Suzuki Books

Not much new information can be found in this book you can't currently find on the internet.

This is the only book available for those few who manage to actually see some of Suzuki's incredible films. If you've managed to catch Branded to Kill or Tokyo Drifter at a festival or on video release, here is a starting point to chase down the rest of the films by Japan's most startling director. Amply illustrated with stills (B & W only, unfortunately as you miss the bold colour compositions that became a Suzuki trademark), and covering a selection of his films from 1959 through to 1981, with a complete filmography and a little background on the director, this book covers enough ground to give you a good sketch of the man and his work. However, there is still room for someone to write an English language definitive Suzuki reference.

With an output of 40 features in a 10 year period from 1956 - 1966 Suzuki was an incredibly prolific studio director for Nikkatsu (who specialised in Yakuza and "Roman Porno" -ie Romantic Pornography, or soft porn). However, he got increasingly sick of the hack scripts he was assigned to and began to turn his routine genre films into fractured, eccentric pieces full of visual bravado, garish colour, overtly theatrical staging and acting heavily influenced by Kabuki. He pushed the envelope too far with Branded to Kill and got the boot for making "incomprehensible" films. It seems that he was actually the victim of a cash crisis at Nikkatsu - he later sued for wrongful dismissal and won , but was rewarded with a blackball by the industry and a 10 year hiatus churning out essays and advertising to survive.

He is still around, doing occasional cameos (Cold Fever, playing Masatoshi Nagase's grandpa), scorning journalists and writing the most caustic advice column in Japan, "Ask Seijun".....

good but not as user freindly as i thought it would be. if you want to do one specific adjustment you have to read how to take they entire part down to figure out how to.

While most of this is in japanese the photo's are first class especially the close up on the first couple of pages

This 20-page book is a short introduction to the philosophy behind the Suzuki method of teaching piano. It gives very general guidelines on how piano teaching should be tackled. It provides the reader with a general idea on the Suzuki method but it is not very useful for someone interested in learning how to teach piano. It does not include any specifics and merely refers to the other books of the author about the method. The author's statements are not well justified and are only bases on the personal experience of the author. Some of them make sense but not all of them. It contains no figures nor music scores.

This is a decent, informative book, with plenty of illustrations and descriptions of the major concepts in shodô --- including kana calligraphy. However, I'm afraid its intended audience is unclear. People who have access to a shodô teacher already know everything the book covers, and if you want to learn by yourself you'll find it lacking in details (the section on the elementary "ei" character, for example, doesn't have detailed instructions on how to do each stroke).

This book is written by the wife of Shinichi Suzuki, founder of Talent Education and the Suzuki method. Waltraud (Prange) Suzuki shares how she and Suzuki met, describes their wedding, and shares stories of their years together. Her story offers a unique glimpse at a more personal side of Suzuki. She also shares her own trials as she endures World War II as a foreigner, a German no less, in Japan.

Mrs. Suzuki tells her story candidly and reveals herself to be a resourceful woman and a wonderful help mate to her husband as they both work on his dream of educating small children in music.

The Plundered Seas by Machael Berrill gives an overall view of the situation of the major fisheries i the world. The book is not a scientific but journalistic work which make it easy to read. However its angel is from a sustainable biologic and economic point. with out getting into the detail of explaining the deper theoretical reasoning for these views. A good book for somebody who wants an overall view of the state of the world fishery, both as a profesionall in the industry but primarely as somebody that is not familiar with the problems that the world fishery is facing

Meimu, Birthday (Dark Horse, 2004)

Birthday, known in its film incarnation as Ring 0, is exactly what the film title would lead one to expect: a prequel to Ring. It's told in three interconnected short stories,that focus on Sadako (if you have somehow not yet found yourself involved some way in the Ring trilogy, read the first novel, or watch the first film; you'll get up to speed pretty quickly. Note: Ring Two is an "offshoot," not the actual sequel [that's Spiral, the film version of which was called Rasen and has not been remade in America as of this writing], and so you may get thrown off track if you think of it as canon).

I can't really call Birthday bad, per se, but am more than willing to entertain the idea that I'm not doing so because I have a fondness for Koji Suzuki's wonderful novels and Hideo Nakata's film versions. What Birthday is is more disjointed. It's hard, despite the presence of Sadako, to figure out exactly how it all fits in some pieces of the story (not to mention how we get from point A to point B; where does the title [and last frame] of "Lemon Heart" come from, anyway?). There are enough events from Ring here (told, of course, from different points of view) for us to get an anchor, but the boat itself is being battered by constantly-shifting winds.

Still, it's not a bad little book. The impressionist feel of the delivery, while sure to alienate those who like their stories straightforward, does give the whole thing a creepy sensation, and the stuff that comes at you from out of the blue (like that whole "lemon heart" thing) can be unsettling, as long as it doesn't completely jar you out of the story.

For Ring fanatics only, but will be a valuable addition to the completist's collection. ***

Takashi Susuki's "The Romance of Engines" trikes me as being three books in one.The first, the one I thought I was going to read,is an interpretation of the development of the engine thrugh history. From the earliest steam efforts of Huygens, Newcomen and Watt, through Otto, the Carnot cycle and the work of Diesel, an interesting but scattered history of engines is provided. Tales and vignettes of aero and automotive designs. successes and flops, were the most enjoyable parts of the book for me. I particularly found the story of the Packard radial diesel and the reason for its failure to be a very compelling one of which I was completely unaware. Dr. Suzuki offers his insight as to why many designs failed. Some of these are inteesting, some are obvious, and some are an academic approach to hindsight from a person of a differnt time and culture. A staunch proponent of engineering science, Dr. Suzuki emphasizes the important role of failure analysis throughout the book. The second book I found in this work might be called "Diesel Cumbustion Theory." The author was employed by the Hino concern in the field of diesel development so naturally he included a great deal of this materiel. This topic is intermixed with historical materiel in a strange nonlinear chronology. Time and time again he brings up the important role of injection timing and pressure in controling diesel emissions. Also intermixed with nearly all parts of the book is the third theme, the socialogical and ecological responsibilities of engine design and application. The need for higher effeciency and cleaner running engines must be the jprime target of all engine design engineers. Dr. Suzuki finally states the the whole world must adopt the Japanese concept of harmony with nature, as opposed to to the foolish western notion of battling against natural forces. A little jingoistic here, I would say. Some of the book seems to be devoted to a defence from the western belief that the Japanese blatantly copy others' designs. The author indicates that everyone copies and that it is just good engineering to thoroughly study the works of others. I wondered if the Hino built Renault 4CVs were any better than the French ones. There were some surprising omissions, too. The most cutting edge of engine design has often been in the motorcycle field, yet this goes almost unmentioned. This is particularly surprising coming from Japan. I also thought the Caminez and the barrel type aero engines should be inculded, as well as the two-strokes of Bourke and Orbital. Some errors were noted, including labeling an SJ Duesenberg as a V8. Overall, having had a lifelong romance with engines myself, I am glad to have this title in my library. It has a good bibliography, is nicely illustrated, including cartoons by the author himself, and offers a high degree of browsability.