The Yellowmenace shares with you the 8 greatest Asian books of all time.
translator - R. L. Wing
HAIKU Book Review: Illustrated I Ching
Shake 3 coins, 6 times
64 future outcomes
straight or broken lines
"An easily accessible yet powerfully enlightening tool that will help readers understand the I Ching's way of knowledge and grasp the principles behind the world's most ancient book."I placed this book at #1 because of length of time it has been in my life & the impact it has continually had upon my journey. This isn't a book that sits on the shelf gathering dust, the I Ching is an advisor, my spiritual compass in times of turmoil or indecision.
2) Dance, Dance, Dance
author - Haruki Murakami
HAIKU Book Review: Dance, Dance, Dance
Motel room Sheep Man
Our past spins us like laundry
Don't forget to dance
"As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls; plays chaperone to a lovely teenage psychic; and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man."Wandering lost through life, allowing for odd events or characters to lead you to even stranger circumstances is one of Murakami's constant themes. In this book, there's a sense of excitement & adventure to the encounters, as opposed to the usual morose resignation most of his protagonists carry through his stories. The plot has some more common thriller elements that help bridge all of the places & characters, give forward momentum to the story & balance out all the weirdness.
writer & illustrator - Hideo Yamamoto
Inflict or receive
Pleasure defined by our taste
Life's a bloody mess
"Using Ichi as a tool, Jii-san plots to kill Anjou-gumi's leader and steal his money. With Anjou's death, their top yakuza, Kakihara, sets out to find the murderer. While Kakihara searches for Ichi, Ichi effortlessly kills off remaining members of the Anjou-gumi. This continuous cycle of killing and searching leads the two closer together revealing Ichi's psychological manipulation and Kakihara's obsession of pain and torture."Can human life be boiled down to control over pleasure & pain? All iterations of lifestyle derive from where we fall on the continuum between pleasure & pain, control or submission. What is your ultimate joy, being controlled by someone who orders you to cause pain? Or does forcing someone to inflict pain on you actually give you pleasure? With these extremes, Yamamoto explores a warped world of revenge & manipulation in the Yakuza underworld.
HAIKU Book Review: Norwegian Wood
Motel room Sheep Man
Our past spins us like laundry
Don't forget to dance
"Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman."
The movie disappointed me, mainly it was the character of Midori (Kiko Mizuhara - 水原 希子) being played down. Having seen Kiko act in some other projects, I can say with confidence that it was the director's fault for holding her back. In a book filled with sad, lost, depressed characters, Midori is the light, the ridiculous hope for a better tomorrow. By toning her down, the film was stuck on a single note of despair.
4) Journey to the West
compiler - Wu Cheng'en translator - Anthony C. Yu
HAIKU Book Review: Journey to the West
Our peerless talent
Training, rebellion, journey
We are Monkey Kings
The tale of Sun Wukong is a long, ancient epic, but can roughly be divide into 4 parts:
1. Becoming - From his birth out of a magic stone egg to rising as King of the Apes on the Mountain of Flower & Fruit
2. Training - Meeting his master & developing all the skills the Monkey is famous for
3. Heavenly Kingdom - Appointment to master of the royal stables in heaven to his stealing peaches & pills for immortality which resulted in a long battle with the generals in Heaven to his final capture & imprisonment.
4. Journey - Hundreds of years later, Wukong is finally given a conditional release. He's charged with protecting the monk Xuanzang on his quest to obtain the Buddhist sutras.
"The Journey to the West tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China’s most famous religious heroes, and his three supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures. Throughout the journey, the group traverses a land riddled with a multitude of obstacles, both real and fantastical. An adventure rich with danger and excitement, this is the seminal work of the Chinese literary canon."It is an amazing tale, which has influence storytelling worldwide. It is extremely long though, so I would recommend the abridged version The Monkey & the Monk adapted by Anthony C. Yu
Powerfully combining religious allegory with humor, fantasy, and satire, accounts of Xuanzang’s journey were passed down for a millennium before culminating in the sixteenth century with The Journey to the West.
compilers - Paul Reps & Nyogen Senzaki
HAIKU Book Review: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Ungiveable gift
Seek, catch, tame; there is no bull
Answerless answers
"The book consists of; 101 Zen Stories, a collection of tales that recount actual experiences of Chinese and Japanese Zen teachers over a period of more than five centuries; The Gateless Gate, the famous thirteenth century collection of Zen koans; Ten Bulls, a twelfth century commentary on the stages of awareness leading to enlightenment; and Centering, a 4,000 year-old teaching from India that some consider to be the roots of Zen."
7) Chronicles of the Tao
author - Ming Deng Dao
HAIKU Book Review: Chronicles of the Tao
Peak of Taoist way
Call to arms; Shanghaied
Kung-fu in mean streets
"An extraordinary spiritual odyssey of the making of the Taoist master Kwan Saihung. Born into a wealthy family in a remote province of China, Kwan defies his parents' wishes and enters into the rigorous and mysterious discipline of Taoist practice. Renamed "Little Butterfly" by his Taoist masters, he survives the upheaval of the Japanese occupation, and the later the Chinese Revolution, all the while becoming adept in the Taoist arts."
8) Tao te Ching
author - Lao Tzu translator - Stephen Mitchell
HAIKU Book Review: Tao Te Ching
Untangle the knot
2 piece infinite puzzle
10 000 ways gate
"The classic manual on the art of living. In 81 short, poetic chapters, the book looks at the basic predicament of being alive and teaches how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao, or the basic principle of the universe."Like many of the books in this list, you don't read the Tao Te Ching from page 1 to the end. Flip around & allow the passages to find you, meditate on those words & let doors open where you thought there were only walls.
I hope you enjoyed my list.
Which books would be in your list? Tell me down in the comments
Which books would be in your list? Tell me down in the comments
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