#20 - One Last Rabbit Hole Dive 🕳🗾

from Shakespeare & Star Wars to the East Asian fear of 4️⃣

Dec 30, 2024

Happy holidays friends, it’s been a while :)

It’d be a dead shame to let a newsletter stay on the nineteenth issue at the end of the year, so before ‘25 arrives tomorrow, here’s round twenty. 📰

But before I forget:

I’m really thankful to you all.

A group of people—some friends, many strangers—across the globe, decided that stuff I’d written was worthy enough for them to spend a few minutes reading…

… when there were unlimited other options for those same minutes.

This is a privilege no writer, even one as novice as myself, can ever take for granted.

So thanks again! And I hope you like this last one 🙏

Yep, I said “last one”. Not indefinitely, but for the near future.

There are so many ideas to pursue, commitments to maintain, and bets to place, that for now, I don’t have the time or energy for a project that’s just for fun.

Becoming a solopreneur is neither an easy process, nor a fast one. There are some guides, but no roadmaps. And one has to always be ready to leave bad bets behind, and get creative with good ones.

For example, the past few months I’ve been writing about Data Visualisation on LinkedIn, but it seems to me that written content is going nowhere fast so I’ve pivoted to focus on video. But as you can see here, there’s a ton I still need to learn. 😅

So for now, please enjoy this last bit of S-P-A-M 🦊

🕳 Rabbit Hole Dive

Part 1 - Akira Kurosawa

Apologies to the Bardolators1 and Skywalker-lovers for the slightly clickbaity subtitle, but I’ll promise we’ll get to it.

One of my goals for this Xmas break was to re/watch a good number of Akira Kurosawa’s films (and I managed - yay! 😆).

But a while back I was learning more about this legendary filmmaker and I went on an interesting rabbit hole “trail”.

Why do I think he’s probably the greatest director of all time, even ahead of the likes of Hitchcock and Welles?

Well, you can read tomes on his storytelling and cinematography pioneering, far better than anything I can summarise here, but I’ll just mention how his films revolutionised cinema forever:

Seven Samurai (1954)
- One of the GREATEST films of all time, it was the first to popularise the "assembling the team" trope. So while it was remade a dozen times in many languages, the movies that have taken influence from it are uncountable. I mean, even the idea for the flippin’ Avengers ultimately comes from it!
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
- George Lucas acknowledged the heavy influence of this film on Star Wars (1977)
Yojimbo (1961)
- Sergio Leone blatantly ripped it off and remade it into A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which spawned the entire “Spaghetti Western” genre!
  Kurosawa wrote to Leone directly, saying, "Signor Leone, I have just had the chance to see your film. It is a very fine film, but it is my film…” Eventually, Kurosawa and Toho Co. received 15% of the film's revenue.
Rashōmon (1950)
- And finally we have a film that was so influential with its unique storytelling that the word for when various people provide subjective and contradictory versions of the same incident is the “Rashomon effect”!

And it’s from Rashomon that we’ll jump into the next rabbit hole, but let’s not forget old Will’s influence on dear Akira!

Kurosawa adapted 3 iconic Shakespeare plays into critically acclaimed films:

Throne of Blood (1957)
- based on Macbeth
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
- based on Hamlet
- Francis Ford Coppola cited the first 30 mins "as perfect as any film I've ever seen" and used it as inspiration for the wedding sequence in The Godfather (1972).
Ran (1985)
- based on King Lear

Enjoying this? Maybe a friend will too 🙃

Part 2 - Rashomon

So we said this 1950 film was so influential that it gave its name to the phenomenon of eyewitness unreliability.

But what was this masterpiece itself inspired by?

The film is adapted from a Japanese short story "In a Grove" (1922) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927).

But the film’s title actually comes from an earlier short story - “Rashomon” (1915) - from the same author. The story is however unrelated.

Naturally I was curious about what a great writer this Akutagawa must have been…

Part 3 - Akutagawa

And indeed he was!

He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.

Part 4 - Japan’s version of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Jumping into the Akutagawa Prize, I learned that there is another highly sought-after literary prize in Japan, called the Naoki Prize, name after Sanjugo Naoki (1891-1934).

In fact, author and publisher Kan Kikuchi established both prizes.

They’re viewed as "two sides of the same coin" and indeed both are awarded twice a year, have the same 1 mil yen + pocket watch award, and focused on rising authors.2

Part 5 - Naoki

Ok so, was this Naoki a rival to their “father of short stories”?

Not really. It doesn’t seem like he was as great an author as Akutagawa, but there was something rather interesting about him…

Naoki, born Sōichi Uemura, had a reputation for being eccentric. And in fact, he changed his pen name four times.

At ages 31, 32, 33, 35.

When he reached age 35 (Sanjūgo), he decided to keep the same name from then on.

But he skipped 34.

Why? Because he was also a superstitious fellow, and it seems that 4️⃣ is an unlucky number in those parts.

(Funny how he didn’t think changing it exactly 4 times was unlucky 🤔🤣)

End - Tetraphobia

And this is how I got to the fear of the deathly number 4. ☠

The Chinese word for "four" (pinyin: ‘sì’) sounds quite similar to the word for "death" (pinyin: ‘sǐ’) in many varieties of Chinese. Similarly, the Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean words for "four" (respectively ‘shi’ and ‘sa’), sound similar or identical to "death".

Apparently, Eastern tetraphobia far surpasses Western triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13).

Yes, it’s all ridiculous but they make for nice stories lol.

🎶 Music

Last December in my very 1st issue I shared my favourite track of 2023, from my friend and most listened to artist of 2023, Italian Synthwave maestro, Chris Keya.

It’s now only fitting to share from my top artist of 2024, another Italian Synthwave master (Italy’s not crawling with them I swear 😅) and friend, Vincenzo Salvia.3 🍕

And if you want something with lyrics, this track from his “mini horror story about carbs” will crack you up. 😂🍝

💭 A Final Thought

In the first issue of 2024 (4th4 issue of S-P-A-M), I shared a brilliantly insightful and humorous speech from Alain de Botton about the value of pessimism.

At the time I said I thought it could be beneficial to anyone, especially when starting a new year. I remember thinking “if I could share just one helpful video with someone, this would be it”.

I still think the same and I’m glad I remembered it now.

Even if just to remind myself to watch it again. 🙂

“I’d like to reverse the equation: nothing was entirely supposed to go right and so nothing has particularly gone wrong.”
– Alain de Botton

Thanks for getting to this point dear reader. Even if there’s just 1 of you, it was worth the many hours nit-picking over every word.

Have a great 2025, and as always, please please remember, to always dance with the one that brung ya!

Prince 🦊

Idolisers of Shakespeare, the “Bard of Avon"

The Akutagawa Prize is probably slightly more prestigious in literary circles due to its focus on "serious", as opposed to “popular”, literature.

Chris almost had it again, mind you

Uh-oh, did I say 4th?! 😱💀

S-P-A-M