English Translation of Original "Godzilla" Novels Released Just In Time for New Movie

    

Image Source: https://64.media.tumblr.com/255b7b083cb4df499ad9dc508bd9f8b2/tumblr_n5unfyLAz51r5r8duo1_250.gifv

                Sixty-nine years ago, Toho Studios released Godzilla's wrath upon the world, becoming an international sensation and inspiring nearly 40 more films and hundreds of television shows, comics, manga, and books.

            While America waits for the newest Godzilla film from Japan, Godzilla Minus One, set to release in theaters December 1st with English subtitles, the original novellas based on the 1955 classic are finally getting their English translation. The translation is done by Jeffrey Angles, professor of Japanese literature and culture at the University of Minnesota with the University of Minnesota Press.

    While the idea of the 1955 Godzilla movie came from Tomoyuki Tanaka, he recruited famous mystery and sci-fi author Shigeru Kayama. Kayama gained popularity in Japan post-WWII after publishing Orang Pendek's Revenge, later winning awards for various published works. After helping give Tanaka's movie a story, he published two novellas, Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again the same year that the original Godzilla movie came out in order to give the story more depth.

    As much fun as big monster action movies are, Angles and Takashi Yamazaki, the director of the latest installment of the Godzilla franchise, work to maintain the original message behind the story. 

    Having been released just 10 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and just one year after the Lucky Dragon No. 5 tragedy caused by the United States reckless nuclear weapon testing, Godzilla addresses dangers of nuclear weaponry and war. Its a tragic story of a legendary being who is attacked and becomes the attacker, just to be taken down again; a cycle of violence that ends in death and destruction on both sides. 

    Researchers from the Project Kayama blog talk about Kayama's reaction to the screening of the original Godzilla film:

"The 50-year-old writer had been deeply affected by the finished film, and later said that his tears were for the monster’s second punishment from mankind. After being burned and disfigured by the H-bomb, he had fallen victim to a second, more terrifying doomsday weapon. To Kayama, Godzilla was a character to be pitied, an entity whose wretched existence made him as much a victim of the bomb as any human might’ve been."

    Though many adaptations have strayed from what made the original Godzilla so powerful, Yamazaki has told The Japan News that his adaptation keeps the "Japanese spirituality." Angles' timing with the latest film installment will hopefully result in more exposure to Kayama's lessons. With tensions rising across the globe and conflicts escalating, Kayama's passivist reflection of the futile and destructive idea of an arms race may be just what the world needs.

References:

 

About Shigeru Kayama. PROJECT: KAYAMA. (2021, November 4). https://projectkayama.wordpress.com/about-shigeru-kayama/

The Japan News. (2023, November 4). Director of new godzilla film pursuing “Japanese spirituality” of 1954 original. The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun. https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/culture/film-tv/20231104-147574/

Kosaka, K. (2023, October 29). “godzilla” novellas expand on infamous Monster’s origins. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/10/29/books/shigeru-kayama-godzilla/

"Before the Coffee Gets Cold" 4th Installment Coming to the US in November

        

        About the Book

        Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a novel written by Japanese playwrite-turned-novelist Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated to English by Geoffrey Trousselot, was first published in Japan in 2015 and has since been translated to 35 different languages and sold over 3 million copies worldwide. In 2017, the book was nominated for the Bookstore Awards and had a movie adaptation released in Japan in 2018. In 2019, the English translation was released and the series gained traction and popularity in the West. The 4th installment of the series, Before We Say Goodbye, is going to be released in the US November 14th, 2023, just in time for the holidays.

        The series is set in a small, cozy cafe in Japan, Café Funiculi Funicula, tucked into a small alleyway in Tokyo. The premise is that there is a table in the cafe that is usually occupied by the ghost of a woman. The woman doesn't move much, but when she does, customers can take her spot and travel back in time within the physical limits of the cafe and they have to finish the magical cup of coffee before it gets cold (hence the name). The series deals with grief, regret and death, issues which the patrons are trying to work through via time travel. Before We Say Goodbye will be no different, with four new stories to add to the collection; one dealing with a proposal a woman couldn't answer, a strained relationship between father and daughter, loss of a pet, and a husband's message.

About the Author

    

Picture Credit: https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/culture/2023/02/12/039before-the-coffee-gets-old039-novelist-says-there-is-hope-in-every-cuppa

        Mr. Kawaguchi of Osaka, Japan started off his career as a theater director and playwright. In fact, Before the Coffee Gets Cold started off as an award-winning play. During one performance, the woman who would end up being Kawagachi's editor at Sunmark Publishing was so moved by the story that she urged him to turn it into a novel.

        Since then Kawaguchi has traveled around the world to talk about his story and the stories that he writes. He has mentioned drawing inspiration from his own life, with the death of his father, as well as the lives of ordinary people. It is his goal that his audience might be able to heal the parts of themselves that hold onto grief and regret through his characters' experiences and proceed into the future with hope. In an interview with The Star, he quotes:

 “even if you cannot change the present if you are to travel to the past or the future, you can still change someone’s heart and overcome any obstacles.”

    

 References:

Agency. (2023, February 12). “before the coffee gets old” novelist says there is hope in every cuppa. The Star. https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/culture/2023/02/12/039before-the-coffee-gets-old039-novelist-says-there-is-hope-in-every-cuppa

Before the coffee gets cold. Before the Coffee Gets Cold | Sunmark Publishing,Inc. (n.d.). https://www.sunmark.co.jp/eng/book/fiction02/

Before we say goodbye. HarperCollins. (n.d.). https://www.harpercollins.com/products/before-we-say-goodbye-toshikazu-kawaguchi?variant=41072867803170

Chowdhury, S. (2023, June 9). Exploring nostalgia over coffee. The Daily Star. https://www.thedailystar.net/daily-star-books/news/exploring-nostalgia-over-coffee-3341831

 

First Physically Disabled Person to Win Japan's Akutagawa Prize After 88 Years

 "I would like everyone to think about why it is that a work like this became a first to win the Akutagawa Prize in 2023."- Saou Ichikawa   

Property of: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/09/02/books/saou-ichikawa-hunchback-review/

      

    The winner of the second Akutagawa literary prize of 2023 is Saou Ichikawa for her novella Hunchback, described by The Japan Times as "a darkly funny portrait of disability." The story follows the life of a woman named Shaka Izawa, a disabled author that grapples with what it is like to be physically disabled in a group home in Japan. Izawa has been described as funny and smart, having written everything from scholarly thesis to teen romance stories all while posting shocking confessions on her secret social media account. She posts about issues from being uncomfortable with having a man help bathe her because she isn't seen as a sexual being to the lack of progress in reading accessibility in Japan for those who can't roam a bookstore, hold a book and flip through its pages, or even sit in one position for very long. 

Property of: https://st.cdjapan.co.jp/pictures/l/02/01/NEOBK-2873033.jpg?v=2

 

    

     The novel seems to be based on the author's life, as Ichikawa herself is also a disabled woman who has been an author for more then 20 years, with Hunchback being her fist work of literature. When she was young, she was diagnosed with congenital myopathy, a genetic muscle disorder that, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, can include symptoms such as muscle weakness and lack of control, difficulties breathing and eating, impaired motor skills, and skeletal problems. Ichikawa started showing the symptoms when she was in Junior High.

Property of: https://www-nhk-or-jp.translate.goog/shutoken/wr/20230626a.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

       

    In an interview with Good Morning Japan Kanto Koshinetsu, Ichikawa goes into great detail about the struggles of physically disabled people in Japan, criticizing the lack of accessibility in a way mainstream media doesn't touch on. She has studied the history of erasure of disabled women in Japan as well as the "monsterization" and dehumanization of disabled people, the progress of which has not gotten much better in Japan, according to Ms. Ichikawa. Often stories that involve a disabled person are told from the caregiver's point-of-view, where the caregiver is always painted in a heroic and sacrificial light. This a major step for disability awareness in Japan and has opened the public to conversations about accessibility.

 

 

References:

Ha, T.-H. (2023, September 8). Saou Ichikawa’s “Hunchback”: A darkly funny portrait of disability. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/09/02/books/saou-ichikawa-hunchback-review/

News, K. (2023, July 19). Disabled author wins prestigious Japanese Literary Award in First. Kyodo News+. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/07/26a318651087-disabled-author-wins-prestigious-japanese-literary-award-in-1st.html

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Congenital myopathy. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/congenital-myopathy

芥川賞候補作「ハンチバック」作家・市川沙央さん 重度障害の当事者として描く: NHK. NHK首都圏ナビ. (2023, July 21). https://www-nhk-or-jp.translate.goog/shutoken/wr/20230626a.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog: Reading Around the World: Japan!

My name is Brandy, I've been reading since I was 5 and started writing shortly after, and I will be your guide on this journey.

First, let's make sure you're in the right place.

Do you...

• Love reading?

• Love to travel, even if it's just in your head?

• Love discovering new authors?

   

  

GIF Source  

 

    Great!

 

    Now that we're on the same page (heh), the purpose of this blog is to bring you publishing and book news from Japan. Generally, social media tags like BookTok and Bookstagram are filled with western authors from publishing companies based in the US and the UK. But, according to Zippia.com, 2 of the world's 15 largest publishing companies are based in Japan! And with series such as Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold becoming more popular globally, book lovers' horizons are broadening every day!

    Disclaimer: this blog owner fully believes that anything that is published with words in it is reading. This means manga, graphic novels, and comic books are fair game here.