Story: Three in the Morning, Four in the Evening. In the times of the Song Dynasty[i] in China lived a man they called Sokō, which means monkey trainer. He loved monkeys and reared a whole horde of them at his house. Sokō understood the monkey’s minds quite well, and likewise the monkeys understood their master….
Author: Jasmin
Musings VI: On the ghost of O’iwa, and why she’s still scary.
The Season of Horrors It may seem strange at first that summer is the prime time for ghost stories in Japan. We tend to associate summer with pleasant things… but imagine you’re living in early modern Japan. You have no iced drinks, no electric fans, no convenient water taps. There’s basically no way to keep…
Musings V – Adaptation in Japanese (Pop) Culture
One among many orientalist[i] stereotypes of Asians is that they are masters of imitation (or adaptation) but lack original creativity (or invention); an assumption which looks ridiculous when one spends just a little time studying any given Asian culture, I would say. Rather, I spot the tendency to imitate (instead of inventing) in modern popular…
Doing Justice to Transgender Characters on TV
It’s always a good sign when something ‘weird’ stops being funny, and is taken seriously. As it seems, that is happening – in some cases – with transgender characters in Japanese TV. A Queer Family in Last Friends First off, I have a correction to make. In my post on lesbians in Japan I was…
Musings IV: Japanese Idioms, and why it is a good idea to know some.
Perhaps you’ve been so lucky never to have prayed into a horse’s ear (uma no mimi ni nenbutsu), but I bet someone has once looked at you with white eyes (shiroi me de miru) until you felt like your stomach was boiling (hara ga nie-kurikaeru yō). Yes, those are Japanese Idioms. I’ve had a class…
Pots, Cats and Lilies, but Nothing Changes?
Japanese Lesbian/Transgender Identities in Contemporary Media. The anime and manga community will probably be familiar with the term okama (literally, kettle), variously translated as ‘transvestite’ or ‘Drag Queen’, which is commonly applied to (effeminately) gay characters, especially in a cross-dressing context. Bentham/Bon Curry from Oda Eiichiro’s One Piece may turn being okama into a martial…