ANDREW CAMPANA
Kitchen Stadium
Long before reality show cooking competitions were the norm
there was Iron Chef: an odd little Food Network import from Japan
complete with its own pageantry, its own mythology
an on-‐scene reporter, two colour commentators
and a Chairman with a luscious voice and Liberace clothes
sensuously biting into a yellow bell pepper at the beginning of each episode
as majestic soundtracks from long-‐forgotten Westerns
spooned on their sonic gravitas like so much béchamel.
The Iron Chefs were my heroes.
I'd hide under the covers and pretend to be them
rising up on their platforms amidst billowing smoke into Kitchen Stadium
like judges in a Daoist hell:
Rokusaburo Michiba, Iron Chef Japanese
who solemnly wrote down his planned menus
in a flowing hand with an ink-‐drenched brush.
Hiroyuki Sakai, Iron Chef French
who I would tell anyone within earshot
was known as the "Délacroix of French cuisine"
even though I didn't know who Délacroix was and had never eaten French food.
Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
who my Bengali mother would always root for
because his food looked the spiciest
and Masahiko Kobe, Iron Chef Italian
the loser.
The judges were just as memorable.
Sachiko Kobayashi, singer and supreme diva
who wore dresses and neck ruffs half the width of the judging table
and once performed a concert standing on the hands of a giant statue
of herself.
Kazuko Hosoki, a red-‐lipsticked neocon
who happened to be the world's richest fortune teller.
But most important of all was Asako Kishi
food critic, and terrifying, unsmiling grandmother figure
condoner of no bullshit, inevitably giving scores
three points lower than everyone else
earning her the nickname in the Japanese press of
the "East German Judge."
My mind, though, always goes back to the deleted scenes from one episode.
Battle Chinese Cabbage. The challenger, Cui Yufen,
was 57 years old, and used to cook for Chairman Mao
one of the few women to ever appear on the show
and the only one from China.
I remember her third dish being set before the judges
almost ludicrously simple-‐looking
Chairman Kaga asking her to describe it
and she said through her interpreter,
"It's just cabbage and mustard."
The judges, skeptical, took their first bite.
After a long silence, Asako Kishi, the East German Judge,
was the first to speak
her voice breaking ever so slightly.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten," she said
as she picked up the bowl and raised it to her lips.
Hello Kitty Has No Mouth
1
hello kitty has no mouth.
hello kitty, created in 1974 by yuko shimizu, has no mouth.
hello kitty's mouth was the zippered opening
of the vinyl coin purse where she first appeared
soft and gaping and ready to be filled with cash.
sanrio says she is mouthless because she is universal
mouthless because she speaks all languages
mouthless because she can feel any emotion
depending on how you look at her
endlessly reproducible
the perfect commodity
mouthless so she can be immortal.
she did gain a mouth once
in 1987, on hello kitty's furry tale theatre
her first television show
she could actually talk.
in the last episode, the little matchstick girl,
she shivers in the cold
lighting match after match to keep herself warm
until the last one grants her a vision of heaven
and the snow covers her dead little body.
a hello kitty with a mouth can end the cycle:
she can speak, and thus finally be silent.
goodbye, kitty.
2
mori ogai wrote a short story in 1890.
mori ogai wrote a short story, "the dancing girl," in 1890.
mori ogai wanted to write a short story
like the german ones he had been translating
but written japanese didn't have an "I" exactly
didn't have the pronoun exactly, not in the way german did
didn't have first person narration quite yet
so the first scene is in a crowded saloon of a ship
and the narrator describes who is not there:
not the shipmen, not the card players, not anyone
except for one person, sitting on a bench
looking at the empty room
who must be the narrator, since he's the only one left.
and so mori ogai created a first person
by eliminating everyone else.
3
japanese has three scripts.
japanese has three scripts, kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
japanese has three scripts, and katakana is blocky, angular
used for telegrams, and onomatopoeia, but mostly for foreign words.
a thousand years ago, it was used as a reading guide
for buddhist scripture, a way to give sound and order
to dense chinese characters rendering holy sanskrit truths.
in the 1980s, katakana was used for computer text
its simplicity so well-‐suited to the screen
it was as if those monks putting brush to page ten centuries before
had pixels in mind all along.
in the poetry of kiriu minashita, katakana is a virus,
infecting her language, interrupting her thoughts with a cold machinic voice
a videogame opponent to the possibility of expression:
password is incorrect. don't talk back. press start to continue.
and katakana was used, over and over again
by poet survivors of the atomic bombings
trying to record their experiences in the immediate aftermath
their normal script rendered useless
by that which could not be described
leaving only pages and pages of stark, angled writing:
language rendered foreign from itself,
language become sound effect,
telegrams from the end of the world.
Andrew Campana was born and raised in Toronto, and now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. His work has previously been published in On Spec Magazine. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at Harvard University in Japanese literature and media studies, which means he reads a lot of poetry and plays a lot of Nintendo games. He doesn't really trust anyone who doesn't think that Majora's Mask is better than Ocarina of Time. Because, come on.
Long before reality show cooking competitions were the norm
there was Iron Chef: an odd little Food Network import from Japan
complete with its own pageantry, its own mythology
an on-‐scene reporter, two colour commentators
and a Chairman with a luscious voice and Liberace clothes
sensuously biting into a yellow bell pepper at the beginning of each episode
as majestic soundtracks from long-‐forgotten Westerns
spooned on their sonic gravitas like so much béchamel.
The Iron Chefs were my heroes.
I'd hide under the covers and pretend to be them
rising up on their platforms amidst billowing smoke into Kitchen Stadium
like judges in a Daoist hell:
Rokusaburo Michiba, Iron Chef Japanese
who solemnly wrote down his planned menus
in a flowing hand with an ink-‐drenched brush.
Hiroyuki Sakai, Iron Chef French
who I would tell anyone within earshot
was known as the "Délacroix of French cuisine"
even though I didn't know who Délacroix was and had never eaten French food.
Chen Kenichi, Iron Chef Chinese
who my Bengali mother would always root for
because his food looked the spiciest
and Masahiko Kobe, Iron Chef Italian
the loser.
The judges were just as memorable.
Sachiko Kobayashi, singer and supreme diva
who wore dresses and neck ruffs half the width of the judging table
and once performed a concert standing on the hands of a giant statue
of herself.
Kazuko Hosoki, a red-‐lipsticked neocon
who happened to be the world's richest fortune teller.
But most important of all was Asako Kishi
food critic, and terrifying, unsmiling grandmother figure
condoner of no bullshit, inevitably giving scores
three points lower than everyone else
earning her the nickname in the Japanese press of
the "East German Judge."
My mind, though, always goes back to the deleted scenes from one episode.
Battle Chinese Cabbage. The challenger, Cui Yufen,
was 57 years old, and used to cook for Chairman Mao
one of the few women to ever appear on the show
and the only one from China.
I remember her third dish being set before the judges
almost ludicrously simple-‐looking
Chairman Kaga asking her to describe it
and she said through her interpreter,
"It's just cabbage and mustard."
The judges, skeptical, took their first bite.
After a long silence, Asako Kishi, the East German Judge,
was the first to speak
her voice breaking ever so slightly.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten," she said
as she picked up the bowl and raised it to her lips.
Hello Kitty Has No Mouth
1
hello kitty has no mouth.
hello kitty, created in 1974 by yuko shimizu, has no mouth.
hello kitty's mouth was the zippered opening
of the vinyl coin purse where she first appeared
soft and gaping and ready to be filled with cash.
sanrio says she is mouthless because she is universal
mouthless because she speaks all languages
mouthless because she can feel any emotion
depending on how you look at her
endlessly reproducible
the perfect commodity
mouthless so she can be immortal.
she did gain a mouth once
in 1987, on hello kitty's furry tale theatre
her first television show
she could actually talk.
in the last episode, the little matchstick girl,
she shivers in the cold
lighting match after match to keep herself warm
until the last one grants her a vision of heaven
and the snow covers her dead little body.
a hello kitty with a mouth can end the cycle:
she can speak, and thus finally be silent.
goodbye, kitty.
2
mori ogai wrote a short story in 1890.
mori ogai wrote a short story, "the dancing girl," in 1890.
mori ogai wanted to write a short story
like the german ones he had been translating
but written japanese didn't have an "I" exactly
didn't have the pronoun exactly, not in the way german did
didn't have first person narration quite yet
so the first scene is in a crowded saloon of a ship
and the narrator describes who is not there:
not the shipmen, not the card players, not anyone
except for one person, sitting on a bench
looking at the empty room
who must be the narrator, since he's the only one left.
and so mori ogai created a first person
by eliminating everyone else.
3
japanese has three scripts.
japanese has three scripts, kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
japanese has three scripts, and katakana is blocky, angular
used for telegrams, and onomatopoeia, but mostly for foreign words.
a thousand years ago, it was used as a reading guide
for buddhist scripture, a way to give sound and order
to dense chinese characters rendering holy sanskrit truths.
in the 1980s, katakana was used for computer text
its simplicity so well-‐suited to the screen
it was as if those monks putting brush to page ten centuries before
had pixels in mind all along.
in the poetry of kiriu minashita, katakana is a virus,
infecting her language, interrupting her thoughts with a cold machinic voice
a videogame opponent to the possibility of expression:
password is incorrect. don't talk back. press start to continue.
and katakana was used, over and over again
by poet survivors of the atomic bombings
trying to record their experiences in the immediate aftermath
their normal script rendered useless
by that which could not be described
leaving only pages and pages of stark, angled writing:
language rendered foreign from itself,
language become sound effect,
telegrams from the end of the world.
Andrew Campana was born and raised in Toronto, and now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. His work has previously been published in On Spec Magazine. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at Harvard University in Japanese literature and media studies, which means he reads a lot of poetry and plays a lot of Nintendo games. He doesn't really trust anyone who doesn't think that Majora's Mask is better than Ocarina of Time. Because, come on.