Matt Treyvaud examines the increasingly eccentric ways that anime studios use titles to differentiate seasons.

For a four-panel moeblob manga/late-night anime in the character-driven genre known only half ironically as “cute girls doing cute things”, Gochūmon wa usagi desu ka? is pretty standard fare. But its title is another story. The fact that the four-mora abbreviation of its title is Gochi-usa rather than, say, Gochūsa will surely play a significant role in future scholarship on the morphology of Japanese fanbbreviation. And the (official!) English title, Is the order a rabbit?, is the greatest use to which English has been put since that Peter Frampton talk box guitar solo. But what I really want to talk about is the punctuation.

You see, the first 12-episode season of the anime adaptation was just called Gochūmon wa usagi desu ka? But the second season, which began airing October 10, is called Gochūmon wa usagi desu ka??, with two question marks. Presumably the English version will follow suit: Is the order a rabbit?? Same content, but with a hint of hysteria creeping in at the edges — like a Hitchcock zoom.

This isn’t the first time that an anime production company has used this technique. The earliest example I am aware of is K-On! (2009) and its second season K-On!! (2010). Dog Days (2011) was followed by two more seasons, Dog Days’ (2012) and Dog Days” (2015). (These are pronounced “Dog Days Dash” and “Dog Days Double Dash” respectively, but a natural English translation would use “Prime” instead of “Dash.”) Working!! (2010) had two followup seasons combining these conventions: Working’!! (2011) and Working!!! (2015).

There are more cryptic examples too: Nisekoi (2014) and Nisekoi: (2015), Seitōkai Yakuindomo (2010) and Seitōkai Yakuindomo*, and Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (2010) and Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai. (2013). Oreimo also deserves some recognition for its mildly Beckettian video game title scheme: in translation, the first is My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute Portable, and the second “My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute Portable” Can’t Go On.

On one level, this is just a trend. Production companies have decided (or, perhaps, learned) that they need some way to signal to consumers that the current self-contained batch (“season”) is connected to but different from the previous one, and punctuation is in right now. In the past, other methods have been used — OG fans will recall that Sailor Moon was followed by no less than four variations: Sailor Moon R, S, Super S, and Sailor Stars.

But is it a meaningless trend? You can’t discount the influence of K-On!, I suppose — it was huge — but I think something deeper is at work. Differentiating seasons by punctuation alone is a way for anime studios to modulate their signals for fans alone, since anyone liable to notice an extra colon here or there is, pretty much by definition, a nerd. The form of the signal also sends its own message: this season is just like the last one, only more so.

The order can’t be a rabbit, it must be a rabbit, it is a rabbit.

Matt Treyvaud compares the covers for famed translator and scholar Jay Rubin’s new novel.

Here is the cover of The Sun Gods, translator and scholar Jay Rubin’s new novel about the U.S.’s wartime internment camps and their aftermath. As you can see, the designer has placed everything on a background of old-timey Japanese text, suggesting a certain linguistic and cultural separation between the intended readership and the contents of the book.

Here is the cover of the Japanese translation of The Sun Gods, Hibi no hikari 『日々の光』. As you can see, the designer has placed everything on a background of old-timey English text, suggesting a certain linguistic and cultural separation between the intended readership and the contents of the book.

Hopefully there will soon be a translation into Korean or French, say, to break the tie.

Matt Treyvaud lists out the hot summer jamz — Father Edition — for 2015.

Let’s be real. It takes a very careful series of life choices to keep attending all-night dub improv happenings in Shimokitazawa forever. For most of us, the appeal of settling down eventually wins out, and for a smaller but still substantial proportion of us, children follow. Parenthood entails many responsibilities, but here we address one of the gauntlets thrown at the feet of men in particular: dad music. (Mom music will be covered in a later post, if we can find someone to write it.)

Listening to dad music is one of the hallmarks of being a dad. But what is dad music in 2015? The traditional record collection-based definition makes no sense in a world where everyone has access to all music at all times. Yes — dad music, too, requires curation. Here, then, is our offering as the Japanese summer closes in.

Beating the heat

High humidity calls for spare music. You can’t be expected to endure a whole bunch of jangling and drumming and harmonizing when even your own clothes feel like wet towels against your skin. Oshima Yasukatsu‘s Bagashima nu uta – Song of My Islands, an album of traditional songs from Yaeyama, is what you need. The first full minute is just Oshima singing. Then he starts plucking languidly on his sanshin as well. That’s it. That’s as thick as the texture on this album gets. This is music that passes through the room like a gentle breeze, leaving no possibility of mold behind.

(Those seeking something a little more dad might consider Oshima’s Shimameguri – Island Journey, which features guest appearances from members of Kiroro and Altan.)

A touch of class

You can’t neglect the jazz side of things. How is your kid going to grow up to be a saxophone player living in a garret in New York if you don’t expose them to the music before they know any better? On the other hand, you’re a dad, and you’re worried that too much jazz will eat into your prog time. Solution: Fukamachi Jun‘s Haru no yo no yume (“A dream on a spring night based on the Tale of the Heike”). Okay, the season isn’t quite right — but just listen to Rakujitsu no shō (“The sinking Heike”). That is a summer synthesizer by any definition.

(Note: This album is also approved by Planet Mellotron.)

Rocking out

The kids are out catching tadpoles. Your wife is at an antique fair. Now is the time to open the window and let the neighborhood know that you remember how to rock. (But considerately.)

You have many options for this one. Most of the Taj Mahal Travelers’ oeuvre, for example, is available at bargain prices from Amazon Japan’s digital music store. They take a while to get going, though. Your family might come home at any moment and demand that you turn it down. For a quicker fix, why not dig out that battered old disc from the back of the 9×9 CD wallet you bought in college – Ghost’s Lama Rabi Rabi?

Did you know it’s been almost twenty years since that album was released?

Hold that feeling. Your kids are at the door.

Matt Treyvaud looks at the latest works of Japanese literature to hit the public domain, including a guide to rakugo argot.

Every year Japan puts older creative works into the public domain — something that no longer happens in the United States. For works of literature, the tireless website Aozora Bunko celebrates Public Domain Day each year on January 1 by presenting a neat list of newly free works. (Note, however, that these works may not be considered public domain in other jurisdictions, including the U.S., because Japanese copyright — “life + 50 years” — is on the short side by international standards.)

This year, Aozora Bunko released works by ten different authors. One noteworthy example: critic and free verse poet Miyoshi Tatsuji‘s groundbreaking Surveying Ship (“It is twilight/ O mother, push my pram/ Towards the tear-damp evening sun/ Push my creaking pram”). Another: feminist historian and activist Takamure Itsue‘s “From the Standpoint of Research into Women’s History” (“Women’s history is a completely new field for development, and if this research is continued, it is only natural that many fallacious aspects of the hitherto prevailing views of history should be corrected”).

Okay, one more: rakugo artist San’yūtei Kinba III‘s “Argot Etymology.” Most of this essay is about the argot used by the author and his contemporaries in the entertainment industry (so, mainly the senbo tradition deriving from Osakan puppeteers of the Edo period) but there are some interesting comments about his era’s shopgirl slang too. Towards the end, for example, he lists some senbo number words:

• 1 = hei, the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of 平, meaning “flat, level”
• 2 = biki, from the Japanese crest known as maru ni futatsu-biki, “circle with two [lines] drawn [through it]”
• 3 = yama, because the character 山 (yama, “mountain”) has three points on top
• 4 = Sasaki, after the quartered-square crest of Sasaki Takatsuna, visible on a flag here
• 5 = katako, because if you’re counting things on your fingers, you can count to five (go-ko) on one hand (kata-te)
• 6 = Sanada, after the sixfold crest of the Sanada clan
• 7 = Tanuma, after Tanuma Okitsugu‘s “seven celestial bodies” (七曜) crest
• 8 = yawata, a native Japanese pronunciation of 八幡 “Hachiman“
• 9 = kiwa, because it’s on the edge (kiwa) of ten

All these can also be found in Umegaki Minoru’s 1956 Argot Dictionary 隠語辞典, albeit with different etymologies in some cases. For example, observing that katako and biki show up as kata-kobushi (“one fist”) and maebiki (“front-puller”) in other traditions, Umegaki proposes those as the direct sources for those two. Mind you, he is unsure what “front-puller” is supposed to mean (“Because carriages were pulled by two men?” he asks forlornly).

Anyway, should you ever need to talk business with a rakugo artist without the other punters catching on, now you can. Happy Public Domain Day!

Néojaponisme Literature Editor Matt Treyvaud steps back to examine the basic themes of beloved Japanese children’s character Anpanman on the death of its original creator.

Yanase Takashi, creator of Anpanman, passed away on October 13 at the age of 94.

Today, Anpanman stands at the center of a vast mandala of characters and stories, crisply drawn and intricately differentiated. The original books published in the 1970s, however — the Pali canon of Anpanman, if you will — bear no resemblance to any of this. The art is shockingly crude, and the villains have little in common with the high-concept rogue’s gallery that Greater Vehicle Anpanman would develop. In the first book, Anpanman fights a giant gorilla. Baikinman shows up relatively early, but he is not the resource-rich techno-fetishist Bond villain of later imagining. He lives on a raincloud and spies on Anpanman through an ordinary TV set.

What is left of Anpanman, then, when the historical accretions are stripped away? Or, rather, what has been at the core of Anpanman through all his adventures and transmigrations? Well… anko. The underlying message of Anpanman is simple: Everyone deserves to eat. Anpanman fights for justice (seigi), but Yanase’s experiences during World War II left him with the belief that food security is justice, objective and absolute.

Yanase in 2011:

「アンパンマン」を創作する際の僕の強い動機が、「正義とはなにか」ということです。正義とは実は簡単なことなのです。困っている人を助けること。ひもじい思いをしている人に、パンの一切れを差し出す行為を「正義」と呼ぶのです。 […] 飢えている人に食べ物を差し出す行為は、立場が変わっても国が違っても「正しいこと」には変わりません。絶対的な正義なのです。

My strongest motivation in creating Anpanman was the question “What is justice?” Justice is actually a very simple thing. It’s helping people in trouble. Offering a hunk of bread to people who are hungry — that’s what I call justice. […] No matter what your situation or which country you’re in, offering food to starving people is always the right thing to do. It is absolutely just.

Anpanman, famously, doesn’t just carry food around to distribute — he is food. It’s easy to see him as a Christ parallel — “This is my head which is given for you” — and there are rumors that Yanase himself was a Christian (I don’t recall ever seeing it brought up in an interview or profile). But I have always seen Anpanman as a reflection of the bodhisattva ideal, whether Yanase intended this or not. He does not give of himself to share communion; he does not urge those he gives to to remember him. Anpanman just gives, out of what appears to be the proverbial compassion for all sentient beings.

This is why, despite its messed-up gender politics and ubiquitous merchandising, I cannot bring myself to dislike Anpanman. He could stand to anpunch Baikinman a little less, but still, when I look at Anpanman I see someone whose first reaction to a giant rampaging gorilla in that early story was: “Clearly this gorilla needs something to eat.”