Tag Archives: review

You can almost hear it


Book review, from Tokyo – Rain. I remember those days huddled up indoors, safely away from the seemingly endless rumbling. Peering through the windows at those blinding white streaks crackling across the sky. Walking around outside in those suddenly leaky shoes and soggy socks that squish with every step. Drenched clothes that stick to the skin, and those drippy trousers that strangely feel a whole lot heavier. None of that in Yuko Ohnari’s『どしゃぶり』(Doshaburi, lit. Downpour), a charming story of a boy meeting a sudden downpour right in front of his house.

He is on his way out, stepping gingerly over the burning porch, when he spots a towering gray cloud floating this way. The first drops begin to fall. Pitter, patter, plop. That’s a big one! The smell of rain blends in with the smell of the ground. And then the skies open…

The boy opens his umbrella. Dop. Dup. Bip. Bop. Bup. Bop. Duppity dop. Bup bop bup bup bop bup bruuuup. Bap bap bup bup braaap. It has become a drum!

“It’s so noisy!” He shouts. The rain falls harder. Faster. He notices a cacophony of sounds around him. The trees, the grass, the ground, the roofs. It’s the rain! In full voice! And he sure can hear it.

Arms outstretched, he feels the rain. He kicks off his shoes and joins in the fun. Swish! There goes a puddle! Plomb! And another one! He stops and tilts his head upwards. The rain bounces off his head. Glides across his forehead. Slides down his cheeks. Swirls round his ears. Washes down his hair and neck.

And then it’s over. As quickly as it came. The entire street is dripping wet. The cars. The houses. The boy too, of course. Refreshed. Cooled down. A wide smile on his face. That was great! “Come back again sometime,” he says.

The text is, quite simply, noisy. Not exactly easy to read, but fast, loud and fun. This picture book about a boy in the rain fascinates me because Koshiro Hata’s artwork alone could not tell the entire story. We see the rain fall. The umbrella open. The water strike and drench the boy. The boy kicking and jumping into puddles. And we also see him smile. But that is only half the story. Ohnari’s text tells us how the boy hears the rain, speaks to it, plays with it, and at the end, he says goodbye to the passing shower.

That’s not the only connection. Midway through the book, the boy stands hunched in the barrage of falling rain. On the last page, the boy holds his umbrella up to the shower in the bath. On both pages, you can almost hear the sounds again. Even without the help of any text.

Sometimes, we are not so lucky with rain, with floods and drought and the recent extreme weather conditions. But the joy of playing with water doesn’t really change, and this book certainly captures it well. In the rain, without the rumbling thunder and lightning flashes of course.

 

Title:『どしゃぶり』(Doshaburi, lit. Downpour)
Text by Yuko Ohnari, illustrated by Koshiro Hata
Publisher: Kodansha, 2018

Since that day


Book review, from Tokyo – The Great East Japan Earthquake struck more than eight years ago. The impact was felt not just physically. It was a day when a fundamental change began, and continues unabated. Just recently, the decision was made to decommission the nuclear power plant next to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi.

In the preface to『あの日からの或る絵とことば』(Ano hi kara no aru e to kotoba, lit. Pictures and words from a day since then) picture book editor Daisuke Tsutsui brings together 32 children’s book creators who tell their own stories from the day. Readers are treated to one more, in the preface reserved to the driving force behind a book of artworks interspersed with contemplative worded entries.

In the preface, Tsutsui expresses a view I share, that the content of some picture books has changed. Bolder, filled with life, addressing death, and giving space to images that were once thought to be frightening. Meanwhile, others have become more sensitive, carefully portraying the details of our daily lives and those moments to cherish. In compiling this book, Tsutsui hopes readers will identify with some of the ideas in those pages and reflect on their own thoughts since that day.

Here are some parts from four essays among the entries spread across 130-odd pages.

Yuki Sasame’s poem 『よごしてはいけない』 (Yogoshite ha ikenai, lit. We must not dirty) starts off expressing a gratitude to nature (god). “While humans may be the ones to cultivate the fields and refine the grains, only the gods (nature) can make them grow. Such gifts of the gods (nature) must not be tainted by human desire.” And of course, she goes on to stress the need to stop polluting the land, the air, the oceans, the rivers, that give us our vegetables, fish, meat, and food, because why should we make ourselves and our children suffer as a consequence?

mirocomachiko’s 『いきものとしてのわたし』(Ikimono toshite no watashi, lit. Me as a living thing) reflects on her plight as a weak creature, lamenting her struggle to even find a sanitary napkin in Tokyo in the aftermath of the quake, while apologizing to her late cat for not realizing earlier how it detested visits to the hospital and letting it finally go peacefully. And how she puts her energy into painting to live true to herself and start recovering her strength as a living being.

In 『机の下　柱時計の中』(Tsukue no shita hashira dokei no naka, lit. Under the table, in the grandfather’s clock), Kenji Oikawa recalls ducking under his desk, an act that brought him back to his school days, to an evacuation drill. And then back further, into the Brothers Grimm’s “The Wolf and The Seven Little Goats” where only the one in the grandfather’s clock was miraculously spared. Their stories, he says, are sometimes cruel, with the innocent made to suffer. Not unlike the ferocity of nature.

Across several essays, there was an appreciation that we just happen to be alive, to survive in this time and age. Yasumi Kato’s expresses in『あんぱんと牛乳』(Anpan to gyuunyuu, lit. A red bean bun and milk) that we are alive in this particular time in our unfolding history of disaster, pollution, attacks, and conflict. In her short essay, she recounts her bewildering, sudden craving for a red bean bun and milk right after the quake. And her realization that those brightly lit nights of slumber were an unneeded habit brought from her upbringing. She continues “there is so much that is unnecessary. Since then, I reflect on things around me more often. Where is this water from? What is this dish made of? Where was it made? Who did the cooking? What did people do when this didn’t exist? What did we do before we had cling film?”

This somewhat parallels a point in mirocomachiko’s essay. “If we go along with the flow of this world that we have created, the days will be filled with excessive, unnecessary worries. And we would gradually lose the power that we actually need to live.”

So what is the excess that consumes this power? Kato offers another thought. “Many living things feed on something, pass motion, and leave offspring. The oceans are polluted, and since we cannot fish anymore, the shells and fish just keep growing in number. This is akin to inheriting dirty oceans. Or so I read somewhere. And it continued, must humans also be this way?”

Leaving the open question, she returns to her title. A red bean bun and milk is a combination that the police often equip themselves when keeping an eye on a suspect, well at least in Japanese dramas and movies. Essentially, supplies for the long haul. Certainly an initial hunch that falls not far from the target.

The essays and contributions allowed me to contemplate the fundamental shift I felt from that day. That creators of children’s books considered these issues in similar ways gave me the chance to collect my thoughts, and that gave me hope. Hope that the change that started from that day will carry on. And that stories like Hisanori Yoshida’s attempt to capture the strength of life and the human spirit in 『希望の牧場』(Kibou no bokujo, lit. The Ranch of Hope) are being heard.

Title: 『あの日からの或る絵とことば』(Ano hi kara no aru e to kotoba, lit. Pictures and words from a day since then)
Edited by Daisuke Tsutsui with illustrations and photos by 32 children’s book creators
Publisher: Sogensha, 2019

That person?


Book review, from Tokyo – Remember when you had no choice but to team up with that person for something? Well, in life, we will have some moments with people we aren’t quite comfortable with. Some we prefer to forget. Others maybe more fondly remembered.

On its spine, Noriaki Tsujimura’s 『あいつとぼく』 (Aitsu to boku, lit. Him and me) already says a lot. In Japanese, “boku” is, well, just plain old “me” but “aitsu” is normally used to refer to someone who “I’d rather stay away from”, “isn’t exactly my type”, “that person”. You get the idea.

This story of “me” being paired together with “him” for a three-legged race is coupled with Toshikado Hajiri’s colourful spreads and facial expressions that jump at you straight off the page. Tsujimura takes care to put us in “my” shoes and spells out “my” thoughts in words.

From the start, lil’o “me” already seems scared of the sight of “him”. “He” is loud and brash, doing things “his” way, while “I” stay indoors with “my” friends, engrossed in a game of ping-the-eraser-off-the-table. During PE, the teacher lines the class up by height, pairing “him” with “me”, for the three-legged race at the annual sports day. “He” decides that “we” step out on our outer leg. It’s not working. No matter how much practice, “we” keep falling over.

Throughout the entire book, Tsujimura uses very few names. One is Mayumi, the name of “his” sister.

When practicing on the eve of sports day, Mayumi falls and hurts herself. Something happens. Legs bound together, “we” dash across the field. Fast. Without falling over. For the first time. As “he” piggybacks her off to the nurse’s room, “he” leaves a parting shot, suggesting to step out on the inner foot – something “I” suggested before.

The next day, the race ends in a flash. Fast but not fast enough. “I” wanted to run some more, but that bond around “my” leg had been removed too quickly. 

“He” wants to race together again next year, but “we” might not be in the same class then. During recess, “he’s” at it again. But this time, “he” looks this way and flashes a V-sign with that big wide grin of “his”. And “I” return a rather sheepish one.

That sheepish smile at the end seems to say, “Perhaps he’s not as scary as he seems.” Never once referring to him by name, from the start, the meek boy keeps a safe distance. But by the end, the two boys have formed a kind of bond. Not best of friends just yet, and that’s just fine.

 

Title: 『あいつとぼく』(Aitsu to boku, lit. Him and me)
Written by Noriaki Tsujimura, illustrated by Toshikado Hajiri
Publisher: PHP Institute, 2015

Already available in Korean from Scola (Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd.)

Work in progress


Book review, from Tokyo – That step into parenting is, well, while much documented, very much unknown territory. Even for an old hand, no two children are exactly alike, but some things will stay more or less the same.

From birth, sniffing up that newborn fragrance, anxiously cheering their first steps, quietly leaving them to wobble on ahead on their bicycles, bidding them off to school, facing down the teen rebel, enjoying that first paycheck treat, meeting their choice of a lifetime partner, maybe getting to transition into parenting seniority, and perhaps gaining the mantle of grandparent-hood.

Much of these parenting milestones are picked up by comic artist and father-of-two Shinsuke Yoshitake in 『ヨチヨチ父　とまどう日々』(Yochi yochi chichi – tomadou hibi, lit. Wobbly toddly dad – those dithery days).

In 55 signature musings, Yochi yochi chichi is littered with illustrated reflections from the everyday challenges of a dad as a child’s first non-mum entity to those desperate hunts for diapers. He also laments how dad-dad non-talk doesn’t feel quite the same as free mum-mum chatter.

He puts a dad-spin on a non-dad view of the most mundane events – a dodgy guide to the wide world, his child’s occasional fan, the ways dad tries to keep literally in the picture, and the gratitude of finally landing a place of comfort at the in-laws, along with no lack of kid-related topics for conversation.

Underpinning each episode are expectations, from his boss, co-workers, family, wife, and children, and the pressure to satisfy them partially or simply fall hopelessly short. These create the perfect chance to introduce the Yoshitake family teaching – take life a step at a time and learn from those who are more successful, so that one’s peak is always now or ahead. This contrasts to setting a fast pace, peaking early in life, but falling sharply and ending up frustrated at not being able to fulfill one’s expectations of life.

Despite several readings, I remained slightly puzzled by cover flap that said “papa ha kyoukan, mama ha rakudan“, which loosely means, “dads empathize, mums despair”. One day, I came to realize that this could be interpreted as how dads are often let off for being “dad”, but mums would feel let down instead. Behind that is the expectation mothers bear as parents, the need to cover for dad’s parenting inadequacies, and do much more, including work.

In Japan, I have learned that a child’s education brings greater parenting burdens. Finding a preschool opening eats away at the mental fabric of cities teeming with young dual income families. The huge waiting lists are proof of the stress parents face at each entry window. Having to maintain cash flows without adequate childcare support simply means choosing not to have children.

And then with school comes PTA and those parent-led or -participation groups, committees, organizations and communities today often chaired by selfless working mothers. Fathers silent, invisible. Almost as if visibility at routine meetings might brew a strange kind of pressure to take on more. What then for their wives and children. And for those ready to swim against the tide, who knows what expectations lie in wait. I’ve seen dad-only dad-led groups, but those are voluntary, ultimately for the willing.

Such episodes don’t appear in Yochi yochi chichi. Perhaps Yoshitake was merely speaking from experience. Maybe it is one of the many reasons for the disdain implied in the cover flap. But probably we would all be better off seeing through and breaking down all those hidden expectations, dispelling unnecessary stress and pressure, for a parent will always be a work in progress. I appreciated the kindness and forgiveness as a new parent, and this book certainly affords parents a little kindness that goes a long way toward helping the village raise a child.

 

Title: 『ヨチヨチ父　とまどう日々』(Yochi yochi chichi – tomadou hibi, lit. Wobbly toddly dad – those dithery days) by Shinsuke Yoshitake
Publisher: Akachantomamasha, 2017

The numbers behind the math


Book review, from Tokyo – Like math? I do. I’d gladly spend my afternoon proving a math truth to someone interested (if I remember how), and I actually enjoy the mental workout from making those functions work for me in Excel. Well, imagine the joy I found reading Taro Gomi’s 『さんすうくんがやってくる』(Sansuukun ga yattekuru, lit. Here comes “math boy”).

A kid who simply lives and breathes math, Sansuukun spews out numbers at every chance – counting friends at the park, dividing up the strawberries for everyone, analyzing the performance of the little league team and their odds of winning the title, it all comes so naturally.

When his friends show any hint of interest, or even when they don’t, Sansuukun rattles on – area, volume, energy, units of time, temperature, even energy. The calculations get more and more complex, but the kid sure knows how to show that math pervades many parts of our lives.

Sansuukun is cool, but not really much fun. Counting at the park isn’t quite like playing together, besides Sansuukun gobbled up the remainder of the strawberries after dividing them up equally for his friends.

Other than being mostly neutral (except when it comes to his favorite things, like strawberries), he gushes math wisdoms. For instance, he reminds us that a score on a test is merely a number derived from marking someone’s answers to the test, and it does not actually indicate how intelligent that person might be. What clarity of thought – super cool kid (especially if you didn’t score well on that test)!

He also shares how the clarity of numbers can sometimes mislead – a tiny frog and an elephant can both be counted as one animal despite their obvious differences. And of course, he readily admits that there’s no way he could count all the stars in the entire universe, even if he could come up with a pretty far out estimate. Nice and clear, not unlike math.

A picture book for three to five year-olds littered with numbers, this fun, inquisitive look at a cool but weird kid who just sticks to his math, shows us how we use numbers to create numerical representations of our myriad observations. As numerical fact derived using specific methods, on their own, they possess neither positive nor negative nuances. The more complicated the calculation, the less apparent is the clarity. Numbers gain meaning with analysis and our perceptions. Like how our brains seek patterns, we use numbers to help us make some sense of our lives.

So let’s not get too carried away or bothered by those sometimes arbitrary values, and as Sansuukun’s friends would say, let’s remember to have some fun together while we’re here!

 

Title: 『さんすうくんがやってくる』 (Sansuukun ga yattekuru, lit. Here comes “math boy”) by Taro Gomi
Publisher: Gakken Plus, 2006

Penguins and suits


Book review, from Tokyo – Penguins look like they wear tuxedos. That black and white dress and its assumed importance plays a part in adding to the fun of watching them wobble and hop on land, and then rip through the waters with ease. This connection is open to play, offering good contrast and effect.

Satoe Tone might not have intended to, but 『ペンギンかぞくのおひっこし』 (Pengin kazoku no ohikkoshi, lit. The penguins are moving) does it effortlessly. It tells the story of, well, our avian friends looking for a new place to call home.

The home of this family of 84 is shrinking, so they decide to embark on a journey. In their bowties and top hats, the birds ride the waves on a breakaway iceberg, first venturing South ―I hear there are clear blue seas there, says one. But they find themselves swimming through dark, murky waters.

They then go East, West, and finally North, seeking grasslands teeming with snails, yellow fields of towering dandelions, and forests filled with singing birds. They were disappointed each time, by factories and their billowing chimneys, a bleak gray expanse of sand, and a land of barren trees. Well, no place for us on Earth, they thought.

And so they hop into their balloons and set off for the moon. There the penguins are struck by the sight of the lovely, perfectly round, luminous, blue planet, and decide to return home.

Perched in a tree, they take their hats off to collect dandelion seeds, committed to doing something ―anything― for their beautiful planet.

To drive home the obvious message, Tone ends with a note. The penguins symbolize the first 84 signatories to the Kyoto protocol in 1997. Some countries chase economic progress and lose sight of its impact on the environment, but everyone can do their part ―walk, conserve water and energy― to reduce global carbon emissions.

A simple story for children with a call to do all we can, however small, to stop global warming. Tone uses vivid colours for the worlds the penguins dreamed of, contrasting them starkly with the darkish, gray tones of those they end up in. Flushed in white, the final page conveys both the call to action and hope for building a cleaner, brighter future.

Its funny how sometimes we miss the woods for the trees, or need a reminder of what sits right under our noses. Like the penguins who decide to move, before realizing that the only place for them is, well and truly, this planet we all call home. Well, who else should clean up after but ourselves?

Title: 『ペンギンかぞくのおひっこし』
(Pengin kazoku no ohikkoshi, lit. The penguins are moving) by Satoe Tone
Publisher: Shogakukan, 2017
Translated from the Italian original, also available in Spanish.

Thicker than water


Book review, from Singapore – Sharon Ismail’s What Sallamah Didn’t Know (2007) tells the heartwarming story of a girl growing up in a kampung (Malay for village) with the people she knew as her family, but later finds out that some things are not what they seem. Painting scenes of life in Singapore from a bygone era vivid in largely monotone palettes, Khairudin Saharom places his illustrations at a comfortable yet accessible distance, rousing both nostalgia and imagination.

The story begins in the night. A sleepy newborn girl bundled in white cloth is given away to a Malay family. We are told that other families in the village had seen this before, and that the receiving family would magically have a new member the next morning.

This new member is named Sallamah.

Sallamah grows up with her siblings in a Malay family. She has a kind elder sister, Muna, who always looks out for her, and a mischievous elder brother Dollah who always picks on her.

At the age of twelve, Singaporeans get their identity cards, or ICs. As a child, I remember this year of my life well – preparing for PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination), a centralized entrance exam for entry into secondary education, that big BCG vaccination needle, finally seeing the last of someone in class, having to part with best friends, and the customary rite of getting my IC, my official photo ID with information based on my birth certificate.

For Sallamah, this rite of passage throws her into confusion – she receives the card of a Chinese girl with an unfamiliar address. Dazed and lost, she stumbles into a game of marbles that Dollah was on the verge of winning, and he says something that strikes deep into her heart. Unable to sleep that night, she overhears her parents talk about not telling the children know.

She turns to her elder sister, who reveals her memories of that night many years ago. Sallamah then realizes that her siblings, and some other children around her, did not really look like their parents either. What she knew and saw was that they lived together, played together, fought with each other, laughed and cried, like children, like family.

Touched by this simple truth that draws on the joys of having family and family life, Sallamah’s story also reminded me that we do not need blood ties to share such moments together.

Adults choose who to marry, to become family. Blood ties are created with offspring. Those lineages continue with children bringing together two formerly separate families, but children have neither the choice of which family to grow up in or of who to have as siblings or parents. That is where, I believe, lies the roots of parents’ responsibility to their children, and how they fulfill that is a journey the family takes together. Simply taking the blood out from the equation does not change it; blood ties are not essential, it is, essentially, a choice.

For Sallamah, her Chinese birth parents chose to give her away, because they had too many mouths to feed, and she was a girl, after all. Because they found this kind Malay couple in a far-off village, Sallamah was able to grow up in the shelter and guidance of her loving parents, the comfort and company of a gentle elder sister, and a place among bickering siblings, the only family she ever knew.

In relation to adoption, in Japan, I hear of a movement to help working parents look out for children, to build a caring community to help nurture the country’s next generation while parents work. The idea is comforting but also worrying because of the inkling that it might fester misguided thoughts of letting parents stay at work and leaving their children to others in the community. Perhaps what it does is to propose an actual, proper safety net, one that Kore-eda’s Shoplifters seemed to promise, but a public movement telling people to do so would have raised some alarm bells. It certainly made me think of social pressure, norms and morals.

Sallamah also prompted thought of how I spend time with my closest and dearest in my busy life. It paints the home as a safe harbour to return to, for company, sympathy, relaxation and a good recharge after a long day’s toils. For this working parent, this is a seemingly insurmountable goal , and at the moment more of an occasional, fleeting hurrah than any hint of a permanent sanctuary. Home is proving to be a marathon, an extended work-in-progress that might just be its own end product some day.

Littered with snippets of Singapore’s past that still ring relevant today, Sallamah has also started filling a gaping gap of images of old Singapore in a growing collection. Surely, their place on my shelves will grow, hopefully as quickly as the country’s urban landscape changes.

 

Title: What Sallamah Didn’t Know
by Sharon Ismail, with illustrations by Khairudin Saharom
Publisher: Candid Kids, 2007
Malay, simplified Chinese, and Tamil language editions launched 2015 under the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism.

(I had the pleasure of hearing Sharon Ismail speak at AFCC 2018 about writing for multicultural readers, where she mentioned this book and the myth of blood being thicker than water, which led to the title of this post. This review is based on a reading of the Chinese edition of the book.)

Safely hidden


Book review, from Tokyo – A summer vacation offers, for many, respite from the daily grind of school and the office. The hiatus often brings a selection of scary tales to library shelves, one both refreshingly frightening and inspiring at the same time.

Etsuko Yamamoto’s YA chapter book『神隠しの教室』(Kamikakushi no kyoushitsu, lit. The hidden classroom) tells the story of the sudden disappearance of five children in the middle of a normal school day like a classic who-dunnit.

The missing children come from varying backgrounds – a straight-talking 5th-grade girl born to Brazilian parents; her quiet classmate who somehow fell into the bad books of that cool girl in class; a nerdy-looking, bespectacled 4th-grade boy; a timid, soft-spoken, nervous 1st-grade girl; and a gangly, unkempt 6th-grade boy.

The teachers and school staff scramble to find the lost children. Meanwhile, the kids realize they had somehow entered a parallel world, with no one else in the entire compound, which looked very much identical.

Taking it onto themselves to join hands to find food and shelter in the confines of the school, they find their lunches served as they should at meal time, at their tables in their classrooms. There was also electricity and gas. Besides the fact that no one else was there, the school seemed to function like any other. They start to get used to their one-meal-a-day, care-free lives in this otherwise empty school, that is, until the weekend, when there was no school, and no food served.

In the hokenshitsu, the medical care or nurse’s room found in Japanese elementary schools, Sanae, the school’s nurse, notices something amiss. The bread she routinely puts in her drawer for the gangly 6th grader is gone. Had he somehow taken it without her knowing?

Ruffling through the school’s annals in the Principal’s office, the children find out that Sanae herself was similarly spirited away in 6th grade, in that same school. Uncanny. Perhaps the school was doing this. But why?

Gaining access to a computer in the audio-visual room, the kids manage to contact Sanae through her counseling blog. She rummages her memory to suggest that they open the same door at the same time to connect both worlds. However, their attempt only manages to open a blurry portal, which they could not walk or reach through. Something was lacking.

Sanae realizes that the school might be keeping the children safely away from something. As she gradually unravels the story behind each missing child, the five children grow closer with each passing day.

The children finally ask Sanae to reenact her return by asking their now distraught mothers to help them out of the other world. Only four return to their parent’s relieved embraces. The gangly 6th grader chooses to stay behind, his mother not there, or so it seemed.

Eventually, he too returns unharmed, striding out alone to four newfound friends, and the nurse who now knew and threw light on their stories.

Throughout the book, the children are plunged into varying degrees of self-doubt (why me?), self-blame (I’m the reason they are here with me), disappointment (it’s just not working), frustration (it’s all your fault!), and hopelessness (we’re never going home). But each time, some one would come up with a diversion, an idea, an outlet that offered hope or just a welcome break.

They could have chosen to stay in that hollow parallel world, until the point they realized that their loved ones were waiting on the other side, and also that the old building was slated for demolition.

In a story that was not unlike some bizarre escape game, the children found each other, a peer group, a group of individuals whose presence at school was under threat for some reason – bullying, abuse, neglect. Finding that group inspired the courage and clarity of mind to take the step back into their lives, with deep gratitude to the old school building that had developed a mind of its own.

 

Title: 『神隠しの教室』(Kamikakushi no kyoushitsu, lit. The hidden classroom)
by Etsuko Yamamoto, with illustrations by Yuki Maruyama
Publisher: Doshinsha, 2016
The book won the 2017 Noma Prize for Juvenile Literature.

Struggling with neglect


Film review, from Tokyo – Last things first: After watching Kore-eda’s critically acclaimed 『万引き家族』(Manbiki kazoku, lit. Shoplifters), I remember deep anger, sympathy and then finally hope from its abrupt ending. Shoplifters came through as a story of the many forms of neglect, which allows underlying problems to fester, to take on a life of their own. In this film, it colours the decisions made in the struggle for survival, largely out of convenience with huge dose of humanity and a tinge of exploitation. (Core plot follows.)

Right from the outset, the audience is presented with shoplifting as the appetizer leading up to the main course. It is winter in Tokyo, and a middle-aged man (Osamu Shibata, played by Lily Franky) and a slightly wobbly lady (Nobuyo, Sakura Ando) are making their way home together after a few drinks. A boy (Shota, Jyo Kairi) is slumped over the man’s shoulders half-asleep after a long day. Taking a familiar path home, they spot a little girl (Yuri, Miyu Sasaki) left alone out in the corridor of an apartment, cold and hungry, quivering perhaps also from the screams and shouts within.  They decide to take the trembling child home.

Home is a single storey structure shrouded in foliage, a cramped, messy abode, where two women, one grandiosely old (Hatsue, Kirin Kiki), the other whose future lay just ahead (Aki, Mayu Matsuoka), did not seem especially perturbed by the new arrival.

The story revolves around the familial relationships among these six people: Osamu, an odd-job construction worker; Nobuyo, a laundry shop part-timer; Hatsue, the old lady living on handouts and pension payouts; Aki, who chose her grand mother over a college education overseas; Shota, Osamu’s pilfering sidekick and curious reader; and Yuri, the newcomer, who threw a spanner into the old equilibrium.

The Shibatas live in poverty, pilfering to make ends meet, but they bring Yuri home, take her on a shopp(lift)ing run to get new clothes, swimming costumes, and then to the beach for that picture perfect family outing.

Things go downhill quickly though. Their wafer thin finances are hit first by Osamu’s injury, so when Hatsue leaves Aki in mourning, the next turn proves a carbon copy of gruesome reality – they decide to hide her body to continue receiving her pension payouts. Nobuyo then gets laid off, a deal struck with some compensation.

But when Shota gets caught on a routine run, the Shibata’s house of cards finally unravels, illuminated under the spotlight, crumpling under the long arm of law.

All through the movie, I saw the Shibata’s struggles with money, their humanity inciting sympathy and solidarity. I smiled at their familial joys, but winced occasionally at their choices for survival. And so I comprehended my blase at the superficial media coverage of the unplanned abduction and the initial anger against the officials who effused pity along with disdain. Bringing Osamu and Nobuyo under the law proved their errors, but it felt cruel to label those struggles as simply a result of being grossly misled.

A story rooted in an elder getting by alone, her misguided granddaughter, two wayward part-timing adults struggling for a livelihood, and two neglected children who found temporary shelter. Perhaps it all hinged on the boy who read, for him to find the courage to trust the world and its myriad systems. If others had reached out to them, if they knew what was out there for them, perhaps the story would have been very different.

It all began with the Shibatas bringing little Yuri into their home, and it all ended with her finding something offscreen. Although that felt rather abrupt, it is a fitting ending, because that’s probably the start of another story altogether.

 

Shoplifters (2018)
Original title in Japanese:『万引き家族』(Manbiki kazoku)
Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
More on the film at IMDb

Looking to the stars


Book review, from Tokyo – Japan’s drizzly season bridging spring and summer officially ended in Tokyo in June for the first time, with one day to spare. With libraries having renewed their selections ahead of time, I found a slightly different tale of Tanabata (七夕), celebrated on 7 July in Japan, but based on the same date in the lunar calendar in Chinese tradition. Retold by Touru Tsunemitsu through Takaaki Nomura’s signature woodblock-print illustrations, 『たなばたにょうぼう』(Tanabata nyoubou, lit. The tanabata wife) tells a lesser-known version of the tale, rooted in a fox’s advice, given twice, to a peasant.

The first time was after he spared the fox’s life when he found it hiding in a barn. Go down to the river, it said. The peasant was skeptical, but did as he was told. Hanging on a branch by the river was a beautiful, delicate piece of cloth. Puzzled but pleased by his find, he brings this home.

Later that day, a girl named Tanabata comes round asking for her celestial dress, but he denies any knowledge of this. Living together, they eventually marry, and Tanabata gives birth to a boy.

One day, the boy finds a strange-looking box in the cupboard and shows it to his mother. Having found her celestial dress, she could stay no longer, taking her child with her to heaven.

The fox then returns to the despairing father with advice. Build some wings and I will send you to heaven, it said, and it barked as loud as it could to send the man with wings soaring through the sky.

Reunited in heaven, all is well until the Heavenly Mother sets repeated trials for the man to pass in order to stay on. The first test is to lug a huge rock back from the mountains. The second is to scatter three bushels of seeds, only to instruct him to gather every single one the next day. The third is to tend the melon patch.

For each test, Tanabata gave her husband sound advice: the rock is made of paper so bring it back as if it were heavy, bury the bushels intact and retrieve them the next day, and never eat even a single melon no matter what happens. The dutiful husband passed the first two trials comfortably, but Tanabata was worried about the third – the man would have to fight the desire to quench his thirst under the hot sun.

Inevitably, he takes one. It pops open, starting a chain reaction of all the other melons in the patch. As the man is washed away by the flood, Tanabata shouts repeatedly over the gushing waters to meet on the seventh day of the month, but the man hears this as the seventh day of the seventh month. The flood creates the Milky Way, and the couple would only meet once a year, as we know today, on the seventh day of the seventh month.

Tsunemitsu’s retelling offers a slightly different version of a familiar tale, where I see the tricky fox as the chief architect and the man falling to his opportunistic nature in the end despite his wife’s repeated advice.

Ahead of Tanabata, I often see wishes written on colourful strips of paper tied to bamboo branches. These have always remained somewhat unfamiliar, but now I know from Tsunemitsu’s afterword that the tradition was started by terakoya (temple schools) during the Edo period to encourage the pursuit of scholarly desires and ambitions.

 

Title: 『たなばたにょうぼう』(Tanabata nyoubou, lit. The tanabata wife)
Retold by Touru Tsunemitsu, illustrated by Takaaki Nomura
Publisher: Doshinsha, 2017