It’s May Fifth! You know what that means….!

Happy Hikago Day!!!

Technically this LJ is on hiatus until the end of June, but it’s May 5th, and on May 5th, exceptions must be made.

For anyone new to this journal, Hikaru no Go is my true love. If you have never watched this show or read the manga, here’s my Top 5 pimp post about why it is the best. Best, best, best. Best story ever, best characters ever, best epic metaphor for life turned into a shounen manga series ever. Oh, my heart. Hikago has a unique place in the annals of beloved manga/anime series for many people. There’s just something about it that’s truly special.

This year, Manga Bookshelf, a wonderful fan review site run by my friend Melinda Beasi, is doing a very special roundtable on Hikaru no Go to celebrate the publication of the final volume of the series’ English translation (which was released, fittingly enough, on May 5th).

Melinda asked me to be a part of the roundtable discussion, which has been fantastic. If you’re a fan of the series (or don’t mind being thoroughly spoiled), please check it out. Those ladies are so smart and articulate, and we had a wonderful, fun discussion.

Every year since 2007, I have done a special Top 5 meme in honor of Hikaru no Go to celebrate May 5th. It’s my favorite post of the year – Hikago fans ask each other for their top-5 Hikago-related things! It’s so much fun and reminds me every year how wonderful this series is.

Melinda also asked me if I would like to do a very special Manga Bookshelf version of this year’s Top 5 meme, the only answer was: of course! What better to celebrate the 5th anniversary of my meme? And what better way to celebrate a story that’s all about connection than connecting with other people who aren’t on LJ?

So! Hikago fans! You can find this year’s Top 5 meme at Manga Bookshelf, right this way!

Bring your game faces, and LET’S FIVE!

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Japanese Cinema Blogathon #3: What’s in the bag? Asian Horror & the Great Divide

NJapan Cinema/CinemaFanatic‘s weeklong Japanese Cinema Blogathon. Donate here; or check after the entry for more places to donate.

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There was originally going to be a review of Audition here but then butterflythread made a great post (warning: link contains graphic imagery and detailed textual & visual references to gore, violence, and disturbing horror film imagery) about the use of the abject in horror films, referencing mostly American & European horror.

So that got me thinking about the special quality of Asian horror films that made them all the rage at the turn of the century. And how Audition is the perfect encapsulation, as a film, of everything that was wonderful about that impulse, and also everything that went so horribly awry. In fact we don’t even have to talk about Audition as a whole. (Esp. since JapanCinema just reviewed it as part of the blogathon today!)

We can just talk about The Bag.

For those of you who haven’t seen Audition, the main thing to know is that it succeeds on its lack of pretense as a horror film. The first half appears to be a harmless, unassuming (if surreal) comedy of errors about a man’s attempts to find a wife. You’re thinking, oh, what a strange, odd, yet sweet little film about dysfunctional romances and age differences in modern urban life.

And then this shit happens.

The Bag is the iconic, defining image of this film. It’s a symbol of both the horror of the body/soul divide and a symbol of the genre divisions of horror itself. You have no idea what’s in The Bag. You don’t want to know what’s in The Bag.

But whatever’s in The Bag, it ain’t pretty, and it ain’t good.

There were a handful of quintessential Japanese horror films at the end of the 90′s that crossed over into the American mainstream and kick-started American interest in Japanese horror for most of the next decade, though that’s waned thanks to lots and lots of crappy remakes, and Tartan’s now-bankrupt “Asian Extreme” brand. But in the beginning, there were a handful: Ringu (1998), Audition (1999), Pulse (2001), and Ju-On (2000/2003). Arguably Battle Royale (2000) and Ichi the Killer (2001) were also forerunners of this movement, too; but I want to set them aside for a moment and talk about the other four, for the obvious reason that they sidestep the typical gore-splattered effects of the modern horror genre and opt for a more heavily suspense-driven suggestion-based approach to the creation of fear.

American studios, used to many decades of gore-splattered zombie, vampire, and teen slasher films, took away completely the wrong thing from American film-lovers’ new interest in Asian horror. They decided it meant that it was time for a recontextualization of traditional Western horror elements. So they looked at the basic ingredients of Battle Royale and Ichi the Killer, and in synthesizing those elements with American horror, essentially wound up with a whole new genre, torture porn.

When they looked at the basic ingredients of The Ring, The Grudge, and Pulse, however, American studios floundered. As a genre, it must have been easy to build on the ravenous, violent social commentary of the first two films; but after they got done doing literal, shot-for-shot recreations of the other films, there wasn’t much for American horror films left to synthesize. They failed to realize that films like Ringu and Ju-On, and the frustratingly ambiguous Pulse, had more in common with those other late films of the 90′s, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and The Others. All of these American films (like their predecessors, The Haunting, The Birds, Rosemary’s Baby, and countless other horror classics) opted for the Jamesian approach to supernatural horror, depicting it as a symptom rather than a cause of human psychological breakdown. This new wave of Japanese horror films took our imaginations a step further: they presented internal and external horror as permanently, inextricably conjoined. And they did that by de-emphasizing many of the tried-and-true horror techniques of American/European cinema. No one remembers how many bodies are dismembered in each of the Saw movies; but everyone remembers the horse jumping over the side of the boat.

And everyone remembers the Thing In the Bag.

Audition, to me, sits in the middle of these two impulses. It has elements of both the graphic horror genre and the implied horror genre. It has a set of protagonists who are all complicit in creating the horror that lives in the shadows of our heroine’s apartmet. But it also has such a strong psychological component that it’s easy to forget that nothing supernatural actually happens in the film. The Bag, as an image, is so powerful that it seems to be superhuman, mythological. (Is there some supernatural element involved in keeping the Thing In The Bag alive? We will never know, but aren’t you tempted to wonder?)

In most modern American horror films, there’s a defining point of origin for the evil: Freddy, Jason, the Devil, the Candyman, a coven of witches. In Asian horror, there’s often an eternal grudge, a ghost caught in a permanent time loop, or a strange new form of evil creeping out of Pandora’s Technogadget. These things aren’t palpable, and often are immutable, uncontrollable. You can’t hope to harness them anymore than you can hope to pinpoint their origins. Likewise, the Thing in the Bag, though it may have a definite origin, history, and backstory, resides in that loop of inhuman and uncontrollable terror. It has a direct correlation to that other longstanding horror trope of The Hatbox, something that carries an instant mythos of its own without you ever needing to see what’s inside it; even as you know that, inevitably, you must see what’s inside.

And this is where, to return to the concept of the abject, the Spirit/Body divide is also a reflection of the Supernatural/Psychological divide; the place where the body and spirit are horrifically severed is the same space in which supernatural & psychological evil are permanently conjoined. Uzumaki (Spiral) (2000), based on the manga of the same name by Ito Junji. Spiral is a lacklustre adaptation of a very clear idea: that evil elements occupy a life cycle as surely as any living thing.

Ito’s horror manga is completely concerned with the delineation of that yin/yang push and pull: he depicts a kind of supernatural/personal nesting space, not only thematically, but quite literally, in one of his most famous short stories: The Enigma of Amigara Fault, which you can read online here (remember manga is read from right to left). DISCLAIMER: This manga has brief images of earthquake devastation and survivors. Please please do not read if you will be triggered or made uncomfortable in any way by these images. Alternately, you can read a plot synopsis here.

In the Enigma of Amigara Fault, Ito creates an iconic and terrifying image: hundreds of person-shaped holes have opened up on a mountainside. Each hole seems to correspond to fit an individual. So people delightedly flock to the mountain, determined to find their hole, their special, custom-tailored bit of inexlicable phenomena. So quite literally, the mangaka gives us this image of a unification of the body/spirit divide that also encompasses this joining of the external/supernatural and the internal/psychological. Not only is the origin source unknown, but there is no knowing what you will find when you find the hole that belongs to you. Just like the Thing in the Bag presents the concrete visual of the body, dehumanized and de-contextualized, Ito’s person-shaped holes present the completely abstract extreme of the body/soul divide: the spirit, meeting the supernatural, calling out to the body to rejoin it like a child returning to the womb. We recognize the inherent drive to seek out our own tailored supernatural experience because we know that that supernatural phenomenon is already, in part, created by us, as we are created by it. (Which came first, the person or the hole/womb?)

In the same way, we are driven to recognize the inherent humanity of the Thing in the Bag, despite the accompanying horror of that discovery. And this is the great genius of Asian horror: it joins the personal to the external so fully that we have to recognize the extent to which all supernatural phenomena is self-created. Somewhere out there is a person-shaped crater for each of us, whether six-feet underground or just on the surface, waiting for us to crawl into it. And just as we recognize that we are all irresistibly drawn to that personalized darkness, we realize that being drawn to that darkness is paradoxically part of what makes us human. And that is the starkest juxtapostiion of all: the realization that to be alive is to be drawn always, inexorably, towards death–

–and the realization that the Thing in the Bag is us.

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Places to Donate to Help Japan:

• Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
• (Note: the list of fanfic writers participating is being sorted by fandom here)
• ‘s list of resources including places/ways to donate and information links for those trying to locate family and friends.
  
  If you’d like to join me in blogging to raise money for Japan, just grab a banner and link your post on the roundup!
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  Posted by bookshop on Mar 17, 2011 in film, i heart japan | 0 comments

Japanese Cinema Blogathon, #2: Images of women in Japanese film.

NJapan Cinema/CinemaFanatic‘s weeklong Japanese Cinema Blogathon. Donate here; or check after the entry for more places to donate.

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Kazama Shiori.

When she was only 17, her short Imitation Interior became the first film to win the PIA Film Festival Scholarship. She’s gone on to write and direct feature-length films focusing on 20-somethings struggling with adulthood in modern Japan: How Old is the River (1995), Mars Canon (2002), and Sekai no Owari (2005).

Kawase Naomii. In 1997, for her autobiographical documentary Embracing, she became the youngest person ever to win the Camera D’Or (for best new director) at Cannes.

Ten years later, for her feature film The Mourning Forest, she won the Grand Prize.

watch the trailer for The Mourning Forest

Tanada Yuki. Winner of the 2008 Directors Guild of Japan award for her film One Million Yen and the Nigamushi Woman, Tanada is a filmmaker who places women at the center of her stories, and gives them agency and freedom. Her films tackle a heady host of issues including teen sexual exploration, queer identity, female sexual empowerment, and coming of age in modern Japan.

Quote from Tanada’s Midnight Eye Interview: “I want to be known as a filmmaker, not a woman filmmaker. As you know, there are male directors and women directors who produce interesting and not so interesting films, regardless of their sex. I don’t think there’s any difference in approach or subject matter between men or women. I think if you had the same script and you gave it to a different filmmaker, it doesn’t matter if they were male or female, a different movie would come out. I don’t think gender has anything to do with it. It’s the individual who defines how the film turns out.”

Ninagawa Mika. Renowned and award-winning photographer, cinematographer, and director, you can see her trademark color-bursting style in the AKB48 MV , which she directed, or in her fashion shoots for Vogue Japan. Her directorial debut, Sakuran (2007), is scripted by Tanada, and is a critically acclaimed, color-saturated depiction of female sexuality.

Ando Momoko and Ando Sakura.

The daughters of famous filmmaker Okuda Eiji, both have achieved success and critical acclaim: Sakura notably through her award-winning role in Love Exposure, which Jasper Sharp calls “the most exciting film to come out of Japan in years;” Momoko through her directorial debut, Kakera, about the relationship between two young women struggling with their sexualities and with adulthood.

Ibi Keiko. Former Miss Japan, NYU grad Ibi became only the second Japanese director in history to win a non-honorary Academy Award–in 1999 for her Documentary Short, “The Personals.”

This puts her in a club of exactly two people: herself and Akira Kurosawa.

Hamano Sachi.

With over 300 films to her credit, Hamano worked her way up in the pink film industry to become a legend who ran her own production company, and garnered the title of the most prolific filmmaker in Japan.

After realizing that her body of work was being largely critically ignored because of the subject matter, she set out to include more mainstream films in her portfolio, featuring empowered heroines and gay and lesbian protagonists.

Since 2000, her films such as In Search of a Lost Writer (2000) and Lily Festival (2001) have taken top prize at film festivals around the world.

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Places to Donate to Help Japan:

• Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
• (Note: the list of fanfic writers participating is being sorted by fandom here)
• ‘s list of resources including places/ways to donate and information links for those trying to locate family and friends.
  
  If you’d like to join me in blogging to raise money for Japan, just grab a banner and link your post on the roundup!
  Read More
  Posted by bookshop on Mar 17, 2011 in film, i heart japan | 0 comments

Japanese Cinema Blogathon, #1: Kurutta ippêji (A Page of Madness) (1926)

NJapan Cinema/CinemaFanatic‘s weeklong Japanese Cinema Blogathon. Donate here; or check after the entry for more places to donate.

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Film Kurutta ippêji (Page of Madness) (1926)
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Cast: Masuo Inoue, Yoshie Nakagawa and Ayako Iijima
Review: This film, you guys. one of my all-time favorites. Have flailed for hours attempting to talk about it without just giving up and linking you to Midnight Eye’s review instead, but here goes.

the tl;dr version: A Page of Madness is a disjointed and sorrowful story of a family tied to an asylum. It is confusing as shit, but it will blow your mind. It’s rare, and difficult to follow because of the subject matter, non-linear structure, and of course because it’s a silent film with NO title cards–but A Page of Madness is an absolutely brilliant piece of avante-garde storytelling. Midnight Eye writes, “a synopsis of the plot can’t begin to explain the power of the film, nor the audacity of its vision.”

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chilly chilly is the evening time, but waterloo sunset’s fine.

My real life relationships, all of them, romantic or semi-platonic or the fuzzy area in between, have ended in unequivocal, unmitigated disaster of one kind of another. They don’t just end, they end, more or less, in ruin. As a result, rather than subject myself to yet another instance of failing to love another human being half as well as I manage to love the fictional relationships in my head, I suspect that I more or less fall in love with ships instead of people, anymore. I suspect it’s a coping mechanism of sorts. I think, selfishly, that as coping mechanisms go, there are far worse ones I could cultivate.

Harry/Draco is roughly equivalent to The One, whose first name I never say; the one I am over, except for how once every five years or so I find myself thinking about him and it all comes flooding back like it was yesterday. H/D was The OTP, the one you don’t get over, the one you never really move on from. H/D is the ship that burned its way through my heart and changed everything. H/D took years to recover from and probably required therapy. H/D is still reaching out and coiling itself around my heart. This is us, HP fandom. We’ll never be quits. Never.

But oh, then there was Tezuka/Ryoma. And if H/D was The One, Tenipuri was that unexpected, robust passion that comes into your life when you least expect it. Prince of Tennis was this new, joyous love that I never ever expected and didn’t quite know what to do with. And if, when it was over, I realized it was a perfectly clean break, nothing left, then I had no lingering regrets either. We parted with fondness and wished each other well, and I smile whenever I look back now. I remember how in love I was then, and I laugh that I was so head over heels for something so fleeting. But how could I have been anything else? It was wild and wonderful and unforgettable.

Somewhere in there, McShep and I kept having these sordid flings in back alleys, where I gorged myself on all the fic I could find with a vague sense of self-loathing, because I should know better than to fall for such a cocky, arrogant, acerbic ship. McShep thinks it’s just such hot shit. Well, let me tell you, McShep, I’ve looked into the soul-blazing clear eyes of Tezuka’s all-blinding rainbow-colored love for Ryoma, and I can tell you I know from soulbinding, and you, McShep, you and I, we’re just not compatible. Not at all. Ugh, you’re so vain and smug and –we’re just not — oh my god is that a coffeeshop AU? *MAKES OUT WITH*

And then, and then, Akira/Hikaru. Akira/Hikaru, who makes me tea when I am sad and fluffs my pillows and allows me a safe place to hide my head in. Akira/Hikaru, the kid next door who’s always there for you, your best friend and more, the one who waits for you to grow up, the one you take for granted until it’s stealing your breath and breaking your heart; and all you can think is that you want to keep this, this feeling inside you, with you forever, locked somewhere secret and safe, so that the two of you can always be together.

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I kind of don’t want to write fic for Inception. I kind of want to just keep enjoying everyone else’s passion, letting it envelop me but still breeze right by me. I was never really happy with any of the fanfic I wrote for Prince of Tennis, because I feel like I was too giddy in love with the subject to be uninvested enough to write anything good. I am alarmed at my own level of investment in Inception fandom. Maybe it’s just a summer fling, but it doesn’t feel the way the others do–not Kradam or Merlin or House or Death Note, where the superficial appeal was obvious but the investment was never more than half-hearted. No, this feels more like that giddy, joyous insouciant thing that I’ve only felt with Tenipuri (and maybe with That Guy, the one with the long slender fingers and the off-key singing, who made me weak-kneed and heartstricken when I was too young to know what to do with the feeling).

I kind of don’t want to tackle Mr Eames, with his beautiful mouth and his expressive eyes and his face that goes haunted when you least expect it, so quickly you think maybe you imagined it. I’m kind of afraid he’ll break my heart. I’m kind of afraid Arthur, beautiful Arthur with his frowns and his straight lines and clean angles, will mystify me to exhaustion. I’m kind of afraid I’m projecting (lol projection). Maybe it’s okay to sit this one out. Or maybe I’m just intimidated. Or tired.

Then again, maybe I’m relating just a little too hard to Eames, forever, cheerfully, holding out his hand to Arthur, with utterly no expectation and no hope of return. There’s something cold and ultimately so sad in that metaphor.

Especially when I bring it back around full circle and apply it to myself.

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(All this navel-gazing aside–just like Eames, there’s nowhere else, right now, I’d rather be. ♥)

eta, 8/25/10: as stunned as I am to say it, it seems to be real, and not a dream:
- there is actually now beautiful, gorgeous-beyond-description fanart based on this post by ;
- and there is actually now heartbreaking, glorious, painful, amazing fanfic based on this post & comments by .

Please, please go gaze/read and give the creators your love. ♥

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quick update

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have gone back and exhaustively edited the fanfiction post, which doesn’t really have an official title but probably needs one. I’ve cleaned up the list and expanded it based on all the many helpful suggestions you guys have provided, and I’m so grateful to everyone who stopped by and read and made corrections and expansions to the list. Thank you everyone.

I really hope that the list will continue to be useful to people in your discussion and explanations of fanfic, so please feel free to keep adding to it as you find new examples of fanfiction operating outside of fan spaces.

As a final note, in particular I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to this example of published fanfiction:

That, my dear Ms. Author of the Week, is what is known as Crossover fanfic.

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Hikago fandom!

effex and I are going to host an epic Hikago manga re-read and re-watching party! Please please feel free to join us! Details can be found here.

eta: also, hikarunogo is hosting a drabblefest! Check it out when you get a chance! It’s still Hikago Week, you know! The meme is also still open for business.

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As a side note:

A lot of people have swung by this journal this week, and I just wanted to say hello and welcome, and I’m glad you’re all here. I have no idea what to tell you to expect from me or my journal these days, but I hope that you enjoy your visits. Please feel free to ask me anything about any of my fandoms, or me, or my journal, or anything you want.

Aso, you should know that i really do have an unhealthy obsessive thing for gay serial killers, if this bothers you, turn back now.

Happy Friday, all!

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Also on LJ. You know the drill.

You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently comments!

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IT’S HERE, IT’S HERE, IT’S FINALLY HERE! I’VE BEEN WAITING ALL YEAR! :D

So I’ve been kind of quiet on the Hikago front because I’ve been busy and Hikago fandom and I needed a mutual break from each other, by order of many months–but Hikaru no Go is still the ruler of my heart forever, and today is MAY FIFTH!!!!

Which means ONLY ONE THING: IT’S FINALLY HIKAGO DAY!!!!!!!

Hikago is my true joy, I cannot stress that enough, it is the love of my life, and every year for the last 3 years, I’ve done the greatest meme in the entire world to celebrate May 5th, aka Hikago Day. <333333

Previous Incarnations: here (2007), here (2008), and here (2009).

5 things to do if you don’t know what Hikaru no Go is:
1. Read my Pimp Post!
2. Buy the SUBLIME Manga from VIZ.
3. Watch the equally sublime anime after which you should read the manga bc there is an even more sublime WHOLE EXTRA ARC that the anime sadly does not cover
4. stare at the amazing art by Takeshi Obata until you feel the love.
5. Ask me how Hikaru no Go will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

READY?

LET’S FIVE!

sry eddy i ttly hotlinked that picture from you ilu you better do my meme <3

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~BE SHINY NOW, EVERYONE~

Hi to everybody who is coming over to this LJ and my twitter account from the book-blogging world. I LOVE BOOKS, ergo I LOVE YOU GUYS.

I just want you all to know that this is a fandom journal through and through, always will be!!! Which is to say, I may detour through serious posts infrequently, but the rest of the time it will be mostly gibber & squee.

In honor of driving this point home, I thought it was time for a little trip down memory lane.

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