#japanese novels

[beljar]

It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don’t know.

Osamu Dazai, from No Longer Human, 1948

[vraisetzen]

私説三国志 天の華・地の風 | Shisetsu Sangokushi Ten no Hana Chi no Kaze

by Emori Sonae (江森備)

[lilwomansanctuary]

"I feel trapped."

"Like there's a lid on top of you."

~

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami.

4/5 ✨

~

Caught in a ceaseless battle with his own gloom ridden thoughts, we see Eyes (the male protagonist) secretly sharing letters with Kojima, a female classmate, and gradually forming a closeness which bestows some solace to the forlorn life of both. Victim of boundless torture by their own barbaric classmates, Eyes & Kojima find in each other what they need the most at their time of great affliction- gentleness of a human heart to soothe their sore wounds.

To be honest, I'll need some time to understand the character of Kojima. On the other hand, the character of Eyes is a sensitive one. Real name of the male protagonist isn't revealed, he is called 'Eyes' by his classmates because he's a 'lazy eye', which is the key reason behind his classmates treating him in such a brutal way. As an infp myself, I can fathom the intricate feelings of his gentle heart.

The descriptions of bullying are gut wrenching. This novel made me went through a plethora of emotions: agony, grief, disgust, pain.

Fragile moments of tenderness (those letters) kept my heart warm and strong enough to endure the excruciatingly painful illustration of bullying.

[P.S: This is my first review ever. I mean a kinda long one. So, sorry if it isn't proper or helpful. 🥹]

[mypasteluniverse]

🌸⛩️☁️

[minimalist-language-learning]

変な家 — First Impressions

The plot summary seemed simple on the surface but somehow it made me really curious, so I bought this book and the audio book as well. I just finished the first chapter and want to share my first impressions and thoughts with you.

Reading approach

This time I'm experimenting with a different reading approach. Instead of reading mostly extensively and just highlighting unknown words, I quickly jot down words or information in Japanese whenever I feel like it could be important to the story.

My reading progress may be slower, but by taking quick notes my mind is more active. I have to actively think about what to write down and how it fits into the bigger picture. This thinking process is deeper than during extensive reading and helps me to remember not only information but also the used words.

After finishing chapter 1, I also created a mind map based on my notes. On this occasion, I also looked up unknown words.

I feel that the mind map format helps me to remember more of what I've read. Plus, I have an overview of what is important. When in doubt, I can easily look up a person's name and further information about this person, for example. This is very helpful when a story gets more and more complex.

I probably wouldn't do this with every book I read but I think this slower but more intensive approach has its benefits. I’m not only reading a book, I also use the language to a certain degree.

The story

Now to the book itself. As the title 変な家 suggests, it's about a strange / mysterious house.

Chapter 1 introduces a whole bunch of peculiarities during a conversation between the protagonist and other persons. By looking at the ground plan, they notice more and more details you wouldn't find in a normal house. They also share wild ideas for what dark purpose the former residents may have build it that way. At this point, they have no real evidence but then the police finds something that may consolidate what they assumed. At the end of chapter 1, the protagonist can't stop thinking about the mysteries that are hidden in this house and decides to investigate.

This summary may not sound very exciting but chapter 1 made me really curious so far!

The book itself is also a bit unusual. In the first chapter, there is not much descriptive text. It’s very straightforward, compared to other novels.

The great part of this chapter are conversations between the protagonist and other persons. Plus, the names are always written above the dialogue. (Which is great because in some novels I sometimes confuse who is speaking; especially during longer conversations or between more than two people.)

During these conversations, the characters often refer to the ground plan of the house. You always see the ground plan they are talking about next to the text, which makes it much easier to understand.

I don't know how the story will develop but at this point I really like this book so far. I also like the rather straightforward writing style. I can follow the story quite well at my level. I’ll listen to the first chapter of the audio book before I continue with chapter 2.

[xisadorapurlowx]

My Favourite Pieces of Writing

The Prelude: Stealing the Boat - William Wordsworth

I was first introduced to this through my time in school. This Poem is from Wordsworth's book, The Recluse where he muses about life.

This poem makes me think of times where I have been out with people and have seen the lights on the promenade go out at night, leaving the street in near darkness, if it weren't for the street lamp. It really illuminates and reminds me that although the human race is terrible and horrific, there is natural beauty in the world.

But it also reminds me of how small human beings really are. I used to lie in bed as a child and think about how small I am in the grand-scheme of things. How I am just a momentary consciousness in the universe. Most of the time, I'd scare myself thinking about it and roll over, finding something else to distract myself with.

It's a good example of an existential crisis, as at the end of the poem, the man who stole the boat, can never see the world with the amazing awe and beauty he once had for it.

2. The Spider's Thread - Ryuunosuke Akutagawa

The Spider's Thread details a story of how the Buddha is strolling through paradise and gazes into a pond where he sees Hell. There is a criminal in a pool of blood lying at the bottom of the pond. The Buddha sees that this man did one good act in his life, and moved by it, lowers a spiders thread to save the man from Hell.

This was really my first proper introduction into Akutagawa's writing. I'd only heard about him through Bungo Stray Dogs and knew only of Rashomon. The anime/manga was what really sparked my love in classics.

What struck me about this story, was how cruel and vividly I could picture the story playing out as I read the words on the page. I'd heard that in Japanese Buddhism, they believed that women who did bad things in life would be sent down to Hell and forced into a pool of blood and I can't help but be reminded of that in this story.

Akutagawa has also inspired me into writing short stories more recently.

3. Lady Macbeth's Soliloquy - Macbeth

I have spent a lot of time in performing arts. Growing up, I was always excited when my school decided to put on a play - a break from the boring and mundane sitting at a desk and being forced to memorise useless maths equations I would never use.

I've always thought that Shakespearian English is really pretty and I love this whole speech she gives herself. I can't stop thinking about the lines: 'And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty' and 'And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,' This whole monologue is so powerful.

[hornyforpoetry]

”I was immediately seized by a paralyzing pain, like when you look at something when you're tensed. The pain spoke to me like this: "You are not a human. You are a creature that cannot mix with people. A sad and strange creature, you are far from human"

Yukio Mishima, "Confessions of a Mask"

[masochistreader]

"[B]ut I don't have to worry about that. After all, there's no proof. To me this is a false diary, though no human being can be so honest as to become completely false."

— Yukio Mishima (Thirst for Love, 1950)

[minutiaewriter]

I had a lovely Saturday—I spent time at a bookstore and picked up some copies of my favorite Japanese/Korean novels. I then drank a delightful Kyoto cherry blossom tea at the tea shop and the okonomiyaki I had was quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

[beljar]

After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding it through trickery, they worked to express it.

painting by Malcolm T. Liepke, 1953 // text by Osamu Dazai, from No Longer Human, 1948

[spilledink-tch]

The Equation of Kindness - The HouseKeeper and the Professor

I read this months ago but couldn't find the right words. And lo and behold, i still haven't. But maybe I can convince you to read this sweet story anyway!

I’d read this a while ago, but I couldn’t coordinate my words to speak about it. Happens like that sometimes. It was something that was so simple yet made me have deep feelings that I couldn’t articulate. Well, now I might have a few. So let’s unpack a sweet novella about memory, numbers, and kindness. The Housekeeper and the Professor is a beautiful little slice of life about a Housekeeper…

[dreamsandroots]

Between Bodies: Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami, 2020

There is an illustrative passage at the end of the 2nd chapter of Mieko Kawakami’s 2020 novel Breasts and Eggs in which the narrator, Natsuko, accompanies her elder sister Makiko—an ageing hostess and single mother, briefly visiting from Osaka—to a bathhouse near the former's home in Tokyo. As they settle into the tub in the women's section of the bath house, Natsuko listens to the laments of her sister who, while ignoring the faux pas of wearing her towel into the bath, begins obsessing over her breasts, which, she explains, have been malformed since the birth of her now teenage daughter, Midoriko, and, beyond her recent investigations into breast implant surgery, something which she had discussed with Makiko on numerous occasions, has recently gone so far as to use very painful (and temporary) chemical treatments to restore her nipples, even if only briefly, to a lighter—and in her mind more desirable—colour. 

It appeared that the preoccupation, or shame, or insatiable curiosity that drove Makiko to fixate on her breasts was about more than size alone. Color [sic] was a major factor. I tried to imagine Makiko getting out of the bath, whatever time that was for her, and heading over to the fridge to grab the two small bottles of medicine, which she proceeded to apply to her own nipples, making them burn and itch like hell. . . . What had possessed Makiko to do this, at this stage in her life?

As Natsuko attempts to placate her sister's inquisitions (her inner monologue here betraying to the reader an already characteristic anxiety regarding an appropriate response: should she try to console her by saying nothing was wrong, even if only half-heartedly?; Should she tell the ‘truth’ that she does, in fact, find her sister's nipples to be unusually ‘dark’?) there suddenly appears a same-sex couple (two women, though one decidedly more masculine in appearance) who join the other women in the bath. As Natsuko's attention is deflected from her sister's fixation (the narration describes her as "staring so hard she was scowling" at the other women in the bath, "as if devouring them") the reader is swept along a stream of thought which brings into focus, through a semi-contained sub-narrative, a range of issues which permeate throughout the novel in its entirety.

The issue of the same-sex couple begins as a simple crisis of categorization: "[w]hat business did a straight couple have barging into the women's side of the bathhouse? It wasn't right." However the passage soon shifts between modes of narration with only subtle, and inconsistent hints, as to the nature of the ongoing changes in register.

As Natsuko ponders:

. . . how was I supposed to address the tomboy without insulting her, and get my point across, and find out what I wanted to know? 

Concentrating my awareness on my frontal lobe, I rubbed my thoughts together with ferocious speed, like a person rubbing sticks together to make fire, and waited for smoke to trickle from the wood.

she soon recognises that she had once known the 'tomboy' (Yamagu) and they had been, for a time, close friends in elementary school. Natsuko remembers a period of their childhood in which they would often sneak into the kitchens of a cake shop run by Yamagu's mother. She recalls in particular an instance in which she licked cake mix off her friend's finger, after Yamagu had grinned at her broadly, as if to share some inner secret.

The reader is left wondering here how to place this innocent description in terms of Natsuko's anxious reaction to the present situation: her friend’s indefinite sexuality, a kind of femininity which she says “always felt way stronger than what I picked up from the average woman” seems to imbue her with something extra-sexual, a kind of force which emanates from her inherent liminality, and which affords her a refusal of categorisation, whether actively or passively.

When she imparts that "[t]he thoughts kept coming, but I couldn't look away", we are led to believe that something beyond her control is at play within her thought process. Is there not a sense in which the character seems to be confronted by the redesignation of an old childhood friend into something that confuses her understanding of the world, and that challenges her sense of order? Something “separate from her gaze, something inside of her” that has catalysed this traumatic reaction to her presence?

Following the ambiguity of this imaginative thrust, Natsuko decides on a line of enquiry and engages Yamagu, asking: "Since when were you a man? I had no idea". The passage continues:

but she didn't answer, just flexed her muscles. Then the bulging flesh sheared off, coming free like a hunk of dough, which morphed before my eyes into a bunch of tiny people. They ran over the water, skating across the tiles, whooping their way up and down the naked bodies of the bathers, like kids monkeying through a playground. Meanwhile, the real Yamagu had wrapped the hem of her shirt around the horizontal bar and was doing feet first somersaults ad infinitum.

When her fantasy proceeds to the point of homunculi that scream to her that “"THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS WOMEN"” the reader is firmly at this point in the register of the fantasy space which until then had only been teased. This of course places further ambiguity on the preceding narration—did she really confront the ‘tomboy’?; was she really her childhood friend?; was the same-sex couple purely a figment of her imagination?

In this passage we can observe the use of dream space as a kind of speculative imaginatory realm in which the ongoing tensions of the novel, developed partially over the first two chapters, are thrust into a kind of playfully morphogenic field where boundaries are crossed and ultimately left less rigid for their crossing. This incursion of memory and speculative imagination into the present situation exacerbates the tension already developed (though perhaps not yet explicitly stated) in the discussion of Natsuko’s feelings of inadequacy relating to any clearly defined sense of femininity at play in her social reality, and particularly in relation to her ageing and impoverished sister, and the lengths she seems to be taking to conform to the desired standard.

The playfulness of this passage acts as a hermeneutic code for the thematic content of the novel, whereby themes of femininity, gender (and, more generally, bodily) dysmorphia and identity are made clear in terms of their content while retaining the status of riddle in terms of the novel's ultimate position to (and resolution of) these themes. In a sense, the dream space here acts as a demonstration of the types of thematic content the reader can expect to encounter while leaving space for ambiguity in terms of the symbolic resonance the novel goes on to develop.

The mastery of this passage lies in the ambiguity of its framing: there is no point at which the narration imparts explicit coding that indicates a shift from the narrator’s typically sporadic inner dialogue into space which is, to a degree, more abstract than the rest of the text. Upon completing the novel in its entirety, one could easily go back to this section and read over the contents to arrive at differing inflections as to what it may mean in relation to the novel's explorations of womanhood. This application of imaginative myth, as a space for exploration within the larger text, is reminiscent of Scott Freer’s observation regarding Franz Kafka's 'parable of the leopards' by which he argues that Kafka "aestheticizes the mythomorphic discourse: the leopards as violators enter into the self-generating recycling of myth narratives.” This passage provides textual space for reinterpretation of thematic concepts whereby "the vehicle of the body does not always directly correspond to the tenor of the self", a metaphoric sleight-of-hand which in turn allows the passage its own reformation, thus demonstrating “myth’s reconstructive process."

We can see how, much like the figure of The Sphinx in the myth of Oedipus, the character of the tomboy in this passage, whether ultimately read as real or imaginary, presents a mystery which is unable to be penetrated by intelligence alone. In fact, it begs for the reader of this novel to approach it through indirect, organic, evolving channels of meaning, granting her “the very incarnation of sacred enigma.”

Bibliography:

Burnett, Leon. “10. Sorrow and surprise: a reading of Théophile Gautier’s sphinx complex,” In Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious, edited by Leon Burnett, et al., Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwsau/detail.action?docID=1350199.

Freer, Scott. "3. Kafka's Sick Ovidian Animals," In Modernist Mythopoeia: The Twilight of the Gods, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2015.

Kawakami, Mieko. Breasts and Eggs, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, UK: Picador, Pan Macmillan, 2020.

[chishiyareviews]

Audition is a japanese novel written by Ryu Murakami. Originaly,it was published it 1997 (japanese ver.) and later in 2009 in English. The story follows a middle-aged man named Aoyama who lost his wife 7 years ago and he hasnt dated since. Aoyama lives with his son Shige and their house maid. On the recommendation of a physician Aoyama sets two goals for himself: 1. To spend as much time as possible with Shige and 2nd goal was to bring an acclaimed East German pipe organist to Japan to hold a free concert, which in reality is a ploy so that he may record the rare concert and sell it on VHS. Aoyamas friend Yoshikawa notices his friends sadness and decides to help him find a new love by making aj audition for a nonexistent film. Aoyama,at first,thought this idea would never see the light but later,he accepted it. There were many many girls who wanted the main spot in the film but Aoyama barely liked any of them untill a beautiful 24 y/o woman with unrealiatic feautures came in — Aoyama instantly fell for her which he will later regret. The rest is on you,hope you will enjoy this kinda underrated novel. Fact : This novel was the basis for the movie " Audition " directed by Takashi Miike in 1999.

[blog-i-carry-your-heart-with-me]

Review : Strange Pictures by Uketsu

Strange Pictures was... well... strange. A who-and-why-dunnit unlike anything else I have ever read, I was expecting a truly unsettling mystery, shot through with intrigue, racing inexorably toward a thrilling climax. Instead...

★★★ Strange Pictures was… well… strange. A who-and-why-dunnit unlike anything else I have ever read, I was expecting a truly unsettling mystery, shot through with intrigue, racing inexorably toward a thrilling climax. Instead, I found an occasionally creepy mystery novel, which named its own frustrations, and shifted between narrators with a sometimes confusing rapidity. Whilst I suspect this…

[kavinjindal]

Casually discussing Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood has been the most bizarre fiction I have ever experienced in my existence and even though it has been months since I completed reading the title, I have vivid images of what I felt during the read. Now the reason I picked it up was primarily because of its strong word of mouth. Almost everyone I knew had this in their reading list and I was quite fed up with this book showing up…

[daikon-studies]