(guh-no-la ee-yay)

". . . as I have said often enough, I write for myself in multiplicate,
a not unfamiliar phenomenon on the horizon of shimmering deserts."
- Vladimir Nabokov

Um, this journal is semi friends-only, because my journal entries are very boring. ):

Comment to be added!

"The Song That is Everywhere", Ninomiya Kazunari
trans. Kaiten Soshi

I can’t see the difference between right and wrong*
You said, “Everything’s alright!”
Those words are making me disappear
and that’s what I’m the most afraid of.

Shout it with all your might,**
“I’m here!” as proof.
We’re not that weak. But we’re not that strong either.
So it’s alright if we cry.
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
It’s something that only people with a future can do.
It’s a sign to move on.

I cry, wish, fall down, cry again.
You grew up, afraid of getting hurt.
You’ve always been holding back your tears and
Stopped being able to smile.

When I realized it, I was alone and afraid.
It was that time that your voice that reached out to me,
so gentle that it hurt, and I cried.***
“You’re such a crybaby,” you told me.
It found easy for me to say, “You too,” and we/I laughed.
Don’t say that it’s “nostalgic”, the way we joke around.
I want to grab the present that is here and now.

Look!  Breathe in and out, we’re alive.
Taking it step by step, that’s all we need to do.
It’ll be okay. We’ll be here, always.
Just let it all out**** and stand proud.
Because that’s us.
Always and forever.




General note: As with most of Nino’s songs, I’m not sure if he’s speaking or if he’s speaking on behalf of someone…

*It literally says “What’s right? What’s wrong?”
** Literally means “Shout it with all my life/energy”
*** I need to rephrase this better.
****Some lyrics point that it’s ’さらけだして” which is basically “lay it all bare”. I heard it as “叫だして”, “shout it all out”. 

Original Lyrics

「どこにでもある唄」　　　　二宮和也

To-Do List

20th Century Japanese History
1) "The Rise of Revolutionary Nationalism", in Sources of Japanese Tradition. Vol. 2. 1600-2000, eds. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, 948-979.
 
2) Peter Duus, Modern Japan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, 134-149.

3)Sydney Crawcour, "Industrialization and technological change, 1885–1920" in The Cambridge History of Japan, ed. Duus, Peter. Vol. 6. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp.385-450.
 
4) Takafusa Nakamura, "Depression, recovery, and war, 1920–1945" in The Economic Emergence of Modern Japan, ed. Kozo Yamamura. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp.116-158.
5) Carol Gluck, "Japan's Modernities, 1850s - 1990s," in Asia in Western and World History, eds. Embree, Ainslie T. and Carol Gluck (Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, 1997), pp.561-593.

6) Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp.13-47.

7) Sydney Crawcour, "Industrialization and technological change, 1885–1920" in The Cambridge History of Japan, ed. Duus, Peter. Vol. 6. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp.385-450.

 

 

8) Takafusa Nakamura, "Depression, recovery, and war, 1920–1945" in The Economic Emergence of Modern Japan, ed. Kozo Yamamura. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp.116-158.

Alternative Lives in Contemp. Japan
1) Upham, Frank.  1998.  “Weak Legal Consciousness as Invented Tradition.”  In Mirror of Modernity: invented traditions of modern Japan (S. Vlastos ed).  Berkeley CA: University of California Press.  [E-RESERVES]
 
2) Upham, Frank K.  2004.  “Instrumental Violence and the Struggle for Buraku Liberation.”  In M. Weiner (ed), Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan (v. 2). NY: Routledge. (pp. 146-190)  [E-RESERVES]

3) Watch Go!


Post-col/Post-mod
1) Revise concepts
2) Finish reading Rhys 
3) Read Tayeb Salih

Cold War
1) H.W.: Erenberg: “Things to Come”;
(Suggested viewing) “Swing: The Velocity of Celebration” (CDV 293-6R), “Dedicated to Chaos” (CDV 293-7R)
2) Continue reading Underworld
3) Revise previous week's readings
4) “Long Tall Sally: Spring-Summer 1992” pp. 63-150 +
5) Virilio “The Immaterials of War” from A Landscape of Events;
6) Edwards: Chap. 1 from The Closed World; Broderick “Nuclear Movies”;
7) Powers chapter from Prisoner’s Dilemma;
8) Paul Virilio “The Art of the Motor” from The Art of the Motor; Sterling: “ARPANET to Internet”

9)(additional readings) Edwards: excerpts from “Why Build Computers?”; Boyer: “Dr. Strangelove: Kubrick Presents the Apocalypse”;
10) William Carlos Williams selections; Beckett Endgame (if you wish to watch one of the productions we own in media resources, choose CVC 12767 or the performance on CDV 852-855); Beck Chap. 1 of Dirty Wars “The Purloined Landscape”

Gender
1. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. 3-73 (excerpt).
2) Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "How to Bring Up Your Kids Gay: The War on Effeminate Boys." In Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. 154-164.
3) Revise concepts covered in previous lectures
4)

	Rubin, Gayle. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David Halperin. New York: Routledge, 1993. 3-44.
	Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Axiom 1" and "Axiom 2." In Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 22-35.

American Lit
1) Revise Rober Frost (memorise some stanzas)
2) Read on Gertrude Stein and literary "abstract expressionism"
3) Read up on Wallace Stevens
4) Read Ernest Hemingway 


Freelance
1) Camera Cabaret
2) Art Stage SG
3) MBS
4) Capella
5) Birds & Co.
6) Wanderlust

Hey guys!

Oh my god!


I got in!

To the Top 23!

I've got to do a video now to convince YOU and THEM why I should be The World's Coolest Intern!

If you don't really know what I'm talking about, check out my blog post or follow me on twitter at kaitensoshi!

For any of you who might have stumbled upon this blog after searching for information about Waseda and/or the SILS programme, I'll be updating this blog with my adventures in Japan :) I'm from Singapore and will be taking part in the one year exchange that Waseda has, from September 2009 - August 2010.

However, this blog is still rather personal so most of my posts will go onto my weblog In Your Basment.

I'm trying to trim my fringe so that it looks like the short-ish crop I had in Japan but it's not working out very well. Looks like I'll have to pay the hair-dresser a visit. Speaking about going into town, I need to pick up my Ooku books.

I haven't given up yet, because Yen gave me a timely prod, so here is day 2 of the meme.

day 2 – where you’d like to be in 10 years.

If my math doesn't fail me, I'd be 31 going on 32 in 10 years time. It's a doubly scary thing for me, because another ten years would have passed me by and I'd be thirty. I can get away with being below 18 sometimes, when gregarious insurance agents approach me in the subway stations and ask me if I am old enough to talk to them and I can scoot away and say "no I'm still in JC." When I'm 30, I'm quite confident that I won't look like this anymore. Hopefully I'll be thinner, none of that paunch that comes from drinking and midnight snacking and in a better place.

I haven't decided. Do I want to be in Tokyo or New York? I know one large part of my postgrad plans are going to be centered around either place, but I still haven't decided. Or both. It'd be great if I could be like Naho and Yuri and shuttle between both places. Going through Yuri's mobile updates about her month in New York (on business, no less) and visiting her alma mater makes me feel that I should travel and experience the Big Apple, from the inside out. I'd like to be in a city -- with quick access to the country-side. Loud sounds and quiet people.

I miss Tokyo more than anything else. How the streets outside my dorm always had someone walking past, with their dog, by themselves on the way to the public bath-house, or bringing their laundry to the laundromat. I like watching the huge industrial washing machines and dryers whir into the night.

I'd like to be somewhere I can practice my art in. I'm caught right now, in between writing and photography, and while I want to pursue both wholeheartedly, I'm going to have to make a choice sooner or later. In ten years, hopefully I've found the answer -- and it might be the right one.

Because I've neglected this journal for far too long, and I would like to practice writing -- that is, writing anything at all, because I've been abnormally tightlipped lately -- so Yen and I are going to do these 30 day memes!

I'm probably going to modify some of the questions because clearly this isn't a tumblr and I don't have time to tumblr around with tumblr questions.

( meme questions )

Here is the first question.

day 1 – your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is.

( answers here. )

Why are the lit people (and the non-lit people, but mainly the lit people) in LMH's gender class so amazing? I'd like to think that once, for a brief moment of time, I was nearly as brilliant.



I want to eat their brains.

17:34 My dad decided to add my friends on Facebook. :\ NO DAD, NO. #

18:20 Chicken rice is cooking in the rice cooker. My hands smell wonderful! #

21:59 @milkred You can feed me steak chunks! ;) But awww, lysacat byebye ;__; #

01:05 @milkred Doing the quiz now... the questions are disturbing... #

01:06 Just took "Which guy from Johnny´s are you?" and got: Tegoshi Yuya! Try it ➔ bit.ly/9sylB7 #

01:08 @perpiewerpie is mindy off twitter? #

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