by WATANABE Hiroshi (Tokyo, Japan)
since January, 2000



to 2004. 1〜
to 2003. 1〜12
to Japanese version




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2002/12/25 (Wed)
　Do you know 'depleted uranium bullets'? They are 'soft version' of atomic bombs. It's of course USA that has been making them. USA used them mainly in the Gulf War. It's said that about a million bullets were used in the war and caused several diseases in Iraq; leukaemia, cancers, deformities, etc. The scattered radiation there are said to be more than ten thousand times as the 'Hiroshima' atomic bomb. USA has been saying they are fighting for justice. It's a barefaced lie. USA has been killing and torturing innocent people, and trying to rule the whole world.

2002/11/12 (Tue)
　I found an interesting opinion advertizing in the website of 'The New York Review of Books.' It's as follows:

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CONTEST: $1,000 prize to the first person who offers a definition of "terrorism" that both a) captures its character as a mode of combat, and b) excludes all official U.S. military strategy and tactics. Respond to NYR Box 16050. Society for Promotion of Accuracy in Political Speech. Frank Bardacke, Douglas Lummis, Jeffrey Lustig, founders.
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　Hey, Bush Jr., don't you think to answer the question is more difficult than graduating from Yale?

2002/9/29 (Sun)
　Lili is Annie Wang's first novel written in English. She is not a Chinese American, but Chinese. So English is not her native language. The fact tends to be forgotten, especially by native speakers of English.
　And most U.S. people wonder why other countries aren't like their country. For example, why they aren't as 'democratic' as U.S.A., why other country's people don't stand up against their countries' old regimes. Those questions sometimes have good points and other times are wide off the mark.
　Lili, the protagonist, is a modern Chinese woman. She experienced the Cultural revolution as a girl. She was forced to criticize and slap her bourgeois grandmother with her mother in front of people. And after that, she and her parents (music teachers) were made to go to poor village and work as peasants. There Lili was raped by the member of the communist party and fled to Beijing alone.
　In her twenties, she met U.S. journalist Roy. He made her think about her country, China, again. But for her, Roy seemed to be too positive and not to know much about her country's history and culture. And in the end Tiananmen Square Incident happened...
　Lili is a good introduction to Chinese modern history, society and culture. When you become aware of the deep culture gap between east and west, you can estimate this novel properly for the first time. Read it before you go to war.

2002/8/28 (Wed)
　Gail Tsukiyama's new novel, Dreaming Water, moved me deeply as her previous works. Hana is a Japanese-American woman, whose disease stopped her growing in her teens and caused rapid aging. Racial discrimination (her father had been interned in a camp in the WWII) and the disease prohibited her from enjoying youth and life. After her father died, she has been only living with her Italian-American mother, Cate. The story deals with their only two days and their recollections, but on the first day's night, Hana's friend, Laura came to see them with her daughters who were Hana's godchildren. Especially the elder child Josephine got nervous since her parents' separation, so Laura wanted her children to meet her best friend, Hana, and of course she wanted to meet Hana for herself.
　The storytelling is perfect. So are the details. For example, on the first encounter, Josephine simply said to herself that small Hana reminded her of "a character in a George Lucas or Steven Spielberg movie." And then things began to change...
　Thank you, Gail, for your heartwarming story, especially in this new age of discrimination. I want to read more about Josephine's changing.

2002/8/23 (Fri)
　I'm so busy and tired this summer. I work Monday to Saturday for my company every week, except for only two days when I went to sea with my family.
　In today's Japan, we often come across a word iyashi, which originally means 'healing'. But here now the iyashi means that our fatigue can be gotten over by medicines, herbs, smiling faces of entertainers, etc. So we can get over and work for money, our companies and our nation every day, and then make ourselves happy.
　But I don't think it can be. Our tiredness can be gotten over only by changing Japanese lifestyle and attaching greater importance to well-being than to national economy.

P.S. Last month my new collection of poems, Boy's Diary, was published. But, much to my regret, it's only in Japanese.

2002/7/12 (Fri)
　It's said all over the world that Japan is affluent. But I can't feel so. Hard work and anxiety about money, loan and unemployment. Here too many middle-ages have committed suicides, while members of the privileged class enjoy themselves in high-class hotels every day. Japan has been in a long recession, and the Government can't eliminate the big budget deficit and has used the whole bag of tricks to raise substantial taxes especially for 'ordinary' people, and to give good treatment to 'members of their family companies,' just like Bush Jr.
　I'm so tired these days but here we can't find out the ways to help each other.

2002/5/25 (Sat)
　I've read again the book that I forgot I'd read twenty years ago. It's the fourth of the series called "Messages from South Korea." It mainly deals with the period from the assassination of their tyrannical president Park (1979) to Kwangju massacre brought about by the military authorities (1980).
　It was the age of reign of terror in South Korea. And it was the CIA/USA that supported the coercion. Then, the President of the USA was Jimmy Carter. Now he behaves as if he was the voice of human rights and democracy. He might forget what he did.

2002/5/16 (Thu)
　Last week, on the premises of Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, Chinese police caught five people believed to be from North Korea. It is said the consul and the staff didn't feel like receiving any refugees, especially from North Korea, and had decided to turn away any of them.
　It's a typical example of Japanese awareness about human rights. Japan doesn't secure even civil rights of foreigners living in Japan.

2002/4/22 (Mon)
　When was the last time that I read Brautigan's books or read about him. It was probably almost ten years ago when Jan Kerouac's Trainsong was translated into Japanese. This Jack Kerouac's daughter described Brautigan's lecture in Amsterdam a year before he died. Jan Kerouac died too in mid-nineties.
　Now this Brautigan's posthumous book, An Unfortunate Woman: A Journey, reminds me of an atmosphere of early eighties; not too much industrialization and 'do it ourselves.' But this book is not so simple. The narrator went to cemeteries everywhere. And every time he tried to talk about an 'unfortunate woman' who had hung herself, he got off the subject. Hatred for LA-style cities, the sound of a woman making love in Berkeley, a photograph of him and a chicken in Hawaii, etc. These episodes are funny but, on the other hand, somewhat depressing.
　Nostalgic, witty and a little sad. It's unmistakably a Brautigan.

2002/4/12 (Fri)
　I wonder how they feel living in Israel? Inexplicable disquiet? Hatred? Anger? It took about half a century for Israelis to forget their own invasion and call Palestinians 'terrorists.' I think Israel herself is a 'terroristic' nation supported by USA and England. In other words, Israel is a dark symbol of the 20th war-and-money century, as well as wartime Japan or post-war North Korea.
　It's not too much to say that USA, England and Israel give birth to 'terrorism' all over the world.

2002/3/2 (Sat)
　Before the end of WWII, Japan had colonized Korea. So many Koreans came to Japan, of their own will, under coercion or sometimes being cheated. The protagonist of Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is Franklin Hata, who was a son of them Koreans living in Japan. He was adopted to Japanese family and went to WWII as a Japanese soldier. He hid his Korean identity, because Koreans were discriminated very harshly in Japan. It was one of his 'gestures.'
　After WWII, he went to USA and lived as a Japanese merchant. But his new life in USA didn't release him from his 'gesture life.' Both his adopted daughter and his lover smelled out his 'gesture' and left him. Why didn't he confess he was Korean? Because he went to war as a Japanese soldier and couldn't save a Korean 'comfort woman' he thought he loved. It's a tragedy most Japanese have been avoiding for so many years.
　Of course, A Gesture Life is not a political essay, but one of the most excellent and important modern novels. It attacked me like a sweet and sad surprise.

2002/2/19 (Tue)
　Bush Jr. came to Japan. To make a round of courtesy calls? Or to boss us around or to eat Japanese barbecued chickens? No. He came here to make us go to war against 'axis of evil,' that are Iraq, Iran and North Korea according to him. He might have forgotten Japan was a member of old 'axis of evil.' He is a boss of the 'Crusades,' trying hard to please American war industry and petroleum industry.
　Now in the center of Tokyo, we see many police officers on the streets. They are on the watch against Bush-haters. But please don't misunderstand us. We don't hate U.S.A. We hate her today's warlike way.

2002/2/7 (Thu)
　Last month I received a mail from a reader of this page in Brazil. He said he enjoyed this page and asked me to give him some tips about Japanese awesome books, music, movies, etc. I couldn't answer him (sorry, Gustavo). Now here we have many authors, many musicians, many actors, but most of them are not so brilliant. They advertise themselves for money. In other words, their expressions are commercial messages to make themselves celebrities.
　These days I have been reading books written by philosophers, historians, etc. I'd like to know the essence of Japanese nationalism, especially its collaboration with U.S.A. after the WWII. So I think I ought to have told the Brazilian reader to read John W. Dower's Embracing Defeat.

2002/1/18 (Fri)
　I've been reading Robert Westall's Gulf. This British novel is for young adult readers about that Gulf War. Andy, the narrator's young brother, is a very sensitive boy. When the Gulf War starts, he 'becomes' a young Iraqi and begins to speak Arabic. His family take him to the hospital, but...
　Now many innocent Afghans have been murdered by American marverous bombs. But most Amerians look upon it only as a war against terrorists. Their government is very good at making stories of self-justification. I wonder if they can make an earnest story about their 'war' against Afghanistan some day.

P.S. In Korea and Japan, the research about Cheju massacre has been conducted. Cheju is a Korean island. In 1948, over thirty thousand people was killed there by American and Korean troops. For a long time, they say it was only a rebellion of communists. But it's a lie. Americans hated Korean democratic movement and destroyed it.



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