5 Daunting Doorstoppers You've Just Gotta Have!

[Dave Monroe]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 7:29 AM, Henry <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2008/11/five_daunting_doorstoppe
> rs_you.html
>
> "Here are five books I suspect have more owners than readers. That's not a
> crime! Not even a bad thing! Let's call it the fat-book-you've-gotta-have
> phenomenon."

Numa, Shozo. Kachikujin Yapoo [Yapoo the Human Cattle], 1956-70 [rev.
ed. 1991; def. ed. 1999]

A sprawling SF epic, first published in 1956, albeit under constant
revision since by its author, an apparent Yukio Mishima favorite (of
course ...) set by and large in a future where the Caucasian ruling
class has bioengineered (via everything from genetic manipulation to
plain old crossbreeding to something very similar to Japanese rope
bondage) an Asian underclass into everything from slave labor to
furniture, fixtures and appliances to outright food (i.e., human
cattle). See various descriptions below (Japanese, Italian, French,
English) ...


Wikipedia entries in Japanese and Italian:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AE%B6%E7%95%9C%E4%BA%BA%E3%83%A4%E3%83%97%E3%83%BC

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yapoo_-_Il_bestiame_umano_(romanzo)


Info from the French ed. page (uh, en Française, naturellement [?]):

Note on the author:

http://www.editions-desordres.com/auteurs/shozo_numa.php

Book descriptions (published in 3 vols.):

http://www.editions-desordres.com/catalogue/yapou_1.php
http://www.editions-desordres.com/catalogue/yapou_2.php
http://www.editions-desordres.com/catalogue/yapou_3.php

Links (reviews, essays, et al.):

http://www.editions-desordres.com/critiques/shozo_numa_cahier.php

The author's afterword:

POSTFACE à Yapou, bétail humain
Shozo Numa (Juillet 1970)

http://www.editions-desordres.com/catalogue/yapou_1_postface.php

Not to mention Ch. VI, "Un monde sans toilettes"

http://www.editions-desordres.com/catalogue/yapou1_toilettes.pdf


Account/discussion, at long last in English, in:

Tatsumi, Takayuki. Full Metal Apache:
Transactions Between Cyberpunk Japan And Avant-Pop America.
Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2006.

http://www.dukeupress.edu/
http://books.google.com/books?id=0Dcxkm5u05YC
http://www.leonardo.info/reviews/may2007/full_mosher.html

See "Rereading Yapoo the Human Cattle," pp. 52-59, e.g., ...

"In this far-future society, Japanese people are surgically or
biotechnologically transformed into living furniture[,] appliances,
and food stock generically called 'Yapoo.' Among other uses, Yappo
serve as walking lavatories ... walking vomitories ... and walking
cunnillingual vibrators.... and, of course, Yapoo are eaten ..." (p.
55; and see illus.)

"... whereas Gibsonian cyberpunk--exploring how western people in the
oriental near-future context will become pieces of junk
art--appropriates an end-of-(human)-history-type discourse typical of
the western grand narrative, Numa ironically declares the beginning of
the history of human cattle by describing an ultraracist society which
radically reorganizes evolutionism. In this new history, Japanese
people become neither existential beings nor useless junk, but rather
multipurpose domestic animals and/or cattle ..." (p. 56)

Keep reading there (see Google books link above), and see as well, e.g., ...

Befu, Harumi. Hegemony of Homogeneity.
Portland, OR: Trans Pacific Press, 2001.

http://www.isbscatalog.com/reports/r22.asp?LC=9781876843052
http://books.google.com/books?id=91s4n07d4p4C

"The Yapoo's only purpose is to serve the white race in myriad ways.
Surgery is performed, for example, on some Yapoo to elongate the mouth
to fit the genitals of the white masters and thus enable them more
readily to swallow the urine and eat feces of their white masters
without dripping...." (p. 138) ...

I suspect either an ESL, a translation, an editing, or a proofreading
glitch there, but ...


Mangafied, by the way, as well, by:

Tatsuya Egawa (b. 8/3/1961, Japan)

http://lambiek.net/artists/e/egawa_tatsuya.htm

Again, this seems to have been translated at LEAST into Italian as
well. Do note the illustration.

This I believe is the manga version as well:

http://japattack.com/main/node/47

There's as good--if not necessarily as well-written--a description as
any I've seen there as well ...