Todd "Road Warrior" Shimoda wrapped up his month-long book tour with two events in Seattle last week joined by his wife and collaborator, artist Linda Shimoda. They spoke at two historic venues in Seattle's Japantown. Our intent was to get Todd and Linda out of the bookstores and into settings that better reflect what they (and we) were trying to do with Oh! At Kobo, Linda's art hung on the wall as Todd stood and read. At the Panama Cafe, her art was spread across a long wooden table for everyone to look at and -- carefully -- touch. Todd introduced the audiences to Zack, Kumiko and Professor Imai and talked about Japan's suicide clubs and mono no aware. The audiences at both events were well-informed and asked insightful questions. And Linda talked about the art, how she creates the art separately from Todd, only knowing the outline of the story, and how she boiled down Zack's emotional struggle to one of fear and hope. "The people driven by fear often get more done because they're more grounded," she said at one point. I have been thinking about this line for the last week or so; I think she's on to something.

Despite the sunny weather, both events had respectable crowds. But I wonder what the average person thinks when they get invited to a "reading." Is that a bit like being asked to look at a friend's vacation pictures? I mean, if you have a deep interest in, say, Lake Chelan, then maybe your friends' photos of their trip there will hold your interest. For others, the thought of faking it through a bunch of photos is enough to come up with elaborate excuses.

Not to say that our events were boring. Far from it. But they were also far from ordinary readings. In fact, I think we need a new name to correctly denote what we're doing: Making of a literary object? Fusing of art and lit? Story-telling through words, art and design? Those are all lame, but you get the idea.

I discussed this idea with Todd a bit on the way home from Bellingham: Do readings need a revamp? We believe so, and that's what we were trying to do at Kobo and Panama. For Chin Music, the process of making the book is the story in some respects, and one of the highlights for me was listening to Todd, Linda and Josh Powell, our designer, discuss how the book came together. It's a fascinating story because at each step -- and I'm not making this up -- there was an "Oh!" reaction from those involved. Oh! at Todd's page-turner novel and how it ends. Oh! at the first sight of the artwork Linda sent to Seattle. And Oh! when Josh found a way to fuse the art even deeper into the narrative.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is twofold: Thank you Todd, Linda and our hosts at Kobo and the Panama for offering us such historic spaces to talk about our book. And to all our friends who may have shied away from the events because you thought they'd be boring -- we don't blame you! But think again, because we're finding new ways to talk about books just as we're reconnecting with the old way of making them.

Thanks to Kevin Kiuchi of the North American Post for the photo of the Kobo event at the top. Thanks to Marc Jacobson for the other two shots of the Panama Cafe.

As I was writing my last blogpost about the Panama Hotel, one of two stops on Todd Shimoda's booktour in Seattle, it occurred to me that the other stop, at the Kobo Gallery, has just as colorful a history and deserves its own entry.

Kobo occupies the location of the former Higo Variety Store, originally known as the “Higo 10 Cents Store,” once a fixture in Seattle's Nihonmachi (Japantown). Founded by Sanzo Murakami 100 years ago this year (though at a different location), it was named after Murakami's home prefecture on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Around the store, you'll find samples of its frog logo, so chosen because the Japanese word for frog, “kaeru,” is a homonym for the word meaning “to return,” thus emphasizing the reminders of the old country Japanese immigrants could buy there.

You can still see some of the items that immigrants would buy, displayed in some of the original glass cases that lined the store. The owners of Kobo Gallery, John Bisbee and Binko Chiong-Bisbee, have devoted one wall of the store to its history, displaying old relics once sold there such as paper fans and boxes of split-toe “tabi” socks, meant to be worn with sandals or wooden clogs. They've even asked a researcher to comb through the items left over the years, to develop a clearer picture of the store and its relation to the Japanese immigrant community.

During World War II, Sanzo Murakami and his family, like other Japanese American Seattlites, were sent to an internment camp (in their case, Minidoka in Idaho). The Murakamis boarded up their windows and even brought a crowbar with them among their few possessions to Minidoka, so they could get back in later. But their store, unlike many in Nihonmachi, wasn't broken into or occupied by others. According to “family lore” as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put it, the store was watched over by the Murakamis' tenants Julius Blumenthal and his half-brother Maurice Zimmer, who ran a pawnshop next door. They reportedly even paid the Murakamis' bills.

But a new tragedy struck after the War ended. Sanzo Murakami died just 8 days after returning to Seattle. The store was then managed by his son Kay and two daughters, Aya and Masa Murakami, until the family sold it to the Bisbees in 2004.

Not all the treasures in the store come from the prewar era. Aya and Masa Murakami acted as schoolteachers at Minidoka and held onto a collection of some 40 short autobiographies written by their elementary school-aged pupils, including descriptions of their experiences in the internment camp. The Bisbees hope to publish or display these handwritten compositions in an exhibit in the future.

Todd will be speaking about Oh! and his research into "mono no aware" ('the sadness of things') at Kobo on Thursday, June 25, at 6pm

Haruki Murakami's new two-volume set, 1Q84 (an homage to Orwell; the Q is a homonym for the Japanese word for 9), is selling at an unbelievable rate in Japan. Here's the latest from the Japanese Writers House:

" Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, 1Q84 (Books 1 and 2), was released by Shinchosha on May 29. The publisher committed to additional printings on three consecutive business days, bringing the total number of copies (Books 1 and 2 combined) through the sixth printing of June 4 to 960,000.

"The fact that Book 1 sold out before the second printing reached the marketplace was particularly noteworthy. Amazon Japan was not expected to receive copies until June 10. The novel (both volumes combined) ranks sixteenth overall on Japan’s bestseller list for the first half of the year (December 2008 through May 2009), despite the fact that it was actually on sale for only five days during this period. It occupies the first or second place on the bestseller list at a number of bookstores. Shincho described the sales as "perplexing," exceeding all expectations.

"In response to the unexpected sales, Shinchosha issued additional printings on three consecutive business days: a third printing of 50,000 copies for each volume on May 28, a fourth printing of 50,000 copies of each volume on May 29, and a fifth printing of 50,000 copies of Book 1 and 40,000 copies of Book 2 on June 1. Following the second printing, additional shipments are scheduled to follow regularly after June 8. According to a representative of Shincho, "the soonest we could issue one million copies would be the end of June."

Wow! If only Chin Music Press could be so "perplexed." Our buddy Roland Kelts (Kuhaku, Art Space Tokyo) has written an illuminating piece on Murakami for the Japanese Writers House website. Also, it's interesting to note that the buzz for this book was started by literally doing nothing:

Shincho has employed the unusual method of releasing only the title, price, and two-volume format of the novel, concealing all information about the content. Following the release of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore seven years ago, many readers stated that they "would have rather not know the content of the novel beforehand." In consultation with Murakami, the company decided to conceal the contents until publication. As an additional result, demand for paperback versions of "Kafka on the Shore" (volumes 1 and 2) had also increased by June 2, totaling approximately 740,000 copies.

Todd Shimoda, whose newest novel "Oh! A mystery of mono no aware" we just published this month, is now zigzagging across the country on a 9-city booktour. Those of us officebound in Seattle are particularly looking forward to a special event here in town at the Panama Hotel & Café on June 27.

Arranged by "Oh!" book designer Josh Powell (who under another of his many hats, works for Books Kinokuniya, which is the sponsor of the event), it will take place at a wonderful tea shop located right in the heart of Seattle’s former Nihonmachi (Japan Town).

The event, like another one held on Thursday, June 25, at the Kobo Gallery, also in Seattle, will feature both the author and the artist, as well as display copies of the original artwork used in the book.

But what will be most unique about that particular event is the site itself. A former workingman's hotel, designed by Seattle's first Japanese architect, the Panama Hotel became a drop-off point for belongings left there by Japanese residents of Seattle before they were taken to their Internment Camps in March 1942. And you can still see them while you sip your tea – through glass plates in the floor that reveal the abandoned belongings in the basement below.

Earlier this year a new novel was published featuring the Panama Hotel at its heart. Called “The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” by former Seattlite Jamie Ford, it's mostly a sweet romance between a Chinese boy and Japanese girl in prewar Seattle. But what I enjoyed most about it was the light it shined on Seattle’s dark ethnic history. I find it very ironic that Seattle -- which is ostensibly so liberal and progressive today -- is built on serial ethnic cleansing (Native American in 1855, Chinese in 1886, and Japanese in 1942).

What's even worse is how little current residents know about it. A couple of years ago, my family and I went to the Strawberry Festival on Vashon Island, an island in the Puget Sound about 30 minutes’ferry ride from Seattle. What immediately struck our eye was that there were no strawberries and nobody knew why. After a little digging (and with some help from Dave Neiwert's book "Strawberry Days"), we learned that Vashon as well as Bellevue and other farm areas (now suburbs) near Seattle had been painstakingly cleared by Japanese farmers, who turned them into strawberry fields before WWII. But that past (when Japanese were Seattle's largest ethnic group) is nearly invisible today -- since the Japanese who returned after Internment largely did not go back to farming – except at special places like the Panama Hotel.

*For those also interested in finding out more about the Chinese expulsion from Seattle, Jamie Ford has also written a short story about that too.

CREDIT: The photo was taken by radio producer Dave Weinberg, now of WWOZ in New Orleans. He produced a very evocative story on the Panama Hotel last summer, after actually living in a room there for four months. I'd also recommend viewing his photo slideshow, which includes current and historic photos of inside the hotel, including some of the bathhouse, which remains the only intact prewar Japanese bathhouse in America.

And what a dream it is:

Picture a world of small, good regional publishers like Two Dollar Radio, Seattle publisher Chin Music Press, and Akashic Books printing beautiful books with high literary merit and authors making good, honest blue-collar salaries (instead of grossly overinflated six-figure book deals). Frankly, that sounds like my dream industry.

Ours too. Of course, Paul Constant goes on to describe a less dreamy scenario in which "the idea of reading printed books will be a tiny boutique experience, not unlike collecting vinyl." I must admit that very thought has crossed my mind. But if that's how the die is cast, so be it. I'm just happy I'm alive at a time when so much is in flux in publishing.

Read the rest of Paul's report from Book Expo America here.

The buzz continues to grow for Oh!, with a review in the Orlando Sentinel. My favorite bit:

The book's a conversation piece in more ways than one: the presentation from Seattle's Chin Music Press shows an amazing attention to detail and mood. The pages between chapters are peppered with illustrations from Shimoda's wife Linda that capture the contemplative feel, and there are "exhibits," or bits of research along the way revealing the background of mono no aware.

We also received this wonderful review of our press from a blogger in Brooklyn. Here's a snippet:

I think we’re in good shape if Seattle’s Chin Music Press is any indication of the future of independent publishing. At this point they’ve got a small list of books but from where I stand they’re doing everything right.

Todd and Linda Shimoda have helped us make it clear: Our books are a response to the times not only because of the timely stories they tell but in how they strike a counterpoint to the disposable culture around us. A well-made thing still has meaning, whether it's a smartphone or a hardcover book.

We are thrilled to announce that National Public Radio featured our very own Oh! in its special on books to read this summer. Lucia Silva, buyer at Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City, CA, wrote the review. which ends with this line:

The book itself is a fine work of art, with a gorgeous, embossed cover, rice-paper-thin pages, and textured paper inserts with illustrations that offer clues to Zack's fate — a triumphant kick in the pants for anyone who doubts the future of paper-and-ink books.

As talk of e-books increases, Chin Music Press is offering a counterpoint: E-books can replace hastily made books, books that are thrown together without much thought — but try to replace our books, and you'll get a kick in the pants!

The NPR review also includes an excerpt of Chapter 10 along with two of Linda Shimoda's original pieces of art ("Sight" is reproduced here too, but on the NPR site, you can enlarge the pieces and get a better look.)

We're giddy, I admit, but there's lots of work to be done to make sure that Oh! gets its due in the marketplace and Chin Music Press becomes a stronger presence in book publishing. Lots of work to do, but man, this is a big help!

Now that BookExpo is behind us, we've launched a cross-country tour to promote Oh! A mystery of mono no aware. Here are the dates and places of future events:

Wednesday, June 10
Inkwood Books
216 S. Armenia Ave., Tampa, FL 33609-3310
6pm
Tel: 813-253-2638

Friday, June 12
Urban Think!
625 East Central Blvd., Orlando, FL 32801
6:30pm
Tel: 407-650-8004

Monday, June 15
Boulder Bookstore
1107 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO 80302
7:30pm
Tel: 303-447-2074

Thursday, June 18
Readers Cove Bookstore
1001 E. Harmony Rd. Unit C, Fort Collins, CO 80525
5:30pm
Tel: 970-226-1618

Saturday, June 20
Eastwind Books
2066 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704.
3:30pm
Tel: 510-548-2350

Tuesday, June 23
Village Books
1200 11th St., Bellingham, WA
7pm
Tel: 360-733-1599

Thursday, June 25
Kobo Gallery
602-608 S. Jackson St., Seattle, WA 98102
6pm
Tel: 206-755-8900

Saturday, June 27
Panama Hotel & Café (sponsored by Books Kinokuniya)
607 S. Main, Seattle
6pm
Tel: 206-223-9242

Incidentally, we chose some of the locations based on reader feedback. This is how our event at Malaprop's in Asheville, NC, was described by the Mountain Xpress:

"Bands tend to tour where their fan bases are located. So why shouldn’t authors do the same? Hawaii-based author Todd Shimoda (according to his press agent) scheduled a “stop in Asheville purely in response to a personal request by a local fan of Todd’s that he make a stop there, describing it as a ‘great book town.’”

Above: Hanging with Eric (and Brian, entrenched behind the books) Obenauf of Two Dollar Radio. Left: Jenn and I at the CMP booth.

Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the publishing industry, we had a blast at Book Expo America last weekend. I think this Los Angeles Times article sums it up best (and not just because they called our booth-mates Two Dollar Radio "up and coming"): For small press the future is wide open like never before.

The hysteria over e-books at BEA was a bit pathetic, The large publishers were wringing their hands over the digital shift or pretending to be with the times (a Book Espresso Machine, anyone?). I began telling people that Chin Music Press was Seattle's antidote to the Kindle, which got a good response most of the time. Suddenly, publishing well-made books was an act of rebellion.

The champagne flutes came out a couple of aisles over from us after Perseus made a book in 48 hours. A gimmick is a gimmick is a gimmick and in the end who cares how fast you make a crappy book? The New York Times wrap-up of BEA concentrated on the surge of interest in e-books, countering it all with this gem from Seattle's very own Sherman Alexie:

Inevitably there was a backlash. At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”

BEA always embodies the crass and commercial, so that wasn't a surprise. What seemed different this time was it didn't feel intimidating at all. It was if people realized the crass and commercial just doesn't work as well as making interesting books on thin margins does. It may sound idealistic, but I walked away from this BEA feeling that now it's our turn.

If you are a nerd like me and care about things like the inner workings of Japanese politics (Buddha help you!), don't forget that we operate a blog for Minoru Morita, one of the most quoted political analysts from Japan. He writes a weekly commentary (which we translate), and there are links to writings by our friend Takehiko Kambayashi (Kuhaku, Curing Japan's America Addiction), who recently started a very interesting column for The Diplomat.

When it comes to Japan, we offer all flavors.

Which reminds me: if you are attending Book Expo America, come by the Chin Music Press-Two Dollar Radio booth on Friday from 3-4 for a sake-tasting party. Come say kanpai! with us.

The email newsletter Shelf Awareness gave Oh! a wonderful review last week. Read it here. It also provided a shelf talker after the review:

Shelf Talker: A fascinating glimpse into a little-known dark side of Japanese culture as well as a compelling account of an obsession with feeling emotional epiphany at any price.

You never know how a given review is going to affect your business. Sometimes the impact of a good review is hard to see; other times a mention in a lesser-known publication leads to a bunch of orders. The Shelf Awareness review had our phones ringing and our email inboxes filling up. We were duly impressed!

A book exchange in El Cerrito, California, limits customers to 50 free books each. The environmentalist and avid reader in me applauds the Bay Area Free Book Exchange for promoting reuse. It's a much better solution than remaindering. The small publisher in me swallows hard and heads to Craig's List to peruse the job postings.

As a society, we have more books than we can handle. I get that. But I cringe at the thought of boxes of CMP titles lining shelves at book exchanges. I'm not particularly proud of this. I should be for free, DIY culture, I tell myself. But like parents who turn their back on the public school system because their little angel will get a better education in a private school, I think of my little CMP books and I start getting all conservative. They must be worth something, I tell myself.

We've gone so slow as a press -- seven titles in five years -- and we've taken such care with each book that we haven't had the heart to throw any books away. Until recently. We were clearing out a warehouse in Tokyo and we had to make a decision -- ship certain books back to Seattle or chuck them in the recycling bin. Most we found homes for, but some we had to chuck. It felt like failure. Donating them to a free book exchange must feel a little better, I suppose, but only a little.

These free exchanges just reinforce the idea that we should go slow, publish only the books we're very proud of, and when the inevitable day of remaindering comes for this or that title, suck it up and find the local free book exchange. But until that day comes, we'll work our behinds off to keep our books out of those socially responsible exchanges.

Here are a few thoughts on the design of Oh! for anyone interested:

Needless to say, Oh! was a pure joy to design. I not only had Todd’s amazing story to work with, but Linda’s gorgeous art as well—nearly 100 pieces in total. It was great to have a project that was so visually rich right from the beginning.

In the book, each chapter opens with a small pen and ink sketch, an “exhibit” from Zack’s sketchbook illustrating something Zack sees in that particular chapter. Then there are the full-color pieces: giclee prints of color photographs with wash on rice paper, and Linda’s own calligraphy in sumi ink on top. The sketches are treated much more as distinct entities in the book design, clearly demarcating each new chapter. The giclee prints, however, have been intertwined much more deeply with the narrative and the text. They follow a progression; they are slowly revealed, in a sense, in much the same way as Zack progresses emotionally throughout the novel.

We'll be exhibiting our wares at Book Expo America in NYC later this month thanks to an invitation from Two Dollar Radio to share their booth. They are fun folks to hang out with, and their books are edgy and eclectic. Check out this piece in the Village Voice about Eliza and Eric, the founders of the press.

The novel arrived this weekend. It's beautiful. Thank you Sirivatana in Thailand for an excellent job.

The back cover features a surprise under the wrapper -- the back of the cover image.

Click through for a couple of photos of the inside spreads featuring artwork by Linda Shimoda.

I enjoyed hanging out at Sakura Con a couple of weekends ago with Roland Kelts. I also enjoyed watching teenagers dressed up as anime characters and pulling out wads of bills to buy signed copies of Roland's Japanamerica and our very own Kuhaku. Check out Roland's article on the economic effects of anime fests to get a sense of what I'm talking about.

It seems to me that as anime conventions grow, the young participants naturally grow curious about the real Japan. They are CMP's future readers. And there are more and more of them every year.

On the other side of the world, we're getting ready to share a booth at Book Expo America with our good friends at $2 Radio. It will be a blast, for sure. Todd Shimoda will be flying in from Hawaii to hang out with us and talk about his new novel, Oh! Yet I can't help but think that BEA is a dinosaur. I mean, the exhibit wanted to charge us $120 to rent a stool for the weekend. (We're bringing lawn chairs instead.) Do they still live in an alternative universe where three-martini lunches and lavish expense accounts are the norm? I will enjoy reporting on that directly from the floor of the BEA at the end of May (that is, if I can afford the wifi connection).

In the meantime, as we charter Chin Music's course, I'm thinking more anime fests, fewer stodgy book affairs (FWIW, I had a great time at AWP, and I will probably have a blast at BEA -- but at some point a business has to follow the money).

So if you're about to pitch a book to Chin Music, consider that you may be hawking it dressed as Pikachu or Naruto. If you're cool with that, then we'd love to see what you've written.

I just recently finished reading 2008’s Best American Nonrequired Reading and came across two separate selections that seemed to compliment what I had felt while reading Oh!, in addition to some of the things I’ve mentioned in these posts. The first rather unlikely one being an article from the New Yorker about marine vigilante Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Watson speaks of artistic and cultural achievements such as architecture, music, and film as “expressions of human vanity, ‘worthless to the earth.’” He points out our misplaced priorities: holding art as priceless, whereas nature is something that can be destroyed without a second thought. It seems to argue directly against that Adams’ quote, in which art is seen as a sign of human advancement. Although something tells me that Watson would be somewhat drawn to the mono no aware attitude towards nature: which upholds a symbiotic relationship between man and nature, rather than mankind’s current view of themselves as masters of nature.

Now this is nice:

Not only is Shimoda a consummate storyteller with a clean, relaxed, graceful style, but the book itself is a work of art ... Chin Music Press has created a book of visual delight that is sure to cause a little mono no aware in book lovers.

We're days away from getting Oh! delivered and then off to bookstores. This review is a nice little teaser of what's to come.

Returning to the idea of those “aesthetic moments” I mentioned in my previous post, I am amazed at the force with which memories of my time in Japan can come back to me. By listening to a particular album I can be instantly transported to my final months in Japan or by smelling a particular fragrance I return to the time I spent traveling through a distant part of the country. Those songs or that fragrance somehow return me to the heart of the event. How I felt emerging from a bath house into an early spring night in Gujo-hachiman or watching the glowing fireflies on a humid summer night, in a marshland in Kitamoto, a town where nature is still allowed to creep into one’s daily life, with a close friend who shared a love of nature and art and with whom I’ve now fallen out of touch. It’s amazing what must be going on in our brains during those moments, when those memories come flooding back, and how little we understand it—a topic also touched upon in Oh!

It was my original intention to write a much shorter post on our forthcoming book Oh!, by Todd Shimoda, linking it with some general thoughts on art. The post, however, kept ballooning in size as I made numerous, seemingly random connections to other things I had been thinking about, growing to be perhaps too long for one entry. I’ve decided to divide it up into three separate parts which I’ll post over the next few days.

Throughout the time I was working on the design for our forthcoming book, Oh! A Mystery of Mono no Aware, I’d had print-outs and proofs of the book strewn about my apartment. A particular page, which I had read numerous times before, had been lying on top of a pile of papers on my coffee table. One day I passed by this pile of papers as I had done many times before. On this particular instance, however, glancing over a certain passage, I made a connection I had not made previously. First, the passage:

If we were to develop an artful way of living based on mono no aware, it would be mono-no-aware-dō, or the “way of experiencing the deep emotional significance of objects and events.” Or more concisely, the “way of aesthetic perception.” A guiding principle of mono-no-aware-dō would be to understand the significance of the object or event. In Japanese, this is called mono no kokoro (“the heart of the thing”) and koto no kokoro (“the heart of the event”). To be aware of the heart of something means to be sensitive to mono no aware.