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More reviews by Bill Purves
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Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey
At first glance, it's difficult to understand why Man Booker-winning novelist PETER CAREY would be interested in writing up his Tokyo vacation. Sleeping on tatami, eating fish for breakfast; hasn't it all been done before? It has, but Carey's casts himself in the role of non-fiction writers like George Plimpton or Redmond O'Hanlon: he's willingly inserted himself into a society he doesn't understand, where he's far out of his depth, and the book is a tale of his survival.
Carey chose to visit Tokyo with his 12 year-old son. They don't, of course, understand each other, and each often finds the other's behaviour embarrassing. But beyond that, the trip is devoted to a study of the worlds of manga and anime: Japanese cartoon magazines and animated films. Carey's son Charley is a fan, but even Charley can only vaguely understand the plots and characterizations. They're just too Japanese. So Carey devotes their holiday to a daunting struggle to understand this Japanese art form, and through that knowledge to better understand his son.
As a best-selling author, Carey can bring to bear some of the commercial clout of Kodansha, one of Japan's largest publishers. He has a Japanese agent to help him, and his Japanese translator also lends a hand. Such heavyweight contacts open doors, and Carey and son are granted face time with some of the biggest names in manga and anime. Charley comes away with autographs and travel snaps a Japanese fan could only dream of. Father comes away mystified.
As a certified man of letters, Carey feels obliged to treat his interviewees as serious artists. He enquires about their world views and their sources of inspiration. He explores what he imagines to be the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the violent, futuristic worlds of manga. Deep questions, but they elicit few answers. To some extent, his interviewees probably just don't understand what he's asking. To the extent that they do understand, they protest that the cultural gap is so wide that they can't properly explain such things to an American.
- Mr. Kitakubo responded to my written questions in the same style as every other damn Japanese I'd questioned. That is, he made it clear that nothing in this country was as I thought it was. My misunderstandings were very interesting, he said. By which he did not mean to claim that his film did not have meaning -- of course it did -- but after a long, exhausting Q&A it became clear that he would reveal none of them to me.
And anyway, as one famous author explained, the only motivation behind one of the most successful manga series was to create a story which would sell toy robots.
Like Plimpton scrimmaging with a professional gridiron team or O'Hanlon camping with cannibals, Carey and his son escape without serious injury, but only a little wiser. The book concludes, "Let's get out of here before we find out that we're wrong."
Don't buy this little book to learn about manga. If you're a Carey fan, you'll learn a bit about the man and his son, and you'll enjoy his measured prose. This is not the book, though, to while away an intercontinental flight. You'll have finished it before reaching Tokyo.
Bill Purves
28/02/2005
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