reynardine's blog

Kabe Otoko (The Wall Man)

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:11:30 -0500

Had a chance to watch Kabe Otoko today, starring my favorite actor, Sakai Masato. It's a horror movie, but more along the lines of creepy rather than scary, which is typical for Japanese horror.

The plot involves a reporter, Kyoko, (played by Ono Mayumi) who specializes in fluff pieces, reporting on "rumors". Her boyfriend, a photographer, Nishina, (played by my boy Sakai Masato) has a nightmare about her investigating an urban legend called "The Wall Man". Strangely enough, the next day, a letter arrives at her office telling her about the legend, a letter with an address, but no name.

BEWARE: SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!!!

Kyoko decides that The Wall Man would make a good story for her show, so she goes to the address on the letter, only to find that it's the basement of an abandoned shopping center. The place is creepy, but she finds nothing substantial. However, she keeps running into people who have heard the legend and have leads to follow, so she continues with the story.

In the meantime, her boyfriend Nishina has become intrigued with the Wall Man story. He picks up the theme of walls for his next photography exhibition. His previous one, Inner/Outer, was all pictures of faces and hands. In a flashback, it is revealed that the Inner/Outer exhibition is where he met Kyoko. She was there as a reporter, and he took pictures of her. He was especially drawn to her right hand, which was scarred. Walls, Nishina thinks, are neither "inner" or "outer", but somewhere in between.

As Kyoko investigates the Wall Man, Nishina takes pictures of walls and examines them for traces of the Wall Man. Kyoko, however, becomes afraid. The story that she has reported has set off a media frenzy. The few real leads that she receives are disturbing. A man is supposedly injured by the Wall Man when his apartment wall collapses. The taxi driver who gives her the man's address is later injured in a car wreck. And Nishina is beginning to act very strangely.

Determined to contact the Wall Man, Nishina gives up taking photographs and puts up post-its of alphabets all over his walls, not only kana (the phonetic characters of the Japanese language), but Roman and Greek letters as well. To each letter, he attaches a bell. Kyoko leaves him, and he spends all his time in his room, waiting to hear back from the Wall Man.

It turns out that the original letter about the Wall Man was a hoax, made up by one of the cameramen who works for Kyoko. But the legend has taken on a life of its own now. A disturbed fan goes to the basement where Kyoko originally searched for the Wall Man and threatens suicide if she won't speak to him. She goes there, but gets no answers as the man is captured by the police as they talk. Later, she admits to her cameraman that she was relieved that the crazy man in the basement wasn't Nishina.

The cameraman (who was the guy who started the hoax) is on the verge of confessing, but then asks if Kyoko wants him to go with her to check on Nishina. They go, and find him laying on the floor, his head bashed into the wall. While the cameraman goes to get help, the bells on the wall start ringing. The letters spell out that Nishina is already dead, and when Kyoko asks who is ringing the bells, the answer is the Wall Man.

And then there is the trick ending, but it's difficult to explain. Suffice to say, the urban legend dies down, but the Wall Man remains, and Nishina is waiting for Kyoko to join him.

Again, creepy rather than scary, but a very interesting movie. The director managed to make ordinary walls seem ominous. The acting was great and the script was rather deep for a horror movie. There was a lot of examination of the concept of in-between and media. Urban legends have been used for fodder of horror movies before, but rarely in such a thoughtful way. In some ways, Kabe Otoko reminded me of Candyman, although not quite as gory.

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Camelot and Hula

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:36:32 -0500

Yesterday seemed to be PBS day in our house. There were a couple of interesting shows that I recorded and watched.

PBS's Live from Lincoln Center had a performance of Camelot, one of my favorite musicals. Gabriel Byrne played King Arthur and a broadway singer named Marin Mazzie played Guenevere. Lancelot was played by baritone Nathan Gunn. I wish I could say this was a good performance, but it was horribly mediocre, the sort of thing I would expect to see here in Dubuque, and certainly far below New York standards. Usually, I like Gabriel Byrne, but he was horribly miscast in this role. The actress playing Guenevere had a lovely voice, but she flubbed her lines a couple of times. I mean literally, sang the wrong words and had to catch herself. WTF? I might expect that in a local small-town production, but certainly not from something in New York! I was very impressed with Nathan Gunn, however. First time I've seen the guy (looks like he tends to focus on opera, which I tend to ignore). Gorgeous man, incredible voice. I guess it helps that a strong baritone tends to make me weak in the knees. *fans self*

Since this performance was not a theatrical run (it was more to showcase the orchestra), there wasn't much effort put into the costumes and they looked cheesy. The dancers weren't bad, but the chorus was pretty weak. That may not have been their fault, however--usually in musicals, the orchestra is located in a pit below the stage, but since this was the New York Philharmonic, they were placed behind the singers and often overpowered them. Christopher Lloyd put in an appearance as King Pellinore and almost stole the show--it's the first time I've actually seen the role of Pellinore being funny, as opposed to tedious.

Honestly, I was horribly disappointed in this performance. I really was looking forward to seeing it and to see it so badly done...le sigh. Well, at least it was on TV and I hadn't spent however much a ticket to Lincoln Center costs. Not that I'd be able to travel to New York anyway. :-P

A bit of history here: I'm not sure when I first became aware of the King Arthur legend. I already knew about it in elementary school, so I'm assuming that it was in some storybook that my parents read to me as a very young child. It was one of my favorite stories. I do remember the first time I heard Camelot, though. I saw the Broadway Cast recording (this is back in the days of vinyl) at the library when I was in 3rd grade and checked it out. This is the one with Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. I absolutely fell in love with it, and begged my parents for a copy of the album, which I later got for Xmas. I wore it out, I listened to it so much. (Incidently, I also managed to get my brother hooked on the show because he'd heard me playing the songs so often.)

When I was in junior high school, Richard Burton revived the role and my father managed to get us tickets. They weren't great seats (my dad, as ever, got the cheapest ones), but it was magical all the same. I had caught the movie version (with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave) on tv at some point in the 1970s. Gorgeous (albiet historically inaccurate) costumes, but the production suffered from Redgrave's inability to sing and some of the supporting cast's bad acting. Harris as Arthur was fine, and actually Franco Nero did a pretty good job as Lancelot, considering he couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically. Later, I saw a few local productions of the play. If someone is doing a version of Camelot, I'll usually make an effort to go see it.

And every single one of these productions was far superior to the dreck the Lincoln Center put out in their version. That's saying a lot.

The PBS show Independent Lens showed an interesting movie recently: Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula, following the story of one man and his hula school. There's a preview here on youtube if you are curious. Ya'll know me: I can't resist Hawaii. The Islands are Calling!

What I found most interesting about this documentary was the juxtaposition of what is perceived as a "feminine" dance being performed by men. Actually, a version of hula was always danced by men, but because of all the hip-swaying, it was perceived as lewd and was almost stomped out when the white settlers came to the islands in the 19th century. The tradition was kept among the women (I guess women swaying their hips isn't lewd at all, huh?), but very few men got involved until there was a great revival of Hawaiian culture during the 1970's.

Even now, there is a stigma attached to men's hula. It was interesting to see one of the dancers sitting down to dinner with his family, and hearing from his kids how they were teased at school because their father "must be gay" to be dancing hula. The man actually broke out in tears when his oldest son (now grown) confessed that he was very proud of the way his father danced. Several of the other dancers mentioned their initial resistance to learning hula because of the "gay" factor, but then, when they got into it, they got hooked.

When you see these men dance, "feminine" is the last word that comes to mind. They are extremely masculine, and also graceful, and yes, beautiful.

The film follows a particular school as they prepare for an annual dance competition. This school, one of the older ones, has a company of men who are mostly middle-age (although there were a couple of younger men in the bunch). They don't perform competition that often because of the intensity--(IIRC, they only show up to this competition once every ten years). There was some chest-beating going on about them being old--a lot of the groups they would be competing against were comprised of much younger men. But they go on and work to get in the contest anyway.

The film was very touching. The watcher really gets to care about these everyday men who are taking time from their lives to preserve a part of their native tradition. (And yes, as always, there is one "white guy gone native"--in this case, a man from Connecticut who came to Hawaii to visit when he was young, got hooked on the culture, and now teaches Hawaiian Studies at the University there. He blends in, though.)

Well-worth watching, if you get a chance. Check the local listings. There is also a version of the film out on DVD.

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Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:45:06 -0600

So, yesterday, I finished reading the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy by Pamela Aidan. The books in this series are An Assembly Such as This, Duty and Desire and These Three Remain. They were recommended to me and I thought I'd try them out, as I do enjoy the occasional Regency romance.

My impression? Well, mixed. Ms. Aidan is a good writer, although she tends to get a little repetitive and could use a good editor. And why not re-interpret the novel Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's point of view? But upon reading the books, I felt that the idea fell a bit flat. The Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy was originally written as fan-fiction and reflects some of the pitfalls of that genre.

Mr. Darcy, for one thing, comes over as somewhat of a "Gary Stu." He's too perfect, and that in fact takes away from some of the appeal he has in the original novel. Let's not mince words here: Mr. Darcy is somewhat of a jerk in Pride and Prejudice. He snubs the heroine and her family (and just about everyone else in their neighborhood), he tries his best to separate his friend Mr. Bingley from the girl that he loves because he doesn't believe she loves him enough, and he's really, really full of himself. Which is half the fun of the character, and it makes it all the more sweeter when this priggish snob finds himself head-over-heels in love with the heroine despite his best efforts to the contrary.

However, in this trilogy, Darcy always has a reason for being the way he is. He isn't a snob, he's just devoted to his family and his duty to his estate. He's religious, he's nice to his sister, he helps out his friends and is kind to his overly-annoying relatives. He also dresses to perfection, fences like a pro, and generally is too perfect. And boring.

I think the mistake the author made here was becoming too enamoured with the character. She always wants to show Darcy in the best light, even when he's making mistakes. This does not make for good literature.

The saving grace of the book was the supporting characters that the author either made up or fleshed out from spear-carriers in the original novel. Fletcher the valet, Lord Brougham, Colonel Fitzwilliam all shine and are a heck of a lot more interesting than the moping Mr. Darcy. The added plot of Irish rebels was a bit overdone, but made me think that the writer might have been better off just writing an original Regency Romance and leaving Pride and Prejudice out of the picture entirely.

The trilogy was an entertaining-enough read, but I admit having to struggle to finish it because I was getting bored. I'd probably not recommend it, unless you are a very big Pride and Prejudice fan. As for myself, I'm passing the books on to my Mom to see if she might have a different opinion.

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A Couple of Books About Medieval Japanese Women

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:51:17 -0600

So I have these two books out via inter-library loan (ILL), mainly because they're so pricey I can't afford them.

Japanese Women Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, edited by Chieko Mulhern is an interesting dictionary showcasing Japanese female writers. There's a huge time-gap between the writers of the Heian and Kamakura eras, and then a skip to the Meiji era. I don't agree with the writer's claim that there were virtually no women writers during the Edo period, particularly since I have translations of some of their poetry and Donald Keene notes some diaries written by women during this period in his book Travelers of a Hundred Ages, which I know that Mulhern read because she quotes it in some of her footnotes!

Setting that aside, the book did have some excellent essays regarding the following Heian and Kamakura era writers:

Ono no Komachi

Ise

Fujiwara Michitsuna's Mother

Sei Shonagon

Izumi Shikibu

Sugawara Takasue's Daughter

Sanuki no Suke

Fujiwara Shunzei's Daughter

Ben no Naishi

Abutsu-ni (the Nun Abutsu)

Nakatsukasa no Naishi

Junii Tameko (Kyogoku/Fujiwara Tameko)

Go-Fukakusa'in (Lady Nijo)

Eifuku Mon'in (Dowager Empress Eifuku)

The essays are excellent, reflecting both biographical information and some critical examinations of these writers' major works. I'll probably photocopy them (for personal use! It's allowed!) to refer to later. If the book were not so expensive, I'd buy it. There are also many excellent essays on Meiji and Taisho era female writers, but I'm just beginning to dabble in those waters.

The other book is Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Pre-Modern Japan, edited by Barbara Ruch. This book is a treasure and I hope to be able to afford a copy one day. As the title reflects, it is a collection of essays (many translated from the Japanese) regarding the subject of women, particularly nuns, and their relation to the Buddhist faith. The essays include:

Burning Iron against the Cheek: A Female Cleric's Last Resort

Empress Komyo's Buddhist Faith: Her Role in the Founding of the State Temple and Convent System

State Buddhism and Court Buddhism: The Role of Court Women in the Development of Buddhism from the Seventh to Ninth Centuries

Vicissitudes in the Ordination of Japanese Nuns During the Eighth through Tenth Centuries

Tonsure Forms for Nuns: Classification of nuns according to Hairstyle

Buddhist Convents in Medieval Japan

"Nun Shogun": Politics and Religion in the Life of Hojo Masako

Nuns and Other Female Devotees in Genko Shakusho (1322), Japan's First History of Buddhism

Where the Bones Go: Death and Burial of Women in the Heian High Aristocracy

The Original Bomori: Husband and Wife Congregations in Early Shin Buddhism

And these are a portion of the essays--others go into subjects such as Divorce Temples, Scriptural Issues and Iconagraphy, as well as Tokugawa-era practices. It sounds dry, but actually, it's been very exciting reading so far. The subject of Women and Buddhism is very new to scholars (even in Japan) and there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. Makes me wish I could go to graduate school, finally learn Japanese properly, and be able to help in the study of this field!

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in medieval Japanese women's lives.

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A Little Heian Lit

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:53:15 -0600

Finally finished Everyday Things in Modern Japan, which was excellent. It really engrossed me in a subject matter (historical demographics) that usually comes out quite dry. The emphasis is on the Edo period (better records for that time), but the author transitions from the late Sengoku period and also brings in some early Meiji period as well, as her thesis is that traditional Japanese home life didn't really change all that much (from Westernization) until WWII, except among the very rich or the intellectual class. Highly recommended.

I had two books come in this week that I'm really looking forward to reading, both examples of Heian literature. (Wait, don't look at me like that, I know we're poor, but they were used ex-library copies and they were cheap!)

The first was The Changelings (Torikaebaya monogatari no kenkyu), translated by Rosette Willig. This is a story about a brother and sister who decide to "switch places" and each live as the opposite sex. Yes, it sounds like shoujo manga (wait, it IS shoujo manga!), but the story was actually written by an anonymous author sometime between 1196 and 1202. They're not sure if the author is male or female. The writing seems female, but evidently poorly done, so it may be a man imitating a woman, in the same way that Ki no Tsuriyuki did in his Tosa Diary. Anyway, I've been looking for this book for a long time, but just recently found it at a price I was willing to pay. It looks like it will be entertaining.

The second was one I stumbled across recently: The Poetic Memoirs of Lady Daibu (Kenreimon-in Ukyo no Daibu shu), translated by Phillip Tudor Harris. Set during the same time period as the Tale of the Heike, it features some of the Taira clan in a very different light. Lady Daibu's (not her real name, btw) birthdate is unknown, but scholars put it somewhere between 1150 and 1160. She is last heard from in 1232, when she is approached for a couple of her poems to be included in an imperial collection, the Shinchokusenshu. I lucked out on this one and only paid $5 (plus shipping, which made it like $9)! I've only read in about 50 pages so far (all introduction--there's like three introductory essays before the actual translation begins), but so far, so good. Great, concise information about the end of the Heian era, court life and how to put the work in its historical context. Also, the next SCA project I wanted to do (besides all the sewing, which comes with the territory) was a shu (poetry collection), and this book is exactly the format I wanted to emulate.

Damn, I'm such a geek!

とりかえばや異聞 (小学館文庫―夢の碑)

木原敏江

Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture

Susan B. Hanley

The Tosa Diary (Tuttle Classics of Japanese Literature)

Ki No Tsurayuki

The Tale of the Heike

The Changelings: A Classical Japanese Court Tale

Rosette Willig

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Utahime

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:00:42 -0600

I just finished watching Utahime (dramawiki site is here), a nostalgic romance set in the mid-1950s. What an excellent drama!

The drama starts off with the trials and tribulations of Akira (played by TOKIO lead singer Nagase Tomoya), a young man who loses both his job and his fiancee in one fell swoop. His mother, a famous singer, sends him off to the final showing at a run-down movie theatre off in the boondocks, an old movie called "Utahime" that she assures him will change his life. Akira, not pleased, heads off to the tiny seaside fishing village where the theatre is located, and gets drawn into the film, as it seems the film is actually about his own grandfather:

The movie's story revolves around Taro (also Nagase Tomoya), a soldier who washes up on the shores of a beach on the last day of the war. He is rescued, but has no memory of anything that happened before. For ten years, he lives with and works for the man who rescues him, a movie theatre owner.

The younger daughter of the family, Suzu (Aibu Saki) is a feisty girl just on the verge of adulthood. Suzu is in love with Taro, but he seems not to notice. In the meantime, a local yakuza thug, "Croissant no Matsu" (a hilarious Sato Ryuta) has fallen hard for Suzu and is determined to make her his wife.

Most of the drama is focused on life in their tiny rural fishing village and how Suzu and Taro deal with their evolving relationship. Things become more complex with the appearance of Miwako (Koike Eiko), a woman from Taro's past who is determined to make him remember the person he once was.

Utahime didn't get very high ratings, but I absolutely fell in love with it. I'm not sure if it was because of the 1950's setting, or because of the story itself, but it is one of the most original and entertaining dramas that I've watched in a long time, even with the rather hokey premise. The acting was all-around excellent with an especially talented supporting cast and the story kept me riveted. Taro and Suzu have a very electric relationship--and it turns out the two actors playing the roles later got together in real life. Highly recommended!

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The Mist

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:35:10 -0600

I've seen some previews of the new movie, The Mist, which looks really good and horribly depressing. As I have been in poor spirits lately, I decided to forego the movie for now (catch it on DVD later or something) and read the original Stephen King story instead, published as a novella in the collection Skeleton Crew. It being Stephen King, of course the library had it. So the night before last, I settled in for what I thought would be a pleasant read.

Yeah, right.

Word to the wise: Never, ever, EVER stay up until 2 am reading a scary story by Stephen King. Particularly one of his short stories written in the heyday of his talents. Oh, man, I barely slept, and when I did, I dreamed of fogbanks, giant insect-thingies and the small-town grocery store that I used to go to back when I lived in Lanesville, Indiana.

Oh, the story was good. It was can't-put-the-book-down good. Hence my staying up way past my bedtime, curled up in the comfy chair with my knees raised up so I could perch the big hardback volume of the book on them. But dayum, it was freakin' scary!

Some of the story is rather dated. It was written in the early 1980's and some of the plot points (like the protagonist's four-wheel drive car) are not issues nowadays like they would be then. From spoilers on the internet, some things were updated and evidently the end of the story was changed as well, making the movie in the words of one reviewer "the most depressing thing I have ever seen". Not that the original ending was all upbeat or anything, but still...

There are some excellent movies that are brilliant, like Schindler's List or Se7en, which I thought were wonderful examples of the filmmakers' craft and which, having seen once, I refuse to watch again because they're so damn depressing. I have a feeling that The Mist is going to fall into that catagory. Maybe my old bud from the Elitist Bastards, Mightygodking, will do one of his famous reviews for us?

Anyway, last night, my bedtime reading consisted of a half-chapter from Donald Keene's Seeds in the Heart, which is like being with a good friend who is showing you all the cool things about early Japanese literature. And is not scary at all. I am happy to report there were no giant insects in my dreams last night, although there might have been a tanka or two from a guy swathed in layers of silk who looked remarkably like Sanada Hiroyuki.

Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century

Donald Keene

Skeleton Crew (Signet)

Stephen King

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Twin Peaks, The Worst Hard Time

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:54:24 -0600

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Timothy Egan

One of the things that really makes me appreciate the life I have (well, besides watching COPS, which is enough to make anybody happy that they're not on camera with The Men and Women of Law Enforcement) is to read books about The Great Depression of the 1930's. I grew up hearing stories from my grandparents about how hard life was back then and quite frankly, it doesn't hurt to go back and remember those times and realize how very spoiled we are. I recently read an excellent book on the subject of the Dust Bowl.

I picked up The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan on a whim at Borders awhile back and just got around to reading it. Unlike many history books, this one wasn't a boring rendition of names and statistics, but focused rather on the lives of a handful of people who lived through the Dust Bowl. Egan gathered a lot of his information through interviews, and then rounded out the stories with rich detail about prairie life during the first part of the 20th century. He focuses on a few communities in the Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma, eastern Colorado and western Kansas--the areas hardest hit by the dust storms.

What's amazing is how this preventable tragedy was just permitted to happen, all in the name of greed. People were getting rich on wheat crops and land speculation, left and right, and then the drought came (right as the Great Depression hit) and everyone was struck down. If there hadn't have been a depression at the time, maybe people would have been able to just leave, but in those times, jobs were scarce all over the country. And what was scary about these circumstances was that you could see the present problems in the American economy being reflected in the mirror of the past. We have repeated history's mistakes, just in a new fashion.

Twin Peaks - The Definitive Gold Box Edition (The Complete Series)

Egan is a superior writer, and the reader really gets to know and love the people he portrays. I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in American history, or just in historical writing. It sounds cliche, but I literally had a hard time putting this book down. It was a brilliant work of non-fiction.

I also had a chance in the past couple of weeks to sit down and rewatch Twin Peaks, which has been released in a "definitive Gold-Box edition". It had been awhile since I last saw it and it was just as good as I remembered. What was really amazing to me was the high quality of the transfer. I had a copy of the videotapes from way-back-when and had only seen the series in rather low-quality form. It was a delight to be able to notice new quirky details after all this time.

Twin Peaks first aired when I was still living down in Texas, and I remember meeting up with my co-workers at the mortgage company in the break room every Friday morning to discuss the previous night's episode. I didn't really care who killed Laura Palmer, but enjoyed watching Agent Cooper work his way through the quirky little town. I do remember thinking that the high-school kids all looked like refugees from the 1950's most of the time, although watching the series now, it's funny to see that the characters who were more modernly dressed are the ones that seem horribly dated. Has fashion changed so much since then? I guess it has. Dang, where did the time go?

Strangely, even in these days of shows like Heros, Lost, House and the Sopranos, Twin Peaks still stands up as excellent television. It only goes to show how far ahead of its time the show was. I really enjoyed my little trip back in time while I watched the series again. It was like being 24 years old again all over.

The set has plenty of amusing extras (including a set of postcards), although a commentary track might have been nice. Still, well worth the money, especially if you can catch it on deep discount.

Next up: Honey and Clover (anime version). I've been meaning to watch HachiKuro for a while now, but now that there's a live-action version coming out this winter, it seems high time.

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Hotelier (Jdrama)

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:00:19 -0500

Autumn must be here, because I'm finding time to watch Jdrama again. This past week, I've been marathoning Hotelier, a Japanese remake of the popular Korean drama of the same name.

First, I wasn't even aware that "Hotelier" was even a word. It's not one that is in common use in America, although when I looked it up, it seems that it is English (borrowed, of course, from the French) and means a hotel owner or manager. Huh. Learn something new every day.

Anyway, back to the drama. I'd caught a few episodes of the Korean version when it was shown on AZN TV and it looked good, so I thought I'd give the Japanese version a try. It also helped that one of the stars was Oikawa Mitsuhiro (more on him later). The story focuses on Odagiri Kyoko (played by cutie Ueto Aya), an assistant manager in a large luxury hotel. She's devoted to the job and popular with her fellow staff members. Alas, there's another company looking to take over the hotel (led by villain Morimoto Masakazu, played by character actor Takenaka Naoto, probably best known in the US from his unforgettable role as the Latin-dancing enthusiast Aoki in the hilarious movie, Shall We Dance?). The hotel's president asks Kyoko to find a former manager of theirs, Ogata Kouhei (played by very hot Tanabe Seiichi) to help them defend the business from being taken over. Undeterred, Morimoto in turn hires Mizusawa Keigo (Oikawa Mitsuhiro), a Japanese ex-pat now living in America who is famous for being able to force hostile takeovers.

But as it happens, Mizusawa happens to meet Kyoko by chance when she's tracking down Ogata, and it's love at first sight. That's not about to stop him from taking over the hotel, but he figures he can have his cake and eat it, too. Kyoko has other ideas. Plus, Ogata is in love with her, himself, and he and Mizusawa clash over both love and business.

Basically, the entire drama is about a takeover bid on this hotel, and how the hotel staff band together to fight it. And surprisingly, it was pretty good. It did seem a bit rushed in places, but I think that was due to the writers trying to cram 20 episodes of plot from the Korean drama into 9 episodes of Japanese drama. Unfortunately, I didn't see enough of the Korean version to tell if the plots were similar, but from what I did see, the Korean version was much better (and I'm going to have to track it down now, aren't I?).

However, a big plus in this drama was the supporting cast. The only weak spot was the girl who played Morimoto's daughter. The rest of them were spot-on perfect, and it made the "slow parts" go by quite quickly because they were all so entertaining. Ueto Aya isn't an actress of great range, but she did very well in this drama, even if she was a bit young for the role. I think the only complaint I had was that the romantic parts weren't very romantic at all, and not just because of the age differences. The romance parts just weren't written very well. So don't watch this one for the romance, but for cheering on the gutsy employees of the hotel as they take on "The Man".

Oh, back to what I was saying about Oikawa Mitsuhiro. He's a nice-looking man, not spectacularly handsome, but he's quite a compelling actor. I've seen him in supporting roles here and there and he's always been good. Evidently, he's also a singer and dancer as well. This role had him as quite understated, but that just made him sexier than even the hunky Tanabe Seiichi. Hopefully, he'll get more starring roles in the future. I'll be looking for him.

2007 Japanese Drama - Hotelier - w/ English Subtitle

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A Couple of Books on Japanese Nuns

nobody@vox.com(reynardine) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:03:42 -0500

Recently read a couple of books that were quite good. The first was Letters of the Nun Eshinni by James C. Dobbins. Eshinni was a nun who lived during the Kamakura era, and who was married to the monk Shinran , the founder of the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) school of Buddhism. In 1921, a cache of her letters was found amongst the belongings of a temple that her great-grandson had founded. Most of them are fairly mundane, talking about her daily life, transfer of servents, that sort of thing, but she does go into some details about Shinran's life, which is what makes the letters historically important. However, Dobbins' assertion is that Eshinni's letters also reflect how people actually followed the Buddhist teachings in their everyday life, and that historians often have a fallacy of applying religious texts (which are ideals) to actual practices (which are...um...doable?). The meat of the book regards Dobbins' outlines of what everyday life was like during Eshinni's time, especially for women, and how everyday people integrated the Buddhist faith into their lives. Very interesting reading!

Another book in the same genre is Zen Sanctuary of the Purple Robes, a history of the Tokeiji Convent from 1285 to the late 19th century, when it was subject to persecution by the State Shinto cult. The nuns left and the convent was put under the administrative rule of another temple. It still exists today. Tokeiji was one of the so-called "divorce temples" because during the Edo period, women could take shelter there and (eventually) dissolve their marriages. The book covers some of the early period (especially during the schism of Japanese Buddhism during the Kamakura era), but focuses quite a bit on the Edo period. Still, it is a fascinating look at women's lives and religion during Japan's medieval and early modern age.

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