The Name of the Game is A Kidnapping

Keigo Higashino

PR genius Sakuma is miffed when his latest idea is rejected out of hand by Nissei Auto, a major car manufacturer. After a drinking spree, he goes to Nissei CEO Katsuragi’s home, where he watches a girl climbing down the wall outside. It is Juri Katsuragi, trying to escape her abusive family.

Sakuma, thirsting for revenge, and Juri, who needs money, team up and fake Juri’s kidnapping. But Katsuragi is no fool, and when the two believe to have reached their goals, Katsuragi proves to be a master of the end game after all.

This was a fun, fast-paced thriller, and other than Higashino’s usual books, there is no police involved. The plot revolves around the three characters, with Sakuma and Katsuragi playing a wonderful game of mental chess. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Higashino novel without a twist at the end, and once again, it was a total surprise to me. I did feel that there was something wrong about Juri’s story, but what had really happened before she escaped the family villa, I couldn’t guess.

Another excellent and twisty book by Higashino, and of course available on amazon.

so-on-g

On my quest to follow BATI-HOLIC to all of their concerts (in Kyoto), I am exposed to a lot of other bands, both local and foreign. There are all sorts of music styles, all stages of proficiency, and different levels of “I like it”.

One of my recent discoveries is so-on-g (騒音寺). The kanji mean “Noise Temple”, but even though they could be considered as rock band, their music is very melodic and easy to dance along. And sing along, if you know the texts, of course. Here’s one of their music videos:

so-on-g “Long Line” music video

so-on-g are a band from Kyoto and they’ve been around for 30 years. They have plenty of fans, which makes their shows fun to watch. It was even more fun to watch BATI-HOLIC leader Nakajima move into the first row at their latest show and completely switch to fanboy mode. Musicians just love music – just like writers just love books…

Nobel Prize for Hibakusha

The Nihon Hidankyo – short and Japanese for The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations – has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize after having been nominated several times before.

The organization founded on August 10, 1956 is run entirely by hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their main objective is the prevention of nuclear war and the elimination of nuclear weapons, and they are active world wide. Today, there are roughly 106,000 hibakusha still alive, from 650,000 originally recognized by the Japanese government.

Have a look around their website – the Message to the World written at the inaugural meeting is especially powerful.

And if you ever make it to Hiroshima, visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, not just the first section that talks about the bombing and history in a very detached way (the clock measuring the time since the last nuclear test notwithstanding), but also the second section depicting the impact and suffering of the victims in graphic detail. If you come out of this part without being touched to your core, you’re probably a psychopath.

Pretty Visitor

When I opened my window this morning, I found an unexpected visitor. She got caught between the window pane and the flyscreen, so I opened the latter to let her out. She didn’t want to leave, so I had to help her a few hours later. A couple of hours after that, her mate made an appearence too – he was about half her size and the color of a dried leaf. These are the things I have in my garden. I am both amazed and somewhat frightened…

Before you ask: Yes, another monster hunting spider made an appearance in my office a few weeks back. I dealt with it. But to be honest: These are the moments when I regret my life choices (of staying single…)

Sorry, just a short post today. I’ll have to go see BATI-HOLIC a bit later tonight.

Austrian Elections 2024

Last Sunday were Austrian national elections. Democracy prevailed and the current, quite unpopular government was voted out of office.

Sadly, people instead voted the right-wing FPOE to the top of the list with almost 29% of the votes. So far, that doesn’t mean they were voted into the government, but it will definitely be most difficult to get a new government. I’m not expecting anything anytime soon.

I sent in my absentee vote almost three weeks ago, and I really hope it did arrive in time (you never know…). The ballot paper I received cracked me up, have a look at the last position:

“Keine” means “none”, with the full party name translating to “none of those” (other parties.) That’s hilarious, and at the same time: why can’t we not really vote for “none of those” and just leave the seats won like that empty in the parliament?

I know that many people don’t vote or vote right-wing just to piss off the mostly center-left establishment. In my not so humble opinion: there are plenty of other parties to vote for if you’d really like to teach lessons. Hell, this time, we even had a “Beer Party” (not making this up, the candidate was actually quite interesting) on the ballot.

So, maybe this would be a valid option for those who’d rather not be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Just have a “empty” vote that would lead to empty seats and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, the question is whether in the end the result would look the same after all, just with scaled down percentages. Then again, I always wonder what kind of work our parliamentarians are doing, really…

Maybe it’s worth a try. I mean, with all the online polls everywhere it would be easy to have such a system and see how many people are really supporting a party’s line versus how many see it as the best worst option.

Underground

Haruki Murakami

In the early morning of May 20, 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo, a now-forbidden religious cult, released sarin gas on three Tokyo subway trains. However, the deadly nerve gas, conceived in Nazi laboratories in the 1930s, failed to cause the destruction the perpetrators had intended. Yet, the families of the 12 people who died and the thousands of injured – a good part of whom had to deal with varying long-term aftereffects – would disagree with this assessment.

In the course of 1996 when the worse shock over the attack had passed, but memories were still fairly fresh, Haruki Murakami interviewed 62 survivors. Of these testimonies, 34 are contained in “Underground”, a shocking account of how a normal Monday commute turned into a nightmare for many, touching on emotions that were still raw a year or more after the attack.

This edition of “Underground” also contains a part 2, titled “The Place that was Promised”, a collection of 8 interviews with (former) members of Aum Shinrikyo. While most of the victims expressed a hatred toward Aum, these interviewees were torn in their views. Most of them initially joined the group because they felt alienated by the world around them or tried to fill a (spiritual) void in their lives.

Even though they had a spiritual home in and were completely devoted to Aum, they declared that had they been asked to carry out the attack, they would have declined. Only one said that he would have gone through with it “if I had been asked by the right person.”

This raises the question – and Murakami addresses it in his own reflections on the topic – how far each of us would be willing to go for “the right person” or “the right cause”. On average, as history shows: all the way down to the inner circles of hell.

Haruki Murakami (born in Kyoto, 1949) is a Japanese author. He is most famous for his novels, which have been translated into dozens of languages and received numerous (international) prizes. He also writes essays and non fiction like this book.

For a first-hand account into one of Japan’s deadliest terrorist attacks in peace time. I recommend this particular edition for a view of both sides; they are equally chilling but for different reasons. It’s available on amazon.

Fixing Things

Last week, I received mail from Austria. Not that this is newsworthy, of course. What is somewhat worthy of a post is that the letter came sealed in a plastic bag with a sticker on it:

The sticker essentially says that this piece of mail was damaged somewhere on the way and that a special division of a post office somewhere in Saitama took it upon themselves to glue the envelope back together without touching whatever was inside.

They did such a good job that I cannot even see where the envelope was damaged. My friend who sent the letter said that everything had arrived as planned, so I guess there may have been a small tear in a corner somewhere or maybe the glue at any of the flaps didn’t hold up.

So far, I’ve only received water-damaged mail with stickers saying that the post office had dried the letter. This was always obvious, other than now. Oh well, Japan. Good to know that my mail is safe and will arrive in the best of all possible conditions.

Autumn Equinox

Today is the autumn equinox, which is a national holiday in Japan. Because it’s Sunday today, the actual day off will be tomorrow, but you get the idea.

While the moon has always featured prominently in Japanese art, and not just the Harvest Moon in September, the equinox as such is a bit more difficult to depict. But, thankfully, science and technology as applied by NASA come to the rescue.

Equinox September 2022