:17:02
Perhaps they read only in the street,
or perhaps they just pretend to read—these yellow men.
:17:08
I make my appointments at Kinokuniya, the big bookshop in Shinjuku.
:17:12
The graphic genius that allowed the Japanese to invent CinemaScope
:17:15
ten centuries before the movies compensates a little
for the sad fate of the comic strip heroines,
:17:20
victims of heartless story writers and of castrating censorship.
:17:23
Sometimes they escape, and you find them again on the walls.
:17:26
The entire city is a comic strip.
:17:37
It's Planet Manga.
:17:41
How can one fail to recognize the statuary
that goes from plasticized baroque to Stalin central?
:17:45
And the giant faces with eyes that weigh down
on the comic book readers,
:17:52
pictures bigger than people, voyeurizing the voyeurs.
:18:02
At nightfall the megalopolis breaks down into villages,
:18:04
with its country cemeteries in the shadow of banks,
with its stations and temples.
:18:09
Each district of Tokyo once again becomes
a tidy ingenuous little town, nestling amongst the skyscrapers.
:18:28
The small bar in Shinjuku reminded him of that Indian flute
whose sound can only be heard by whomever is playing it.
:18:33
He might have cried out if it was in a Godard film or a Shakespeare play,
"Where should this music be?"
:18:41
Later he told me he had eaten at the restaurant in Nishi-nippori
where Mr. Yamada practices the difficult art of 'action cooking.'
:18:54
He said that by watching carefully Mr. Yamada's gestures
and his way of mixing the ingredients
:18:58
one could meditate usefully on certain fundamental concepts
common to painting, philosophy, and karate.