Japanese People Are Evil

And I can't stop writing about them.

Progress on my new script, Lobsters vs. Butterflies, has been slowed lately by the entrance of Japanese characters into the scene. (They are Japanese lobsters, you see. Evil Japanese lobsters.)

Progress slows because my familiarity with the Japanese language and culture is limited by what I can glean from video games, and anime (Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!) - hardly a large font of knowledge to draw upon.

So I depend on a great deal of reseach: primary sources and artwork and photography to piece together how things should look and sound and feel. Visiting Japan this past summer was a tremendous help, of course - it's one thing to read about the nightingale floor at Nijo castle, but quite another to hear it in person.

But no amount of research can provide you with the aura of words. There is a dense network of allusion and connotation and history packed in a name of any language, and it all goes right over your head if you're a native speaker. For all I know, my villain's name sounds like Eugene to Japanese audiences - naming Japanese characters is quite the arduous process, and any astute viewer will note that my Japanese names are packed with none-too-subtle nods to video games and anime. (I have a character named after a Sega arcade platform, for crying out loud.)

Despite this difficulty, or perhaps because of it, I have seen fit to include Japanese characters in my next three projects. In fact, each of the three stories prominently feature Japanese villains: Japanese lobsters in Lobsters vs. Butterflies, Japanese real estate magnates and pop culture icons in Pillow Crisis, and (ominously) the Japanese military in Waxahachie Air.

Clearly, I have a preoccupation with Japanese villainy. Perhaps it's a trace memory of my grandparents' experience during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan - my grandparents all speak and read Japanese fluently as a result, and they didn't exactly pick up the language as a hobby. And yet, none of my grandparents seem to bear any grudge against the Japanese at all. My mother and grandmother are vacationing in Hokkaido as I write this; my grandma's all like, "Hey Japan, you guys locked me up in a camp back in the day, but it's cool, I love your beaches."

Oh, and my great-grandmother was a geisha.

When you consider her life, and then consider mine, a writer spinning a yarn about treacherous Japanese crustraceans, it makes you wonder about the story the universe itself is spinning.