The Melancholy of Mechagirl
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Palimpsest to the kitsune-pirate in In the Night Garden to the Tsukomogami in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Part of me has never left. I do not expect that this collection represents the end of my writing about Japan. I do not think there is an end. Some things you never stop writing about. Love affairs, deaths, children, missed chances, sicknesses, places you never expected to find, or to find you. Countries of the heart. And yet, as true as that feels to me to write, I cringe a little, for what Western author who ever rubbed elbows with a Tokyo train has not professed a love for Japan, if only for the noodles at Narita? Is my love different, special? Well, one always likes to think so, and one is rarely correct.
It is my experience that Westerners—and I am one, I am not exempt—look at Japan through thick, thick glasses of expectation. Some of that expectation is shaped by the export of Japanese culture, some of it through imperialist dogma, some of it through economic interest and fear, some of it just plain exoticizing of the Other. When I say I have lived in Japan, people immediately haul on their glasses and make assumptions, not only about the nation but about me, what I must think, how it must have been. I was an English teacher, obviously. Clearly, I loved anime and manga and planned to move there for years. It was exactly like they imagine it, exactly like they have seen it in the movies, some sort of cross between Blade Runner and Memoirs of a Geisha and Cowboy Bebop. None of that is true, of course. I went overseas with as few expectations as I could, and yet of course I still had them. You cannot even begin to meet Japan until you have peeled back the veneer of the Western image of Japan. And Western ways of seeing are powerful, hard to look beyond. That is the purpose of a culture, though success is always incomplete: to turn a mass of people in one direction and unify their vision into one. After ten thousand years or so, humans are awfully good at it. And of course, the West is not the only lens: I saw as a woman, I saw as a young person, I saw as a historian, I saw as a writer, I saw as a queer woman, I saw as a military wife, I saw as a near-suicidal depressive, I saw as a romantic, I saw as a twenty-first-century technologically adept intellectual. Maybe it’s just lenses, all the way down.
I was in Japan for reasons to do with love and hegemony. In the beginning, I loved my husband, and the global hegemony of my nation brought me across the Pacific. In the end, I loved Japan, and my marriage had become a repressive state. There is, perhaps, little difference between the two. They can be traded. They can masquerade each as the other.
And to write of a country, a culture, a world that is not your own is an act, forever and always, balanced precariously between love and hegemony.
I have tried to err on the side of love. That is a phrase I would not mind inking on my skin, above my door, upon my grave. I have tried to err on the side of love. Because of those years and because of who I am, I could not have helped writing about Japan. It was always only a question of how I wrote about it, and I hope, I hope I have done well. Since the first words I put down in my house underneath Tsukayama Park, I have sought to integrate and interrogate my own experience, my own actions, my own perception, both from within and without, without being overly kind to myself and my culpability or overly romantic or unforgivably ignorant or bullheaded concerning Japanese culture. That is always an iterative process. You circle the thing itself endlessly and never quite arrive at it. And so I have spent a goodly amount of ink and blood and time over the last decade writing about a place that is not my home, a culture that did not give birth to me, though it shaped me unalterably. And yet this is a deeply personal book. Everything has a dual nature. It is not a book that purports to speak for Japanese culture in any way, but one which speaks for its author, for a span of ten years of circling Japan and never reaching it, and a single woman’s relationship with a nation not her own, but one which, very occasionally, sat down to tea with her.
Perhaps had I been older when Japan and I met, I would not have been so arrested by it. Perhaps had I been less silly and studied subway maps instead of Susano-no-Mikoto’s tempers. But I was young and I was silly, and so there are these stories, and there is me, and neither of them are Japanese, but perhaps we float together offshore, the stories and I and you and our cozy little time machine, looking out at the islands in the distance as the sun comes up.
Ten years later, the shrine is gone from the house in Yoshikura-Cho. I do not know what happened to it. Perhaps another American officer living there asked for it to be removed. Perhaps the wood rotted. Perhaps a typhoon blew it down. I have not been back to that house tucked in under the terraces. I cannot say. But the little Jizo I clung to no longer faces the sun in his hat and scarf. I do not imagine this affects Jizo’s ferrying across the Sanzu River, but I felt then that he watched over me with, at least, disinterested, impersonal compassion. The shrine is gone, but he remains. I remain too. I am still a traveler. I am still not a sacred girl. But perhaps I see, very, very occasionally, incompletely and always dimly, by the light of the wish-fulfilling jewel in Jizo’s tutelary hand, through, with difficulty, with error, with aching, with determination, to the truth of things. Or at least to a better lie.
Everything has a dual nature.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
“The Melancholy of Mechagirl.” First appeared in Mythic Delirium. Issue 25, Summer/Fall 2011.
“Ink, Water, Milk.” Original to this volume.
“Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai.” First appeared in Haunted Legends, Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas, eds. Tor Books; 2010.
Ghosts of Gunkanjima first appeared as a limited edition chapbook, Papaveria Press, 2005.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/ Time.” First appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, August 2010.
“One Breath, One Stroke.” First appeared in The Future Is Japanese, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington, eds. Haikasoru; 2012.
“Fade to White.” First appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, August 2012.
“Story No. 6.” Original to this volume.
“The Emperor of Tsukayama Park.” First appeared in Apocrypha, Wildside Press LLC, 2005.
“Killswitch.” First appeared in Invisible Games, 2007.
“The Girl with Two Skins.” First appeared in Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, Norilana Books, 2009.
“Memoirs of a Girl Who Failed to be Born from a Peach.” First appeared in Apocrypha. Wildside Press LLC, 2005.
Silently and Very Fast. First appeared in a limited edition (octavo). WSFA Press, 2011.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times best-selling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and the crowdfunded phenomenon and national best seller The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, and an enormous cat.
HAIKASORU
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
SELF-REFERENCE ENGINE BY TOH ENJOE
This is not a novel.
This is not a short story collection.
This is Self-Reference ENGINE.
Instructions for Use: Read chapters in order. Contemplate the dreams of twenty-two dead Freuds. Note your position in space-time at all times (and spaces). Keep an eye out for a talking bobby sock named Bobby Socks. Beware the star-man Alpha Centauri. Remember that the chapter entitled “Japanese” is translated from the Japanese, but should be read in Japanese. Warning: if reading this book on the back of a catfish statue, the text may vanish at any moment, and you may forget that it ever existed.
From the mind of Toh EnJoe comes Self-Reference ENGINE, a textual machine that combines the rigor of Stanislaw Lem with the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Do not operate heavy machinery for one hour after reading.
NOBLE V: GREYLAN
CER BY HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI
It is the year 7000 by Noble reckoning, and the vampire rulers of the world have grown complacent. When the shape-shifting Outer Space Beings invade, the Noble warrior Greylancer must pit his skills and magic against the technology of the OSBs, quash an anti-Noble rebellion, outwit the Ultimate Mind, and, when he is critically injured, turn to mere humans for help. The Three Thousand Year War of Vampire Hunter D begins here!
Also includes the bonus short story “An Irreplaceable Existence”!
FOR THE SHORT STORY READER
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE—HAIKASORU
A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese! Includes the Hugo Award nominee “Mono No Aware” by Ken Liu and the Shirley Jackson Award nominee “The Indifference Engine” by Project Itoh!
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Introduction by Teruyuki Hashimoto
The Melancholy of Mechagirl
Ink, Water, Milk
Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai
Ghosts of Gunkanjima
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time
One Breath, One Stroke
Story No. 6
Fade to White
The Emperor of Tsukayama Park
Killswitch
Memoirs of a Girl Who Failed to be Born from a Peach
The Girl With Two Skins
Silently and Very Fast
Afterword by Catherynne M. Valente
Publication History
About the Author