Murakami and After the Quake: Reality Check

The video above is the trailer for a play by Frank Galati formed from two of the stories in Haruki Murakami's short story collection After the Quake, yet another of the creative spin-offs of his work.  In the book, the actual earthquake takes place offstage. As a reality check, here's a bit of BBC coverage of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Of course, it's impossible to read this collection now and not think about the more recent Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. Must reading in that regard is Murakami's acceptance speech ("As an Unrealistic Dreamer") given for the Catalunya International Prize in Barcelona this summer. In it, he talks about the resilience of the Japanese people in the face of natural disaster but focuses most of his attention on the relationship of Japan and nuclear power,

We should have been working to develop alternative energy sources to replace nuclear power at a national level, by harvesting all existing
technologies, wisdom and social capital. Even if people throughout the world had mocked us, saying, “Nuclear power is the most effective power generation system, and Japanese people are really stupid not to use it”, we should have retained the aversion to nuclear power that was triggered by our experience of nuclear weapons. 

We should have made the development of non-nuclear power generation the cornerstone of our policy after World War II. This should have been the way to assume our collective responsibility for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Japan, we needed strong ethics, strong values, and a strong social message. This would have been a chance for the Japanese people to make a real contribution to the world. We neglected to take that important road, however, preferring to pursue the fast track of “efficiency” in support of our rapid economic development.

This month National Geographic has a package with photoessays (Japan Nuclear Zone) of scenes from within the "exclusion zone" and nuclear radiation clean-up, an area already beginning to resemble Chernobyl, a disaster we've read about and discussed here previously.

The New York Times also has a fresh multi-media report out on the clean-up,

So far, the government is following a pattern set since the nuclear accident, dismissing dangers, often prematurely, and laboring to minimize the scope of the catastrophe. Already, the trial cleanups have stalled: the government failed to anticipate communities’ reluctance to store tons of soil to be scraped from contaminated yards and fields.

If you're looking for a more upbeat story about the disaster, I enjoyed this PBS Newshour piece about scientist-activists working with citizens to crowdsource radiation data in the interests of providing information about the safety of living conditions.

Murakami donated the prize money from the Catalunya prize to earthquake victims.  I just wanted to note here too, that another of our favorite authors, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi) contributed a short story to the Kindle collection Shaken: Stories from Japan which benefits Japan America Society of Southern California's 2011 Japan Relief Fund. Loyal Readers might want to check that out.

More Murakami posts can be found here.

Naomi Hirahara at Pacific Asia Museum

Naomi Hirahara, author of (Summer of the Big Bachi) will be speaking at Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum on Thursday, November 2 at 7 PM. She will be joined by Sujata Massey, author of Girl in a Box, in which Japanese American sleuth Rei Shimura must use all her resourcefulness and unorthodox methods to unmask a killer. Naomi Hirahara's newest novel, Snakeskin Shamisen, finds Mas Arai, one of mystery fiction's most unique heroes, caught up in a dark tale that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.

Book signing and light refreshments included. Reservations recommended, 626.449.2742, ext. 20. Authors on Asia programs are included in museum admission, $7, $5 and are free for museum members.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, events

Naomi Hirahara Recommends...

Last but not least, my final post on Naomi Hirahara, author of Summer of the Big Bachi.  Here is a link to an article where she suggests titles for further reading (many for children or youth) on the Japanese-American experience.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, teachingresources

Conservancy Walking Tours

Since this has come up a couple of times in our offline discussions, I wanted to put in a plug here for the Los Angeles Conservancy Walking Tours, including the tour of Little Tokyo, relevant to our recent discussion of Naomi Hirahara's, Summer of the Big Bachi. The tours are a great activity for out-of-town guests, especially the ones who whine about LA having no history!  Maybe a future Rights Readers outing...?  Here also is a link to some information and photos of public art in Little Tokyo, a noticeable feature of the district for any casual visitor.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, Los Angeles, history, art

Remembering Nagasaki and Hiroshima

Another supplementary post on Naomi Hirahara's, Summer of the Big Bachi. Because last year was the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are still some interesting virtual memorials to explore:

The Exploratorium has a photo exhibit, Remembering Nagasaki while Art for a Change, has an exhibit of paintings and drawings by atomic bomb survivors. Here is another exhibit, Portraits of the 70 Hibakusha. Check of this picture of Chizuko Hirahara. Finally, we shouldn't foget the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, atomic bomb,

Hirahara Family Interview

Here's an interview Weekend America did with Naomi Hirahara, (Summer of the Big Bachi), and her parents a year ago, focusing on their experience as survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  There's also a little gallery of pictures of the family.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, Japan, Hiroshima, atomic bomb

Our August Author: Naomi Hirahara

A quick introduction to our August author, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi). She has her own website with a Q&A for reading groups that's worth a look and I also recommend browsing the nonfiction books section to get a feel for how grounded her work is in California history. She's written a book Green Makers: Japanese American Gardners in Southern California which gave me a flashback to an exhibition I saw a few years back at the Japanese American National Museum.

She also contributes to a group blog, Murderati, with a post each Wednesday. Language geeks take note that at the end of each post she explicates a Japanese word from one of her books, for example,

WEDNESDAY’S WORD: monku (SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI, page 87)

To complain or a complaint. Once upon a time in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, there was a shoe store that sold T-shirts that read, "Monku, Monku, Monku." In this record-breaking heat in Southern California, monku is plentiful. But considering the unstable situation our world is in, a little heat is easy to bear.

Tags: Naomi Hirahara, California, language

Mystery Month Preview

Rights Readers discovered some time ago that reading detective fiction can be a fun way to explore serious human rights issues-- after all, mysteries are all about the search for justice.  Today's Los Angeles Times brings us an article on the social consciousness of some local mystery writers.  Rights Reader favorite Walter Mosley (Little Scarlet) and our August author, Naomi Hirahara (Summer of the Big Bachi) get a mention.  Of her father (survivor of Hiroshima and the inspiration for her fictional gardner hero, Mas Arai) she says,

"Some drivers passing my father tending someone's lawn and garden may have thought nothing of him, but in fact he had survived and witnessed one of the horrific events of the 20th century," ... "I wanted to give a voice to people like this."

Mosley observes,

"At this point there are feminist, black, Japanese writers," he said. "And they think, 'Hey, I could tell this story in this genre. Certainly the people who have had critical success have spoken more to the social implications.' "

The protagonist of the new noir is still "the existentialist hero, someone standing up against corruption in society," Mosley said. But now "there's a critique not of bad people in society, but of society itself."

The new noir, Mosley said, is not a break from the past. Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, who famously refused to testify during the anti-Communist witch hunting of the McCarthy era, "was extraordinarily political," Mosley said. "He was the guy who wouldn't name names. He went to prison."

Taking note of the other authors, --Paula L. Woods, Denise Hamilton, Marcos McPeek Villatoro-- mentioned for future Rights Readers mystery months!