Still busy, so here's a guest review: THE TIMES OF BOTCHAN

Things are still crazy busy at the Cunard household--my wife and I are discussing, debating, squabbling and bickering as we enter the process of building our first house--but I hope to start having some more content posted here soon (that, and my Super Secret Project Thing that should start around Marchish). Until things get back into swing again, Low Road friend and sometimes guest blogger RM is back with another review.

The Times of Botchan

Drawn by Jiro Taniguchi; text by Natsu Sekikawa
Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2005, US$19.99 each

First volume: 132 pages + end matter
Second volume: 114 pages + end matter

There are very many reasons to be delighted about the publication of these first two installments of this ten-volume series in a good English translation. Taniguchi is already well known to English-speaking readers from his work in Benkei in New York (2001) and The Walking Man (Ponent Mon/2004). Previous translations of this ten-volume series—published in Japan beginning in 1986—have appeared in French (Au temps de Botchan), Italian (Ai tempi di Bocchan) and Spanish (La epoca de Botchan), all in an attractive graphic adaptation by Coconino Press. The cover-price is steeper than it should be, but both books are well produced and carefully translated. They follow traditional Japanese printing convention—right-to-left page layout and cell blocking—in keeping with the now well-established trend of presenting translations without substantial “flipping” formerly used to make them conform to western book layout.

The Times of Botchan is set in the Meiji period (1867-1912), perched between feudalism on the one hand and the Weimar Republic-like atmosphere of the Taisho period (1912-1926) on the other. World War II is not on the horizon in any recognizable way yet, but the Tokugawa shogunate is still alive and well in recent memory. In Taniguchi and Sekikawa’s careful work, the period comes alive in subtle, convincing ways—dress, signs, transportation, etc.—and in not so subtle ways such as an increased role for women in public and intellectual life, the emergence of western-style beer gardens, the development of significant modern literary movements and the beginnings of military-nationalistic expansionism in conflict with Korea, China and Russia. While it is easy to look at the Meiji period as an in-between time during which kimonos and old samurai clan identities coexisted curiously with railroad travel, urbanization, modernization and openness to the West, Taniguchi and Sekikawa portray it well as a point in time with its own distinct cultural identity.

The Times of Botchan allows the reader to view Meiji Japan through the lens of the life of Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) whose delightful coming-of-age novel Botchan (坊っちゃん, published in 1906) lends its name to the title. Natsume’s novels include some of the best-loved classics of early modern Japanese literature; he is pictured on Japan’s 1000-yen note and it is not an exaggeration to say that every Japanese student reads at least some of Natsume’s work. Much of his writing is available today in English translation, and some of it has been produced in anime versions.

Botchan follows the misadventures of an earnest young teacher from Tokyo assigned to a high school in small-town Japan. In The Times of Botchan we follow Natsume’s life during the creation of Botchan and the whimsical but profound I am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru, 吾輩は猫である, published in 1905). The manga chronicles use a combination of biographical facts and artistic license to illustrate the author’s life during this period of extraordinary creativity. The publication of the first two volumes of this series in 2005 was all the more significant for the release of an important new English translation of the novel Botchan, translated by J. Cohn (Kodansha America, 2005). If readers find themselves drawn into the life and writing of Natsume through this solid manga series, it is fortunate that they will be able to turn to an accessible and accurate translation newly in print.

Natsume is often described as the Japanese equivalent of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, and the sense of immediately recognizable coziness that still today characterizes his work for many readers bears this out. In fact, the best part of the charm of The Times of Botchan springs from its ability to produce the same kind of captivating atmosphere that hovers around Botchan and I am a Cat themselves.

Natsume’s grandson, the manga critic Fusanosuke Natsume, contributes an essay to the first volume in which he reflects on the accuracy of this comic depiction of his grandfather’s life. (As it turns out, the raging alcoholism depicted in the book does not appear to have been a part of the real Soseki Natsume’s life; it was added by Taniguchi and Sekikawa as an illustration of his struggle with writer’s block.) Two essays in the second volume give Sekikawa’s perspective on the history behind the writing of I am a Cat, and the story of his early collaboration with Taniguchi that resulted in The Times of Botchan.

The end-matter essays have not been translated into the smoothest or most idiomatic English. And if Japanese right-to-left printing format has been preserved, why have all the Japanese and Korean names in the book been inverted to make them given-name-first? These names would have been more recognizable if they had been presented in the usual Asian way of family-name-first, e.g. Natsume Soseki, Ito Hirobumi, Ishikawa Takuboku, etc. A small note at the beginning of each volume could have explained that names are presented in their original format.

But these are two really minor points; the first two volumes are wonderful, and English-language readers thankfully have eight more to look forward to over the next several years. This is a very promising series, and it says very promising things about the work of Fanfare/Ponent Mon.