Women's Work by Megan K. Stack (Doubleday)

When Megan K. Stack  decides that it’s time to have a baby, she looks at this as a type of sabbatical. A war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting, and author of Every Man in this Village is a Liar, which was a National Book Award finalist, she anticipates a quiet domestic life with her infant by her side, giving her ample time to finish her novel-in-progress.  She has no idea that “the immediacy of domestic life and the desperation of small humans” can be as all-consuming as time spent in a battle zone.

Faced with a baby who screams for hours with colic and takes his sleep in random snatches, Stack becomes “crazed and haggard.” When her husband, whose journalism career mirrors her former life, walks out the door and “vanished back into work,” Stack is overwhelmed with panic and envy. Although his job supports them all, his morning departures feel like a form of abandonment, and Stack finds her only refuge in a phrase she’s often heard from other expat wives, “Help is affordable.” An affluent American living in Beijing, Stack knows help isn’t only affordable, it’s a fact of life. She soon acquires employees of her own, in China and later in India, when her husband’s job takes the family to that country.

This should be the perfect solution but Stack is still swamped in domesticity. Housekeeping is a prime example of Parkinson’s Law, expanding to fill all available time, and Stack’s time is filled, even when she has two “helpers” in Delhi. Her novel falters. When it’s finally completed, it receives a tepid reception and she abandons it. But writing is the core of her existence, the one thing that keeps her from becoming an expat June Cleaver, so Stack decides her next book will be about the lives of domestic help in foreign countries.

Although this is a book that many would like to read, they won’t find it in Women’s Work. This is a highly personal memoir of the travails of a fortunate and oddly oblivious woman, one who refuses to use the pejorative term “maid,” but who is blithely unaware that an employee who lives in servant’s quarters behind her house is surrounded by filth and squalor. When her husband suggests installing an air conditioner in the “helper’s” sweltering room, Stack has to be persuaded that this is essential. When a later occupant of the same room is ill for a week, Stack never thinks to extend any concern beyond fulfilling the woman’s request for diarrhea medicine. She regards another employee’s sick child as “a horror I hoped would simply blow over.” The women who work for her are appliances, in place to make her own work possible--until she finally decides they can be useful in other ways.

In the final eighty-one pages of Women’s Work,  Stack attempts to harvest every detail of her employees’ lives, posing intimate questions, asking to see their domestic circumstances, even stalking one of them on Facebook. Her failure to achieve her goal is a triumph for the women she has employed; after all, they sold her the right to their labor, not a license to invade their privacy.  

Women’s Work stands as a document that clearly defines white privilege. It’s a How Not To manual for any employer of household help, be it at home or in another country. Read it and try not to hurl it against the nearest wall.~Janet Brown

大家さんと僕 by 矢部太郎 （新潮社）

*Japanese Text Only

“The Landlady and Me” by Taro Yabe (Shinchosha)

I have been living in Japan since 1995. For the first twenty-one years, in Tokyo, and for the last three years, in Aomori City. A city that’s located in the northernmost prefecture on Honshu island and is also called Aomori. In Tokyo, I worked for a large record store chain that also housed a large English language book section. We carried everything from novels to computer books, self-help books to language books and of course we put a lot of effort into carrying books about music. I had access to a variety of materials that were available in English. Then I moved to Aomori City. Access to English books became scarce. I know I could order books off the Internet but I’m still very weary about making online purchases. In order to fulfill my desire to continue reading, I started buying books in the Japanese language. Many novels are still beyond my reading and comprehension ability so there are oftentimes I would  purchase a manga (comic book) or a graphic novel of which this is one.  

Taro Yabe is one half of a manzai combi nearing his forties. Manzai is the Japanese term for stand-up comedians performing a comic dialogue. His partner’s name is Shinya Irie and they call themselves Karateka. Japan’s manzai profession is very competitive in which the upper echelons of the manzai shi or stand-up comedians make a lot of money and are often seen on television. They may also host their own television or radio shows and are often one of the commentators on news variety programs. However Karateka is not one of the them. Their appearances on tv are minimal and usually not during prime time but are either on after midnight or are on cable.

Due to an episode on a late night television program which Yabe’s current landlord had seen and said was funny, the landlord still asked Yabe not to renew his apartment contract and to find another place to live. Having no choice but to move, Yabe goes to a real estate agent. The agent informs Yabe that there is a room available at a house in Shinjuku but includes an unusual condition - it comes with a landlady in her eighties who lives on the first floor. The low rent and the house’s location are two things that makes Yabe sign a contract. When he meets his landlady for the first time and she asks him about his job, he explains that he sometimes appears on the stage and on television. The landlady then asks if he’s an actor and he tells a little white lie and says, “Yes.”

This comic is based on actual events as seen through the eyes of Yabe. Having lived with his landlady for a while, Yabe decides to chronicle some of their conversations and adventures they have, in comic form. After receiving permission from his landlady, the comic gets serialized by Shinchosha. The publisher then compiled the comics into a book and published it in 2017. It surprisingly became a bestseller, selling two hundred thousand copies within three months of its release. It also won the 22nd annual Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize for Short Work Prize and turned Taro Yabe into a household name almost overnight.

The story begins with Yabe moving into the landlady’s home on the second floor. His landlady was born and raised in Tokyo. She is a very classy lady and always greets Yabe with gokikenyou, a very dignified way of saying “hello”. Her favorite place to shop is Shinjuku’s Isetan Department store and she enjoys watching NHK, Japan’s public television broadcasting network. Yabe’s writes and draws many episodes of his conversations with his landlady. Some of my favorites being when Yabe asks her, “What kind of man is your type?” and she solemnly answers, “General Douglas MacArthur”. The landlady fills Yabe’s days with stories of her life before and during the war. One of her wishes before she dies is to go to Churan in Kagoshima Prefecture. Yabe gladly says he will take her, not even knowing where Churan is. Other episodes include going to a local udon shop and not noticing the fast food restaurants that are in the same neighborhood. She tells Yabe she used to come to this udon shop before the war because it was the only place that had a telephone. She tells him how you could see fireflies by the river. She also tells Yabe how she would one day like to eat cotton candy as her father was very strict and she wasn’t allowed to go to festivals. She also had Yabe take pictures of all her possessions so she could write the names of who should get what item. Yabe thought it was strange that she was already preparing for her death. She tells him, she’s even made funeral arrangements already so if something were to happy to her, everything would be taken care of.

The simple fact that a not so popular middle aged comedian shares a nice friendship with his elderly landlady in her eighties and enjoys her stories enough to put it to print is refreshing and heartwarming. The story shows us that two people, generations apart, can live together under one roof, albeit living on different floors, and have a relationship with mutual respect for each other and become friends in the process. The landlady was proud and happy for Yabe that he found success in the publication of this book. This is one of those few books that actually makes you laugh out loud. One should be careful of where one decides to read this.

On a sad note, in August of 2018, the landlady passed away. As she was not a celebrity, the cause of her death was not made public. ~Ernie Hoyt

おもしろい！進化のふしぎ 「続ざんねんないきもの辞典」by 今泉忠明

*Japanese Text Only

English translation: Encyclopedia of the World’s Most Unfortunate Animals 2 edited by Takaaki Imaizumi

From the man who brought us Zannen na Ikimono Jiten or “The Encyclopedia of the World’s Most Unfortunate Animals” in English, comes the much anticipated sequel Zoku Zannen na Ikimono Jiten or “The Encyclopedia of the World’s Most Unfortunate Animals 2”. As a reminder to non-Japanese readers, zannen can be translated as “too bad”, or “unfortunate”. Ikimono directly translates to “things that are alive”, thus “animals” and jiten translates to “encyclopedia”.

This book begins by introducing us to the different types of evolution many animals have gone through. Evolution of the body. For example, the crocodile may have the strongest bite in the animal kingdom but the strength to open their jaws is really weak that an elderly gentlemen can hold it shut. Evolution of the way of life. A fine example being the dolphin. If the dolphin was to sleep, it would drown. How unfortunate! Evolution of abilities such as the scorpion that shines a blue-green color due to ultraviolet rays but has absolutely no meaning and the scorpion itself doesn’t realize that it is shining.

The first chapter discusses the unfortunate evolution of peculiarities. For example, the meal of the vampire bat. This animal only feeds on the blood of living animals. However, because blood is a liquid, it readily digests and the bat remains hungry so continues to suck more blood. Usually more than half of its body weight. But then the bat becomes too heavy to fly and hops its way back home. How unfortunate! Or the least weasel, which is a very small rodent but will willfully prey on another animal fifty times its weight and sometimes may be eaten in the process.

Here’s something interesting on the evolution of bodies you will learn. Did you know that in a group of clownfish,  the largest one will change genders and become a female? Or that the flapjack octopus has very short tentacles and cannot spit any ink? More interesting yet is the nautilus which may have sixty to ninety legs but can’t walk! My goodness, how unfortunate for these animals! One of my favorites is the marine iguana that’s indigenous to the Galapagos islands. They are the world’s only lizard that spends time in the ocean and will “sneeze out” salt after being underwater for a period of time.

Then the book focuses on the evolution of different lifestyles. We all know that squirrels bury acorns so they will have something to eat later. What we are not told is that the squirrel usually forgets where it buried its treasure. We are also taught that koalas only eat eucalyptus leaves. What we learn from this book is that koalas were not born with this ability. Their ability stems from eating the feces of its mother! WHAT?  REALLY? It’s their baby food. Apparently, the baby food poop has no odor. But still, poop is poop. What an unfortunate animal.

What about some unfortunate abilities? The pronghorn can run really really fast but doesn’t have a predator to run away from. The little tern is so small that to drive away their enemies, a flock of them will shower their foes with bird droppings! Then there is the armadillo. The strength of its armor can deflect the bullet of a gun. If they manage roll up into a ball, they can protect themselves from all kinds of enemies. But of the twenty or so species of armadillos only two types can actually roll up into a ball. How unfortunate for the other eighteen species. However, this abilitly also makes it easier for humans to catch and to carry home for later consumption. Once again, most unfortunate!

What I learned from reading this series is that life is one continuous evolution. Change may be gradual but necessary in order to survive. Who knows how we as humans will evolve next. Perhaps with global warming, we will evolve to have thicker skin to protect us from ultraviolet radiation. Along with us humans, more animals will evolve and change. If not, they will go extinct and is probably something all animals, us humans included, want to avoid. ~Ernie Hoyt

On the Other Side: 23 Days with the Viet Cong by Kate Webb (out of print)

Kate Webb was twenty-three when she came to Saigon in 1967 as a journalist.  By the time she was twenty-eight, Webb was the UPI bureau chief in Phnom Penh, taking the position after the former chief had been found lying dead in a paddy field.

Cambodia was “a different war” from the one Webb had reported in Vietnam. Reporters drove down highways to the front lines of battle and returned to a graceful colonial city when the day was over. When Webb made that trip in April 1971, going only thirty miles down the road from Phnom Penh, it was three weeks before she came back.

She and her Khmer colleague were walking near the front lines when they and four other journalists took shelter in a ditch as bullets whizzed past them. Running on all fours, they found a safe spot in the jungle where they spent the night. In the morning, they were captured by enemy rifles. Two Vietnamese soldiers removed their shoes, tied their arms behind their backs, and gave them tree branches to carry as camouflage from passing aircraft. “You will be taken to a pleasant place for food and drink,” a soldier told them.

At first the journalists felt “like cattle,” sticking their faces into jungle waterholes and gulping down black water. Their feet became infected and a soldier closed the cuts on the soles of one of his captives by stitching them shut with a needle and thread. Within a few days they were given flip-flops, “from Highway Four,” they were told. Walking in the shoes of dead men, hiding from U.S. bombers, they marched slowly toward an undisclosed destination, accompanied by a group of Vietnamese soldiers.

Slowly a weird camaraderie developed between captors and prisoners. During interrogation sessions, Webb assessed the different personalities of her questioners and gave them private nicknames. “We were always hungry,” Webb says, but they were given the same Spartan nourishment as the Vietnamese ate themselves. Webb began to have vivid fantasies of eating oranges while she marched, and savored every cigarette she was given.

After their first week, the journalists were given new clothes, the men green fatigues and Webb  the black pajamas worn by Vietnamese women. She felt a stab of terror when she put them on; now from the air she would be just another black figure running through the jungle, another target.

“We combed our hair, did not cry, joked…”

Webb found a silent rapport with a man she called the Carpenter and another soldier teased her for being unmarried at her advanced age. A field doctor treated the prisoners’ infected feet with Mercurochrome and crumbled bits of penicillin pills, “like a very serious Boy Scout.”

Webb’s biggest fear was that the statements she was told to write would be taken out of context and read over Radio Hanoi as support for North Vietnam. During her interrogations, she struggled to clarify the role of journalists as impartial reporters, a concept her questioners found hard to believe.

And yet, after twenty-three days, all six prisoners were released, unharmed, and were guided to a place where they were found by government troops. “Miss Webb,” she was told, “You’re supposed to be dead, “ and Webb discovered her obituary had appeared in the New York Times.

“We will miss so much your soft voice,” Webb was told as captors and prisoners said goodbye. That night in a Phnom Penh apartment, after three hot baths and “fifteen or sixteen” glasses of iced orange juice, while lying in a chilled air-conditioned bedroom Webb missed her hammock. Thinking of her captors, she wondered if there would ever be a time when they would meet again, “sitting down and talking--over beer, not rifles.”~Janet Brown