Death Sentences

Originally published in Japan in 1984 Death Sentences/Genshi Gari by Kawamata Chiaki was awarded the Nihon SF Taisho Award in the same year, and has recently been published by the Minnosota University Press in a translation by Thomas Lamarre, (The Anime Machine) and Kazuko Y. Behrens, the narrative of the novel is spread over five chapters with an opening Prologue and a Final Chapter entitled: Oblivion. The novel is sandwiched between an informative  foreword by Takayuki Tatsumi and an expansive and explanatory afterword by Thomas Lamarre, which describes the structure of Kawamata's prose and explores the thematic implications that the novel raises, Takayuki Tatsumi's foreword contextualises  Kawamata's writing, both within the sphere of Japanese Science Fiction writing and also comparatively  with authors of the genre from the West, J.G Ballard, Philip K.Dick, Stanislaw Lem, among others. It could be said that Death Sentences only begins to resemble something that you could call explicit science fiction near it's closing, but the path it takes to get there could quite easily fit into being labelled with the speculative, the novel weaves between genres and timezones giving it a palpable spatial texture. It's hard to talk of Death Sentences without thinking of Koji Suzuki's novel Ringu, which was published a little over a decade after it, it has at it's centre a dangerous death inducing object, in Ringu it was embodied in the videotape, in Death Sentences the object has more of a literary inspired source in being a poem. The novel opens in the modern day with a special unit officer, Sakamoto, tracking down a copy of the poem through a couple in a love hotel, the next chapter leads on to describe the poem's origin and the history of it's author. As Lamarre mentions in the afterword, the sequencing of the events in the novel can feel or read as being subtly  syncopated, the narrative appears to focus into specific segments of the story that has an underlying looping element, the nuances in the book are slight and a reading of Lamarre's afterword explores these in greater detail, Kawamata often switches between first and third person narratives, the whole affect is a highly readable prose.

Much of the narrative of the following chapter traverses back in time and is told through the surrealist Andre Breton as he waits to meet a poet in a Paris cafe, as the clock passes the anticipated hour of their meeting, through Breton's recollections we learn of their initial meeting in New York some years earlier, these first chapters dip in and out of the history of Breton and other Surrealists - Marcel Duchamp, Anton Artaud and David Hare who all come into contact to varying degrees with the poet Hu Mei or as Breton comes to understand his name through Hu Mei writing his name in the air with his fingers - Who May. The poetry he writes is full of arcane obfuscation and include a number of curious words and usages of language that Who May has appeared to have invented, over time Breton's contact with Who May becomes patchy as the poet begins to slip into obscurity. We learn of the suicides and mysterious deaths of many of the surrealists who had come into contact with the poems. The narrative moves again through the proceeding chapters, forward in time to Sakakibara, the owner of a small press who becomes involved with a department store's ambitious exhibition of Surrealist artifacts that have been recently come to light, the centre piece of the proposed exhibition is Breton's travelling trunk, the contents of which contain many manuscripts which until now have remained unseen, amongst them Who May's poems, the effects of the poem again begin to show themselves in the contemporary world. The narrative continues following the poem's dissemination, jumping again via Sakamoto and through a reading of the poem the narrative lands to a Martian setting, the events described by Carl Schmitt, leader of a squad about to lead a raid on a Martian settlement searching again for copies of the poem. An intriguing and symbolic novel and translation that will appeal to the reader on many differing levels.

Death Sentences at University of Minnesota Press
        

a wind named amnesia {} invader summer

This volume collects two novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, also author of Vampire Hunter D, Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku, that were both originally published in Japan in 2005, translated by Joe and Yuko Swift and published by Black Horse Books in 2009, accompanied by fifteen pages of illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. It could be said that they are quite noir-ish in style and show inspiration from Lovecraft, also at times reminding me of Otsuichi. The first story, A Wind Named Amnesia is set in a post apocalyptic America, after a recent reading of Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon it wasn't too difficult to make parallels with the two stories, an event occurred in the not so distant past that has caused a collective amnesia, reading the story also provoked memories of reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, although with a few differences, ok, perhaps maybe more than a few. The two main characters, Wataru and Sophia, find themselves on a road movie-like quest of a journey as they head, at Sophia's request to New Orleans, along the way they encounter various gangs usually made up of a violent leader and those just trying to survive, after each of these episodes they pick up a straggler who wants to continue with them, but usually leaves after finding a renewed sense of themselves. These survivors carry vague recollections of their past lives which are variously recalled in slight abstraction. Set in the futuristic year 20X5 another factor that threatens them are the existence of the Guardians, huge mechanical robots that were used to police the cities before the apocalyptic event and now roam randomly, their drivers now skeletal. Wataru recalls his meeting with Johnny, who seems to have escaped the amnesia, teaches Wataru world history and instructs him that he must spread the word of this civilisation that man had created before the amnesia struck, Johnny recalls the apocalyptic moment the amnesia started, when Johnny meets Wataru he tells him that his mental age had reverted to that of a three year old. Sophia's history is clouded in ambiguity, and as their journey progresses she begins to exhibit some strange powers, none the least her ability to communicate with the survivors who have lost the ability to speak in a recognisable language. As they travel from city to city and gang to gang, it becomes apparent that something malevolent seems to be travelling not too far behind them, Wataru begins to suspect that Sophia has some extra-terrestial connections that could also be linked to the collective amnesia. 

The second story, Invader Summer seemed to clinch it in being my favourite out of the two, set around the High School of Yubue City the main protagonist is Katagiri, a well trained student of Kendo whose abilities are outstanding, through his conversations with Sayo we learn that he had a relationship of sorts with her late sister Yayoi. The narrative follows Katagiri as he walks past a dilapidated house and sees a slightly spectral girl, later the girl is seen again in the playground of the school. Through the various perspectives of Katagiri's friends, Mikimoto, the poetry writing literature student and Kuramochi, a judo champion, things begin to go a little strange for the community of students, the boys begin to fall obsessively in love with the pale girl, collectively lingering around her house, a human eating dragon monster appears which has been pulled out of the realm of fantasy by one of the boys whilst fantasizing over the girl. The pale girl appears before Katagiri asking for his friendship and reveals that her name is also Yayoi, (although with a different family name to that of Sayo and Yayoi). A local journalist friend of Katagiri, Otomo, begins to investigate the girl's history which doesn't add up to what she has been telling people. Another story line that weaves it's way through this is of a group of Yakuza who keep approaching Katagiri, which usually ends with their defeat by Katagiri who defends himself without a sword. Invader Summer contains many story lines as it explores it's characters involvement with the plot, some of which end up being more relevant to the main story than others which makes the story an enjoyable reading experience, and the slightly abstracted way the characters are introduced, at first they are described figurativley and then later named specifically in the narrative kept you uncertain as to who was being introduced and to what degree they would be involved in the central plot, keeps the reader guessing. This story too has an extra-terrestial theme, (albeit that of a dysfunctional alien), which reaches it's conclusion at the local Natsu Kudari festival.

A Wind Named Amnesia {} Invader Summer at Dark Horse Books

The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories

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.