Nobel prize in literature

[Russell]

Japanese British writer wins it this year.

If only he could've had double nationality...

[legion]

I'm sure it woz his wabi sabi wot dunnit

[Takechanpoo]

as far as i remember, i read his 日の名残り(The Remains of the Day) in my univ days. it was sort of a weird experience to read an english-written-by-ethnic-jap novel by the japanese-translated version. also i vaguely remember it was a boring one, though.

well...recently its difficult to not find some japanese name among the nobel winners.

[canman]

The Japanese media is having an orgasm about this guy winning the Nobel prize in literature. I love how they say he’s from Japan. Forget that he has lived most of his life in Britain, doesn’t matter, he’s a spawn of Yamato. I wonder would they do the same for a serial killer? I think not.

[Mike Oxlong]

I think Sagawa has been quite celebrated, no?

[Wage Slave]

Yep. But the number of recent Nobel Prize winning Japanese names who hold a Japanese passport is much smaller thanks to the idiotic and cruel monogamous relationship with the Japanese state rule.

Tacky, this is not an invitation for you to start defending said rule. Please don't bother. Where's Havel when you need him?

[Grumpy Gramps]

Being Japanese is like being catholic; once baptized, always catholic. Baptism makes you a Christian Japanese and member of the Mystical Body of Christ Yamato. And foreign passports count for nothing in Japan.

Unless, maybe, you're a serial killer

Congrats for the Nobel prize, though

[wuchan]

Being Japanese is like being catholic; once baptized, always catholic. Baptism makes you a Christian Japanese and member of the Mystical Body of Christ Yamato. And foreign passports count for nothing in Japan.

Unless, maybe, you're a serial killer

Or a politician....

[Coligny]

as
well...recently its difficult to not find some japanese name among the nobel winners.

Who knew that nobel had an equivalent to the paralympics for underachievers...

[Takechanpoo]

isn’t it extraordinary that this young Japanese guy should know so much about English butlers.” He recalls “a kind of surprise,” the palpable sense that “people are slightly uncomfortable that [he] made what they see as a jump, from being someone identifiably writing about [his] ethnic background, if that’s the word, to someone who wasn’t.”


In a 1985 review of Pictures from the Water Trade: An Englishman in Japan by John David Morley for the LRB, Ishiguro wrote a lede paragraph which has been quoted by them today.

The British and the Japanese may not be particularly alike, but the two races are exceedingly comparable. The British must actually believe this, for why else would they be displaying such a curious desperation to deny it? No doubt, they sense that to look at Japanese culture too closely would threaten a long-cherished complacency about their own. Hence the energy expended on sustaining an image of Japan as a place of fanatical businessmen, of hara-kiri and sci-fi gadgetry. Books, articles and television programmes focus on whatever is most extreme and bizarre in Japanese life; the Japanese people may be viewed as amusing or alarming, expert or devious, but they must above all be seen to be non-human. While they remain non-human, their values and ways will remain safely irrelevant. No wonder the British are so fond of the ‘inscrutability’ of Japanese faces.

Here, Ishiguro gets at the way that the British look at Japan: they don’t realize all what they are failing to see. There is much that English-language critics have failed to see about Ishiguro. In this paragraph, he performs the rather impressive analytical feat of understanding the way his critics see him, defining “inscrutability,” which is one of those racist tropes that is so powerful because it is so menacingly vague.

https://newrepublic.com/article/145206/ ... o-ishiguro

in english side, he has been treated as a foreign matter by the roundabout hypocritical double-tongued cynical perverse mean english way.



and it seems that he said in the press conference of the prize winning "i have thought some part of me is always japanese."
https://this.kiji.is/288676549489099873 ... 7727945729

[matsuki]

Admit it Take, Call him Japanese all you want but dude would sooo not fit in here...

[Wage Slave]

Tacky is in way over his depth as always - Nothing he said implies anything of the kind about his experience in the UK. And if it did why did his parents and him decide of their own free will to stay in the UK? Why did he choose UK citizenship over Japanese?

That said, of course he should have a Japanese passport as well as a UK passport and of course he is partly the product of Japanese culture and of course he is partly Japanese.

[wuchan]

isn’t it extraordinary that this young Japanese guy should know so much about English butlers.” He recalls “a kind of surprise,” the palpable sense that “people are slightly uncomfortable that [he] made what they see as a jump, from being someone identifiably writing about [his] ethnic background, if that’s the word, to someone who wasn’t.”


In a 1985 review of Pictures from the Water Trade: An Englishman in Japan by John David Morley for the LRB, Ishiguro wrote a lede paragraph which has been quoted by them today.

The British and the Japanese may not be particularly alike, but the two races are exceedingly comparable. The British must actually believe this, for why else would they be displaying such a curious desperation to deny it? No doubt, they sense that to look at Japanese culture too closely would threaten a long-cherished complacency about their own. Hence the energy expended on sustaining an image of Japan as a place of fanatical businessmen, of hara-kiri and sci-fi gadgetry. Books, articles and television programmes focus on whatever is most extreme and bizarre in Japanese life; the Japanese people may be viewed as amusing or alarming, expert or devious, but they must above all be seen to be non-human. While they remain non-human, their values and ways will remain safely irrelevant. No wonder the British are so fond of the ‘inscrutability’ of Japanese faces.

Here, Ishiguro gets at the way that the British look at Japan: they don’t realize all what they are failing to see. There is much that English-language critics have failed to see about Ishiguro. In this paragraph, he performs the rather impressive analytical feat of understanding the way his critics see him, defining “inscrutability,” which is one of those racist tropes that is so powerful because it is so menacingly vague.

https://newrepublic.com/article/145206/ ... o-ishiguro

in english side, he has been treated as a foreign matter by the roundabout hypocritical double-tongued cynical perverse mean english way.



and it seems that he said in the press conference of the prize winning "i have thought some part of me is always japanese."
https://this.kiji.is/288676549489099873 ... 7727945729

Truthfully, you can't read (English) well enough to make that judgement.


As far as the NHK "news conference" goes, nothing seems more official than doing it on a park bench. I wouldn't be surprised if NHK paid him.

[legion]

and it seems that he said in the press conference of the prize winning "i have thought some part of me is always japanese."

It seems that he said "I'd like my books to be translated into Japanese so I can make more money"

[matsuki]

Sure seems like it...find instant success if you use a Japanese name to write under.

[Takechanpoo]

"a large part of my way of looking at the world and the artistic approach is japanese"

[Wage Slave]

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro now.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-queens-birthday-honours-list-2018

[legion]

I don't have much time for gongs, but I this one is well deserved



http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11695/11398338/jermain-defoe-admits-mixed-emotions-for-obe-award-after-death-of-friend-bradley-lowery

[Wage Slave]

Yes. Just heard him interviewed by Dotun Adabayo on Radio 5 - Well deserved and whatever cynics like us think about gongs the recognition clearly means a lot to him and to his family who have worked very long and hard to do some good in the world.