...Is a literary figure who is "trending" these days because his novel Cloud Atlas is getting a second life in film form.
So why not follow Mitchell's suggestions on which Japanese author's to read?
Mitchell, a British novelist, has lived in Japan and made a living teaching English there. His caveat (how humility-filled it is!) is "My students taught me more about Japan than its authors, really."
Till the time I make contact with the real Japanese in real Japan, I'd go by Japanese novels recommended by Mitchell.
The Doctor's Wife is a historical novel on the status of women in Japan
Grass For My Pillow looks at Japan's bruised relationship with its post-World War II history
One Man's Justice is about the war
Runaway Horses is the second volume of the tetralogy Sea of Fertility
The Makioka Sisters is a Jane Austen-like guide to navigating the complex and demanding marriage market in Japan
Yet, upon being asked which authors, dead or alive, would he personally want to meet and have a party with, Mitchell surprisingly excludes naming any Japanese authors. He mentions Chekov, Issac Bashevis Singer, Dorothy Parker, Katherine Mansfield and Sylvia Townsend Warner.
For a self-confessed Japanophile, the list looks awfully Europhilic.
The Harajuku Barbie has had a truly global trajectory, if by global we mean a process that is highly non-linear, a random coalescing of cultural fragments that are essentially trans-identarian (transcends the traditional notions of identity and nation).
The Harajuku Barbie is the invention of the Bronx's very own Nicki Minaj, the hip-hop phenom who is also a pioneer in that she is about the only female hip-hop star on the horizon.
Harajuku is indeed a city in Japan but they don't have a particular Barbie from there. The Japanese doll, that looks like an anime, is Minaj's alter ego in her videos.
The inspiration for the Harajuku Barbie is not got from Harajuku but from Gwen Stefani who was notorious for using fake Japanese "Harajuku girls" as background dancers.
Now Matell has a real Harajuku Barbie; each piece sells for $1000.
I thought I made the "perfect" egg curry, but upon reading about Jiro Ono, the 85-year old sushi-making legend of Tokyo, Japan, I have thoroughly revised my position on what constitutes perfection, not only in the culinary sphere specifically, but in the larger sphere of human endeavors.
Jiro has been making sushi since he was nine (when he left home), and he has been making sushi everyday of his life, including holidays (which he loathes), and confesses that he even in his dreams he experiments with ways and means of improving the craft.
Despite the thorough sushification of his being, Jiro still doesn't believe he has reached perfection in sushi making.
Perfection, in Jiro's sense of the term, is paradoxically, an ego-transcending notion. Jiro isn't looking to reach a pinnacle when he can say "Ah, there I have nailed the perfect sushi, and its time to rest."
Perfection, on the contrary, is a constant process of self-improvement and discipline and involves more than just getting the task on hand done flawlessly.
Besides, sushi, it is implied in the documentary Jiro Dreams of sushi, is simply a means to an end, which is the unflagging pursuit of the holy grail (of the perfect).
In an era of mass production and fast gratification of desire, Jiro's art, belief and life-style--he has lived in the same tiny, unadorned, tiny apartment for years and takes the same train to his restaurant in the basement of an office building in Tokyo--seems impossible to replicate, unless one is gifted with a strength of character and a single-mindedness of purpose that is rare.
Jiro's "hole in the wall" eatery can accommodate only ten patrons at a time.
A meal at Jiro's--about twenty pieces of sushi per serving--costs three hundred and seventy dollars.
Walter Benjamin would say that Jiro's sushi has its "aura" intact.
As for my egg curry? I realize, somewhat shamefacedly, that it would be sheer buffoonery on my part to use the adjective "perfect" in conjunction with it. It's just a routine egg curry with no a strand of aura about it.
Besides, the making of it comes wrapped up in my ego: I feel that when it's time or occasion for me to name my favorite dish (there are one too many more than 85% of which I am unwilling to cook for fear of failing in the process to do so), I would reflexively say "Egg curry," and revel in that statement momentarily because its one dish that I have cooked multiple times with confidence.
My involvement with the egg curry is petty. No wonder neither eggs, nor the curried version of them, ever come into my dreams.
