Nick Joaquin’s “Manila, My Manila” in Japanese

Check out here the book cover of the Japanese edition of Nick Joaquin’s “Manila, My Manila”:

(Photo courtesy of Katayama Takashi, who borrowed the book from Shinjuku City Library last July 30, 2022.)

The design uses the 18th Century Map of Manila City created by Antonio Fernandez de Roxas in 1713. The translators of this Japanese edition are Nobuhiko Hashimoto and Masanobu Sawada. It was released by Akashi Shoten publishing company in 2005.

“Manila, My Manila” was originally published as “Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young” by Vera-Reyes, Inc. in 1990. It was republished in its current title by The Bookmark Inc. in 1999.

Nick Joaquin (May 4, 1917 – April 29, 2004), who also went by the penname Quijano de Manila. was awarded the title of National Artist of the Philippines for Literature in 1976.

You can read a review of “Manila, My Manila” by Hidde Van der Wall in Kritika Kultura Vol.   No.33/34 (2019): The City as Nation: NickJoaquin’s Manila, My Manila as Nationalist History.

It's Snowing in Manila

"The snow is always falling in 'Fargo,' cloaking the world in metaphysical confusion." - Jessica Zafra

The militant chided the child for singing "White Christmas" when the longest Christmas season
isn't white, in the absence of snow in these parts. (The movement would not give its imprimatur.)

But it gets almost-white cold up in Baguio City. But snowflakes allegedly fell in some parts 

of Metro Manila, said the news. And there's Snow World in Star City amusement park.

Suddenly, snow falls and cloaks Manila in meteorological confusion; the street children 

begin inhaling more feverishly, setting the mean streets and themselves on fire.

Soon, snowmen start throwing corpseballs at each other, across frozen feces-strewn streets  

unfamiliar with swathes of ice, now covering the familiar (and multiplying) burnt flesh.

The whole world winters; its entirety imagines, suffers, and melts with the snow... 

just as it realizes, and burns with, the fires of hell in the here and now.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

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