The
title The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture would
tend to suggest a voluminous, encompassing text covering
the spectrum of Japanese entertainment. Let's get this
out of the way right now: Mark Schilling's book is
not that comprehensive, which he readily admits in
the introduction. This book is more a survey of notable
pop culture trends and celebrities, as chosen by an
expat writer on film and TV who has lived in Tokyo
for over 20 years. What this means is that the text
functions more as an overview of the pop culture, selectively
pruned and approved according to national and international
impact, or, in some cases, more by personal taste.
The book may have been more usefully titled An Introduction
to Japanese Pop Culture, but the book is what it
is, and other than with the title, never pretends to
be anything else.
The
topics covered in the book are far-reaching, from trends,
movies, scandals, manga, books, music, and even national
crazes such as royal weddings, or the advancement of
appliances in Japanese homes. As such, the book is
very informative, and I was pleased to learn more about
such things as comedians in Japan (my students would
always talk about their favorite comedians, and I barely
knew anything about them, despite having to dress up
as one for a school event), or the history of pop music
from rockabilly to the New Music sounds. There is a
lot to interest Toho-philes as well, with essays on
Godzilla and Ultraman, the Waka Daisho films, anime
guru Hayao
Miyazaki, and a number of celebrities that
have appeared in Toho's films, such as Yusaku Matsuda
(The Family Game), Momoe Yamaguchi (Izu
Dancer), and
the members of the super boyband SMAP. However, presumably
because their works are considered more art than pop,
Schilling omits Akira
Kurosawa and Toshiro
Mifune,
as well as the influential works of Ozu and Mizoguchi.
But
for all the ground covered, Schilling shows clear favoritism
for certain subjects, going on at length (about nine
pages of text) about the scandals of Seiko Matsuda
to the point that his book begins to sound like a tabloid,
while giving other important topics, like the Guinness-Record-breaking
series of films, Tora-san, not even three pages of
text. Schilling particularly seems to scorn what might
be termed juvenile entertainments such as video games
and tokusatsu films, the essays about which feel much
less researched.
Unfortunately
for Schilling, this reviewer has read up on a number
of those juvenile topics, and his essays are popping
with an alarming number of mistakes, even at some points
very basic errors. Starting with Godzilla, Schilling
can't seem to decide whether to use the Japanese Romanized
monster names, or the names of monsters established
in America. He refers to Godzilla as Godzilla and Mothra
as Mothra, but Anguiras is "Angirasu" and Rodan keeps
his Japanese name of "Radon"—small but puzzling
inconsistencies. More troubling was his insistence
that Godzilla won all of his movie matches, including
an bewildering assertion that the Big G actually did
defeat King Kong, and no mention of his ignominious
defeat at the web-shooters of the Mothra larvae. Schilling
also indicates that Mekagojira no Gyakushu was titled Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster (instead of Terror
of Mechagodzilla) in America, and that Kempachiro Satsuma
was hired to portray Godzilla in a North Korean movie,
completely missing the fact that the resultant film,
1985's Pulgasari, was essentially a propagandistic
film with more in common with Daiei's Daimaijin trilogy
than the nuclear dinosaur.
Not
that the books factual errors end with the Godzilla
entry. In the Mario essay, Schilling states that the
original Super Mario Bros. was initially an arcade
game, which is patently false—while the game
was eventually ported to arcades (I actually saw one,
complete with Famicom controllers hooked to the unit,
while I was in Japan), it was first a killer app for
Nintendo's "family computer" home console. Some other
errors I found include Schilling's note that, in the
initial run of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Saban
hired "one white, one African-American, and one Hispanic
actor to play the three male roles"—except that
there was no Hispanic Power Ranger at first; and Schilling
says that Ultraman debuted in Tsuburaya's Ultra
Q series,
which never once had the giant silver superhero. Ultraman
wouldn't debut until after that Twilight Zone-inspired
show ended; the M78 alien hero came the next year with
a full-color kids' show titled, predictably, Ultraman.
These and other factual errors rendered the entire
text as suspect to me; when reading topics I was less
familiar with, I was always wondering if he had managed
to get his facts straight.
In
addition to all the unfortunate factual mistakes, The
Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture also holds the
dubious distinction of having some of the most error-riddled
prose I have ever encountered in a published work.
In nearly every essay I found multiple obvious mistakes,
some of the most common being omitted particles (a,
the) and even incorrect verb tenses. (Several times
he uses "become" where "became" would be appropriate.)
These are the kinds of mistakes I would expect from
a Japanese struggling with learning the English language,
and I wonder if he is actually picking up the mistakes
of the people around him—something I often found
myself doing in Japan, making the same mistakes as
my students because I heard them all day long. The
book reads as if he didn't have an editor, and indeed
there are places where presumably Schilling started
editing the text himself but didn't complete the job,
leaving a garbled sentence structure in his wake. It's
like reading a particularly articulate blog.
Obviously
this isn't a great book, despite all the work that
went into it. I don't regret reading it, but the huge
number of mistakes makes it hard to trust anything
he writes. The book would work well as a rather dated
overview if someone had given the prose a few more
passes through an editor. As it stands, the book might
be worth a look if found for cheap or free (like at
a library), but at full price this book unfortunately
isn't worth it. |
