“Teaching East Asian Literature in the High School”
Lesson Plan for
“The Hell of Mirrors”
by Edogawa Rampo
BACKGROUND READING
I. Edogawa Rampo
or Hirai Taro
http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/title.cgi?title_id=1166
Japanese
Tales of Mystery & Imagination
The
famous mystery writer Edogawa Rampo took his pen name
from the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe--the master of Western
mystery and horror stories. Collected in this chilling volume are some of Rampo’s best stories, bizarre and blood-curdling
expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange. A quadruple
amputee and his perverse wife; a man who discovers hidden pleasures in a
chamber of mirrors; a chair-maker who buries himself inside an armchair and
enjoys a promiscuous career of sordid “loves” with women who sit on his
handiwork: these are some of the wonderfully strange characters you’ll meet in
the pages of Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, each worthy of Poe
himself.
About
the Author
Hirai Taro (1894-1965), much more familiar as Edogawa Rampo,
was the first modern writer of mysteries in
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Edogawa_Rampo.htm
brief listing of stories and
collections by Edogawa Rampo
http://www.sitartmag.com/edogawa.htm
photo of Edogawa Rampo, but text is in French
http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/edogawa+rampo/7/*http://www.glyphs.com/words/film/95/rampo.html
Edogawa
Rampo (Naoto Takenaka) was
the premier Japanese mystery writer of the first half of the twentieth century;
his name is a phonetic approximation of one of his literary mentors, Edgar
Allan Poe. Like Poe's mysterious stories, Rampo's
work seems to blend the dark side of human psychology with a vague atmosphere
of unrealness.
http://www.movieweb.com/movie/rampo/rampo.txt
Rampo was
born
In
1923, while unemployed, Rampo, who was an avid reader
of Western mysteries, wrote a short mystery and submitted it to the only
mystery magazine of
When
he first started writing mysteries, he chose for his nom de plume the name of
Edogawa Rampo after Edgar Allan Poe (pronounced edogah-aran-poh in Japanese). In the subsequent 30 years of
prolific writing, he has acquired a reputation among Japanese mystery story
enthusiasts that equals -- if not surpasses -- that of his famous
namesake. With a canon of work that
includes more than 20 full-length books, countless short stories, children's
books and essays devoted to the mystery story. He is considered the
"dean" of mystery writing in
Although
his position as a literary figure in
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gjdemko/japan.html
Crime
stories had a rather early start in
One
of the writers deeply influenced by Kuroiwa was
Edogawa Rampo (aka Taro
Hirai) who became the acknowledged "Father" of the Japanese mystery
genre. His pen name was a Japanese phonetic version of Edgar Allan Poe said
rapidly with a mouth full of marbles as well as a bit of a funny pun based on
the
http://www.jps.net/outsider/r.html
Rampo,
Edogawa
While primarily a mystery/suspense writer, Edogawa Rampo
also wrote some of the first Japanese horror tales to appear in translation. In
his introduction to the 1956 publication of Rampo
stories collection, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, James B.
Harris said that this was the first collection of Japanese mystery stories in
English. The first story in the collection, was
reprinted in Peter Haining's 1972 horror anthology, Beyond
the Curtain of Dark. Haining briefly referred to
the story as "new" in his introduction.
While "The Human Chair" was not an outright horror tale, it
has an interesting plot twist. It shows demented logic of an unbalanced mind.
The basic premise, that the protagonist hid himself inside an armchair to touch
the object of his obsession, is rather implausible but entertaining.
"The
Caterpillar" is undeniably a horror story. The title character is a
soldier who lost all his limbs, his hearing and speech in war. The action
concerns his wife's shifting attitude towards him from duty to pity to utter
sadism. It's a chilling piece of raw human emotion.
"The Hell of Mirrors" is an "over-reacher"
plot, the oldest horror device that goes directly back to Frankenstein. There
are some things man should not tamper with. Ken Tanuma's
obsession with mirrors and optical devices leads him on a bizarre path
comparable to the deranged heroes of Lovecraft. Japanese
and Western Science discusses this tale in the context of the scientific
interest in Japanese magic mirrors in the early 20th Century.
"The Red Chamber" and "The Traveller
with the Pasted Rag Picture" also have elements of horror fantasy. The former with its story-telling club framing device and latter
with its unique use of optics to transfer a character to another place.
http://www.shinko-elec.co.jp/eng/square/square.htm
Rampo
(real name: Taro Hirai, 1894 - 1965) was born in Nabari
in Mie prefecture, graduated from Waseda
University, and worked as an office clerk at Toba
Dockyard from 1918 to 1919.
Some of his senior workers talked about their memories of him, and the late Mr.
Odajima, the founder of Shinko Electric, also talked
about him in an interview in the magazine "Akoya-gai"
(Pearl Oyster Shell), published in 1966, as recounted below.
-----------------------------
"I
remember that was the year after I entered Suzuki Shoten
(Suzuki Shoten founded Toba
Dockyard Co., Ltd. and took over all business including shipbuilding and
electric light business from Chuo Ironworks and Yotsukaichi
Ironworks). That detective story writer, Edogawa Rampo
entered the general affairs section of the company. He was really well built, he looked like a true sportsman type. However, he was
not good at sports at all; he was only good at drinking. Even if we drank right
through the night, he would be at his desk fresh as a daisy the next morning.
He said his body was a result of rowing a boat in the sea breeze in his
boyhood. He was young, but he was very smart. Somebody told me that Aijima island (present Mikimoto-shinju
-----------------------------
Mr. Yoshizo Nakamura, who also worked with him, talked about
his recollections of Edogawa Rampo. "First of
all he lived in the dormitory at the outfall of Funazu-shinden
and worked as record keeper on the spot. Then he moved to a rented house at the
foot of the mountain after turning up a small road in front of the Matsuda
Clinic that used to stand next to
the present Ushigin in
Iwasaki. He used to cook for himself. He would arrive at work late as he often
overslept. Matsuoka chief engineer would get very angry and always shouted at
me to "Fetch him!". I was in charge of
fetching him. Kinnosuke Bessho,
Masakichi Sato, Taro Kimura and so on were all
friends of ours. Once we all went to see the sports day at the primary school
in Sakate island. He fell in
love with a lady teacher there and eventually married her." (Shinko
Electric Times, first issue).
-----------------------------
An important period for him as a detective novelist.
The
records of Kadokawa Bunko tell us that, "He was
employed by Toba Dockyard Electric machine division
in Mie prefecture in November 1917. Uhei Masumoto, who was the head engineer there, recognized
his talent and Rampo started to edit the company
journal (Hiyori)."
Rampo himself also wrote in his autobiography (40 Years
of Detective Stories) that office clerk at Toba
Dockyard in Mie prefecture was one of the jobs he had
from 1916 to 1924 after he graduated from the university. "I was working
at Suzuki Shoten in Toba, Mie prefecture around 1917 and 18 because the father of Mr.
Yoshio Inoue (detective story translator) worked at the same place. He was much
older than me and we didn't know him very well, but I visited his house two or
three times. I met a guy called Yoshio there. Yoshio had two sisters, and his
elder sister married one of my colleagues. This colleague's name was Shigeru
Suzuki. He was great at reading children's stories. We gathered primary school
students at the theater in Toba and held a children's
story meeting.
He also wrote, "I read Dostoyevsky when I was working at Toba Dockyard (1918) practically without putting the books
down, starting from Crime and Punishment and then The Brothers Karamazov, in
the compact little volumes of translations published by Shincho."
It seems that the days at Toba Dockyard were
important in maturing him as a detective novelist.
II. Reference
and Criticism
http://www.jps.net/outsider/shoshigaku.html
Reference
works in English
Addiss, Stephen. Japanese Ghosts and
Demons.
Aston, William G. A History of Japanese Literature. Tuttle: 1972.
Reprint of 1899 original. Perhaps the first book in English that made a
comprehensive look at Japanese literature. Aston claimed that direct knowledge
of Japanese literature was a recent event. No English-speaking person could
read a single page of Japanese prior to the 1860's!
Davis, F. Hadland.
Myths and Legends in
Reprint
of 1913 classic study includes 32 illustrations and a bibliography.
Hearn, Lafcadio.
In Ghostly
______. Kwaidan.
Iwasaka, Michiko and Toelken, Barre. Ghosts and the Japanese.
Le Nestour,
Patrick. The Mystery of Things: Evocations of the Japanese Supernatural.
Watanabe, Masao. The
Japanese and Western Science, translated by Otto Theodor
Benfey.
Contains an interesting discussion of Japanese
magic-mirrors and their relationship to a story by Edogawa Rampo.
http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/BIB95/00poplit_sato.htm
Edogawa Rampo,
Nihon tantei shôsetsu jiten. Ed. Shinpo
Hirohisa and Yamamae Yuzuru.
Kawada shobô shinsha,
1996.
Call no.: PL 826 .D6 N54
1996
In spite of its name, this is
not really a dictionary, but rather a collection of previously published
reviews and criticisms that Edogawa Rampo wrote on
various authors and works of detective fiction over the years. The work
is organized by the author's name. What is interesting about this work is
that the entries for the authors also contain a review or criticism that the
author has written on Rampo. Although this may
not be a useful work for gathering basic information on detective fiction, it
is nonetheless a very interesting work for anyone who is an avid reader of
detective fiction.
Nakajima Kawatarô,
Nihon suiri shôsetsu jiten. Tôkyôdô Shuppan, 1985.
Call
no.:
A good place to turn for factual information on
detective fiction
Nakajima Kawatarô,
Nihon suiri shôsetsu shi.
Tôkyô Sôgensha,
1993-1996. 3 vols.
Call
no.: PL 747.67 .D45 N35 1993 v.1-3
Spanning from the beginning of
Meiji to the postwar period, Nihon suiri shôsetsu shi, a collection of past articles written by
the author, provides a comprehensive literary history of detective fiction in
Itô
Hideo, Kindai no tantei
shôsetsu. San'ichi Shobô, 1994.
Call
no.: PL 747.57 .D45 I86 1994
Examining the development of detective fiction from
the early Meiji to the Shôwa 20s
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmurphy/JPT3120.html
… there is nothing in the experience of the
The Origins of Modern
Japanese Literature by Joseph Murphy
Kato Shuichi, A History of Japanese
Literature: Volume 3, (NY, Kodansha, 1978)
Fragments of a Past, by Yoshikawa Eiji
"Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity." by
Silverberg, Miriam
"The Machine" by Yokomitsu Riichi
"Hell of Mirrors" by Edogawa Rampo
“A Mirror and a
III.
Historical References
Murphey, Rhoads.
page
260 – Dutch Learning “Western learning
was known as ‘Dutch learning’ (rangaku), since that
was the source of nearly all the Japanese acquired, via the Dutch traders at Deshima.”
page 287 – “The Meiji era,
which lasted until Mutsuhito’s death in 1912, was in
fact a period of astonishingly rapid change which remade Japan from top to
bottom and left it at his death already a major industrial power, employing all
the technology pioneered by the nineteenth-century West, and also an
imperialist power, following the Western example in that respect as in so many others.”
page 301 – 1900 poverty
page
302 – Ito was an enthusiastic modernizer, especially after his visits to the
West, but he also understood the need for compromise in politics and for
adapting Western ways to Japanese traditions, circumstances, and values. He saw the need for foreign ideas, but never
at the expense of strong Japanese identity.”
page 351 –
page 353 - Concerns About Modernization
The novelist Natsume Soseki
(1867 – 1916) speaks through a character in his novel, Passersby, about the
disturbing pace of change, called “modernization,” which reached full speed in
twentieth-century
You know, our
uneasiness comes from this thing called scientific progress. Science does not know where to stop, and does
not permit us to stop either. From
walking to rickshaws [oddly enough, a foreign introduction], from rickshaws to
horse-drawn cabs, from cabs to trains, from trains to automobiles…to
airplanes—when will we ever be allowed to stop and rest? Where will it take us? It is really frightening.
IV. Magic
Mirrors
http://www.grand-illusions.com/magicmirror/magmir4.htm
http://web.syr.edu/~aslow/mirror.html
The
Japanese produced particularly fine "Magic Mirrors" made from bronze.
These gave a perfect image when observed from straight on. Their
"Magical" properties could be observed by reflecting light off the
surface, and on to a wall or screen. Bright, "strange" images could
be seen, that supposedly were reflections of the past and the future. The
secret of the "Magic", was eventually found
out. Images were engraved on the reflecting surface and subsequently polished
away. Upon reflection, the images reappeared due to remaining inequities of
curvature, thickness, and density of the metal.
http://www.tarot-decks.com/mirrors.htm
Magic
Mirrors - They enabled, it was said, to see the present, the past and the
future.
They are of great variety, and of great antiquity.
V. Miscellaneous
http://www.amanosworld.com/html/amanos_work/rampo_edogawa/frame_main.html
Rampo
Edogawa
These
are drawings for the 65 volume collection of the entire works of Rampo Edogawa. Influenced by Rampo,
most especially his statement, "The present is a dream, the dreams of
night are reality", Amano freely expresses the essence of Rampo's world based on his inspiration from each title.
http://cave3.red5interactive.com/cgi-bin/catalogmgr/152163188065025309/browse/item/2298/4/0/0
3 stories by
Edogawa made into animated or anime
Animated
Classics of Japanese Literature
http://www.filmsondisc.com/LaserReview/mystery.htm
info on
film The Mystery of Rampo
http://movieweb.com/movie/rampo/
quote
from Edogawa and info on movie made in 1995 The Mystery of Rampo
“The Hell of Mirrors” short story by Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965); published in 1926. This science fiction tale recounts the
macabre fate of Tanuma, a man obsessed with optics
ACTIVITIES
1. WRITE – a daily diary entry following your
visits to see your friend, Kan Tanuma.
Include your feelings – fear, surprise,
admiration, scorn….in the following suggested
entries:
Diary Entry #1 In
physics class, concave mirrors are passed around.
Write
about your and Tanuma’s differing reactions.
Diary Entry #2 After
visiting Tanuma’s small observatory and looking
through his telescope into the private lives of his
neighbors, write your reactions.
Diary Entry #3 One day you visit and see Tanuma looking through his
periscope into his maids’ rooms. Then he instructs you
to look into his microscope at the insects. Write your
feelings about these two incidents.
Diary Entry #4 In the
afternoon, you walk into Tanuma’s dark laboratory
and see the monstrous human face projected on the wall
by the stereopticon.
What do you think of it? Want to
try?
Diary Entry #5 You enter
Tanuma’s new experiment, the “chamber of
mirrors,” a small room lined with six mirrors. What do you
see and think?
Diary Entry #6 After
visiting Tanuma’s glass working plant, you tried to
dissuade him from squandering his fortune. Tell about
your conversation.
Diary Entry #7 Next you see Tanuma
in a giant mirror with 5 holes and
then doing a dancing ritual beneath a kaleidoscope.
Write
your concerns or admiration.
Diary Entry #8 FINAL – You are called by a
messenger to Tanuma’s
home where you encounter a huge sphere. Explain what
you think happened.
2. VIDEO – create your own video following the
entries listed above or create a video
of one or two of the
scenes – for example, the monstrous human face projected on the
wall or the giant
mirror with 5 holes or the ritual dancing under a kaleidoscope using
a disco ball and
recreating his weird laugh.
3. DRAW – your own image of Tanuma,
perhaps the monstrous human face as described
on page 112 or
the transformed Tanuma described on page 118.
4. WRITE - Using concave mirrors, look at the
distorted image of yourself and write a creative description of what you see.
5. ART -
Using different materials, create Tanuma’s
laboratory room.
6. RESEARCH and WRITE – Research optics . Explain and
give examples of the following from the short story:
mirrors: concave/convex/corrugated/prismatic
microscope
telescope
periscope
stereopticon
kaleidoscope
7. WRITE – After brainstorming the dangers of
advanced technology, create your own sci-fi fantasy story based on the dangers
of one topic which you select.
8. WRITE – Based on the interesting opening line
of “The Hell of Mirrors,” create your own short piece of writing. “One of the queerest friends I ever had was
Kan Tanuama. From
the very start I suspected that he was mentally unbalanced. Some might have called him just eccentric,
but I am convinced he was a lunatic. At
any rate, he had one mania --….”
Discussion Questions
Prereading Discussion:
I. Title “The Hell of Mirrors”
Based
on the title, what do you imagine the story might be about?
What
visual image does a hell of mirrors evoke for you?
If
this were a ghost story, how could mirrors contribute to a sense of eeriness?
What
does a mirror reflect? How could that be
scary or hellish?
II. Repeat aloud the author’s name: Edogawa Rampo.
On
the board, write the Japanese pronunciation- edogah-aran-poh.
Brainstorm,
writing on the board the student responses to the following –
What
do you know about Edgar Allan Poe? What
stories do you know by Poe?
Among
his short stories, most students are familiar with at least “The Tell-Tale
Heart” and with others in which the main character is a ‘madman’ or mentally
unbalanced.
Now
read the opening lines of “The Hell of Mirrors.”
“One
of the queerest friends I ever had was Kan Tanuma. From the very start I suspected that he was
mentally unbalanced. Some might have
called him just eccentric, but I am convinced he was a lunatic.”
Ask
students to draw their own comparisons.
III. Review briefly
Murphey, Rhoads.
page 287 – “The Meiji era, which lasted until Mutsuhito’s death in 1912, was in fact a period of astonishingly rapid change which remade Japan from top to bottom and left it at his death already a major industrial power, employing all the technology pioneered by the nineteenth-century West, and also an imperialist power, following the Western example in that respect as in so many others.”
page 302 – Ito was an enthusiastic modernizer, especially after his visits to the West, but he also understood the need for compromise in politics and for adapting Western ways to Japanese traditions, circumstances, and values. He saw the need for foreign ideas, but never at the expense of strong Japanese identity.”
page 351 –
Rice riots protesting the steep wartime rise in rice prices had erupted in 1918 which had to be put down by the army; the government was clearly at fault in offering only repression instead of efforts to improve the lot of factory workers and the urban poor.
The main character in “The Hell of Mirrors”, Kan Tanuma, “had one mania—a craze for anything capable of reflecting an image….”
How might the reflection of an image be distorted by “magic lanterns, telescopes, magnifying glasses, kaleidoscopes, prisms, and the likes”?
How might the distortion of an image relate to the conditions of
---the distortion of a society falling apart
---the importing of foreign ideas and western items distorting the Japanese image
Why might the author have included the fact that “Perhaps this strange mania
of Tanuma’s was hereditary for his great-grandfather Moribe was also known to have had the same
predilection. As evidence there is the
collection of objects—primitive glassware and telescopes and ancient books on
related subjects—which this Moribe obtained from the
early Dutch merchants at
Perhaps the author is referring to the distortion of the Japanese image of
themselves by specifically mentioning the early Dutch influence—the first to
trade and import to
page 260 – Dutch Learning “Western learning was known as ‘Dutch learning’ (rangaku), since that was the source of nearly all the Japanese acquired, via the Dutch traders at Deshima.”
IV. Brainstorm ideas of fear of advanced technology
page 353 - Concerns About Modernization
The novelist Natsume Soseki
(1867 – 1916) speaks through a character in his novel, Passersby, about the
disturbing pace of change, called “modernization,” which reached full speed in
twentieth-century
You know, our uneasiness comes from this thing called scientific
progress. Science does not know where to
stop, and does not permit us to stop either.
From walking to rickshaws [oddly enough, a foreign introduction], from
rickshaws to horse-drawn cabs, from cabs to trains, from trains to
automobiles…to airplanes—when will we ever be allowed to stop and rest? Where will it take us? It is really frightening.
Review
how Edogawa Rampo worked as an office clerk from
1916-1924 in the Toba dockyard (the predecessor of
the present Shinko Electric Co., Ltd.
http://www.shinko-elec.co.jp/eng/square/square.htm
Do
you know of any other science fiction stories which relate to fear of
technology?
--refer to Ray Bradbury’s recurring themes;
for example, in “A Sound of Thunder” or “The Veldt” or to Stephen King’s theme;
for example, in “Trucks”
READING
THE STORY:
How
does the narrator view Tanuma’s interest in optics?
“…when
I spotted an extra-large concave mirror mounted in the far distance I took to
my heels in holy terror.” (110)
“He
completely isolated himself in his weird laboratory….” (111)
“…his
malady was going from bad to worse.” (111)
“morbid craze for optics…” (111)
Why
do you think the narrator remains Tanuma’s “only
friend who ever visited him”?
What
are Tanuma’s most eccentric activities or inventions?
Why
might we consider these beyond social norms or taboo?
--peeping
secretly through telescopes at neighbors
--peeping
secretly through periscopes at maids
--observing
insects fighting and mating (gory)
--entering
‘chamber of mirrors’ with his favorite maid
Tanuma seems to move to further image distortions of himself. Describe these.
--distortion
of his face to grotesque size
--small
room lined with mirrors “anyone who went inside would be confronted with
reflections of every portion of his body.”
“…he
kept laying in bigger and bigger stocks of mirrors of all shapes and
descriptions—concave, convex, corrugated, prismatic—as well as miscellaneous
specimens that cast completely distorted reflections.”
--giant
mirror “creating a weird illusion of a trunkless body floating in space.”
“…the laboratory was transformed into a purgatory of freaks”
Compare
Rampo’s description of the room under the
kaleidoscope “…with each rotation of the gaint
cylinder the mammoth flower patterns of the kaleidoscope would change in form
and hue—red, pink, purple, green, vermilion, black—like the flowers of an opium
addict’s dream”(115) ---to Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death
“These windows were of
stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the
decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for
example, in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple…third was green…fourth
with orange…the fifth with white—the sixth with violet…the seventh in
black… there stood opposite to each
window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays
through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room . And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy
and fantastic appearances. There were
arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the
madman fashions. There were much of the
beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible,
and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there
stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.”
Compare
“like the flowers of an opium addict’s dream.” “Nor did his madness end here-far from
it. His fantastic creations multiplied
rapidly.” (115)
What
happens at the “terrible, tragic climax” of Rampo’s
tale?
Tanuma is stuck in the large spherical object of his creation.
How
does Rampo build suspense at the end of his tale?
What
is the spine-chilling laugh and how will they get him out.
Describe
Tanuma’s “horrible transformation”:
“His
face was pulpy and discolored; his eyes kept wandering aimlessly; his hair was
a shaggy tangle; his mouth was agape, the saliva dripping down in thin, foamy
ribbons. His entire expression was that
of a raving maniac.”(118)
Discuss
the questions raised by Rampo in the story on
p.118-119:
“Could
the mere fact of confinement inside this glass sphere have been enough to drive
him mad?
Moreover,
what was his motive in constructing the globe in the first place? (118)
Why
would a man become crazy if he entered a glass globe lined with a mirror?
What
in the name of the devil had he seen there?” (122)
The
ending of “The Hell of Mirrors” can be discussed in terms of the repeated theme
of going against natural order, going beyond sacred space, and its
consequences.
What
is the story of Frankenstein about?
Are
there some things man should not interfere or mess with?
“My
hapless friend, undoubtedly, had tried to explore the regions of the unknown,
violating sacred taboos, thereby incurring the wrath of the gods. By trying to pry open the secret portals of
forbidden knowledge with his weird mania of optics he had destroyed himself.” (122)
Connections
to other literary works:
Some literary works have already been mentioned in the above
discussion:
Edgar Allan Poe
-- The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death
Natsume Soseki
-- Passersby
Ray Bradbury --
The Sound of Thunder,
The Veldt
Stephen King --
Trucks
A comparison might also be made between Rampo’s
short story The Human Chair and The Hell of Mirrors. The Human Chair also deals with the
demented logic of an unbalanced mind in which the protagonist hides himself
inside an armchair in order to touch the object of his obsession.
Edogawa Rampo also wrote, “I read Dostoyevsky
when I was working at Toba Dockyard (1918)
practically without putting the books down, starting from Crime and
Punishment and then The Brothers Karmazov….”
Themes and symbols:
Themes have already been mentioned in the above discussion.
The Dangers of Advanced Technology
The importing of foreign ideas and western items distorting the Japanese self-image
Withdrawal from society
Violating sacred taboos and destroying self
The
Hell of Mirrors
Anne Brinckerhoff
(847) 657-1198
apbrinck@aol.com