Speaker: Mark Schreiber, author (The Dark Side, ...)/journalist (Tokyo Confidential, ...) butor to "Tokyo Confidential," the popular Sunday feature consisting of edited translations of articles selected from Japan's weekly tabloids, such as Shukan Shincho (Weekly Tide). The selected articles are often described as quirky, in the same sense that the Coen brothers' exceptional movie Fargo is so described. Schreiber's recent translations of less quirky material include How Canon Got Its Flash Back: The Innovative Turnaround Tactics of Fujio Mitarai (Wiley, 2004). Although he speaks, reads, and writes both Japanese and Chinese, Schreiber claims that he first came to Japan as a 17-year-old U.S. Army brat. If suitably provoked, he can support this claim by flashing a mint-condition 1965 USAFJ driver's license that includes a photograph of a person bearing a vague resemblance to himself. After attending Tokyo's International Christian Univer- In 1992, Schreiber began translating/editing material from Japan's weekly tabloids for The Mainichi Daily News. He later edited Tokyo Confidential: Titillating Tales from Japan's Wild Weeklies (The East Publications, 2001), a representative selection of articles that he and several "partners in crime" had generated for the Mainichi between 1992 and 2000. When the Mainichi ceased publication of its broadsheet edition in April 2001 and moved to the Internet, Schreiber moved to The Japan Times. Schreiber has authored two books to date, each on true crime, each reflecting both his work on "Tokyo Confidential" and his long-standing interest in crime fiction. His first book, Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan (Yenbooks, 1996), includes accounts of 16 violent crimes committed in Japan after 1945. The crimes, which were chosen by Schreiber because they were considered particularly shocking by the Japanese public, range from serial murders committed in 1946 by a lone sociopath to the gassing of several Tokyo subways in 1995 by members of AUM Shinrikyo. While doing research for Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan, Schreiber unearthed many written Japanese accounts of crime, law enforcement, and the penal system from the Edo (1603-1868), Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and early Showa (1926-1945) periods. These accounts formed the basis both for his biweekly series "Crime and Punishment in Old Japan," which ran in the Mainichi from 1998 to 2001, and for his second book The Dark Side: Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals (Kodansha International, 2001). Schreiber has compiled two other collections of articles from Japanese weekly tabloids that he and his "partners in crime" have translated/edited for The Japan Times and The Mainichi Daily News: Tabloid Tokyo: 101 Tales of Sex, Crime and the Bizarre from Japan's Wild Weeklies (Kodansha International, 2005) and Tabloid Tokyo 2: 101 (All-New) Tales of Sex, Crime and the Bizarre from Japan's Wild Weeklies (Kodansha International, 2007). On 28 June 2009, in his fourth appearance as our BookNotes lecturer, Mark Schreiber will provide a masterly overview of crime fiction set in Asia. He'll first review pre-war fictional Asian criminals and detectives, such as Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, John Marquand's Mr. Moto, and Earl Biggers's Charlie Chan, then discuss popular postwar genres, such as Earl Norman's "Kill Me" series, and finally evaluate in light of their historical forebears modern fictional detectives in Asia, such as Osawa Arimasa's Inspector Samejima in Tokyo, James Church's Inspector O in Pyongyang , and Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen in Shanghai. To gain admission to Mark Schreiber's BookNotes presentation "The Hard-Boiled (and Not-So-Hard-Boiled) East," you must purchase from Good Day Books a copy of one of the mysteries set in postwar Asia that Schreiber will discuss, such as Osawa Arimasa's Shinjuku Shark, James Church's A Corpse in the Koryo, or Qiu Xiaolong's Red Mandarin Dress. |
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