DC Palter's Blog
May 15, 2014
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
One of my book clubs was reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. I heard it had some relevance to Japan, and a quick search online showed that one of the main characters was named "Kakuro Ozu." Hmmm.
I almost didn't pick up the book. There are too many novels that feature Japan as a setting or include a Japanese character or two, written by people who know nothing about Japan and the Japanese, and I feel no need to add to my collection of hated books. The name, Kakuro, seemed like a dead give-away that this book lacked authenticity. "Kakuro" could plausibly be a man's name, but it isn't. Look up the name on facebook or linkedin and you won't find another Kakuro.
But the book was sitting on my desk and I had finished the previous book, so I picked it up just to see who this Kakuro was. And very quickly I was pulled in by this novel. Though perhaps "novel" isn't quite the right word. Novelization of Zen Buddhist philosophy would probably be a better description, more of a textbook on Zen thought taught through real-world example than a story for the sake of entertainment.
And it was clear that the writer did understand both Zen and Japan. So that left me wondering why the name "Kakuro" for the main Japanese character who seems to represent the Buddha Shakyamuni. This became a bit of an obsession to try to figure out.
My first thought was "kakuro" was short for "kokkurouchi", one way of saying cockroach in Japanese. Though there probably is an interesting take on Kafka's The Metamorphosis that could be written, it was clear pretty quickly that Barbery was not trying to say the Japanese or the Buddha were vermin.
Next I thought it might be a poorly mistransliterated version of Kakkuro, which is a sudoku-like mathematical puzzle game. There would be something Zen about saying the Buddha was a puzzle, (three pounds of flax!) but Kakuroh and Kakkuro are completely different, and anyway, it would be just as strange as naming a character "Puzzle-Game Smith." You can do it, but you'd better have a good reason, like Joseph Heller's "Mjr. Major Major Major" Catch-22 and the other characters need to react to it. The character's last name of Ozu is also not common, but having the same family name as the famous filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu is a critical part of the story.
My next thought was to find the Japanese translation of the book and see the character's name there. Non-Japanese character names would be written phonetically, but it would be strange for the Japanese character not to be written in Kanji, unless this again was done on purpose as Murakami Haruki often does. And certainly, I expected, the translator would have some contact with Ms. Barbery to ask important questions like this. Thought I wasn't able to find a copy of the translation here in Los Angeles, I did find a number of online resources including Amazon Japan where the book was discussed. And in all of them, the character is referred to as "Master Ozu." I guess the translator had no better information than me, and this was a good solution for the problem. (I also noticed that while this book was a best seller in France, US, Korea, and many other countries, it was never popular in Japan.)
So I was stumped. As I prepared for the book club meeting, I pulled my copy of The Book of Tea, by Okakura Tenshin, off the shelf. Tea is mentioned frequently in the novel, and at one point, Barbery specifically paraphrases Okakura's Book of Tea with the best description of Tea Ceremony that I've ever read. I happened to look up Okakura's book on Wikipedia and found that the writer's real name is Okakura Kakuzoh. Ahah! It all fell into place.
Kakuzoh is a not uncommon Japanese man's name, at least during Meiji Era, and in the case of Okakura, is written with the kanji for Satoru, a Buddhist term for enlightenment. So Barbery changed Kakuzoh - "enlightenment three (3rd son)" to Kakuroh - "enlightenment son". This, at least, is my guess.
If anyone has other ideas, I would love to hear them. And Professor Barbery, if you happen to read this, I would be overwhelmingly thrilled if you would contact me and let me know if I'm right. I hear you're working on a new novel set in Kyoto. If you need any help or review of the character's Kansai-ben, I'd be happy to help.
I almost didn't pick up the book. There are too many novels that feature Japan as a setting or include a Japanese character or two, written by people who know nothing about Japan and the Japanese, and I feel no need to add to my collection of hated books. The name, Kakuro, seemed like a dead give-away that this book lacked authenticity. "Kakuro" could plausibly be a man's name, but it isn't. Look up the name on facebook or linkedin and you won't find another Kakuro.
But the book was sitting on my desk and I had finished the previous book, so I picked it up just to see who this Kakuro was. And very quickly I was pulled in by this novel. Though perhaps "novel" isn't quite the right word. Novelization of Zen Buddhist philosophy would probably be a better description, more of a textbook on Zen thought taught through real-world example than a story for the sake of entertainment.
And it was clear that the writer did understand both Zen and Japan. So that left me wondering why the name "Kakuro" for the main Japanese character who seems to represent the Buddha Shakyamuni. This became a bit of an obsession to try to figure out.
My first thought was "kakuro" was short for "kokkurouchi", one way of saying cockroach in Japanese. Though there probably is an interesting take on Kafka's The Metamorphosis that could be written, it was clear pretty quickly that Barbery was not trying to say the Japanese or the Buddha were vermin.
Next I thought it might be a poorly mistransliterated version of Kakkuro, which is a sudoku-like mathematical puzzle game. There would be something Zen about saying the Buddha was a puzzle, (three pounds of flax!) but Kakuroh and Kakkuro are completely different, and anyway, it would be just as strange as naming a character "Puzzle-Game Smith." You can do it, but you'd better have a good reason, like Joseph Heller's "Mjr. Major Major Major" Catch-22 and the other characters need to react to it. The character's last name of Ozu is also not common, but having the same family name as the famous filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu is a critical part of the story.
My next thought was to find the Japanese translation of the book and see the character's name there. Non-Japanese character names would be written phonetically, but it would be strange for the Japanese character not to be written in Kanji, unless this again was done on purpose as Murakami Haruki often does. And certainly, I expected, the translator would have some contact with Ms. Barbery to ask important questions like this. Thought I wasn't able to find a copy of the translation here in Los Angeles, I did find a number of online resources including Amazon Japan where the book was discussed. And in all of them, the character is referred to as "Master Ozu." I guess the translator had no better information than me, and this was a good solution for the problem. (I also noticed that while this book was a best seller in France, US, Korea, and many other countries, it was never popular in Japan.)
So I was stumped. As I prepared for the book club meeting, I pulled my copy of The Book of Tea, by Okakura Tenshin, off the shelf. Tea is mentioned frequently in the novel, and at one point, Barbery specifically paraphrases Okakura's Book of Tea with the best description of Tea Ceremony that I've ever read. I happened to look up Okakura's book on Wikipedia and found that the writer's real name is Okakura Kakuzoh. Ahah! It all fell into place.
Kakuzoh is a not uncommon Japanese man's name, at least during Meiji Era, and in the case of Okakura, is written with the kanji for Satoru, a Buddhist term for enlightenment. So Barbery changed Kakuzoh - "enlightenment three (3rd son)" to Kakuroh - "enlightenment son". This, at least, is my guess.
If anyone has other ideas, I would love to hear them. And Professor Barbery, if you happen to read this, I would be overwhelmingly thrilled if you would contact me and let me know if I'm right. I hear you're working on a new novel set in Kyoto. If you need any help or review of the character's Kansai-ben, I'd be happy to help.
May 3, 2014
Connu for Short Stories
I've been writing short stories most of my life, and back in the golden age of litmags, had a dozen or two published. That world is unfortunately gone and left readers with few places to find great short stories other than the New Yorker and anthologies by novelists.
So it was with great enthusiasm that I became an advisor to Connu, which aims to use modern technology to bring great short stories to readers on a daily basis, even including audio for those of us stuck in Los Angeles traffic for hours at a time. Check it out at .
So it was with great enthusiasm that I became an advisor to Connu, which aims to use modern technology to bring great short stories to readers on a daily basis, even including audio for those of us stuck in Los Angeles traffic for hours at a time. Check it out at .
