The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami - 2005. - translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell - 2016

The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami- 2005.  - translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin  Powell - 2016

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 

This is my 14th year as a participant in The Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Docle Belleza.  Through this I discovered hithertofore unknown to me writers whom I have added to my read all I can lists.  

The requirements of The Challenge, explained in The Website, are simple. Read one book written by a Japanese author and post a link to your comments on the Website.  The Japanese Literature Challenge opened up a fantastic Multi-Dimensional area of literature to me.  You can also meet others who share your interests and perhaps expand the reach of your website.

I have previously read and posted upon two novels by Hiromi Kawakami, Prade and Strange Weather in Tokyo.

In July of 2021  I read Hiromi Kawakami’s delightful novel Strange Weather in Tokyo.   Strange Weather in Tokyo centers on the very slowly developing relationship between a single woman in her late thirties,Tsukiko, and one of her former high school teachers, Sensei,at least thirty years her senior. They run into each other in a bar by accident.  They have frequent unarranged meet ups at the bar, which serves great food along with Saki and beer. She assumes he is a widower.

As time passes a shared love of food, proximity and their history brings them into a more intimate relationship.

This is a very subtly developed story line.  Each character keeps things in reserve.  Both are deeply lonely.

The Nakano Thrift shop is not an expensive antique shop, more a place for curios.  Each of the twelve chapters is named after an item sold in the store, how it got there and who buys the item. 

The shop is owned by Mr. Nakano.  The narrative thread on the relationship between Hitomi and Takeo, the  thrift shop’s pickup and delivery driver and buyer.  Hiromi, the narrator of the novel feels an attraction for Takeo but as in Strange Weather in Tokyo it is very subdued and only partially returned.

Mr. Nakano often has lovers.  Hiromi and Takeo share an interest in spying on him, partially for his sister.  She has her own live in boyfriend.  Hiromi and Takeo begin to see each other outside the store.  He tells her he is not especially into sex.

There are lots of food references, facts about the antique business in Japan as well as interesting side characters.

The characters are very interesting.  They have issues forming intimate bonds.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s most acclaimed and successful authors. Winner of numerous prizes for her fiction, including the Akutagawa, Ito Sei, Women Writers (Joryu Bungako Sho), and Izumi Kyoka prizes, she is the author of The Nakano Thrift Shop, a Wall Street Journal Best New Fiction pick, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Manazuru, among

others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and Granta. She lives in Japan.. from Europa Publishing

 

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - 2003, translated from The Japanese by Allison Markin Powell

 

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 15- hosted by Dolce Bellezza 

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - 2003, translated from The Japanese by Allison Markin Powell

This is my 14th year as a participant in The Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Docle Belleza.  Through this I discovered hithertofore unknown to me writers whom I have added to my read all I can lists.  

The requirements of The Challenge, explained in The Website, are simple. Read one book written by a Japanese author and post a link to your comments on the Website.  The Japanese Literature Challenge opened up a fantastic Multi-Dimensional area of literature to me.  You can also meet others who share your interests and perhaps expand the reach of your website.

I have previously read and posted upon two novels by Hiromi Kawakami, Prade and Strange Weather in Tokyo.

In July of 2021  I read Hiromi Kawakami’s delightful novel Strange Weather in Tokyo.   Strange Weather in Tokyo centers on the very slowly developing relationship between a single woman in her late thirties,Tsukiko, and one of her former high school teachers, Sensei,at least thirty years her senior. They run into each other in a bar by accident.  They have frequent unarranged meet ups at the bar, which serves great food along with Saki and beer. She assumes he is a widower.

As time passes a shared love of food, proximity and their history brings them into a more intimate relationship.

This is a very subtly developed story line.  Each character keeps things in reserve.  Both are deeply lonely.

Parade is also about odd bonds formed to combat loneliness.  Here it is with traditional Japanese spirit entities which can only be seen by one person or perhaps also their close companion.  The entities have interesting personalities.

I was delighted to see a third of her novels, all translated by Allison Merkin Powell, The Ten Loves of Mishimo, on sale for $1.95.

This book is structured in a very interesting way, in ten chapters ten different women give an account of their relationship with Mishimo. Mishimo is a now a thirty something business man, single.  We do have accounts of him in his School days also.  Like her other novels, this is about people seeking an escape from loneliness.  Most of the women do sleep with him and all eat with him.  Foodies Will enjoy this.  Every woman has her own vision of him.  None of the relationships endure. The Challenge of The Ten Loves of Mishima is in trying to put together a whole character from fragments.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s most acclaimed and successful authors. Winner of numerous prizes for her fiction, including the Akutagawa, Ito Sei, Women Writers (Joryu Bungako Sho), and Izumi Kyoka prizes, she is the author of The Nakano Thrift Shop, a Wall Street Journal Best New Fiction pick, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Manazuru, among

others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and Granta. She lives in Japan.

Mel Ulm

Parade:A Folk Tale by Hiromi Kawakami - 2002 - translated from the Japanese by Alison Marken Powell - 2019

 My Post on Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

Parade:A Folk Tale by Hiromi Kawakami - 2002- translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell 2019- 

In July of this year I read Hiromi Kawakami’s delightful novel Strange Weather in Tokyo.   Strange Weather in Tokyo centers on the very slowly developing relationship between a single woman in her late thirties,Tsukiko, and one of her former high school teachers, Sensei,at least thirty years her senior. They run into each other in a bar by accident.  They have frequent unarranged meet ups at the bar, which serves great food along with Saki and beer. She assumes he is a widower.

As time passes a shared love of food, proximity and their history brings them into a more intimate relationship.

This is a very subtly developed story line.  Each character keeps things in reserve.  Both are deeply lonely.

Parade is also about odd bonds formed to combat loneliness.  Here it is with traditional Japanese spirit entities which can only be seen by one person or perhaps also their close companion.  The entities have interesting personalities.

I found Parade a lot of fun to read.  I do have one practical qualm.  The projected Reading time is 55 minutes but 32 minutes are devoted to extracts from print reviews praising her other work.  I obtained the Kindle edition on sale for $1.95, it is now back up to $6.95.  Personally i would have felt taken advantage of  had I paid that price.

HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first book, God (Kamisama), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Tread on a Snake (Hebi o fumu), and in 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban), which was an international bestseller. The book was short-listed for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize.

Hiromi Kawakami. - Two Short Stories by a Akutagana and Tanazki Award Winning Writer (Both Readable Online)

"Mogera Wogura", in The Parisian Review, Spring, 2005 (translated by Michael Emmerich)

"God Bless You, 2011" in Granta, March 10, 2012 (translated by Ted Goosen and Motoyuki Shibata)

Until yesterday I had never heard of Hiromi Kawkami, a multi-awarded Japanese writer.  I became aware of her through a recurring Facebook post by Billy O'Callaghan.  (I have posted on three of his wonderful short collections and he has kindly done a Q and A Session on The Reading Life which contains lots of great reading suggestions.). Having now read and been very intrigued by two of her stories I have added her to my read all I can list.

"Mogera Wogura" has a Hurakami Murkami Magic Realism meets Kafka feel but the execution is delightfully  orginal and for sure deeply mystified me.  Set in contemporary Tokyo, Mongera Woguras are fully intelligent and articulate underground dwelling entities (I am not sure it is accurate to call them animals) about a meter tall, covered with hair,they once were common place but now only one extended family seems left.  They pretty much live humans but underground, having spouses and in laws.  They have their own culture but the husband works in an office with humans.  In the strangest left very mysterious aspect of the story the husband collects a certain type of person, we don't really know what he is looking for, and somehow reduces them to very small size, takes them home where they return to full size.  The reasons behind this are left for us to ponder.

You can read this story here.

"God Bless You, 2011", like "Mogera Wagura", features a nonhuman person acting, speaking, and behaving very much like a human while still, in this story, remaining a very large bear.  This story is only three pages and has an interesting back story (which you can read at the link I will below provide.

The story is about a bear and a woman out for a walk that is the tentative first step in a possible relationship.  They are walking in the area of the 2011 Meltdown of a nuclear power plant after an earthquake. Both are concerned with tracking their amount of radiation exposure.  Goverment agents responsible for checking radiation levels are a bit jealous of the bear as bears can stand more radiation than humans.  The bear shows of his fishing skills when he dives in a river and gets a fish.  I will leave the rest of this really fascinating story untold.

You can read this story  here

Hiromi Kawakami 川上弘美. Official bio

Hiromi Kawakami  (1958–)  has on the one hand won accolades for her innovative style—notably in her novel Manazuru, which won the MEXT Award for the Arts in 2007 and has been translated into English, German, and French—while on the other producing a growing body of highly realistic, eminently readable stories about the lives and loves of women in contemporary Japan. She first began submitting stories to science-fiction magazines and taking on editorial work while majoring in biology at Ochanomizu University. Her literary coming of age arrived in 1994, when she won the Pascal Short Story Award for New Writers, an all-online competition, for Kamisama (God Bless You). In 1996, she received the Akutagawa Prize for her short story Hebi o fumu (Step on a Snake), which established her among the standard bearers of the Japanese literary world. In 2001 she won the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize for her best-selling novel Sensei no kaban (The Teacher's Briefcase), which was adapted for television by the writer and director Teruhiko Kuze. After the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, she created a commotion with God Bless You, 2011 (tr. 2012, in the anthology March Was Made of Yarn), a reworking of her earlier story relocated to radiation-contaminated Fukushima.

Mel u