Like most people, the Japanese have a tendency to look back with fondness on bygone eras, which they often sum up with the word natsukashii (NOTS-ka-SHEE), which can be translated as “that makes me so nostalgic that I must look like one of those wide-eyed manga characters with a tear rolling out of my eye.” Japanese usually get sentimental about the Showa Era (1925-1989), especially for the decades after World War II, seen as a Golden Age when life was much simpler and everyone worked together to rebuild the country and make it strong. Being an old school fan, I can tap into this wellspring of nostalgia through manga and anime, which I’m currently doing with Touch, the classic high school baseball story that I used to read back in college. It’s the story of two twins, pitching ace Kazuya and his lazy twin brother Tatsuya, and their childhood friend Minami, who they both love. When Ka-chan is killed in a car accident, Ta-chan must put on the uniform and fulfill Minami’s dream of taking their team to Koshien, the legendary High School Baseball championships held every August. I love the simplicity of the story — no robots, esper powers, or alien invaders that were foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls here — and all the old stuff we don’t have any more, from public phones with rotary dials to tabletop video games and record albums of the latest JPOP idol. If you want to experience Japan’s Showa Era for yourself, we recommend Always, a great new film we’ve posted to the site which tells a story of Japan back during the construction of Tokyo Tower (region 2, full English subtitles included).
I’ll teach you another Japanese word: guuzen (goo-ZEN), which means “coincidence.” I don’t know why, but there seems to be something about Japan that brings out the most unlikely coincidences, at least for me. On several occasions I’ve bumped into people I studied Japanese with at SDSU in Tokyo and Yokohama — quite a feat, considering the fact that I live far from these places myself. The guy who lives next door to us just happened to decide to run for mayor in our city of 200,000, and won — this proved helpful when it came time to ask NTT to upgrade our broadband connection, since we have the same last name as him and everyone assumes we’re related. When racing manga/anime Initial D got popular in the U.S., I was surprised to learn that the mountain roads I’d been zooming through for years were the setting of the story. But the biggest guuzen of my life would have to be the fact that the city I just happened to come to live in was the home town of Touch creator Mitsuru Adachi, and his high school (the model for the school in the anime) was near where I used to teach English. While browsing an outstanding Touch site the other day, I got another shocker: Mr. Adachi also shares the same birthday as my wife. How many degrees of separation are involved here? It just boggles the mind.
Japan’s hopes in the World Cup have come to an end with the unfortunate (but probably inevitable) 4-1 loss to Brazil. The game took place at 4 a.m., Japan time, and no doubt many thousands of fans stayed up to watch it as it unfolded. My son was among them, at a school sleepover event in which students brought sleeping bags and slept in the school so they could get up to cheer the Japan team on together. Congratulations to Brazil on the win, and good luck to the teams still in the game!
