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Friday Poetry Blogging: On Reading Manga for the First Time
An old one: 1990, from our trip to Japan:
ON READING MANGA
Perhaps his name is Bob.
With disarming smile,
endless erection,
perhaps equally endless
source of money,
Bob penetrates every
woman he encounters,
ripping open the kimono
of the ryokan hostess,
teasing open the cross-legged
self-respect of the envious
photographer who captures
his endless erection in the
act of a (legal) back-alley pee,
wide open at 1/250 sec.
Bob smiles through the
endless labour of the salaryman's wife,
winks at the cracked spine of oba-san,
throws a 10-yen coin to the
exhausted pelvis’ of the girls at Soapland,
an ideal of masculinity like shit
scraped from the rusting armour
of bushido.
The women are jewelled
with nipples and tears,
their vulnerability like 100-yen coins
scattered in the ponds at the base
of Bob's penis, that donjon
of the castle of maleness.
He is everywhere.
Even the trees at the jinja shrines
are festooned with paper semen,
fecund with oppression.
The women know he is around them
like the folds of a kimono.
Remembering demons,
they pitch their voices higher,
turn up the volume of their radios,
shriek advertisements in streetcars,
hoping to frighten him off.
They shield their skin with parasols,
hoping that their resultant pallor
will render them unattractive to his lusts.
Through their frenzies,
Bob smiles a smile no deeper
than the ink of the social contract
written on the paper of feudalism.
--Uto, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan 1990
*********************************
Glossary:
ryokan--a middle-value inn in Japan
salaryman--a male breadwinner between the ages of approximately 20 and 55; very low status in Japanese society
oba-san--grandmother; also used as an honorific for any woman beyond middle age; many elderly women in Japan have advanced osteoporosis, and need spinal support just to walk; often, they will lean forward on baby carriages and strollers to go walk from place to place
Soapland--a brothel/massage parlour, originally called “Turkish Bath”, until Turkish people objected to the ethnic slur
jinja--usually a word applied to Shinto temples and shrines
Bushido--ancient feudalistic code of honour, with strong militaristic overtones
Manga, a form of pulp comic book, is so widely available in Japan as to be unnoticeable after awhile. Published frequently in books the size of the Toronto white pages, with versions available for virtually all ages, with varying levels of violence, nudity (no pubic hair allowed, by strictly-enforced law) and unashamed sexism (by western standards).
4 Comments:
Yeah, see, this is the stain I see even in the sanitized Manga seen here.
I have to go shudder.
Ouch... the depths of depravity that can be reached with ink on paper...
Actually, I was shocked, myself, on encountering manga from my perspective as a man and as a westerner. Bruce Cockburn refers to manga in "Tokyo" ("comic book violence"). I had been a member of one group within the loosely and inaccurately named Men's Movement, and we had been getting at some deep personal/political stuff. I was not prepared for what I saw in Japan.
The blatancy of it all was what got me. Of course, Japanese folks could rightly say that our comix are just as blatant in their way.
However, not all the poem is based on manga itself: blues guitarist Ellen McIlwane (http://www.ellenmcilwaine.com)lived in Japan for nearly 10 years, and speaks Japanese fluently. She mentionned that whenever she speaks Japanese, she unconsciously pitches her voice (normally a throaty alto) much higher and her gestures become more "girly". She remarked that she thought it had to do with the unstated image Japanese have of what constitutes femininity.
For my part, I found that a host of visual images I remembered from japan could be seen in light of what the manga depicts. In reflection, it seemed to me to be all of a piece.
Sorry, Ellen lived in Japan for 15 years.
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