23 August 2013 3 Comments

Experiments in Manga at Manga Bookshelf

Experiments in Manga has joined Manga Bookshelf! The site will no longer be updating at Blogger, so if you have bookmarks in place you may want to update them to http://experimentsinmanga.mangabookshelf.com/. Although I won’t be removing the old site, all of the content and comments have been moved to the new one. I’m hoping to make the transition as smooth as possible but I still have a bit of tidying up to do. I’ve tried my best to get everything to redirect properly, but if you notice anything missing or strange please do let me know. Thanks for your help and thanks for sticking with me! And now:

A huge welcome to new readers of Experiments in Manga and an even bigger thank you to returning readers!

My name is Ash Brown. I’m a musician by training, a librarian by profession, a blogger by choice, and a manga addict by nature. My interest in Japan and Japanese culture actually extends far beyond manga and includes other literature, art, music, language, food, and probably anything else you can imagine. I practice traditional Okinawan karate-do (specifically Shōrin-ryū and Shūdōkan) as well as kobujutsu. I also happen to be a member of a taiko ensemble. Oh, and I love riichi mahjong. I’m pretty bad at it, though.

My day job has absolutely nothing to do with manga (although once I did catalog a collection of underground and independent comics; that was pretty cool.) Experiments in Manga is a personal site that I write and maintain entirely in my free time. I would actually like to write more than I do, but unfortunately that free time is very limited. Besides, I like to spend some of my waking hours actually reading, too.

I started Experiments in Manga in 2010 (mostly for myself) as a way to interact with the manga blogging community to a greater extent and to help keep track of all the manga that I read. And I read a lot of manga. Depending on who you ask I either have a very eclectic taste or no taste at all. I’m extremely open-minded and difficult to offend. I read and enjoy manga from just about every genre and aimed at any demographic or audience.

What can you expect from Experiments in Manga? Typically, I release three or four posts a week, including the weekly My Week in Manga feature. I also write in-depth reviews, among other things. Not surprisingly, the primary focus of Experiment in Manga is on manga but I also cover Japanese literature and write about tangentially related subjects and other things that interest me as well. I currently hold a monthly manga giveaway which allows me to quite literally share my love of manga. It also gives me an excuse to make lists. I love lists.

I am absolutely delighted to be joining the Manga Bookshelf Battle Robot. I’ve been a devoted reader of Manga Bookshelf since I discovered the site and some of my most admired manga bloggers are associated with the group. I consider it a great honor to be invited to join. I’m truly looking forward to working with everyone at Manga Bookshelf and hope that readers (new and old) will find Experiments in Manga at least occasionally interesting or useful!

Filed Under: Random Musings, Unshelved Tagged:
21 August 2013 2 Comments

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Author: Edogawa Rampo
Translator: James B. Harris
U.S. publisher: Tuttle
ISBN: 9784805311936
Released: May 2012
Original release: 1924-1950

After reading and enjoying Edogawa Rampo’s novella Strange Tale of Panorama Island I decided to seek out more of his work. What better way to start than with Rampo’s debut in English? Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by James B. Harris and first published in 1956, was reissued in 2012 by Tuttle Publishing with an additional and quite useful foreword by Patricia Welch putting the collection and Rampo into historical and literary context. Despite Rampo’s prolificacy, influence, and popularity in Japan, relatively few volumes of his work are available in English although his short stories can often be found in anthologies. In addition to being Rampo’s introduction to English-reading audiences, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination is particularly interesting in that Rampo worked very closely with Harrison on its translation.

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination collects nine of Rampo’s short stories selected to represent some of his best work. Eight of the nine stories were originally written in the 1920s. The collection opens with what is perhaps Rampo’s most well-known story “The Human Chair.” (At least, it was the story with which I was most familiar before reading the volume.) Next is “The Psychological Test” which features Rampo’s famous detective Kogorō Akechi. “The Caterpillar” is another story I was previously aware of and for a time was even banned in Japan. The collection continues with “The Cliff.” Written in 1950, it is the most recent example of Rampo’s work in the volume. Other tales of mystery include “The Twins,” “The Red Chamber,” and “Two Crippled Men” while other tales of imagination include “The Hell of Mirrors” and “The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture.” Though, as Welch points out in the foreword, Rampo frequently blurs the lines of genre and many of the stories have significant crossover.

Rampo is an incredibly clever and imaginative writer. Even when working with similar themes and plot elements, each story in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination exhibits Rampo’s creativity in narrative technique and structure and he throws in enough plot twists that they all feel fresh. Each story is a little peculiar and each story is vaguely disconcerting—the erotic and the grotesque and macabre are no strangers to Rampo’s work—but in the end the tales are all different from one another. The culprits of his crimes stories are often undone by their arrogance, belief in their infallibility, or on occasion their guilty consciences, but the paths to their downfalls vary. Rampo’s more fantastic tales rely on subtle and not so subtle horror, but their thrills and terrors are all distinctive.

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a captivating collection of short stories and would make a fine introduction to Rampo’s work for the uninitiated. If I had to choose, I think that I personally prefer Strange Tale of Panorama Island and its outrageousness slightly more, but the selections in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination show evidence of the elements in the novella that I particularly enjoyed: the tight plotting, the light style of narration with slight touches of humor, the unexpected turns in the story, the inherent strangeness of the characters and their accounts. Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination has stood the test of time well. Nearly fifty years after it was first released, and more than a half-century since the stories were originally written, the volume remains an intriguing and engaging collection.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged: ,
19 August 2013 Leave a Comment

My Week in Manga: August 12-August 18, 2013

My News and Reviews

Two reviews, and some big news! First up was my review of Blade of the Immortal, Volume 24: Massacre by Hiroaki Samura. As you might suspect from the title, it’s a rather bloody volume. It also features what I think is one of the best visually executed battles in the series. I also reviewed Yukio Mishima’s novel Forbidden Colors which is a bit twisted but extremely engrossing and very good. Like his earlier novel Confessions of a Mask, it deals with homosexual themes and includes autobiographical elements.

As for the big news! Over the weekend Experiments in Manga celebrated it’s third anniversary and I wrote quite a lengthy post about it. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here’s the really important bit: I am delighted to announce that in the very near future Experiments in Manga will be joining the Manga Bookshelf network of blogs!

I was traveling quite a bit last week (a couple of my friends were getting married), so I’m a little out of touch when it comes to some of the most recent manga news. However, there is one thing that I want to be sure to pass along. I personally don’t read much manga digitally, but Organization of Anti-Social Geniuses has a fantastic post looking at all the legal ways to read digital manga in 2013.

Quick Takes

The Last of the Mohicans by Shigeru Sugiura. The Last of the Mohicans is the first volume in editor Ryan Holmberg’s Ten-Cent Manga series, exploring classic manga influenced by popular culture and comics from the United States. In addition to the manga itself, the volume also includes an article by Sugiura and an extensive essay by Holmberg which puts The Last of the Mohicans into context. For me, this was probably the greatest appeal of the volume. I more or less enjoyed the manga, but I valued to an even greater extent learning about its history and Sugiura’s influences. I don’t know that The Last of the Mohicans will necessarily entice casual manga readers, but for those interested in comics history it’s great.

Math Girls Manga, Volume 1 written by Hiroshi Yuki and illustrated by Mika Hisaka. Based on the Math Girls series of novels, the manga focuses a little more on the romance and a little less on the math, but it still can teach a thing or two about it. Unfortunately, errors slipped into the English edition and some of the mathematical symbols are missing. Seeing as Math Girls is about, well, math, this is somewhat problematic. But if you can ignore that, Math Girls is a rather delightful and charming manga. Math lovers in particular will appreciate it, but as with the novels it’s possible to skip over the math-intensive sections and just enjoy the story. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the Math Girls manga, but I suspect there won’t be another volume released anytime soon.

Strawberry Chan, Volumes 1-2 by Ai Morinaga. I picked up Morinaga’s Strawberry Chan manga on a whim. The series consists of two volumes, The Gorgeous Life of Strawberry Chan and The Super Cool Life of Strawberry Chan. The manga is fairly episodic and each chapter is very short. The titular Strawberry Chan is a small pet frog owned by Taro Akiyoshi, a sadistic high school student who delights in tormenting him. Despite his cruelty, Strawberry Chan adores his master. And then there’s Taro’s roommate who’s legitimately in love with Strawberry Chan and a masochistic classmate who just wants Taro to abuse him instead of the frog. Strawberry Chan is utterly ridiculous, random, and all sorts of wrong. I loved it.

Three Wolves Mountain by Bohra Naono. So far, only two of Naono’s manga have been released in English. Yokai’s Hunger largely frustrated me but I thoroughly enjoyed Three Wolves Mountain; it’s easily my favorite manga out of the two. It’s an odd mix of comedy, drama, and the supernatural, but Naono makes it work this time. Kaya Susugi is a cafe owner by day and a grave keeper by night who ends up taking in Tarou and Jiro Tsukihara, two werewolf brothers. Susugi is used to being alone but becomes very close with both of the brothers, but especially with Jiro who has fallen in love with him. I wasn’t expecting Three Wolves Mountain to become such a family affair, but parents, siblings, and even cousins all have their role to play in the story. Three Wolves Mountain is great stuff.

Filed Under: Features, My Week in Manga Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
18 August 2013 Leave a Comment

Random Musings: Three Years of Experiments in Manga

Three years? Three years?! Three years ago today I began writing at Experiments in Manga in an attempt to share my love of manga and Japanese literature. Well, to be perfectly honest I started the blog for myself, but I am delighted that other people have on occasion found it to be helpful and interesting. It’s been a lot of work and I certainly have plenty of room for improvement, but I have largely been enjoying myself. I’m rather pleased that I’ve been able to keep the blog going this long.

So what am I particularly proud of looking back on the year? One of my biggest accomplishments was hosting the Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast. I’ve been regularly participating in the Feast since December 2010, but this was only the second time that I acted as host. It wasn’t quite as nerve-wracking as the first time, but I was still very anxious about it. I like to think that it went well. Not as many people participated in the Feast as did in the first one I hosted, but the contributions were great.

I don’t tend to get very personal in my posts at Experiments in Manga, but I made one notable exception last year—Random Musings: A Note of Thanks for Wandering Son. This article was very difficult for me to write because it was so extremely and intimately personal. I had no idea what the response to it would be. Much to my relief, it was very well received. As nervous as I was, I ended up being very glad that I put myself out there writing it.

Another post from the last year of Experiments in Manga that seemed to go over well was Finding Manga: Right Stuf. Finding Manga and the closely related Discovering Manga are two features that I’ve really been meaning to update more frequently. I’ll have to make a point to try to do that over the next year. I tend to focus on reviews at here at Experiments in Manga, but it’s fun to mix it up every once in a while, too.

Two of my reviews from the past year have been particularly popular. My review for The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of Gay Erotic Manga has been, by far, one of the most frequently visited pages at Experiments in Manga in the blog’s entire history. I was pretty excited about the manga—the first volume of Tagame’s work to be released in English—so hopefully the review has been useful. I was rather surprised to see how popular my review of Tomoyuki Hoshino’s volume of short fiction We, the Children of Cats proved to be. The review did receive some support from the publisher, so that probably helped. We, the Children of Cats is a difficult but very good collection.

And speaking of reviews: I continued my Blade of the Immortal review project. Every month I have been reviewing one volume of the series. Although Blade of the Immortal is still being published in English, I have just about caught up with Dark Horse’s release. I will continue to review the series as the new volumes come out, but I plan on taking on another monthly review project as well. I’ll be putting it to a vote, too, so look out for a poll in the near future if you’d like to help choose which manga I focus on next.

Over the last year I was able to consistently release at least two “extra” posts a month. This pace has seemed to work pretty well for me and tends to be manageable. I still run into the problem where there’s more that I want to write about but I simply don’t have the time. In general, my coverage of manga has increased and I post at least one manga-centric feature or review a week. At this point the balance between manga posts and non-manga posts is close to where I want it, but I may have over-compensated a bit. I miss reading and reviewing non-manga materials to the same extent that I used to do.

Oh! And some big news before I close: I am very pleased to announce that I and Experiments in Manga will soon be joining the Manga Bookshelf network of blogs. I was greatly honored and very excited to be invited to the group and after much careful thought and deliberation I decided to accept. Not much will actually change here at Experiments in Manga, but by being a member of Manga Bookshelf I’ll have even more opportunities to write about and discuss manga. More information about the move will be coming very soon. I am really looking forward to it and am delighted to be joining a group of manga bloggers that I sincerely admire.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, I would like to thank everyone who has read and supported Experiments in Manga over the years. As I previously mentioned, I started Experiments in Manga mostly for myself, but I sincerely appreciate all of my readers. Whether you’re a regular reader or just drop by on occasion, thank you so much! I hope that I can continue to build upon what I’ve already done and make Experiments in Manga even better over the coming year.

Filed Under: Random Musings, Unshelved Tagged:
16 August 2013 Leave a Comment

Forbidden Colors

Author: Yukio Mishima
Translator: Alfred H. Marks
U.S. publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 9780375705168
Released: February 1999
Original release: 1951/1953

In Japan, Yukio Mishima’s novel Forbidden Colors was released in two parts. The first eighteen chapters were compiled in 1951 while the collection with the final fourteen chapters was published in 1953. The English translation of Forbidden Colors by Alfred H. Marks was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1968. Like Mishima’s earlier novel Confessions of a Mask, Forbidden Colors deals with prominent homosexual themes, although the two works approach the material in vastly different ways. Also like Confessions of a Mask, and many of Mishima’s other works, Forbidden Colors contains some autobiographical elements. In addition to being my introduction to Japanese literature, Mishima and his works fascinate me. I’ve been slowly making my way through all of his material available in English, but I was particularly interested in reading Forbidden Colors.

After being betrayed time and again the aging author Shunsuke Hinoki has developed an intense hatred of women. Seeking revenge, he enters into a peculiar arrangement with a beautiful young man by the name of Yuichi Minami. Yuichi has come to realize that he loves men and is tormented by what that means living in a society which doesn’t accept homosexuality. Shunsuke is willing to assist Yuichi in hiding his secret by helping to arrange his marriage and to develop a reputation as a philanderer. In exchange, Yuichi promises Shunsuke to make the women he seduces miserable. They may fall in love with him, but he will never love them in return. The agreement is advantageous for both men. Yuichi will have a perfect cover allowing him the freedom to explore his sexuality—no one would suspect a married man and a womanizer to have male lovers—and Shunsuke will have the revenge he so greatly desires.

Shunsuke is an unapologetic misogynist. His anti-women rhetoric can be difficult to take, but without it the plot of Forbidden Colors would never go anywhere. It is necessary and important as the story’s catalyst. Mishima has very deliberately created a distasteful character who at the same time is enthralling in his extremes. Yuichi, despite being loved by all, isn’t a particularly pleasant person, either. However, I did find his portrayal to be much more sympathetic. He’s vain and self-centered, but he also has an air of naivety and innocence about him. Both men and women fall victim to his charms but Yuichi himself is often manipulated as well. Forbidden Colors is an absorbing tale as Yuichi struggles to keep his two lives separate, sinking deeper into Japan’s underground gay community while trying to keep up appearances in his public life. It’s an outlandish battle of the sexes that is hard to look away from and no one comes out unscathed.

Forbidden Colors explores and deals with a number of dualities: homosexuality and heterosexuality, love and hatred, youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, truth and deceit, cruelty and kindness, morality and immorality, and so on. Mishima plays the dichotomies off one another, but also reveals how closely intertwined they can be. The complexities of the characters’ relationships show that opposites are rarely just that and how at times in the end they aren’t really all that different. Yuichi, for example, comes to genuinely care for his wife but in his twisted way of thinking expresses that love through cruelty. There is a certain logic to his decision and his concern is real, though someone else might not reach the same conclusion. At it’s heart Forbidden Colors is a fairly dark story with erotic underpinnings and characters who, though often unlikeable, are captivating. I found the novel to be incredibly engrossing.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged: ,
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