Hey first up: a quick thanks. I got lots of messages from folks who bought stuff from the gift guide, and I appreciate that so much. It’s a lovely feeling to yell about books into the abyss and have the abyss yell “hey thanks!”
Okay. Cliché, but: One of my favorite things about New York is looking into people’s apartments from the street. I like how up close we all are to each other’s lives. I like walking around at night and feeling bathed in the glow of other people, warm in their homes, above me in every direction. Sometimes when my insomnia gets bad, I’ll sit in the living room and stare at the apartments in the building across the street, imagining little lives for people based on what they’re watching on TV at 3AM.
Here are some books that feel like that. They are extremely attuned to the rhythms and moods of Tokyo, and it makes me so grateful to get to live where I do. First I am going to tell you about the books, and then I am going to tell you a little bit about the author—I promise you want to stick around for that last bit.
Way back in The Before, I was wandering McNally Jackson in SoHo waiting to meet Alan after work, and I impulse snagged a copy of Masako Togawa’s The Master Key, published originally in 1962 and translated and reissued later.
The Master Key is set in an apartment house for unmarried women that is being moved. Moved as in, like, physically lifted and scooched over a little. The move is a highly publicized event that attracts press coverage and gawking neighbors, and everyone’s quiet lives suddenly seem very exposed. The titular key that opens every apartment in the building has been stolen. Oh and one other problem: there’s a body in the basement.
But it’s not just the body. Over the course of the book you get cross sections of life in the building, the secrets people keep and the lies they tell. The woman who hoards trash and the woman hiding her late husband’s manuscripts and the retired violinist. It feels quaint and sinister at the same time, dark and dangerous. Like peeking in all their windows at 3AM.
Here’s a passage that comes shortly after we learn that the building is being moved and that the engineers have told the residents that the move will be so smooth and seamless that a glass of water won’t even spill.
Man is an animal that seeks to know the reason for his existence, and just as a prisoner will scratch the wall of his cell to mark the passing of time, so we guinea pigs had become so obsessed by the promise not to spill one drop of water that we agreed to put them to the test. It was Miss Shomoda, committee representative of the third floor, who first proposed this experiment. As she had originally been a science teacher, and was naturally devoted to experiments, it was perhaps a slightly strange outcome that she should have persuaded the majority to partake in what was after all a rather unscientific experiment. For the consensus was not for all to conduct a standard experiment, but for each to lock herself in her room and carry out the test in her own fashion. There was to my mind a certain irony in this. Still, as the practice of the ladies living in the apartments has always been to live their own lives without interfering in the affairs of others, it could not be helped. So that is the reason why all went to their rooms and locked themselves in an hour ago, providing the contrast between the bustle outside and the tomb-like stillness within. The only sign of life is Miss Iyoda’s cat, which she has locked out of her room. It is curled up asleep on top of the bannister on the gloomy staircase.
As for my views on this experiment—well, I think it’s childish, not to say stupid. But, as a caretaker here, I have to be sensitive to the psychology of the residents—what looks like mere child’s play in fact gives them something to be interested in. And as it is my duty to do what the majority of residents want, I too have put a glass full of water on the centre of the office desk.
Anyway, putting such thoughts aside, when I look at the water piled up to the brim of the glass, its surface like a living membrane, I remember first learning about surface tensions when I was a student, and how a speck of dust can break through at any time; and I wonder if they are all so engrossed in this experiment just because they wonder if it will spill?
My answer is a definite No! The moment this building is moved, a past crime will be revealed. People are frightened that something will occur. That’s why they avert their eyes, preferring to stare instead at glasses of water.
Isn’t that just divine? What a scream.
Anyway, then I picked up the other book that Pushkin Vertigo recently put back into print: The Lady Killer. The back correctly bills it as “a dizzying tale of lust and murder” (heck yeah) that takes place in Tokyo’s cabarets and nightclubs, as a man moves through the second half of his double life in the shadows seducing vulnerable women—until three of them are found dead. (It reminded me a little of a fictional People Who Eat Darkness, which is excellent.)
Anyway, I loved them both. They’re plot-heavy and byzantine and clever as hell. And it was as I was thinking of doing a newsletter about her when I finally, for the first time, went to her Wikipedia page, and I was deeply unprepared for what I found there:
She started off as a typist. She had several children, the last at age *48*. She was known for sporting a multi-colored afro. She would go on to own a famous nightclub called Blue Room that became a celebrity hangout and lesbian nightlife epicenter for over 43 years.
She sang at that nightclub, too, eventually releasing two records. She performed throughout her whole life, and it was backstage waiting for her sets where she started writing novels. She would go on to write over THIRTY of them, most based on her real life—The Master Key is set in the apartment building she grew up in with her mother.
She also starred in a TV show based loosely on her life where a team of women solve white collar crimes (Japanese! Jessica! Fletcher!) AND starred in a film adaptation of one of her books.
You can watch her on YouTube, smoking a cigarette while singing on stage at a cabaret. It’s absolutely unreal. I am obsessed with her. But first you should read her books.
BUY: The Master Key, The Lady Killer
Note: I want to briefly mention here that The Master Key features a man wearing a dress, and the language isn’t quite up to today’s standards. It’s not lingered on or played for big laughs, but some NPCs on the scene react with shock. My understanding is that Togawa was a proud member of the LGBTQ community, but also! it reads like something written in 1962. I waffled a lot about whether to mention this! But I decided I’d rather err on the side of being cautious in case it helps people to be aware going in.
Playing: Paradise Killer, which is literally if Vaporwave was a video game, I am in love
Listening: Lolita Pod. Jamie Loftus is a gift. Yes, she’s a comedian (her pod My Year in Mensa is (sorry) genius and has permanently lodged the *sad airhorn noise* in my brain as an internal comedic reaction to things), but outside of a few funny moments, she takes Lolita very seriously. Broadly researched and sourced, deeply studied and felt, informative even to people who thought they already knew everything (me).
Buying (washing?): I wanna give a brief shout to Boundary Body. The soap is amazing, the shipments come fast, the packaging is gorgeous and minimal, and I am obsessed (and everyone i know irl is getting soap for Christmas, not sorry). The shop is taking a lil break but she’ll be back.
Reading: Deep dive Die Hard analysis for writers
Drinking: ok why didn’t anyone tell me that you could make your own Irish Cream and that it’s so fucking delicious
Fairy Tale: Please listen to this berserker story Casey told me last week, I cannot stop thinking about it