The Monastery by Kurahashi Yumiko

The Monastery is an earlier story from Kurahashi which first appeared in 1961, a year after she had made her debut as a writer, it's available to read in a translation by Carolyn Haynes in the Kodansha collection The Showa Anthology. In the introduction to the story this earlier work is described as demonstrating her somewhat indecisive experimentation which in a way is a fitting description to her continuing writing, it feels that there is a fine line to the direction she wanted to commit or designate her characters to in her narratives, leaving the reader uncertain to the unfolding path is something that can be felt in her sentencing structure and speculative fictions. In this early work there appears certain motifs that perhaps are hallmarks of her interests - the wandering from accepted narrative norms, it feels that she has a preoccupation with historical settings even though this might not be confined to any particular epoch, the current story feels like it could possibly exist in a contemporary setting but at the same time there are no immediate pointers, it could be arriving from the fringes of a medieval period, there's a number of references; ancient swords, gigaku masks, also there's a sense of time being traversed, an aspect perhaps redolent in some of Nakagami Kenji, The Monastery has at times the feeling of being related as if in the style of a somewhat personalised chronicle.

Essentially the story is one of a love triangle, the narrator addresses the narrative to her betrothed, no particular name of this character is given aside from the betrothed being named as 'you', is this we the reader?, Kurahashi liked to blur points of reference and demarcations perhaps. Set as you might imagine in a monastery the narrator is the daughter of the abbot and her betrothed is set to succeed him after his passing, the relationship with the betrothed has the feel of being the more formal and 'business' one, although not mentioned perhaps it has been arranged?. These things we begin to understand after the arrival of 'K', a scholar of art who comes with letters of introduction from a university, K initially stays at Temple H. The buildings are described as a vast complex, K and the narrator explore the area in a frolic that is headily and sensuously described, to the narrator it feels that she is rediscovering the place in his company anew, there is a deep spiritual connection between the two - the contact of our hands no more than the inevitable closing of a circuit. The relationship grows, in some scenarios it's uncertain who is committing the initiating, the betrothed arrives, K departs, the narrator contemplates a three way relationship, there's an infatuation between K and the narrator that grows in intensity as the story progresses.

The descriptive prose of the story as well as the growing in it's intensity has the feel of one arriving out of the archaic and it feels that the events are unfolding from a distant time location, perhaps this is emphasised also due to the remoteness of it's setting, maybe again this is a frequent aspect of Kurahashi's writing, here a monastery and in The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q the setting is a reformatory, the locations are ones that are set away so to speak and Kurahashi seemed to also extend this sense of displacement in order to additionally free up the sense of time period of their setting. Added to this there are thematic lines occurring in the background, debate of suicide, there's an underlying voyeuristic element as the dueling relationships and characters are measured against each other. The story has a number of moments to ponder further as with the mention of the gigaku masks, a mask used in a somewhat lewd play of the Asuka Period concerning a love rivalry, which to a degree mirrors events or motives of this story. K returns and makes a forced fumbled advance on the narrator, a novice monk arrives who is passed an ancient sword by the betrothed, along with the description there is loaded implied meanings to also pass on to K. At the end of the story, which is a bloody one, there's a renewed sense that things have unfolded in a grandiose epoch, pallbearers, shadows cast, although the narrator observes the ceremony was little more than a purging of the violent death of a sinful outsider - there remains the sense that we've witnessed the tragedy of a forsaken love, arcadia momentarily turning bloody.

                

Apollo's Head by Kurahashi Yumiko

An author I've been meaning to return to is Kurahashi Yumiko, although the short story collection The Woman With the Flying Head and Other Stories, translated by Atsuko Sakaki has remained out of reach for the time being I thought I'd look out for the short stories that I have or am able to read online. So perhaps I'll have a mini season of reading her short stories, the first one stumbled upon is available over at Words Without Borders, Apollo's Head,  translated by Ian MacDonald, perhaps subconsciously whilst reading there's the hope that an affordable and accessible collection may appear in the near future. Apolon no Kubi first appeared in 1985.

There's an aspect of the imagery used in Apollo's Head that defies immediate interpretation, the reader has to accept the story as is, associations are made and contemplations of Apollo's significance or representations in ancient history are contemplated, but it feels that the story is a picturesque fantasy that presents a phantasmagoric and in places an erotically charged scenario to consider. The narrator is a student who whilst walking on campus discovers through a blue glowing hue, the head of a beautiful young man or boy at the base of a tree, at first beguiled by his beauty and then succumbing to fear and the realization that he is the victim of a murder she flees home. The head though seems to show some signs of consciousness, the eyes blink, the pupils move, this assessment of it's consciousness arises again later, but to the narrator there remains similarities to the head of Apollo, hewn in either Pentelic or Parian marble, the head's beauty gives rise to erotic speculations in the narrator leading to envisioning culpability for the decapitation, which provokes briefly the question of reliability of the narrator, amongst this the decision to retrieve the head.

The head is brought home, nurtured in a fruit bowel of water and puzzled over, somewhat placidly, by the narrator's fiance, Toru, who remains on the whole unimpressed, until near the end of the story where his forbearance gives out. The story is laced with the erotic, earlier the narrator kisses the head, later she and Toru make love in front of it, the head remains indifferent to these encounters. There is the disarming element in Kurahashi's ability to maintain and align the everyday against the unfolding of these macabre and erotic events. The head eventually begins to transform, taking on the resemblance of a pomegranate, a watermelon, a cactus, a comparison to a portrait by Arcimboldo is suggested, eventually a harvest of heads is cultivated. Apollo's Head appears to defy direct interpretation, the reader is presented with an unnerving blend of eroticism and hinted metaphors.


Apollo's Head at Words Without Borders    


image from Wikimedia

The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q

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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