furyofvissarion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-06-25 02:08 pm
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-06-25 02:08 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
The WisCon Chronicles Volume 5: Writing and Racial Identity - Edited by Nisi Shawl. Reading earlier volumes of the Chronicles, I wondered if they would be as compelling, & as understandable, to someone who hadn't been to that year's con. Sadly, I now have the experience of having read one volume without having been to the con. It was definitely compelling & understandable! Though as someone who's been to several previous WisCons & knows several of the authors in this volume (& knows more by reputation, etc.) I still obviously have a lot of context.
Anyway: it's quite difficult to review books that have things in them by your friends! Overall I thought this volume was v. readable & inviting, which is nice, as sometimes in previous volumes some of the academic stuff made me yawn. & it was very moving to see this volume dedicated to the issue of race, after seeing deeply troubling things like RaceFail & MoonFail emphasize how much "our" community still has to work on. I read this book on the way back from this year's WisCon, actually, so in the airport & overnight on a plane & while very much missing my friends & regretting having to switch back into the ordinary world, where people are sometimes even less in tune with these issues than the WisCon community ideally (& sometimes) is. I don't have a lot specific to say about it aside from a general feeling of "thank goodness": for having people around to say these things & talk about these things, & being fortunate enough to be friends w/a lot of them.
A couple of moments that stood out: Seeing the photo essay of the POC dinner was amazing & wonderful (not just because I know people in the photos, ha!). Just having that visual reminder that we are there, we exist, we belong & can have our own spaces: so fantastic. In Jaymee Goh's article about decolonizing steampunk, she says:
Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai - Michael Dylan Foster. Lovely book about what youkai (spirits/monsters/etc.) have meant, culturally, in Japan over several hundred years. Foster starts off by examining various encyclopedias of youkai that were compiled in the 18th century, during a period when natural history & cataloging & observing the world became prominent methods for understanding the world. While the expected sorts of creatures are catalogued (kappa, etc.), there's also a few instances where the compilers translated a general spooky feeling into a concrete, visual object. For example: mokumokuren is the feeling of being watched (Foster asks the reader to imagine they're taking shelter in a rickety abandoned country house, but I'm not sure if this setting is an essential part of the mokumokuren experience). One encyclopedist translates this into an illustration of an overgrown, abandoned house with a torn shoji screen. Each section of the screen has a pair of eyes on it. This time also saw the popularity of hyaku-monogatari, parties where people would light 100 lamps & tell 100 ghost stories/stories of the supernatural, extinguishing one lamp per story. At the end, it was expected that an actual supernatural event would then occur. (Hee, zomg, this sounds like such an awesome party!!)
In the Meiji period, however, with the push for modernization, there was a change from merely cataloging youkai to wanting to disprove their existence as backwards country superstition, & to enlighten the ignorant rural folks as to this. This led to the development of "youkai-ology" (yokaigaku) & yet more cataloging of youkai. One thing I thought was interesting was that sometimes people engaging in this work agreed that there were, indeed, mysterious things in the world -- it's just that youkai are not among them; they're pure myth. It was more acceptable to see mysterious things as powered by modern inventions like electricity -- some of the discourse at the time around electricity did make it sound rather mystical! I also liked hearing about Kokkuri, a divination method with some similarities to the craze for table-tapping in the West (it seems like Kokkuri may have been inspired by this, in fact, though I didn't think the evidence presented sounded particularly conclusive). Another sign of the turn from the traditional towards the modern was how mental illness was increasingly seen as not, say, the result of being possessed by a fox, but as a medical issue.
Foster spends some time discussing short stories produced around the turn of the (twentieth) century, & how they show the anxiety around modernity versus tradition/superstition (I enjoyed this too, & found the stories discussed genuinely creepy; I just don't have anything else to say about it!). This period saw more cataloging of youkai, & as well, tying in youkai to a communal Japanese identity (somewhat under threat from modernity). Youkai were, one scholar argued, a way to understand fear & awe, but while the modern world was stripping away this use of youkai, it had yet to proffer a replacement.
The next chapter is a particularly strong one: it begins with a short look at Godzilla but then focuses on a modern chronicler of youkai: Mizuki Shigeru, & how his life history has been subtly shaped to emphasize his status as someone who comes from a small rural town (though he was born in Osaka, a fact generally elided) & thus has authority to speak about youkai from experience. Through Mizuki's many works (manga, which has often been made into anime, but also general research on youkai) we can see how youkai are part of a nostalgic project focusing on an idyllic rural past in Japan, where culpability for WWII crimes is not something that has to be dealt with. Mizuki's telling of his experience as a soldier in WWII, especially his recollection of his time in a village in Papua New Guinea, emphasizes innocence and paradise -- his view of the villagers reminds me of the condescending exotification of Solomon Islanders in Rocket Girls. The rest of the chapter focuses intriguingly on Kuchi-sake-onna, "Slit-Mouthed Woman," a kind of urban legend/urban youkai who seized the imagination of Japan in the 1970s. There's a lot to say about Kuchi-sake-onna expressing anxiety about rapid urbanization in Japan at the time & the roles of women/feminist movement -- lots to say, & I am lazy, but yes, very interesting!
The final chapter takes a brief look at J-horror, & its increased popularity outside Japan, versus a local boom in youkai movies that don't export as well, & how youkai are emblematic of Japanese-ness & the Japanese nation.
A really fascinating book, & for an academic work, pleasingly low on obtuse language. I'd like to read more stuff like this, especially through a gendered lens (more on Kuchi-sake-onna, more on gender among traditional youkai, as seen in the past & revitalized today), & more on youkai & the concept of nation.
Anyway: it's quite difficult to review books that have things in them by your friends! Overall I thought this volume was v. readable & inviting, which is nice, as sometimes in previous volumes some of the academic stuff made me yawn. & it was very moving to see this volume dedicated to the issue of race, after seeing deeply troubling things like RaceFail & MoonFail emphasize how much "our" community still has to work on. I read this book on the way back from this year's WisCon, actually, so in the airport & overnight on a plane & while very much missing my friends & regretting having to switch back into the ordinary world, where people are sometimes even less in tune with these issues than the WisCon community ideally (& sometimes) is. I don't have a lot specific to say about it aside from a general feeling of "thank goodness": for having people around to say these things & talk about these things, & being fortunate enough to be friends w/a lot of them.
A couple of moments that stood out: Seeing the photo essay of the POC dinner was amazing & wonderful (not just because I know people in the photos, ha!). Just having that visual reminder that we are there, we exist, we belong & can have our own spaces: so fantastic. In Jaymee Goh's article about decolonizing steampunk, she says:
...as I learned more about Orientalism, my discomfort in adapting steampunk gear with elements from my culture grew: if I drew on Asian aesthetics for my steampunk outfit, did I Orientalize myself? Did I box myself in for the Western gaze? Would I be playing into Orientalist tropes and remaining trapped there? Would I get to have a speaking role and be an actor in my own story, with an audience that would understand where I was speaking from?Which... YES. I also was struck by MJ Hardman's article, which takes Joanna Russ' categories on how to suppress women's writing & applies them to POCs. The examples used to discredit, invalidate, & discourage POCs & POC culture were so familiar to me, & slightly triggering (like reading the Microaggressions blog); it's the sort of thing I think a lot of people would read & go, "well, yes, DUH." But I think such a through catalog of examples is tremendously useful to people who are resistant to admitting the persistence of racism. & when Mary Anne Mohanraj's guest of honor speech about being heroes was posted online last year, I got teary; similarly so, rereading it in this book.
Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai - Michael Dylan Foster. Lovely book about what youkai (spirits/monsters/etc.) have meant, culturally, in Japan over several hundred years. Foster starts off by examining various encyclopedias of youkai that were compiled in the 18th century, during a period when natural history & cataloging & observing the world became prominent methods for understanding the world. While the expected sorts of creatures are catalogued (kappa, etc.), there's also a few instances where the compilers translated a general spooky feeling into a concrete, visual object. For example: mokumokuren is the feeling of being watched (Foster asks the reader to imagine they're taking shelter in a rickety abandoned country house, but I'm not sure if this setting is an essential part of the mokumokuren experience). One encyclopedist translates this into an illustration of an overgrown, abandoned house with a torn shoji screen. Each section of the screen has a pair of eyes on it. This time also saw the popularity of hyaku-monogatari, parties where people would light 100 lamps & tell 100 ghost stories/stories of the supernatural, extinguishing one lamp per story. At the end, it was expected that an actual supernatural event would then occur. (Hee, zomg, this sounds like such an awesome party!!)
In the Meiji period, however, with the push for modernization, there was a change from merely cataloging youkai to wanting to disprove their existence as backwards country superstition, & to enlighten the ignorant rural folks as to this. This led to the development of "youkai-ology" (yokaigaku) & yet more cataloging of youkai. One thing I thought was interesting was that sometimes people engaging in this work agreed that there were, indeed, mysterious things in the world -- it's just that youkai are not among them; they're pure myth. It was more acceptable to see mysterious things as powered by modern inventions like electricity -- some of the discourse at the time around electricity did make it sound rather mystical! I also liked hearing about Kokkuri, a divination method with some similarities to the craze for table-tapping in the West (it seems like Kokkuri may have been inspired by this, in fact, though I didn't think the evidence presented sounded particularly conclusive). Another sign of the turn from the traditional towards the modern was how mental illness was increasingly seen as not, say, the result of being possessed by a fox, but as a medical issue.
Foster spends some time discussing short stories produced around the turn of the (twentieth) century, & how they show the anxiety around modernity versus tradition/superstition (I enjoyed this too, & found the stories discussed genuinely creepy; I just don't have anything else to say about it!). This period saw more cataloging of youkai, & as well, tying in youkai to a communal Japanese identity (somewhat under threat from modernity). Youkai were, one scholar argued, a way to understand fear & awe, but while the modern world was stripping away this use of youkai, it had yet to proffer a replacement.
The next chapter is a particularly strong one: it begins with a short look at Godzilla but then focuses on a modern chronicler of youkai: Mizuki Shigeru, & how his life history has been subtly shaped to emphasize his status as someone who comes from a small rural town (though he was born in Osaka, a fact generally elided) & thus has authority to speak about youkai from experience. Through Mizuki's many works (manga, which has often been made into anime, but also general research on youkai) we can see how youkai are part of a nostalgic project focusing on an idyllic rural past in Japan, where culpability for WWII crimes is not something that has to be dealt with. Mizuki's telling of his experience as a soldier in WWII, especially his recollection of his time in a village in Papua New Guinea, emphasizes innocence and paradise -- his view of the villagers reminds me of the condescending exotification of Solomon Islanders in Rocket Girls. The rest of the chapter focuses intriguingly on Kuchi-sake-onna, "Slit-Mouthed Woman," a kind of urban legend/urban youkai who seized the imagination of Japan in the 1970s. There's a lot to say about Kuchi-sake-onna expressing anxiety about rapid urbanization in Japan at the time & the roles of women/feminist movement -- lots to say, & I am lazy, but yes, very interesting!
The final chapter takes a brief look at J-horror, & its increased popularity outside Japan, versus a local boom in youkai movies that don't export as well, & how youkai are emblematic of Japanese-ness & the Japanese nation.
A really fascinating book, & for an academic work, pleasingly low on obtuse language. I'd like to read more stuff like this, especially through a gendered lens (more on Kuchi-sake-onna, more on gender among traditional youkai, as seen in the past & revitalized today), & more on youkai & the concept of nation.