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Library Reviews

Wazakka – A Japanese Sense Of Lifestyle

A flexible plate made of tin. A paper hand fan designed to be used wet. A ceramic hot water bottle.

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This is a small book that presents a select range of wazakka items. A concept that author, Rinko Kimino, knows can be difficult to convey to non-Japanese and distinguish from sundry goods. They are beautiful utensils that combine traditional craftwork with everyday functionality. Most of the production behind these objects involve businesses with decades or centuries of history and skill-intensive labour.

Presented are around 75 different items divided into three groups. Accessories are the fewest, amongst which are items commonly associated with female use such as cosmetics, hair ornaments and haberdashery. The dining items category mostly consist of vessels like cups and bowls and numerous boxes. Lifestyle items are diverse from sparklers, tenugui hand towels, bonsai, kokedama moss balls and more.

Besides the items themselves there are occasional side topics and instruction guides on activities related to certain items such as mizuhiki cord tying or trimming a candlewick or chopstick etiquette. While there isn’t any pricing, included lowkey at the end of the book is a table with supplier name and contact for each item.

Storybook – Discovering the Undiscovered – A Collection of Japan’s Finest Goods, Foods and Travel Experiences

“Local products that are the pride and joy of Japan but not yet known outside of Japan” – The Wonder 500

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This is like a catalogue for purveyors of quality merchandise who are partial towards less commonly found goods. Double walled titanium decanters that have the tactility of fabric; light, reusable plates made from lacquered paper; an iPhone case with LEDs powered entirely by the phone’s ambient radio waves. Alongside the ultra-modern are elegant examples of the functionally beautiful such as truly ready to wear apparel, warm timber furnitures and clothing hangers hand crafted from a single piece of solid beech. Intangible but indelible eating and sightseeing experiences are also presented. In all, 500 remarkable products from all 47 Japanese prefectures.

Both covers of this edition are a tasteful utilitarian black, lightly embossed and virtually free of text. Even the script on the spine is a black relief. Inside, the page composition varies appropriately. Travel experiences are given breathtakingly vivid, edge to edge photographic spreads. For products, the page layout switches to large amounts of attention isolating white space and a clean, uncluttered view of the subject.

It’s been some years now since the project was unveiled in 2015/2016. Actually buying anything could be more challenging than ever. Pricing isn’t included in this book nor was it on the project website. Links to the product’s vendor are available but these are sometimes an informational website and clicking on “buy” or “shop” will direct you to a page with physical store addresses. It’s understandable to want to avoid hard pricing and perhaps the intended audience was importers rather than retail consumers. At the time, it was positive to discover that for items where pricing could be sourced, their cost seemed to vary somewhere above casual affordability but below unattainably expensive (international shipping not accounted for).

The Wonder 500 defined itself as a regionally-driven Cool Japan project designed to discover “local products that are the pride and joy of Japan but not yet known outside of Japan” and to promote these worldwide. The original project website is no longer operational (thewonder500.com) but some content can be seen here: https://allabout-japan.com/en/tag/wonder-five-hundred/

(Previously reviewed 2016 October. Edited.)

Love At Six Thousand Degrees

Not your usual romance or usual anything really…

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To oversimplify, Maki Kashimada’s story is about a housewife having an extramarital crisis. One ordinary day, she seizes on another randomly met neighbourhood mother, cooks up some excuse to leave her own daughter in her care for an afternoon …and promptly heads off on an escapade which will take days. The “Six Thousand Degrees” in the title is a reference to atomic weapons and the main character’s preoccupying visions of a mushroom cloud. Without much ado, the secondary main character appears, a biracial youth encountered at her hotel and an unplanned liaison begins.

The abnormality extends far further than this blatantly absurd setup. A stand out would be the stylised plot structure. Although always orbiting the housewife, the narrative jerks around in stream of consciousness fashion. The housewife is a confused, self-conflicted, or omni-conflicted, mess with borderline misandrist thoughts. The youth’s mental health is possibly just as bad but over different matters. Writing is mostly in third person but sometimes switches to first person and there is some blurring of the fourth wall in terms of the narrator and the character (and the author).

A work from earlier in Kashimada’s bibliography, it was awarded the Yukio Mishima literary prize of 2005. Interestingly however, if public review sites are anything to judge by, there is a bit of a divergence between the novel’s critical and popular appeal. Just one more point of contemplation in a work where there isn’t any shortage of them.

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