Short Fuse

H2

During the winter break, I finished the complete collection of H2, a highly addictive manga by Mitsuru Adachi. I had a great time, digging into a lengthy serialized manga for the first time in a long while. It also made for a fun refresher course for my slowly rusting Japanese.

H2 is a story about high-school baseball, romance, friendship. At the center are two best friends on two different baseball teams: Hiro the ace pitcher and Hideo the star batter. (You know what's coming, don't you?) They are joined by Hikari and Haruka: Hikari is Hiro's childhood friend, Hideo's girlfriend, and the first love for both of them; Haruka is Hiro's budding sweetheart. Hence, H2 - it refers to the duel of Hiro vs Hideo, as well as the 2 couples whose names all begin with "H".

The story follows Hiro through the 3 years of Japanese high school. It begins with Hiro enrolling in a school without a baseball team, after giving up baseball because he is mistakenly diagnosed with a young-career-ending injury. It ends with a head-to-head matchup between Hiro and Hideo at the national high-school baseball tournament, the shobu (win-or-lose fight) that both of them have dreamed of. In between those two plot points are numerous baseball games, romantic interludes, subplots about teammates and opponents, and a death in the family. The story is told with subtlety and humor; H2 is a very funny work, loaded with verbal puns and setups worthy of the best sitcoms.

But events do not drive H2's story. What makes H2 special is Adachi's deft handling of the changing dynamic among the characters. During the gradual progression towards the final duel, the 4 H's develop and reveal their feelings about love, friendship, and winning and losing. The nail-biting moments in H2 don't take place during the bottom of the ninth inning, but in conversations, arguments, confessions. Much of the exposition is open-ended: in what feels like a rare feat for manga, Adachi asks the reader to work a little to understand the characters - to read between the lines, to study the facial expressions. Given Adachi's craft, it makes for pleasurable work.

The Hiro-vs-Hideo climax is set up as early as in the first volume, and takes places in the very last volume. Thus, it was remarkable that Adachi was able to keep me invested in the duel for so long, and even generate some suspense as to its outcome. (I admit that it might have a little do with my not understanding every word.) I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say that the question becomes: can Hiro win in baseball, love and friendship - all at the same time? What I found so sweet is the twist that Adachi puts on the answer. Adachi led me to expect the realistic resolution: no, he cannot win in all of them, and he must choose and sacrifice. But when Hiro makes his choice, he is able to do what is best for everyone, as another character puts it.

I began thinking about what H2 says about Japanese culture. It presents a conservative viewpoint in many ways:

The context of high-school baseball involves a view of the world that is rooted in timeless tradition. In that world, going to the Koushien (the stadium in which the national tournaments are held) is the dream of every high-school baseball player and fan, year in, year out. H2 takes place within this dream, unchanging through the seasons. It follows that H2 lacks obvious signifiers of a time period, save a Nintendo 64.

Along with the timelessness of the H2 universe, there is a strong presence of the past within the characters. Even as high-school students, Hiro and his friends are driven by memories of their childhood that serve as sources of regret or affection. Flashbacks appear frequently. The past is shown to be a major guiding force in life; rarely do the characters use the unmapped future as a motivation.

The dominant family relationship is between father and son. While one mother figure has a prominent role, there are more explorations into how the son is shaped by the father. The twist is that many of these explorations end (happily) with the father breaking with society to help the son.

The main female characters have mostly reactive roles. This might seem nitpicky, given that both Hikari and Haruka are portrayed as intelligent and athletic young women. But emotionally, they are not as strong. They react to the feelings of their male partners or are motivated by their own memories.

Visually, the emphasis is on the clarity of storytelling, with Adachi's clean, uncluttered style. When formal elements do stand out on their own, it has the distinct feel of old-school Japanese cinema, such as the use of long shot / wide framing at moments of heightened emotion. The pacing is both precise and relaxed, and despite the length of the series (34 volumes), few frames are wasted.

Adachi is famous in Japan but not outside of it, especially when compared to peers like Rumiko Takahashi. (googlefight.com shows Rumiko beating Adachi handily, 50100 vs 8300.) I hope this will change soon. The last few years have seen an expansion in the range of mangas available in the US, including popular shonen and shojo titles such as Initial D and Love Hina. H2 and Adachi's other works would be a welcome addition to that growing catalog.

Adachi's Universe (Download the first few chapters of H2 and other manga, with fan translation.)

2003 review

Movies
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Kill Bill Volume 1
American Splendor
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Albums
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher
Four Tet - Rounds
Manitoba - Up in Flames
Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway
Ellen Allien - Berlinette
Radioactive Man - Booby Trap
Broadcast - Haha Sound

Songs
Manitoba - Jacknuggeted
The Go! Team - Ladyflash
Erlend Oye - A Sudden Rush
Plaid - B Born Droid
Lali Puna - Together in Electric Dreams
Prefuse 73 - Storm Returns
Sun Kil Moon - Gentle Moon

Disappointments
Mystic River
Demonlover
Cremaster
Johnny Marr and the Healers - Boomslang
Massive Attack - 100th Window
DK2: The Dark Knight Strikes Again - Frank Miller and Lynn Varley

Discoveries & Rediscoveries
24 Hour Party People
Ping Pong
Cowboy Bebop
Herbert - Bodily Functions
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Guided by Voices
Talk Talk
John Tejada
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
H2 - Mitsuru Adachi

I Still Don't Get It
Coldplay

Rest in Peace
Steve Benton
Leslie Cheung
Anita Mui
Gregory Peck
Katharine Hepburn
Stan Brakhage
Kinji Fukasaku
Elia Kazan
Jean-Yves Escoffier
Elliot Smith

West beats East in cultural deathmatch

The NYT article A Cultural Scorecard Says West Is Ahead reports on Charles Murray's new book, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. (Via Calpundit.)

Mr. Murray has issued what he says is a mathematically precise global assessment of human achievement, a "résumé" of the species in which Europeans like Shakespeare, Beethoven and Einstein predominate and in which Christianity stands out as a crucial spur to excellence. Equally provocative, he maintains that the rate of Western accomplishment is currently in decline.

...

Mr. Murray developed inventories of 4,002 significant figures in the arts and sciences by calculating the amount of space allotted to them in standard reference works and assigning them scores on a 100-point scale.

For the sciences, at any rate, the results suggest a contest of David-and-Goliath proportions. Using 34 reference works in four languages, Mr. Murray produced inventories for eight fields — astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics, mathematics, medicine and technology — as well as a combined index ranking scientists from all disciplines. In all, Europeans and North Americans account for 97 percent of scientific accomplishment.

Murray's "mathematically precise" approach is debatable, but it's just one of many approaches, I suppose. Like all top 10/100/4002 lists, the book sounds like good fodder for conversation, discussion and name-calling. And like all lists, it's more useful for that purpose than for serving as an objective reference.

It would still be easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to the overwhelming Western dominance in Murray's findings. Take the "97 percent of scientific accomplishment" credited to Western figures. It's simply unbelievable, since we all know the Chinese invented everything. And shortly thereafter, the Japanese copied, improved, lowered the price, made loads of money. Then the Koreans outdid the Japanese, but we weren't rich or arrogant enough to think we could take over Hollywood. Here's looking at you, Sony.

Around '93, Time magazine faced a slow news week, and came up with a cover article on the greatest heroes and villains in human history. Among the heroes: Alexander the Great. Among the villains: Genghis Khan. I'm not familiar with details about the two rulers, but I never understood what makes one of them good and the other bad. They both seem to have killed a lot of people in a lot of places. It seems perspective makes all the difference all the time.

Otaking visits MIT

On October 1, Toshio Okada came to MIT for a lunchtime lecture. Okada calls himself "Otaking", or king of otaku, the Japanese slang for "hardcore fanboy / fangirl". He is a co-founder of Gainax, the studio that created Evangelion and FLCL; he also teaches a course on otaku culture at Tokyo University. (So he's like... George Lucas meets Henry Jenkins, or something.) In his talk, Okada shared tidbits, anecdotes and ideas about anime, creativity and Japanese culture.

For Okada, the two most significant Japanese otakus are Hayao Miyazaki and Takashi Murakami. It seems that Miyazaki is perceived in Japan as quite the otaku, whereas in the West, we only see him as a master of animated storytelling. The subject of Miyazaki's fandom is not anime but old-school military machinery. It reminded me that Porco Rosso began as a manga short story that is filled with details of WW2 seaplanes. Also: in Miyazaki's Spirited Away, the character of Sen / Chihiro wears a Japanese maid uniform with a little bib. Okada said that some Japanese fans found this to be a nod from Miyazaki towards the lolicon otakus. Lolicon, as in "Lolita complex", as in the fascination with young schoolgirls and their uniforms. (Miyazaki is a lolicon? Huh?)

Okada made an interesting observation about the effect of the Internet on otaku culture. On one hand, in Japan like elsewhere, the web has made it easy to connect with other fans, no matter what your chosen obsession. On the other hand, Okada felt that this community-building was causing a drop in the output of quality content. His reasoning was that many of today's best-known artists were once extremely frustrated otakus. Before the web, they could not easily communicate with other like-minded fans. After years of isolated fandom, they would begin producing their own work, out of the unbearable need to share their solitary passions. Today, said Okada, the frustration level of fans never gets very high because you can always hook up with other fans on the web. He felt this is reducing the chance that visionary artists would continue emerging from the otaku culture.

(A plausible scenario, but I would argue that the community will merely change the nature of the creative otaku output, not always for the worse as Okada predicts. For example, collaboration with digital media and tools is possible today, something not available to the old-timers in Okada's pre-web generation. And how long before a few Japanese teenagers with Powerbooks produce anime that surpasses the Gainax product? Okada has to be worried.)

In tracing the rise of anime / manga culture, Okada pointed to the effect of the post-war Japanese baby boom. He noted two aspects. First, the baby-boom generation was denied a sense of history. After the war, the American rulers saw Japanese history as a dangerous element: Japan's ancient history had been used to pump up and justify the militarism of its recent history. The suppression of history led to a cultural focus on the present. The English word "now" actually became a widely-used slang. If something was popular, it was likely to be good too. Hardcore fandom was a natural outgrowth of this obsession with the "now". Secondly, childhood rose to a higher plane over adulthood. Becoming an adult, as it came to be understood, meant responsibility but also pollution of spirit. Thus, in Japanese films and other media works, when the hero is transformed in the story, he or she goes back to being a child. This is in contrast to Western culture, where the story causes the hero to grow up, to grow older and wiser. Infantilism is still rampant in Japanese media, and this has encouraged those so inclined to embrace "kid stuff" - anime and manga - well into their adulthood.

Work and non-work

Last month I was busy with a research deadline (September 30). Now I'm busy with the next deadline (October 20). Simply put, it feels great to be back at the lab, making new things.

Here are some other things I've been doing on the side:

Catching the recent MFA show, Visions and Revisions: Art on Paper since 1960. A few inspiring pieces. Project ideas: calligraphy ink and vinyl records; halftone zoom-in / zoom-out; microscopic etchings using graphite pencil.

Reading V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, David Lloyd, Steve Moore. Alan Moore is so good at creating visual and thematic connections between two separate threads, something he pulls off even more expertly in Watchmen.

Reading Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken. A quick and funny read about the right-wing horror in this country.

Playing volleyball and working out, although not as much as I'd like to. Also: buying athletic gear for the first time in years. Asics, Nike and New Balance are richer for it. I love my new NB 831 so much that I'm going to buy a second pair at the local NB Factory Store. Still waiting for my new volleyball shoes to arrive. Related: Joanna's photos from the months-late IM coed-league champions dinner.

Meeting Jason Kottke and Meg Hourihan for two minutes. Cameron brought them by the workspace at the lab. I said hello, and was going to say something funny about meeting A-list bloggers, but couldn't think of anything.

Organizing all the media in my apartment, which is going slow. I couldn't find a CD or a book if I tried.

Goodbye May Kasahara

In an earlier post, I wrote about an electronica track inspired by Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Here is the song - a nice bit of gentle, summery instrumental hiphop.

Caural - Goodbye May Kasahara (MP3, 6.2MB)

Murakami meets electronica

Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the inspiration for Goodbye May Kasahara, a track off Caural's latest EP, Blurred July. In the book, May Kasahara is the oddball teenage neighbor of Toru Okada.

The rest of the EP looks good too, with a remix by Savath & Savalas, aka Prefuse 73 in a kinder & gentler post-rock mode.

That elusive Songbook song

Here is the difficult-to-find track from Nick Hornby's Songbook. It is not on the CD included with the book. Enjoy.

Butch Hancock and Marce Lacouture - So I'll Run (MP3, 3.5MB)

R34G38B25

Christopher Doyle's latest book, R34G38B25, features several images from Hero. Doyle creates gorgeous photocollages out of pictures of Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Tony Leung, and Jet Li.

Go here to see sample images and order the book from Magma. (eBay was a faster and cheaper option for me.)

Ice Man

Ice Man, new fiction from Haruki Murakami.