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A Father-and-Son Adventure to the Heart of 'Japanese Cool' Date: 3/14/2005 |
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By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Published: March 15, 2005 The very subject of Peter Carey's new book, "Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey With His Son," can't help but raise all sorts of great (well, at least positive) expectations. The book, which traces a recent trip Mr. Carey and his 12-year-old son, Charley, took to Japan to immerse themselves in the wild and wacky world of Japanese pop culture, seems perfectly timed with the cultural boom in Japanese animation (anime) and comics (manga) that has recently been sweeping America, pushing these movies and books from previously arcane specialty shops to Target and Wal-Mart stores around the country. And the reader, perhaps unfairly, imagines that "Wrong About Japan" might follow in the footsteps of another book about a father-son journey and their inquiry into the relationship of East and West: Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Advertisement Unfortunately, the reader with such expectations would be wrong about this book. "Wrong About Japan" does not give the reader a tactile appreciation of manga or anime or any other aspect of Japan's pop culture. It does not probe, save in the most superficial manner, the dynamic between East and West that informs much of that youth culture. And while it provides a couple of touching glimpses of Mr. Carey and his son, it does not delve into their relationship or their feelings about their joint trip. Instead, "Wrong About Japan" turns out to be a thoroughly cursory travelogue that feels as though it had been written on a tight deadline for an airline magazine. In fact, Mr. Carey, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel "Oscar and Lucinda," proves to be a truly awful reporter. He makes notes about his peregrinations around Tokyo only to find that he is later unable to read what he wrote. He confines his account of his and Charley's visit to "the red-hot center of the manga world" to perfunctory ramblings. And he serves up utterly generic descriptions of their visits to places like Sega World, "five floors devoted to terrifying arcade games where kids with guns shoot men like fish in a bucket." As for his interviews with Japanese artists, they tend to assume a familiar shape: Mr. Carey peppers them with questions based on his own preconceptions and on books he has read about Japanese culture; they politely but firmly shrug off his theories, insisting on a more literal understanding of their craft. For instance, he interviews a famous swordmaker named Yoshindo Yoshihara, asking him if his work "felt like a spiritual business," and if he thought "about the function of the sword as he forged it, that it was made to cut skin and flesh, to take life." Mr. Yoshihara patiently explains that when he is working he concentrates on "how to make the sword." Mr. Carey also says he "saw the effects of World War II in almost every anime" he watched: "in the continually crumbling cities, in those ever-present preternaturally powerful children who threatened to obliterate the universe," in the filmmakers' fascination with robots, a metaphor, perhaps, "for the technological might of the atomic bomb." After a flurry of questions along such lines, Yoshiyuki Tomino, the maker of a seminal series known as Mobile Suit Gundam, replies simply that Gundam was started "to sell toy robots," to "create a product that people would buy." Throughout this book, Mr. Carey and his son talk about their search for the "Real Japan." They argue about whether that Real Japan is the Old Japan of temples, Kabuki and ancient samurai codes of honor; the Cool New Japan of whimsical fashions, postmodern video games and super-high-tech cell phones; or the Depressing Modern Japan of sprawling suburbs and conformity-minded salarymen. Their exchanges, however, never evolve into anything remotely resembling a real discussion. Nor does Mr. Carey make a concerted effort to give us resonant snapshots of these very different Japans. With the exception of an odd boy named Takashi (whom Charley met over the Internet and who acts as their sometime guide), none of Mr. Carey's Japanese acquaintances comes across as a memorable individual, and with the exception of a few casual references to Commodore Perry and Hiroshima, no historical context is provided for what Businessweek has called the new "Japanese cool factor." One man's lengthy reminiscence about the horrors of World War II is shoehorned into the middle of the book - presumably to show just what different experiences children of that generation had, compared with those of Charley and Takashi - but his memories are simply left hanging, unconnected to anything else. At one point, Mr. Carey remarks that he understood, "as a foreigner, I could never know the truth." Later, he says that one of his interview subjects "made it clear that nothing in this country was as I thought it was." Given the lackluster, shallow book he has produced, the reader can only ratify those depressing assessments. |
| Source: The New York Times |
