peculiar choice for Blacksmith Book’s new series, China Revisited. Hervey’s writing can barely qualify as travel writing, steeped as it is in his fictional fantasies and thinly veiled racism. “How pleasant I was (sic) to see soldiers who were not yellow,” he gushes when passing a group of British troopers and Chang Yuan is described as “astonishingly well educated…faintly grandiose.” Not even his childhood idol escapes the snobbery of this high school-educated product of Texas, who charitably reports Sun Yat Sen’s perfect enunciation “was not surprising, as he is a college graduate.” It escapes Hervey that even the sing-song girl who entertained him with a song in Pidgin English is bilingual, which he himself, in true American fashion, probably is not.

Perhaps when all of the choices for this series of attractive little books are published, Harry Hervey, who later became a Hollywood screenwriter largely because of his presumed knowledge of Asia, will take his place among them without making readers wondering why. Let’s hope so.~Janet Brown

Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year 1878-1879 by Constance Gordon-Cumming (Blacksmith Books)

Constance Gordon-Cumming was in her fifties when she first came to Hong Kong on Christmas Day in 1878 but her reactions to this city, and later to Canton, had the enthusiasm of a young girl who had just left home for the first time.

This was far from the case. Gordon-Cumming had been a devoted traveler for twenty years, making her first overseas voyage when she entered her thirties and sailed to visit her sister in India. From there she had gone to Ceylon, Fiji, New Zealand, and Japan before she had set her sights upon China. Although at this point she had seen enough of the world to view it with a jaded vision, this wasn’t her style. An artist who had the goal of ending “never a day without at least one careful-colored sketch,” she looked at the world with hungry eyes that took note of everything she saw.

Gordon-Cumming fell in love with Hong Kong’s “steep streets of stairs” that led past “luxurious houses encircled by “camellias and roses and scarlet poinsettias.” Bamboo groves and banyan trees, the intertwining of the city’s Chinese and Portuguese areas, the piercing blue water of the surrounding harbor—”Only think what a paradise for an artist!”

Paradise went up in flames that night when Christmas festivities were interrupted by an act of arson that threatened to consume the city. Perched above the conflagration in a Mid-Level home, Gordon-Cumming watched the fire as it destroyed Chinatown and advanced upon the affluent homes of Hong Kong’s expatriates. Ten acres of the city were devastated with 400 houses gone in a single night, an unimaginable spectacle with “a horrible sort of attraction…so awful and yet so wonderfully beautiful.”

By New Year’s Day, Hong Kong’s “social treadmill” had resumed and by January 9th a short voyage takes Gordon-Cumming to Canton. There she’s met by a “resplendent palanquin” that was fit for a mandarin but lay in wait to take her to her hostess on the Western enclave of Shamian Island. Delighted by the English social life that held sway in this community, she refuses to succumb to its charms that keeps many foreign residents of Shamian from going into the heart of Canton.

Instead Gordon-Cumming submerses herself in the city’s shops and markets, on streets with names that are “touchingly allegorical”—The Street of Refreshing Breezes, The Street of One Thousand Grandsons. She’s overwhelmed by the commerce that she finds there—flowering branches for Chinese New Year, oranges that have been peeled because the peels, used for medicine, are more valuable than the fruit, ivory carvers, tallow-chandlers, vendors that sell drinking water next to porters that transport raw sewage. (Tea drinking is the pervasive custom because the water for it has been boiled, she observes.)

From there she is taken to Canton’s riverine world where a separate city exists. Families live in domestic comfort on boats, with order preserved by “water police” who are notoriously corrupt. Crafts that hold barbershops and medical clinics serve this community, along with market boats and river-borne kitchens. Floating biers carry corpses to their final destination while other vessels hold leper colonies. Gordon-Cumming, with aplomb befitting the daughter of a British baronet, finds her way to the “flower boats” that she euphemistically describes as places where dinner parties are attended by wealthy citizens who are entertained by “singing-women.”

From Canton she travels to Macau, a place she finds “most fascinating” but so “essentially un-Chinese that I have decided to omit the letters referring to it.” This decision does quite a bit to illuminate Gordon-Cumming’s character and helps to explain the decision that ended her life of travel. A year after her time in Canton, she remained aboard a ship that evacuated its passengers when it ran aground. Refusing to leave the watercolors she had painted on the voyage, she stayed with the captain until the two of them were finally brought to safety.

Did her explorations come to an end because she was unnerved by this disaster or was she blacklisted by shipping companies because she refused to take to the lifeboats when that command was given? Somehow I doubt that this conclusion to her travels was Gordon-Cumming’s idea and I’m sure she fumed over it for the rest of her life.~Janet Brown

Doraemon : Gadget Cat from the Future (Selection 6) by Fujiko F. Fujio (Shogakukan)

If you love Japanese anime or have lived in Japan, then you would be familiar with the blue robot cat named Doraemon and you would know the robot cat’s most famous gadget is its dokodemo door or “4 D (fourth dimension) pocket”. The manga was first serialized in 1969. The chapters were then collected in forty-five tankobon volumes, tankobon being a Japanese word now used in English to refer to cartoons collected in one volume from the weekly and monthly manga magazines. 

The manga was adapted into an anime three times. The first time in 1973, then again in 1979, and finally in 2005. There are over forty anime films as well including two computer generated full-length features as well. The merchandise spawned from the manga and anime series is still a multi-billion industry that continues to appeal to children and adults alike. 

I did not realize at first that Doraemon : Gadget Cat from the Future was part of a series published by Shogakukan English Comics. I would have started with the first volume but as these stories are not collected in chronological order, it doesn’t matter which volume to start with. Also available in English are ten volumes of the story originally published by Tento Mushi books which includes the Japanese text outside the picture frames. The Tento Mushi series follows the same order as the Japanese manga. 

There’s a bit of history concerning Doraemon as well. As mentioned, Doraemon is a robot gadget cat from the future and was born on September 3, 2112. Hard core Doraemon fans will know that the blue robot cat was originally yellow and also had ears even though the backstory was written long after the manga debuted. 

In the storyline as Doraemon was napping, a mouse nibbled off his ears. When Doraemon saw himself in the mirror, he turned blue from the shock. As to why Doraemon travels back in time from the future? It was to help Nobita, a ten-year-old Japanese school boy who at heart is a good boy but is very lazy, gets bad grades at school and is terrible at sports. His future grandchild, Sewashi Nobi, sends the cat to take care of Nobita so future generations will have a better life. 

Surrounding Nobita are his classmates Shizuka, the main female character and also the love interest of Nobita. Gian, a big bully who often steals toys or other items from Nobita and his friends. He often gets his own comeuppance for his actions though. Then there is Suneo, a spoiled rich boy who likes to show off how rich he and his family are. 

In this collection of Doraemon stories, Nobita is once again bullied by Gian who steals his ice cream cone, gives it a lick, then says Nobita can have it back. But as it was licked by Gian, Nobita doesn’t want it. He cries to Doraemon to do something about it. 

In another episode, Suneo brags that his family is going to ride on a steam locomotive. When Nobita finds a ticket for the Milky Way Express that Doraemon drops. Nobita invites his friends who at first don’t believe him, but they all get into a little trouble when they discover there is no way to get back home.

There are a total of fifteen stories in this collection and its main aim is to help Japanese learners of English by providing them with a one point English lesson. Doraemon remains as popular today as it was after its debut and there is even a Fuji F. Fujio museum in Kawasaki where you can see Doraemon’s development along with other works by the manga artist. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Dragon's Pearl by Sirin Phathanothai (Simon & Schuster)

In 1956, as the Cold War took on lethal proportions, Thai politician Sang Phathanothai sent two of his children to China. This was a clandestine and potentially dangerous move for everyone concerned, one that was inspired by the ancient custom of tribute paid by one nation to a greater power. Phathanothai saw the Korean War as a Chinese victory against the United States and although Thailand had fought as a US ally in that war, he felt it was essential to establish ties with the People’s Republic. In the sort of byzantine politics that Thailand specializes in, he convinced Thailand’s prime minister that if by giving his children to China under extreme secrecy, an act that would go against US interests if it were ever disclosed, he would create an indissoluble bridge between the two countries.

When they leave for China, Warnwai is a twelve-year-old boy and his sister Sirin is only eight. Wai is old enough to carry the responsibility that he takes on when he is designated as a representative of Thailand’s Prime Minister, a task that gives him a connection to his homeland and fosters his ability to keep careful records of his meetings with Chinese officials. Sirin, an indulged and pretty little girl, has no such weight placed upon her. For her this is a bizarre vacation in a country where she has no maids to wait upon her and where the house they were to live in compares sadly with their Thai home that had twenty rooms on three floors and four gardeners to tend a profusion of orchids.

The two children are placed under the guardianship of Zhou Enlai, China’s premier who’s second only to Mao Zedong, a decision that Wai understands and records as fully as he’s able in careful notes and a daily journal. Sirin quickly succumbs to Zhou’s legendary charm and swiftly begins to think of him and his wife as her new parents. Equally delightful and much more accessible is Liao Chengzhi, a high-ranking official whose father was American-born and who has an informality that brightens Sirin’s new life.

Although she lacks the diplomatic skills that her brother had been schooled in, Sirin learned early in life that to gain the attention she wanted, she needed to be attentive as well as beguiling. By the time she went to China, she had absorbed a rudimentary political understanding that she brings to bear in conversations with Zhou and Liao. But while Wai absorbs these conversations as an observer, Sirin takes them to heart. The advice she receives from her Chinese “fathers” lets her adjust to the sacrifices of The Great Leap Forward and the precursor to the Cultural Revolution that flourishes briefly in 1957. When she learns that her father has been arrested in Thailand, she clings even more tightly to the relationships she’s forged with the men who are now her protectors.

Their Chinese lives aren’t easy to relinquish because of the secretive nature that has pervaded them from the beginning. in 1967 Mao’s wife Jiang Ching begins to strengthen her power by nurturing the seeds of the Cultural Revolution. Her Red Guards ransack Liao’s home and issue thinly veiled threats against Zhao. It’s the wrong time for Sang Phathanothai to come to China at last, bearing a conciliatory message from the US government. His children know the danger this action carries. Their father does not. When he makes the message public and then departs, he leaves Wai and Surin unprotected, their contact with Zhou Enlai cut off.

Wai defends his father and is expelled from China. Surin, alone and defenseless, says “Wai’s world was not disintegrating. Mine was.” Officials tell her “You have to choose your own destiny. Denounce your brother.”

To survive in a country that is going mad, Surin publicly denounces her family on a radio broadcast, an action that does little to soften her life in the years to come. Her life is caught in the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, where her brains and charm just barely keep her safe.

Her story is a devastating account of a time that China has done its best to erase from its history, an era that has inescapably shaped Surin’s life. Despite an escape that is close to miraculous, she has never been able to leave China completely, a country that is more her home than the one she was born in. The Dragon’s Pearl, told with the acumen and objectivity that kept her alive in a perilous time, is a balanced look at a country few understand and many fear.~Janet Brown

Here After by Amy Lin (Zibby Books)

When her husband goes off on a morning run, Amy Lin tells him, “Don’t go too hard. Love you.” Those are the last words she will ever say to him. An hour or so later, Kurtis Nakayama’s body is found on a trail, dead before he hit the ground. A prolonged autopsy finds no reason for his death.

Kurtis is 32. Amy is 31. They’ve been married for less than two years. They’ve been in love for seven. With his death, Amy “falls out of time.” Ten days afterward, she’s diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis with clots in one leg, her abdomen, and a lung. If she dies, she wonders, will Kurtis be waiting for her? She lives to cremate her husband and begins to wrestle with the longing to die herself.

When they first met, Amy told Kurtis she was a substitute teacher. He contradicted her after he found a blog she had kept in the past. “Why did you say that? You’re a writer.”

Writing emerges again as she enters a life without Kurtis. With scalding honesty she narrates the account of what it is to be a widow when the man with whom she planned a future is dead. Grief, she discovers, is an unexplored emotion in modern Western culture. Nobody wants to hear about it and even therapists are poorly equipped to deal with it. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, has an entry for “excessive grief disorder,” when mourning the death of someone close goes on beyond twelve months.

Amy is told otherwise by a counselor. Grief sharpens after the first year and then sometimes again around the third through fifth years. “Grief is a long journey, “ the counselor says and Amy thinks “I can’t do this for five years.”

“How are you doing, friends ask, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. Take it a day at a time. Hey, doing well?” As time goes on, they tell Amy “It’s difficult to hear. It’s too heavy. It makes me too sad. I need a break.” One psychotherapist persistently refers to Kurtis’s death as “a stressful event.” Another asks “Do you feel as if you’ve been hit by a train?” “No,” Amy says, “You hear a train coming.”

For the first time in their lives together, Amy asks her father how long it was before he finally felt “space from his grief” when in his early twenties, he faced the death of his father. “Years,” he says, and then after a moment, “maybe never.” 

The widely accepted template of Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief is one Amy doesn’t fit within. She discovers that it was never intended for mourning. It was developed after studying the behavior of terminally ill patients as they faced their own deaths. There is no template for young widows, only statistics. They face the “widowhood effect,” with a heightened risk of suicide in the year after their husbands have died. They are 22% more likely than married women to die “of other causes…that may seem random but are, in fact, not.”

Amy heard the screams of Kurtis’s parents when she told them he was dead. She stays alive because she knows her death would cause her parents that same agony. When she’s given a residency at Yaddo, she goes because long before she promised Kurtis she would take him; she would show him “every single thing.” She transforms her anguish into art and leaves us all with an unyielding question.

“How can grief be so universal and yet still be so widely misunderstood?”~Janet Brown

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon, with Kim Green (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

Even when she was very small, Chantha Nguon knew the difference between noodles. Instant noodles came in packages and “tasted careless.” Kuy teav noodles, made from wheat flour mixed with eggs, were sold in the Battambang market every day, available to anyone who had the money to buy them. But best of all were her mother’s noodles, hand-rolled into perfect cylinders that took hours to prepare. Slow noodles, she learned as a little girl, are the best and will provide her with an enduring “philosophy for life.” Care and practice, with no shortcuts, make daily living rich and flavorful.

A child with a “puppy nose for food,” Chantha knows what happiness smells like: “cloves, cracked pepper, and pate de foie.” Her mother was a beauty who knew looks weren’t enough. She augmented the gift of her appearance with extravagant meals that took lots of money and time to prepare. Her cooking was a kind of magical theatre production that entranced her little daughter and the memories of that food would shape Chantha’s future.

Cambodia swiftly transforms from “a little girl’s heaven” into a place of turmoil and tragedy. The U.S.-backed government headed by Lon Nol turns against anyone with Vietnamese blood and Chantha’s mother is Vietnamese. She sends her children to Saigon to live in the safety of relatives there. But in that portion of Southeast Asia there is no safety. Cambodia becomes locked in the horror of “Pol Pot time” and Saigon becomes Ho Chi Minh City.

Poverty sweeps over both countries in terrible ways. Chantha’s mother escapes from Cambodia to be with her children, and then witnesses their deaths. Chantha is the only child to stay alive—and then her mother dies.

Chantha has never learned how to be frugal. At one point in her life when her mother made a living as a seamstress, wooden clogs in different colors became the girl’s obsession and she used her pocket money to buy forty or fifty pairs. “I should use those as firewood,” her mother teased her. Later, alone after her mother’s death, Chantha burns them all, one by one, as fuel for cooking rice.

As she struggles to stay alive, a fortune teller predicts she will become even more poverty-stricken in the future but “sewing and cooking will save you….You will take care of yourself.”

The story of her survival and her return to Cambodia with the man whom she would marry is an adventure that tears at the heart, but this isn’t the driving force of Slow Noodles. The theme that prevails is how a country was deprived of its history, with its future jeopardized by Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea. Trying to blot out over a thousand years of culture, this government erased “education, medicine, cinema, books, money, cars and religion” by killing anyone “whose job it was to plan for tomorrow: doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists.” “Estimates range from 1.6 to 1 million dead, from one-fifth to more than a quarter of the population.” What was left in the aftermath was “a country with no idea of tomorrow.”

Slow Noodles is a metaphor as well as a cherished culinary memory. Time, patience, persistence, and care are essential for the cooking of this dish and for the recovery of a traumatized nation. Chantha Nguon shows how this is possible to accomplish in a book that celebrates the importance of food in rebuilding a culture and revitalizing a country, while generously offering traditional Khmer recipes to replicate in any kitchen.~Janet Brown

The Samurai and the Prisoner by Honobu Yonezawa, translated by Giuseppe di Martino (Yen On)

The Samurai and the Prisoner by Honobu Yonezawa is the English translate of [黒瘻城] (Kokurojo) which was originally published in the Japanese language in 2021 by Kadokawa Books. The translator, Giuseppe di Martino is an Assistant Language Teacher for the JET program (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program). 

Yonezawa is mostly known for writing his young adult mystery series Kotenbu which is also known as The Classic Literature Club series. The series would be adapted into a television animation program and the first book in the series, Hyokka would be adapted into a movie starring Kento Yamazaki and Alice Hirose. 

The Samurai and the Prisoner is a more adult-oriented story blending historical fact with fictitious mysteries occurring during the Siege of Itami. Araki Murashige, a samurai lord is defending his castle against the forces of Nobunaga Oda, a daimyo during the Sengoku Period or Warring States Era in Japan. The time is the winter of 1578. It is four years before the Honno-ji Incident resulting in the assassination of Oda. 

Murashige, who once was an ally of Oda, betrayed him and sided with the Mouri who were also fighting against the Oda forces. Oda had sent an envoy named Kanbei Kuroda, one of Oda’s chief strategists, to convince Murashige noto to defect; however, Murashige went against bushido protocol and instead of killing the envoy there and then and sending his head back to his master, he imprisoned Kuroda in the dungeons of the castle.

As Oda’s forces are closing in on Aroka Castle, Murashige continues to hold them off while waiting for reinforcements from the Mouri or Ishiyama Hongan-ji armies who never arrive. As Murashige’s men continue to protect the castle, a string of mysterious incidents occur and it appears the only one who can help Murashige solve them is the one man who’s wasting away in the dungeon - Kanbei Kuroda.

The first incident involves a young boy who is killed on the castle grounds. His death spurs rumors about “Divine Intervention”; however, Murashige is a warrior. Although he commanded his retainers to detain him and lock him in a room, he is mysteriously killed. Murashige recognized the wound as an arrow wound, there was no arrow to be found. 

Reluctantly, Murashige visits Kuroda in the dungeons to get his advice on how to solve the mystery. Murashige believes that Kuroda cannot resist showing off his deductive skills but speaks to Murashige in riddles. It is later that Murashige understands why Kuroda only gave him a hint because to help Murashige would mean to betray his own master. 

Three other mysterious deaths occur, one in each season of the year. Murashige finds himself consulting with Kuroda after every  incident since none of his men can answer his enquiries. But, does Kuroda really help Murashige? And if so…why? 

Yonezawa’s blend of historical fact and detective fiction will entertain its readers in highlighting the actions and thoughts that took place during the Warring States Era. The conflicts between the The only two flaws in the story being the translator’s assumption that the reader is familiar with Japanese history and the use of archaic words in English such as thee, thou, prithee which stem the flow of the story. The plot twists at the end of the book may surprise you as well. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson (Random House)

Alex Berenson was a reporter for New York Times and has extensively covered the occupation of Iraq. He uses his experience and has created a story for post-911 America. The Faithful Spy is his book and it has won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. 

It is about an undercover CIA agent named John Wells, who has successfully infiltrated Al Qaeda before the events of 9-11. “After years of fighting jihad in Afghanistan and Chechniya, he spoke perfect Arabic and Pashtun, his beard was long, his hands calloused”.  He rode horses as well as any native Afghan, enjoyed the sport buzkashi, an Afghan version of polo but instead of using a ball, the objective of the game is to place a dead calf or goat in a goal. He played as hard as any Afghan.  “He prayed with them. He had proven that he belonged here, with these men”. He had also become a Muslim. The Taliban and Al Qaeda members call him Jalal.

The story begins a few months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. The story opens with Wells and a few of his jihadist friends being in the middle of a battle in Afghanistan. Their small group is planning on attacking Marines who are stationed nearby. Wells plans to take out his comrades and to try to get a message to his CIA handler.  

Around the same time that Wells was doing battle, Jennifer Exley, She was asked by her superiors to go to the U.S.S. Starker, which was sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean in international waters, “so its precious cargo would remain outside the jurisdiction of American courts”. 

Onboard the naval ship is just one prisoner. A young man named Tim Kiefer who went by the name of Mohammad Faisal. He was a twenty-two year old American who was fighting for the Taliban “against the United States”. The American public was aware of the capture of John Walker Lindh, which the media dubbed the American Taliban. Keifer’s capture was kept quiet and President Bush had signed an order declaring Kiefer an “enemy combatant”. Exley was here to question him about one other American - John Wells who has been incommunicado for the last two years.

The story progresses at a fast pace. Wells does manage to take out the terrorists who were his buddies and was taken in by the U.S. military where he gave them as much information as he could about what he had learned. He also writes a note and asks Major Holmes to make sure Jennifer Exley at the CIA gets his handwritten message. “Will pursue UBL. No prior knowledge of 9/11. Still friendly, John ”. 

John Wells is caught between two worlds. It is similar to the real-life situation of Agent Storm : My Life in Al Qaeda (reviewed in Asia by the Book, April 7, 2023). Unlike Mortem Storm in the real story, Wells goes back to the terrorist fold because he knows that the upper leaders are planning on something bigger than 9-11. He is determined to find out what and when will it happen. But little does he know, he is part of the plan as well… ~Ernie Hoyt

世界の路地裏１００ (Sekai no Rojiura 100) by Nozomu Kato, pictures by P.I.E. Tsushinsha (PIE Books) Japanese text only

There was a time when I was hooked on picking up photography books. I enjoyed looking at pictures of mostly landscapes and beautiful scenery. I bought a series of books published by PIE Books titled 世界の名景・絶景 55 (Sekai no Meiki・Zekkei) which translates to “Famous and Spectacular Views of the World”. Each book had a theme -  waterside views, landscapes, sceneries with buildings, scenes seen in a movie, legendary scenes, and sceneries around unexplored areas and featured fifty-five different spots. There are more in the series but these were the titles I bought; however, when I purchased the books, my Japanese reading ability was still below par so I could only enjoy the pictures and could only guess at what might be written.

After living in Japan for nearly thirty years and studying Japanese on my own, my reading ability has improved to the point where I can read manga without furigana and have even managed to read some novels as well. It still takes me a long time to complete  a novel but I thought I would revisit a book my wife bought me for my birthday. 

The book I received was 世界の裏路地１００ (Sekai no Uraroji 100). This translates to “The Back Alleys of the World”. Various photographers working for PIE News Agency, a Japanese publisher, traveled the world and instead of taking photos of the most well known tourist attractions, they traveled through the back roads and alleys of ten countries around the world.

The majority of countries featured in the book are in Europe - France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Portugal, the Czech Republic, and England. The other two countries featured are Mexico and South Korea. The photos are both in color and in black and white. Text is provided for each country and was written by Nozomu Kato. 

A major portion of the photos were taken in different cities in Spain including Altea, Mijas, Sienna, Cordoba, Sevilla, Frigiliana and Barcelona. The second most featured country are the islands of Greece. Most forms of public transportation are forbidden. The book gives you a chance to armchair travel around the islands of Skyros, Rhodes, Mykonos and others. 

Featured cities of France include Lyon and Nice. In Italy, you will travel the canals of Venice and the backroads and alleys of Sienna. You will also enjoy the views of the island of Burano. 

There are a few pictures taken in Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, and a few views of old downtown Seoul in South Korea. In London, England, you won’t find any pictures of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, or Windsor Castle but you will get to check out the facades of different English pubs. It will make you want to go in for a pint. 

Some readers might not consider photography books as a “real” book but most of them include texts to describe the places and things that are pictured. It may inspire you to take your own pictures while on vacation as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled abroad but reading and looking through this beautiful photography book has reinstilled my interest in visiting new places I’ve never been to. It also makes me long to travel back to my hometown as well.　~Ernie Hoyt

Black Ghosts: A Journey into the Lives of Africans in China by Noo Saro-Wiwa (Canongate)

One of the more interesting and impenetrable aspects of traveling in Hong Kong and beyond are the enclaves of African men who show up and clearly know their way around. In Kowloon’s Chungking Mansions, some are asylum seekers and many more are undocumented, there for “business.” Gordon Mathews, anthropology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of Ghetto at the Center of the World (Asia by the Book, June 2012) and Globalization from Below, has taught English classes in Chungking Mansions for years and has gained the confidence of many African residents of that community. Everyone else receives a polite greeting in passing, at best.

Mathews writes about the community of Africans who live in Guangzhou and when Noo Saro-Wiwa learns about them, she goes to that city in search of them. Nigerian by birth and brought up in England, she holds a British passport and has studied at both King’s College, London and Columbia University. She has a unique position of Western privilege and an African birthright which leads her to feel confident that she will be able to discover how Africans live in the south of China.

She’s mistaken. Her attempts to penetrate a male world of men who live by their wits and without documentation are met with the usual reply of “We’re here to do business.” A few take her to dinner and to nightclubs but although she’s introduced to their friends, she still hits a wall when asking about their lives in China.

Guangzhou has neighborhoods that are largely occupied by men from Africa and Saro-Wiwa spends most of her time within these areas. She makes contact with a Nigerian fabric merchant who comes to Guangzhou for a month at a time several times a year. “I jealous these people,” he tells her with a “clenched admiration,” “What this country has and we do not have in our country is quite enormous…Enormous wealth. The US don’t even have it.”

This wealth doesn’t trickle down to the area known as “Chocolate City,” a place dominated by a massive market that is a “bazaar of garishness.” There Africans and Chinese engage in a dance of commerce that is plagued by cross-cultural misunderstandings, acrimony, and racism. Saro-Wiwa encounters the racism quickly. Although she is clearly a visitor and a woman of means, vendors turn her away when she asks for a discount. 

Despite the Chinese aversion to dark skin, there are a number of Guangzhou women who have married and started families with African men. This has created a kind of settled community, with mixed-race children and a tentative form of security. Still, she’s told, that although “no sane person will stay in Nigeria,” these men whose Chinese wives and half-Chinese children allow them permanent residency status “Every day you are being reminded of where you come from. I don’t belong here.”

Although eventually Saro-Wiwa discovers the businesses that keep the African afloat, including drug-dealing, she’s forced to flesh out her book with stories of her travels in China and facts garnered from academic research. A seasoned travel writer who works for Conde Nast Traveller, she makes her solitary explorations enticing. She falls in love with Wuhan only months before covid shuts that city down and gives a splendid account of the northern town, Pingyao, whose antiquities escaped the depredations of the Cultural Revolution. She ends up taking refuge in the more hospitable area of Hong Kong where her research gains an increasingly intimate texture. Even so, Black Ghosts ends with the knowledge that her “journey into the lives of Africans in China” doesn’t live up to its subtitle. Saro-Wiwa hasn’t even illuminated the lives of Africans in Guangzhou.~Janet Brown

No Longer Human : Complete Edition by Usamaru Furuya (Kodansha)

Recently, I decided to revisit a Japanese classic. However, it is a graphic novel written by Usamaru Furuya but is based on the Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human (reviewed August 4, 2022). I was expecting the same bleak story in manga form but was in for quite a surprise. 

Although the main characters remain the same, the story is told through the eyes of the manga artist Usamaru Furuya and the story is updated to the present era. The story opens with Furuya talking to one of his employees saying he hasn’t come up with an idea for the next serial. As he surfs the Internet, he comes across something called “ouch diary”. An anonymous reader wrote, “I got depressed reading it. But I can’t stop reading it. Take a look!”. A URL was provided and the title was No Longer Human. 

An “ouch diary”? Curiosity piques the manga artist’s interest and he clicks the URL. What pops up is the title “Yozo Oba’s Albums” and there are three pictures of Yozo. One at age 6, another at age 17, and the last at age 25. 

The artist first clicks on the age 6 picture. His first impression is that Yozo must be from a wealthy family but he couldn’t help noticing that the smile on Yozo’s face seemed to be fake and all he could say was “What a creepy kid”. 

Usamaru then clicks on Yozo, age 25 and can’t believe his eyes. He says out loud, “He’s 25 in this one? He looks like an old man. His face is totally lifeless”. He also clicks on Yozo, age 17 and is taken for another loop. He inadvertently says, “Wha…What a handsome young man”. Usamaru thinks to himself, “What could have happened to him between these three photos. The guy’s name is Yozo Oba and his diary is titled No Longer Human. 

The book is divided into twelve entries and Usamaru clicks on the first one titled Yozo Oba and is greeted by the line - “I’ve lived a life full of shame.” The first section, Yozo Oba writes about his high school years playing the class clown because he wanted people to like him. He then writes about going to an art prep school where he meets Masao Horiki who becomes his friend and mentor in wining, dining, and general debauchery. 

As Usamaru continues to search the Internet for material for his next serial manga, he keeps going back to Yozo Oba’s diary, No Longer Human. What he says of Oba’s diary is “He revealed his actions and inner thoughts in surprisingly vivid detail…”

Usamaru reads through until the end of the diary he finds an afterward written by Yozo’s friend Masao Horiki. Horiki found out that Yozo was taken into custody by the police after they found him wandering the streets and coughing up blood. After an examination he was arrested and indicted for drug use and sentenced to probation and put in a rehabiliation facility. This is where Horiki rekindles his friendship and would visit Yozo quite often, but one day, Yozo just disappeared. 

Horiki explains why he posted Yozo’s diary without his friend’s consent and pleads with any readers that if they know his whereabouts to contact him. In the manga, Usamaru Furuya writes that he regretted reading the diary until the next morning, then went to bed. However, he could not get Yozo Oba out of his head. 

In the manga, Usamaru decides to go in search of Yozo Oba or to at least confirm if he really existed or not. He does discover that there really was a Yozo Oba and that he may still be alive somewhere…

Usamaru Furuya’s adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s novel may also seem to be a bit bleak but it is not quite as depressing as Dazai’s original. His drawings really draw the reader into the story of Yozo Oba’s life. At times, his diary reads like a desperate call for attention. Oba’s utter lack of self-esteem and self-worth are depressing and reading about his downward spiral will make you want to re-evaluate your own life to help you determine if as Yozo Oba says, “Human beings terrify me!” ~Ernie Hoyt

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Atlantic Monthly Press)

The Inheritance of Loss is a novel written by Kiran Desai. Desai was born in India in 1971 and got her education in India, the U.S. and in England. It is her second novel and was originally published in 2006. It won the Booker Prize the same year, a prize given to the best work written in the English language and published in either the U.K. or Ireland. 

The story is about two main characters - Biju and Sai. Biju is an illegal alien living in the United States and trying to get that one precious item many Indians long for…an American green card. He is the son of the cook who works for Sai’s grandfather. Sai lives in a mountainous region called Kalimpong in the state of West Bengal at a place called Cho Oyu. She is an orphan but lives with her maternal grandfather, the cook that works for him, and a dog named Mutt. 

Sai’s grandfather’s name is Jemubhai Patel. He is a retired judge who despises Indians and their way of life. He hated the lifestyle of Indians. The way they dress, the way they eat  so he would eat chapatis, an Indian-style flatbread, with a fork and knife. 

Away from the prying eyes of the international community, there was a small group of Maoists trying to make a country for themselves in Nepal. During the same era, a small group of rebels are fighting against the Indian goverment to create a nationl called Ghorkaland, an area in West Bengal, for the Nepali-speaking Indians.  The story opens with a couple of young Ghorkas entering Cho Oyu who demand that Sai’s grandfather give them his guns. They vanish as suddenly as they appear and the Judge calls the police the following day. 

The police interview both the Judge, his grand-daughter and the cook but seem to be as inept as the young Ghorkas. The three people who live at Cho Oyu just want to live happy, quiet lives. The Judge is a grumpy old man and reminds one of American sitcom icon Archie Bunker, although the Judge is not quite as bigoted as Archie. Sai is more interested in her flourishing relationship with her tutor Gyan and the judge is waiting for his son to become a success in the United States and perhaps invite him to live with him in the land of milk and honey.

The book might come off as a bit depressive but it does have its comic moments. Desai’s story is about the ever elusive effort of belonging to someone or somewhere. She shows the contrast between Indians who despise their own kind, such as Sai’s grandfather, and yet is not accepted by the British who he tries to mimic. It is also about the anger other Indians have for people like Sai’s grandfather, believing that they are not interested in keeping their traditions. In the end, in Desai’s story, nobody seems to be happy. Not Sai, not her grandfather, and certainly not Biju who has to move from one job to another to escape being caught by agents for the U.S. Immigration Department. 

It’s my belief that life is only as good as you make it, no matter the circumstances. As one of the old cliches goes, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day”. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Golden Voice: The Ballad of Cambodian Rock's Lost Queen by Gregory Cahill and Kat Baumann (Life Drawn by Humanoids)

As a person who’s been an enthusiastic reader for 71 years, it came as a shock when I recently discovered there were reading skills I’ve yet to acquire. I wasn’t allowed to read comic books when I was a child which means I’ve struggled with graphic novels as a (very) mature adult. Giving equal attention to the words and the pictures in each frame wasn’t easy and when I finally learned to do it, I felt quite proud.

Then I bought a copy of The Golden Voice, a biography of the Cambodian singer Ros Serey Sothea, that is written as a graphic narrative. The art is cinematic and the words, readers are told at the outset, are written in three different languages: Romanized Khmer, English, and French, along with a healthy smattering of military acronyms. But here’s what most intrigued me, and almost defeated me—this book comes with a playlist and a QR code that allows 47 songs to be played as the book is being read.

I’m a tremendous fan of the Khmer music stars of the 60s and 70s, especially Ros Serey Sothea and Sin Sisamouth, both of whom died during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. So I happily scanned the QR code and read the accompanying directions. The songs were chosen to complement the narrative and they were meant to be played in order. However there was a little glitch. Icons with the corresponding numbers of each song appeared in the frames, telling readers when to hit play and when to hit stop.

Once I became involved in the life of a girl who rose out of the rice fields in Battambang to become a star renowned and loved throughout the Kingdom of Cambodia, I often overlooked the tiny numbered icons that gave the appropriate background music. They are very small and easy to miss. I ended up backtracking to hit play--but since I’m a rapid reader, I was told to stop much too soon and so I heard only a few bars of each song. By the time I turned the final page, I had a mild headache and felt as if I’d just picked up a raging case of dyslexia.

Probably the ideal way to read this stunning piece of graphic art is to play the 47 songs without stopping--at least for readers like me who are unused to the magic of QR codes and instructions embedded in the text. When I approached the book that way, I wasn’t only immersed in the tragic life of a gifted singer, I felt as if I’d been transported to the radio stations, recording studios, nightclubs, and the American Embassy in Phnom Penh during the war. The art is that detailed, showing not just the city but the rapidly changing facial expressions of the characters that do much to tell the story. Reading The Golden Voice is like watching an animated film.

First published in Cambodia, this book gives a detailed look at the turbulent and tragic years that led up to the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of the country. Gregory Cahill met and interviewed surviving members of Ros Serey Sothea’s and Sin Sisamouth’s families. Unfortunately these relatives were unable to give a complete picture of events that took place after the Khmer Rouge came to power so Cahill cautions readers that not everything he’s written is factual and the tragic end of Ros Serey Sothea’s life may not have happened as he’s shown it in this biography. 

Still, through his text and Kat Baumann’s art, along with the songs they’ve provided, the life of this beautiful woman who died when she was only thirty, is movingly and carefully told.~Janet Brown

Where Rivers Part by Kao Kalia Yang (Simon & Schuster)

Kao Kalia Yang comes from a line of beautiful women who gave birth to beautiful daughters. All of them had a special closeness to their mothers and in this lovely history, Yang pays tribute to three generations of these strong and stunning Hmong women.

Beginning with her great-grandmother who was “unexpectedly beautiful…smart and able, though rumored to be promiscuous,” and moving on to the Bad Luck Woman, the grandmother whom Yang never knew except through the stories of her own mother, she then unfolds the story of Tswb, “Chew,” whose own bad luck is counteracted by her quick and determined mind, and who gives birth to daughters whose luck is shaped by the life their mother has made possible.

Chew’s beauty gives her an indulged childhood that ends with the death of her father and the war that takes her away from the village of fruit trees in blossom, where two rivers meet and diverge. In the midst of upheaval and death, Chew’s mother leads her children in a perilous and grueling flight through Laos’ jungles. 

This is where Chew first sees the man for whom she will leave her mother. Without hesitation, she marries Npis, “Bee,” a “song poet” whose lack of ambition is counterbalanced by his deep and unflagging love. He pulls her, their infant daughter, and his mother across the Mekong River into Thailand, and stands on the opposite bank with his skin torn into “pale ribbons of flesh,” shredded by the tubes of bamboo and the ropes that he clutched to bring his family to safety. 

But Bee had grown up in poverty. He lacked Chew’s background of comfort and education that drives her to seize all opportunities for a better life. After spending years of squalor in a refugee camp, she persuades him to seek repatriation in another country and two years later, Bee, Chew, and their two daughters are on a plane that will take them to Minnesota. 

In America, they “have been tossed through time.” Their daughters swiftly become fluent in English. Chew struggles through two years of night classes to attain a high school diploma while Bee fumes that she’s wasting time. She “should have just taken the GED test,” as he had. Now he studies through a community college to get a machine operating certificate. They all, parents and daughters, sit at the kitchen table every night, doing their homework.

 Chew is constantly pregnant and her children are predominately daughters. She is determined to break the cycle of “bad luck women” and through her efforts and example, her daughters go to Stanford, Columbia, Carleton College, the University of Minnesota. They live outside of what their mother had known when she “existed in a picture of need.”

Where Rivers Part is the third book in Yang’s trilogy that began with The Latehomecomer (Asia by the Book, April 2008) and The Song Poet (Asia by the Book, March 2021) . Each tells a different segment of Yang’s family history--her own memories of life in the refugee camp with her shaman grandmother and the story of Bee’s life as a child who had never known his father and who struggled to learn how to be a father himself after he and Chew were married. But the most tender and poetic of these three family histories is Yang’s story of her mother. 

The story of a girl who grew up in a gentle home, who loved to learn, who fell in love at first sight with a stranger and married him when she was still a child, who gave birth to fourteen children and lost half of them before they left her body, who returned to Laos after her seven surviving children were grown and realized her own mother was there, ready to welcome her home after she died, is told in words that give Chew’s life the luster of fiction and the blessings of truth.~Janet Brown

Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto, translated by Don Knotting (Hanover Square Press)

What does a person do when all their only ambition is to do nothing? For Shoji Morimoto, the solution is to do nothing as an occupation. Through Twitter, he makes it known that he is available for any situation where another person is needed, just so long as he is required to do nothing. He began this pursuit in 2018 and has done nothing for other people over 4000 times since then. For this, he charges only his travel expenses, asking that any food or drink required during the appointment be covered by the client. Later he puts the client’s request and a summary of his response to it on Twitter, which is his only form of advertising. At the time this book was written, he received three requests a day for his service. Within ten months of launching this enterprise his Twitter followers went from 300 to 100,000. Apparently he has found a Japanese need and is quite busily filling it.

Who asks for a person who will do nothing? Artists of all kinds--writers, manga illustrators, musicians--ask Morimoto to sit with them, silently, while they create. A marathon runner wanted him to stand at the finish line, waiting for the entrant to complete the race. Others ask that he attend court proceedings as an onlooker, meet them at an airport, wave them off as they leave on a train. One endearing request is that he join another man to have an ice cream soda, something the client is too embarrassed to do on his own. Another job results in a spectacular hangover when Morimoto is asked to sit in a park while the client drinks a can of chu-hai (a shochu highball). “Summer, nighttime, a park, alcohol…I got pretty drunk,” he confesses in a tweet.

Others have more complex requests. One woman wants to talk about her girlfriend, whom she hasn’t revealed to her family or friends. A patient in a hospital asks for a visit in the suicide risk intensive care unit she’s been placed in. A man divulges at the end of his time period that he used to be a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Another wants Morimoto to spend a day with him in his home because he’s never shared it with another person. He confesses when the day is over that he had been released from prison where he served a sentence for murder.

This is an occupation that requires a lack of personality, evaluation, advice, or judgment. Morimoto is careful to keep his responses neutral, sticking with “Uh-huh” and “I see.” His role, as he sees it, is to fall between “friend” and “stranger” during his times with a client. He serves as a sort of quasi-friend to the person who’s engaged his services. Between the two of them there’s no emotional history and no demands of reciprocity--which is why one woman asks him to have dinner with her at a very expensive restaurant. If she asked a friend, that person would feel obligated to do the same for her.

Because Morimoto approaches his work as a blank slate that the client fills as they wish, the obvious question is will he eventually be replaced by a robot? Not in Japan, he says, where people suffer from “AI fatigue” and yearn for human contact, even for something as simple as receiving a reminder message. 

Since he charges nothing, how does he survive? From savings garnered from his brief foray into financial trading is what he claims, although a Reuters article quotes him as saying that when he first began as Rental Person, he charged 10,000 yen (about $71) per rental.

Although he initially depended heavily upon Twitter for exposure, Morimoto has been featured in manga, has inspired a TV series, and, according to the author information that appears on the final page, he’s written other books. Not too shabby for a man who claims he does nothing.~Janet Brown

The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (G.P. Putnam's Sons, release date February 13, 2024)

Tucked away on a street near Kyoto’s Higashi Honganji Temple lies a hidden restaurant. No sign directs customers to it. A one-line advertisement in Gourmet Monthly gives no contact information, only two names: The Kamogawa Diner and The Kamogawa Detective Agency. For those who manage to find this place, they discover that it has no menu but the owner serves whatever food he has cooked for that day on the finest of lacquerware and Baccarat crystal plates. Clearly this is no ordinary diner.

Although the food is made from the best ingredients, what draws customers to search for this place is the  detective agency. Each one of them is haunted by a dish they had in the past, with flavors they’ve been unable to replicate or find in any other restaurant and with memories they hope to relive if they can only find the exact replica, faithful in every detail. 

This is what the Kamogawa Detective Agency promises its clients. After learning every piece of information that is remembered about where and when they had this food and any detail they recall about its taste and presentation, the owner scours Japan for it, tracking down every minute clue that has been given to him. If he succeeds, he charges nothing but what the client wants to give.

The stories told by the six customers in this book are charming and resonant. One man wants a simple meal that his dead wife used to make for him. A woman hopes to eat a dish she once left unfinished because her date unexpectedly proposed marriage to her as their meal was put on the table. Another hopes to restore her ex-husband’s vanished memory, stolen by dementia, if she can feed him the food that once only he was able to make. Since everyone in the world has a particular culinary memory that they would love to taste one more time, these people are ones readers can easily take to heart--but they aren’t the core of this novel.

Hisashi Kashiwai is a Kyoto dentist with a passion for food and the skills of a forensic kitchen detective. He is aware of every detail that makes a dish extraordinary and he divulges them all. Whether it’s the way water drawn from different regions can change flavors or how pouring tea over a helping of rice can enhance the taste, Kashiwai generously divulges these little secrets. His descriptions of the meals served in the diner or tracked down by an indefatigable expert dominate this book. If you aren’t a devotee of Japanese cuisine, you will be by the time you finish reading about all the dishes Kashiwai describes so well,

None of his choices are haute cuisine. They’re simple dishes that people eat as everyday meals but the ingredients used to make them turn them into unique culinary art. Hishashi makes the regional differences in Japanese cooking something to yearn for, along with the use of ingredients that are only available in their particular season. Slivers of taro in mackerel sushi, taro found only in a small village, elevates the flavor as nothing else can and canned meat, cooked cleverly, can rival the finest Kobe beef. 

Kashiwai is also a devoted lover of Kyoto. Sprinkled among the luscious descriptions of food are quick glimpses of the gingko trees that turn the city to gold in the fall, the mountains that loom white in the winter, the courtyards filled with spring cherry blossoms, and the mists and shadows that bring mystery to the streets in the rainy season. “There was nowhere like Kyoto to make you really notice the changing of the seasons,” one client observes as he approaches the diner, and Kashiwai reveals the magic of his hometown in a few quick sentences.

Although The Kamogawa Food Detectives is being compared to the series that was launched by Before the Coffee Gets Cold, (Asia by the Book, February 2023), Kashiwai published this two years before the Coffee series began. He’s followed it with The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, a sequel that’s not yet available in the U.S. which gives promise of a series in the offing.

More dishes? More intriguing ingredients? Sign me up for a Kyoto food tour, please, Mr. Kashiwai!~Janet Brown