(This is my review of Sakyo Komatsu’s original SF novel, from Anime FX way back in 1995 when it was released in paperback suspiciously swiftly after the Kobe Earthquake. The latest movie remake, oddly retitled Sinking of Japan, is out this week in the UK from MVM).

Although the hardback version was first published a generation ago, Japan Sinks remains one of the few works of Japanese textual SF available in English. Now re-released this month by Kodansha, the book and translation make for intriguing reading. When first published it was ahead of its time; last year it might have been regarded as a little dated, but this year it has acquired new significance.

Sakyo Komatsu is, according to Brian Aldiss, one of the most-read SF authors in the world. He remains virtually unknown in the English market, but gained many readers worldwide when Japan Sinks was made into a film (known here as Tidal Wave). But Japan Sinks is not the most representative Komatsu story; like his compatriot Shinichi Hoshi, much of his real skill lies in the punchy twists of SF short-shorts. Many of his stories are also parables, making warnings of the if this goes on… variety. In The Quiet Corridor, for example, the narrator realises too late that his own sterility is not unique, and that the ‘quiet corridor’ of the maternity unit and the dying vegetation outside his window are but two indicators of imminent environmental collapse. More warnings are contained in At the End of the Endless Stream, which shows humanity fleeing a dying planet by travelling into the past. Komatsu’s novel Resurrection Day depicts the hellish results of a bacteriological weapon, which leaves only a small pocket of humanity left alive in the Antarctic. In each case we see the human reaction to a global problem, and this form of writing is repeated in Japan Sinks. The title should be enough of a hint. Scientists discover that the Japanese archipelago is just about to give way; the government tries to cover it up, but then all hell breaks loose as the inhabitants flee their drowning country. But what will happen to the global economy? Where will those millions of people go? If they leave Japan, will they still be Japanese?

Japan has always been a danger area, at risk from earthquakes, tsunami and volcanoes. Critics of anime violence who see an easy explanation in the influence of the Bomb, might already have discovered their mistake in the wake of the Kobe earthquake. Natural disasters have played an important role in the development of the Japanese psyche, and this book throws much light upon it. Komatsu’s Japanese are adaptable, brave people, whose characters have been shaped by their environment. Japan Sinks posits the ultimate disaster, and shows us how Komatsu thinks his countrymen would deal with it.

On occasion, his observations speak volumes about Japanese attitudes. In extreme situations, Komatsu’s characters revert to (stereo)type, as an insular, nationalistic and determined herd. By extrapolating ‘disaster’ to such extremes, Komatsu is able to amplify subtle influences to such an extent that many stereotypical views of Japan become much more understandable. However, post-Kobe, some of Komatsu’s scenes are tragic in their inaccuracy. How could he have guessed that when the next big earthquake came in 1995, the rescue operation would be anything less than efficient? Komatsu expects a stiff-upper-lip heroism from his nation, and in one scene describes the arrival of humanitarian aid. It is not unlike the post-Kobe operation, although Komatsu’s characters do not charge money for drinking water. Neither would they have bulldozed ruins scant days later, even though survivors were being pulled from the Mexico City site three weeks after zero-hour. While Komatsu makes many interesting points about ‘the Japanese’, he also makes many assumptions that have proved to be too optimistic.

This may be a symptom of the book’s age. It was written in 1973 and translated in 1977, two factors which have considerably influenced the style of the English version. The 70s edition was abridged from the original by an experienced literary translator, Michael Gallagher. Gallagher is better known for his ‘mainstream’ works, and his versions of Mishima’s Spring Snow and Runaway Horses are excellent. He did a pretty good job on Japan Sinks, too, but there are features of his text that both date the work and demonstrate areas where a background in ‘high’ culture can work to a translator’s detriment. ‘Software’ for example, is spelled ‘softwear’; a reasonable mistake in the computer-illiterate 70s, but not one that would escape the attentions of a contemporary editor. Similarly, there are a few places where Gallagher’s translation seems to be pitched at the wrong market. There are words and references which would require no explanation to an audience of Japanese-language students, but which a mass-market readership would find confusing. In one scene, characters make ironic reference to the sinking of the Tei-en. Although readers would be aware that it is a line from an old war song (it says as much in the text), few would know that the Tei-en, or, to give it its real name, the Dingyuan, was a Chinese flagship in the Sino-Japanese war, or that the lines of the song are the last words of a dying sailor, asking if his comrades have succeeded where he has failed. The pathos of the scene is thus lost on much of the readership. (Although if you really want to know about the Dingyuan, its story is told in my biography of Admiral Togo - JC, 2010).

If Japan Sinks were a modern translation, things might have been very different. It is possible that Gallagher might not have been hired at all; not because he is bad (he isn’t), but because there is now a significant number of skilled translators who specialise in popular texts, just as Gallagher specialises in literary works. One wonders what ALfred Birnbaum, Dana Lewis or Frederik L. Schodt would have made of the same material; they too would have cut it drastically, but they might have also written for an SF audience. Readers used to ‘real’ SF might find Japan Sinks a little turgid in places, while readers of ‘literature’ might find the characterisation too sketchy. Using a literary translator on a popular work is a little like using a spanner to drive in a nail. It might work well enough, but a hammer would have done a better job.

(Ah the naivety of youth. There was me in 1995 assuming that popular translation would bring its own rewards, and cause people to specialise in it. In your dreams, today, in your dreams would you get people of the calibre of Michael Gallagher translating modern Japanese science fiction novels. But I have ranted about this before - JC, 2010)

Far be I from one to brag… much, but there is a glowing review of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis by Elizabeth Hand in the latest issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I am not sure I will ever live up to many of the claims made in it, but I shall enjoy imagining how.

The New Three Musketeers, a Japanese TV show based on the book by Alexandre Dumas, with a script by Welcome Back Mr McDonald’s Koki Mitani. 40 x 20 minutes, running daily on NHK. What’s not to like…?  Someone, surely, from the world of television must think this is worth a punt? Well, NHK does for a start, as they are apparently already running it in English on their international channel.

The Japanese have always done well with the source material. Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is still a childhood favourite with many of my generation. There was also an anime Three Musketeers in the 1980s, in which Aramis turned out to be a woman in disguise. But the sequence above is only the opening credits, with music from Spanish Connection (the whole thing seems oddly Spanish — perhaps a leftover from Dogtanian, or even Alatriste). The show itself is the latest in NHK’s long-running cycle of puppet shows, which has previously included such gems as Aerial City 008, Madcap Island and New Hakkenden.

Here are the puppets themselves in action:

You can find out more about the history of Japanese puppetry in the entries on individual shows for the Dorama Encyclopedia and the larger survey included in the Anime Encyclopedia. But I’m still finding stuff out, like this, and like the stories in Yasuo Otsuka’s The Prospect of Little Nemo, in which he recounts the impact in Tokyo of an “epoch-making” 1961 puppet performance of Macbeth, and how the staff behind it soon found themselves working in TV, and then on anime.

Back in the days of Anime UK we used to call it Japlish, but far leveller heads have prevailed in the mainstream, and today it is usually known as Engrish. It is an awful, fractured mangling of English, usually found in Japanese instruction leaflets and T-shirts, where someone has had a really good stab at English, but ended up saying something mildly rude or downright ludicrous.

But while we point and laugh at little old ladies with obscene phrases on their T-shirts, we should perhaps wonder what happens when the reverse happens. Believe me when I say it is no urban myth that some oriental tattooists have wreaked a terrible revenge on drunken chavs in their care. I once saw a woman in a Stratford supermarket with Stupid White Bitch written in perfect, permanent Chinese across her shoulders, although she was convinced that it some kind of romantic haiku. What can you say in a situation like that? It’s not like the truth is going to help anyone…

Which brings me to this month’s story – a little glimpse of the world of T-shirt manufacture and Japanese slogans, not in Japan, but right here in the UK. A designer had knocked up a very nice picture of Wolverine fighting the Incredible Hulk, and had decided to throw in their names in Japanese to be cool. To do this, he switched his font to Japanese and simply typed them in. I mean, that was how translation happened, right?

Luckily someone smelled a rat, and decided to run everything past an expert. When they couldn’t find an expert, they came to me, and I snickeringly informed them that the Japanese words on the picture were deliciously random. In fact, according to the legend, they had found a metal-clawed member of the X-Men whose name was apparently Dellabe Pissbarmy, and he was fighting a muscly, green-skinned man called Gaggy Bammy Sauce Swishy Bag-o-bay.

A few emails with the aid of a Japanese word processor, and I had saved everyone’s blushes, although almost immediately I started to feel pangs of Evil Translator Guilt. In order to bring a little joy to the world, surely I should have looked at their mock-up and said: “Yes, that’s absolutely fine.” Better men than I have clearly once been working at Japanese advertising companies and marketing firms, and managed to say with a straight face that Baseball Throw-Up is an ideal T-shirt slogan, as is Sroog: Your Demonstrator Has a PhD For, which I once actually had on a T-shirt and proudly wore all over London.

Broken Japanese, of course, is the common currency of the otaku, and I have long since stopped trying to correct it when it is flung around me like some sort of linguistic dirty protest. I regularly hear anime fans, for example, adding a superfluous honorific in introductions as if addressing themselves, (e.g.: “Call me Derek-chan”) which as my Japanese teacher once memorably explained: “You would only do if you were a bit simple.” But who am I to stop such faux pas from bringing a little joy into the life of the Japanese? I now realise that I really let the side down by not waving through Dellabe Pissbarmy to give all the Japanese tourists a laugh next time they are in London. Oh well, next time…

(This article first appeared in NEO #68, 2010)

Out now in shops, my Doctor Who: Survival of the Fittest, for which I was asked to give Sylvester McCoy an unrepentant Nazi for a travelling companion. Herewith my 150 words from the liner notes:

My grandmother was convinced she’d been had. After gassing the nest and plugging up the holes, the exterminator returned a few days later to check on it. When he unplugged the entrance, a bunch of wasps flew out and away. But he assured us that the nest was dead, and that the fugitives were merely the last hatchlings, from post-apocalyptic eggs.

The idea of insect civilisation brings questions of its own. How would it operate? How would they feel about being born, already forced into incontrovertible specialisms? As her first act after hatching, a newborn bee queen will murder her twin sister in the neighbouring cocoon. Every insect must know its place. When Big Finish asked me to think on the implications of taking Klein’s ideology to logical conclusions, I drew on my childhood memories, and the concept of a group of creatures, born alone in the dark in the ruins of their world, then freed to fly away to an unknown fate. Where did they think they were going? Were they only following orders?

But there’s more; there always is. As with most scripts, there was a long process of pitching and repitching before everybody was happy with the ideas on the table. “Survival of the Fittest” was in my mind because at the time I was writing a book about Charles Darwin, and I was fascinated at the time with the pull exerted on early Darwinists by the eugenics movement, which, of course, fed into Nazism. I initially wanted to write something about the First Emperor of China, who really took fascism to its logical conclusion. He was raised by what was known in those days as Legalists, people who would do anything to get into power and anything to stay there. The legal system of his Qin dynasty included punitive maiming and institutionalised bribery, while many lower classes were reduced to super-specialised slaves, door-openers and power sources. Hence my original pitch, which was called The Hidden Offices, taking its name from the title of the First Emperor’s personnel division for disabled slaves.

But Big Finish wanted something interstellar and far-ranging, so instead I pitched the concept of a world high above the galactic plane, where the Milky Way itself spun “like a swastika in the sky.” My working title, in fact, was Swastika Night. There was some stuff in there about warp cores and gravity wells, too, and a malfunctioning drive that had marooned human colonists millions of light years away from a solar system large enough to truly support them, forced instead to struggle for lebensraum with indigenous insectoids.

I wanted insects because of the parallels between hive societies and a fascist regimes. But once I had insects, I was drawn inevitably to a recurring issue in my Doctor Who scripts: how does the TARDIS translation circuit actually work? If everything somebody says is translated fully, why do we hear accents? Are accents part of semantics, in which case should we hear stress in unstressed languages? What size of area does TARDIS translation affect? What happens when it’s gone? And in this case, what happens when communication is conducted by pheromones and scents? When creatures have no vocal chords, how would the TARDIS render their communication?

When I realised that there would be little scope for humour, sarcasm or untruths in a pheromone-based communication system, I had my story. And then it was down to producer David Richardson and director John Ainsworth to make all the actors play creatures that communicated by smell. Everybody likes a challenge.

I can’t even remember the name of the fanzine. I do remember that back in 1995 when Schoolgirl Milky Crisis wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye, they interviewed me about translating Japanese animation, and in passing, someone said that the closing theme of Dragon Half was “untranslatable”. I said that nothing was truly untranslatable, although a faithful rendition of the song “Watashi no Tamagoyaki” would inevitably sound as odd in English as it did in the original Japanese.

“All right,” they said. “Prove it.” So I got a pen and a Wordtank, and got stuck into the song: a mad sequence presenting a girl crazily trying to cook a meal for a boy she is trying to impress. After a brief monologue about the state of her cooking and her feelings for her prospective man, we get to hear her side of the disastrous dinner conversation, before she’s agonising once more in the kitchen, then back at the table, then finally winning his approval. But then, in the final lines, she watches in terror as he reaches for one of the dodgy eggs.

Oh yes, and you have to leave in asides in Chinese and Korean, along with some la-la-la nonsense words, and make it rhyme and scan with the original, which is sung to the tune of a Beethoven medley played at triple speed, belted out by the sublime Kotono Mitsuishi at a thousand miles an hour.

I was pretty pleased with the results. As was the nameless fanzine, which went on to print my translation without bothering to include the interview that was supposed to go alongside it. Fifteen years on, I could probably do a little better… but not much. I’d probably leave out the deliberate British slang (it was a UK publication) and I’d think twice about “bloody”, but otherwise it’s as good a crack as anyone’s had at performing the impossible.

Altogether now…

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Pit-patter time is rushing, bloody egg!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Look at the grill, it’s turned to smeg!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Pit-patter time is rushing, spuds are cursed!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Don’t try to boil them or it’s worse!

Oh, he’s a wonder, he’s a dream, mustn’t blunder

I’m a wreck, I’m a nutter, but I want him bad

Heart can’t stop rushing as I’m cooking while I’m gushing

Gotta be the best meal that he’s ever had!

Outside the sun is shining, we could be somewhere dining

Let’s hope he gets the hint and asks me out

Just say you will and we can trash all this swill and have a

Good decent meal without a doubt, RAN RARARAN

RAN RARARAN YAN YAYAYAN YAN YAYAYAN

North East South West Full Empty Up Down RAN RARARAN

RAN RARARAN YAN YAYAYAN YAN YAYAYAN

One Two Three Four, Yi Er San Si

“Don’t eat the tomato!

It’s mine and I should know!

Try octopus, yes do!

I made it just for you!”

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Pit-patter didn’t know he’d want some more!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

No more boiled eggs so now they’re raw!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

Pit-patter time is rushing, lager too!

Pit-patter time is rushing, Pit-patter quicker-quicker

It’s far too cold but that’ll do!

Wow! Think it’s working! So what now? No more shirking! So…

“Ahem! Did I tell you you’ve got pretty eyes?”

Oh! This is lovely, is it time to get snuggly?

Do I wait or do I take him by surprise?

Don’t think I’m surly, I’m a silly little girlie

But I want you to tell me what you think. Confess!

Ah that’s more like it, he’s so cool, what a poet

I was starting to think I had to guess RARARAN

RAN RARARAN YAN YAYAYAN YAN YAYAYAN

Kamsa Hamnida, I am sorry

RAN RARARAN RAN RARARAN YAN YAYAYAN YAN YAYAYAN

Gambei, Takeaway, School’s Over Hooray!

Toughest meal I ever had, 95% ain’t bad

Jungle law my hand was forced, why not try the special course? Ow!

The egg! It’s all for naught!

I’m done and it’s my fault!

Damn! Bloody eggs! Bloody eggs!

I’ll be in Dublin on the 20th-21st March for the second Irish Film Institute Anime Weekend, which will include screenings of Evangelion 1.11, Evangelion 2.0, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Gundam: Unicorn, and Blood: The Last Vampire. I’ll be introducing some of the films and doing a panel or two, one of which is sure to involve Hugh David (ex of ADV Films), Andrew Partridge (Beez Entertainment) and I smacking chairs over each other’s heads and arguing about the future of anime. I’m also conducting a seminar about the way Japanese animation is put together, using the ideas employed by the late Jinzo Toriumi in educating an entire generation of anime screenwriters. If you are an Irish anime fan (or a student who wants to book one of the limited places available on the seminar), you might want to keep that weekend free. And yes, I am always happy to sign copies of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis — someone in Glasgow last week asked me if I’d mind! Good God, I can’t sign enough of them.

Details of the weekend and/or seminars aren’t up at the IFI website yet, but I know they’re printing their March brochure, so they should be soon. Watch that space.

I love my job. But it is my job. I write for money. Copyright and its enforcement makes it possible for me to earn a living as an author and, hopefully, not die penniless like Sir Walter Scott.

Because I blogged earlier about the PLR, it’s only fair that I should also mention the sterling work done by the ALCS, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, which collects royalties from institutional photocopying of magazine articles, broadcasts of scripts, and sundry other bits and bobs, including monies from any foreign library schemes that have signed a deal with the UK. So if you take one of my books out of a library in the Netherlands, or Germany, or God knows where else, the ALCS collects the money accruing and passes it on to me.

I actually earn twice as much from the ALCS as I do from British library loans, largely thanks to the meticulous care of teachers and lecturers all over the world. On my ALCS statement this February, for example, I see that someone in Australia has been teaching lessons with the aid of photocopies from my children’s book Chinese Life. Bits of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis and articles from Newtype USA and NEO are turning up in lectures all around the world, and when they are photocopied, I often get a modest stipend.

Meanwhile, for the first time, authors in Britain are receiving royalties through the ALCS from the Irish Public Lending Right scheme. So if you took one of  my books out of an Irish library last year, you were inadvertently contributing towards the GuinnessI shall be drinking tonight in your honour. Which will keep me alive for another day of ranting and spite, for your entertainment in another book.

However, if you stole one of my books this year,  no love. PLR, the ALCS and bodies like them are fighting constantly to defend authors’ interests in an indifferent world. They’re doing a great job, and their existence is something I greatly appreciate, particularly when bookshops themselves are dwindling. As a sometime historian, I am all too aware that authors today have a better deal than authors at any time previously in history, and that modern media, including the oft-derided Internet, is one of the prime factors that make this so. However, it also means that we must contend with the self-entitlement issues of thieves who can apparently afford a laptop computer, but not the book they read on it.

The Japanese TV world moves fast; there are approximately 30 new series each season, of which perhaps a dozen will go out in prime time, and only a handful will comprise remakes or sequels to earlier shows. In order to help you guess what the storylines might be for as-yet unmade series like Hairdresser Detective, My Boyfriend is an Alien, Get Away From My Husband You Bitch, and who knows, perhaps Undertaker Cop, we offer this handy plot generator. Delete as applicable, or add your own variables:

Janet is a (reporter / photographer / traffic cop / nurse / princess / florist / teacher / stewardess / designer) who finds herself falling for John, who is a (detective / bail jumper / salaryman / architect / doctor / samurai / pilot / musician / student/ undercover alien / terrorist). After first meeting during a (wedding / crime investigation / blind date / robbery / swordfight), they initially fail to get on with each other, but are miraculously thrown back together by their (interfering parents / shared interest in an unlikely hobby / unexpected relocation to shared lodgings).

However, their burgeoning relationship is threatened by (old flames / intrigues at their workplace / the fact they’ve switched bodies / their removal to a different time period), and by the fact that Janet is (already married / a celebrity / impersonating someone else / on the run from the police / diagnosed with only three months to live / on an undercover mission / pick one from the next list) and that John is (leaving the country / in love with someone else / supposed to defend the world from attacking aliens / pick one from the previous list).

Nor is anyone expecting the sudden mid-season appearance of (an old flame / a long-lost relative / an ultimatum that could ruin their careers). They must also deal with a dark secret, because one of them is (also married / still getting over the death of a loved one / a parent / suppressing the memories of a terrible trauma / actually a ghost / hell-bent on revenge against the other’s father). Luckily, they grow closer thanks to an incident involving (zany friends / a talking dog / someone’s parent / a wacky DJ) and the fact that they are forced to cooperate on (rearing a child or children / chasing a story / an arrest / saving the planet).

Though the story appears to resolve itself, a surprise twist involving (another murder / a revelation about the boss / a sudden hospitalisation) leads to a last-minute reunion at (Narita airport / a wedding / a sports meet / the hospital). And everybody lives happily ever after, including two supporting cast members who have unexpectedly fallen in love, unless there is a second season, in which case at least one of the leads will (turn up with an unexpected spouse / change jobs / lose their memory).

(Originally printed in the Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama Since 1953, by Jonathan Clements and Motoko Tamamuro, 2003).

A great night at the UK premiere of Evangelion 2.0 at the Glasgow Film Theatre yesterday. Emily Fussell from the BBFC was on hand to talk about rude words, dodgy imagery and imitable violence. The audience were on great form with a plethora of questions about censorship, and I found myself signing a bunch of copies of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, the Dorama Encyclopedia and even a few of my Highlanders.  As for Eva 2.0 itself, it met with a roaringly enthusiastic reception, as a full house laughed, yelled and WTF’d their way through an all-new apocalypse. I thought it was everything that a premiere ought to have been, and the crowd left with plenty to talk about. An excellent start to Scotland Loves Animation – a new strand of programming that we’ll be seeing a lot more of in months to come.