Realm of the Dead by Uchida Hyakken

Realm of the Dead is a book I've been meaning to reach for a while now, published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2006 and translated by Rachel DiNitto, who has also written an in-depth study of Hyakken in Uchida Hyakken - A Critique of Modernity and Militarism in Pre-war Japan, (Harvard East Asian Monographs - 30). Realm of the Dead is made up of two books by Hyakken, the same titled Realm of the Dead/Meido from 1922 and also Triumphant March Into Port Arthur/Ryojun Nyujoshiku from 1934. Between the two volumes there is a one page preface from Hyakken for the collection Triumphant March Into Port Arthur, in which he goes some way in explaining the ten year gap between the publication of the two books, the main cause being the great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, reading this short preface from Hyakken comes the realization that Realm of the Dead is a book that would have perhaps been improved upon with the addition of at least a few pages by means of a further introduction or afterword to give a fuller con-textualisation to his writing and it's period. As well as writing an alternative version of I Am A Cat, Hyakken is also famous for being the subject of Kurosawa Akira's film Madadayo, in 1911 he was a pupil of Natsume Soseki, and after graduating from Tokyo University taught German at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from 1916.

The two books consist mainly of short stories, 18 in Realm of the Dead and 29 in Triumphant March into Port Arthur, some of these in the later barely cover two pages, but reading Hyakken is to marvel at what he achieves in such a short space, his writing inhabits in lucid prose, realms of consciousness peeping out into vistas of the subconscious, or vice versa, at times surreal, reaching depths and heights that at times abruptly end as if their narrator is awakening from a dream or vision. Hyakken's compressed world is sometimes similar to that of Kafka, the inconsequential can be flipped over into being the consequential, plunging the narrator into philosophical explorations and interior ruminations which throw the narrator's world view into unexpected trajectories, the dilemma of a found wallet being one. Reading Realm of the Dead reminds me of the need to track out two other books, one being A Thousand One-Second Stories by Inagaki Taruho and the other is The Beautiful and the Grotesque by Akutagawa, in places it's interesting to remind yourself that Hyakken was for a time a contemporary of Akutagawa, perhaps he can be identified here appearing as Noguchi in the longer story The Bowler Hat, the narrator and Noguchi almost vie with each other as to who is the more affecting of the two writers, Noguchi departs the story eventually overdosing. Hyakken's stories do dip into some strange territories, one narrator finds himself being interrogated by melting police detectives, and although brief his stories impress with their unrelenting nature, in others the reader may pause and begin to question as to the motives behind Hyakken, or his narrator's reasoning in relating their narratives. In Whitecaps the narrator relates the story of how he and his Uncle find themselves rowing out to sea with the task of disposing of their pet dog that is guilty of biting a neighbour's child, reading Hyakken's stories sometimes feels that some could come closer to being described as narrative obstacles rather than ending with clear conclusion, although an overriding one could be that sometimes life is not good.

Across both of the books of stories there are number of different styles and narrative forms, some are dark explorative fictions, some feel that they maybe inspired from real life experiences and settings, there are a number here set in Hosei University, (including the title story of Triumphant March into Port Arthur), where Hyakken taught and perhaps if you are well grounded in Taisho/early Showa era history, some of the symbolism and portraits will begin to come into sharper focus, the story Triumphant March into Port Arthur is a far from being a celebratory narrative following the narrator watch a newsreel of the battle, which is centred around the meeting between General Nogi and General  Stessel, the narrator leaves the theatre with tears down his face, loosing all sense of his bearings he describes - 'The crowd kept clapping. My cheeks wet with crying, I fell into formation and was led out into the quiet of the city streets, out into nowhere'. Many of the stories feel that they have a metropolitan setting, but amongst these The Carp seems to pause for a moment to offer at what first appears as a landscape view, although with Hyakken it doesn't take too long before things begin to take on an alternative perspective, the narrator finds himself pursued into the landscape, the motives or identities of his pursuers uncertain, a mountain range comes into view, one pointing up resembling the dorsal fin of a carp, at points the delineation between land and sky becomes distorted, a spot of bright light appears and the narrator can hear an echoing sound that seems to grow in volume, the narrator finds himself on the other side of the light, staring back he notices that the side he was in is shaded in darkness, before him he observes a lake, in it a beautiful carp swims, the narrator becomes entranced by the fish, whose reflection he can see projected or reflected in the sky, the story ends with the narrator trying to restrain himself from diving in to swim with the beautiful fish. It's a beguiling story, reading it again on it's own and taken out of the stream of narratives from these stories, is to realise Hyakken's ornate  combination of allegory and modernist prose, to read The Carp is to perhaps picture a narrator witnessing an aspect of one of the stories from Ugetsu Monogatari - Muo no Rigyo/A Carp That Appeared in My Dream, and in another of one transcribing the journey from the mortal into the immortal, a fascinating collection that rewards after repeated reading.  


Realm of the Dead at Dalkey Archive Press                       

Triangle by Hisaki Matsuura

Forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press, Triangle is translated by David Karashima, it could be said that it could be added to the slowly growing number of titles that feature the presence of two celestial globes, although Triangle predates another well known one, (Murakami's 1Q84), by some years, it seems that perhaps the presence of two moons or two suns could become the common motif of novels with characters that find themselves caught in alternative realities, maybe one of the earliest appearances of this could be in The Invention of Morel by the Argentine novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares which was published in 1940. Perhaps the protagonist of Triangle, Otsuki, doesn't find himself in an alternative reality in a literal sense, but does find himself becoming embroiled in dark circles which he struggles to comprehend across this at times unsettling novel.

With an unsettling film at its centre the narrative style of Triangle also feels in places cinematic and could perhaps be described as being a blending of somewhere between Yamada Taichi and the darker side of Murakami Ryu, much of the novel is situated in Tokyo's Taitō District in particular San'ya, a notoriously rough and rundown area. Otsuki is a rather dissolute character, a recovering drug addict, who on returning home one night encounters an old acquaintance, Sugimoto, standing out in the street in only his boxers and vest, (this rather enigmatic incidence is returned to later in the novel and given it's fuller and darker context), through Sugimoto's insistence and the offer of easy work Otsuki is introduced to Koyama, an older man whom Otsuki begins to understands is a renowned calligrapher whose home is labyrinthine with glass panelling and conservatory, at first Otsuki imagines that he is needed to act as a translator into French, but Koyama shows him a film that he has been working on. The film is experimental in nature, a young woman or teenager is seen having sex with an older man, these scenes are cut and interposed with close up images of various insects, later Otsuki is introduced to the young woman as being Koyama's granddaughter, Tomoe, Otsuki is propositioned with completing the film.

To degrees the novel's concerns could be seen as being about the fabric of identity, over the course of the book and through scenes of violent intimidation and torture, at the hands of Koyama's brutal henchman, Takabatake, who also turns out to be the man in the film with Tomoe, Otsuki is faced with re-constructing and de-constructing his own identity, in the past he had burnt out in a normal 9 to 5 job, but finds himself unable to live with the alternatives and finds himself seeking again the reliable safety, albeit the emptiness of this kind of existence. Another interesting aspect to the novel is some of the parallels going on subtly with the narratives, Otsuki's voice is that of the contemporary man and his dilemmas, the extremes that he faces in the novel represent in a way extremes that the age faces, counter to his is Koyama's, the elder established man, in another way Koyama, who we believe at first to be a darkly cultivated aesthete offers the deeper, although much darker, philosophical voice, added to this the narrative poses some post-modernist musing about the fallible nature of representation in the arts. Throughout the novel, Otsuki is caught between two women, Hiroko, a married woman who he is a having an affair with who offers to leave her husband for him and also, Tomoe, the central and most enigmatic character of the novel, (there are at times rumours of levitation), whom Otsuki becomes increasingly infatuated with. Otsuki finds himself filming in San'ya above Takabatake's shop which in places is a curiously laid out and reconstructed replica of Koyama's house.

The threads of the novel begin to come together, or perhaps untogether when Hiroko's husband begins to drop clues after her disappearance, pursuing Otsuki over an incriminating ledger filled with names and also begins to fill in the blanks concerning Koyama whose past holds the truth to his assumed identity, Hiroko's past as well is not what Otsuki believed it to be and forges links to places he'd rather not acknowledge. Dalkey Archive describe Triangle as a moral tale gone wrong, and the darkness here seems to swamp the light, it fuses and defuses in almost equal measure, unnervingly, rather than concluding it seems to point to further darkness, further corruptions and whilst reading it provokes questions on the dilemma of how modern or contemporary novels might depict or mirror the contemporary world that create them.

Triangle at Dalkey Archive 



              

A Day in the Life by Senji Kuroi





 

It's been difficult deciding which of Dalkey Archive's latest books published in their Japanese Literature series to go for first, but something about the slightly enigmatic presentation of Senji Kuroi's A Day in the Life, pulled me towards it. Translated from the Japanese -  一日 夢の柵 by Giles Murray, the cover of the book describes it as a novel, but turning curiously to the inside pages we're presented with A Day in the Life, and Other Stories, faced with the presentation this way around you'd have to surmise that the, and Other Stories comes as a subheading to the novel. A Day in the Life comes as twelve portraits of events of a day seen from the perspective of an elderly man, there are some linking scenes and motifs amongst the stories, these are mainly in the form of appointments with doctors, medical centre waiting rooms and medical examinations. The links are not explicitly done, but they remain there in the corner of the reader's field of thought to the degree that after finishing each of the chapters you have to pause momentarily and ponder on the scenes that might have potentially formed links. In some of these stories you get the sense that the full disclosure of the story is left open ended and that the ending scenes of one story maybe described in more detail in the succeeding ones. Most of the stories revolve or start from observations of commonplace and unassuming events of the everyday, but scrupulously convey how normality is a country we take for granted. There's an aspect to Kuroi's writing which carries an understated ability to represent certain associations or events and leave it to the reader to decipher, events unfold sometimes in an unrelated way which can lead the characters into uncharted territory. In the story Marunouchi the discovery of a telephone number written on a piece of a paper found deep in the pocket of a seldom worn coat leads to an encounter of an enigmatic meeting with a woman whose identity has eluded the protagonists memory, after the meeting normality reverts so quickly that makes the reader wonder if the meeting had actually occurred.

As well as being enigmatic in tone the stories convey the sense of being representative of ideas and associations which emanate from the everyday, some are disarming in their depictions of the ordinary as in Shallow Relationship where a man finds himself curiously out of sync with the technical world he encounters; an ATM, an automated train ticket machine, all suggest subtle demarcations that are there to subtly remind us of what being human in the modern world entails, and also points to the world devoid of a sense of common humanity, a world which is subject to change and continual transformation. A reoccurring observation in the characters of these stories is of the world that existed before and is slowly disappearing from their view, the memory of a tree which acts as a local landmark pulled down to make way for a car park, and in Shadow House where a retired man and an elderly woman observe the construction of a coffee shop being built on what used to be a neighbour's home, the previous owner, a woman who made dolls to supplicate her living is remembered. In this story the past and the present become strangely linked when the elderly man sneaks into the property, (another characteristic that appears in a number of these stories), and discovers a doll in the house, perhaps this represents the spirit of the previous owner lingering in the property?, it's left to us to make up our own conclusions.

Although each of these pieces takes us into different directions, there are a number of linking scenarios that are played out in the stories which give the pieces an added sense of cohesion; the protagonist seems to repeatedly find himself entering buildings where enigmatic episodes are occurring, each time this happens it feels that we are on the cusp of unlocking the deep puzzle to understanding the motives and causes at the centre of them only to find that the central action or deeper mystery is actually being played out at an unsuspected location, or in some of them the enigma impenetrably remains. It's disarming to find how easily some of the characters here drift in and out of their lives, entering at times effortlessly into the world of complete strangers, sometimes this is a familiar world and other times it becomes a hostile and intimidating place, as in the final story Yozo's Evening, where the protagonist is pursued by a haranguing character and tries to throw him off his trail by entering a apartment block that is not his own, the narratives seem to wander effortlessly from the inner into a collective consciousness. In the Train, seems to be a contemporary retake on Tanizaki's short story Terror, taking the opportunity to re-evaluate and explore the contemporary psychological landscape. A Day in the Life is an engaging collection of excursions into an enigmatic landscape of neighbourhoods, waiting rooms and inner psychologies, interestingly presented under the parenthesis of being a novel.  


A Day in the Life at Dalkey Archive

A Day in the Life at Kinokuniya



            

Embracing Family by Nobuo Kojima

Embracing Family/Houyou kazoku won Nobuo Kojima the first Tanizaki Prize awarded back in 1965, like his earlier short story, The American School, (trans.William F.Sibley), the novel shares its setting immediately after the Pacific War, (although maybe a few years later), and explores the effects of the presence of the occupying forces, in The American School it is viewed through a group of teachers as they march towards the school they are scheduled to teach at, in Embracing Family it's seen through the domestic setting of the Miwa family. Shunsuke is a Professor who has lectured on Japanese Literature in America and also within Japan he lectures on the American way of life, he is married to Tokiko and they have a son, Ryoichi and a daughter, Noriko, with few characters to the novel it at times resembles the framework of a play. An addition to this family setting is a maid, Michiyo, and also an American soldier, (George), who has gone AWOL, his presence in the household has been initiated by another American called Henry whose mistress is Michiyo's sister. Through an accusation by Michiyo that Tokiko and George are having an affair the novel turns its attention to examine the fragilities of Tokiko and Shunsuke's marriage, the novel operates on different levels, addressing and presenting various issues, although in comparing it to The American School, in Embracing Family the differences, and to a degree the opposing aspects between American and Japanese culture appear more referentially. Tokiko persuades Shunsuke that perhaps Michiyo is manipulating the truth and that George had forced himself on her, she had kept quiet in order not to wake the children, Tokiko points out as well to the fact that Michiyo's accusations have the potential to ruin the family's reputation, but at the same time Tokiko seems to want to prolong her contact with George who represents an escape from the drudgery of her domestic servitude. Shunsuke arranges to meet George with Tokiko in an attempt to establish the truth but the meeting ends with Shunsuke yelling at George, "Yankee, Go home!".

After the turmoil of the affair eventually dissipates, through Tokiko's instigation the family purchases a plot of land, forty minutes from Shinjuku, (which slightly reveals the novel's age), to build a designer new home which features a Western bath room and other examples of Western design, radiators, etc, it acts as a kind of a hybrid between the two cultures, but Kojima adds a symbolical element to it's description in that the ceiling develops a leak when it rains. Shunsuke's impression of the American way of life appears more pragmatic as opposed to Tokiko's which remains slightly more idealistic. It becomes apparent that Shunsuke too had had an affair before he left for the war, although within the novel it doesn't seem to count as much as Tokiko's affair, Tokiko openly states that if she were younger she would have gone with George, and he counters that he had no feelings for the woman he had an affair with, the couples arguing is often reduced to Shunsuke and Tokiko equally accusing each other that - you don't understand what it's like to be a woman/you don't know what it is to be a man, their arguments are frustratingly unresolved, which give them an intense tangibility, to the extent that in the novel Shunsuke suffers physical pain at the things Tokiko says to him, he consults a doctor. Although I struggled to reconcile in places with the way that Shunsuke thinks about women, for instance at the end of the novel when he is looking for a second wife, and to degrees the perception of women within the novel as a whole is one that I'd like to think is something leftover from the old world, despite this Tokiko comes across as an incredibly strong character although her strength disguises a vulnerable and uncertain inner world, in the past we learn that she has had plastic surgery and her teeth strengthened, the fact that she and Shunsuke sleep in separate rooms adds another complex aspect to their married life, which is a taught one but at the same time quite open, Shunsuke ponders whether he should have actually allowed the affair to continue, and confesses that he perhaps regrets his marriage.

Not long after moving into the new house Tokiko discovers a lump in her breast and the novel begins to turn in a completely different direction and tone, events and things said in the past can be viewed and reassessed from the viewpoint of this new perspective, the novel carries a great sense that time is finite and is a constantly moving line crossing the lives of it's characters, pushing the reader unconsciously to contemplate these perspectives. Whilst Tokiko is in hospital the narrative follows the domestic scene continuing at home that Shunsuke struggles to maintain as well as following his inner anguish, at many points he has an almost uncontrollable desire to share his inner world with the external one, the narrative juxtaposes to palpable effect Shunsuke's inner turmoil with that of the indifferent world going on around him. The back of the book has a quote from novelist Shimada Masahiko  that, 'Embracing Family should be read by all American readers', obviously that between the forty odd years since its publication the novels contemporary message has faded somewhat but its has lost nothing in the power of its unflinching humanism.

Embracing Family at Dalkey Archive Press  

Plainsong - Kazushi Hosaka

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

          

Isle of Dreams - a novel by Keizo Hino

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

The Word Book

 

 

 

 

After starting this blog I've come to realize just how much Japanese literature, (considering the twentieth century alone), there is yet to be translated. So it's great to learn that the Dalkey Archive is adding Mieko Kanai's, The Word Book to the list in their Japanese Literature Series. It's a collection of twelve short stories, originally published in Japan in 1979 under the title 'Tangoshu' by Chikuma Shobo, and is translated by Paul McCarthy. In Japan, Mieko Kanai has published collections of short stories, novels, and has won numerous awards for her poetry, this is her first collection to appear in English.

Mieko Kanai has a detached dream like quality to her prose, but retains a certain exactness to her writing, through these stories she presents an array of characters that seem to be lost in memory. Many of the stories feature memories from childhood, her narratives mingle real events in the character's lives, with recollections, seen or remembered again by the character as an adult, some of the characters here seem to be in a locked groove, repeating or re-enacting scenes or memories from childhood, in a way that sometimes resembles a Kafka like world, it sometimes feels that there is a distant nihilism in her writing. These stories portray lives, lived out as a reflection of incidents in the past or the reflection of their memory. Mieko Kanai has an unnerving ability to dislodge notions of time, memory, dream, her narratives captivate the reader, Kanai can pick up a theme and circle over it, and not waste a single word. Another disorientating aspect about this collection, that gives the whole a unifying feel, is that the character's are rarely named, many of the stories being depictions of family relationships, so when the character's refer to one another it's just, mother, father, brother or sister. In the other stories, characters are distinguished by being referred to as, her or he. I found this to be a really interesting element, and creates a great feeling of intimacy with the characters. In fact the only names here are the names of other authors; Mishima, Yoshioka Minoru, Jun Ishikawa , and also Von Geczy and Leo Reisman , whose songs feature in the story 'The Rose Tango', which tells the story of a violinist of a small band, who is witness to a fight caused when a jealous gangster punches a man for dancing with his girl. But none of the stories are solely about these people. Mieko Kanai, who herself features in the story 'The Voice', a story about an author, (Kanai?), who receives strange, sometimes hostile phone calls from a young aspiring writer/reader, who foresees that Kanai will write a story featuring the phone call they are having, another story that explores the world of authorship.

The last three stories, (Kitchen Plays, Picnic, and The Voice Of Spring), seem to have connecting elements to them, again memories from childhood, a mother's instruction to buy a litre of milk, spindle-tree hedges, train journeys, a visit to a dilapidated basement theatre, milk being spilt, the possibility of a father's infidelity. Kanai mixes the narratives to the degree that it's uncertain to who is actually narrating the story, the father?, the son?. The mirror like labyrinthine quality to these stories is spellbinding, 'Windows', starts with a meditation on authorship, the author (Kanai?) sitting contemplating writing a story on plants, but gets distracted by objections made by the character she is about to create, the character questions the author's knowledge of the character, but slowly the character's story emerges, a memory from childhood, a building, a weapons depot, and a first experience with a camera, a photo album from father with pictures of mother as a young woman, before we were married, his father tells him, the mother he never met. Photography becomes his obsession, wanting to photograph every second, every hour. He returns to the weapon depot building of his youth to photograph it everyday, to witness it slowly deteriorate into a ruin, but then come to be dissatisfied with what a camera can capture, he dreams of the single photograph, which catches the stopping of the instants, separate from time's continuous progression.

The brilliance of this collection completely caught me off guard, explorations of relationships lost, meditations on authorship, examination of events, that skip from dream, to memory, from childhood to adulthood, and pass from generation to generation, memories that seem to hover and exist in some other ethereal realm. I'm already looking forward to another collection.

Dalkey Archive

The Glass Slipper and Other Stories

The first story in 'The Wandering Minstrel' has a very Murakami-esque beginning with the character awakening from a strange dream. In it he finds himself in a field with grey cows dotted around, with him he has two babies, who he feels are his own. The field is like a Spanish bull ring, encircling it are men aged between 30-50, each holding a bottle of milk, and moaning that their wives don't give them enough money. The main character in 'The Wandering Minstrel' feels very Murakami-ish too, although you get the impression he's struggling through life, you get the impression he could handle whatever might come his way. He's very laid back too, when a proposal of marriage is arranged by his boss, (whom he fears), his main concern is, does she have a round face or an oval face?, he is working as a translator, and spends most of his time avoiding scorn from his colleagues. But just like Murakami, there's a lot more to it than just cows, (or sheep), Shotaro Yasuoka gives us a great portrait of a man living within the parameter's of his fears, to the extent that he tries to play one off against the  other, his fear of cows, seems to lessen the fear of his boss.

The second story too, the title story, 'The Glass Slipper' opens with quite a surreal piece of dialogue, although in a story like 'Homework' the tone changes a bit, a closely observed story, it's one of my favourites. It is set near the end of the war, and centres around a boy's experiences at school, and growing up in a family which is facing financial ruin. Yasuoka Shotaro has a great ability portraying the rites of passage that most children go through, being bullied, realizing he can cheat money from the woman at the counter at the local baths, but of course set against the backdrop of the war, not only the boy's story is covered, but also of the whole family, Uncle's committing suicide due to stock market crashes. 'A Room in Tsukiji', is a sometimes humorous look at the thwarted dreams of a group of boys, influenced by Komai Kumakichi, (the groups leader/source of inspiration), they drop out of their Kyoto high school, and head for Tsukiji in Tokyo, to try and live the artistic life in the manner of 'old Edo', although none of them are quite sure what this actually might entail. After episodes of bedbugs, poverty and strange room mates, (a writer of onomatopoeic poetry), the group try and extort money from the girlfriend of one of the group, which comes to nothing, failing in an anti climatic way.

'The Glass Slipper and Other Stories' is quite a slim volume, but well worth exploring, I think most Murakami fans might see some familiar things going on in these stories, especially the opening story's dream, it seems like a metaphor, or maybe just a strange dream, that combined with well crafted story lines, that well convey each of the character's dilemmas. The stories selected here were written by Shotaro Yasuoka between 1951-54 and are mostly set during the war and the immediate years after it, but interestingly these stories focus on the individual's stories. Shotaro Yasuoka has received many literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize, Noma Prize, and in 2001 received the Order of Culture.

Dalkey Archive Press