Mishima and Kawabata Prize announced

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 by Wahei Tatematsu

 

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 necessity, and are part of a continuous tradition. Many moments in the novel sees Mitsuo appointing blame at the development, when Koji also takes up with Kaede and things take a tragic turn, Mitsuo remarks that none of it would have happened if the development hadn't happened, 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

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

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

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

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, there's 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 what's 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

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 by Keigo Higashino

 

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.

 

Naoko at Vertical Inc        

Fukko Shoten

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

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/