Passage J: March 2013

The inaugural Tokyo International Literary Festival was a fantastic dream come true, treating Tokyo's literati to live readings and panel discussions on various topics, ranging from otaku romance and global travel to jazz writing, monsters, the future of books and reimagining Tokyo. There was even a live writing performance that saw the author Shinji Ishii improvising a short story while riding a train. "It swayed, writing in there," he said, commenting about both the train and his spirit.

And boy were spirits swayed! Junot Diaz, the highly acclaimed author of "This is How You Lose Her," talked about how the story of love is basically about two people when it works, but about society at large when it fails. Pico Iyer, the inimitable and intrepid postmodern travel writer with skyrocketing frequent flyer miles, talked about traveling to become young fools again in his discussion with John Freeman, the editor of Granta and a true polymath, and Geoff Dyer, an eclectic and delightfully humorous author of many books, whose topics range from the backstories of jazz legends to aircraft carriers.

An open mike session at Super Deluxe, one of Roppongi's most happening bars, featured Power Point enhanced poetry readings by the edgy, iPad wielding Bin Sugawara, a rap session by DJ Misoshiru & MC Gohan, a charming, squeaky clean artist of the "kawaii" school paying tribute to the glory of food, and a poetry reading by Wen Yourou, a vivacious multicultural writer who claimed to be neither Chinese nor Japanese, but "Chapanese" (a straddler of both Chinese and Japanese worlds).

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel bewitched the audience with his deeply meditative one-man shakuhachi (bamboo flute) performance, celebrating the instrument's close ties with traditional Japanese poetry, and Geoff Dyer engaged in a fascinating conversation on jazz writing with Keiichiro Hirano before Hideo Furukawa, Keijiro Suga, Keitaney Love Kojima, and Motoyuki Shibata staged their multimedia, beatnik interpretation of the novel, Night on the Galactic Railroad, a timeless classic by Kenji Miyazawa.

Chip Kidd, the exuberant, stylish and trailblazing book designer and author, was also there to talk about the intricacies and wonders of a good book design that can't be reproduced on a kindle (yet). Jonathan Safran Foer, the highly acclaimed author of Everything is Illuminated, spoke about "writing to see your thoughts," and Michael Emmerich, the eminent translator of many Japanese works of fiction, including Monsters---a wonderfully manic short story by Hideo Furukawa---delved deep into a discussion about voice and tone, using the analogy of an airplane to shed light on the finer points of those literary devices.

Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor of The New Yorker and John Freeman of Granta were brilliant moderators (along with many others), steering discussions with their thoughtful questions and comments, and Lexy Bloom, a senior editor at Vintage and Anchor Books offered some great insights into the process of producing works in translation. Nicole Krauss truly shined in the session titled Memory, Love, Words and in an another one titled Encounters at the Crossroads of Culture.

David Peace, an ex-Nova English teacher turned celebrated author of works such as Occupied City and Tokyo Year Zero, made an impassioned performance, while the world-renowned poet Shuntaro Tanikawa recited verses that captured tender and bittersweet moments, but the highlight of the event was the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee's readings of excerpts from his upcoming novel, The Childhood of Jesus. Accompanied on stage during his final reading by a Japanese reader---the dashing Japanese actor, Shosuke Tanihara, whose golden voice had that familiar baritone urgency shared by many narrators of Japanese television documentaries covering UFOs, ghosts, and prehistoric subaquatic dinosaurs---Mr. Coetzee's eloquent and poignant reading really brought the event to a touching finale.

Perhaps the next installation could see the participation of other luminaries as well, such as Haruki Murakami, David Mitchell, Roland Kelts, Banana Yoshimoto and Randy Taguchi (of Outlet and Fujisan fame 😊). But all in all I had a giddy time, feeling like a kid lost in a candy store. Thank you, Japan Foundation, for making it happen. The team led by David Karashima---an accomplished translator himself---did an absolutely marvelous job.