Mini Book Review: Boy by Takeshi Kitano
When I read on Tokyo Mango that Beat Takeshi had written a book, it wasn’t very long before I Amazon Prime’d it down to my place, reading it two days later. (Yes, that’s right, I used Amazon Prime as a verb. Believe it.) Now, the Tokyo Mango piece, I think, was a little misleading in that it isn’t a children’s book, it’s a book about children. The book is short and composed of three short stories. The cover and dust jacket are none other than Chip Kidd, which is pretty sweet.
It’s a good, quick read. I have the strong suspicion that it suffers in the translation - but you know I don’t read Japanese so it’s hard to say. Given the movies I’ve seen by Beat Takeshi, it’s surprising to read these stories about these boys but despite it you can still see his imprint on them.
The book gets away with being naive and amoral the way only books about growing boys can be. Each follows one particular boy with a just off-center point of view - not unlike how his movies tend to have a slightly adjusted perspective that results in the strange feel his movies leave you with. I liked the stories more as I read, the first I like pretty well and was really into it by the time I finished the third. I’m not sure if it’s because each one was better than the last or I was just more immersed in the stories as each went on.
If you like his movies, it’s definitely worth picking up. If you haven’t seen his movies, well, you should see them but you might want to read this book, too.
