Tokyo Two-Tone #6: Worldly Words, Wordy Worlds
Hello, 你好, and こんにちは! This is Mike with your biweekly dispatch from Japan called Tokyo Two-Tone, part of my overall writing project Big Husband. The title of my Substack is a tongue-in-cheek literal rendition of the characters 大丈夫, which means “no worries” or “it’s okay” in Japanese, and “a manly man” or “a gentleman of virtue” in Chinese. Still don’t get it? All good, just keep reading. 大丈夫ですよ。
The dreaded rainy season approaches. I got deadlines out the wazoo. Been drinking wine, thinking about the moon, wrangling words. Thanks to a recent translation project, I learned that the Chinese word for chakra is 脈輪 màilún, or pulse-wheel. My Chinese is languishing, has long been languishing. The Japanese vocab I’ve been grappling with is either really dry, i.e. 代表取締役 (managing director) daihyō torishimariyaku—dare you to say that five times fast—or mostly impractical manga-speak, like 嫉妬に狂う (fly into a jealous rage) shitto ni kuruu and ヤブ医者 (quack doctor) yabu isha. Language, language. What would we be without language?
What I’m reading
I finally got around to finishing Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and found myself enjoying this tale of a plucky Chinese girl in early 2000s London. The episodic structure, with each section centered on an English dictionary definition, worked well and got my writerly gears turning a bit. I tend to be a stickler in my approaches to narrative, placing value on taking a certain amount of time (and pages) to build a scene or dynamic, but perhaps it doesn’t always need to be so laborious. One can dip in and out as long as the center of the story holds.
To be honest, I’d gone in with some qualms about the interracial and intercultural romance at the core of Guo’s novel, but the characters turned out to be subversive in ways I hadn’t expected. I also liked the playfulness of the narrator’s journey in writing, reading, living and loving in English. Damn, though, she really got her shit together in a year, while it took me forever to remember how to say “nod” in Japanese. 😼
What I’m watching
If you’re based in Tokyo, you should check out the short film fest GINZAZA that’s playing down in, well, Ginza, through the end of the month. Some lovely little cinematic amuse-bouches to go with your late afternoon kimono errand, or if the line at Tsurutontan is just too dang long. For the backstory behind this pop-up festival and some one-line teasers about the films, check out my Tokyo Weekender piece here. ✌️