Nihon distractions: Readings in translated Japanese Literature

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Part 2

2012-02-04T10:50:00.003Z

Since posting on this charity project two more short stories and an essay have been added to the Waseda Bungaku webpage. Nakamura Fuminori, whose Kenzaburo Oe Prize winning novel The Thief is due out in March from Soho Press, has the essay and observational piece 'When the Earthquake Hit', translated by Michael Staley, in which he recounts the day of the earthquake. From Jungo Aoki, who has been described as the Japanese Thomas Pynchon, comes the short story, Special Edition - Sack-toting Turtle Spotted in West Ikebukuro, translated by Ian McDonald, and Yoshikawa Yasuhisa's penetrative short story, Snow Dusk, Death Dusk, is translated by Lucy North.

Please remember to donate something via the Japanese Red Cross or through your country's Red Cross Society.

March Was Made of Yarn - Edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke is published by Vintage in the USA in March, and also in the UK by Harvill Secker.

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature at Waseda Bungaku Department

The Wild Geese

2012-01-26T20:25:00.000Z

As is often the case that after a period of reading relatively modern or contemporary books or novels the desire to turn to something older pounces on my reading habits, and vice a versa. Feburary 17th will mark the 150 anniversary of Mori Ogai's birth, which seems like a great prompt to read some of his works, 2012 also marks the 100th anniversary of Soseki's Kokoro. Gan/The Wild Geese was written between the years 1911-1913, it could be described as being a long novella coming in at around 120 pages long, although it took longer to read than anticipated, theres plenty in here to inspire thought, like Kawabata Yasunari's later novel Koto/The Old Capital the novel is of interest with topographical descriptions of it's setting, here it's in and around Muenzaka near Tokyo University and Shinobazu Pond, this area is also the setting for Kawabata's short story from 1926 Boshi Jiken/The Hat Incident, which can be found in the collection, Palm-of-the-Hand-Stories. Biographical details on Mori are plenty throughout the internet, but a reading of a number of his fictions we can see that he drew on experiences and episodes from his life to use in his writings, Mori lived and wrote during the Meiji period, and many of the changes that this epochal period caused are witnessed and reacted to by the characters in his books. Like Natsume Soseki, his writing is seen as being anti-naturalist in it's perspective, in Gan the narrative is dotted with asides which can be interpretated to this effect. The story is narrated by an anonymous acquaintance of a student called Okada, who the narrator notes reminds him of Kawakami Bizan, it could be said that the book has four or five distinctive narratives, the opening one introduces us to the two students and of Okada's first contact with Otama by seeing her in the window of a large house he walks by. In the second the story of the money lender Suezo is described, at first a servant to the students of the university, Suezo through being thrifty has also managed to amass a capital of money, and he is reviled in the neighbourhood as a money lender, the narrative set before Okada's encounter with Otama traces Suezo's fascination and attraction to Otama, which eventually leads him to renting a house in Muenzaka for her as his mistress, and another one to accomodate her father. Mori's narrative moves in and out of the thoughts of his characters, Otama's as she misses being with her father, Otama's father's thoughts about his daughter, then it passes to Suezo's wife, Otsune, who begins to suspect her husband after hearing rumours, Otsune comes nearly to breaking point when Otama is pointed out to her in the street with the same parasol that Suezo had given her, confrontations abound. The narrative also following Suezo as he continually tries to put his wife off the scent, these psychological portraits are incredibly well defined insights into the worlds of the characters, Otama's loneliness and sense of entrapment in particular.

Throughout the novel the narratives of Mori's characters observe and note events and people occurring around them, the Namamugi incident is referred to and Suezo picks up on the idiosyncrasies of Fukuchi, the writer who owns a large house next to his - He was supposedly an intelligent man, a writer. But was he? If a clerk did the same kinds of nasty tricks with his pen as Fukuchi did, he would be discharged, reading a line like this makes you think that perhaps Mori had someone particular in mind. Examples of the changes being brought in with the period can be read too - The wheeled stall vanished from it's set place under the eaves. And the house and it's surroundings, which were always modest, seemed suddenly attacked by what was then fashionably called "civilization", for new boards over the ditch replaced the broken and warped ones, and a new lattice door had been installed at the entrance. This passage gives the impression that Mori is alluding that the changes that were underway went only as far as appearances, that in an understated way that underneath things remained pretty much the same, the big changes were perhaps only skin deep. As the narrative progresses Suezo acting on a slight impulse buys Otama a pair of linnets which can read as being the first appearance of two metaphors used in the narrative, after Otama has hung the cage up in her house in Muenzaka, the narrative flows into focusing on Okada's perspective, coming to the rescue of the birds when the cage is attacked by a snake. Gan finishes with many threads left unresolved, it leaving it up to the reader to imagine the continuous lives of it's characters.

Gan has been translated into English twice, as The Wild Geese by Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein, published by Tuttle Publishing, and again by Burton Watson as The Wild Goose published by Center for Japanese Studies Publications, University of Michigan

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

2012-01-23T21:06:00.000Z

At the moment it seems that my reading is not complete without having at hand a manga to read, and after reading Mitsuse Ryu, Moto Hagio seems like a logical choice, with the news that Fantagraphics will be publishing Hagio's shojo classic The Heart of Thomas/ Toma no shinzo I thought I'd better catch up with their previous book by her. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories collects ten stories that spans thirty years, 1977-2007, the stories are translated by Matt Thorn and includes the essay The Magnificent Forty-Niners, in which he introduces the artists that made up the influential manga group, all commonly believed to have being born in 1949, although as it turns out Hagio was the only one actually born in this year. I'd have to admit being torn between either posting solely on Iguana Girl or posting on the collection as a whole, although reading through the stories in this selection, they seemed to get better and better as they went along that not to post on any of the others seemed like a little of an injustice. The narratives in Hagio's stories are quite simply conveyed, most of these stories are brief but everyone leaves a resonance with the reader after finishing them, most are largely told from the perspective of a child who is caught at the moment as they are beginning to interpret and awaken to the machinations of the adult world, or are caught responding to some distant tragedy that has taken place in their past, Hagio's use of metaphor in her stories adds another dimension to them. A predominant theme that appears is that of societal conceptions of the normal, well adjusted child as opposed to those that are seen as being ugly or not fitting in, as in Hanshin: Half God from 1985 a story about a pair of conjoined twins, one beautiful, who is brash but also has a limp and is therefore carried by the other twin who is not as beautiful but is studious and takes care of her sister, it's also implied in the story that the beautiful twin is sapping the uglier twin's good health. The story explores her feelings of resentment with her beautiful twin, and Hagio's ability to examine the motives and perceptions of the reasoning process in her characters is both exacting and moving to read, the moral table is turned many times in this story when the doctors come to the conclusion that they should be separated, although it will be the case that one of them will die in the operation, Hagio leaves it to the last pages in adding the unexpected twist that changes the perspectives held by her characters.

The title story A Drunken Dream/Suimu, also from 1985, stands out from the others as it's setting is on a space station, it's a fantastic love story that spans across dream and reality, as well as shifting between time periods. The story is seen through the narrator, an androgyne, who has a reoccurring dream of a love unfulfilled, a mysterious person inhabits these dreams and when a group of new recruits arrive at the station the narrator excitedly discovers that among them is the person in the dream. At first reality seems to intervene on the dream, although Hagio has a knack of pulling the rug from beneath your feet at precisely the right moment which ends most of her stories in an enigmatic way, things come to a conclusion but a sense lingers that things are far from being resolved, which leaves the reader contemplating again what has occurred in her stories. The two longest stories Angel Mimic and Iguana Girl, (both from 2008), see Hagio exploring the traits of her characters to a greater degree, Iguana Girl is a story that explores the neurosis between a mother and daughter, (and sister?), the use of metaphor leads the reader into perceiving the narrative one way, but then Hagio turns the story in an unexpected direction which leaves you wondering which of the characters the metaphor is being applied to or which of them it is being perceived by. Angel Mimic/Tenshi no gitai follows the complex relationship between a young high school teacher and one of his pupils whose irrational behaviour hides an episode from her past, at the same time she harbours a fascination for angels which is another enigma to the teacher. The selection also comes with an interview between Hagio and the translator Matt Thorn where they discuss her beginnings and influences as a manga artist.

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories at Fantagraphics

Coming Closer and Getting Further Away

2012-01-19T22:00:00.000Z

I first came across the photography of Asako Narahashi through the book Heavy Light and then again of her exhibition Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water, Narahashi's photographs are a heady evocation of disorientation, that question our sense of proximity and balance in a spatial perspective, in them Narahashi would wade out into the sea and then turn her back and would photograph from the perspective of the sea looking back inland. Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water, Nazraeli Press is a book that I've still not managed to get a copy, but I've kept an eye out for other publications featuring her work, a recent publication is Coming Closer and Getting Further Away a booklet size collection which features a selection of photographs from the exhibition, Asako Narahashi 2009/1989: Coming Closer and Getting Further Away, Tokyo Art Museum, 2009, the text is in Japanese and English and comes with an additionally essay on Asako Narahashi entitled The Form of Water by art critic Shino Kuraishi, (translated by Franz K. Prichard), in which he traces Narahashi's photographs through her previous exhibitions and the books NU-E (1997), Funiculi Funicula, (2003) and also Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water. Kuraishi explores the concept of nue in Narahashi's photography, here the term nue is derived from describing the mythical creature but is also used to represent the sense of an un-identifiable person or an ambiguous indeterminate attitude. The booklet contains some photographs of the exhibition by Takashi Yasumura and also thumbnail images of all the photographs exhibited as well as full page selections of the photographs, which include construction shots of skyscrapers and express ways from Dubai and also photographs similar to those seen in Half Awake and Half Asleep in the Water taken in Jindo in South Korea.

For more information and images please check out the publisher's page.

The booklet is published by Osiris an imprint based in Shibuya in Tokyo who publish an interesting selection of books on photography, often in dual text editions, including; Nakahira Takuma's 1970 book For a Language to Come and Kanemura Osamu's My Name is Shockhammer and also a DVD collection of poet Yoshimasu Gozo's films Ki-Se-Ki:gozo cine, (trailer below), and many more, an imprint well worth exploring.

OSIRIS

Asako Narahashi's webpages

10 Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights

2012-01-18T22:30:00.000Z

SF is a genre that is open to so many interpretations, and then once you start to explore the genre further you discover that there exists further sub genres to it, 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights, is a novel whose scope takes in thousands of years, and fictionally links together some sizable enigmas in it's path. Originally published in 1967, and then again in a revised edition in 1973, the novel must stand as being one of the earliest examples of Japanese SF in translation, the current edition in Japan is published by Hayakawa Publishing, who also publish a large selection of classic SF titles in Japanese translation. The novel opens at the creation of the earth, the cosmic event is described in prose full of scientific terminology, which continues sporadically throughout the rest of the novel, passages of text journey over thousands, millions of years of evolution, the tide of time going in and out, Mitsuse layers the time periods arriving at what the reader presumes will be the permanent setting of the novel. In three chapters we are introduced to the main characters through historical episodes related to them, Plato travelling through the remote town of Elcasia, the period of events are meant to be those of his writing Timaeus and Critias and his fascination for the doomed civilisation of Atlantis.

The novel is dotted with descriptions of domed buildings and of objects made from curious unknown materials, whilst in Elcasia Plato comes into contact with the strange building material of glaes and also the material orichalcum, and speaks with the suzerain, a strange oracle like entity, the room in which Plato and his servant stay in is fitted with electric lights, which at first terrifies then rouses their curiosity. At night during a sandstorm Plato is overcome by a vision that he is Orionae witnessing the end of Atlantis. The setting of the second chapter takes us to the besieged city of Sakya and the scene of Siddartha's departure from the city at the beginning of his spiritual quest. Accompanied with his Brahmins the journey begins to take on a celestial path, Siddartha encounters the warring Asura and the malevolent Maitreya, whose identity and origins are clouded with uncertainty. The third of the introductory chapters arrives at the trial and crucifiction of Jesus Christ, with Pilate being harangued into sentencing the Nazarene to death, in much of these chapters Mitsuse is setting the scene, re-illustrating the stories that we are familiar with, (or partially familiar with), but at the same time ending them with a hint or a clue of the novel's real plot.

The novel is published by Haikasoru and translated by Alexander O.Smith and Elye J. Alexander and comes with an afterword from Mitsuse from the 1973 edition and also a commentary from Mamoru Oshii who recounts meeting the author. Reading the novel is like discovering a classic episode from Japanese SF history, Ryu Mitsuse was one of the first SF writers to be translated into English. The novel's scope is gargantuan but as it progresses Mitsuse refocuses the action into following the main characters as they hunt down and try to decipher the cause and motive of the destruction they encounter in a bout of civilisation hopping, the clues pointing to the Planetary Development Committee, although who is controlling the organisation?. Siddartha finds himself in a destroyed city which he discovers is the remains of Tokyo of 2092 and encounters some survivors, much of the last half takes place within the landscapes of destroyed civilisations, the characters travel through thousands of years, their abilities and the appearance of their armies are somewhat suddenly introduced to the reader, but this is the way in which things happen in the world of anime and manga, (Mitsuse's Andromeda series was illustrated by manga artist Keiko Takemiya), and it lends the novel a great sense of cinematic immediacy.

An excerpt is at Haikasoru's page.

Akutagawa Prize Winner announced

2012-01-17T21:42:00.000Z

News of the winners of the 146th Akutagwa Prize -

EnJoe Toh for Dokeshi no cho (Clown's Butterfly), and Tanaka Shinya for Tomogui (Cannibalism)

Naoki Prize winner -

Hamuro Rin for Higurashi no ki (Chronicle of Cicada)

Read more at Junbungaku.com and Mainichi Daily News and of course at bunshun.co.jp

The Moon and the Batteries

2012-01-14T16:29:00.000Z

For those who can't wait, an extract from the latest novel to be translated by Hiromi Kawakami, The Briefcase, (by Allison Markin Powell), has been posted over at Granta's website. The novel won Kawakami the 2001 Tanizaki Prize and will be published by Counterpoint Press at the end of February.

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Project

2012-01-11T20:44:00.000Z

As it approaches being nearly a year since the events of the March Tsunami last year it's still difficult to comprehend and take in the scale of the disaster. Waseda Bungaku Department have organised the Japan Eartquake Literature Project and compiled a collection of stories by contemporary Japanese writers giving voice to their reactions and reflections, offered free to download in English translation as PDF's, but please remember to make a donation!. The stories will be published in book format edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke in the U.S and in the U.K. under the title of, March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown of 2011, some of the stories featured are avilable to read through the Department's web page, please read through the introduction by Makoto Ichikawa, (director of Waseda Bugaku), to these stories and author profiles and make a donation to the Japan Red Cross or alternatively through your own country's Red Cross Society, and please remember to purchase a copy of the book when it is published.

The stories featured -

Ride on Time by Abe Kazushige, translated by Michael Emmerich

Poola's Return by Hideo Furukawa, translated by Satoshi Katagiri

March Yarn by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Michael Emmerich

Almost Everything in the World by Shin Fukunaga, translated by Michael Emmerich

Silverpoint by EnJoe Toh, translated by Jocelyne Allen

Planting by Aoko Matsuda translated by Angus Turvill

The Day the World Ends, We...2011 by Akio Nakamori translated by David Boyd

Signals by Mayuko Makita translated by Allison Markin Powell

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Project

Japanese Red Cross Society

Many thanks to the editor of Waseda Bungaku for allowing me to post a link to these stories and their webpage.

The Naked Eye

2012-01-11T10:04:00.000Z

The most recent translation of Tawada Yoko, (The Naked Eye, New Directions 2009, translated from the German Das Nackte Aug, Konkursbuch Verlag, 2004 by Susan Bernofsky), again witesses her narrative traversing across many borders, the protagonist, a young Vietnamese student who has travelled from Vietnam to Berlin to speak at an international conference is kidnapped the evening before she is due to present her lecture. The novel opens with a swirling description of a room, the scene as if seen by a digital camera whose operator is unaware of the fact that it's actually recording, presents a sequence of unrelated objects, the narrator concludes; It isn't possible to reconstruct a story from this landscape of ruins. The young woman's geographical knowledge of Europe is slight, it being the first time she has travelled, although fluent in Russian her kidnapper is a German student who smuggles her back to his apartment in his car. At an attempt at entrapping her to stay with him permanently her kidnapper, Jorg, tries to convince her that she is pregnant, as time passes she begins to take walks and she learns the location of the town's train station. Through a series of events she manages to board the train which she assumes will take her to Moscow, but it is in fact making it's way to Paris, on board she is fortunate in finding a Vietnamese woman who gives her the address of her sister in Paris who'll be able to help her. Through the novel's narrator, (who later gives the false name of Anh), we too become spectators to a familiar world where meanings and inter pretations have become slightly adrift from positions that are taken for granted, in a sense that they revert back to presenting them selves as existing partially comprehended, we begin to re-interpretate and re-associate images and behaviours of people and events, being viewed without being bound to their original language or culture leaves them prone to being interpreted with a sense of slight surreality, they shift between context and contextlessness, or in as much they form a new contextuality, the form of Tawada's prose often transforms from prose to the poetical, passages sometimes linking thematically.

Tawada's novels truly have an international scope to them, spanning continents and countries, political and gender ideologies, through the narrator of The Naked Eye we look into the lives of the people that she encounters, Marie, the prostitute, Ai Van and her French husband Jean, Charles who she meets at the cinema, the Vietnamese doctor, Tuong Linh. The novel has a cinematic feel to it, when she makes it to Paris the narrator finds a sanctuary in the cinema and becomes obsessed by the films of Catherine Deneuve, the chapter titles of the book take on the name of her films, Indochine, Drole d'endroit pour une rencontre, Dancer in the Dark, and many more, in each of them we are given a synopsis of scenes and scenarios, the segments of those which the narrator doesn't fully comprehend are described in a circumspect way, as the novel progresses the narrative of the synopsis and the actual narrative sometimes subtly cross paths. It could be said that suspicions are roused in the plausability to some of the connections of the segments of the novel, but they can be easily overlooked, as the novel con-vincingly paints a picture of the easiness for people to slip out of sight when moving between borders, the scope and inventfullness of Tawada's prose is always something to be in awe of. Tawada has been awarded nearly all of the major awards in Japan most recently the Noma Prize.

Yoko Tawada.de

The Naked Eye at New Directions Publishing

Das Nackte Aug at Konkursbuch Verlag

The Lake

2012-01-09T10:51:00.000Z

The Lake/Mizuumi, originally published by Foil Tokyo, back in 2005 was published recently by Melville House in a translation by Yoshimoto's mainstay translator Michael Emmerich, the novel has been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, the shortlist of which will be announced imminently. Yoshimoto's characters speak in a lucid and simple language which effortlessly catch the complexities of the heart. The novel's central characters both have in common the fact that their mothers have passed away, the first part of the novel is taken up mainly with the novel's main narrator, Chihiro, reflecting on the idiosyncrasies of her mother and father, Nakajima, the enigmatic young man who becomes the object of her affection is seen by her in the window of the apartment block opposite hers. As Chihiro gets to know more about Nakajima slowly the details of his troubled passed are revealed, Chihiro's narrative is full of passages of her rationalising her thoughts about her feelings for him and about her observations of his behaviour, she at times considers him to be suicidal, his aversion to having sex with her makes her suspect that he could be gay, but at the same time her rationalising is punctuated with moments where she catches herself being overawed by her feelings for him, in simple things about him, the way he stands.

A sideline story that flows along whilst Chihiro slowly unlocks the enigma of Nakajima is that Chihiro has been employed to paint a mural for a school under threat of closure, the two threads of the story begin to subtly entwine as the novel progresses. Although there is a lot of crying in the novel the prose never seems to read as being over wrought, the characters in many of Yoshimoto's novels always have the ability to give free reign to their emotions, whilst also in-habiting worlds which they appear to be experiencing either for the first or last time, which imbues her prose with a freshening aspect, an example is when Chihiro and Nakajima walk back from their visit to Nakajima's friends, the brother and sister, Mino and Chii, who live in their makeshift house by the lake in the forest, Chihiro asumes that she'll never relive the experience. Chii is bed bound and speaks to Nakajima and Chihiro through Mino in a way which hints that they posses a telepathic connection, the pair exhibit a supernatural aura, they live an ethereal life, beyond the peripheries of society, out in the countryside, at a point Chihiro considers that they could have been a figment, and when she returns to them she is taken aback by their actuality, Mino explains to her that he rarely needs to venture back out into town.

Seeing a picture on the wall in Mino and Chii's house offers the clue for Chihiro to realize the enigma of Nakajima that has been up to now beyond him being able to rationalize and relate to her. Through Chihiro's narration Yoshimoto's prose conveys a sense of the emotional journey that Chihiro and Nakajima have taken through the course of the novel, which is a common motif in Yoshimoto's narratives, finishing her novels always leaves me with an affinity for her characters and their plight, theres always a lucid sense of a before and after and a re-evaluation between these two places, also an impression of coming full circle with her characters. Yoshimoto's use of an ellipsis finds a perfect vehicle in Nakajima's repressed trauma, almost passing undetected, The Lake has been unsurprisingly a much blogged about book so there's little need to divulge anymore of the plot, only to add that to read it I feel again a certain reaffirmation.

The Wind Has Risen

2011-12-30T22:54:00.000Z

December has proved to be not a great month for me to blog in, I had originally planned to look back over my readings and posts of the last year, but instead have found myself caught up by a reading of The Wind Has Risen/Kaze Tachinu by Hori Tatsuo, Hori was a disciple of Akutagawa and Muro Saisei, although a prominent literary figure of early Showa not very many of his writings have made it to being translated into English, which is a great pity although his novel Naoko from 1941 was translated by Yuko Watanabe by Bucknell University back in 1975 and a translation of his short story Les Joues en Feu appeared in Kodansha's The Showa Anthology. The translation of Kaze Tachinu by Francis B. Tenny can be read in Columbia University's recently published abridged edition of their Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature. The above edition is from Iwanami Shoten which also includes Hori's novella Utsukushii Mura/Beautiful Village from 1933. Kaze Tachinu follows the tentative relationship with a male narrator and Setsuko who suffers from encroaching tuberculosis, the narrator's attentive observations of Setsuko's condition are also interupted with careful observations of his relationship with his possible father in law. They come to the agreement that the two will head to a sanatorium at the base of Mount Yatsugatake, in the hope of an improvement to Setsuko's condition, throughout the story they are taking small steps towards the answer of whether they're relationship will form into something substantial, in little snippets of dialogue Setsuko gives away clues to the narrator to the depth of her commitment, as well as if to herself.

Hori Tatsuo suffered from lung complaints and ailing health for much of his life and this features prominently in much of his writings, the male narrator is an amazingly drawn character, pensive, intelligent, catching up with walks that he feels he should have taken, studious, and at the same time as reading these cryptic signs from Setsuko, Hori's delicate prose captures the effects on the two as Setsuko succumbs to her condition, the male narrator sits with her holding her limp hand, he describes the scenes as he walks around the sanatorium observing the other patients, his walks extend around the local landscapes and woods, noting that 'in my minds eye the winter scenery like a wood-block print of some improbable place'. Hori's prose is touched with a slight modernism, the poetical descriptions of the woods and mountains contrasted with a description of a mackrel sky fuse together the old and new styles. Coming to the sanatorium for the narrator begins to take on being a culmination of differing emotions and aspirations for him, he describes that he had dreamed of a secluded life with a woman, and they both observe that they find themselves in a sublime beauty and peace at the sanatorium, their relationship begins to ascend to a different level, he begins making notes of his thoughts - "Setsuko, I can't believe that two people have ever shared such mutual love. There hasn't been a you before. Or a me..." Her father pays a visit concerned that her condtion isn't improving and after he has left, her coughing brings up blood, although Setsuko and her father voice their concern of the narrator's work as a novelist is being jeopardised, he hints that he will write a novel of their situation, but stops when contemplating it's projected conclusion. As the story contiues the notes take on being actual dated diary entries, in which some are mingled with retrospective comments so it remains uncertain for a while as to when they are being written, observations and recollections present and past tense converge in almost elgiac prose where the observations of the narrator take on an etheral conciousness, he moves to the small village of Karuizawa, (which Hori also visited regulary), staring at the light reflected from his small cabin window the observation is imbued with an expansive quality, in a sense with a universalism in minature. Walking around the village which is populated with many foreigners he comes across the German caretaker of the church who tells him that the priest is about to leave for Matsumoto. A copy of Rilke's Requiem For A Friend is posted to him and the narrator quotes from the poem. The story, although centering on the male narrator and his observations, rather than being preoccupied with Setsuko's illness is in Hori's nuanced prose an evocative piece of prose on the interpretation of memory and the impact of death, love and loss, and in the end it reads as a narrative from one who finds himself being the one left behind. The diary entries in the story begin at the start of December and I found rather unnervingly end on December 30th.

Here's a list of the titles of non-Japanese authors and novels that I've read in 2011, in no real particular order;

Herman Hesse - Strange News From Another Star
Alain Robbe-Grillet - Project for a Revolution in New York
Alain Robbe-Grillet - Topology of A Phantom City
Michel Houellebecq - The Art of Struggle
Robert Musil - Tonka and Other Stories
Roland Topor - The Tenant
Marguerite Yourcenar - Mishima - A Vision of the Void
Roland Topor - Joko's Anniversary
Julian Barnes - A Sense of an Ending
Francois Mauriac - The Desert of Love
Jean-Philippe Toussaint - Making Love
Richard Brautigan - Sombrero Fallout
Michel Houellebecq - Lanzarote
Richard Brautigan - The Tokyo Montana Express
Steven Millhauser - Enchanted Night
Michelle Paver - Dark Matter
Susan Hill - The Albatross and Other Stories
Magnus Mills - The Maintenance of Headway
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud A Solitude
Ernst Junger - On the Marble Cliffs
Julien Gracq - Cheateau d'Argol
Otto de Kat - The Figure in the Disatance
Jonathan Lethem - Amnesia Moon

Amongst these is quite a few books I've been meaning to read for some time, including the Julien Gracq, (I've managed to locate a copy of his novel The Opposing Shore, so I'll be reading that soon), and also On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger quite a controversial figure, but this novel has an almost unique narrative to it, there's no straightforward dialogue but the descriptive power of the novel is something I've not come across before, until a reading of Chateau d'Argol after it perhaps. Reading Julien Gracq's obituary in the Independent I was quite surprised to learn that On the Marble Cliffs was an influential novel on him. It was quite strange to read Houellebecq's Lanzarote at around the same time as 1Q84, as both novels skirt around the same themes in differing degrees, although Murakami's is certainly the more lengthy. Another novelist I came to this year was Alain-Robbe Grillet and if I'm being honest I picked these up after reading Kurahashi Yumiko's The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q, I found myself completely absorbed into the fragmentary narratives of both Project for a Revolution in New York and Topology of A Phantom City, so Alain-Robbe Grillet will be another author I'll probably revisit in the new year. Other non Japanese novels I've got earmarked to read for 2012, a mixture of old and new include, Roberto Bolano's The Third Reich, Gustaw Herlings collection of three novellas, The Island and also The Story of a Strange Time by Leonid Borodin who sadly passed away recently. Another novel that I'd like to read at some point is Michel Butor's La Modification/Second Thoughts, tracking down a copy of this will be a bit of a quest. There's been many books by Japanese authors that I've not made it to this year, in particular The Town That Vanished in Four Minutes by Shinya Komase and Koichi Toyoda, a photo book that recounts the effects of the March Tsunami on Rikuzentakada City, but hopefully I'll be able to read many more of these in the new year. Also in the new year I might be heading back to Japan, so maybe I'll put my blog on an indefinite hiatus, I have also for some time been contemplating the idea of starting an imprint, but I'm not sure, see how my time pans out, but it remains to say many thanks to you for reading and commenting over the past year.

Nippon Wars and Other Plays

2011-12-07T22:00:00.000Z

Translations of Japanese drama are few and far between so the publication of this collection of six key plays by Takeshi Kawamura is a welcome event, anyone who might have an interest to explore Japanese drama further I'd redirect to the Performing Arts Network Japan pages via the Japan Foundation, the archive of their Play of the Month is especially worth a look through. My knowledge of modern Japanese drama though is slight, other from the appearance of translations of Mishima's reworkings of Noh plays and Abe Kobo's Tanizaki Prize winning play Friends/Tomodachi, there is a collection of translations by Kunio Kishida, (a drama prize named after him is one of the most prestigious in Japan), Five Plays, by Kunio Kishida, edited by David G. Goodman, who also made a study of Japanese drama of the sixties in his book Return of the Gods, and a translation of the The Face of Jizo/Chichi to Kuraseba by Inoue Hisashi, are all books of interest. Another dramatist well over due for some representation into English translation is that of Terayama Shuji, the plays here from Takeshi Kawamura were first performed a little closer to our own time, but at the same time they involve subject matter from the course of modern Japanese history. The book is edited by Peter Eckersall who also writes an introductory essay examining Kawamura's plays and his involvement from production group Daisan Erotica to the forming of his own TFactory, the essay is entitled - Takeshi Kawamura: Memory, Society, Theater-Media and provides a great insight to the nature of Kawamura's plays which take in both traditional and experimental aspects of theater, including to a degree elements of cyberpunk. The plays are translated by various translators including; Shoichiro Kawai, Leon Ingulsrud, Sara Jensen, Aya Ogawa and Peter Eckersall, the selected plays include - Nippon Wars, The Lost Babylon, Hamletclone, Aoi, (based on the Noh play Aoi no ue), Komachi, and The White House in the Hills of Argos.

Nippon Wars was first performed in 1984, set in a dystopian future it opens with a soldier leaving for the front saying farewell to his girlfriend proclaiming although he is young he will fight for the United Capitalist Republic of Nippon, (UCRN), another man appears at the back of the stage on an elevated platform firing a gun into the air, banners unravel proclaiming developments in the war with Calgaria, he explains he joined the Rebel Canary, another banner explains the intensification of the war, UCRN forms an alliance with Amerigo, the war turns to total war, the man's nausea grows, close to vomiting he observes - History is making me sick!, firing in the air slips of silver paper begin to fall, (an editor's note explain that these represent aka-gami, Japanese conscription notices). The scene shifts, the man is regaining consciousness, someone explains that he is coming around after being shot with the anaesthetic Algin Z, he finds himself amongst a strange group, he can hear the distant sound of waves, Welcome to the blue whale room!, they all greet him, he learns from them that from now on his name will change to 'O', as a deserter of the Rebel Canary he'll train for two and half years before being sent to the real front, one of the group reveals that he is inside a giant whale and that there are other similar animals in existence being used for similar purposes, the group is made up of both men and women and are named in the play with single letters, J, B, M, P, K. The others in the group display a variety of extraordinary powers, fragments of O's previous life begin to return to him, one of the others observe that, 'you must have some kind of special power if you were sent to this room', O begins to question where he is again, mockingly another says, 'Hey, bro. We already had that where am I stuff in the last scene. Lay off that hero shit. What are we actors?', abruptly they receive a surprise visit from General Q accompanied by Miss Right and Miss Left and a bacchanalian party begins in the middle of which Miss I returns, her previous whereabouts appear to have been a mystery. Lessons begin, as they count through they come to Lesson 100: conversation, Q explains - This is communication. You exchange your own ideas. But you cannot use any existing language. It becomes apparent that the exercise is being overlooked by a higher intelligence than themselves, which is represented in the form of a floating brain called Sue Ellen, using Neuro Kinetic Energy the group inadvertently blow up an enemy sub that had strayed to close, this realization that they possess this power arouses their curiosity in their situation, and through the conversation and questioning Miss I poses the question, 'Do you have the memory of being loved?', which produces a blank within the group. Sue Ellen informs them that the whale is on course for the coast of Calgaria, this news is interrupted by the announcement of news of the war's further intensification, martial law has broken out in Tokyo. As they near the coast the ensuing panic is represented in a dance and the characters begin to recall moments from their previous existences, they come under enemy attack and at the same time O attempts suicide. After the wave of the attack has passed O is operated upon, during the procedure Q explains that the UCRN had manufactured microbe bombs and androids to help the war effort, the only problem they had were emotions, the realization that they are androids sweeps through the group and that the memories of their previous existences were implanted in an attempt to help give them more of a human like identity. The ending of the play sees an attempted power shift and rebellion but this too could be an event that was pre-ordained by the total brain. The title play from this collection transcends beyond being a story of malfunctioning androids and obviously carries a comment about society at large and offers an apocalyptic vision of a dystopian society, although reading a play you are only exposed to a limited appreciation of it's overall power and scope, reading Nippon Wars you realize it has lost none of it's ability to provoke thought. The plays presented here also come accompanied with photographs of productions of each of the plays.

Read synopsis of Aoi and Komachi at Performing Arts Network Japan

Nippon Wars and Other Plays is published by Seagull Books

T Factory (in Japanese)

Three Contemporary Japanese Poets

2011-11-28T10:39:00.000Z

Another title published from London Magazine Editions, Three Contemporary Japanese Poets appeared in 1972, focusing on poems of the three poets, Anzai Hitoshi, Shiraishi Kazuko and Tanikawa Shuntaro, the translations are by Graeme Wilson and Atsumi Ikuko. Both Shiraishi and Tanikawa have several books in English translation, the latest by Tanikawa is the collection The Art of Being Alone, a selection of poems translated by Takako Lento that span the years 1952-2009, published as part of Cornell University's East Asia Series, a book that I've earmarked to be read in the new year. Takako Lento has also recently translated a selection of poems by Heiichi Sugiyama for Poetry International Web, Last Words and Water being two which seem to remain with me at the moment. Canadian born Shiraishi Kazuko has appeared in translation, notably in the three collections published by New Directions, Seasons of Sacred Lust, Let Those Who Appear, and most recently, My Floating Mother, City, although in this volume only ten pages are given in examining her background and poems, it still remains an informative piece, the poems are interspersed through a brief bibliography and biography, featuring poems from her first collection The Town Where Eggs Are Falling. Anzai Hitoshi is explored a little more indepthly though, Anzai is a poet not much translated in English, the selection here includes twenty translated poems and an informative piece on Anzai, born 1919 in Fukuoka Prefecture, first trained as a teacher but dropped these studies to become an editor for poetry magazine Sanga, he spent some time editing at the Asahi Shimbun. Interested in classical Japanese Literature and French poetry; Francois Villon and Jacques Prevert in particular, although his poetry breaks from traditional styles, Wilson observes though that he hasn't taken the route of the then very contemporary Concrete Poets, which you get the impression that maybe Wilson was none too impressed with. Anzai's poetry captures the fleeting moment, in the poem Snow, Anzai presents a picture of mourning, the poem ends with a reminder that even after people and things have passed, to those that remain fate remains an undecided factor in the equation. Although the traditional seems to be at the periphery of Anzai's poems much of the language used in them reflects the modern, as in the thematically linked poem Disused Railway Station and in the the poem My Eyes, which envisions aspects of the contemporary world viewed around but ends with a glance at the approach and passing of time.

My eyes are the driving-mirror

In the cab of an all-night truck:

They watch time's headlights

Crowding up behind me.

The thirteen poems by Shunatro Tanikawa include the seven part poem A Syllable of Seeing (Portraits of Womankind), the bibliographical and biographical piece describes Tanikawa's upbringing within an intellectual environment, his father was the philosopher Tanikawa Tetsuzo which instilled an aversion to academical life. As a young poet he was sponsored by the poet Miyoshi Tatsuji, and Wilson looks at the period when he wrote his first two books Solitude of Two Million Years (1952) and 62 Sonnets and his joining of poetry group Kai(Oar). The bibliography in this piece is really good including descriptive passages on Tanikawa's, Ehon, (Picture Book), from 1956, and his book from 1968, Tabi (Travel), some from Tabi are included here. A Syllabary of Seeing, (Portraits of Womankind) contains seven syllable each focusing on different women, the first is of a woman, perhaps a first love, the poem subtly captures the first moments of the recognition of attraction, the second which begins by an observation of a grand- mother's eyes and then the following stanzas explore landscapes which although at a first reading don't appear to be linked, the poem goes onto form a cohesive image of slight decay. The third starts by examining a past lover, the poem then goes on to explore an emotional world that is both discarded but at the same time has a distant familiarity to it. The fourth is a poem which has an air of a measured reconciliation contrasted with images of a mixture of emotions that have either escaped or are unattained. The fifth begins with an observation of a daughter and is a meditation on a world of possibilities, the sixth is a retrospective glance of the narrator's mother, and memories from childhood, reaching the seventh syllable we discover that the narrator of the syllables is that of a woman, which by turns forces the reader to reconsider the perspectives of the preceding pieces, the last syllable is a self portrait. This is an interesting introductory book to these three very different poets which will be of interest to those both familiar and new to the poets it looks at.

A SYLLABARY OF SEEING
(Portraits of Womankind)

THE SECOND SYLLABLE

I look at a woman,
My mother's mother. I look at the huge,
Serenely black

Eyes of the gentle
Reptiles whom the earth wiped out
Millennia back.

I look at a sinking
Sailing-dinghy whose jib-sail flickers
In the running tide.

At a line of beach-guards
Drawn up stiff, like singing skeletons,
Side by side.

I look at a tilled
But stony hill. To that stoniness
My eyes return,

To a hillside seared
With the marks of flame, with the ulceration
Of after-burn.

At cheeks inflamed
By imminent flesh, by the body's mantle
About to fall.

And I look at Medusa's
Head observed in the hustle and bustle
Of carnival.

1Q84 Book Three

2011-11-18T13:40:00.000Z

One of the first differences to Book Three is that of a third narrative being added to Tengo's and Aomame's, that of Ushikawa's, some of the details to his character are sketched in and explained further, Murakami devotes a lot of pages to exploring this character and illustrating his background. Tengo's situation at first doesn't change a great deal, he revisits his father who is still in a comatose state in the sanatorium in what Tengo has named the cat town. Aomame's fate alters from where we thought it was heading at the end of Book Two. Fuka-Eri, (still hiding out in Tengo's apartment at first but then disappears again), Aomame and Ushikawa receive a visit by a persistent NHK fee collector, knocking on their doors to collect their subscription fees, the true identity of this collector remains one of the novels enigmas, along with the fate of Fuka-Eri, Murakami's main narrative in the third book is following Tengo and Aomame's story, at the end of reading Book Three Murakami has left a lot of unexplored territory to cover if he were to return to write additional Books to 1Q84. Another difference to Book Three is that the pacing slows markedly in comparison to Books One and Two giving Book Three an altogether different slightly more measured tone to the previous Books, in hindsight it felt like it could be said that the main character of a good portion of Book Three is Ushikawa, the feeling that you're sat with him in the apartment looking watch over Tengo's apartment is palpable. There are large passages of descriptive text in the book, and much of it witnesses the character's circumspection of both unestablished and established aspects of the plot but there are also some vivid passages too, and for me these were amongst my favourite parts of the book, with this in mind it's difficult to contemplate 1Q84 as a whole entity, it dips and peaks, the chapter, 'Occam's Razor', seemed like one of the most hurriedly constructed chapters that I've read in a novel in a long time, for Ushikawa to connect so many threads together in such a short space left me slightly reeling, but I enjoyed how Book Three carves out its own spacious world.

Several stand out scenes for me in Book Three included the description of Aomame's dreams, three of them to begin with, in one Aomame appears to become transparent, where she can still see her vital organs and bones beneath her skin, this depiction of identity loss is echoed with Tengo's father's statement after Tengo asks him about his place in regard to his parentage, You're nothing, Tengo's father replies, which leads me to another passage that I thought was another of the novel's peaks, the description of the contents of the envelope that Tengo's father leaves him, Tengo's certificates and the description of the family photograph, the death of Tengo's surrogate father from a condition the doctors couldn't clarify, could have been the result of exhaustion from a life spent working, his cradle to the grave work life ended with him being buried in his uniform had a crushingly understated sadness to it, it almost appeared like something from a 19th century novel depicting life in the work houses. At times it seemed that not a great deal happens in a proportion of Book Three, but then again it does, Tengo's episode with hashish with nurse Kumi Adachi seemed to almost slip unnoticed amongst the subdued vividness of Murakami's prose, the translation of Book Three is by Philip Gabriel, I've read that the translation was split between the two translators to ensure the publication of the English translation came out as quick as possible. The breadth of Murakami's imagination is always something to be in awe of, and after reading the three books you get the impression that perhaps this is the first dropping of the pebble into the water in regards to how much of the story has been left but could be explored further, but perhaps this will not be the case, maybe Book Three will be the last Book of 1Q84, we'll have to wait and see, maybe a Book 4 will be a much slimmer volume, I've been thinking that maybe Book Three will not be the last to 1Q84.

White and Purple

2011-11-10T22:01:00.001Z

Keijo - Image from wiki Commons

White and Purple/Shiro to Murasaki, a short story by Sata Ineko was originally written in 1950, (the same year that the Korean War broke out), Sata Ineko is an author not widely translated into English so it was an insightful and in many ways a revelatory experience to read this story translated by Samuel Perry. A novel I was reminded of whilst reading was Hayashi Fumiko's novel from 1951, Ukigumo/Floating Clouds, both narratives feature female characters recollecting their lives whilst living abroad in Japanese occupied territories, the stories in each of their own perspectives examine both colonialism and to a degree the post colonial conscience. White and Purple's main narrator, Osawa Yoshiko, has these memories prompted by hearing the name of a town mentioned on a radio broadcast, the narration begins with observations of Yoshiko's appearance and physical mannerisms from the nameless person that Yoshiko recounts her experiences to. Yoshiko recalls Suwon, a place whose ancient splendour is still conveyed in the ruins of an ancient palace, she evokes the tranquility of the place with herons, children playing and shockingly singing a Japanese song about the signing of a treaty at Port Arthur and of the famous General Nogi, she describes her passage from Kyushu to Keijo, (the Japanese name of occupied Seoul), and finding a job at the Railway Bureau of the Governor General. Yoshiko describes the attitudes of the Japanese community, with an exaggerated sense of self importance which soon turns to feelings of superiority of the Koreans. As the story progresses the relationship with a Korean colleague, Den Teiki and Yoshiko could be seen as mirroring and encapsulating the events occurring around them as Japan imposes the name order and begins to tighten it's control over the country, both geographically and culturally. But Yoshiko is an astute observer of these events occurring around them and these instances of cultural intrusion don't escape her eye, but we are left wondering to how much to a degree this effects the image she has of her own identity, she sees the beauty in the Korean people and landscape, but still seems to be rooted in a sense of superiority that she herself is unaware of, Yoshiko is a finely drawn character. Den Teiki, (who Yoshiko describes as a true intellectual), has studied in Japan and is a devotee of Japanese literature asking Yoshiko about the nuances of reading Murasaki and Sei Shonagon, and a particular Shimazaki Toson short story, together they go a trip to Mt Kumgang, during the trip another subject of contention arises when Den Teiki observes that, 'all Koreans want to visit Mt Kumgang before they die', the fact that so many Japanese tourists do so reasserts their dominance on the peninsula they now regard as their own. During their conversation Den Teiki also confesses that she is working on a novel but is uncertain which language to write it in, the talk sees Yoshiko hint at the linguistic superiority of her language, the relationship between the two women is a precariouly balanced one. The translation of this story won Samuel Perry the 2010 William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize organised through The University of Chicago, this story and an introduction to the text by Samuel Perry, and also the other winners, including translations of Nakajima Atsushi, Kim Saryang and Chikamatsu Monzaemon are available to read online via the Prize's webpage.

Sata Ineko at Wikipedia

William F. Sibley Prize at The University of Chicago

Japanese Literature: Online Translations Part 2

2011-11-07T07:15:00.000Z

Ozaki Koyo 1868 - 1903

After having a number of links to online translations to read mounting up in my favourites I thought I'd put them all in one place and also make a post out of them. These are mostly stories and poems to read online again but I thought I'd share them here, hope you find something of interest. Recently published by Kurodahan Press is a collection of short stories, Phantom Lights and Other Stories, by Miyamoto Teru, translated by Roger K. Thomas, if you follow their page about the book theres a link to read a sample story, A Tale of Tomatoes at Japan Focus. Another novel recently found over at Hathi Trust.org is Tokutomi Kenjiro's novel Nami-Ko - A Realistic Novel, from 1898 which I read a while ago, I'm not too sure if this is available to download whole as a PDF, but it maybe of interest if you're interested in reading a Meiji era novel. Another Meiji period novel available to read and download is Ozaki Koyo's, Gold Demon/Konjiki Yasha, first published in 1887, which is available at Archive.Org, this is not a straight translation of the story but a realization of it into English by Arthur Lloyd, and if you're a reader in Japanese they also have Ozaki's Zenshu, (collected works), to read there as well. One of Ozaki's pupils was Izumi Kyoka famous for writing in a Gothic style, you can read and download the story, The Saint of Mt.Koya, translated by Stephen W. Kohl at Intangible.org, (thanks to the blog Pais de neu for highlighting this story). A more recent book to read is On A Small Bridge in Iraq an account of a visit to Iraq by Akutagwa Prize winning author Natsuki Ikezawa and photographer Seiichi Motohashi, translated by Alfred Birnbaum the book can be read and downloaded for free at the publisher, Impala's website. It's great to read about Gunzo's links with the London based literary magazine, Granta, there's lots of stories available to read via the Granta Online Only website but I'd thought I'd highlight some pieces available from Japanese authors, In Goat's Eyes is the Sky Blue?, a short story by Natsuo Kirino, (author of Out), is translated by Philip Gabriel, there's also extracts from two novels by Yang Sok-Il, Taxi Rhapsody and Taxi Driver Diary translated by Alfred Birnbaum under the title In Shinjuku, and thanks to Junbungaku blog for highlighting a story from Hiromi Kawakami called, God Bless You, 2011, an older story rewritten after the events in March, the poem Yakisoba from Hiromi Ito translated by Jeffrey Angles is also available to read. Here's hoping that the links between these two great magazines continue to grow. Bit of a mixture of things, but hope you find something of interest amongst them.

For - Japanese Literature: Online Translations Part 1.

Eden - It's an Endless World

2011-11-03T21:07:00.000Z

For quite a while I've wanted to start reading manga but haven't been too sure which titles to begin with, manga appears to have so many different genres and sub genres within it that it's quite easy to become overwhelmed by choice. I've only read two books of manga before reading the first volume of Eden - It's an Endless World, I've read the first volume of Welcome to the N.H.K by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, (a story whose central character is a hikkikomori), and also Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, I enjoyed reading both of these books, I guess with manga it's simply a case of diving in and discovering what titles you like and those which you don't, although I'm not too interested in checking out the well known ones. This overwhelming choice of manga is something that Hiroki Endo discusses in an afterword to Eden, he talks also about finding the perfect CD amongst the huge choice to be had, the one manga, song or film that you can relate completely to, for him it was Evangelion but he finds that it's magic begins to wear off, or perhaps that you change, his afterword addresses this constantly changing relationship between who we are and why we become attracted to certain books, music, films. Eden - It's An Endless World was published in Japan by Kodansha, translated into English by Kumar Sivasubramanian and published by Dark Horse Comics and Titan Books. The first volume of Eden opens in a post apocalyptic world, to begin with there are three principal characters who we get the impression could be the only survivors of an undefined ending of the world; Enoah and Hannah, two junior high school age kids, and also the older, Layne, a wheel chair bound scientist who we discover quite early on in the story is gay. They discuss facets of the bible, and Enoah asks Layne about his father, Enoah only has sparse memories of him. The story begins to be told through flash back sections which are marked throughout the book with the page backgrounds being in black, Layne recollects growing up with Enoah's father, Chris, in the small town where they grew up Layne was beaten up for being gay, Chris never broke off their friendship, an undercurrent to the relationship between Layne and Chris is that possibly Layne holds an unrequited love for Chris, the two men studied science together and the narrative jumps to them working in a purpose built secret military laboratory base trying to find the antidote and cause of a mysterious bio-hazzardous virus which attacks the body, causing the outer skin to harden and the central organs to liquefy. Chris becomes frustrated with the authorities and begins to pass information onto an illegitimate organization, Propater. Hannah and Enoah seem to be special cases as they have DNA which is immune to the virus, Layne at some point has contracted the disease and his condition seems to be worsening. Walking around the now deserted compound Enoah comes across the pieces of a robot called Cherubim which he reassembles. As chapter one ends helicopters arrive at the base which Enoah refers to as their Eden, and unknown to him his father is amongst the masked men that land and have begun to take control of the base under the guise of rescuing them, tracking down Layne, Chris states he's come for his revenge, a fully functional Cherubim begins to open fire on the men and helicopters, wiping them all out. Chapter two is set twenty years after these events and follows a youth, accompanied by Cherubim, as he explores a city scape now overrun with vegetation and plant life, perplexingly he comes across a body which is being mauled by dogs, inside the ribcage he finds a set of computer discs. The next morning the youth is awakened by a group of bandits that take him hostage, whose leader, Sophia, has hacked into Cherubim and discovered that the youth's name is Elijah and also his father's identity. Eden is a series I think that I could quite easily read in it's entirety, the drawing is a great balance between simplicity and detailed study, the whole tone is one that could be labelled as being speculative, the cover states that it's for mature readers, the first volume is in fact quite mild, although I think as the series goes on, I gather things become more explicit, the volumes that come after this one look in turn at the histories of the central characters, although I think before I take them up I may turn to Endo Hiroki's two volume collection Tanpenshu.

Eden - It's an Endless World at Dark Horse and at Titan Books

Eden - It's an Endless World at Wikipedia

The Cage of Zeus

2011-10-26T20:39:00.000+01:00

The Cage of Zeus/Zeusu no ori is the first full novel by Ueda Sayuri to appear in English translation, (translated by Takami Nieda), with a jacket illustrated by Tatsuyuki Tanaka, (Cannabis Works), it's published by Haikasoru. The novel opens with an almost blink and you'll miss it kidnapping scene, the details of which you just begin to take in before you are transported to Hasukawa's narrative, his daughter sat on his knee, reminiscing about his childhood on Mars, when he was young before the moons of Mars were used for constructing huge elevators that straddle the planets surface, and the city's sky's were covered with huge canopies with an Earth like sky scape projected onto them, he recollects these things for his daughter's history assignment, this process of colonization was going to spread onto the next planet, Jupiter. Hasukawa works for the police department and learns of a terrorist alert, the target, Jupiter-I is a research ship orbiting Jupiter, the terrorist group, The Vessel of Life, who hold rigid bio ethical ideologies are believed to be on their way to the ship, Hasukawa appoints security officers Shirosaki and Harding to take them all out. Jupiter-I contains a research laboratory, and also the special district that houses the Rounds, a species of bio engineered hermaphrodites, created to assist humans in space exploration and colonization. The novel set in an undefined point in the future describes the progressively changing attitudes to sexuality and gender identity, Hasukawa notes that people change their gender as frequently as they do their clothes, surgically changing themselves they become fluid transgenders. Jupiter-I also appears to be in part social experiment, where a society cultivated by complete tolerance to sexual identities and behaviour is an ideal being aimed for - 'A society where we are equals, where only individual differences exist', the assertion by Aristophane's in Plato's Symposium, that humans were originally hermaphrodites with four arms and four legs, the gods tore the humans into two parts, creating man and woman, the beginning of each sex desiring and seeking out it's opposite, acts as a philosophical backdrop to Jupiter-I.

When Shirosaki arrives at Jupiter-I his team are met by Kline and Dr Tei, Dr Tei acts as a go between the Rounds and the Monaurals, the Monaurals being single sex/fixed sex humans, the Rounds occupy the special district and their interaction with the Monaurals is limited. Two members of Shirosaki's team, Arino and Shiohara gain entrance to the special district and meet the Round Veritas who reacts coldly to them, as the novel progresses we learn that Veritas had a bad experience with a Monaural, surprisingly turning out to be Security Officer Harding who at first appearance has an almost pathological hatred of the Rounds. To enter into the notions and themes of the novel the narrative employs the use of non-gender specific pronouns, the English translation here uses Spivak pronouns which take a little getting used to, but their used to great effect which centres the reader's thinking into the heart of this non-gender specific world. Many different perspectives are explored through the novel's duration, Harding's relationship with Veritas in particular where he is faced with both the male and female desires of Veritas, and in turn the Rounds fascination with the Monaurals fixed sex status is also explored. After the security team has arrived a story is told of another Monaural visitor from Mars who had gone mad fixating on the the red spot of Jupiter, the narrative reminds us that Jupiter is the Roman name of the Greek god Zeus, Jupiter-I acting as the cage of it's inhabitant's desires. With the arrival of the first unmanned ship from Mars security is at maximum alert, but an explosion in one of the labs diverts attention, bringing the realization that perhaps the terrorists was already working amongst them. The narrative of the novel, as well as being a taught sci-fi thriller, is an explorative inquiry into the ideas of this evolving dystopia, persuing the ideas and visions it presents with an unflinching eye, I'm looking forward to reading the classic 10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse.

Haikasoru

Tetsuya Ishida

2011-10-19T10:47:00.003+01:00

I remember looking through this book in Kinokuniya, putting it down then moving on to looking through the magazine section, after getting home though I couldn't get the images I'd seen out of my head, and found myself rushing back to the store hoping that they hadn't sold the only copy that they had out on display. It's a book I've been meaning to post on ever since, Tetsuya Ishida Posthumous Works published by Kyuryudo includes 100 of 180 works by Ishida who died in 2005 at the age of just 31, there is some speculation about whether his death was accidental or if he had intended to commit suicide, he died at a level crossing, after his death many of his paintings were discovered in his apartment. The book comes with an appendix and brief biography which is in Japanese, but also comes with a brief biography in English text, I remember watching the NHK Sunday morning art show special on Ishida some months after buying the book. Kyuryudo have gone on to publish a complete edition of his paintings - Tetsuya Ishida Complete, Ishida's art involves an imaginative use of surrealism, most of his paintings involve an almost expressionless young salaryman, which some have interpreted as being based on Ishida himself. One of the most striking aspects of Ishida's paintings is the juxtaposition of the young man in relationship to the situations Ishida places him in, his blank expression conveys a look that could be seen by the viewer as being both compliant and also at the same time disguising a subtle forbearance, the expression could also be interpreted as expressing a resigned submissiveness. The images are sometimes graphic but on a first viewing the viewer's thoughts are primarily occupied with putting the images into some kind of order, to work out what is occurring in them, the graphic element of them seems to linger on afterwards, giving the images an added power. All of these paintings include something that make them stand out, but an underlying theme in Ishida's art is that it conveys a bereft spirituality in a world where almost every physical object around it has a price tag stuck on it, many carry a message on the shallow world of commercialisation, a row of ATMs being used as toilets by a group of the identical blank salaryman, is this use of this same man a comment on the demise of individuality in the commercial world?. Some are set in supermarkets, where the expressionless salaryman is seen in a number of different situations, another aspect is that the salaryman often mutates and co-joins with solid objects, in one he is crouched on all fours, his back acting as a sink, another is a scene where roadworks are being carried out, underneath segments of torn up tarmac the salaryman's face stares out in duplication, this blankness seems to be something that is in the ground beneath our feet covered and hidden by layers of concrete. This physical relationship between the salaryman and his external world, (sometimes he mutates with whole buildings), offers up striking and thought provoking images, where the inanimate objects are imbued with and take on a living existence, and by turns the salaryman appears to have traded a living element of his being, forming an ambivalent balance between the two. As far as I'm aware there hasn't been a book published on Ishida outside of Japan as of yet, hopefully it'll only be a matter of time, but in the mean time most of his paintings are available to view via his webpage, click on the galleries page, select one of the eleven albums and click through the paintings.

http://www.tetsuyaishida.jp/gallery/

Kyuryudo Art Publishing Co Ltd

A Room Where The Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

2011-10-16T21:53:00.001+01:00

Perhaps the significance of this novel, the first translation of Levy Hideo to appear in English may pass by the general reader, I hope it doesn't, Ian Hideo Levy is an American born writer who writes primarily in Japanese, his novel Tiananmen/ Ten'anmon, from 1996 was nominated for the Akutagwa Prize. A Room Where The Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard/Seijoki no kikoenai heya, was first published in Japan by Kodansha in 1992 and won the Noma Literary Award for New Writers, recently it has been published in an English translation by Christopher D. Scott by Columbia University Press. The jacket of the novel comes with quotes from Oe Kenzaburo, Tawada Yoko and Ann Sherif, who likens the novel to Oe's novel A Personal Matter. Opening at the end of 1967 the novel follows Ben Isaac, the son of Jacob Issac, (who works at the American consulate in Tokyo), Ben spent most of his youth living in consulates in Taiwan, Phnom Penn, Shanghai, the American consulate building overlooks Yamashita Park, the Stars and Stripes flag blows in the breeze outside of Ben's window, the consulate building also attracts groups of Japanese protesters, shouting out, Yankee go home!, angry at the Anpo and the Vietnam War. The novel comes to us in three parts, the middle one, The End of November, mainly charts Ben's time back in the U.S, living with his mother who had divorced from Ben's father, who had married again to a Chinese woman, Gui-lan, producing another son, Ben's younger brother, Jeffrey. In The End of November the narrative recollects the funeral of J.F.K, Ben's memories of his mother's plight as she succumbs to the doctors sedatives, sent to her presumably form his father, and of an informing view of a memorial of the rising of the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. Over the course of the three parts of the novel the narrative dips in and out of moments from Ben's past and present lives, the pictures of his life in Japan and his American life contrast and merge with one another.

The main narrative follows Ben in Japan, and unable to handle his father's overbearing and remonstrating temperament Ben runs away from him and also of the protection of the consulate. After enrolling at a Center of International Studies he meets Ando Yoshiharu, a student who takes Ben under his wing and puts him up. Ben begins to succumb to the gravitational pull of Shinjuku, and he begins to decode the Kana and Kanji characters appearing all around him, which will provide the means to communicate his way out of his frustrated linguistic isolation. Ben seems to be in awe of Ando, he studies the contents of his 4 and a half tatami studio flat, the books he reads, the authors he reads, the image torn from a magazine of a muscled writer pinned to Ando's wall appears at various points in the novel, Ben identifies with the stuttering Mizoguchi of Mishima's novel Kinkakuji, as he struggles to master his new language. As the novel progresses Ben's assimilation grows deeper and deeper, casting off his gaijin identity, with this fading of his gaijin identity, his gaijin perspective also begins to recede. Ben takes the rather definitive step of burning his consulate Id card and with Ando acting as his guarantor Ben finds work in a small restaurant as a waiter. The novel begins from the disorientated perspective of a gaijin and follows Ben as he slowly assimilates into Japanese culture and language, some of the scenes I thought at first could be construed as making imaginative leaps, but contemplating on them further they seemed to reflect accurately the thoughts of a teenage mind, compounded by Ben's situation of finding himself in an unfamiliar culture, which in turn made me contemplate the novel from the perspective of someone who has no experience of visiting or living in Japan. In his introduction Christopher D. Scott reflects of Levy - It would be more accurate to say that Levy's work is about the struggle or productive tension between writing in Japanese and not being Japanese, or the dilemma of being a writer of Japanese but not a Japanese writer. Here lies the real power and significance of his literary project: it demonstrates that one does not have to be Japanese in order to write or have a voice in Japanese. Christopher D. Scott also points out other writers of border-crossing literature, (ekkyo bungaku); Tawada Yoko, Mizumura Minae, Yang Yin among others whose writings challenge perspectives of national identity and of national literatures. The novel is brief, just over a hundred pages, and at it's end we get the impression that Ben's story is at the beginning of a much longer journey.

A Room Where the Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard at Columbia Uinversity Press

Schoolgirl

2011-10-11T12:09:00.001+01:00

Recently published by One Peace Books comes this early novella by Osamu Dazai translated by Allison Markin Powell who has also translated Hiromi Kawakami, (a translation of Kawakami's Tanizaki Prize winner, Sensei no kaban/The Briefcase is forthcoming in March 2012), and has also translated Motoyuki Shibata, and Kaho Nakayama. The narration here is set in the war years and comes from a young girl whose family has recently lost their father, within many of Dazai's narratives, whether they're male or female, the presence of Dazai's voice can often be detected somewhere within, much of Dazai's craft with his fiction is his ability to disguise this fact. Many of his stories and novels are peopled with figures who are not swimming in the same direction as the rest of society, or hold contrary beliefs or visions. The details of the girls background are slight and the focus of the novella is in capturing the girls stream of thinking which we follow over the course of a day. She takes a train to school, getting off at Ochanomizu, perhaps a more thorough student of Japanese Literature could write a small tome on the appearance of Ochanomizu in Japanese novels, as the place is mentioned in a few I've recently come across. At school we read her observations on her teachers Miss Kosugi and art teacher Mr Ito, she has been told off as she embroidered a flower pattern on her underclothes, something inappropriate in the austere times. The narrative captures really well the nuances of thinking of the young girl and the flaws that she observes in others often bounce back at her ending in self recriminating reflections on her self. When she returns from school, she finds her mother has house guests, the Imaidas, she observes - While surely there's something to be said for suppressing your own feelings for the sake of others, if everyday from now on I was forced to nod and smile at people like the Imaidas, I would probably go mad. As with much of Dazai's fiction there is a brittle melancholy to the piece, sitting at the porch in the evening washing out her things she imagines another girl like herself sat in a flat of a Parisian backstreet, sharing her sadness with this imagined figure - Nobody in the world understood our suffering. In time, when we became adults. we might look back on this pain and loneliness as a funny thing, perfectly ordinary, but - but how were we expected to get by, to get through this interminable period of time until that point when we were adults?. The novella catches this moment of transience, what is remarkable about the piece is the absence of the commotion of the external world, only events linked directly to the immediate family are touched upon, and amongst these events she still ponders on the good things that humans can do, there are pointers of the age of the novellas setting, the actor Jushiro Konoe, a reading of Kafu Nagai.

The book has been fantastically presented with a bit of a refreshing contemporary twist which works really well, Allison Markin Powell's translation flows really well, to read this translation is to experience this girl's thoughts and observations with a clarity that tugs effectively at the reader's empathy. A passage at the beginning of the book that stood out is when she takes off her glasses, looking at the world she prefers to see things slightly blurred and out of focus - I like to take my glasses off and look out into the distance. Everything goes hazy, as in a dream, or like a zoetrope - it's wonderful. The novella has a contemplative tone, capturing her reflections on her family, the change in her mother since the death of her father, her thoughts on her sister, briefly she remembers them living together in their previous house, and she receives a letter from her cousin Junji being transferred to a regiment in Maebashi. I only hope that this is the first in a series of Modern Japanese Classics from One Peace Books.

One Peace Books

1Q84 Book Two

2011-09-27T20:57:00.001+01:00

So I've given it a little time to digest Book One and nearly spoiled Book Two by over reading about it on another blog's post about it, but thinking it over I've still got Book Three to read yet and with rumours that Murakami well may write a Book Four, or did I read that possibly there might be a Book Zero, (or maybe this was a joke?), the conclusion of 1Q84 still seems to be a distant thing. Considering the Knopf edition will contain all three books in one volume, a tome that will be difficult to read on a bus or train, maybe books of this size are an ebook publisher's dream come true?. 1Q84 almost appears as a saga in it's length, although reaching the last hundred pages or so you'll still find yourself wishing that it wasn't coming to an end, you get the impression that if you were to spread out the story and characters of 1Q84 on the floor, the books Murakami has written so far could be seen as him hovering over it with a magnifying glass in hand, revealing these selected scenes and details of an even much larger and more complex story, as with much of Murakami's writing the book resonates on differing levels, and at times maybe within itself. Book Two seemed to pass alot quicker than Book 1, there's obviously alot less devoted to character descriptions and history as certain things that were alluded to in the first book come into fruition, Book Two continues with alternating chapters on the progress of Aomame and Tengo, posting on Book Two becomes difficult if not wanting to reveal too many aspects of the plot. Two new characters appear in Book Two though, Ushikawa, a man who visits Tengo out of the blue, a representative for an agency that aids young talent which offers Tengo a generous amount of money, Tengo turns down the offer sensing that theres something wrong about Ushikawa and the agency he works for, as the novel progresses and repeated visits to Tengo, Ushikawa reveals a thorough knowledge of Tengo's private life, also implying he knows about Tengo's links with Fuka- Eri and also details about Tengo's mother, the money offered is to be in part protection money. Tengo becomes resolved to the fact the man he thought was his father is actually not his father, (rather incredulously I think he remains unnamed), the man he collected NHK subscriptions with now resides in a sanatorium, Tengo visits him. The other big character is the Leader of Sakigake, whose meeting with Aomame is when the novel begins to turn again in it's more fundamental direction, this is quite a definitive moment in Book 2 and alot of things are clarified.

1Q84 reads much like a thriller, combining and picking up on any number of differing genres; contemporary novel, modernist fable, futuristic detective, Murakami's ability to write all of these into one narrative is simply an awe inspiring thing, Murakami's prose is pitch perfect, his writing balances the flow of the narrative with that of the reader's expectation. One of the central themes which is apparent in some of Murakami's novels is a sense of dualism in both some of his characters and also the worlds they find themselves inhabiting, this can be seen again in 1Q84, but giving it a full definition without a reading of Book Three is a difficult thing. Murakami has turned his attention to the dark world of a secret religious sect, but the demarcations between right and wrong become blurred and Murakami can be seen as exploring the relationship between good and evil, recently I read about his admiration for Dostoyevsky whose writing is famed for including many layers of writing which included incidental passages, in Book Two Murakami includes a brief life history of Tamura, the Dowager's gay bodyguard, although it flows neatly into the narrative, so far it has no bearing to the main story, although who's to say what constitutes a central story, isn't it the whole text?, perhaps it will resurface again in Book Three. Quite early on in Book Two the connection between Aomame and Tengo becomes more explicitly explained, and another enlightening scene is of Aomame actually reading the book 'Air Chrysalis', we get to learn the details of this mystifying book. Another aspect which occurred to me whilst reading the two narratives, is how they correlate to each other in regards to the timing of events, it's not until the ending of Book Two that you get the impression that the two narratives are juxtaposed together at the same time, but I think this is used to add tension to the flow, Book Two ends on a massive cliff hanger with Aomame returning to the scene of the novel's opening, but I think I'm going to end here before I over do it. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to reading other blog posts and articles on this book, undoubtedly 1Q84 is set to be one of the biggest novels of the year, not only in physical form but also in presence.

1Q84 at Knopf
1Q84 at Harvill Secker
1Q84 at Shinchosha (check out the Q world illustrations, this one catches the eeriness of the Little People really well.)

It's Only A Paper Moon

Wedlock

2011-09-18T21:18:00.002+01:00

Sometimes it's odd how reading choices or inspiration for reading plans come about, whilst reading Plainsong, two other author's stories came to mind, Nakagami Kenji, who is mentioned in Plainsong is an author I've been meaning to re-read for some time, one of his short stories - Gravity's Capital seems to stand out to be read again for me at the moment. Another story that sprang to mind to read was Furui Yoshikichi's Yoko which won the Akutagwa Prize back in 1970, a story concerning a man's relationship with an emotionally fragile woman, translated by Donna George Storey in Child of Darkness, sadly I don't have a copy of this story to read yet, although looking through my copy of Contemporary Japanese Literature edited by Howard Hibbett I realized that it contains the story by Furui called Wedlock, which originally appeared in Japan in 1970 with the title Tsumagomi, in the introduction to his translation Howard Hibbett notes that Tsumagomi is an archaic word translating as 'wife keeping', the word appears in an early waka poem from dialogue attributed to Susanoo no Mikoto, the shinto God of the sea and storms, Furui as well as being novelist and short story writer also translated works by Austrian novelists Robert Musil and Hermann Broch, Furui studied German Literature at the University of Tokyo. As well as having an unusually disarming opening scenario, the sequencing of the scenes in Wedlock are seamlessly presented to the reader, although Furui reverses the events of the novella to a period before that of the first opening and then flows on past it adding to the flow of events a momentum that draws the reader in. The novella is largely seen through Hisao who at the start is stood outside his apartment when out of the trees nearby an old woman approaches him asking after Hiroshi, the neighbouring apartment to Hisao's is occupied by a group of rowdy day labourers who are a source of irritation, keeping the neighbourhood awake with loud t.v, singing and drunken behaviour. The old woman mistakes Hisao as being a member of this household and begins to harangue him about wasting his time and that if he were to attend one of her meetings she could fix him up with a nice young bride, adding that if he doesn't change he'll be stuck with a bad woman, she leaves asking him to get a message to Hiroshi about that nights meeting. Hisao goes back inside his flat and relays what happened to his wife, Rieko, she in turn begins to berate Hisao for talking to the woman. Hisao's illness of the week before is described in very lucid prose, describing him passing out at work, his sense of location shifts a number of times, recalling being at the infirmary at work he also has the sensation of a car journey and of lying out on the tatami in their apartment, eventually Reiko revives him by feeding him slices of peach. His convalescence is mainly spent observing his wife going about domestic chores, these take on almost ethereal quality. The figure of the boy who has been delivering the peaches merges with that of Hiroshi, and Reiko later tells that Hiroshi had run an errand to the doctors whilst Hisao was ill.

Through the slight alteration in the way the scenes are presented and the conversation Hisao has with the old woman, Furui brings the reader's attention to one of the themes of the story - the extent of self awareness and perceptions of the self, these doubts about self identity are provoked through the slight circumstances of mistaken identity within the novella. Another event in their married life is recalled when Hisao had lost the key to their apartment and after getting drunk had managed to get in and eventually collapsed under the duvet, Rieko had at first thought he was an intruder. The story examines this theme from many subtle perspectives, the labourers next door all have northern accents, and by turns we learn that Reiko comes from the same town as Hiroshi, this becomes more unexplored territory between Hisao and Reiko, which is heightened when she accepts a drink from them near the end of the story when she takes out the rubbish. Through simple observations of Hisao and Reiko in their apartment, Furui weaves fantastically complex insights of their relationship. Reiko also confesses to speaking with the old woman too during Hisao's illness, the old woman seemed to be provoking Reiko into considering remarrying, Reiko notes 'When you listen to her you begin to wonder who you are yourself', each in their own way consider that the old woman had identified the insecurities in their married life, the story could also be seen as an acutely observed examination of marriage. Another dimension to the story is in the nature of Hiroshi's relationship to both the old woman and also with the other day labourers, it appears that he could be suffering abuse from them, they taunt him almost throughout the duration of the story, and the nature of the abuse is not clearly defined, Hisao recalls seeing Hiroshi vomiting in the fields through drinking too much and then seeing another of the day labourers appearing naked at the door calling Hiroshi back into the house, but later in the story it appears that Hiroshi's father is a member of the household, the nature of his suffering is unclear, it's not until Hiroshi is drunk that he manages to gather the courage to fight back. Wedlock/Tsumagomi is an intriguing story to start by means of an introduction to Furui's writing, I have a copy of White Haired Melody/Hakuhatsu no uta, translated by Meredith McKinney, a novel about ageing to read in the future.

Plainsong

2011-09-11T21:04:00.003+01:00

Recently the Dalkey Archive has added another two titles from Japanese authors to their catalogue, The Shadow of a Blue Cat by Naoyuki Ii, (translated by Wayne P. Lammers), and also Plainsong by Kazushi Hosaka which originally appeared in Japan in 1990, Hosaka has been awarded many prizes, including three of the most well known; Akutagawa, Tanizaki and Noma, both of these titles are selections by the JLPP. The voice of the narrator retains an easy reading contemporary feel although the novel is approaching being twenty one years old, after being dumped by his girlfriend the central character finds himself living in what was their intended shared 2LDK on his own. As the book evolves characters begin to drift into his story, and the presence of a little cat begins to figure as being the centre of his attention, trying to coax a friendship out of it with dried sardines and benito flakes. Finding himself a single man he takes himself to the horse races with his work colleagues, Ishigami and the slightly race obsessive Mitani, who reads cryptic clues in almost every minuscule detail in the racing form. Out of the blue an old friend, Akira, calls wondering if he can be put up for the night, Akira who is an impoverished photographer lives his life by crashing on friends sofas. Hosaka's prose has a transparency to it which makes it very easy to view the idiosyncrasies of the characters that appear around the central narrator, who has an easy going outlook, as eventually when Akira moves on and another old acquaintance arrives, (Shimada), he finds himself again putting up another guest. Shimada, originally from Kyushu had come to Tokyo to become an avant garde film maker but ends up working for a software company, the narrator studies his visitor's foibles, and behind these observations lies his fascination with a little orange and white kitten that seems to drift in and out of the picture. At first the kitten is not at all interested in the narrator, so he phones an old friend Yumiko for advice, through Paul Warham's easy flowing translation, Hosaka has a great knack at placing Yumiko at the periphery of the narrative, she seems to be someone distant to the central focus of the story, there almost appears to be an other worldly aura to her, her plain advice sometimes appears to the narrator as possibly containing a much deeper portent, which also could be said to describe the appearance of the kitten to the narrator, the cat seems to indicate a symbolism of sorts, the mysterious inner workings of the cat seem to be a constant riddle to the narrator, and it's unpredictable appearances seem to be the source of another unfathomable puzzle.

Akira turns up again but this time with Yoko, the narrator suspects that they are an item but soon begins to realize that this may not be the case, Yoko also begins to become absorbed in the coming and goings of the visiting cat, in the evenings she goes out into the neighbourhood on cat feeding missions. Events at the narrators apartment alternate between rather strange conversations with Ishigami who is travelling to England and also Mitani who when the narrator meets up with him again discovers that he has been away in Bali, the conversation turns to horse racing and Kabbalah, and the narrator believes that Mitani is trying to discover a link between the two. Another character drifts into the household, Gonta, who Akira has coaxed in to drive them to an outing to the beach. The novel subtly sees the author looking back at his generation, and reflects back on the events that figured in the early days of his generation, the Tokyo Olympics, Osaka Expo, Murakami becoming a best seller, reading the novel gives you the impression that Hosaka is turning the camera on his own generation and sees an image of the everyday, perhaps anti-climatic but nonetheless punctuated with scenes of life lived in the big picture, wherever the frame of that maybe. The trip to the beach being the most sustained scene of the novel effortlessly captures the microcosmic activities and observations of the small group, with five or six pages entirely devoted to their fragmented observations of the beach, without any descriptive text. In it's subdued way the novel manages to convey a closely observed snapshot of life lived as it is.

Plainsong at Dalkey Archive Press

JLC 5

The Unsung Masters Series: Tamura Ryuichi

2011-09-04T23:09:00.003+01:00

A book I've been eager to read is Tamura Ryuichi: On the Life and Work of a 20th Century Master, recently published by Pleiades Press the volume collects together previous translations of Tamura's poems by Christopher Drake, which originally appeared in Dead Languages, alongside translations of those by co-editor Takako Lento and also by Marianne Tarcov. Wayne Miller is the series editor of Pleiades Press's Unsung Masters Series, who also gives an introduction in which he describes his first readings of Tamura's poetry, (an event that lingers in the mind of any reader's first encounter with his poetry), and also gives an account of how the book came into being, noting comparisons between Tamura's poetry with that of Tadeusz Rosewicz and Paul Celan. The selected poems here are on the whole ones that have been well anthologised, although to have them collected and available in this book which serves as both a hugely informative introduction as well as of a more detailed examination is definitely a welcome event. The poems are also accompanied with a selection of enlightening essays both critical and reflective by contemporary poets of Tamura's and also by his translators - Ooka Makoto, Ayukawa Nobuo, Yoshimasu Gozo, Christopher Drake, (whose introduction to Dead Languages is reproduced here), Miho Nonaka, Mariane Tarcov, Laurence Lieberman and Tanikawa Shuntaro, who's essay interestingly takes the form of Tanikawa interviewing himself in a Q and A style session about his thoughts on Tamura. The book also contains a selection of photographs of Tamura, the cover photo portrait is included here in full with Tamura at the launch of Four Thousand Days and Nights, seated next to fellow Arechi poets Ayukawa Nobuo and Yoshimoto Takaaki. Ayukawa Nobuo's essay, A Journey to Fear, is from the time of the publication of Four Thousand Days and Nights, I get the impression it could of come from a preface to the collection or perhaps from a review. In it Ayukawa charts Tamura's life as a poet, his mapless journey, (the name of a piece from Tamura), and examines Tamura's poetry, especially looking in detail at the two poems Four Thousand Days and Nights and Standing Coffin. In his introduction Wayne Miller points out that the Four Thousand Days and Nights was very nearly the exact period between the surrendering of Japan to that of the poem's completion. Ayukawa Nobuo's essay goes on to explore the notions of being labelled a post-war poet, and compares the differences between the poetry of some of the pre-war poets to that of the post-war era. Laurence Lieberman's piece reflects back on meeting Tamura and on the time when Lieberman first lived in Japan. Gozo Yoshimasu's piece here is entitled Exceptional Poet: Tamura Ryuichi, the main portion of his piece Yoshimasu explains is taken from his introduction to the Japanese edition of Tamura Ryuichi's Complete Works, which has recently been published in Japan. One of the many referential points in Yoshimasu's essay is from the closing lines of a poem by Hu Shi called Dream and Poetry, Gozo Yoshimasu goes on to weave connections between the poem, Tamura, and also that of a haiku of Basho, Exceptional Poet comes to us as a finely flowing and cohesive mixture of part reflection and of projected observations with added parentheses, retracing and drawing on memories and recollections of Tamura in Iowa. Taking in along it's way the essay looks at Tamura's poem On My Way Home, (included here), a poem originally from the collection World Without Worlds. Takako Lento's piece, Poet As Metaphor again recalls memories of Tamura and also discusses translating Tamura, all of the essays here offer acute insights into a unique master of words .

Tamura Ryuichi: On the Life of a 20th Century Master at Pleiades Press

My post on Dead Languages

1Q84 Book One

2011-08-29T16:22:00.003+01:00

Unexpectedly an uncorrected proof of books I and II of 1Q84 came my way recently, I must have been standing in the right time and place, 1Q84 is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated translations to arrive this year, these first two books are translated by Jay Rubin and the third is translated by Philip Gabriel. The last of Murakami's fiction that I've read was Hear the Wind Sing, and then more recently I read the non-fiction, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, amongst his longer fiction I've still yet to read is Kafka On The Shore and Dance Dance Dance, 1Q84 has been described as Murakami's magnum opus, the narrative behaves in the way we have come to associate with Murakami, pulling the reader in with a magnetic like force. It might be difficult to write anything on this first book without letting slip some of the elements of the plot, but I'll try not to give away too much, although there's already many places on the net that have given a spoilers and all account of the novel in it's entirety. The narrative of Book 1, (and I think it continues on into Book 2), is divided, chapter by chapter, between the two main characters; Aomame and Tengo, although as the narratives continue in Tengo's side it could be said that the focus turns to Fuka- Eri, although the perspective is always from Tengo. As usual being a Murakami novel there's reference to quite a few pieces of music most prominently to begin with is Janacek's Sinfonietta, which is playing in the taxi which Aomame is sat in at the start of the novel, which then floats in again a little later, another element familiar in Murakami's novels is the mention of other books, as might be expected Orwell's 1984 is referred to, as is the The Tale of Heike and Chekhov's book on his trip to Sakhalin Island, Tengo reads to Fuka-Eri of the Gilyaks, also another familiar aspect is that both the narratives are permeated with moments from history. Tengo when introduced is coming around from having a kind of seizure, during which a reoccurring memory comes to him from when he was one and a half years old, of his mother with a man, (who Tengo is certain was not his father), who is suckling at her breast. This scene hovers around Tengo throughout the novel and the question of his father's true identity seems to hang in some speculation, his father as Tengo remembers him collected subscription fees for NHK, which on Sundays Tengo had to accompany him with. Another prominent character in Tengo's side of the narrative is Komatsu who is an editor of a literary magazine, and has a history in the student riots of the 1960's, Komatsu wants Tengo to rewrite a manuscript of a novel he's received called Air Chrysalis, whose author Fuka-Eri appears very enigmatic, who asks questions without using question marks. Tengo is reluctant at first but Komatsu persuades him into meeting Fuka-Eri and her guardian; Professor Ebisuno to obtain their permission for the rewrite. The details of what Air Chrysalis is actually about are slowly revealed, set in a mountain commune and populated by Little People who enter this world through a blind goat, Komatsu sets his sights on winning the Akutagwa with it and making a lot of money, you get the impression that Murakami is having a little dig at the business side of the literary establishment. When meeting Professor Ebisuno, Tengo learns that he was part of the student riots at the Univesity of Tokyo and that he was a friend of Fuka-Eri's parents, who after fleeing the city had created a religious retreat called Sakigake, which began farming and selling organic vegetables, the group split though and the more militant Akebono group was formed, this group was involved in a shoot out with police, in which the members were killed or arrested, one though managed to escape, as Book 1 ends who this person could be is not answered, Professor Ebisuno, or even Komatsu perhaps?.

A major character in Aomame's narrative is her high school friend; Tamaki Otsuka, when the pair were young they had a fleeting lesbian experience, although this encounter doesn't define their relationship, the two are close and they learn that they can confide in each other. Tamaki marries and appears to settle down with her husband, all the time though she had been suffering physical abuse from her husband and eventually commits suicide, this acts as a catalyst for Aomame into shaping what she will be in the novel. Another character known as the Dowager of Azabu whose daughter suffered abuse from a violent husband provides the means in which Aomame can carry out punishments to abusive men, the Dowager has set up a safe house giving sanctuary for abused women. Aomame's history too has a connection to a religious sect, her parents were members of a Christian group but Aomame broke away, as the novel progresses Aomame's consciousness begins to show strange signs, she notices a difference in police uniform and the model of gun they carry which makes her begin to question whether she has slipped out of the year 1984 which she is in and has moved into 1Q84 a parallel year, things begin to get stranger with the appearance of a second moon that hovers in the sky next to the usual one, Aomame is too anxious of the answer she'll get if she asks if anyone else can see it, whether this is symptomatic of Aomame's projected sense of self or a genuine change in something much larger I'm guessing is clarified in Book 2, as the two moons feature again at the closing of Book 1, appearing in the last scene with the Dowager, this sense or depiction of a duality to Aomame's state of mind I remember being something that also occurs to Sumire in Sputnik Sweetheart . Book 1 is a little over three hundred pages and the majority of it is taken up with exploring the character's history and the reader gets a sense that Murakami is putting things in place for Book 2, there are plenty of leads that are left open here that could go anywhere, it's not until two thirds of the way through Book 1 that Tengo and Aomame's narratives show any signs of merging. Aomame forms an unusual friendship and alliance in a policewoman called Ayumi, the Dowager introduces Tsubasa, a ten year old girl staying at the safe house to Aomame which in turn leads Aomame to begin investigating the activities at Sakigake, Tsubasa talks too of the presence of the Little People. There's obviously much more to Book 1 which I've not touched upon, but like with Murakami's other novels there's much here that is in full view and always a lot more to be explored that is obscured to a first reading.

1Q84 Book Two

Three Stories by Nakano Shigeharu

2011-08-21T21:31:00.002+01:00

Recently I unexpectedly received an advance copy of Jay Rubin's translation of books I and II of 1Q84 by Murakami, (which I'm nearly 200 pages or so into), which is really great although it has turned my reading plans onto a slightly different tangent. But a book I've been meaning to post on, although I've not yet completely read in it's entirety, is Three Stories by Nakano Shigeharu, translated by Brett de Bary and part of the Cornell East Asia series, and through the Cornell University's East Asia Series the book is available to read online, (click on the image above or the link below to read the collection). Nakano Shigeharu's life and writing was witness to a large portion of twentieth century Japan, from early Showa to well into the post war years. In Brett de Bary's introduction we learn that Shigeharu was a member of the Communist Party, and that he was imprisoned in the early 1930's, as nationalist fervour mounted Shigeharu was arrested for thought crimes, he was released after complying with the minimum requirements for tenko or ideological conversion. The three stories here found their bases from autobiography, Nakano was raised in a farming community and the story included here A House in the Village/Mura no Ie, (1935), tells of a fictionalized retelling of Nakano's, (envisioned through the character Benji), return to his family home after being imprisoned as a Communist, and examines his relationship with his father and in turn their differing political views, the new of Benji with that of the traditional of his father. Nakano initially began his writing life as a poet, he met Akutagawa who encouraged him to continue to write and later won the Yomiuri Prize in 1960 in light of two of his novels, Muragimo/Gut Feelings of 1954 and Nashi no Hana/Pear Blossoms, published in 1960. Brett de Bary notes in his introduction of how his prose was touched with a poetical sensibility, especailly seen here in The Crest Painter of Hagi, where Nakano would include scenes that contained word associations, (engo in classical poetry), which thematical link to memories of the narrator.

In The Crest Painter of Hagi, set some years after the war, the narrator is sent to the remote town of Hagi to mediate between a married couple, noting that the most notable building in the town is that of the Academy of Yoshida Shoin, the narrator walks around the town and comes across a large Edo styled house, after reading the name plate the narrator realizes that it belongs to a leading Conservative Party member active in the Diet, this conjures up in the narrator's mind memories of a wealthy family of his own village and the festivals performed at their home, the narrator recalls the small portions of rice the performers received as a payment. Entering a sweet store, the abundance of sweets provoke memories of austerity of Tokyo in the early war years, a scene returns to him when he was carrying a box of eggs on a crowded train, amongst the crowds the eggs crack and he sucks at the broken shells to prevent the waste, he also recalls his move to Sumoto at the invitation of a friend. Behind these recollections he is searching out a present for his daughter, the times before when he has travelled he's forgotton to buy a souvenir for her, and this makes him begin to doubt his worth as a father. Wandering again after finding a present and a stop at the town's post office he comes across a young woman working at something which at first he can't ascertain, at first he thinks maybe she could be a watch repairer or perhaps a seal engraver, he reads a sign on her wall proclaiming - Home of War Dead. Realizing that the woman is a war widow he also discovers that the woman's work is painting the crest patterns onto haori, the story ends with the narrator contemplating the contours of the woman's face as she works.

Three Works by Nakano Shigeharu

And Then

2011-08-12T22:26:00.006+01:00

Two writers whose works I want to read more of are Natsume Soseki and Abe Kobo, I thought I'd try to make up my reading of their novels this year but as we head into the second half of it I'm beginning to think that maybe my aim won't be fulfilled. It's good to learn though that Tuttle are reissuing And Then/Sorekara next month, the translation I think is the same one published here by Louisiana State University Press by Norma Moore Field, I remember reading Oe's essay in Japan the Ambigious and Myself , (Kodansha 1995),where he discusses the novel and have been meaning to read it ever since, Oe talks about the novel in his essay about the modern Japanese novel in relation to the modernization of Japan. Reading Natsume made me think about his time spent in London, (1901-1903), which led me to think of another English novel which in some ways shares some of it's themes, The Whirlpool, by George Gissing which was published in 1897 has at it's centre a character unable to cope with the machinations of a society facing rapid modernisation, the character unable to keep pace and adapt to these changes has a tragic ending. In And Then it's focus is the rapid modernization of Japan after the Meiji Restoration, the central character, Daisuke, in some ways is in a similar predicament to the character in The Whirlpool, unable to commit himself to the social mores occurring around him. Daisuke is from a family whose father has done well in the newly expanding economy, Daisuke's brothers all appear to be following productive industrial lives, Daisuke is not so committed in pursuing this path. He leads a comfortable life, his father is happy to continue paying his allowance, although aged thirty Daisuke is still unmarried, many potential brides have been suggested for him, but he has managed to fend off these arranged marriages. When his father, was young, he and his brother, (Daisuke's uncle), got involved with a brawl that turned nasty, it was still in the era of the samurai code, this world to Daisuke appears very distant from his, when he hears these stories from his father's and grandfather's past instead of having feelings of admiration, feelings of terror threaten to overwhelm him whenever he hears of the spilling of blood, through the implications of this brawl another potential bride is lined up for him. He reads Leonid Andreyev and contemplates how he might feel if faced with his own end. Daisuke at first appears far from being a victim, his perspective is one that sees through the veneer of the actions of those around him, seeing that the pursuit of financial gain or social advancement is not the be all and end all of his existence. An antithetical character to Daisuke's is introduced at the start of the novel, his friend Hiraoka who had moved to Kansai because of his work, only having to resign and return to Tokyo due to a subordinate embezzling company money, seems to cajole Daisuke about his lack of application to the outside world. It could be said though that Hiraoka's failure at succeeding in this new world reconfirms Daisuke's assertions about the new way of things.

As the novel progresses Daisuke's disliking of the modern world becomes more prevalent, and the pressure from his family to marry increases, almost to the point of entrapment in one scene, the only woman that Daisuke seems to have emerging feelings for is Hiraoka's wife Michiyo who he had known before she and Hiraoka had married, at times she appears unhappy being with Hiraoka. Daisuke feeling duty bound to his friend arranges to help Hiraoka pay off a pressing debt, and this brings him into closer contact with Michiyo. Throughout the novel little instances appear that remind Daisuke of the dangers of actively participating in society, a letter from a friend who he had gone to university with arrives telling him of his married life and the child he has, Daisuke had used to send him books which the friend would discuss at length in his letters, as the correspondence continues the friend no longer mentions even the fact that he receives the books, this acts as a stark reminder to Daisuke. Daisuke is caught between following his duty to his family with that of following his heart, but he finds that in choosing this option he will begin to pull at the building blocks of society, Daisuke's predicament seems to see Natsume questioning just how much people were prepared to let go of the old order of things and examines how much of the new they were willing to embrace. I'm not sure which of Natsume's novels to turn to next, I feel as though I should continue with another from the trilogy, although The Miner/Kofu looks like an interesting novel, as does the unfinished novel; Light and Darkness/Meian. And Now/Sorekara comes with an excellent afterword from translator Norma Moore Field placing the novel in bibliographical and biographical context. The narrative of And Then has probably one of the most rational tones that I've found in a novel in a long while, and has a Janus like quality to it, this pivotal moment in history is represented well in the novel's opening scene when Daisuke half asleep notices the flower head of a Camellia has fallen off during the night, the sound of it hitting the floor reverberates around his waking consciousness, as a calmative he places his hand on his chest over his heart to reassuringly check his pulse is beating steadily.

Sombrero Fallout - A Japanese Novel

2011-08-01T07:03:00.004+01:00

A novelist/writer that I've been meaning to read for quite a while is Richard Brautigan, especially the three of his books that have links with Japan, Sombrero Fallout was published in 1976, (the edition I read was published by Jonathan Cape), the poetry collection June 30th,June 30th appeared in 1978, and in 1979 Brautigan published The Tokyo-Montana Express, a book made up of memories of stations in Japan and Montana, Brautigan was well recieved in Japan and partly lived there in the late 1970's. Sombrero Fallout has a dedication at the front which reads; This novel is for Junichiro Tanizaki who wrote The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man, I've not yet read any other books by Brautigan yet but am intrigued by these three. The cover of the novel shows a photograph by Erik Weber of Mia Hara, Weber's photographs were also used for many other of Brautigan's books. Sombrero Fallout is built up around two main narratives, one is that of a famous American humorist who is separating from his Japanese girlfriend, Yukiko, of two years, she's leaving him as she has begin to feel that the dimensions of her life are beginning to become unstable due to his erratic temperament. The novel begins with the humorist typing out the beginning of a story about a sombrero falling from the sky, it lands on the ground at the feet of the mayor, the mayor's cousin and a man who is mostly described as 'the man who does not have a job', but as the humorist's line of thinking begins to be consumed with thoughts about the separation he rips the story to shreds and drops the pieces into the bin. As one narrative follows the humorist reflecting about when he and Yukiko first met the second narrative continues with the fallen sombrero story and the three man that have found it, this narrative continues on with the humorist unaware of it's continuation. The narrative of the humorist is full of self deprecating observations about himself which are tinged with a wry sense of humour, although to the author it could be said that these observations aren't intended as jokes, when he and Yukiko first make love he observes - She took her clothes off like a kite takes gently to a warm April wind. He fumbled his clothes off like a football game being played in November mud. Before this he goes into the kitchen to find something for them to drink and an observation about himself suddenly comes to him that; He wasted a lot of time thinking about things that never came to anything. The humorist, grief stricken, imagines Yukiko sleeping with someone else, he contemplates calling her, noting the only thing separating them is the digits of her phone number, the distance between the two seems vast, but in reality she is sound asleep with her pet cat a few blocks away. The narrative also dips into Yukiko's dreams and frequently features moments of poetical free association, near the beginning of the novel the humorist is contemplating Yukiko sleeping, and in his lovelorn state he fixates on her hair, he imagines her hair sleeping and dreaming, it dreams of waking and of being combed in the morning.

The book's narrative skips between the grieving humorist and the fallen sombrero through many brief chapters, all with simple titles: Sombrero, Breathing, Clothes, Mayor, etc, the cousin of the mayor begins to realize that if he were to pick up the sombrero for the mayor he might be in for a promotion, and he is seized with visions of himself running for the presidency, the man without a job envisions that if he were to pick it up it might enable him to get a job, he is tired of eating berries and dreams of eating hamburgers, the scene changes to an antagonistic stand off, in the meanwhile the mayor has been thinking - pick it up it's only a sombrero. A crowd begins to gather when people begin to recognise the mayor, a fight breaks out when two of them start arguing which soon escalates out of control. The humorist meanwhile is caught between whether to go out for a burger or to have a tuna sandwich, before another pang of grief hits him, slowly more background details of Yukiko are explained, and he discovers a single strand of her hair. The sombrero story turns into a full blown riot, Norman Mailer comes to report on the scene and the national guard are eventually called in to break things up. The book is an interesting and largely humorous mixture of meta fiction and poetical invention, there's not a great deal of Japan here and how much of it's contents go towards it making it's subtitle of A Japanese Novel is debatable, although at it's heart is an absent Japanese woman which forms a link of sorts, an interesting book to have visited nonetheless.

Making Love

2011-07-20T20:01:00.055+01:00

I've not read many novels or stories set in Japan which are written by non-Japanese, largely novels like these I imagine must be difficult to write, to get the balance between describing any country not of your own without it sounding like a fictionalized travel guide is a tricky feat to accomplish. Faire l'amour/Making Love, by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale is a novel in two parts from 2002 has been sat on my shelf to read for a while, another short story collection I've been intending to read is Michael Gardiner's Escalator, (Polygon, 2006). The novel opens with the narrator confessing that he keeps on him a small bottle of hydrochloric acid, which one day he anticipates using, the motives as to why he keeps this with him at first are unclear, his narrative begins to describe his relationship with Marie, a fashion designer and artist who has travelled to Tokyo to exhibit in Shinagwa, his narrative at first switches between describing the first night of their relationship back in Paris and then to describing the last nights of their relationship in Tokyo, the love between them had begun to diminish, their trip to Japan seems to represent the last flicker, the narrative has a valedictory nature to it. Toussaint's prose describes to some degree the accessories in which the narrator finds himself, whether describing the sheer blackness of Marie's underwear or the sleeping mask she wears when they make love, the placing of these things in the text gives the impression at first that the narrator could be describing a crime scene, the lights of Tokyo that can be seen reflecting from the window of their Shinjuku hotel room at times seems to be the only thing of the external world that threatens to interrupt the slow disintegration between them, although while their making love they receive a message informing them a fax has arrived for them downstairs in the lobby. The narrator finds himself staring into a mirror clutching the small bottle of acid, describing a self portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe and whilst reading the novel the photography of Nan Goldin came to my mind, not many novels provoke me into thinking about photography but this one with it's descriptive prose caught me reading it like a photographer.

The narrator leaves Marie sleeping and goes for a nocturnal walk around the corridors and lobbies of the hotel until he finds himself at the hotel's rooftop swimming pool where he takes an impromptu skinny dip. Afterwards he takes in the night time skyline of the city, and contemplates the earthquake that people describe as the 'big one', the narrator also contemplates the ending of the affair, these emotions are mixed with the exhaustion of the flight, and with descriptions of those who sent the fax back in Paris, the narrative briefly straddles lives that are existing in different time zones. The descriptive nature of the novel seems to involve an attempt at dismantling the city, reducing it to a more of an elemental force. Meeting up with Marie in the main lobby the two still living in their European timezone go out for noodles, as dawn begins to break they feel a tremor, which is the centre of conversation when they meet with the organisers of the exhibition in Shinagawa. During this meeting Marie suffers a mini breakdown and after she regains her composure the narrator leaves early and takes a random excursion around Tokyo's subway before taking the shinkansen to Kyoto to visit a friend. Toussaint's prose manages to circumnavigate and include a number of different themes, the narrator's exhaustion from travelling which also manages to include his emotional weariness at the ending of the affair, his shifting perspectives is one of being an outsider and of regaining a new sense of himself as the affair is coming to it's end, although whether this actually happens is left in slight ambiguity. The precise reasons and details behind their separating is not fully explored or given, and a sense that the narrative is skimming the surface of the narrator's feelings comes across, the reader is left to read alot in to the idiosyncrasies of the circumstance of the story, the inclusion of the bottle of acid acts as an interesting metaphor which the narrator utilizes at the end of this resonant novel.

Making Love at The New Press

Norwegian Wood

2011-07-06T12:27:00.001+01:00

I find it hard to believe that it's been nearly eleven years since I read Jay Rubin's translation of Norwegian Wood so it was impossible for me to watch Anh Hung Tran's adaption sparing too much thought about making comparisons to the original book. This is the third of Anh Hung Tran's films that I've seen, The Scent of Green Papaya, (1993), has to be one of my favourite films, the other by him that I've seen was Cyclo,(1995), which is a mesmeric piece of film making, so I guess I found myself watching the film largely disregarding the fact that it was adapted from Murakami's novel, although obviously the thought never remained that distant. The film runs for a little over two hours and I guess that if it followed the novel in it's entirety it would have lasted a lot longer, the sequences also run differently than they do in the novel, which also throws attempting to make comparisons to the novel further into difficulty, but for me not having read the novel for such a long time and perhaps for someone who has come to the film without having read the book, (if there was such a viewer?), it made me want to return to the novel, and perhaps for someone who hasn't read it, the film I think would want them to track down a copy of the book. The soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood seemed in places a little bit out of place, sometimes as if it was composed for a different film, although the tracks by Can worked really well, Greenwood's subtler guitar based pieces seemed to fit really well, along with the more atmospheric pieces, although the string arrangements I sometimes found difficult to reconcile with what was happening on screen, it gave the actors an animated quality which worked a little unevenly at times. The Beatles song features only twice in the film, once sung by Reiko, (played by Reika Kirishima), and again at the closing credits, music is an integral aspect to Murakami's novels it's great to learn that YMO legend Haruomi Hosono appears as the record shop owner where Watanabe works. Kenichi Matsuyama gives an understated performance as Watanabe, caught between the emotionally fragile world of Naoko and Midori, (played by Kiko Mizuhara), Matsuyama's next movie appearance is in Sabu's Usagi Drop based on Yumi Unita's josei manga Bunny Drop which will also be shown as an animated T.V series. Watching the film for me made me think that Naoko, (played by Rinko Kikuchi), is perhaps the central character to the story that the rest of the characters revolve around, (although in another sense it could be Kuzuki's suicide, played by Kengo Kora), which I don't remember feeling to such a degree when reading the novel. The film is superbly shot, the scenes of Naoko's rural retreat seemed to match how the novel seems to visualise it, the shots also of Watanabe by the sea after Naoko's suicide were beautifully captured, I've not yet checked the location of some of the filming, the feel of the rest of the film evokes the time period it's set in, with Watanabe walking indifferently amongst protesting students near the start of the film. The novel is obviously a tricky one to transfer onto screen due to Watanabe's inner contemplative narratives which would be difficult to convey in film, although it remains a beautifully presented film and would find it hard to imagine it to disappoint. Anh Hung Tran didn't opt for a voice over narration by Watanabe and has chosen to depict the dialogue and what is seen in the novel in a straight forward way, the emotional scenes are caught with great effect, adapting from literary works is largely an ambiguous enterprise, the film acts in a way as an accompanying visual extension of the original novel but also succeeds as a finely crafted film in it's own sense.

Norwegian Wood site

Norwegian Wood at Soda Pictures

The Devil's Disciple

2011-07-05T10:44:00.002+01:00

The second Japanese title published recently from Hesperus Worldwide, is this collection of two novellas from Shiro Hamao, (1896-1935), a public prosecutor with aristocratic lineage, this fluid and at times poetical translation comes again from J. Keith Vincent, (A Riot of Goldfish), who was the joint recipient of the 2011' U.S Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature'. Both of these short pieces were originally published in the literary magazine Shinseinen, in 1929, these were the first stories that Hamao had published. The Devil's Disciple/Akuma no deshi is a tale of thwarted love between the genders and takes the form of a written confession, Shimaura Eizo finds himself accused of murdering a young woman and awaiting trial but as he confesses to Tsuchida Hachiro, who in his old university days Shimaura became infatuated with, it could be that he is charged with the wrong murder. The confession starts by recalling their university days together where the two young men formed a relationship, the older Tsuchida became a mentor to the younger Shimaura who fell under his guidance, teaching him the world of literature, introducing him to Poe, Doyle and Freeman also lecturing him on the world of Carpenter and Whitman, I found myself stimulated by the criminal and the bizarre, Shimaura writes. But Shimaura was dumped when Tsuchida becomes attracted to a younger man at the university. Devastated by this split Shimaura drifts into a desolate life until he meets Sueko, he acknowledges the difference between himself and Tsuchida finding that he is attracted to both sexes. The two find a mutual affection but this relationship comes to an end when a husband is found for Sueko, and Shimaura quits the university and finds himself drifting again, picking up translating work and writing articles for magazines, he manages to scrape by, but always keeping enough money aside for alcohol and his 'sleeping powder'. He meets Tsuyuko who becomes his dutiful wife despite it being on his side a loveless marriage, at first Shimaura can tolerate the situation but his wife becomes a source of irritation to him, her obsessive subservience further annoys him. Randomly he meets Sueko on the street and learns that her husband died in the Kanto Earthquake, and she now lives alone. By this time Shimaura has become quite addicted to sleeping powder and takes vast prescriptions, quantities that would usually kill a person not used to it's effects. Trying to provoke Tsuyuko into leaving him proves fruitless as she tolerates him being with other women, Shimaura begins to spend more time with Sueko, wanting to get rid of Tsuyuko, Shimaura devises a way of murdering her, although due to a tragic intervention, things don't go the way he had planned.

The second story is called Did He Kill Them?/Kare ga koroshita ka, this story is at first narrated by a barrister who becomes embroiled in what at first appears to be an obvious case, he examines the circumstantial evidence, a married couple are found murdered, stabbed to death, the woman's lover is found at the scene with a bloodied blade. This seemingly obvious scenario harbours an intricate maze of hidden attractions between the four characters that Hamao masterly weaves without revealing the actuality of it until Otera Ichiro's last statement is found after he has been executed for the murder of Seizo Oda and his wife Michiko. At the heart of this story, (as Ichiro suspects), lies perhaps a sadistic game, Michiko a beautiful young woman is caught, or so it appears in an abusive marriage, although appearances lead to much darker motives, she takes pleasure in toying with young men's affections, as Ichiro discovers that Michiko has feelings for his friend Tomoda Takeshi, Ichiro's jealousy begins to push him to the brink, the second half of the story switches to being Ichiro's telling of the actual events. Out of the two novellas presented here this one lingered with me the longest after putting the book down and captures Hamao's ingenuity at crafting a complex psychological study from a seemingly simple opening. The translation of these stories broadens further the picture of early Showa Era literature, the stories dip into a number of genres; legal procedure, (as Hamao was a public prosecutor), detective noir, and ero-guro-nansensu, (erotic grotesque nonsense), the influence of these can be read in these stories. In his introduction J. Keith Vincent highlights that Hamao was an early advocate of gay rights, noting that in pre-modern Japan homosexuality was widely accepted, but by the 1930's modern sexual theory had recast it as a pathology and a perversion. Hamao was one of the first writers to oppose this. Hamao was a contemporary of the mystery writer Edogawa Rampo but died early in 1935.

The Hesperus Press Blog

Japanese Literature Challenge 5

Inter Ice Age 4

2011-06-30T11:09:00.000+01:00

Abe's prose has a clinical eye to the detailing and psychology of his characters, the process of how he reveals the scenarios in his novels give them a very controlled momentum, Inter Ice Age 4/Dai Yon Kampyo-ki, one of his earliest novels from 1959 is no exception, perhaps the methodology of his medical training and his experiences in the theatre is shown in his novels. The translation from E. Dale Saunders has aged well, and the novel is complimented with fascinating illustrations from Abe's wife Abe Machi. Like The Face of Another/Tanin no kao, Inter Ice Age 4 has at it's center a scientific experiment, the after effects of it's consequences are uncertain. Inter Ice Age 4 cryptically opens with an underwater eruption, then moves to the scene of passengers on board a ship feeling a slight movement to the water's motion. Professor Katsumi and his assistant Tanomogi have constructed a machine that can predict the future, at first Katsumi and Tanomogi input financial data and receive predictions about the state of the economy, they plan to showcase the machine using it to predict the next election, but the concerned organisers call it off. Katsumi becomes a celebrity; I anticipated all futures and dispatched villains left to right.

As it's revealed that each nation has one of these machines a state of silent stale mate comes about with each side not wanting to upset the economic markets and political balance, the machines act as forecaster-come-spy. Katsumi's superiors begin to question the validity and results of the machine so Katsumi and Tanomogi organise a test cast, and a man chosen at random who they find seated in a restaurant is chosen as their guinea pig, they follow him to a woman's apartment but give up the pursuit. Reading the papers the following morning they discover that the man, (Tsuchida Susumu), had been murdered. Worrying that they maybe incriminated in the case, Katsumi and Tanomogi begin to go over their steps, Katsumi receives a mystery phone call from someone informing him that it will be dangerous to pursue the case, Katsumi recognises the voice from somewhere, but can't remember where. They ignore this call and manage to obtain Tsuchida's body which they will examine using the machine, they manage to tap into Tsuchida's nervous system observing through the view finder they see what he saw on the night of his murder, but it brings no results other than discovering the woman's name and also that she had an abortion and that the hospital paid 7000 yen to retain the foetus. Later Katsumi is chased by a man tagging him, theres a scuffle but he manages to make his way back to the laboratory where he discovers one of the assistants Wada Katsuko whose behaviour appears suspicious to Katsumi, she confesses that she and Tanomogi have started a relationship, also that she's willing to offer herself to be examined by the predicting machine. When Tanomogi arrives Katsumi suggests that they let the machine record their conversation for analysis, they find it has been recording already.

Katsumi discovers that his wife has also had an abortion although he discovers that she was drugged, when she came around she found that she had been given 7000 yen in change, she remembers a nurse with a mole on her cheek. The relationship between Katsumi and Tanomogi begins to strain, Katsumi begins to suspect that Tanomogi had in actual fact murdered Tsuchida and threatens to call the police, it's difficult to tell if Katsumi is serious or just testing how Tanomogi will react, Katsumi receives another threatening call. When the machine reports a fault whilst analysing data, Katsumi recognises the voice as the one that has been making the calls, that's your own voice that you programmed the machine with Tanomogi informs him. Another sub plot that emerges concerns Dr Yamamoto's laboratory, Dr Yamamoto is a leading figure in the predicting machine project, and Tanomogi begins to talk of seeing mammals with gills, at first mice and rabbits, then cows and pigs, eventually Katsumi is taken to Dr Yamamoto's submarine facility to view these experiments and discovers that humans are also being bred with gills. The reasons for Dr Yamamoto's breeding program become apparent when geological results show that due to global warming and the melting of the polar regions sea levels will rise, Dr Yamamoto's submarine project is a secret bid for the succession of the species. The novel ends seen from the perspective of an inhabitant of the underwater civilisation who goes in search of the remains of the world that was once lived above the waves, where music was heard through the air and not as vibrations through water. Abe's sustained imaginative narratives weave unexpected correlations between the real world and the ones inhabited by his characters. A portion of the narratives between Katsumi and Tanomogi sees them discussing the implications of viewing the future, and while they pursue Tsuchida they contemplate how he would feel if he were to know that his whole life was suddenly about to be revealed to him. Abe devotes a postscript to this novel contemplating perceptions of the future and present further, I too, therefore, believe that I must understand the future not as something to be judged but something rather that sits in judgement on the present. Abe also views time as being continuous as opposed as being divided solely as present and future, this continuity is cut short for some of the characters in the novel, and Abe leaves it up to the reader and in a way to providence as to whether the novel can be read in hope or despair.

The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q

2011-06-15T19:13:00.008+01:00

Kurahashi's only novel to appear in English translation was published in Japan in 1969 by Kodansha under the title Sumiyakisto Q no boken, Dennis Keene translated the novel and gives a brief introduction, in it he describes his approach to translating the novel and shares some of Kurahashi's thoughts on her writing. Kurahashi was born in Shikoku in 1935, the same year and isle as Oe Kenzaburo, both Oe and Kurahashi studied French Literature, and here Keene gives mention to the nouvea roman novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, and notes that Kurahashi's first novel Kurai tabi/Blue Journey, (1961) was often compared to Michel Butor's novel La Modification, (1957), translated into English by Jean Stewart as Second Thoughts - a novel almost solely written in second person narrative. Kurahashi's writing if having to be compared with other Japanese authors it could be said shares aspects with Yutaka Haniya and Abe Kobo, although the starkness of the violence and sexuality of some of Robbe-Grillet's novel's is seen in Kurahashi's shorter fiction, (The Woman With The Flying Head and Other Stories), which I have yet to read. As Kurahashi's translator Atsuko Sakaki discusses in her essay, (Re)Cannonizing Kurahashi Yumiko: Toward Alternative Perspectives For "Modern" "Japanese" "Literature", (from Oe and Beyond), Kurahashi defended her writing against accusations of plagiarism, there's a satirical element to the novel here and Kurahashi defended her writings describing them as being pastiches, it seems her writing was to a degree overlooked by the literati within Japan, Atsuko Sakaki directs the reader onto another introductory piece about Kurahashi by Dennis Keene, wherein he has translated from Kurahashi's 1966 essay; Negativity and the Labyrinth of Fiction/Shosetsu no meiro to hitaisei, "I abhor the intrusion of the disorder of 'facts' into the world of words I have constructed. The ironclad rule in reporting facts or events is the clarification of the five W's - when, where, who, what, why-but my stories reject these restrictions entirely and instead build castles in the air. At an uncertain time, in a place that is nowhere, somebody who is no one, for no reason, is about to do something-and in the end does nothing: this is my ideal of the novel", Kurahashi's writing appears to be written within preordained parameters, although given this under-standing her texts have a liberating aspect, acknowledging that there are limitations to the novel, Kurahashi took it to task to push them to extremes, I've heard Alain Robbe-Grillet's books being described as containing anti-narratives and Kurahashi's novels as anti-novels, I can understand the direction these authors are aiming at, although find it hard to reconcile this when this message is conveyed within a novel or within a narrative, although this it could be said is a retrospective viewpoint. Kurahashi was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize twice, once for Natsu no owari/End of Summer and also for Partei, a satire on left wing politics, satire also abounds in The Adventures Of Sumiyakist Q as well. Dennis Keene points out that sumiyakisto is Japanese for charcoal burner which he notes could be in reference to The Carbonari.

The novel opens with Q, (a sumiyakist member), disembarking from a ferry crossing, he is to be an instructor at H reformatory located on the island, a passage at the start of the novel concerning the ferry after it has dropped him off, suddenly it disappears from view, Q checks his watch and notices that the hands on it stop and start randomly, the time that passes in between these movements could be minutes or eternities, seems to give an inclination that within this story even the normal passing of time is something that maybe cannot be relied upon. He encounters some fishermen and women, (these people are later described as menials by the leaders of the reformatory), on the beach, the women taunt him with sexual obscenities. The island appears to be made up of a barren landscape it's austerity is echoed within the architecture of the remote reformatory, beds and stools are made of simple slabs of concrete and wood, also on the beach is a man who acts as porter at H who guides Q there - Each building was of an unsurpassable plainness of design, each being an unornamated polyhedron, and all varying in height (although the unevenness of the ground could have had something to do with this), and indeed the buildings as a whole looked like the result of a box of toy bricks having been overturned, some scattered here and there, some seemingly piled one on top of the other. The narrative appears heavily influenced by Kafka, there's many parallels with Kafka's story In the Penal Colony/In der Strafkolnie, with much of the dialogue seeing the men discussing the quixotic processes of H, walking along the corridors Q is driven on by anxiety and bewilderment, Q meets a man referred to as overseer and they discuss Q's c.v, the overseer knows of a crime that was connected with Q, he's not guilty of this crime, but guilty of another Q confesses, the narrative can be seen to distract from the central plot on a number of occasions, and occasionally appears to come from somewhere beyond the narrative, their conversation turns to the rector. Q is taken to the room where he will lodge, he'll share with another instructor, a theologian called F, who's body odour almost suffocates Q, F has not much to say except to inform Q that a war between the oppressed and those who run H has started, Q is overcome with sleep, he dreams he is an ant amongst concrete building blocks. The rector is a huge man, once in his office Q tries stepping back to take in his complete form but is unable to, Q finds himself attracted to the rector's nurse Sabiya who performs a complete body shave of the rector. At first the exact details of what Q's job will involve remain unclear, Q learns that at H the instructors are free to do what they like, the definition of what an instructor does is full of vague archaic meanings. Another instructor described as the 'literary man' talks with Q at length about the structure of a novel he's writing, the conversations expand into literary theory, the literary man is trying to write a novel free of determinism. Q has an appointment with the Doktor with reference to an operational procedure that all people new to H have to go through, which Q has heard maybe a vasectomy or castration, in Kafka-esque style when Q asks what this will be, the Doktor cryptically replies you decide what it's to be. Q suspects that the Doktor could be a higher member of the sumiyakist there to observe Q's ability to observe. The instructors, rector, overseer and the Doktor play games, one being the board revolving game, where the winner gets to sleep with the rectors gargantuan wife, and also the dog races, which turns to being a metaphorical exploration of political and ideological thinking. Q views everything going on in H from a sumiyakist standpoint, noting down the injustices he sees in a notebook which will appear to be a report to the party.

From the outset of the novel at mealtimes the instructors eat a meat whose origins are from an uncertain source, and as the novel progresses, the rector and Doktor hint that they are eating human meat, (the literary man gives Q a draft of the novel he's writing called Doktor's Notebook - which acts to fill in details within the story that are only hinted at in the actual novel), it becomes apparent to Q that in actual fact the rector, the Doktor, the overseer and instructors have been eating the students/ inmates. Deciding to make plans to put his idea of revolution into action Q questions another instructor about the identity of unruly students, Q learns of Ajita, Ajita came to the reformatory due to his violent background and Q envisions him as an ideal catalyst to kick start proceedings. Going to the students quarters with the literary man, (Mr Bukka), things go wrong and the students take Mr Bukka captive, Q flees. Feeling that things are spinning beyond his control Q confesses what has happened to the rector, hastily Q organizes a meeting of the instructors, the theology instructor makes an impassioned speech which ends with a brutal invasion by the students. The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q was published at the end of the sixties while the global student protest movements were active, and whilst reading the novel, H could be seen as being a model of a hypothetical university in which the fiction is worked around, a fuller appreciation of the novel might be had with more background knowledge to the events and student groups, two further novels from this period that I'd like to read eventually would be Nosaka Akiyuki's, The Rioters/Sodoshitachi (1971), and also Takahashi Kazumi's 1966 novel, Jashumon/Evil Spirit. The corpus of the novel it seems concerns exposing the fragility of arguments and rhetoric used by both factions, these in the novel are overrun by the inmates of the reformatory, (representing the non-determinist element in the novel?), who have no real cohesive ideology, and when Q shouts, "Long live Sumiyakism!", the inmates copy him in parrot like fashion not understanding the meaning of what they are saying.

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Record of A Living Being

2011-06-12T23:23:00.003+01:00

Like most people I first came to the films of Kurosawa through his jidai-geki/period drama films, it's only been quite recently that I've begun to explore Kurosawa's other titles like Stray Dog/Nora Inu and Drunken Angel/Yoidore Tenshi , the latest of his non jidai-geki ouput I've watched is I Live In Fear/Ikimono no kiroku, the film is often referred to, (Stuart Galbraith IV's mammoth The Emperor and The Wolf :The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Faber and Faber 2002), as Record of A Living Being. Released in 1955 and starring two regulars of Kurosawa's films; Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, Record of A Living Being is an exploration of the anxiety of the cold war era, released soon after Godzilla it relies on none of the metaphor that that film implies, but openly voices the fears of living in the nuclear age. Dr Harada, (played by Shimada), runs his family dentist business, and also works as a mediator at a family court, arriving there after being summoned he's caught in the middle of a heated family argument, slowly the nature of the family disagreement is revealed. The father, Kiichi Nakajima,(played by Mifune), the owner of a family run foundry, to escape from the threat of atomic bombs wants to relocate the family to South America, he has already constructed an underground shelter in Akita province, but discovers that this won't be completely safe. The rest of the family want the court to declare him mentally unsound to prevent the move. At first the negotiations are stuck in stale mate, Kiichi shouts "Baka"! to any of his sons who protest against the move, to discredit their father further they look at each other uncertainly and ask if he's intending to take all the family, referring to his illegitimate children and his mistresses too, Kiichi replies that he'll take everyone, the proceedings nearly end in a brawl. A man arrives from Brazil who's eager to sell his plantation and Kiichi tries desperately to raise the funds, but things go awry, the deal falls through, eventually the court's decision falls in favour of the family. The judge afterwards trying to absolve himself from his own judgement declares that, "It's the H-bomb's fault, it made him this way".

Made in the era of the Bikini Atoll testings and the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident it's not difficult to imagine how directly this film must have spoken to it's audience, the film relates to both the past and the future, it's prophetic message is finely observed and crafted through it's contemporary setting. Throughout the film Dr Harada seems to be the only official who doubts his feelings and misgivings about Kiichi's case and motives, medical testing proves that Kiichi is sane, and many times Kiichi protests his reasons - "It's cowards who tremble and shut their eyes, that's why I'm moving", the consequences of Kiichi's fears become apparent after the ruling, he orders a family gathering and begs his family to come with him, mother too changes her point of view and also begins to beg the family, the emotional scene ends with Kiichi collapsing. While he convalesces the family begin to contemplate changing the will in order to finally solve the problem. The film picks up again with Dr Harada pursuing the Nakajima's to see what has happened only to find that the foundry has been burnt to the ground. In the aftermath Kiichi admits to burning it down, "You wouldn't go to Brazil because of the foundry, so I burnt it down!". The extent of Kiichi's presumed madness is heightened by the protestations of the workers, You don't mind if we starve, he's mad! they shout, and after he's been taken into custody the other convicts mock him, 'H-bombs, you're a fool to care, leave it to the politicians!', they jeer at him. Gilbraith observes Record of A Living Being as Kurosawa's testing out ideas which would be more fully realized in Ran, with Kiichi being an early prototype for the Hidetora/Lear character. Dr Harada eventually tracks Kiichi down to a mental hospital where the Dr there admits 'Maybe I'm not sane as I think I am', Kiichi is viewed as either a madman in a sane world or a sane man in a mad world, Kiichi staring out of the window confuses the sun with the earth, It's burning, it's burning!. Kurosawa ends the film with a finely composed scene of Harada walking down the hospital stairs away from Harada and his daughter walking apprehensively up to visit him.

I Live in Fear at The Criterion Collection

I Live in Fear at The BFI

The Devotion of Suspect X

2011-06-04T13:17:00.002+01:00

Originally appearing in Japan as Yogisha X no kenshin in 2005, and winning the Naoki Prize of that year, The Devotion of Suspect X has recently been published by Minotaur Books in the U.S and is also forthcoming by Little Brown in the U.K., the translation is by Alexander O.Smith and Elye J. Alexander. Unlike Naoko that has at it's centre a fantastical idea, The Devotion of Suspect X opens with a description of events that lead up to a murder and then presents to the reader the perspective of the police investigation from the moment that the body is discovered and then follows the investigation as they decipher clue by clue, deduction by deduction the circumstance and culprits of the crime, and behind this a cryptic game of cat and mouse between two geniuses. There's a blank in the narrative between the initial aftermath of the murder and the discovery of the body, which the novel is used to slowly unveil to the reader. Ishigami, a private high school maths teacher leaves for work on his bike stopping off at a boxed lunch store on the way, working at the boxed lunch shop is his neighbour, Yasuko Hanaoka, a single mother who has a daughter, Misato. Yasuko had been divorced a few years earlier from her husband Shinji Togashi, although Togashi is not Misato's father, Yasuko's boss jokingly implies that Ishigami fancies Yasuko, that's why he stops by everyday. Out of the blue Shinji Togashi enters the store and begins to harrass Yasuko into meeting again, after repeatedly asking him to leave her strength of will gives way and she says she'll meet him after work. When they meet again Yasuko reiterates that she doesn't want to see him again and that he should stop pestering her, despite Togashi saying he is a changed man, Yasuko leaves abruptly. After Yasuko has been home for a while Togashi starts ringing her doorbell, knowing that what he probably wants is money she reluctantly lets him in on the proviso that he leaves after she has given him 20,000 Yen. But on his way out Misato in a rage fuelled by some his comments smashes him over the head, in retaliation he lunges at her, fearing that he will kill Misato Yasuko strangles him with the kotatsu cord. At first Yasuko is going to hand herself into the police but Misato tries to persuade her out of it, the conversation is disrupted by her neighbour Ishigami knocking at the door asking what the noise was about. Yasuko at first manages to disguise the fact of what has happened from him, but Ishigami calls again later revealing that he had actually heard everything, and to Yasuko and Misato's surprise he offers them his help in covering up the murder.

The narrative turns to the police detectives Kusanagi and Kishitani who get a report of a body being found, an attempt has been made on the body to make identifying it impossible, and nearby police find clothes that have been partially burned and a stolen bicycle, these are the circumstances that the detectives slowly piece together. Through their enquires and forensics they learn the identity of the man as being Shinji Togashi. The detectives inform Yasuko of the murder and while they are at her building they bump into her neighbour Ishigami who they also talk to, through a letter in his mailbox Kusanagi notices that Ishigami used to attend Imperial University. Another central character to the police investigation is Yukawa, (whose nickname is Galileo - the name of the Japanese T.V serialization of this novel), a professor of physics, who Kusanagi sometimes refers to for help in solving cases, Yukawa also attended Imperial University and as the case progresses he comes into contact again with Ishigami, as a friend, and at a distance as a suspect. Whilst at university Ishigami earned the nickname 'The Buddha', as he was always hunched over his work trying to solve mathematical problems. The main corpus of the novel traces the police as they try to break the alibi of Yasuko and Misato, which was given to them by Ishigami, who keeps tabs on Yasuko and Misato by phoning them from a public phone booth everynight. After time Yasuko begins to wonder why Ishigami helped them the way he has. As the narrative holds back from giving a vital clue and doesn't reveal the chain of events between the murder and the finding of the body the suspense is brilliantly drawn out, and just like in the earlier novel Naoko/Himitsu, Higashino has a great skill at shifting the parameters of these novels at the crucial moments, keeping the reader guessing until the last few pages have been turned.

Mishima and Kawabata Prize announced

2011-06-03T11:58:00.000+01:00

The winners of the 24th Mishima Yukio Prize and the 37th Kawabata Yasunari Prize have recently been announced on Shinchosha's website. The Mishima Prize was awarded to Imamura Natsuko for Kochira Amiko, (Here's Amiko), and the Kawabata Prize was awarded to Tsumura Setsuko for Ikyou, (Foreign Land), written after the death of her husband, the novelist Yoshimura Akira. Tsumura Setsuko was born in Fukui Prefecture in 1928 and has won the Akutagawa Prize in 1965 for Toys, (Gangu) and also the Woman's Literature Prize in 1990.

Distant Thunder

2011-05-29T23:14:00.003+01:00

Noticing that another of Tatematsu Wahei's novels appears on a recent JLLP list, (Hidaka, 2002, translated by Philip Gabriel), it prompted me into a reading of Distant Thunder, originally published in Japan as Enrai in 1980, translated by Lawrence J. Howell and Hikaru Morimoto and published by Charles E.Tuttle Company in 1999. The novel was also adapted for a film directed by Kichitaro Negishi, released through ATG in 1981. Described on the cover as A Novel of Contemporary Japan, the novel is now a little over thirty years old, although it's plotting and characters still resonate on into the present day, Tatematsu passed away early in 2010, hopefully Hidaka and more of his novels and writings will be picked up in the future. As well as being a novelist Tatematsu was an environmental activist and his concerns about the environment can be read throughout Distant Thunder, as it studies a small farming community, (the Wada family in particular), whose lives are transformed after they have sold their land to developers.

Most of Distant Thunder is seen through the eyes of Mitsuo, the second youngest son of the Wada family. Mitsuo's father, Matsuzo, has sunk the majority of the money he made into his mistress's unsuccessful bar and also rents an apartment for them. Mitsuo's older brother, Tetsuo, has moved out to Tokyo leaving it just Mitsuo, his mother, Tomiko, and Matsuzo's mother living in the house. Tetsuo calls asking for money to put down on a house, but as Tetsuo left the family home Mitsuo feels Tetsuo is not entitled to any of the money. Mitsuo spends most of his time cultivating tomatoes in the family's remaining hothouse, he sells them at the lowest rate to the local supermarket and also cheaply to the housewives of the newly built apartment complex. Tomiko, his mother, works directing traffic at a construction site along with Mitsuo's friend Koji, Mitsuo is surprised when Tomiko returns from the supermarket one day, her bags full of daikon, What's the world coming to when the farmer buys vegetables from the supermarket?, Mitsuo ponders out loud. Grandma who seems to be largely ignored by Tomiko and Mitsuo is a constant source of stories on how much better things were in the old days, but on the whole her assertions seem to be proved right, and Mitsuo's resentment at the developers increases when two men appear who want to buy the land that the hothouse is on and turn it into a used car lot. Mitsuo has a one night fling with a woman, (Kaede), from the apartments who tells him that she's divorced but later her husband turns up with a warning for Mitsuo, despite this Mitsuo agrees to meet a woman, (Ayako), through omiai, (arranged marriage), Mitsuo feeling that it's time his life begins to take on a more definite shape agrees to the marriage to the relief of both sides. Ayako, at first is uncertain about the match, but seeing how hard Mitsuo works, Ayako's opinion changes. The novel follows Mitsuo as he ambles between time spent with his friend Koji, fishing in rivers full of rubbish and vomit, and time spent in the hothouse cultivating his tomato crop, the flimsy vinyl sheeting spread over it acts as a transparent barrier between himself and the external world, Koji also works his parent's tanbo, (rice field). Mitsuo's father and his mistress, (Chii), is a source of consternation, Matsuzo tries to convince the family that he's made up his mind to return to them and leave Chii, and in what seem to be an earlier attempt to rid themselves of his father's side of the family Mitsuo dumps his Grandma at his father's apartment, but his father brings her back to the family home.

Reflecting on the old days, and remembering how hard she and her husband worked the land Grandma asks a rhetorical question, 'Who was it who turned sand into the richest paddies in the village?', seems to provoke the reader into contemplating the difference between the developers make a quick profit philosophy and the farmers who cultivate the land out of nescessity, and are part of a continuous tradition. Many moments in the novel sees Mitsuo appointing blame at the developement, when Koji also takes up with Kaede and things take a tragic turn, Mitsuo remarks that none of it would have happenend if the development hadn't happenend, many of the villagers reflect on their life before the complex arrived, the novel is a detailed and well thought out portrait of the effects of modernisation and it's expansion into the country way of life. The novel ends with a lengthy description of Ayako and Mitsuo's wedding ceremony and Mitsuo has a prophetic vision of an uncertain future.

Banana Yoshimoto wins Capri Award

2011-05-25T09:16:00.000+01:00

It's great to read the news from The Mainichi Daily News and Kyodo News Agency that Banana Yoshimoto has won the Capri Award, an Italian Literary Award. The committee has praised Yoshimoto's 'gentleness and spirituality', and noting that her novels 'always carry a poetic connotation ,while depicting a serious reflection between life and death'. The committee dedicating the 2011 Capri Awards to the Japanese people because of their 'dignity and generosity facing fate's adversity, following the devastating March 11th earthquake'. 'The Lake', has recently been published by Melville House Publishing in a translation by Michael Emmerich, some of the proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to disaster relief.

Monkey Business

2011-05-19T06:11:00.000+01:00

For everybody who couldn't make it to the launch of Monkey Business, ( I need to get a copy!), Asia Society have put up an excellent video of writers who feature in the first issue; Hiromi Kawakami and Rebecca Brown read pieces from each other's books, and also Minoru Ozawa and Joshua Beckman read from their haiku. The sessions are introduced by Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen.

For the - video

To buy - Monkey Business

Musashino

2011-05-16T11:03:00.001+01:00

Ima no Musashino/Musashino was written by Doppo Kunikida in 1897, after he and his wife, Nobuko Sasaki, divorced he rented a cottage there, at it's opening Doppo tells us that after reading about the historical Battle of Kotesashi, that took place in what was Musashi Province, a desire to visit the place had welled up in him. Musashino is read like a multi layered piece of reflective writing, at first he describes his initial attraction and preconceived impressions of the place, and then he refers back to his notebook entries that he wrote during his visit. A striking feature of the piece is the differing length of the passages and entries Doppo uses, in his introduction the translator David Chibbett points out that Musashino is written in the tradition of zuihitsu, (random jottings), within his piece Doppo quotes passages from a short story by Turgenev, (translated into the Japanese by Futabatei Shimei), called Rendezvous. These longer passages are a contrast to Doppo's own shorter entries, in them he notes his observations of the weather, wind , rain and recalls midnight walks amongst the forest with an almost haiku like simplicity, there is not much reference to his frame of mind until an entry from 24th November 1896; - Not all the leaves have fallen yet. When I look at the distant mountains, my heart is filled with yearning and longs to vanish into them. Doppo charts the labyrinthine network of paths that criss-cross the woods, following them he finds old gravestones deep within them. Subtly he contrasts the woods of the birch trees descibed in Turgenev's piece with those of his native Japan, noting the absence of the oak tree from Japanese literature, autumn seems to be his favourite season and he notes the re-appearance of greenery as the seasons change. Doppo a reader of Wordsworth and the Romantic poets writes in their style but his stories and writing are filled with characters from Japanese history, Yoshitsune , Rokudai Shojiki, also including a passage from the poet Kumagai Naoyoshi, (1782-1862). Musashino is filled with descriptions of the sounds of the woods and the plains, observations of the shadows of clouds drifting across the fields, although at it's heart the piece has a certain melancholy silence to it, and for it's descriptions of the winds and movement, a certain feeling of stillness is also felt. Nearing the end of Musashino Doppo recounts a walk with a friend, marvelling at the sight of the sun setting over the shoulder of Mt Fuji and describes an impromptu chance of tsukimi , but Musashino for Doppo, at it's ending is infused with the sights and sounds of life glimpsed in the present leaving us with an impression of the eternal.

Musashino can be found in the collection River Mist and Other Stories translated by David Chibbett, published by Paul Norbury, 1983, Chibbett also included an interesting biography of Doppo, drawing on biographies by Fukuda Kiyohito and Sakamoto Hiroshi, Musashino stands out in this collection being the only non-fiction piece which also includes a number of Doppo's prose poems. Another excellent resource I came across while looking online about Musashi Province and the Kozuke-Musashi Campaign was The Samurai Archives Wiki.

Invalid

2011-05-08T06:48:00.002+01:00

Since reading Doll Love/Ningyo ai, Takahashi Takako is an author I've been wanting to return to, Byoshin/Invalid, a brief story from 1978 starts with a phone conversation, a dialogue between a woman and a sick man, throughout the short story Takahashi refrains from naming the two characters. The woman asks how he is feeling, in reply he coughs down the line, the woman begins to imagine his insides; 'But what shape was he in down in the deepest unseeable parts of his body?. She wanted to know the colors, the shapes, the feel and everything else about him'. He tells her he's been listening to Erik Satie, (Gymnopedies), although the true depth of their relationship is left ambiguous to begin with an episode from the past is recalled, another time when he was ill, sitting by the window she had given him a lozenge. Before this episode is recalled though, after further cross inspection by her he confesses to feeling a nausea - It was a nausea that had recently come to roost within his body in the middle of the night, a nausea that could not be eradicated because they did not know it's source, a nausea that seemed to be the riddle that was himself. The phone conversation comes to an end, the narrative continues on down the phone line settling back into a description of the man's apartment that seems to be like a cocoon to the external world, painted entirely white, the stereo playing Satie, There is no more trace of emotion: Only sensation. That is Erik Satie. His illness and the melody of the music fuse. Shifting to describe the woman in her apartment she too is succumbing to a piece of music; Saint-Saens 3rd Symphony, which begins to take her on a journey to her innermost self, consciously and unconsciously, unleashing a tempest. After this, theres a descriptive passage of how she has begun to listen to every word spoken whilst in conversation, she had been able to decipher by listening out closely to single words repeated by the speaker, she learnt how to reach an understanding of that person's inner workings, she finds that this talent proved useless though, when in the presence of her rapacious feelings for him.

Although the man is young he suffers from back pain, the woman's spirit's soar when she learns of this new cryptic clue to the man, they meet at a hospital where he has an appointment for tests to be carried out, after she questions him at length about this pain he is unable to explain exactly whats wrong, telling her that he had a skiing accident when he was young. Some what disappointed with his descriptions of his pain he tells her it feels different than before, '"How was it different?" She was insistent. She had come so far with him. But she was not tormenting him with her questions: she was the one in agony. There was no way she could escape this agony if she could not find out just how his back hurt him.'. The hospital is described with it's clinical attention at attempting to contain contagion, Takahashi in describing physical ailments also hints at spiritual ailments or those of the inner condition, and at the same time reminding us of the vulnerability of the flesh - The whole building had been made whitely, inorganically bright, as if in the hope of neutralizing the diseases that people carried so protectively inside themselves'. The woman's frustrated temperament at his inability to describe his pain borders hysteria, he describes the pain he endured to walk to the hospital but still she doubts him, she wishes for a machine that is able to measure the pain inside people, throughout the story she yearns to have an endoscopic ability in order to see the pain with her own eyes, later studying X-rays the man had had, she still finds no reassurance, the more she examines them the less she can decipher what the images mean. The story culminates on her disappointed resignation that the doctors can't find a specific reason for his pain. Although the word nausea appears regularly in the story, it's existentialism doesn't appear overtly so, there's an ambivalence to the story which leaves the identity of the invalid of the story open to interpretation, also the nature of the invalidism, whether it's the man's physical condition or something referring to the woman's psychological state. Displaying an almost hysteric desperation for physical evidence of the man's pain, she only appears to know him fully through a full knowledge of his pain, she displays the disappointment and weariness of someone living through the philosophical pain and private language argument, there are many instances in Takahashi's stories that bridge the philosophical and the psychological, Invalid/Byoshin is translated by Van C. Gessel and can be found in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, volume 2.

Nakaji Yasui

2011-04-30T02:52:00.005+01:00

If I were in Kyoto ath the moment I'd probably be trying to head over to the Taka Ishii Gallery who are presenting an exhibition of works by the photographer, Nakaji Yasui, the exhibition runs from March 25th - May 7th, so there's not much time left to get to see this if you have spare time during Golden Week. Nakaji Yasui was born in Osaka in 1903, Yasui's photography is both photo journalistic and experimental, often his work would include photo montage. His photographs have inspired many generations of photographers to come after him. The above book which is not related to the exhibition, is dual text, it is now though I think out of print, but copies may still be available.

Naoko

2011-04-25T11:01:00.003+01:00

Naoko was originally published by Bungei Shunju in 1998 under the title Himitsu, (Secret), and it won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award the following year. Like Kotaro Isaka many of Higashino's novels have been adapted to film, you can see a trailer for Himitsu here, his latest book translated into English, The Devotion of Suspect X was directed by Hiroshi Nishitani and released in 2008 starring Masaharu Fukuyama, who recently appeared in Ryomaden. Naoko was translated by Kerim Yasar and published by Vertical Inc back in 2004.

The narrative of the novel comes from Heisuke who works at a factory engineering automotive parts, he returns from work on what seems to be a day like any other, although his wife Naoko and daughter Monami have travelled to Nagano to attend a funeral of a cousin. Switching on the TV his attention is caught with the news of a crash involving a bus that's shuttling people on skiing holidays, knowing that his wife and daughter are on a bus similar to the one mentioned his worst fears are confirmed when Naoko and Monaki's names are mentioned among the casualties. Not long after arriving at the hospital Naoko passes away, Monami remains in a coma, when Monami regains consciousness it appears that Naoko's spirit/personality has transferred to Monami's body, she tells Heisuke of events that are known only between Naoko and him . Heisuke is caught between grieving for his wife and then his daughter, as they begin to adjust to this phenomenonal event Naoko decides to return to attend Junior High to pick up school where Monami had left off. Heisuke attends a meeting amongst family members of the victims to discuss compensation with the bus company, they discover that the driver crashed due to overwork and through this he meets the driver's wife, Seiko Kajikawa. Escorting her home after she slips over he notices that their home is not at all luxurious, Seiko continues to work at a firm contracted with Heisuke's, to provide for her daughter, Itsumi. Heisuke is puzzled as to where the driver's earnings were going as he was putting in so much overtime. The novel follows the two plots of Heisuke following the clues as to where the money was going, and also the events unfolding between himself and Naoko/Monami. Naoko is determined to study hard and do her best for Monami which causes tension between her and Heisuke, Heisuke frustrated as the physical side of their relationship has come to an abrupt end finds himself increasingly drawn to Monami's room tutor, Ms Hashimoto, Naoko discovers a photo of her tucked as a bookmark that Heisuke was reading, but things come to an end when Monami moves on to her next school.

Seiko Kajikawa discovers money orders her husband made to a Noriko Negishi who lives in Sapporo, which at first adds to Heisuke's perplexity, but he gets the chance to follow the lead later when he gets sent to Hokkaido on business. Tension begins to increase when Heisuke begins to suspect that Naoko is having an affair with Haruki Soma, a boy at her High School tennis club, Heisuke's paranoia and suspicions reach new heights when he taps their phone to listen in to his wife's conversations. Heisuke learns from Itsumi that Seiko Kajikawa has passed away, Itsumi gives Heisuke a clock that belonged to her father, Heisuke takes it to a jewellers to have it repaired and they discover a photo of a young boy when they remove the casing. The novel is a taught exploration of jealousy emanating from it's strange parenthesis, and Higashino constantly moves the boundaries of these as the novel progresses towards it's uncertain ending. There's a possible little reference to Soseki's I Am A Cat too, when Heisuke pretends to be looking for a copy in Monami's room, later a cat is seen in the garden, who's watching who?. I'm looking forward to reading The Devotion of Suspect X soon.

Fukko Shoten

2011-04-19T09:06:00.002+01:00

Masahiko Shimada has launched an online book store, Fukko Shoten, (Revival and Survival), to help contribute to Japanese Red Cross and other organisations, other authors contributing include Nobuko Takagi, Banana Yoshimoto, Miri Yu.

http://fukkoshoten.com/

Japanese Red Cross Society

Japanese Literature: Online translations

2011-04-06T07:14:00.002+01:00

The HathiTrust.org, is an online digital Library which has many texts provided by universities across the U.S.A, it's an astounding database, although I think you have to be at one of the partner universities to download books as PDF's, there are many books to read online using the page turner tool. Among translated Japanese texts that are availabe to view many are older texts that I presume are now, (due to their age), in the public domain, here's a list of some I recently found, hope these are of interest. On the HathiTrust Access and Use Policies page it mentions that, 'users are encouraged to cite and link to digital content and are free to do so without asking for permission', so I hope it's ok for me to provide these links.

A Handful of Sand
Ishikawa Takuboku
Translated by Sakanashi Shio

Art, Life, And Nature in Japan
Masaharu Anesaki

An Adopted Husband/Sono Omokage
Shimei Futabatei
Translated by Buhachiro Mitsui and Gregg M.Sinclair

Paulownia Seven Stories from Contemporary Japanese Writers
Translated by Toraro Taketomo, foreward by John Erskine,Phd.

Short stories from; Ogai Mori, (Takase Bune and Hanako),

Kafu Nagai, (The Pier, The Bill Collector and Ukiyoe),

and Toson Shimazaki, (A Domestic Animal and Tsugaru Strait).

Kokoro
Natsume Soseki
Translated by Edwin McCellan

The Cannery Boat and Other Japanese Short Stories

Kobayashi Takiji

Although this is not a full translation of this famous novel it gives a great impression of this story, this edition comes with two other stories from Kobayashi Takiji and also other short stories of Proletarian Literature by Fujimori Seikichi, Kuroshima Denji, Kishi Sanji, Kataoka Teppei, Tokunaga Naoshi and Hayashi Fusao, whose story Cocoons is amongst my favourites in this collection.
A film on Kobayashi Takiji by Heather Bowen-Struyk can be seen here.

http://www.hathitrust.org/

Speculative Japan 2

2011-03-31T07:45:00.002+01:00

Noticing that the contents list of the first volume of Speculative Japan included a slight overlap of stories - two I think, from The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories , I thought I'd better get a copy of Speculative Japan 2. Published by Kurodahan Press the collection comes with a Preface by Edward Lipsett who mentions that in this second collection the scope was broadened a little wider to include fiction that could be read as speculative, and the stories selected here offer a great range, Takagi Nobuko, who won the Tanizaki Prize with, Translucent Tree, is represented with the story Melk's Golden Acres, translated by Dink Tanaka, whose translation of the story won the 2009 Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, the narrative follows a woman's visit to Melk Abbey, taking in the Abbey's history and collection of ancient manuscripts, she pauses in the monastic atmosphere of the Abbey, the woman encounters a man who at first meeting exhibits some peculiar sentiments, looking up at the fresco/secco he points out the hidden image of a woman , the narrator slowly unravels the con-sequences of their relationship, this story seems to be distant to resembling science fiction but has an explorative theological theme to it. Open Up by Hori Akira, translated by Roy Berman, is a brief, but very readable homage to Hoshi Shinichi, narrated by two perspectives, but possibly from one person, it follows a lone astronaut exiting from hyperspace, who's caught on the toilet when unexpectedly he hears a knock on the door.. The opening story is by Awa Naoko, A Gift From the Sea translated by Sheryl A. Hogg is an intriguing fable like tale, situated in a rural seaside village, The Fox's Window and Other Stories, translated by Toshiya Kamei was recently published by University of New Orleans Press, Blue Shells, a short story by Awa Naoko along with an interview with translator Toshiya Kamei can be read at Moulin Review.

A story that seemed to fully represent the speculative is Freud by Enjoe Toh, translated by Kevin Steinbach , after the Grandmother of the narrator passes away the family are left with what should happen to the old woman's house, concluding that no one in the family wants to move into the house, and none can afford the upkeep they agree on pulling it down. The family gather to begin the demolition and under the floor they discover a 'crowd' of Freuds, yes, Sigmund Frueds, or 'old Mr. Scary Face', as the narrator puts it. Following the family as they ponder on the meaning of this mystifying discovery, the story is full of humorous metaphorical and philosophical explorations. The Big Drawer by Onda Riku, translated by Nora Stevens Heath, is a story that could straddle many genres. A brother, (Mitsunori) and sister, (Kimiko), of an extraordinary, possibly extra-terrestrial family settle into their new life and school in Tokyo, the family have an ability to memorize vast chunks of Japanese Literature, Mitsunori has already memorized up to the 19th century, although they are told to keep this ability a secret from the other children by their parents. Walking to school Mitsunori usually passes an elderly neighbour, one morning the neighbour keels over and dies, at this moment Mitsunori has a psychic vision of the key events in the man's life, which enables him to expose a secret that will heal a rift between the man and his son. Mountaintop Symphony by Nakai Norio, translated by Terry Gallagher, follows an orchestra as they prepare to perform their movement in an epic symphony that is so long that no one alive has heard the beginning of or will ever hear it's completion, the story is a fantastically realized metaphorical one as the slight neurosis of each of the characters is subtly revealed and explored. The title story, The Man Who Watched the Sea, by Kobayashi Yasumi is translated by Anthea Murphy, is a tale of an unfulfilled romance between a couple who are in differing dimensions, one in Shoreville and the other in Mountville.

Other authors included are; Ogawa Issui, with Old Vohl's Planet, translated by Jim Hubbert who has also translated Ogawa's The Next Continent and The Lord of the Sands of Time for Haikasoru. Kajio Shinji, whose story Reiko's Universe Box features in the first volume of Speculative Japan is represented with, Emanon: A Reminiscence, an award winning story translated by Edward Lipsett. Kitakuni Koji: Midst the Mist, translated by Rossa O'Muireartaigh, Tani Koshu with Q-Cruiser Basilisk translated by Simon Varnam and also Yamao Yuko, whose story Perspective is translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

The Paradise Bird Tattoo

2011-03-09T20:57:00.005Z

Counterpoint Press has built up a great catalogue of translated Japanese fiction including; Manzuru and Shot By Both Sides, the latest is The Paradise Bird Tattoo, or attempted double suicide, by Kurumatani Choukitsu, translated by Kenneth J. Bryson, and is intriguingly described as an I-novel. The novel was adapted to an award winning film in 2003, directed by Genjiro Arato. Taking place largely towards the end of the 1970's the novel covers a period of the narrator's life whilst working in Amagasaki skewering meat for a yakitori place. In the opening of the novel we learn that the narrator - Ikushima (Yoichi), used to work in an advertising agency, but had to get away from the job as he was working himself into non-existence, his exhaustion manifesting itself into physical illness, pushing him to the brink of karoshi, 'Amid the day to day routine of selling ads I had an uneasy feeling, as if my individuality were somehow being washed away.' His recollection of Amagasaki begins after encountering a rather clingy woman who follows him to a local library. When Ikushima first arrives at Amagasaki he's met in the street by a man with bloodshot eyes who thrusts a 10,000 Yen note into his hand. He works in his tenement apartment, the meat being delivered in the morning, he's expected to skewer 1000 pieces of meat a day at 3 Yen a piece. His employer is Seiko Nesasn, a woman in her fifties who  surmises of him after their brief interview as, 'one of those who got dealt a good hand, but go bust anyway', but remains puzzled as to why Ikushima wants to waste away in a dead end job, her suspicions of Ikushima are shared by the other tenant's of the building, who are slightly intimidated by his presence. Ikushima is ill at ease in Seiko Nesan's presence, as he feels she is attracted to him, and in a despair ladened confession she tells him that after the war she was a pan-pan girl. As Ikushima works away he begins to hear groans and moans through the thin walls of the building, his imagination offers up ideas as to their source; prostitution, gangster torture sessions?.

Slowly Ikushima's knowledge of the comings and goings of the building begins to grow, Ayako, who he met briefly with Seiko Nesan, he discovers lives in the apartment below, Horimayu-san who met him in the street is a tattooist working in rooms adjacent to him, and he notes the movements of the local gangs connected to Horimayu-san who boast of being Kusubori, (burn-outs). Ikushima forms a friendship with Shimpei, who he thinks at first is Ayako's brother, but their relationship is slightly enigmatic, he becomes increasingly attracted to Ayako who's brush off's end when she visits his room one night out of the blue, but then disappears again. Ikushima is an interestingly crafted character, he has dreams early in the novel of himself running around with his back on fire, which is an alarmingly symbolic depiction of his drifting-like existence after turning away from his ad agency job, he loathed falling into the 'middle class life style'. He labours under self deprecation and has an aversion to eating raw eggs, and also a beleaguered defiance against those who try to persuade him off his path. Slowly he gets embroiled into the world of Seiko Nesan and Horimayu-san's shady dealings, all the while trying to keep his infatuation with Ayako in check. Seiko Nesan lays him off unexpectedly and he finds a note from Ayako asking him to meet her in Osaka, eventually Ikushima learns that Ayako's brother is in deep trouble with the gangs, it threatens to put them both on a route to the waterfalls of Akame neither of them seemingly can escape from.

Kurumatani Choukitsu was born in Hyogo in 1945, Akame shijuya-taki shinju misui/Attempted Suicide at the Forty Eight Waterfalls of Akame, published in 1998 won the Naoki Prize. Kurumatani has also won many other literary awards including the Mishima Prize in 1993 for Shiotsubo no saji/Spoon of Salt, a novel centered around suicide, and also the Kawabata Prize in 2001, with the novel Musahimaru.

Isle of Dreams

2011-02-21T13:22:00.002Z

Isle of Dreams/Yume no shima was first published in Japan in 1985, just preceding the economic boom which in turn led to the overinflated valuation of property prices which would ultimately lead to the economic downturn at the end of the last millennium. The central character of Isle of Dreams, Shozo Sakai, aged 50 and widowed, is of the generation that witnessed both the poverty of the immediate post war years and a spectator to the economic ascension. At the beginning of the novel he is quietly in awe of the new Tokyo architecture which his company is constructing, Hino observes the shift in perspectives between the generations, ‘For Shozo and his contemporaries, buildings of steel and concrete were a goal in life, but for the next generation, they were no more than a starting point’. Often Shozo will get off the bus before reaching his destination to go back to examine a building more closely. Finding himself in one spot he reflects on the effects of the Tokyo bombing during the war, being slightly too young to remember it at first hand, he imagines the modern buildings engulfed in flames, Tokyo Tower collapsing in the immense heat. As Shozo traverses around districts of Tokyo; the Ginza, Tsukiji, and Tsukishima he encounters a manga convention,where the young participants are dressed up as their favourite characters, seeing them he reflects; Had Tokyo's neighbourhoods become such dreadful places that it was only here,on this artifical island,that these children could act out their fantasies? It was after all, he and his contemporaries who had produced that same metropolis. Another area Shozo is drawn to is the reclaimed land around Tokyo bay, walking there one day he is nearly knocked down by a motorcyclist dressed in black who when taking off her helmet Shozo discovers is a woman, incredulously to Shozo she offers him a lift. Walking again around the city another place that becomes an object of his curiosity is a shop window full of mannequins; the assistant arranging them has a familiarity. Shozo finds that his Sunday walks out on the reclaimed land offer him an opportunity to tap into his subconscious thoughts and desires, he feels detached from the past, his thinking is interrupted this time by a biker gang racing around, one falls off but the rest speed off leaving the fallen rider, approaching the body lying motionless Shozo recognises that it’s the woman who nearly ran him over, he hovers over her prostrate body caught in a moment of indecision, but hails a cab and takes her to a hospital. The next day he revisits the hospital to discover she’s signed herself out; he pays her bill and discovers her name, Yoko, and also her address.

Finding himself at the address, surprisingly the woman from the shop with the mannequins answers, is she Yoko’s sister? , as there’s a resemblance. Wandering out on the reclaimed land he’s not surprised when he encounters Yoko again, although this time she has a boy on the back of her bike, ‘Are you ready to go?’ she asks, they lead him to an island on the other side of the reclaimed land away from Tokyo Bay, walking through the overgrown bushes and trees Yoko cuts her head badly. Although not at first talkative, once on the island the boy demonstrates an almost extra sensory oneness with the nature of the island. This part of the novel’s setting is in complete contrast to the steel and concrete of the architecture at the beginning of the novel, amongst the overgrown trees and vegetation of the island Shozo makes out old houses and harbour buildings that probably date back to the time of Commodore Perry, which highlights one of the central themes of the novel, the transience of civilisations and the battle of man vs. nature, the novel also carries an allegorical environmental message which is conveyed in the fate of the birds of the island. The attention shifts focus of the main character at the closing of the novel, which reveals a few enigma's within the text. Hino’s writing is noted for being similar to J.G Ballard, reading this novel also brought to mind William Golding.

Isle of Dreams is published by Dalkey Archive Press, and translated by Charles de Wolf who has previously translated short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke collected in Mandarins. Keizo Hino won many literary prizes including the Tanizaki Prize and the Akutagawa Prize.

2/Duo

2011-02-09T10:16:00.000Z

2/Duo begins with a morning scene with Kei describing a dream he had the previous night to his partner,Yu, before she leaves for work he asks for money from her ,'for lunch', he tells her.The film lingers with shots of him reclining on their bed,gazing at the ceiling.Later at his acting job, the director informs him that his scene has been pulled from the film,Kei goes home puts the washing machine on and slumps down in front of it.When Yu arrives home from work she notices the change in his attitude,he seems on edge,although on the surface things bounce along in a slightly animated joviality,with her jokingly applying make-up to him,until he erupts exclaiming 'That's enough!'.They meet later at a restaurant where,out of the blue he suggests that they get married,curious at Kei's sudden proposal she asks why,but all he can reply with is that he wants to.2/Duo,(1997), Suwa Nobuhiro's debut as a director, has a documentary element to the film with both Yu and Kei being interviewed about their relationship as the film progresses,firstly Yu is asked about Kei's motives for the marriage,she's unsure but shares her observation that he seems sad, but doesn't know why.One day after work when she returns to their small apartment she finds him asleep again by the washing machine,the scene begins well with Yu talking and reminiscing about a visit to the beach,but as Kei begins to unpeg the washing the violence in which he throws the laundry at Yu intensifies,until she's forced to scream at him 'What's wrong?', 'I don't know' he screams back, and he storms out of the building, Yu is Kei's emotional punchbag, taking out all his frustrations on her, but he is unable to tell her his reasons.

Kei's fascination with acting is seen again when he is interviewed by an off screen interviewer,and what comes across greatly in the film is his inability to differentiate between acting and reality,as seen in a scene where he imagines his married life with Yu and the dialogues that they will share with each other,throughout the film Kei seems completely oblivious to the emotional turmoil and confusion he's inflicting on Yu,he constantly asks her for money,but at the same time this is blended with his frustrations at being an out of work actor and not being able to fulfill his vocation, taking out his anger on Yu.With each scene the pressure mounts on the couple, mainly it's Yu who bears the brunt of Kei's uncommunicated frustration at his inability to settle into a normal existence, and accept the fact that he's not going to make it as an actor,a climatic scene being where Yu has invited friends around for lunch,whilst she prepares the meal Kei continually criticizes her,the guests when they arrive feel the awkwardness between the two and after a while Kei apologies and asks them to leave,Yu almost hysterical announces to the guests that their getting married,which adds more confusion to the already fraught situation, but the scene conveys the hidden turmoil that Yu has been trying to keep under control.2/Duo realistically conveys a couple's disintegration and the frustration of Kei at failing to accept to settle down in a normal job and acknowledge that he failed it as an actor.Suwa's second film M/Other won the 1999 Fipresci award at the Cannes film Awards,his third film, H Story was a remake of Alain Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour,which starred novelist/poet/Inu vocalist Ko Machida.

Imagination without Borders

2011-02-03T20:29:00.000Z

Imagination without Borders published by The Center for Japanese Studies of the University of Michigan, examines the life and art of feminist artist Tomiyama Taeko, and is edited by Laura Hein and Rebecca Jennison. To get an in depth overview of this book there's an incredibly informative website that accompanies the book.

http://imaginationwithoutborders.northwestern.edu/

A Riot of Goldfish

2011-01-26T12:03:00.001Z

First published in Japan in 1937, A Riot of Goldfish/Kingyo ryoran by Kanoko Okamoto has recently been published by the Hesperus Press,translated and with an introduction by J.Keith Vincent, this collection of two novella size stories comes with a foreword from David Mitchell, (Cloud Atlas, number9dream and most recently The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet). A Riot of Goldfish spans the end of the Taisho and early Showa eras and has as it's central character Mataichi, a student of fish breeding. The story starts with his sense of failure as he examines the results of his latest breed, disappointed, his attention turns again to the Chapel at the top of the cliff,where he can make out Masako sitting, knitting. Masako is the daughter of one of his father's best customers, the wealthy Teizo Araki, Mataichi's story is told in a retrospective style that sometimes skips between tenses. As a child Mataichi used to tease and taunt Masako, but as the two begin to grow up Mataichi can't help himself marvelling at Masako's growing beauty, to the degree that 'he could barely surpress his hostility'. Teizo frequently visits Mataichi's father's fishery, and eventually becomes a patron to Mataichi, paying for him to study in the Kansai area, Mataichi learns that Teizo has also paid for three other men to study ,which adds a slight confusion to Mataichi's thoughts. Before he leaves Masako invites him out for tea and as they walk down the street Mataichi is almost overcome by Masako's beauty, but he begins to put his feelings in check, and the conversation turns to the arts of goldfish breeding, Mataichi is left not knowing if she has any feelings for him or not. Whilst away studying Mataichi becomes a recluse but manages to become the object of attraction for a local girl, Yoshie,he writes to Masako about Yoshie in an attempt to coax out a hint of her true feelings for him, but the letters she writes back are scarce and filled with an indifference which rouses his curiosity and confusions even further, until he learns that she is pregnant and plans to marry. As Mataichi comes to the conclusion that Masako is now unattainable he sets out to reproduce the beauty he saw in her by creating the most beautiful breed of goldfish in emulation. It's incredible to learn through Vincent's introduction that Okamoto wrote fiction for only three years before dying from a stroke at the age of 49. Kawabata moved by one of her stories about the Tokaido Highway took a copy with him on a trip and retraced the route of it's protaganist.

The second story, The Food Demon/Shokuma was published in Japan in 1941, Besshiro is a cooking instructor to the daughters of the wealthy Araki family, Besshiro's arrogant streak is despised by the daughters but as Besshiro's story is revealed we learn that his arrogance is a symptom of thwarted aspirations. The story is told again in a retrospective style which retraces how Besshiro arrives at the point where the story opens. The Food Demon is a fantastically evocative character study, Besshiro's exasperation's are summed up when he arrives home from work with, 'his face frozen into an expression on the verge either exploding with anger or bursting into tears'. He lives with his wife and son in a house owned by his employer, Besshiro and his wife constantly worry of ruining the tatami, one the proviso's that his tenancy relies upon. The story follows Besshiro back to his beginnings to when he meets up with Higaki who runs a restaurant, and describes Besshiro's frustrations at trying to impress the artistic and intelligentsia clientele of the place, failing to prove himself with his paintings Besshiro tries to impress a visiting intellectual with his cooking skills, the woman recognises that aside from being completely delicious that the meal was created with love, and this is a theme to both of the stories the characters pursuing the purity of beauty, Besshiro trying to escape from his poverty stricken life becomes instead the victim of his own aspirations?, but after watching Higaki die from cancer his life takes another route, The Food Demon is filled with a bitter wisdom, and touched with a deep humility.

Hesperus Press

From Trinity to Trinity

2011-01-21T21:55:00.000Z

In her introduction translator, Eiko Otake,mentions the small number of writings of Hayashi's that have seen translation into English, the appearance of From Trinity to Trinity from independent publisher Station Hill Press is a much valued addition. From Trinity to Trinity charts Hayashi's pilgrimage to the Trinity site in New Mexico, the test site of the first atomic bomb on July 16th 1945, which she made at the end of the last millennium. Eiko Otake also gives a description of how her translation came into fruition and her correspondence with Hayashi, recounting her meetings with the author, and gives a biography of Hayashi and an overview of her major works. Hayashi was born in Nagasaki but raised in Japanese occupied Shanghai, her family was the only Japanese family on her block but was treated as an equal, the sense of viewing things as an outsider would inform her writing as a chronicler, she describes herself as being an 'un-Japanese Japanese'. The family returned to Nagasaki when Kyoko was 14, and she worked in a munitions factory, as the family settled on the edge of the city, Kyoko was the only member of her family exposed to the bomb, being a hibakusha she found not only alienated her from society at large but also within her own family. After the war she suffered from radioactive sickness but fled Nagasaki and married a man twenty years her senior, they had a son, a courageous act as cases of second generation radioactive sickness and abnormal births were becoming known. Hayashi began writing chronicling the lives of hibakusha, The Site of Rituals,also known as The Ritual of Death/Matsuri no ba won the Akutagawa Prize in 1975, in 2005 The Complete works of Hayashi Kyoko/Hayashi Kyoko zenshu were published in eight volumes.

Hayashi first travelled to America in 1985 when her son moved there to work, although wanting to visit the Trinity Site for many years it wasn't until 1999 that she could make her pilgrimage, Hayashi refers to the site as the 'hibakusha's birthplace', the site is only open to the public twice a year. Enroute to Los Alamos, Hayashi and her friend stop at the National Atomic Museum where Hayashi not only examines the exhibits but is also conscious of the other visitors to the museum, Hayashi examines her feelings as she takes in the museum, noticing that her feelings of being a hibakusha welled up in her only after a man sitting near to her gets up and leaves. At one end of the museum hangs a portrait of Oppenheimer, who Hayashi reminds us was once celebrated as a national hero, but who also fell from grace. On the wall also hangs the route map that Boxcar took, taking off from Tinian to Nagasaki, then returning to Okinawa. As Hayashi and her friend drive closer to the base Hayashi reflects on the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe who made the Rockies her home, observing the barrenness of the landscape on the road to Los Alamos, Hayashi notes, 'These stones that fell off the cliffs are the dead of the Mesas', nature and observations of the movements of time are a central aspect to Hayashi writings, informing us of the lives of the hibakusha, many episodes experienced in the book which are set in the present tense provoke memories from the past. As they and the other visitors sign into the site and wander in the still radioactive wilderness Hayashi comes face to face with the memorial set in the wilderness, From Trinity to Trinity ends with poetry from Ito Yasuko.

Station Hill Press

144th Akutagawa Prize winner announced

2011-01-18T16:50:00.000Z

The Daily Manichi reports today the announcement of the awarding of the 144th Akutagawa Prize,the prize was shared between Mariko Asabuki for her novel Kikotowa and also Kenta Nishimura for his novel Kueki Ressha.The 144th Naoki Prize winner was also shared between two authors, Nobori Kiuchi for her novel Hyosa no uta and also Shusuke Michio for Tsuki to Kani.

Kikotawa centers around two women Kiko and Towako who reunite after 25, Nishimura's novel,Kueki Ressha, follows a young man employed as a manual worker who hardly makes his monthly rent payments,filled with rage the man develops self destructive feelings.

Nobori Kiuchi's novel Hyosa no uta,has a historical setting,set just before the Meiji restoration,following the exploits of a samurai who has fallen on hard times,and works trying to lure customers into a red light district in Tokyo.Shusuke Michio's novel,Tsuki to Kani,follows a young fifth grader as reality begins to kick into his imaginary world.

For the original Daily Manichi article.

The Moon over the Mountain

2011-01-05T23:06:00.002Z

Nakajima Atsushi was born in Tokyo in 1909, his father came from a family of scholars specializing in the classics of ancient China, this was to influence not only his reading but would inform the majority of his writing. Newly published by Autumn Hill Books,a non profit independent publisher and translated by Paul McCarthy and Nobuko Ochner (who also include an informative afterword on Nakajima), the stories selected in The Moon over the Mountain are mainly set in ancient China, the stories were originally published in Japan in the years 1942-43. After leaving Tokyo University Nakajima took up a teaching post whilst at the same time beginning to write short stories and starting a manuscript of his novel, Hikari to kaze to yume/Light,Wind and Dreams - a novella of the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, which was published in Japan 1942,the same year as Nakajima's premature death at the age of 33, Nakajima, who suffered from asthma died from pneumonia. Nakajima seems to be strikingly at odds from other writers of his time for not writing about the war.

The Moon Over the Mountain is the first collection of stories by Nakajima to appear in English, the first story Sangetsuki,which has also been known by the name The Tiger Poet is one of Nakajima's most well known stories, was studied in Japanese schools. A tale of a frustrated poet, Li Zheng, who gives up his post as a local official to devote himself to poetry, failing in his attempt to fulfill his life's desire of becoming a great poet he falls into madness and one night runs off into the wilderness after hearing his name being called. This violent emotional change within himself also appears to provoke a physical transformation. The narrative jumps forward slightly and takes up with Yuan Can an old acquaintance of Li Zheng who is travelling into an area known for being a domain for a wild tiger. After sometime Yuan Can's party hear the roar of a great tiger coming from the bush, but as they draw near Yuan Can can hear the sound of human sobs, Li Zheng begins to tell of his misfortune and Yuan Can begins to realize that it's his old friend Li Zheng who laments of his transformation. Transformation seems to thread in and out these stories, in the first it is seen as a manifestation of suffering and later in the story On Admiration: Notes by the Monk Wu Jing it appears as a well sought after craft. Nakajima's finely crafted stories blend existential inquiry with that of ancient Chinese story telling, where the human and animal world often mix, in the story The Master a young archer who wants to master his skills turns out to be a danger to his tutor who refers him to a mountain hermit for further training, he's forced to learn how to 'shoot without shooting' in a story that turns the notion of learning on it's head. Many of the stories are set in the ancient Chinese state of Qi and tell of courtly intrigue and can be read as resembling morality tales, where those who appear to be the victims of wrong doing often find their end after being the perpetrators of wrong doing, the stories are far from predictable. As in the story Forebodings which begins with warriors comparing undergarments and ends with the states of Chu and Chen at war, at the centre of this narrative is the beguiling beauty of Xiaja whose beauty subtly commands a destructive power. Nakajima's stories often drop subtle clues and pointers which will often end up being the decisive thread within a story, as can be seen in Waxing and Waning which again concerns an exiled Duke and familial power games, the reader cannot afford to miss a line in Nakajima's finely written narratives.

These translations offer up to the English reader a great opportunity to explore a unique voice amongst Japanese literature, to read an excerpt from this collection follow the links through at the publishers website.

The Moon over the Mountain - Autumn Hill Books

The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories

2010-12-20T20:41:00.000Z

Published in 1997 by Barricade Books this collection edited by John L.Apostolou and Martin H.Greenberg,brings together some intriguing short stories from authors not wholly associated with science-fiction, Morio Kita's story from 1973, The Empty Field includes a description of a crowd coming together in anticipation to watch a flying saucer make contact with earth, much of the story though concerns 'Youngman' as he navigates his way through an expansive void like place, The Empty Field of the title alludes to an undefined barren environment, and essentially the relationship between the man's kokoro and this desolate place, but there's a great sense of spiritual befreftness,Youngman is customised to the non-eventful life.A story rooted as much in the internal psyche as much as the extra terrestial. The most well known name here is Kobo Abe, his story is The Flood, translated by Lane Dunlop, I've read that this story was originally written by Abe in 1950, it's a surreal story which starts with a bored astronomer diverting his telescope from the heavens towards the earth and spots a worker making his way home from the factory, the astronomer is stunned to see the worker turn to liquid before his eyes and stranger still when the mercurial like liquid carries on making it's way over walls. Soon workers all over the world begin to liquefy,but things only begin to appear to get serious when the rich people begin to be affected, Abe works in an appearance from Noah into the ending of this short story in what called be seen as an early forerunner to his later novel The Ark Sakura. The brevity of some of these stories add to their effect as in Takashi Ishikawa's The Road to the Sea, a story only a few pages long which reads as if it were set in a rural village until the reader comes to the final sentence to understand it's other worldly setting. Shinichi Hoshi has two stories selected, one concerning a robot girl created by the owner of a bar to attract customers, but his plan goes tragically wrong when one of his customers falls in love with her, the second story, He-y,Come on Ou-t! (1978) is one of my favourites in the collection,after a typhoon villagers notice that where the local shrine once stood now exists what appears to be a bottomless hole, one of them shouts down into the hole Hey,Come on Out! and then another villager throws down a pebble to see if he hears it land.Officials arrive to try to gauge how deep the hole is but without success, and leave with the advice 'Fill it!'. People begin to fill the hole and eventually it's arranged to deposit radioactive waste from power plants into the hole, then animals infected with unknown diseases, then boxes of classified documents,instead of dumping things at sea, the hole is used to get rid of any unwanted things that the inhabitants of the city want to get rid of, including criminals dumping incriminating evidence into it. The last paragraph starts with a seemingly unrelated scene of a builder on a building site thinking he hears someone above him shouting out 'Hey,Come on Out!', little after he sees a pebble falling past him.., Shinichi Hoshi is an author I hope to read more of in the near future. Cardboard Box is a metaphorical short story by Ryo Hanmura, narrated by a cardboard box, following it's literal search for life fulfillment, to dispel it's empty existence.

The longest story is by Tetsu Yano who actually translated some of the collection's stories into English, The Legend of the Paper Spaceship is narrated by an unnamed serviceman recalling a village he was posted to during the war, quite a remote place he describes his memories of a naked woman who folded paper planes or spaceships and flew them at a place called Endworld Mere, a place that features a mythical lake were the elderly go to die. No one in the village could recollect the reason for the woman's nakedness,some think that she was traumatised during a family dispute, there are rumours that when she was a child a foreigner was trapped and killed in her house. Roaming naked she became the object of lust for the men of the village, the narrator observes the irony that someone regarded as the village idiot was in fact the person who held the most power over the men of the village.After time the woman (Osen) falls pregnant, the women of the village thinking that Osen wouldn't be able to look after the child plead with her to abort it, but Osen in her broken language refuses. The narrator notes hearing the songs that Osen sings as she plays with her paper planes/ spaceships, later in the story the narrator begins to come around to reasoning that maybe he had misheard what she had been singing, confusing the words, and what she was actually singing about was of some sort of craft that had landed, and that she wanted to go home. Osen gives birth to a son and names him Emon, during the story there are references to the myths surrounding the small community, and as Emon grows up we learn that he has psychic abilities, he tries to read his mothers thoughts but she remains a mystery to him, he comes to loathe the men that visit his mother, and begins to wonder about the identity of his father. The narrative is fantastically well balanced, leaving hints to the reader as to the possibility of involvement of the extra-terrestial, Emon one day suspects that his mother's insanity was just an act covering up a wholly different secret, and the narrator observes that during his time in the village he never met anyone else from the outside world,and that on occasions when he had tried to return to the village something has always seemed to intervene, stopping him from revisiting,his suspicions of a cover up are hinted at. Although this collection is I think out of print, it's well worth tracking out a copy.

Children in the Wind

2010-12-05T21:59:00.001Z

Hiroshi Shimizu is a film director I've regretfully yet to fully explore, I'd very much like to see his 1937 adaption of this novel which originally appeared in Japan a year before in 1936, written by Tsubota Joji (1890-1982), Kaze no naka kodomo was first serialized in the Asahi Shimbun. The edition I read was published by Kegan Paul International Publishers back in 1991, the novella was chosen for the UNESCO Collection of Representive Works, the translation was by Robert Epp, a translator whose translations I'd like to read alot more of, especially his Egg in my Palm - The Poetry of Tsuboi Shigeji, Robert Epp also includes an afterword putting the novella into historical context, reminding us that the year it first appeared the Olympics were being held in Berlin, the two brothers of the novel whilst playing mention the names of Japan's medal winners of those games, (Tetsuo Hamuro, Naoto Tajima and Hideko Machata), also Robert Epp highlights the domestic scene familiar to that of the era. The novella is made of about forty chapters each slowly revealing the boys observations of the activities of the adult world going on around them, whose motives still seem to be just out of reach to the boys. Zenta the elder brother steps in to stop a quarrel his younger brother, Sampei is having with another local boy Kintaro who are arguing about the brothers father, Mr Aoyama. News that the stockholders at the factory where their father works are investigating a suspected fraud involving Mr Aoyama is circulating throughout the neighbour hood, later Zenta climbs the Persimmon tree in their garden, Sampei shouts up to his brother asking what he sees, the ocean?, whales?, Mt Fuji?. A man arrives asking their mother to fetch Mr Aoyama the boys see the man show her his card, she turns pale and their father is taken off to the Police station, the two boys watch as their father walks away from the house with the man.

Later whilst waiting for their mother to return from town the boys have two more men come to visit, a man from the factory where their father worked along with an official from court intending to seize the family's property as collateral, the boys remain silent in the house, after a while thinking that no one is at home the men leave. The following day it's decided that Sampei will have to stay with Uncle Ukai, Zenta will stay at home. Sampei's antics soon prove too stressful for his Uncle and Aunty to bear, after overhearing that his father maybe imprisoned for up to a year or two, Sampei exhibits mischievous behaviour and after disappearing for a while near a pond which reputedly is populated by kappas is duly returned to his mother. The vividness in which the emotional world of the family is put under duress whilst their father is under investigation is displayed in a number of brief moving segments,when Sampei has to leave with his Uncle and his mother catches a glimpse of his toes she bursts into tears, and a scene when Zenta is on his own in the house and plays a game of hide and seek with himself,imagining he is playing with Sampei captures a moment of moving innocence. Sampei's defiant stubborn attitude permeates throughout this novella, which also ends the book with a defiant little epithet.

Robert Epp gives a brief biography of Tsubota Joji, born in Okayama Prefecture his family ran a small business making wicks for lamps, Epp mentions that many of Tsubota's other stories centre around factory life. In 1984 Okayama City set up a Literary Prize in his honour.

Goth

2010-11-28T02:40:00.000Z

After a recent reading of Otsuichi's Summer,Fireworks and My Corpse, excellent synopsis here, watching Goth seemed almost a mandatory thing to do. I've not read the novel so can't compare between the two, although I've read that there are differences between the manga adaption by Kendi Oiwa and the novel so I wouldn't be surprised if there were differences also with the film adaption. Directed by Gen Takahashi and released in 2008, Goth has similarities with Summer, Fireworks and My Corpse, Otsuichi's young characters appear stuck in the confines of the urban, the film opens with a park scene that appears normal enough until a woman notices a woman sitting on the steps of a fountain, she has her arm severed, alerting a passing policeman they discover the woman is dead, a crowd gathers,amongst them a high school girl watches the events. At school the following day the class are told to be on their guard for strangers, especially the girls as the recent murder is similar to a previous murder. The camera follows Itsuki as the class finishes up and he walks to the library, the atmosphere of the film begins to change as he walks, in the library he meets the girl who we saw at the beginning of the film observing the scene at the park, they exchange books, he hands her a volume of H.P Lovecraft, 'Give me your thoughts on it?' he asks. The two meet again at her favourite cafe/bar and Itsuki notices that her appearance is similar to that of the two victims, they decide to begin to investigate the murders, and come to the conclusion that the murderer is displaying his victims like art,and takes their hands as a memento, afterwards he follows her home and we learn from her mailbox that her name is Morino. They visit the scenes where the victims were found and Itsuki asks Morino to lie down in a river where one of the victims was discovered, he visualizes a cut in her wrist opening up, whilst joking around with his friends we learn that Morino had attempted suicide.

The murderer strikes again, the victim is discovered by Itsuki's younger sister, and at the cafe/bar Morino tells the story of the accidental death of her sister whilst the two were playing a game, Morino describes the events of her sister's death against the melancholy reverberations of a distant piano. Morino finds a notebook on the floor of the cafe which is the diary of the killer, Itsuki questions the authenticity of the book, but it contains a map which they follow to the mountain where they find the fourth victim, finding the victim before the police proves the books authenticity, but they decide on not handing the book to the police,'If there's a fifth victim it's our fault.' The notebook leads Itsuki to an abandoned school, meanwhile Morino disappears, Itsuki's sweat falls onto the Kanji of the notebook giving him a clue to the identity of the murderer, the film stars Rin Takanashi and Kanata Hongo.

Madame de Sade

2010-11-11T21:07:00.000Z

In his afterword Mishima explains that after reading The Life of the Marquis de Sade by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa the riddle of why the Marquis's wife Renee stayed devoted to him right up until he was released from prison would be at the heart of his play, only after her husband's release did she decide to leave him. This edition is the first in a series of International Plays published by Peter Owen from 1968, translated by Donald Keene, the play (Sado koshaku fujin),was first performed in Japan at the Kinokuniya Hall in Tokyo in November 1965 and directed by Takeo Matsuura, the book also contains photographs from the performance taken by Koichi Yamada. Mishima also states that he wanted to see de Sade from the view point of the women around him. It's a play in three parts, the first opens in 1772 with Madame de Montreuil discussing with Baroness de Simiane and Comtesse de Saint-Fond about the recent crimes and scandals involving de Sade, talking about a recent episode after which de Sade is a wanted man, Saint-Fond talks of de Sade's 'miracles' of evil -

'The miracles of the Marquis de Sade occur only after certainties have been piled on certainties, and all that human beings may learn through the senses has been exhausted. His miracles have nothing in common with the miracles lazy people merely wait for. That day in Marseilles he drove himself to greater and greater efforts. He, Mariette and the man servant joined in a fellowship of pain like galley slaves rowing their banks of oars in a trireme across the sea. The sunrise glowed like blood for i neglected to say it was morning.'.

Saint-Fond goes on to suggest that immorality is a privilege of the aristocracy, Simiane and Saint-Fond vow to help Madame de Montreuil to clear her son in-law's scandal and seek a pardon for his crimes, de Sade has since disappeared, gone on the run. Renee, (the Marquis's wife), arrives and after the two ladies leave Madame de Montreuil pleads with Renee to leave her husband, but Renee replies that 'God does not permit divorce', thus beginning the argument that runs throughout the play between the mother and daughter, Renee reasons that her mother doesn't understand Alphonse's true nature,'If my husband is a monster of immorality, I must become a monster of devotion', she reasons. It could be said that like Mishima's earlier play Primary Colours/Sangenshoku from 1955, there are similar dialogues that are testing the social morality of the day, although in this play he's examining these themes by examining an episode from the past, in his afterword Mishima reminds us that this is not strictly a historical play,de Sade's nihilistic philosophy acts as the catalyst in which the dialogues between the women revolves around. Montreuil thinks that Alphonse (de Sade) is deceiving her daughter, 'No woman has ever been deceived by a man,' replies Renee.

Renee's sister Anne arrives and divulges that she has been in Italy with Alphonse after he had forced himself on her,and reveals that he is hiding out in a farmhouse in Sardinia. As the play progresses it jumps forward in years, the third part, set in 1790, sees de Sade incarcerated and two of the main characters revealing that they have been involved in de Sade's strange masses. With the ruminations of the beginning of the revolution, Madame de Montreuil observes that maybe Sade's crimes are minuscule in comparison to what they have begun to hear about what is happening. Mishima's exploration of what might have made Renee decide to leave her husband ends the play, with de Sade himself appearing at the end of the play.

Where Europe Begins

2010-11-09T18:26:00.001Z

Bringing together pieces written in both German and Japanese, Where Europe Begins has two translators, Susan Bernofsky (translating from the German), and Yumi Selden (translating from the Japanese), the book has three parts, The Bath and The Guest being the two longest and the middle part, Where Europe Begins is composed of smaller pieces. The pieces are linked not in plot, although all the narrators are given from the perspective of someone living in a country and language not of their own, (usually here the country is Germany), or as in Where Europe Begins the narrator is travelling via the Trans-Siberian train into Europe. Tawada's writing through keeping an eye on minuscule observations, (amoebas floating on the lens of the eye), questions perceptions of identity, it's tempting to also include perceptions of nationality, but the perspectives are usually from a point of view slightly indifferent to national stereotypes, the narratives are focused on language, and by turn interpretation and meaning. Another aspect depicted in the book is that of the inital incomprehension when faced with a new language, the narrators stare at the letters and characters of the alpahabet before the decoding procedure begins, Tawada's characters seem to be caught not only between nations but also languages,in a sense they sometimes appear to exsist in a languageless state, caught in transition, a linguistic limbo. In The Guest another theme that lies low in the texts of the previous pieces comes more to the fore, that of the motives of authorship, something hinted to also is the motives of the reader. Here the story seems to be set on campus,or within a student community, the protagonist is a writer who hears a voice, which is interpreted as the voice of the novel the writer is writing, which at first is heard through a series of cassettes played on a tape recorder. The narrator places an classified advert in which she's searching for a book, in the advert she poses as an old woman That this old woman was willing to pay one hundred marks for a book that had value neither for a passionate lover of literature nor a book collector might have seemed unusual. Comparing her advert with others she surmises book 'The novel didn't interest me. I wanted to own the book in order to lock the voice from the tape behind the bars of the printed letters'. She gets a reply from a man called Simon who has a copy of the book although he's not willing to sell it to her, but he's willing to stay with her as long as it takes her to read it. The prose constantly toys with the readers expectations and will sometimes revise or back pedal with what has gone before. It's difficult to conclude the story without thinking as to the identity of the guest in the story, is it Simon?, the voice?, the narrator?, the novel?, or the narrator's enigmatic neighbour Z?.

At the start of The Bath the narrator observes how much of the human body is made up of water, hence the constantly changing appearance of her face, in the mornings she checks her reflection in a mirror against a photograph of herself hanging next to it, then applies her make up ensuring her appearance is the same, treating the application of her make up to the same degree as of a painter painting a picture. This acute warping of a daily activity soon develops into more surrealness in this story, involving an episode where the narrator is a translator at a dinner party, her tongue is bitten off by the sole she eats, she passes out and comes around in a house of a woman who promises that if she returns she'll return her tongue. Tawada's prose is a fascinating journey into language and identity which poses many questions about the author/reader relationship.

The Dark Room

2010-10-27T09:37:00.000+01:00

Anshitsu/The Dark Room by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke was awarded the Tanizaki Prize in 1970, translated by John Bester and appeared in Kodansha's Modern Writers series.The novel is narrated by Shuichi Nakata a writer in his early forties, whilst meeting up with Toru Tsunoki, the two had worked on the same literary journal, we learn that his wife Keiko had died twenty years previously, Nakata suspects that Tsunoki had an affair with his wife, the pair go out drinking and Tsunoki offers Nakata to write a diary for a magazine column, it can even be fictional Tsunoki informs him. Nakata learns that it's to be about his relationship with two women that he meets that night, Tae and Maki. As the novel progresses the reader could be tempted into thinking that the novel is going to be revealed as being the diary itself, but the magazine article soon slips into the background as Maki and Nakata meet up again. Maki confides with Nakata that he is different to other men she has encountered in as much as Nakata doesn't make her sick with repulsion.Nakata's attempt at forcing himself on Maki comes to nothing when she begins to question him,'Let's call it a day' she says, simply concluding his attempt. Nakata is a character with few redeeming characteristics, his use of prostitues,and there is much evidence in the novel of abusive relationships, Nakata also sees two other women Takako and Natsue who either have first hand experience of violent husbands/partners, or know other women in the same the situation, but Yoshiyuki's inclusion of this could be read as him highlighting the issue, although Nakata sees his relationship with these women in nearly purely physical terms. Nakata's narrative has an undertone of despair, and to a degree an emotional isolation, at first he doesn't get emotionally involved with the women, but the distance he keeps slowly gets eroded as the novel progresses.

There are a couple of instances in the first half of the novel where the story wanders, Nakata reflects back to his college days, when he was sent to recuperate from an illness in the country,Yoshiyuki himself had a lung removed due to pulmonary tuberculosis, Nakata stays on farm where one of the sons (Torao) goes on to be a genius within his area of study, but Nakata one day discovers that Torao had a brother and sister who were born with mental deficiencies, their existence is covered up by the family who hide the two in the attic of the farm buildings. Another slight diversion in the text comes earlier on when Nakata reads an article about prostitution after the war,in it prostitutes are interviewed about their experiences,during the interview they all mention a female customer they had,a woman that stuck in their memories, 'She was lucky,having something to live for.You know, somehow were not really living at the moment. What do you mean,'not really living'?. she's asked, I mean living just because there's nothing better to do'. It could have been added as a thematical link, as Nakata begins to realize that Maki is a lesbian, her relationship with Nakata she sees as not being the real thing. The women in Nakata's life begin to drift away from him, Maki falls pregnant with his child but decides to move to America to raise the child, eventually Natsue is the only woman in his life. They meet up and Nakata learns that Natsue was nearly beaten to death by her previous husband, their relationship gets darker. It's great to learn that Kurodahan Press are planning to publish soon Yoshiyuki's Noma Prize winning story in Toward Dusk and Other Stories.

Funuke Show Some Love,You Losers!

2010-10-13T20:35:00.000+01:00

Funuke Show Some Love,You Losers!, opens with a car accident, whilst Shinji and Kiyomi mourn the loss of their parents, Sumika (Shinji's sister in law) arrives from Tokyo,in these new family circumstances her allowance is cut and she has to return to the family home, Sumika's bitterness that she's back where she started is expressed in the claustrophobic gasps as she cycles about the countryside, where there's no reception for her mobile. Looking at the dolls Shinji's wife Machiko creates, Is this witchcraft?, Sumika wonders suspiciously. Slowly events from the past are told in flashback,Kiyomi had drawn a manga of Sumika fighting with her parents after her father wouldn't pay for acting school in Tokyo, she threatens him with a knife but the skirmish ends with Shinji being cut in the face when he steps in to stop it, the incident is included in Kiyomi's manga,with the caption 'I'd kill to be an actress' underneath the image of a crazed Sumika wielding a knife dripping with blood. Kiyomi enters the manga into a newcomer's competition, it wins first prize and the whole village reads it. After the fight with her parents, Shinji and Sumika find themselves drawn to each other, and Sumika makes Shinji vow to be ever faithful to her alone, although he marries Machiko they never have a physical relationship. Desperate to get to Tokyo Sumika sells herself to raise the money. The film returns to the present timeline, Sumika begins a correspondence with a film director who has recently won an award, after a few letters he replies encouraging her to write more, a debt collector from Tokyo arrives to reclaim what Sumika owes, mirroring the past she has to sell herself again to pay off her debt, all the while Sumika tries to payback Kiyomi for the damage her manga had done. One night Kiyomi discovers Shinji and Sumika's relationship,hearing a noise at the door Shinji gets up to check and when he opens the door finds Kiyomi on the otherside but returns to Sumika saying nothing was there, inwardly Shinji is devastated that he's been discovered, which has tragic consequences. Things come to a head when Kiyomi begins drawing another manga about Sumika,and reveals that she's been working at the post office and has kept Sumika's recent letters to the film director.

Based on the novel of the same name by Yukiko Motoya, Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers/Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero is an acerbic dark comedy, ostentatiously depicting the fight between two competitive sisters, the drama overspills into human drama. Hiromi Nagasaku's performance as Shinji's excessively obliging wife was a great highlight.

Funuke Show Some Love,You Losers!

Third Window

The Old Woman, the Wife, and the Archer

2010-10-06T08:54:00.002+01:00

Published by The Viking Press, New York in 1961 The Old Woman, the Wife and the Archer collects three short stories translated and introduced by Donald Keene. The old woman is represented in the short story The Songs of Oak Mountain by Shichiro Fukasawa, first published in Japan in 1956, which is a rendering of the folklore tale of Ubasute, this story was also adapted to film by director Keisuke Kinoshita in the Ballard of Narayama (1958), and then again by Shohei Imamura in 1983. The story is set in a small village community, Orin lives a peasant life with her widowed son, Tatsuhei, and his two sons, as she is getting older her main concern before she has to make her pilgramge up the mountain is to see her son remarried. News comes from the next village that a match could be made with a woman of Tatsuhei's age, with this solution Orin prepares for her departure. Tatsuhei's sons make up songs from older folk rhymes to tease Orin, and other villagers use them as aphorisms 'Cleanse the heart and cleanse the senses, A companion's lot is harder than it seems. On my shoulders the weight is galling. Oh, the burden, it's appalling, Cleanse the heart and cleanse the senses' . Preparations for the summer Bon festival begin, Orin had planned to make her pilgrimage at the beginning of the new year but decides to slip out to visit the priest before so as not to cause trouble to her family. Tatsuhei wakes up too and accompanies Orin as she makes her way to visit the God of the mountain, as they climb higher up the mountain they begin to encounter the bones and corpses of those who had made the pilgrimage before, some still in the posture of prayer, the mountainside is covered with crows. Tatsuhei breaks the oath of not speaking on the mountain when he cries out to his mother, but Orin instructs him to leave her and go back down the mountain.

The Wife of the collection's title is represented with the story Ohan by Chiyo Uno, a story told in retrospect, the narrator is a man who's feelings are caught between a geisha whom he lives off, and that of his estranged wife, his affection for his wife is rekindled after seeing her again. He runs a flailing business from a shop, he sees the school children running back and forth outside of his shop, his wife was taken from him by her parents as they began to see that the marriage was a mismatch, but his wife has remained faithful to him despite their estrangement, in their brief time together they produced a son, who unwittingly visits his father's shop, dreaming that one day they will be able to sleep together again in a row on the same tatami spurns the man to make plans to rent a house for them to live in. The man's actions are observed by the twelve year old niece of the geisha he lives with, she knows that he is about to abandon them for his wife, but like him is unable to inform her aunt. Tragedy thwarts the man's dreams when his son falls victim during a storm.

Asters by Jun Ishikawa takes us back further in history, Muneyori, the governor of a province although born into a family of court poets and is a skilled poet himself argues with his father, who arranges a marriage and sends him to the edges of the province. Trained by his uncle in the art of archery and advised by Tonai (who wants to topple him from power to become governor), he suffers fools badly and with his arrows 'thirsty for blood' begins to extend their use from hunting foxes.Whilst hunting Muneyori notices a realm beyond the mountains,Tonai deters him from exploring this region, but one night he travels back across the mountain, where he meets Hetai a man who spends his life sculpting an image of the Buddha, who explains to Muneyori that the two regions shouldn't mix due to a difference in blood between the people, Muneyori vows to return this place thinking there should be nowhere in the province that he shouldn't go. On his return he encounters a beautiful young woman wandering in the forest, she returns to the castle with Muneyori. All the stories here offer an intriguing insight into Japanese folklore.

Vibrator

2010-09-24T08:58:00.000+01:00

Originally published in 1999 in Japan by Kodansha, the translation by Michael Emmerich was published by Faber & Faber (U.K) in 2005,and then by Soft Skull Press (U.S) in 2007. I read the Faber edition when it came out, and then recently after seeing the film directed by Ryuichi Hiroki I wanted to re-read this novella. The first time I read it I sped through it too quickly, and although being only 130 pages it didn't take too long this time around, but this time I took my time. Hearing a tangle of voices in her head, Rei browses through the products of a convenience store on a snowy Tokyo night, thinking over her job as a journalist, Rei seems to be caught between her feelings of being completely alienated with all that she sees around her with that of wanting to find some release from the loops of voices she hears in her head, the swirling of the voices are silenced when her thoughts turn to a man in the shop. Leaving the shop, she soon finds herself in the cabin of the man's truck, 'Being here is like being in this man's womb'.

The relationship between Rei and Okabe, (the truck driver) is full of perplexities, their relationship doesn't seem to advance from their first meeting, although they have sex, there's not much of the confessional between them during their conversations, Akasaka seems to evoke the emotional territory between the two without probing it in detail, much could be read in the unwritten. Okabe talks of a stalker he had attracted, he got a call from an ambulance when the woman had attempted suicide,she had given them his number, Rei being a journalist records what he says on a tape recorder, which she relistens to. Rei finds herself sometimes smiling incredulously at what she's doing, other times she scans the cabin for exit routes if need be, but her attraction to Okabe over rides her fears, as she enters the world of the long distance trucker, the constantly changing landscape which she watches almost like the images of a film, listening in on the static and random voices over the radio, which parallel with her earlier world of voices, she listens as the voices seem to be reduced to morse code.Memories from an experience with a school teacher seem to unbalance Rei further after finding a brief respite from her voices 'Suddenly I understood why the voices were silent - it was because they felt safe.The vibrations had broken them down into the elements out of which they were originally composed;they no longer existed in the form of language'. The film has a different ending to the book, the novel finishes with Rei finding a slight control, although the feeling that this brief episode in her life is transitory.

Forest of Eyes

2010-09-12T21:14:00.001+01:00

Forest of Eyes recently published by University of California Press won Jeffrey Angles the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, awarded from the Donald Keene Center, these poems have been selected from works that span from 1956 through to 2005, some from posthumous collections compiled by Tada's friend and fellow poet Takahashi Mutsuo after Tada's death in 2003, Jeffrey Angles has presented us with a fantastically translated selection, accompanied by an introduction on Tada's life and also detailed explanatory notes illuminating nuances in the translation process that may not be apparent in the finished English texts, and also adding a comprehensive bibliography of both original works of Tada's that appeared in Japan, and also details of previous English translations of her poetry.

Tada's poetry is full of transformations, where acute observations of events and things that appear in the everyday are reshaped, touched by her readings of Chinese and Greek classics they have a mythic quality to them that could be said to border somewhere between surrealism and magical realism. Settling into her married life in Kobe away from the literary scene of Tokyo, there's a slight sense of isolation and loneliness to some of the poems, in the title poem The Town of Mirrors, or Forest of Eyes, (1968), Tada gives us a portrait of a desolate existence tinged with surrealistic imagery, a life which seems to be entwined with the uncontrolled force of nature, This is my town, the town of my eyes, The people planted alongside the walls, Grow tender tendrils of age beneath the ground. Tada's poetry has something of the visionary, but stem from the experiences and places of the everyday, a visit from a mysterious cat is subtlety turned to questioned how we perceive the possible and by turns the impossible, and again in Horrors of the Kitchen, (1980), where the chef performs his ritualistic duties beneath a knife perceived as the dangling sword of Damocles. The selection includes short prose pieces to longer pieces, also including selections from Tada's tanka, appearing in both English and Japanese texts. A prose piece from Tada's collection, Along the Riverbank from 1998 called Chewing on a Eucalyptus Leaf again takes on surrealistic dimensions, where the narrative maps out an existence lived out amongst an Eucalyptus plant. From the same collection is the poem called Labyrinth, which at times brought slightly to mind the world of Kobo Abe perhaps with it's hint at a hospital setting.

Was I in a huge hospital?

As I dissociated the joints of language

I distorted meaning,left and left again

I clung to bandages unfurling through great white margins

Or to spools of string that someone had given me

There are many juxtapositions of myth and folklore to contemplate within this exceptional collection that will continue to enrich after many re-readings.

Manazuru

2010-09-02T01:11:00.003+01:00

Manazuru, Hiromi Kawakami's first novel to appear in English, is translated by Michael Emmerich whose previous translations include novels from Yoshimoto Banana, Kawabata Yasunari and Yamada Taichi to name but a few, and is published by Counterpoint Press. It opens by following the observations of a woman who has travelled from Tokyo to a remote cape, (Manazuru), she checks in at an inn by the coast run by a mother and son, the son she estimates could be in his forties. In her room her thoughts turn to Seiji back in Tokyo. Inquiring about booking her room she has the feeling that the son's voice reminds her of someone, although she can't pinpoint exactly who. She hadn't actually intentionally travelled to this place, but finishing dinner with someone, on impulse she got on a train and got off at Manazuru. As she starts to piece together the ambiguous fragments of her situation, her history begins to unfurl, she has a daughter, Momo, at High School age,her husband, Rei, went missing twelve years ago, she lives with her widowed mother, and sometime starting in the recent past she has been in a relationship with Seiji, although she's kept their relationship a secret from the rest of her family. As she sets off to walk to the cape, she gets the feeling that she's being followed, the present tense is punctured by recollections of her relationship with her husband, of watching silent movies together, his love of the sea, 'It's strange when his presence used to be so thick, when his sudden departure only made his presence thicker', she realizes of him. The prose reverses back to when Momo was a child and explores the relationship between mother daughter, she contemplated taking down the family name plate, Yanagimoto, after some years after her husband disappeared. Kawakami's prose through Emmerich's translation captures Kei's emotional fragility, her thoughts seem to follow lines caught within an undefined polarity,'When the path ahead is still unformed, we loose all sense of our location', her uncertainty is defined again with her stating, 'The fear in me resembled the inability to tell upstream from downstream, to perceive the direction the water was going'. As Kei examines the effects of her husband's disappearance Kawakami's concerns come to the fore, the substance of the present, desire, love, memory, motherhood, the effects of recollection, loss, and the study of human relations between both, mother and daughter, wife and man. Kawakami seems to dismantle her prose, reducing it to near poetry, near the beginning of the book in a desriptive passage we're offered as a complete sentence, 'Chrysanthemum leaves and Shiitake.', taken by themselves they summon up exacting imagery, this allows her characters to unglue themselves from their circumstances to explore a much wider terrain, and later sentences are further reduced to sometimes consisting of one word, lending the prose a blend of stream of consciousness/ stream of recollection effect, but allowing us to sometimes pause to reflect as Kei pieces together her path to coming to a conclusion of what possibly drove her husband to disappear.

Kei seems reluctant to let go of her husband, or even the memory of him, 'I've heard that when you start to dream of what you have lost, it means the hurt is healing', she appears to be happy to endure this pain rather than let him go. Although Seiji knows about Rei, Kei's feelings for her vanished husband at times threaten to overspill into her relationship with Seiji, he manages to contain his feelings despite her fragility, 'When we embrace, I feel as though I am only the outline of my body... Two outlines almost fusing but without dissolving', she observes when they are together. What Kei felt as a presence following her at the beginning of the novel, takes the form of woman who she suspects maybe connected to Rei's disappearance, she begins to talk with this woman, although it's unclear what this ghostly woman represents, possibly the woman is a symptom of her loss?, but the two women grow a fondness for each other. Despite her sometimes erudite nature the woman guides Kei back to Manazuru, where an accident occurs, a boat being used for the local festival is engulfed by the chaos caused by a typhoon, and after what could be a brief sighting of Rei, there's a pursuit and dilemma of sorts arises. On her return the narrative skips between her relationship with Seiji and recollections of Momo as a child and the difference in Momo as she shows signs of growing up. A letter arrives from Rei's father informing her that he's resigned to the fact that Rei is dead, but for Kei his lingering presence is harder to free herself from. The novel's a mixture of startling abrupt imagery and questioning meditation on the nature of remembrance of things past and passing, losing and loss.

Counterpoint Press