Hemingway and Fitzgerald are probably rolling over in their graves. Cellphone novels? Well, as you know if you read this blog, they are sweeping Japan, and perhaps the first American cellphone novel is still years away, but it will come. At least that's what I argue in my latest piece for Japan Infusion.

Plus our favorite sushi chef, Taichi, writes about how disgusted he was at Bobby Flay and his jingoistic fans on Iron Chef. Is Mr. Flay the Bill O-Reilly of the culinary world?

And now that you're hungry, Takumi writes about appreciating good home cooking. (That's baby Takumi in her dad's lap).

The deadline for Hitotoki - Washington, DC entries was yesterday, but we're extending it ever so slightly. So anyone who has a submission they'd like to be considered for the DC launch, run, don't crawl, to the Hitotoki DC page and grab the submissions form. Thanks!

We're not shy at CMP, so when Nik Mercer of Anthem magazine asked if he could interview us for the magazine's website, we said, "Hell yes," then proceeded to talk over each other until Nik had enough to emerge with this nifty little interview.. Anybody else want to chat?

We're extremely excited to announce a project that has been under wraps for ages — Art Space Tokyo. The book is set to come off the printers at the end of March. To put it simply, it's a guide to twelve art spaces in the city. Some are well known, some aren't even known by those in the art world. We've used these twelve spaces as pivot points to discuss, through interviews and essays, all sorts of topics related to art in Tokyo. It's a fascinating read and I'll be posting more information on the project and how it came to be in the coming weeks.

But for now, you can get more info and take advantage of a $22-free-shipping-worldwide pre-order deal (I plan on posting something about the economics of pre-ordering too) over on the book's homepage: artspacetokyo.com. As always, thank you for your support.

Last of the Red Hot Poppas and our favorite fictional governor, Rex LaSalle, got a nice writeup in the American Spectator about 10 days ago. It was woven into a piece favorably comparing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to Barack Obama (!). Well, all I'll say on that topic is the conservatives over at the Spectator have impeccable literary taste. Here's a blurb:

... a rambunctious (and at times uproarious) fictional ride through Louisiana's infamous political circus.

Check out the whole article here.

Pingmag has a nice interview with Sumie Kawakami online. Sumie, as you all know, is the author of Goodbye Madame Butterfly and this interview illuminates some of the efforts she went through to put the book together.

Ping: Your stories are intensely personal. How did you get all the women to open up to you?

Sumie: The ones in the book are just a fraction of what I’ve collected: One woman, after reading my manuscript, said “I can’t accept this” and kept denying what I had written; some kept asking for revisions over and over; others, hearing that the book will be published in English, ran their Japanese stories through translation software to read it in English. Getting your own story published is a big deal even if it’s under a fake name. I feel that negotiating little details in the story with the women took much longer than the interview itself. The book also includes stories that barely passed the women’s approval and some stories have been dramatically edited due to technical constraints. In that respect, what ended up in the book is the pure essence.

I believe that at the heart of human existence is the desire to be heard and to be understood. And if the story is as intensely personal as one’s sex life or love life, the desire to share one’s story may be even stronger.

It's also available in Japanese too.

The Danish newspaper Information featured a big write-up of Goodbye Madame Butterfly on Friday, complete with a large picture of Sumie Kawakami. This follows up articles in Australia and Japan in recent weeks. The international buzz for this book is alive and well.

For our Danish friends, here's a snippet from 'Butterfly' as translated by the paper:

Hideo Sasaski, sexfrivillig, 44:

På sine fridage forvandler han sig til Hide-san, et tilfældigt kælenavn, hans kunder benytter, og tilbyder sine tjenester til ensomme kvinder på udkig efter sex. Hide-san er ikke prostitueret - han får ingen penge for det, og hans tjenester udføres helt frivilligt.

En typisk morgen for Hide-san møder han en kvinde til morgenmad, efterfulgt af et par saftige timer på et kærlighedshotel. Når han har sagt farvel, fortsætter han til en tidlig frokost med en anden kvinde efterfulgt af endnu en fysisk præstation på et hotel. Han møder endnu en kvinde klokken tre om eftermiddagen, endnu én klokken seks, og tager derpå hjem efter en lang dags frivilligt arbejde.

"Problemet er, at når et par bliver gift og får et barn eller to, mister manden sin seksuelle interesse for sin kone. Han begynder at behandle hende som sin mor," siger hr. Kim leder af en sexklinik. Han tilskriver dette, hvad han kalder "den umodne mandlige psykologi", fremherskende blandt japanske mænd. "Modne mænd er svære at finde i Japan. De kan ikke slippe billedet af deres mor som den ideelle kvinde. For dem er kvinder enten mødre eller elskerinder, og mange fortæller, at det at elske med deres koner føles som incest," siger mr. Kim.

A friend of ours is working on a translation of the piece. We'll offer that here as soon as he's done. And just so it's clear, we are not condoning liberal use of the word "sexfrivillig" on your next trip to Copenhagen.

There's a wonderful copy of a recent TV show about Japanese book designer Shin Sobue available on You Tube. It's in Japanese so you may not catch all the nuances, but it offers a good peek into the "otaku" style workspace and ethic of Japanese creatives.

The main portion of the video revolves around Sobue trying to produce an "inside out" book. That is, where the endpapers are on the outside and the cover on the inside. The men in suits are from the bindery and, to say the least, not particularly enthusiastic about the idea. Mainly because they won't be able to guarantee the integrity of the finished product. Anyone who has tried to design something that pushes the production standards can understand the breathless trepidation of seeing his "vision" fulfilled that Sobue is so clearly feeling in that meeting.

I think my favorite scene is with Sobue at the book bindery where he pulls a piece off the production line and sends a shiver of worry into the workforce of the factory.

It's too bad we don't see the end product. And I partly wonder if the book ever got made. Or maybe it's yet to be published. I feel a book like that would be prominently displayed in the new releases section and I've yet to see it in my regular bookstore visits over the last couple of months.

Anyway, a fascinating little documentary into the Japanese bookmaking world.

Brett Bull, aka Captain Japan, brings us a special review of oddball inventor Dr. NakaMats' Brain Drink. If you've never heard of Doc NakaMats, you're about to learn about one of Japan's true eccentrics:

n 2005, Dr. Nakamats (he prefers to drop the "u" from his name) won an Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the Nobel Prize, for his practice of photographing each meal he has eaten since the age of 42, the year he believes is the start of one's downward slide in life.

Read the rest of the review on the world's greatest literary site dedicated to canned beverages.

The first AQ/CMP Hitotoki event, Hitoban, held last Tuesday, January 29th was a wonderful success. The Pink Cow graciously filled our gullets with some of the best Mexican style eats any of us had ever had in Tokyo. The Hitotoki readings were short, punchy, engaging and, sometimes, like in the case of Momus', a little bit scary. But scary with a wink and a twinkle.

You can catch all the excitement on Flickr! Because, yes ... your eyes, however tired they may be, aren't playing tricks on you. For the first time in history, we helped put on a literary event that was photographed and documented. Finally living proof that all our talk about readings and launch parties aren't fantastical aftershocks of too much LSD.

Thanks especially to the readers: Jean Snow, Shinjo-san, David Cady, Aneta, Guttersnipe Das, Ashley Rawlings, Momus, Sugawara-san and last, sometimes forgotten but certainly not least, Uleshka. And of course to HIllel for gracing us with a spontaneous reading from one of his short stories. All in all, a lot of fun and you can count on us trying to duplicate that same fleeting, impossible feeling you get when you find true love in a literary event a few months down the line.

Sumie Kawakami was interviewed for a trend story on sexless relationships that appeared in this weekend's Sydney Morning Herald. Several of the women featured in the book are also mentioned in the piece. It's gratifying for us to see a trend story on the subject, because we've felt all along that Sumie is on to something here: Sexuality in advanced societies is increasingly dysfunctional and it just so happens that the Japanese women in Goodbye Madame Butterfly are ahead of the trend because they're willing to talk honestly about it.