booklit

According to the inside flap Yoko Agawa has written more than twenty books and won every major Japanese literary award. Where else is there for her to go? Either it’s scooping every minor Japanese literary award - probably not worth her while - or it’s off to international waters, to a brand new audience, and perhaps add to her trophy case with an IMPAC, or something.

The Diving Pool, her first book translated to English, is not a novel but a collection of three novellas from early in her career, of about fifty pages, loosely connected by their content. All three are told by young women with a skewed outlook on reality relating stories about family members. In each, Ogawa deploys an precise style that maintains an eerie distance between the narrator and event, her words clinical and charged with meaning, always leading with a slow build that concludes with a twist - although backstroke is probably more apt.

Aya, the narrator of the title novella, lives with her parents in the Light House, which, she says, “is an orphanage where I am the only child who is not an orphan, a fact that has disfigured my family.” She has a crush on her foster-brother, who spends a great deal of time at the school pool honing his dive seemingly unaware that she is hiding in the bleachers (”I alone can see him, and he comes straight to me.”) admiring him from afar:

Does Jun let his body float free at the bottom of the pool, like a fetus in its mother’s womb. How I’d love to watch him to my heart’s content as he drifts there, utterly free.

It’s a frustrating thing, unrequited love, never mind being treated equal to the orphans by her parents, and Aya finds herself using one of the other orphans, a toddler named Rie, as an outlet:

When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see. I wanted to savor every one of Rie’s tears, to run my tongue over the damp, festering, vulnerable places in her heart and open the wounds even wider.

The tone throughout is a haunting and detached, maintaining a clinical calm not unlike the pool before Jun makes his dive. Ogawa’s words, spare as they are, are carefully picked and shot through with meaning, so much so that it’s not hard to interpret Aya’s home as being a metaphor for people, also like a pool, where we can only question at what happens under the surface:

The church and the Light House are old, Western-style wooden buildings, their age apparent in every floorboard, hinge and tile. The structures have become quite complex through frequent additions, and from the outside it is impossible to grasp their layout. Inside, they are more confusing still, with long winding halls and small flights of stairs.

The Diving Pool, where each page drips with mentions of water, is a powerful story, the most powerful of the three contained in the collection, and the splash of its ending proves an excellent introduction to Ogawa as the dangers of living in the Light House become apparent, of standing solitary and staring off at one point with a single beam, oblivious to everything else around.

The other two novellas maintain the icy tone, with the epistolary Pregnancy Diary, in which a woman keeps a record of her sister’s pregnancy, annoyed that her sister seems to disregard the child growing within her (”The baby haunted the shadows that fell between us.”) and the more straightforward, yet downright creepy, Dormitory, in which a woman haunted by a sound from her past secures a room for her cousin at her old dorm, now in a state of decline, and finds herself caring for the manager, a man who has lost both arms and a leg.

It’s a pity that the novellas are presented in this order, as the prose of Dormitory is paciest and would have served as a better lead in to Ogawa’s cool, calculated style, and would certainly have made the impact of The Diving Pool much stronger, where the satisfactory snapping shut of the book would have left waves rather than ripples. But there’s much to appreciate here, and that Ogawa has a back catalogue ripe for translation, is reason enough to dive in, even if these three novellas are the shallow end.

It’s a little early to be calling, as the cover boldly declares, Snakes & Earrings (2004) by Hitomi Kanehara a “cult classic”, but within its pages there’s enough to warrant it, one day, being recognised as such. It already has one major Japanese award to its name, the Akutagawa prize, making Kanehara, along with Risa Wataya, the youngest winners since it was launched in 1935. On the judging panel in 2003, it’s little surprise to find, was Ryu Murakami, a cult name himself and, going on the basis of his novel Piercing, Kanehara’s line in outsiders and sado-fantasy is much akin to his own.

Teling the story in Snakes & Earrings is Lui, a nineteen year old Barbie-girl (or kogal) who is bored with a life that is “little more than a pastiche of drunken moments”. One day, in a bar, unsurprisingly, she meets a punk called Ama and is immediately drawn to his forked tongue, a feature achieved through the art of body modification:

Apparently, you begin by getting your tongue pierced. You then gradually enlarge the hole by inserting bigger and bigger tongue rings. Then, when the hole has been stretched to a certain size, you tie dental floss or fishing line in tight loops running from the hole down the middle of the tongue. Finally, you cut the remaining part of the tongue that’s still connected using either a scalpel or a razor-blade. In fact some people don’t even bother going through the whole pierce-and-tie process at all - they just slice their tongue in two with a scalpel.

To Lui it’s an enticing idea and Ama takes her to Desire, “a kind of punk/alternative store in a side-street basement”, to have her tongue pierced by Shiba-san. But tongue piercing is not enough and Lui urges Shiba-san to design her a tattoo. She settles on one depicting two mythical beasts, a dragon and a kirin. The choice of these creatures runs parallel to the love triangle she gets involved in, for Ama has a tattoo of a dragon, Shiba-san the other.

As to why Lui would suddenly make these decisions about her body, there’s little explanation given. With disaffected youth, however, the most minimal of reasons is reason enough:

All I wanted was to be part of an underground world where the sun doesn’t shine, there are no love songs, and the sound of children’s laughter is never, ever heard.

Both of the men in Lui’s life are extremists of a sort. Ama has a short fuse and in one early scene beats up a man, leaving him for dead, for touching Lui. Shiba-san is a sadist, pure and simple, with a preference for choking people. Being with these guys at different times is all the rush that Lui needs: be it the education of her new subculture, of sex, of pain. Although she’s still very much alive, her self-concern is so far gone that she may as well be dead. Indeed, she acts as if she is, with respect to her body:

They do say dead men tell no tales after all. In which case, surely there’s nothing more meaningless than not being able to give an opinion on anything. It makes me wonder why people fork out fortunes to pay for tombstones. I mean, for me, I’ve got absolutely no interest in my body if my mind no longer lives in it. I couldn’t care less if it was eaten by dogs.

The triangle between Lui and her men develops, with both expressing their love for her. And when events hit crisis point, she is able to move on, finding comfort in her new tattoo:

Possession can be such a hassle, and yet we are still driven by the desire to possess people and things. Maybe it appeals to the masochist and sadist in every one of us. As for me, I knew that the dragon and Kirin on my back would always be with me. They’d never betray me and I would never betray them.

In reading Snakes & Earrings it feels like Kanehara is out to shock rather than say anything. People come and go in her book, saying little of note. It’s told in a graphic style, with explicit scenes of sex, violence, and humiliation. The sad thing is, however, that what could have been an interesting eye-opener into a subculture, providing an opportunity to express why people turn to body modification, is no more than skin deep.

Ryu Murakami is an author I’ve been aware of for a while now, partly because of his literary namesake, Haruki Murakami, and also through noting a positive response to his In The Miso Soup, translated to English in 2005, although I’d never really felt the need to read his work. Then, by chance, I discovered that a film I like, the teeth-gritting Audition (1999), was based on one of his short stories and he had, in fact, written the screenplay, too. Well what else could I do but hunt down the man’s books after all? And in doing so I choose Piercing (2007), published in Japan in 1994, on the basis that I preferred its cover over In The Miso Soup’s.

Billed as “a dark psycho-thriller” by the Daily Mail and by the Times as “creepy and gripping”, Piercing is certainly that. Or, perhaps, was. It’s been thirteen years between the original and the translation and in that time Asian cinema has enjoyed wider popularity, especially the more violent material, and as a result, the novel’s effect is lessened as the content is what’s expected of Japanese thrillers of this ilk, and therefore it comes across as more schlock than shock. Still, if you can pleasd innocence of Japanese cinema in recent years, then the novel’s intended effect may apply.

Kawashima Masayuki lives with his wife and newborn child in their apartment, which doubles as his wife’s class for teaching bakery to locals and is therefore “permeated with the buttery smell that for Kawashima had come to symbolise happiness.” While to all extents and purposes they are a happy couple, Kawashima suffers a form of panic attack and for the last ten days, with the wife asleep, has found himself standing over his child’s cot with an ice pick, sweating:

Every time he studied this instrument, with its slender, gleaming steel rod that tapered down to such needle-like sharpness, he wondered why it was necessary to have things like this in the world. If it were truly only for chopping ice, you’d think a completely different design might do. The people who produce and sell things like this don’t understand, he thought. They don’t realise that some of us break out in a cold sweat at just a glimpse of that shiny, pointed tip.

It’s an implausible scene, the type you’d expect in movies, and there’s a knowing reference thrown in to Basic Instinct, to show that Murakami knows exactly how implausible it is. But he doesn’t care, this is a thriller after all, and so Kawashima’s panic attacks inspire real fear for himself and of what he is capable:

You wouldn’t do something like that, you would never stab the baby, he told himself hundreds of times, but the voice inside him never stopped replying: I just might.

The fear that he may harm his own child leads Kawashima along a dangerous road as, like the major players in this Piercing, he has a past, and the only way to protect his child is to take himself off elsewhere and what begins as a sadistic urge soons becomes a feat of meticulous planning, horrifically mixing the inhuman with the mundanity of everyday living:

There was no way to be one hundred per cent sure of not getting caught - this had been his first thought on waking - but merely wounding some woman was out of the question. If she lived, she’d surely go to the police, and that would be it for him. He’d mulled over such problems while brushing his teeth and washing his face.

The story builds from there, chapter by short chapter, and then, when all hell breaks loose, Piercing opens up into a non-stop catalogue of cat-and-mouse drugs and violence that, in a single chapter consuming half the novel, leads to a conclusion that’s hard to accept, yet strangely fitting.

The piercing of the title, while it could relate to puncturing someone with an ice pick, relates to the thoughts of Kawashima’s eventual target, a young woman who has pierced her own nipple, but these reflect the novel’s wider concerns:

To be able to choose your own pain - it’s a little scary, she thought, but it’s wonderful, too.

Murakami’s delivery is deadpan throughout, never passing judgement on the events in his novel, regardless of how wrong or stupid they seem, as if to say, this is the story, accept it. Sadly, it’s too pulpy to stir a sense of wrong or right in aligning with characters, but the weaving in and out of their perspectives is done well, increasing the dramatic irony with each incident, and is what makes Piercing particularly gripping and worth having a stab at.

Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is a short novel but, due to its tight plot, brevity is not an issue. Published in 1963, seven years before he committed ritual suicide, the novel explores motivation and the factors that can cause someone to abandon their passions and resume their life embracing the dreams of another.

Noboru Kuroda, a thirteen year old on the cusp of an adult world, is part of a savage gang whose members, despite their exemplary grades at school, have rebelled against the adult world they deem hypocritical. Under the tutelage of Noboru’s friend, also thirteen, they condition themselves against sentimental feelings – a goal they call ‘objectivity’ - by killing stray cats.

Ryuji Tsukazaki, a merchant seaman, has been granted two days’ shore leave and has spent the time romancing Noboru’s widowed mother, Fusako. Noboru likes the sailor at first, his commitment to the sea and all the manly stories he has to tell. But, as Ryuji falls for Fusako, Noboru feels betrayed by the man’s burgeoning romanticism and, with the help of his gang, feels that action should be taken against the man who has replaced his father.

The first thing I noticed while reading this novel was that the characters are rich with life and history. Noboru, at thirteen, has strong feelings for his mother that manifest through voyeuristic sessions at night when, peeking into her room through a spy-hole, he watches her undress, entertain, and sleep. Ryuji, the sailor, knows he has some purpose at sea and continues his life off the land in the hope that one day he will learn his place in life. And Fusako, five years widowed, displays certain strength as she runs her own business, mixes with a richer class of citizen, while trying to raise he son as best she can.

The way the characters develop from this introduction is fast yet believable – the book, in fact, is split into two sections, Summer and Winter, to show that enough time has passed to be plausible. Noboru’s respect for Ryuji wanes as he becomes the worst thing, based on his gang’s beliefs, a man can be in this world: a father. Ryuji’s abandonment of his life’s passion is, of course, the main thread of the novel and it is a tragic decision he makes to give up the destiny waiting for him at sea in order to embrace the world of Fusako and the new direction she has planned for him.

The best thing about this novel is the language. The translator, John Nathan, has done a wonderful job and not a page passes without hitting you with a warm wash of sea-spray. Metaphors and similes are drenched with watery goodness as they add to the novel’s appeal. The prose is warm during the Summer section but as the book turns to Winter the turns of phrase become icier and tend to sting more. The dialogue is nice and realistic and doesn’t smart of stereotypical Japanese honour; the way the characters interact completely plausible.

I hadn’t heard of Mishima until I picked up this novel and, given that he had three Nobel nominations in his lifetime, I will certainly look out for more of his work. His concise prose, realistic characters, and the way his voice carries the sea makes him a rare find. If books were shells, I would hope to hear Mishima in every one.

I bought the new Penguin Classic, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories by Japanese author, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), with the intention of furthering my knowledge of Japanese fiction and its writers beyond Mishima and the spaghetti obsessed Murakami. What I found in this collection is an interesting mix of stories providing an adequate introduction to Akutagawa, but not enough, perhaps, to interest me further.

Preceded by a foreward by the aforementioned Haruki Murakami, the collection is split into four parts by translator Jay Rubin. This division is to differentiate the works between different parts of the author’s short life much like Picasso’s output can be pigeonholed into such periods as blue and rose. So, we have his early retelling of Japanese legends and anecdotes through to conflicts between native religion and Christianity missionaries, on to modern works highlighting both tragic and comic circumstances, before reaching his biographical work in which he showcased his own madness.

For me, the earlier stories of Akutagawa proved more interesting. Rashōmon, which provided the title for Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, is followed by In A Bamboo Grove, the story upon which the film was based. The Nose, a comic tale of vanity, is followed by the great Dragon: A Potter’s Tale, which in turn is followed by the wonderful, albeit predictable, Hell Screen, a story about an artist who requires to see his subject matter so that he may capture it on canvas; thus, when commissioned to paint Hell, he sets about having his vision of Hell recreated before him so that he may recreate it with measured strokes.

Of the later stories there are few standouts, although that may just be my preference for stories set in a highly romanticised medieval Japan than in a period (the 1920s) in which I know little of the nation. The stereotypical legends of samurai, peasants, and overlords sit far more comfortably with me than a beautiful history deeply influenced by western imports. One of the better stories is Horse Legs, a Kafkaesque tale in which a Japanese Gregor Samsa wakes to find that he has equine legs, complete with hooves, and there follows comic situations as he attempts to hide his secret from everyone, notably the wife whom he shares his bed. The Writer’s Craft was another story that sat well with me, a tale about how the appreciation of an author’s work is not determined by the time put in but by how others interpret it within their own lives.

The collection gathers together a blend of Akutagawa’s well known short pieces in addition to a bunch of stories translated to English for the first time. While some of these freshly translated stories appealed, I couldn’t help feel it was a cynical attempt to force a few new tales on those already initiated with the author’s work: one story, for example, is just a fragment of a longer unfinished piece.

Akutagawa’s writing, at least in translation, is certainly vibrant and his stories come at you from all manner of narrators, the most common seeming to be told from the point of view of someone who witnessed the events but was not integral to the plot. Later stories, such as The Life Of A Stupid Man, show interesting attempts at style but the narrative (a series of numbered paragraphs with individual titles) is so personal that it would seem to be only of interest to friends and family of the author, in addition to Akutagawa scholars.

All in, this book serves to give me an introduction to the author and, with the extensive footnotes, a further understanding of different periods in Japan’s history. But, given my indifference to many of the stories, especially Akutagawa’s more personal pieces, I doubt I’ll go in search of his previously translated works, although the occasional retelling of previous Japanese tales may be enough to pique my interest in others of a similar nature.