{"id":49024,"date":"2023-11-22T01:33:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T01:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alltheanime.com\/?p=30497"},"modified":"2023-11-22T01:33:23","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T01:33:23","slug":"books-this-great-stage-of-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/22\/books-this-great-stage-of-fools\/","title":{"rendered":"Books: This Great Stage of Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Clements.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t you making a mistake,\u201d asks the lady selling cinema tickets.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost certainly,\u201d sighs Alan Booth, a man who came to Japan to study classical theatre, and who finds himself glumly commissioned to sit through a ghastly Japanese teen movie so he can review it for a newspaper.<\/p>\n

No, says the ticket seller. This. Film. Is. In. Japanese<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She has entirely failed to notice that they have both been speaking Japanese all along \u2013 not for the last time in Booth\u2019s exasperated chronicles of life as a gaijin in the Land of the Rising Sun.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time of his death in 1993, Booth was already famous for having written one of the best-ever books about travelling in Japan. The Roads to Sata<\/em><\/a> (1985) chronicles his misadventures walking the literal length of the country, from its northernmost tip in Hokkaido, all the way to the titular cape in southern Kyushu. Few Japanese travel books have ever come close, in part because so many of them relentlessly play upon the motif of the hapless gaijin. A Japan veteran of some fifteen years\u2019 standing, Booth spoke Japanese well enough not to have to guess at what was going on, which only made the scrapes he got into all the more entertaining.<\/p>\n

His second book, Looking for the Lost: Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan<\/em><\/a>, lacked the north-to-south narrative thread of his debut, but still offered illuminating insights into the roads less travelled in rural Japan. It ends with the author reporting a tell-tale tingle in his gut that would eventually be revealed as the cancer that killed him, aged 46.<\/p>\n

That, I thought, was that. Although I continued to recommend The Roads to Sata<\/em> anytime someone asked me for a book about the \u201creal Japan\u201d \u2013 along with Alex Kerr\u2019s waspish Dogs & Demons<\/a><\/em> \u2013 I assumed that there would be nothing more from Booth. It took a generation for his editors and estate to rustle up This Great Stage of Fools<\/a><\/em>, an anthology of Booth\u2019s journalism, which chiefly comprised movie reviews for the Asahi Evening News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Booth first arrived in Japan to study kabuki theatre, giving him a knowledge of Japanese dramatic traditions that brooked no nonsense. His reviews take bold and, at the time, controversial stands against much of the Japanese exceptionalism of the era. It\u2019s not that Booth was hard to please, merely that he refused to believe the stories that the Japanese media told about itself. He takes great pleasure in pointing out that a third of the Japanese movie industry churned out nothing but pornography, and a certain rueful annoyance that one of the best films of 1980, Seijun Suzuki\u2019s Ziegeunerwiesen<\/em>, was beloved by critics but screened in a 90-seater tent on the roof of a department store. For all those spuffing with excitement about Kurosawa\u2019s Kagemusha<\/em> (pictured), Booth points out that Japan\u2019s greatest director couldn\u2019t even get arrested in his homeland until George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola offered to finance his comeback.<\/p>\n

Booth is entertainingly excoriating about the \u201cdrivel\u201d on Japanese television and in Japanese movie theatres, railing against talentless himbos and off-key soubrettes. The peak of his fulminations comes in his take-down of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun<\/em>, which he flays not for its exploitation or its low-brow aims, but for being \u201cpompously lacking in humour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

With a degree of nerdish delight, I discovered that This Great Stage of Fools<\/em> has an entire section of anime reviews, with Booth according the creators of the 1970s and 1980s a degree of respect that he refused to grant the purveyors of V-cinema. His first chronological review, of Rintaro\u2019s Galaxy Express 999<\/a><\/em>, zeroes in not on the director, for whom this was a cinema debut, but on the \u201ceditorial\u201d contribution of Kon Ichikawa, the renowned filmmaker whose involvement in the anime classic has been largely forgotten by posterity. Booth finds in Galaxy Express 999<\/em> an unexpected poetry and fantasy, \u201ca world where lithe and beautiful females are in love with pitiful dwarves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe art of animation can hardly have reached a higher plateau anywhere than it has in Japan,\u201d he observes, \u201cand\u2026 the result is frequently dazzling.\u201d He devotes an entire article to querying who is the intended audience for Isao Takahata\u2019s Grave of the Fireflies<\/em>, a film which he finds particularly harrowing because its doomed heroine, Satoko, is \u201cso intolerably like a real four-year-old.\u201d He appears not to have noticed, or at least neglects to mention, that Fireflies<\/em> was screened in Japan on a double-bill with My Neighbour Totoro<\/em>, a film which he rates as \u201cone of the finest animated children\u2019s films ever made.\u201d His daughter Mirai is clearly at the forefront of his mind, in both his horror at Fireflies<\/em> and his adoration of Totoro<\/em>, which he admits to seeing multiple times on video in her company. He makes Mirai the focus of his subsequent trip to see Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service<\/em>, a father-daughter outing high in expectations, and disappointing in comparison with its predecessor. \u201cIf I were a young child, I would be very pleased indeed if my parents took me to see [Kiki<\/em>],\u201d he writes, \u201cbut if I had already seen Totoro<\/em> I should wonder, perhaps, why the little flying girl slipped out of my dreams so very soon, while Totoro stayed there forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

It is remarkable how much the English language has changed in the last generation. I was taken aback momentarily by Booth’s reference to an “avocado pear”, and it took a while for my mental gears to grind into action to remind me that this was, indeed, the full name for what is generally known today as a plain avocado. Booth was working in the pre-internet world \u2013 sometimes it is hard to persuade Millennials and their successors that there truly was a time when articles were written on paper and retyped by their editors, and one expects it would be a surprise to Booth to learn that the manga and anime world would generate their own publishing industry after he died. So we can hardly blame him for transcribing the name of Galaxy Express 999<\/em>\u2019s creator as \u201cReiji\u201d Matsumoto<\/a>, or the occasional slip of the pen, like Frankie Howard instead of Howerd. It would have been nice if his helpmeets at Bright Wave Media had fixed those errors for him with the occasional Google check. Such gentlemanly redactions are commonplace in volume-form releases of bitty journalism, but have possibly been avoided here on the grounds that Booth is no longer around to oversee them, and the idiosyncrasies of his writings from forty years in the past are themselves historical curios worth preserving for posterity.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of Japan<\/a><\/em>. This Great Stage of Fools<\/a><\/em> is published by Bright Wave Media.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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By Jonathan Clements. \u201cAren\u2019t you making a mistake,\u201d asks the lady selling cinema tickets. \u201cAlmost certainly,\u201d sighs Alan Booth, a man who came to Japan to study classical theatre, and who finds himself glumly commissioned to sit through a ghastly Japanese teen movie so he can review it for a newspaper. No, says the ticket [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61,14956,122,127,129,124,128,125,132,131,133,126,130,123,66,94,88,97,56,64,65,60,112,40,75,95,104,33,120,105,101,98,115,30,29,41,86,70,69,68,72,71,26,118,108,87,46,55,48,52,54,51,50,83,62,58,57,109,35,59,63,85,79,82,96,80,27,81,114,44,42,43,45,38,39,110,117,100,111,116,73,89,90,92,91,93,84,78,37,102,34,36,77,67,74,99,113,119,28,121,32,47,49,53,103,31,76],"class_list":["post-49024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","tag-airpods","tag-alan-booth","tag-anime","tag-anime-characters","tag-anime-cosplay","tag-anime-edits","tag-anime-merchandise","tag-anime-movies","tag-anime-news","tag-anime-recommendations","tag-anime-reviews","tag-anime-series","tag-anime-streaming","tag-animes","tag-app-store","tag-app-store-samsung","tag-appgallery","tag-appgallery-oneplus","tag-apple","tag-apple-music","tag-apple-tv","tag-apple-watch","tag-bbc-sport","tag-best-mobile-games","tag-bixby","tag-bixby-xiaomi","tag-champions-league","tag-cyberpunk","tag-cyberpunk-2077","tag-fantasy-football","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-formula-1","tag-fortnite","tag-free-fire","tag-free-mobile-games","tag-freebuds-pro","tag-galaxy-a52","tag-galaxy-note-20","tag-galaxy-s21","tag-galaxy-watch-4","tag-galaxy-z-fold-3","tag-game","tag-games","tag-golf","tag-harmonyos","tag-how-to-backup-iphone","tag-how-to-factory-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-restore-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-5","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-6","tag-huawei","tag-ios","tag-ipad","tag-iphone","tag-live-soccer","tag-lol","tag-macbook","tag-macos","tag-mate-40-pro","tag-mi-11-lite","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p-huawei","tag-mi-smart-band-6","tag-minecraft","tag-miui","tag-mlb-scores","tag-mobile-game-design","tag-mobile-game-development","tag-mobile-game-marketing","tag-mobile-game-monetization","tag-mobile-games","tag-mobile-gaming","tag-nba-scores","tag-nba-standings","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-scores","tag-nhl-scores","tag-one-ui","tag-oneplus","tag-oneplus-9-pro","tag-oneplus-buds-pro","tag-oneplus-nord-ce-5g","tag-oxygenos","tag-p40-pro-plus","tag-poco-x3-pro","tag-pokemon","tag-premier-league","tag-pubg","tag-pubg-mobile","tag-redmi-note-10-pro","tag-samsung","tag-samsung-pay","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-steam","tag-steeam","tag-top-10-anime","tag-valorant","tag-when-do-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-does-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-is-the-iphone-7-coming-out","tag-world-cup","tag-xbox-series-x","tag-xiaomi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49025,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49024\/revisions\/49025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}