Tag: Japan

Butter/バター

Food in all its guises is at the heart of Yuzuki Asako’s Butter (バター), from its availability, preparation, consumption and enjoyment, to its symbolism and use as a means of control. The book starts with a shortage of the title ingredient. Main character Machida Rika, a journalist at a men’s weekly magazine, is visiting her oldest friend Reiko, newly moved to a Setagaya suburb with her husband Ryōsuke. As a gift, in the absence of butter, Rika brings a tub of margarine that claims to be 50% butter. She tells us she can’t tell the difference between margarine and butter and we quickly learn that she has a limited palate, setting the scene for her later encounter with the cook and convicted serial killer Kajii Manako.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 6

Six Degrees of Separation, April 2026

April comes around again and with it the first Saturday of the month. Shall we hammer together some links in a Six Degrees of Separation chain?

This month, our host Kate has chosen The Correspondent by Virginia Evans as our starting point. You can find out more about the meme at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 15

Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success

Miki Berenyi’s memoir Fingers Crossed is a rough read at times. It chronicles the dysfunctional childhood of an only child whose parents were more interested in their own happiness than that of their daughter. It features a Nazi-sympathising grandmother who sexually abused her granddaughter. It lays bare the chaos of Berenyi’s coping strategies and the defensive callousness she shows to people who care about her. It calls out the sexism of the indie music scene of the 1990s. For all that, it’s immensely readable.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 2

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse is more than the book I was expecting it to be. I thought it was going to be an examination of city streets and public spaces and how they welcome or exclude women, of a similar ilk to Leslie Kern’s Feminist City. It turned out to be more like Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City. Which is fortunate, because I loved Laing’s book and hated Kern’s. Elkin blends personal memoir with the stories of other women who have worked things out through walking and sought anonymity in city streets across the world. It gave me a lot to think about. This one’s going to be a long one – make yourself a brew.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 3

‘Cherry’ Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan’s Blossom’s

Have you visited Japan during the cherry blossom season? Have you done your own hanami (花見/はなみ) ritual, gazing at the ephemeral beauty of the sakura (桜/さくら) in the brief window the trees are in flower? I have. Did you know that a single variety of cherry tree, the Somei-yoshino, a cultivar from the end of the Edo period (1603-1868), became popular at the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912), was unofficially selected as Japan’s national tree at the start of the Taishō era (1912-1926), and became a political symbol in the Shōwa era (1926-1989)? Or that prior to industrialisation Japan had a greater variety of cherry trees that blossomed over a longer period? I didn’t. Naoko Abe told me about it in her whirlwind of a book about Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

Small Buildings of Kyoto II

Hot on the heels of reading Small Buildings of Kyoto, I bought Small Buildings of Kyoto II. It arrived from Japan four weeks after I placed my order. I’d forgotten all about ordering it. Telly being dire on a Friday evening, I sat on the settee with my husband and we looked through John Einarsen’s photographs together, spotting places we recognised and others that we would like to see in passing for ourselves.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

Small Buildings of Kyoto

I bought Small Buildings of Kyoto eight years ago. I’m sure I looked through it when it arrived, but it has been lingering on my To Read list on LibraryThing as though I didn’t. I added it to my Year of Reading Independently list this year.

I was waiting for my e-reader to charge this morning and needed something quick to while away the time. After my trip back in time to the Covid-19 pandemic, I wanted to travel somewhere else. I can’t get on a plane and go to Kyoto right now, but hopping there through the pages of this diddy photobook was a good enough substitute.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 2

Leaf Art Encyclopedia of Animals

Leaf Art Encyclopedia of Animals is a collection of photographs with stories by the Japanese artist Lito (リト). It was one of my Christmas gifts this year from Mr Hicks.

Lito describes in his introduction how he has always been fascinated by the natural world and as a child loved to read illustrated books about animals. He talks about looking for his own way to be in the world and being inspired by a Spanish leaf artist to create his own leaf art. He’s entirely self-taught and describes his process at the end of the book.

My Japanese is extremely rusty. I’ve forgotten almost all of the kanji I learnt for GCSE and A Level. I was thankful for the assistance of Google lens in translating the text in this delightful book.

I spent some of my festive down time looking at the detail of the leaf art, marvelling at Lito’s skill, and laughing at the funny little stories. While it is enough to look at the beautiful art (there are examples on the front page of his website), the stories beneath add even more charm.

On his website, Lito describes himself as a clumsy man who was always being shouted at for getting things wrong. In his leaf art, he has found a world where he belongs. In an article in the Asahi Shimbun, he talks in more detail about what is behind his apparent lack of skills in day-to-day tasks and how his ADHD diagnosis encouraged him to think about the things he is good at.

The book is absolutely gorgeous and I know I’ll return to its pages again and again.

Read 25/12/2024-26/12/2024

Posted on by Jan Hicks 5