This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 19, 2017.

number9dream

By David Mitchell – Random House – December 18, 2007

Review by Robin Marx

I enjoyed The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and when I discovered Mitchell had an earlier book set in Japan, I was eager to check it out. While there are some great moments and I was eager to see where the story led, overall I was disappointed.

This book tells the story of a Miyake Eiji, a youth from rural Japan who travels to Tokyo in a search for the father he never knew. Eiji also has a propensity for vivid dreaming, both of the waking and nocturnal varieties, and as a result the line between real world events and fantasy are frequently blurred.

The book is at its best when Mitchell describes Tokyo (a city in which I've lived nearly half my life) and the island of Yakushima (which I've had the pleasure of visiting), but the surrealistic interludes became more and more unwanted and intrusive as the book continued. Very few of them enhanced or illustrated the core narrative, and the recurring “Goatwriter” meta-fiction sequence was particularly extraneous and masturbatory.

Apparently this book was a sort of blatant homage to Murakami Haruki (who is name-checked in this book), and had I known that in advance, I wouldn't have bothered. I've assiduously avoided reading Murakami, as everything I've heard about his work has convinced me that his work is tepid surrealism for boring people too timid to venture outside of the capital-L Literary ghetto and pick up a decent fantasy or weird fiction novel. The more tedious portions of this book certainly mesh with the perception I've formed of Murakami's work.

I'm a big fan of surrealism, from classics like Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories to more modern work by people like China Mieville, but it just didn't work for me in this book. The more grounded parts of the story—like Eiji's childhood interactions with his sister, reading his grandfather's diary, his letters from his mother, even his somewhat unconvincing romance with a piano student—worked far better than the dream interludes.

Even more so than the hallucinatory fever dreams, it was the dialogue of this book that I found the most unrealistic. The characters all spoke like New York literary novel cut-outs, not living and breathing Japanese people. All of the customer service staff presented throughout the book speak in aggressive or dismissive manners that ring false to anyone who has spent any amount of time in Japan, for example. His characters are all demonstrative and outspoken, not indirect or concerned with propriety or hurt feelings in the way most Japanese people tend to be with acquaintances and coworkers. Early on in the book there's even a pun (“Company?” “No, I came alone”) that only works if the Japanese characters are speaking to each other in English. Mitchell apparently spent eight years living in Hiroshima and has a Japanese wife, but I suspect he never picked up much of the language. His portrayal of Japanese people is frustrating because his portrayal of Japan itself is so good.

Mitchell is a talented writer, there are glimmers of that here, but he wastes too much verbiage on stylistic trickery when a more straightforward approach would suffice. There's an entertaining portrayal of Japan and a nicely human story here, but it's absolutely suffocated by literary wankery and cruft.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on April 21, 2012.

The Tokaido Road: A Novel of Feudal Japan

By Lucia St. Clair Robson – Forge Books – November 29, 2005

Review by Robin Marx

This historical novel was a mixed bag. It had the best sense of place of any Westerner-penned novel about feudal Japan I've read and the characters were appealing, but its length and incredibly slow pace as well as the relatively unexciting plot hurt an otherwise appealing book.

This book was incredibly well-researched. I'm fairly well-versed in the Edo period and fluent in Japanese, and I could find very few nits to pick. The author demonstrated such a broad grasp of Japanese history that I was surprised to find out that her other books are set in historical America. I was pleased to see samurai Japan faithfully brought to life, and everything seemed authentic.

While I thoroughly appreciated the detail that went into the book, there were also times where it was overkill. Much of the detail explained at length for Western reader's benefit described facets of life that a Japanese character of the time would've found unremarkable, and probably could've been safely glossed over.

The plot was also slightly disappointing. It's sort of a prequel to the Loyal 47 Ronin historical incident, which all Japanese people are intimately familiar with through theatre, film, and novels. The basic premise involves a revenge plot against the conniving samurai Lord Kira, who provokes rival Lord Asano into drawing his sword while in the Shogun's estate, a capital crime. After Asano's death, 47 of his retainers lie low for a couple years before avenging their former lord in a bloody, dramatic fashion. That's the historical tale, but this book focuses on Asano's fictional illegitimate daughter Cat. Hoping to round up her father's remaining loyalists and prepare for vengeance, she escapes from the brothel she works at and makes an epic journey along the eastern sea route (the eponymous Tokaido) to her father's fief. Her journey is mostly entertaining, but the book reads almost like an unabridged travelogue, with no detail spared. Several colorful characters drift in and out, but most are largely inconsequential to the narrative. Without giving too much away, her journey concludes in a less than triumphant manner, and the actual Loyal 47 Ronin revenge saga is resolved in about a dozen pages, with our heroine relegated to the sidelines. If you're familiar with the story through film and history books that's not a critical flaw, but those less of a background in Japanese history might feel slighted by the abrupt resolution.

While plot and pacing were a little on the weak side, I did enjoy the characters. Cat is beautiful, brave, and determined, but those qualities are balanced out by arrogance and occasional episodes of pettiness and imperiousness. Ronin bounty hunter Hanshiro lives up to the archetype while still avoiding becoming a cliche. He seemed like the kind of character Kurosawa's favorite leading man Mifune Toshiro would play. Peasant girl Kasane is a gullible bumpkin, but her loyalty and fundamental kindness endear her to both Cat and the reader.

Overall this book was a bit of a slog. Rich in detail, but meandering and overly long. I enjoyed the world it presented and the characters appearing within, but probably a third of the book's length was extraneous. I'd recommend it to fans of Japanese history and samurai, but those with only a passing interest in these topics would probably find this book frustratingly slow.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on October 17, 2021.

The Disfavored Hero

By Jessica Amanda Salmonson – Ace Books – January 1, 1981

Review by Robin Marx

While I found the idea of a female samurai sword & sorcery protagonist appealing, I was a bit let down by the book itself.

The book starts off strong. Tomoe finds herself under the sway of an evil not-Chinese sorcerer, who compels her to join a demon horde and slaughter thousands of her former master’s warriors. She manages to free herself from this magical influence, but the damage is done: her master is slain and her honor as a samurai besmirched. She goes off on a journey to restore her good name.

Unfortunately, the book that follows is largely directionless and disjointed. It’s more of a sequence of events than a cohesive narrative. Tomoe is afflicted by a curse early on in the story that gets resolved about halfway through the story, and the book concludes with a duel with the shogun’s champion, who she encounters early on (not that there’s much of a dramatic build towards this duel, or a sense of inevitability), but there’s not really a driving plot. Tomoe wanders and experiences strange events involving magic and monsters.

The decision to set the book in an alternate world is a strange one. I suppose setting the story in “Naipon” rather than Nippon offers some cover for inaccuracies and allows license to do a “good bits version” of historical Japan. But Tomoe is a historical (if mythologized) figure and real world locations and religions are used, rather than fictionalized substitutes. Real Japanese terms appear frequently throughout, if occasionally misspelled or misused. Characters sometimes have names that would be unpronounceable in Japanese (“Noyimo”), and the western first name-last name order is used. I wished Salmonson had committed to either sticking close to the real Japan or taking a much freer hand with the source material. Her “Naipon” seems like a frustrating half-measure.

Published in 1981, this book is notable for using a non-Western fantasy setting and for having a lesbian heroine, but the plot wasn’t especially engaging.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on January 15, 2013.

Yoshitoshi's Women: The Woodblock-Print Series Fuzoku Sanjuniso

By John Stevenson – University of Washington Press – 1995

Review by Robin Marx

This handsome volume offers an in-depth look at one of Yoshitoshi Tsukioka's most remarkable series of woodblock prints. The book opens with an excellent summary of Yoshitoshi's life as well as the ukiyo-e creative process, making it appropriate for both newcomers to Japanese art and the already initiated.

Each print in the series is given a full two page spread, with one page devoted to the artwork and the other providing in-depth commentary. The descriptions are fascinating and extremely illuminating, cluing the modern viewer in on allusions, metaphors, and other pieces of cultural context that the contemporary Japanese audience would've naturally understood.

From literature to fashion and material culture, the multidisciplinary depth of John Stevenson's research is truly impressive, and the presentation is clear and engaging. I've been a fan of Yoshitoshi's artwork for years, but this book helped me gain an even deeper appreciation of his work. Highly recommended.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on January 15, 2013.

The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: A Field Guide to Japanese Yokai

By Matthew Meyer – March 1, 2012

Review by Robin Marx

This illustrated volume is a fun, if not especially deep, look at monsters from Japanese folklore. The book is an adaptation of Matthew Meyer's A-Yokai-a-Day web project, where he uploaded an original painting of one of Japan's traditional monsters (Yokai) along with a brief explanatory article.

The book reads a bit like a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, with each creature's appearance, diet, habits, and encounter spots listed. The text is breezy and entertaining, but doesn't offer much in the way of analysis or detail. The artwork was excellent, presented in a style that mixes traditional Japanese stylings with a more Western aesthetic. Overall this book offers an appealing look at an interesting side of Japanese culture, but those hoping for detail, citations, or more ethnographical content are going to be left wanting more.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on January 15, 2013.

Japanese Colour Prints

By Jack Ronald Hillier – Phaidon Press – August 12, 1998

Review by Robin Marx

This book was a bit of a disappointment. The opening essay offered a decent overview of the history of ukiyo-e, but those readers without a background in art history (and ideally some knowledge of Japanese art) are likely to find it confusing and unhelpful.

While most of the most notable artists are present and accounted for, the example prints selected were lacking in several instances. Harunobu, Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige were all incredibly influential artists, yet the prints chosen for them are far from their best work.

The commentary accompanying the prints is also spotty. Rather than providing some much-needed cultural context for Kabuki scenes, allusions, etc., featured in the print, Hillier tends to go off on extraneous tangents about that artists' pupils.

I also felt Hillier's decision to exclude late period prints (after the introduction of foreign aniline dyes) was pure snobbery. He argues that “...few of the later prints rise above either ineffectual prettiness, or violently colored melodrama,” but Yoshitoshi was one of the giants of the art form, and dismissing his work is unforgivable.

In the end, this book offers a decent, unspectacular survey of the ukiyo-e art form, with commentary that goes into a little too much detail in arcane areas. Who is the audience for this book? Pairing introductory artwork with beginner-unfriendly text seems like a strange editorial decision. The artwork is nice, but I'd recommend those interested in ukiyo-e either look elsewhere, or supplement their reading with additional books.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 7, 2014.

Eight Million Gods

By Wen Spencer – Baen Books – May 15, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

There's a saying among expats in Japan: “If you stay here for a week, you write a book. If you stay here for a month, you write an article. If you stay here for a year, you don't write anything.” I suspect Wen Spencer has spent a week in Japan.

I really wanted to like this book. Japan appeals to me enough for me to have made it my home for more than a decade, and I've always been fascinated by Japanese folklore and mythology. The idea of a book dealing with folklore in modern Japan appealed, but unfortunately this book falls down on several fronts.

The Japan presented in this book is a mixed bag. Some aspects (perhaps not coincidentally those that a Western tourist would encounter over the course of a short stay, such as subway station coin lockers, or a description of the Gion festival) are represented authentically, with almost fetishistic detail. Other bits are embarrassingly off. The use of the Japanese language is frequently suspect; Osaka locale “Dōtonbori” is misspelled consistently throughout the book, as is the “jorogumo” monster name. Prices for things tend to off by a factor of ten, and the protagonist shops with bills that don't exist (¥100,000?). It's also a bit strange as someone who has lived in rural Japan to see tanuki (“raccoon dogs,” which basically combine the least threatening aspects of both animals) presented as a dangerous menace. Most of the Japanese mythology was represented accurately, but fairly shallowly. It was blatantly obvious that this was Japan viewed through an anime/manga lens; there's actually a pretty cringe-worthy section where characters remark “This is just like that bit in Inuyasha! Or Naruto!” I guess this is a book you can judge by its katana-wielding schoolgirl cover.

None of the characters really appealed to me. Heroine Nikki has hypographia, a mental disorder characterized by a severe compulsion to write, but this felt like a trivial depiction, as is common for obsessive compulsive disorder. Her hypographia turns out to be more of a supernatural gift than a mental disorder, which could excuse some of this, but it still reminded me of flaky girls using “I'm SO OCD!” as an excuse for minor personality quirks, when the real thing isn't so cute and harmless.

It also bothered me that the only prominent Japanese characters were basically spirits on the periphery. The main character, her friends, the shadowy organization operating in Japan, are all foreign. Leo is half-Japanese, at least, but he was raised in Hawaii by a Brit and serves little purpose in the plot but to beat people up, get beat up, and be sexy for the heroine. The actual Japanese characters are basically all deities, including dead historical—although this strangely isn't played up in the text—figure Taira no Atsumori. It's fun reading about foreigners active in Japan (hell, I AM one), but reducing Japanese people to props, obstacles, and Yoda-like mentors does them a great disservice, especially after borrowing so many of the cool trappings of their culture.

The plot feels fast-paced, but there were so many dead ends and tangents that even with its exuberant tone, this book was a struggle to get through. There's a late plot twist involving protagonist Nikki's mother that feels extremely contrived, and the book's final confrontation is breathtakingly anticlimactic.

If you like Young Adult books, anime, and dream about maybe visiting Japan someday, this may be a good book for you. If you're expecting a more adult book (it wasn't marketed as YA, although it should have been), or if you're more acquainted with Japan and/or less than enthused about the manga Inuyasha, this is probably one to skip.

★★☆☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 11, 2011.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

By David Mitchell – Random House – June 23, 2010

Review by Robin Marx

This book turned out quite differently than I expected. I'm not familiar with Mitchell's other output, but articles led me to expect capital-L Literature. The New York Times Book Review blurb on the back cover promised “an achingly romantic story of forbidden love.” The book starts out with way, with the first 175 pages chronicling a Dutch clerk's first few days in the Japanese port of Dejima and his fleeting encounters with an enigmatic local woman, but the historical romance plot is sidelined pretty quickly. The book soon turns into an almost C.S. Forrester-style adventure story—you know, the “rollicking” type—with a despicable bad guy leading an evil cult right out of a Fu Manchu yarn.

Betrayed expectations might lead some to put the book down, but if you can keep up with the sudden changes in tone, the book is consistently good throughout. I couldn't find many faults with the Japanese historical details (something that has been a frequent disappointment when reading English language books set in Japan), and Mitchell's occasionally purple capital L Literary stylings are balanced out by an earthy sense of humor. Worth a read if you like historical fiction as a genre or have an interest in Japan.

★★★★☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on February 10, 2022.

The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

By Michael Dylan Foster (Writer), Shinonome Kijin (Artist) – University of California Press – January 14, 2015

Review by Robin Marx

Books about yōkai are becoming increasingly popular, even in English, but this is the clearest explanation I’ve encountered about the cultural context surrounding these folkloric monsters in Japan. It’s written in an extremely engaging manner and is a pleasure to read as well.

★★★★☆

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