Tag: Japanese contemporary fiction

Amrita
by Banana Yoshimoto
published in English by Grove Press
1997 (Japanese original published in 1990)

Sakumi, a bereaved older sister who is drifting through life, falls on snowy steps, hits her head, and loses much of her memory. Her friends earnestly remark that she seems like an entirely different person.

But what does that MEAN?

Sakumi tries to live without her full memory, though this is stressful. Meanwhile, she continues to mourn her dead younger sister, support her struggling young half-brother, and find her way to BE. In time, she finds ways to appreciate the world’s beauty while interacting with an odd collection of friends, relatives, and acquaintances who are each trying their best to enjoy life on their own terms.

While Sakumi takes time to appreciate the way lacy curtains look in the sun or to deeply feel the suffocating presence of ghosts who died in battle on a tropical island, her reconciliation with her situation and ability to enjoy life by being fully present in the moment give the book an ultimately soothing vibe.

Breasts and Eggs
by Mieko Kawakami
translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd
published by Europa Editions, New York
2019

This award-winning novel tells the story of Natsuko, a young-ish-but-not-young writer who survived her youth of poverty and hardship, only to be uncertain of her purpose and judged by her peers for not living a conventional woman’s life, as they have.

While Natsuko’s dear older sister struggles as a single mother by working at a failing bar, repeating some of their mother’s choices and hardships, Natsuko wonders if motherhood is the relationship that will fill her own life with meaning. While trying to come to a decision, Natsuko approaches those around her with something close to an interviewer’s curiosity, as they reveal their own views, compromises, and dissatisfaction with their choices and obligations.

This novel manages to describe so much: abuse, living hand-to-mouth, the limited options available to women who leave their marriages, they way you can go back to your hometown (but it will NOT be the same), dreary literary readings, creepy pressures from relatives to bear children and tend to thankless in-laws, the (unnecessary and ruinous) shame associated with adoption and artificial insemination, and the atmosphere of countless rooms near train stations where people meet for coffee, rounds of cocktails, deep confessions, and inappropriate offers! (I am transported back to gray November days in Tokyo just writing this…)

The novel covers many years, and so many conversations, Throughout that time, season after season, the pressures on Natsuko to resolve her life situation (and/or finish her new book) never let up.

Breasts and Eggs is a well written, engrossing book about struggling to make a life that works while withstanding (gendered) societal pressures and writers block. It’s well told, and I’m glad I read it.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
translated by Jay Rubin
published by Vintage Books, New York
1997

This is an imaginative novel that somehow weaves its story within contemporary suburban Japan, historical occupied Manchuria, and an supernatural parallel space filled with danger.

Toru Okada is an ordinary man, who left his law office job to find something more satisfying while his wife’s job pays the bills. During his time of reflection, his cat disappears; then his wife starts working very peculiar hours, and stops coming home altogether. That’s when strangers begin to reach out to him with cryptic warnings about the flow of water, he hears rumors of a cursed neighborhood home, and the malevolence of his in-laws appears to take on a supernatural force.

This is not the sort of Isekai story that I’ve written about in the past: instead of the ordinary Japanese protagonist falling into another world, the ordinary world is instead revealed to be much stranger than the protagonist had noticed.

Odd characters, almost all of them women, interact with Okada in emotionally supportive and/or physically intimate ways as he navigates the altered reality that is gradually revealed to him.

(Okada seems especially comfortable when women of any age are with him, even without knowing their real names (!), who they are working for, or much about their motivations. This gives me some ideas of why his marriage didn’t succeed (other plot events notwithstanding), but this combination of being easygoing and oblivious is entirely plausible for the character.)

The author of this book provides a classical soundtrack for the chapters, which matches Okada’s musical tastes: you can access this musical guide on his website (harukimurakami.com).

This is surely the least predictable novel I’ve read in years. While the protagonist seems so ordinary, the story that unfolds around and through him and his supporting characters is engaging, suspenseful, atmospheric (the humidity of summer rains or chill coldness of being underground are so well described), and is engrossing. This is my first Murakami novel, but won’t be my last.

The Goddess Chronicle
by Natsuo Kirino
translated by Rebecca Copeland
published by Canongate, Edinburgh
2012

This is a beautiful, sad, vivid retelling of a Japanese myth (Izanami and Izanagi) that I was previously unfamiliar with.

This story is narrated from the underworld, by someone who died young, and who writes of her misfortune. On a beautiful, isolated, tropical island, she was one of countless underfed locals. Her childhood came to an abrupt end when she was forced into a traditionally necessary taboo role… which prepared her, in some respects, for another role in the afterlife, where she learns that women being forced into taboo roles has a VERY long tradition.

This story is lyrical, harsh, and has haunting imagery. The modest narrator’s experiences of hunger, love, attachment, and betrayal give her deep sensitivity to the suffering of the goddess she comes to serve, and their stories interact in unexpected ways. It is a moving story written in a timeless way.