Speaking of Japanese stuff, I’m going to have to geek out a little now.
I have been wracking my brain trying to remember the author of this story I remember from Japanese literature class. It’s about this hole in the ground that people keep throwing stuff into, because it just goes and goes and goes and stays there, and there aren’t any side effects.
Voila!
Solution to where to store waste!
Anyway, I don’t want to spoil it but obviously that kind of thing is totally unsustainable.
Had I known the word “unsustainable” at the time I was in college, I would have tried to translate it.
So obviously I can’t just sit around and wonder, and Googling in Japanese is hard if you don’t have a start point. You know, actually, I’m just saying that. I’ve never Googled anything in Japanese and I have no idea if it’s hard or easy. I guess that would have been one way to go about finding out the author. But it was easier to just write to my old professor.
Hoshi Shin’ichi
So I got the original story from my Japanese language professor John Mertz, and he sent me the story Ooi Dete Koi (pictured here in the background). It’s by Japanese short story writer Hoshi Shin’ichi, who Akira’s just confirmed what Wikipedia says, that he specializes in sci-fi and fantasy.
Obviously sci-fi writing—in Japanese or not—is right up my alley, since I was an Isaac Asimov fan growing up. I sort of mentioned that on this post about artificial intelligence.
If anybody is wondering where this sudden outpouring of fantasy interest is coming from, I just finished reading the weird, intriguing and incredibly depressing book The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Reviewed in the New York Times by one Michiko Kakutani, whose name is… Japanese!
More Japan stuff
We’re kind of connected to Japan a bunch here at the Design Kompany blog. But it’s not like we’re Japanophiles or anything. I like to write about all kinds of countries, like India, for example.
Check out our brand identity design for the Japanese restaurant Miyabi and this brand design for a job recruitment site.
We also made the menu design for Maekawa and did some layout for YouMaga.
Also see these cultural notes Akira wrote about Haruki Murakami. And my ramblings about Jun’ichirō Tanizaki.
But my favorite post so far relating to Japan is this one about the time Design Kompany met SJ’s dad, a “samurai” designer. Yeah!
Here’s a short summary of his bio and a couple of videos I stumbled on. It’s very well done!
Japanise it’s a hard language and if you know it more power to you.