Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa

As mention of another batch of titles in Pushkin's Japanese novellas begins to appear on the horizon time remains to catch up with another of the initial books, Hideo Furukawa's Slow Boat, translated by David Boyd. In the books Linear Notes Furukawa explains that the story is essentially a remix, or a cover version of the Murakami Haruki story, there are displays of the usual Murakami motifs, the jazz track - On a Slow Boat to China by Sonny Rollins, the boku narrator, and also the inclusion of multiple narrative voices. The story has the feel of a Bildungsroman, in places it also resembles  Murakami Ryu's 69. Aside from being sent to a summer camp for wayward kids at the story's opening, a lot of the story plays out in Tokyo's Suginami Ward, and as Furukawa's narrator circumnavigates the possible peripheries of the city, (who knows where they begin and end?), and it's potential escape routes the narrative moves amongst an anonymous hotel room, descriptions of the details of furnishings and contents, Furukawa's narrative questions visual spaces alongside emotional progress and the two merge convincingly. These hotel scenes and the Sonny Rollins track gain greater clarity and poignancy in the closing scenes, the book is made up of rather than chapters but boats, Boat 1, Boat 2, etc.

Despite it's brevity the pace of the prose is pitch perfect, for a while we skip between episodes of recounting past girlfriends and additional narrative interludes, or chronicles, provided by Kaku Nohara, glimpsing into the events of lost years, 1994, Y2K giving the main narrative a broader context and perspective, the two overlap, a memorable scene of the narrator loosing it on a packed commuter train after being given an ultimatum from a departing girlfriend in pursuit of her destiny, that is one of many here, the name of his restaurant being decided after a misreading is another. At the end of the book you're left contemplating differences, Furukawa's prose here is faster paced, feels more edgier, more in your face, although remaining a homage with a lot of respect and originality.


Slow Boat at Pushkin Press 
     

Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure

Perhaps on a first reading of Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure, what first remains is a sense of distance imparted to the reader, although written and published in the immediate months after the disaster that hit Fukushima and the North East in 2011, Furukawa's blend of fiction and non-fiction, travelogue and memoir creates a space for contemplation and presents various perspectives of narrative, early on in the book the phrase 'use imagination for the good' reaches out and stays with the reader. With it's blend of voices Horses, Horses searches out for the narratives not found in official history books in an attempt to reclaim and present the authentic, there is a fascinating use of allegory within Furukawa's telling of the history of the horses associated with the area of the North East, in particular with Soma City which carries within it's name the word horse, reading this allegory and the way Furukawa has structured this element of the book brought to mind Julian Barnes's A History of the World in Ten and 1/2 Chapters, which similarly presents an alternate allegorical perspective of history. Furukawa pinpoints two figures from medieval Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Oda Nobunaga in his observations of historical paths.

The main branch of narrative of Horses, Horses is of Furukawa caught between writing projects and of the sequence of the events of the disaster unfolding, his personal history of this period is examined and then returned to when being both in and outside of Japan. This proceeds with him and colleagues from his publishers hiring a car to travel to the area to see how close they can go, (the slowly enlarging red circles of the exclusion zones feature), Furukawa toys with the notion of exposing himself to the radiation, and confronts suicidal feelings unexpectedly arising that he assumed he had over come in his youth. There's a measured economy to the prose, the reader very much gets the sense that although with the literary experimentation, the dipping into fiction and non-fiction, (in places in a talking direct to the camera type of way, with the appearance of a character from one of his novels in the car that they are travelling in), Furukawa is not attempting to place words where they cannot be placed, it very much feels that apprehension is never too distant from the surface.

Along the way there are number of names referenced, one of the first being The Beatles in particular their songs Strawberry Fields and Tomorrow Never Knows, with it's screeching sound at it's beginning which sounds similar to that of the squawk of a gull, poetically evocative of being at the coast and in a way a warning cry. A number of Japanese writers are mentioned, in particular Miyazawa Kenji and Nakagami Kenji, both writers Furukawa obviously has an affinity and strongly identifies with, similar themes and motifs appear in their works, animals, and the sense of alternate histories being written and born out of alternative myth. Another aspect that appears whilst reading the book is a rather pensive sense of apprehension and fear, this is highlighted in the quote that Furukawa borrows from Nakagami, and Furukawa later examines this fascination of dates - 3.11 - 9.11, and of how these events cannot be confined to a single day, although the book has the subtitle - A Tale That Begins With Fukushima, it also feels that it resembles a memoir of an approach. Throughout these narratives there are incidences of subtle poetical examinations of the second part of it's title - that of light and in one place the prose arrives at a stop and Furukawa turns to poetry to express himself. Throughout it's various modes of narrative Horses, Horses moves and posits questions in equal measure.


Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure, translated by Doug Slaymaker and Akiko Takenaka is available via Columbia University Press
            

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Project

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.