Review – The Saint of Bright Doors

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

It seems almost pointless for me to review a book so original, so outside of the norms I know, as this. The awards are numerous, major, and utterly deserved. People are speaking of The Saint of Bright Doors in superlatives and wonder, and having just finished my first read (of which I think there will be many more), I can only agree with what everyone else is saying. And who even cares about my opinion, anyway? But having finished the book, I feel I have to write about it. There are thoughts banging around, and I need to get them out.

There are books that are good because they are fun, or interesting, or thought provoking. People like what they like. Books that are great, though, tend to have more than that—undercurrents that hint at unseen depths, at leviathans swimming in seas of culture and history.

The reason that a children’s book like The Hobbit has gone on to become an enduring classic of Western Literature is that Tolkien rooted it in a thousand years of hero’s journeys and Anglo Saxon sagas. Gene Wolfe’s books are layered with allusions and histories of Greece and Rome, religions pagan and Catholic, pushing them beyond mere adventure and space opera. Le Guin wove stories of wizards and dragons from primordial myths and basic human truths.

Vajra Chandrasekera has written a Great book; done something that echoes those feats, with a weft of modern post-colonial literature and woof of lit-in-the-age-of-Covid, but the roots and undercurrents seem deep and… Unknown to me. This, I think, is what makes this book in particular, right now, so worth rereading and excavating. For me, anyway. This book breathes the air of an unknown land even as it echoes more familiar Kafka-esque paranoia and surreality, and that air is still fresh to me. I feel that I recognize some of the pieces Chandrasekera used in assembling this mosaic, but some are still in colors I cannot name.

I want to learn those names. I want to know if the “invisiblelaws and powers” are his, or if they belong to a history and tradition I am simply ignorant of. This book is a signpost toward a place I have never been, and I think I want to follow it.

Thoughts on The Book of Tea

When I was a wee lad, I was a bit of an “intellectual.” This was both an affectation, in that I tried very hard to be “smart,” and something that in retrospect was actually true. I was much more into thinking and learning than I was into doing anything productive. And, now, I’ve made a bit of a decent living out of that, so, thanks dorky young Jim!

That course lead me through a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, which did a couple of things to me. First, it made me by and large bullshit proof, as I was contending with some of the greatest bullshitters in history on a daily basis. I was trained to critically assess and question essentially everything, to accept nothing without vetting. Which is a pretty good skill to have in the age of disinformation.

Second, it made me approach things from basic principles (which is in many ways a restating of the first point). No idea, no system, no structure comes from nowhere. There is something guiding it, or which served as a basis, and philosophy is the pursuit of finding those principles so that we can understand. Anything. Everything. In other words, it is asking, “Why is this thing the way it is?”

This very long introduction is a way of getting to the point of saying, The Book of Tea offered me some shockingly good insight into “Why is the traditional Japanese aesthetic the way it is?”

But let me step back a moment. “What is The Book of Tea, anyway?”, you might be wondering. It’s a good thing to wonder. I heard about it from a Japanese podcast I listen to, called Nihon Bunka Radio. It’s a very frequently updated podcast that is basically one guy, who goes by the name of Sebastian Takagi, talking about Japanese literature, culture, and art with a rotating cast of potters, lacquerware artists, and other researchers. Takagi seems to have become recently fixated on this book, and talks about it a lot. And, since it was in English and out of copyright, I figured I’d get it off Project Gutenberg. Here’s a link.

It was written in 1906 by a Japanese man named Kakuzo (Commonly known in Japan as Tenshin) Okakura. It ostensibly addresses Japan’s tea ceremony culture for Western audiences, but what it truly does is contextualize Japanese culture in the grand historical tradition of China, and presents Asian culture as equal to European/Western, in an effort to bridge growing gaps between the two hemispheres.

That synopsis does not do the book justice, though. It is a work of incredible erudition. The idea that a man could successfully write a work referencing Chinese classical poetry and works of Taoist philosophy, tying them to Greek myth and Arthurian legend, and referencing Shakespeare, itself is astonishing. That he is doing it in his second language? And with a level of rhetorical flourish that most native speakers never achieve?

It beggars belief. I mean, read this paragraph, and tell me if you could have written it, in any language:

In the trembling grey of a spring dawn, when the birds were whispering in mysterious cadence among the trees, have you not felt that they were talking to their mates about the flowers? Surely with mankind the appreciation of flowers must have been coeval with the poetry of love. Where better than in a flower, sweet in its unconsciousness, fragrant because of its silence, can we image the unfolding of a virgin soul? The primeval man in offering the first garland to his maiden thereby transcended the brute. He became human in thus rising above the crude necessities of nature. He entered the realm of art when he perceived the subtle use of the useless.
Okakura Tenshin, The Book of Tea

And the lessons it holds! It explains how Zen ideals inherited a Toaist view of the world, and that Zen’s development in Japan was a direct influence on tea ceremony culture, which then went on to dominate Japan’s traditional art through architecture, pottery, flower arrangement, and even painting. It is a masterful summary of centuries of philosophy that inform the traditional aesthetic of Japan that so many of us still find so alluring. Along the way, it offers lessons on art appreciation, moral rightness, and

It is a key to so much, and is inspiring so much further study (the mark of a truly good book), that I feel the need to trumpet it from the rooftops. It’s short, it’s free, and it’s highly accessible despite the age of it.

Read it!

Review – Who We’re Reading when We’re Reading Murakami

This animated gif of the cover is from the publisher’s website, linked through the title below.

Who We’re Reading when We’re Reading Murakami

by David Karashima

Soft Skull Press

I just finished this book after picking it up based on a passing comment by Matt Alt on social media. I did so not because I am particular fan of Murakami—I’m not—but because I wanted to actually know more about the issue hinted at in the title: how the personality and identity (the “who”) of the translator impacts the end translation.

To sum up, this very well researched and written book follows the whole process of how Haruki Murakami went from fresh new Japanese novelist to global literary darling. Karashima tracks down and talks to all the editors, translators, designers, agents, and the author himself to look at how Murakami’s work up through Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ended up in English.

The result is a really compelling example of how intentional and designed such a career is. Please don’t take that to mean I don’t believe the success is unwarranted or undeserved; I make no such judgment at all.

But it is clear that what people read from Murakami in English has been very tightly controlled by a large cadre of peripheral figures. They selected stories, they cut text, they created the legend. Which is not a surprise to me at all, having been a translator working on pieces for publication.

Which brings me to my only grump about this book: I’d very much like a bit more focus on the question in the title. I want more depth on the people. In parts, I want more concrete looks at how specific choices the individual translators made could influence a resulting literary work’s reception. There are tantalizing tastes of this, with a few examples of people bringing up translation choices, but I’d have loved more.

In all, though, this strikes me as a valuable tool to demonstrate the realities of the translation process to a reading public.

It’s well worth a read to anyone interested in Murakami, translation for publication, outer international fiction.

Review – Ceramics and Modernity in Japan

I’m trying lately to build a solid base of knowledge in ceramics, not only of aesthetics and mechanics, but of culture and context as well. This book, part of the Routledge Research in Art History series, is an excellent resource for exactly that.

The cover of the book Ceramics and Modernity in Japan. — The image is the abstract work Mr. Samsa’s Walk by Yagi Kazuo.

It features 11 scholarly essays (including the intro and epilogue) examining how the whole ceramics world—creating, seeking, purchasing, and appreciating—changed in post-Meiji Japan. The individual topics are relatively specific, but are well arranged and referenced enough to give an excellent overall grasp of the various issues at play.

The articles are all both rigorous and accessible, with the possible exception, perhaps, of “More than “Western”: Porcelain for the Meiji Emperor’s table” by Mary Redfern, which reads like something an undergraduate in social science might write to fill in a word count assignment. Study, overly erudite, and off questionable insight

Of particular interest to me are the many references to the interplay between attitudes toward other Asian nations during Japan’s colonial and post-colonial periods and the concurrent growth of the mingei movement under Yanagi Sōetsu. There is also a very illuminating reference to the circularity of how ceramic science from Europe influenced Japanese pottery, which in turn went on to influence the British studio pottery wave spearheaded by Bernard Leach.

These incidents fundamentally changed my perception of the mingei movement and Leach; particularly his “translation” of Yanagi’s work into “The Unnamed Craftsman.” The clear biases and, dare I say, agenda they shared makes much of what they say very suspect, even as it touches on some clearly vital issues of the intersection of art and Buddhist ideas.

Anyone who is interested in fort insight into the historical context of his Japan came to be “potter’s paradise,” the tension between art and craft in ceramics, and the roots of Japan’s enormous valuation of pottery and the “living national treasures” that create it would do well to read through this one.

Highly recommended.

Review – The Japanese Sake Bible

The Japanese Sake Bible: Everything You Need to Know About Great Sake – With Tasting Notes and Scores for 100 Top Brands by Brian Ashcraft

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are quite a few good books for sake beginners that introduce concepts like how it’s made, the different classifications, and the basic history. There are also very technical books that go into the chemistry and technical details of brewing and flavor.

This might be the only book that is both.

I’ve yet to encounter such a comprehensive discussion of sake-its history, its brewing, and the figures who have guided them both.

You can start this book from zero knowledge and end up with an admirable understanding of Japan’s national drink after finishing. It’s a truly well researched, nearly exhaustive look at sake. It’s not as technical (or difficult) as Gautier Rousille’s Nihonshu, or as intimate as John Gauntner’s Sake: The Hidden Stories, but exists as a bridge between them.

The tasting notes at the end offer a look at many of the most important modern brands, but tasting notes are always exercises in subjectivity so don’t get too caught up in them.

Overall, this is a stellar addition to the English language sake library.

Jump on it.

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