The Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse

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The Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (1966, translated-1969- from the Japanese by John Bester, 298 pages)

I am very happy that Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 4 has begun.    This will be my second year participating in this wonderfully managed challenge.   There is a very good list of recommended books on the challenge blog.     When I signed up for  the challenge in July 2009 I planned to just read one Japanese novel to complete the requirements.    I have now posted on 60 Japanese literary works This includes everything from novels by Nobel Prize winners,  then century poetry, historical novels, great books about WWII and some books that may never be classics but were a lot of fun.   In reading the Japanese novel in translation we have the possible advantage in that probably only the best and potentially best selling ones are translated so we already have a filtering process in place before we begin to select books.

Masuji Ibuse  was born in Hiroshimi and, like Oe studied French literature and also had a deep interest in the work of Tolstoy.    He was born 1898 and died 1993.   During WWII he served in Singapore in the Japanese Army.   His primary duty as writer for the Singapore newspaper The Straights Times.  He wrote articles in which he  depicted the occupation of the city by the Japanese as very preferable for the people to British rule via a diary he published.   As time went on he stopped publishing his diary as he saw no point to doing it under military supervision.   He also gave lectures on Japanese culture at a Singapore University.    He was an unwilling inductee into the Japanese army and he showed his distaste for military life in his  writings  after the war.   He did not directly experience the blast as he was in Singapore on August 6, 1845.   He never was in combat  (I have noticed many Japanese novelists were devoted readers of western literature.)    In his early twenties he began to publish short stories in literary journals.        He became famous as a writer for his only major work, Black Rain.

Black Rain is set in Hiroshima Japan from  August 4 to August 15, 1946.    On August 6 history was made when an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima.    Black Rain centers on a woman who lived with her family in Hiroshima but was far enough from the bomb explosion to survive.    A couple of days before the explosion the Americans dropped leaflets over the area saying they had a big surprise in the works for Hiroshima.    The war weary  residents just shrugged it off.    

Everyone knew something terrible had happened.   People knew the Americans had a weapon of a new magnitude but they were not sure how it worked.    They knew the bomb did not just kill with its blast but left survivors with horrible injuries and a new illness the doctors did not understand.    We travel with the woman as she goes in search for her relatives.    Everywhere she sees the remains of the dead and the soon to be walking dead.     Black Rain beautifully describes horrors.    The book also makes use of fictional diaries, journals and conversations as well as first person and third party narration.    After the bomb all sorts of rumors go through the city as people try to figure out what the Americans dropped on them.    When it rained shortly after the blast the rain came down black and many felt it was an oil bomb to set the city up for fire bombing.    Somehow everyone believed that if the Americans and their much feared potential fellow invaders, the Russians (looking for revenge for the Russo-Japanese  War) took over Japan they had plans to castrate all the male citizens.   (Maybe Ibuse was attuned to this sort of rumor from his work in the propaganda ministry.)    The Japanese had even been told that the Americans were going to send in specially trained "Rape Squads" of black soldiers.    Ibuse does a masterful job of capturing the feel of the first few days after the bomb.   After the bomb attack for nearly the first time many Japanese soldiers begin to refuse to follow orders.     Some people behaved very courageously after the attack and did all they could to help the victims.    

Ibuse's account is harrowing  and beautiful. I could not help but read on and on.  There is no sense in which he blames the Americans for what happened.    (I agree with the standard opinion that the bombing saved millions of lives on both sides and for sure the Japanese would have carpet bombed Australia, The Philippines and The USA with atomic bombs had they been the first to develop them.)     There is no great screaming out of horrors in the book.   If anything it is understated as the people walking through the city do not know how many were killed they just see local destruction.  

As I read Black Rain I could not help but hope there will not be a need to write a similar book after another world war.   As I thought that I began to wonder who would be left  to write it.   Black Rain was written 21 years after the first atomic bomb.    I wondered how long it would be after a world war with full use of nuclear weapons before a beautiful book about it could be written, published and one day blogged about.   

Kenzaburo Oe has written a wonderful non-fiction book about the bombing, Hiroshima Notes.   I have previously posted on a short story by Ibuse, "Crazy Iris".    Kenzaburo Oe admired this story so highly that he made it the lead work in his collection of short stories about the atomic aftermath, Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. 

I recommend this book without reservation and see it as must reading for anyone interested in the literary treatment of WWII from the Japanese point of view.   I must point out that the print is very small and if you have a hard time with small print you will have issues with this book.    I hate to say that as it is a wonderful work of art and it is sad some may miss out on the chance to read it.

Mel u

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima

Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima (1970, 420 pages, translated by Michael Gallagher)

I am becoming increasingly convinced that one of the defining characteristics of the Japanese novel  is an assumption that the audience for the novels will be familiar with the conventions of various types of Japanese theater.   One of the first Japanese novels I read was Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with  the Sea.    If you merely look at this as a purely European novel the plot line is cliched and the characters are not fully developed.    When I stepped back and came to see this as a novel that assumes the ritualized and representational features of classical Japanese theater I was able to see the brilliance in the work.     This knowledge is not something arcane that only professors would understand , it is (or maybe better said now was) part of the common culture of the Japanese novel reader. 

    Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970)   is on all lists of the best five Japanese novelists.   One of the themes of his work is the destruction of traditional Japanese culture through the defeat in WWII and the subsequent total adoption of the values of consumerism by most Japanese.    Mishima felt deeply enough about his views to commit ritual suicide in support of them.      


Runaway Horses is the second work in Mishima's tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility.    The Sea of Fertility is unified by having a common lead character in each of the four works, Shigekuni Honda.    When Honda is first introduced he is a law student and at the end he is a distinguished retired judge.   In each novel the plot action centers on a young man that Honda believe to be the reincarnation of a school friend of his.    


Not long ago I was browsing in Fully Booked, a book store with branches all over Manila.    I was happy to see they had a lot of books by Yukio Mishima, one of the Japanese novelists I for sure want to get to know better.      I guess i should have looked more carefully at the book before I bought book two in The Sea of Fertility before book one.      I set the book to the side thinking I will go back and buy book one, Spring Snow.    As luck would have it, book one is not available anywhere in Manila I can find.   I am running very low on unread Japanese  novels on my shelves so after researching the over all plot of the tetralogy I decided to read it out of order though I will not post much on it until I read the first part at least.    I am planning for sure to read all of it this year, if possible.   


I am noticing a common theme in the works of Mishima.   In his works young idealistic men in their teens or early twenties rebel, often violently, against what they see as corrupt older men who have obtained power through a betrayal of the ideals they espouse but no longer embody.    He also uses this as a way of showing the general falling away of Japanese society from its core values   through an over attachment to the material values of the west. (This is a common theme in the post war Japanese novel.)   This is exactly what happens in Runaway Horses.     I liked Runaway Horses a lot.    The story  takes place in 1932 and 1933 and involves a plot against the government, though not against the Emperor, by a group of young men.  The planning of the plot is told in a very exciting way.   There is a lot to be learned about pre-WWII Japanese society from this book.  


I would really suggest that one read the first part of this tetralogy before the second and I will do a longer post once I have read part one, Spring Snow .    


Mel u

Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale by Nagai Kafu

Rivalry:   A Geisha's Tale by Nagai Kafu (1918, trans. by Stephen Synder 2007, 164 page)

Nagai Kafu (1879 to 1959-real name Nagai Sokichi) wrote about the world he lived in and loved, Geisha girls, exotic dancers, and prostitutes.    Maybe he is not among the immortals of Japanese literature of his period.     He was not an man of extreme culture and erudition like Ryunosuke Akutagawa .     He did not write a dozen novels  like Junichio Tanizaki that belong in the canon.     His face did not wind up on Japanese currency like Natsume Sosoki but he lived out the adage that one should write about what you know and love.    Here is a quotation from the  Japan Times in which Kafu kind of sums up his life:  "in Tokyo and even in the Occident, I have known almost no society except that of courtesans."      

Kafu attended a university but did not graduate, he studied French Literature as so many Japanese writers have.    He began to sell his short stories at age 19.    In 1903 his family sent him to Tacoma Washington (USA) to stay with family friends in hopes he would be turned away from his obsession with the pleasure quarters of Tokyo.    From there, I do not know why or how, he ended up in college in Kalamazoo Michigan (USA).    He then worked briefly for a Japanese bank in New York City.      While in the USA his only real interest was touring as many brothels and disreputable bars as he could.       Given the choice between living in a fancy area of New York City and a very poor area he choose the poor area to be close to the cheapest brothels.   Back in Japan he had two marriages that lasted less than a year each, lived for a while in a Geisha house, went to France for a year or so and published a collection of short stories on his trip to the USA and one on his trip to France.    Both of these collections were banned in Japan shortly after publication as they focused on the world Kafu knew and loved, brothels, bars and the poor side of town.    I think he wrote the only Japanese account of a visit to cheap American and French brothels prior to WWI.     

Rivalry:    A Geisha's Tale is set in the pleasure quarters of Tokyo.     One of the questions often asked in discussions on Japanese literature is whether or not a geisha should be seen as a kind of prostitute.    In Rivalry:   A Geisha's Tale  they  are treated as enterprising women who take a bit of cultivation but they are seen as basically prostitutes.      There is no negative value judgement made on the women in the life.  Kafu spent as much time and money as he could in the pleasure quarters.  That and writing his stories was his life   He never married again after his two youthful marriages and had no children.    I could not help but wonder if maybe his two wives were both unable to live up to the standards of the professional women Kafu knew.    We get a good look at  the day to day business of the life of a geisha.     We see the  varying status of the women in the profession.    We see that the Geisha try to find wealthy patrons or even husbands to set them up in their own geisha or tea house.    In one very well done scene a woman who used to be part of the scene returns for a visit  to lord it over her old coworkers now that she is married to a wealthy former client.   A tea house in the world of the pleasure quarter is a place where a Geisha and a customer could go for a liaison.  Some of the lower class tea houses were also brothels.    As a geisha aged and found no patrons she would often become more or less a woman on demand prostitute.     The geisha may have been trained to create an illusion of culture and refinement but they had no delusions about what their clients ultimately wanted from them.      The pleasure quarter is a too be expected entity in a society which expected women to be virgins at marriage and men to be experienced.   Made into a movie this book would have an R or maybe even an X rating.      We also learn about the men who live off the earnings of the geisha ladies, tea house girls and dancers.    They are referred to as the "parasites of the quarter".    We also learn a bit about the theater of the time.      Geisha girls all wanted to have the most famous actors of the time as their clients.    

Rivalry:    A Geisha's Tale is a an enjoyable read with well developed characters.    It gives us an open eyed look at life in the pleasure quarters of Tokyo in the 1910s.   It does not feel like a near 100 year old novel (of course it is a brand new translation by one of the highest regarded translators  of Japanese literature.)   I would endorse it to anyone interested in older Japanese novels.    I took a quick look at the Wikipedia list of novels published in 1918.    I have read only a few of them but I am quite sure Rivalry:    A Geisha's Tale would shock many of the original readers (and authors) of these books.     I am glad I read Rivalry:    A Geisha's Tale.   I sort of think of Nagai Kafu as the Japanese literary match for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.     It it also reminded me of a work I recently read for the classics circuit, Nana by Emile Zola which was set in the pleasure quarters of 19th century Paris.     The attitudes of Zola and Kafu to the world of the demimonde are very different.     

Mel u 

The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi

The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi (1966, trans.  by Wakako Hironaka and Ann Kostant, 174 pages)

The Doctor's Wife is the best known novel of Sawako Ariyoshi (Japan, 1931 to 1984).    She is among the highest regarded female authors to emerge in Japan after WWII.    She graduated from college in 1952.   Her area of concentration was the preforming arts with a special interest in Kubuki theater.  After graduation she went to work for a publishing house and began to contribute articles to literary journals.   In 1959 she received a Rockefeller Grant to study preforming arts for a year at Sarah Lawrence College in the USA.    By 1968 she was able to devote her full efforts to writing novels, short stories and essays.   She never married or had children and died peacefully in her sleep in 1984.    

The Doctor's Wife centers on the life long conflict of the mother and the wife of Doctor Hanaoska Seishu (1760 to 1835) who was the first modern doctor to preform  breast surgery using anesthetics.     In this era of Japanese life the leading male figure in a household was dominant over all others.    Ariyoshi does a very good job in detailing for us the conflicts of the wife and mother-in-law of the household.    She portrays well their very long lasting feelings of mutual dislike and near hatred.

I found the depiction of medical practice in Japan in the early 19th century fascinating.    We get to see exactly how the business end of medical practice worked then and we see the procedures also.    The medical focus of the novel is on breast cancer.   At this time there was no way to operate on a woman with breast cancer without killing her.    Dr. Seishu had been experimenting  for a long time on animals in order to find a way to preform pain free surgery.     He made use of various mixtures of herbs and modern chemicals and had succeeded on animals numerous times.    He needed to try his procedures on a human subject.   The nature of the character of the mother in law and the wife come out wonderfully when we see them both demanding to be the first human test subject.     Ariyoshi takes us deeply into the dynamics of the household relationships.   The events that follow are really quite exciting and I will relay no more of the plot of this wonderful book.

I think what I enjoyed most about this book was seeing how medical practice worked in Japan in the early 19th century.    A doctor's office was for sure a family business.  The relationships between the two women was very well done and we get a feel for the marriage also, though this might be underdeveloped.   

I recommend The Doctor's Wife very highly.      There is a very subtle intelligence in this book.     I will soon read and post on another of her novels  The River Ki.

Mel u

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai  (1948, translated by Donald Keene, 176 pages)

Osamu Dazai (1909-1948-Japan-pen name for Shuji Tsushima) was born into a wealthy family.   He lived a life of considerable dissipation funded by his family money.   He studied French literature in college where he met Masuji Ibuse (author of Black Rain) who helped Dazai begin to get his writings published in literary journals.   He was not drafted into WWII because he had tuberculous.    No Longer Human is the second best selling Japanese novel of all time, behind Kororo by Natsume Soseki.   

No Longer Human is largely narrated as if it were the  note books of a man named Oba Yozo.    The novel has strong autobiographical elements.   Oba is virtually unable to relate to to other people in his real personality so he adopts the pose of a happy laughing all the time person.    Inside he is deeply alienated from his wealthy  father  (and all of proper society)  who is appalled by his degenerate life style centering around drinking and prostitutes    His only seeming friend is man way below him in intellect, culture and family background who is kind of his guide to the darker side of life in Tokyo.    Women find Oba very appealing.   He learns how to seek out highly nurturing and supportive women that can see that he has the potential to be a great artist if he could shape his life in another direction.      He cares nothing for them and exploits them to avoid working.   He does get in very serious trouble at one point and luck and family money get him out of trouble.   Oba is very intelligent and insightful.  In time he does begin to pursue a marginally successful career  of sorts as an artist.   He knows very well there are lots of things wrong with himself but he cannot find any reason to work to rise above his problems.      The novel is divided into three sections which cover sections of Oba's life several years apart.    No Long Human is a brilliant account of the mind of a very alienated man who is a spectator at his own life.    I will not convey the ending so as to avoid spoilers but is very well done and completely sound artistically.    I recommend this book without reservation with the observation that it is a bit (ok quite a bit) grim.   Given its extreme popularity (over 12 millions copies have been sold) I think anyone interested in the Japanese novel at some point needs to read No Longer Human 

Mel u

Silence by Shusaku Endo

Silence by Shusaku Endo (1969, trans. from the Japanese by William Johnston, 201 pages)

Shusaku Endo (1923 to 1996) is a very highly regarded post WWII Japanese novelist.    He studied French literature in college and was raised as a Catholic, a very rare thing in Japan.    There is a very good background post on Endo on In Spring it is the Dawn, which is hosting a discussion of Silence.   There are links to several very good posts that cover the thematic details and talk about the historical period the book is set in, Japan in the 1600s on that web page.   Given this I will just make a few observations on the work.   

Silence is about the horrible persecution of the early Christian Missionaries (Catholics from Portugal) in Japan by the authorities.    As the religion began to take a hold, those who had become Christians  also could be subject to horrible punishments.    To be a Christian was basically a criminal act in Japan in the 1600s.    A good bit of the book, and the current discussion on it, revolves around the courage shown by most of the missionaries and the betraying of clandestine converts by others for payment.     I was intrigued by conversations in the book concerning the relationship of Jesus to Judas.    I found the descriptions of the tortures of the Christians very well done and, as all would, I felt great admiration for those who kept their faith while being tortured.   I learned some interesting things about life in Japan in the 17th century from this book.  

As I was reading Silence I began to imagine the Japanese sending missionaries to Portugal to convert the natives there to forms of religious belief and practices current in 17th century Japan.   The Japanese missionaries might have the best of intentions (even if those who financed them had other uses in mind for their work) but they would have been met with exactly the sort of reception the Christian missionaries got in 17th century Japan, if not worse.     Leaving aside any spiritual considerations, the missionary is the tool of the colonizer in almost all cases.   A missionary in 17 century Japan, The Philippines or Brazil might and often did have wonderful intentions and did his best to help those who he tried to convert but their efforts were financed by those interested in commerce and empire building, and not in saving souls.   In many cases or even most, the missionary may have no idea why his mission is really being funded.    This use of missionaries as a colonial tool is not just a European matter.    Sometimes in reading Silence (which is in part about the seeming silence of God) I felt that there was a silence over these matters in the narrative.

Silence is a well written historical novel.    The introduction by William Johnston is very good.    I think some readers appreciate this book almost as a religious text more than as a work of art.    I am glad I read this book and think others will enjoy it also.

Mel u

Pinball, 1973 By Haruki Murakami

Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami (1980, translated by Alfred Birnbaum, 79 pages)

Pinball, 1973 is book two in a trilogy by Haruki Murakami along with Hear the Wind Sing, the first in the series and Wild Sheep Chase, the final work.    Dance, Dance,  Dance also continues the plot lines of The Rat Trilogy (the rat is a friend and sometimes business partner of the central  character, Buko, who is the narrator).     Pinball, 1973 is Murakami's  (1949-) second novel.    It has long been out of print in English translation.   Sometimes you can find a used copy for sale on Amazon (they have some now for $25.00 USA).      Murakami has stated that he will not allow Pinball or Hear the Wind Sing to be republished in English as he considered these works to be inferior to his later novels.    I wanted to read Pinball but did not want to pay the price for this short work.   I was  happy when a very considerate commentator posted link to a  pdf file of the work.

Pinball, 1973 is about a man recently out of college, Buko,  and in love with the freedom of doing what he wants to do and running a small translation business with his friend who he calls, The Rat.    The two friends never occupy the same narrative space in the book and their disconnectedness is one of the themes of the work.   The main narrator lives with twin teenage girls who he feeds and houses.   The girls are almost like pets that provide sexual pleasure.   They lack the intellectual depth to be real friends with  Buko but they help him fight away his loneliness.    There is a big hole in the center of the life of Buko that was created by the suicide of his girl friend.   In order to pass the time and to drive his mind as close as he can get it to an empty space, Buko spends a huge amount of time playing pinball at a nearby arcade and becomes the high scorer on one of the machines (a big deal in the world of pinball!).    Like later  better Murakami works there are references to wells, cats and a bar plays a big part.   (Yes one must also say references to teen age girls are part of his standard plots also.)   Buko get involved in a mystery concerning pinball machines.   (The novel takes place before even the  Pacman game was invented-1980-and pinball machines were much bigger then.)   As Buko points out, all of the machines have numerous images of very large breasted women on them.   I did learn a good bit about how the pinball business worked in Japan in the 1970s.

If you really like Murakami (as I do) and want to eventually read all his novels then Pinball, 1973 is worth the time it takes to read it.  The teen age twins seem added just to play into a male fantasy and sell some books.   The plot like did not pull me in like Wild Sheep Chase did (This is not meant in criticism, Marukumi was just getting started and second rate Murakami beats most other authors best works any way!).     It is fun to see a great writer's talent develop.

      you can read it here

A link to some of my other post on Japanese works can be found here   

Mel u

Vita Sexualis by Ogai Mori-A Leading Meiji Period Novelist

Vita Sexualis by Ogai Mori (1909, trans.  by Kazuji Ninomiya and Sanford Goldstein, 154 pages)

Ogai Mori (1862 to 1922) was born into a privileged family in the southern Japan.   His family had long had the been by right of inheritance physicians to the daimyo (a feudal samurai lord) of the region.    As the oldest son of the family, Mori as expected graduated from Medical School.   In his younger days he studied Confucian texts to supplement his schooling and insure a grounding in the classics.    After graduation he enrolled in the Japanese Imperial Army.   The army sent him to Germany to pursue advanced medical training and while there he developed a passion for European literature.     Upon return to Japan he was given a high ranking position in the army medical corps.   While pursuing his military career he started at his own expense a literary journal in the pages of which Japanese literary criticism first began.   In time he  was promoted to the position of Surgeon General of the Japanese Imperial Army.   While in the army he served in Manchuria and Taiwan during periods of combat.   As a hobby he pursued his writings, the most famous of which is The Wild Geese.

Vita Sexualis is considered an autobiographical novel of the sexual development of Mori.   It was considered so daring at the time that it was banned three weeks after its initial publication and Mori drew an official reprimand from his military superiors.   The book is narrated as if one writer was presenting the manuscript of a second one.     In a very good introduction to the book, Sanford Goldstein, gives us a very interesting account of the place of erotically explicit literature in the literary culture of Japan of the period.   Vita Sexualis is in no sense at all a an explicit book but it does talk in an open way about homosexual activity (including rape) in Japanese all male boarding schools which were attended by most elite Japanese of the time.   The book is told sort of one year at a time starting with age six and ending at age twenty one.    The narrator ends up in medical school just like Mori did.   We see him learning about self gratification from his peers up to his first sexual encounter which was with  a prostitute.   This  is portrayed as a normal right of male passage at the time.  I thing the suggestion that elite Japanese males commonly visited prostitutes and tea houses  of bad repute is   probably one of the reasons the top functionaries of the Imperial Army did not like his book.   We also see the role of  geisha in the life of the Japanese elite.   There is a lot of blurring of the line between prostitutes and gieshas in Japanese novels.       Given time it was expected that gieshas would provide sexual services and also cultural instruction to young elite males.   For sure this is the depiction of that aspect of Japanese life is shown in Vita Sexualis.   I think maybe the real  reason his book was banned as he revealed to much "boy's club" information about life among the elite in Japan.


I enjoyed this book.   It is well written by an obviously very cultivated and highly intelligent man.   It gives us an interesting look at the upbringing of elite males in Japan in the early part of the 20th century.   One must think that the elite males who were the classmates of the main character in 1904 (when they were about 20) lead Japan into war  thirty years later and we have to wonder if the values of classical Japan are already being shown as eroding in this 1904 work.    


I recommend this book for any one very into the Japanese novel  or anyone interested in the culture of early 20th century Japan.  It is also a book those interested in seeing an open treatment of homosexuality in Japanese literature will enjoy.    For those new to the Japanese novel I would recommend that they read post WWII books first then after you have read most of the major post WWII authors you will get more from this book.


Mel u
Just for fun I looked at the Wikipedia article on literature in 1909 (a purely Euro-centric list in all years it seems) and Vita Sexualis deserves a place as least as well as 80 percent of the selections on their do.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami (1982, trans. from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum, 352 pages)

A Wild Sheep Chase is the eighth book by Haruki Murakami  (1949) that I have now read.   Obviously I like and admire his work a lot.    It is the third book in what is called The Rat Trilogy which begins with Pinball which was  followed by Hear the Wind Sing (both of which are sadly out of print-there is chatter they are coming back in print soon-they can be found on Amazon.com at times).   Dance, Dance, Dance which came out in 1988 is sort of a continuation of the plot lines of the Rat Trilogy.

I really enjoyed this book.    It is just flat out a lot of fun.   It was recently the subject of discussion and review by several readers on a read along hosted by In the Spring it is The Dawn.   The posters there covered some of the deeper themes of the book so I will just talk briefly about the book.

The book is kind of a take off of the detective story complete with a visit from a sinister stranger who sends our unnamed central character on a quest for a mysterious wild sheep.    Along the way he meets and has a romance with a prostitute with beautiful ears.    We also learn a lot about the history of sheep in Japan which I found very interesting.     Our hero meets a number of strange and interesting characters.

   There are hints at an evocation of Japanese animism  in the use of the sheep imagery but Murakami does not take it too seriously and neither should we.  There are references to untoward human-sheep encounters so we know it is OK just to enjoy the book without a great deal of thought as to the symbolic meaning of the sheep.     There are many references to American cultural icons.   

I liked A Wild Sheep Chase a really lot as do almost all who post on it.     If you are just getting into the Japanese novel or looking for a first work to read by Murakami I would suggest either After Dark or Norwegian Wood.   

A link to some of my other Japanese reviews can be found here

Mel u

On Parole by Akira Yoshimura

On Parole by Akira Yoshimura (1988, 254 pages, trans. from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, 1999)

This is the second work by Akira Yoshimura (1927 to 2006-Tokyo) that I have read.   I read back in  2009 his One Man's Justice about the  life in post World War II Japan of an Imperial Soldier who served time as a war criminal for executing an American POW after the Japanese had surrendered.   Yoshimura wrote over 20 novels (sadly only three seem to have been translated) and was  president of the Japanese writer's union.   

On Parole is an extremely well done story of a man who spent 15 years in prison for murder.   The story begins with his routine in prison and  goes on to his parole.   In every way the lead character seems the model of a rational prudent hardworking man.   We are very confused as to why he wound up in prison until it is shockingly and vividly revealed to us.   I learned a good bit about how the justice system works in contemporary Japan.    We get an inside look at how prisons are run in Japan and we learn how people on parole are managed.  I also learned a lot about the chicken business in Japan after the released prisoner got a job working at a chicken ranch.   His biggest fear was that his coworkers would find out he was a released prisoner.   

I thought the portrayal of the parolee, Kikutani was really brilliant.   The scenes in the chicken and egg farm give us enough detail so we feel like we know what it was like to work there.    I really felt like I was being given a good look at the life of a humble simple man whose life was destroyed in a few crazy moments of madness.   

On Parole is a very good book, easy to follow and keeps us wondering what will happen next.   It may seem a bit of a cold book but that is in part as the character of  Kikutani seems cold on the surface.   I recommend it to anyone interested in the Japanese justice system.   I have one problem recommending this book to first time readers of Yoshimura.   On Parole is good but his One Man's Justice is great, a true master work that should be read by anyone interested in the post WWII Japanese novel.     I would suggest that one new to the Japanese novel first read One Man's Justice, then read at least 10 other Japanese novelists then go back to On Parole.    Some may find the subject matter of the book does not interest them all that much and at first I sort of felt that way but as the book went on I overcame my initial disinterest and I am very glad I did.   One of the signs of the great skill of Yoshimura is that he is able to make us feel in sympathy with people we have every reason to greatly dislike and have contempt for.   

The translator, Stephen Snyder, is a professor at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont and is one of the highest regarded translators of the Japanese novel into English.   

I am reading this book in association with the Japanese Literature 4 Challenge hosted by Dolce Bellezza.   I urge anyone who has the time to join her challenge, all you have to do is read just one book.   

Mel u

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi (1971, trans. from the Japanese by John Bester, 203 pages)

Fumiko Enchi (1905 to 1986-Tokyo) was the daughter of a famous scholar of classical Japanese literature.   She acknowledged as one of her strongest literary influence the work of Junichiro Tanizaki  which I did  see.    During a bombing raid in WWII the house of her and her husband was destroyed along with all their possessions.    She was educated at home by tutors and at 13 was reading Oscar Wilde, Edgar Alan Poe,  and classical Japanese literature.    She was very much into the reading life.

The Waiting Years took Enchi nearly eight years to write.   It is a wonderful basically flawless work of art.   The novel is set in the home of a Samurai family in late 19th century Japan.   The husband is a middle level, maybe a higher at times, government official.   The family is quite comfortable and can afford several servants but they are not among the truly rich or elite.    The novel's center is Tumo, the wife, about ten years younger than her husband.   One day the husband comes to her with some instructions for her to carry out.   He wants her to find a new maid for the household that will also serve as his concubine.    She suppresses her anger and jealousy as he explains to her it is simply that a man of his standing is expected to have at least one concubine and if he does not it casts doubts on the families financial status and looks bad for him to his peers.   There were functionaries whose served the needs of those who sought out concubines/maids and Tomo went to one of them with the money her husband had given her.    She tries to control her emotions as she imagines her husband sleeping with the various girls she interviews.   These girls were basically offered for sale by their families.   Once funds were paid for them they were more or less slaves and certainly had no right to leave their masters.   It was a bit shocking to learn that the typical age of these girls was 13 to 15.   The girls trained in household duties and most also service the sexual needs of the master of the house.   We see Tomo and the girl develop a relationship even though they have every reason to dislike and distrust each other.   It is not openly stated but the husband  seems to be very brutal in his relations with both his wife and the new maid.   

The novel covers at least 40 years in the life of the family.   In each chapter we are given a view of a different aspect of their developing lives.   Soon the husband feels a need for a second then a third concubine.   All of the women are bought as young girls and live in the household.   We see the tensions between the wife and the concubines.   One of the concubines seems to have some power over the husband and they urge her to have the wife, who has now lost her looks and is quite heavy,  displaced from the household.   

Along the way we meet their children and grandchildren.   I could not help but laugh when I found out who the real father of the children of one of the concubines really was.   We see the shifting relationships of the women over time.    We see that  the women have no power other than what ever emotional hold they have over the husband.   

   The Waiting Years is a very subtle, cerebral work that takes us deeply into the lives of the women (and the husband) in a late 19th century Samurai family.     I hope to post on another of her novels in July, Masks.  She wrote many novels all of which center on female characters trying to find away towards self-actualization in a male dominated society.   Sadly only  three of her novels have been translated into English.   I recommend this book with the only reservations that if you find Jane Austin, The Brontes, Tanizaki or George Sand boring you may have the same reaction to this book.

The translator, John Bester (1927-) is one of the foremost translators of the Japanese novel into English-having translated over a dozen works.   He is a graduate of the London School of African and Oriental Studies.   (From now on I will try to post a bit about the translators of the works I read.)

Mel U

Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami

Japanese Literature 4

Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami (1980, trans.  from the Japanese, 1985 by Stephen Synder, 392 pages)

Ryu Murakami (1952-not related to Haruki Murakami) has played in a rock band and had his own talk show on Japanese TV.    He is best known for several novels that depict alienated people in their teens and twenties from the darker side of life in Tokyo.    Many have the image of the Japanese novel as depicting a world of extreme refinement and high culture in which hours are spent talking about the color patterns in a favorite kimono, the old days before WWII, the nuances of puppet theater and family ties that go back a thousand years.   There are a lot of beautiful wonderful novels that do just that in a masterful way.    If a man in one of these books has an extra-marital encounter it is with a geisha of the highest standing.   In Coin Locker Babies it is with an unknown woman in an alley with no names exchanged while they are observed by the denizens of Toxic Town who yell out their comments on the looks of the woman.   A lot of people have read some of the novels of Natsuo Kirino such as Real World, Out or Grotesque that depict live among those left out by the prosperity of contemporary Japan.   Many say they find the world depicted in her novels almost too hard to take at times.   Well, life in her works is High Tea at the Peninsula Hotel Tokyo in comparison to life in the world of Coin Locker Babies.     Coin Locker Babies has one of the most jarring attention grabbing first lines I have read in a while.   I think some people might be so offended by it (either because they find it offensive or because they will see it as basically cheap sensationalism) that they will stop reading the novel.   I had to read it three times to be sure I was getting it right in my mind!  


The  two male central characters were left in a coin locker in a transit station in Tokyo by their mother shortly after their birth.   They spend their growing up years in an orphanage and with a series of foster parents.   As they get older their thinking becomes dominated by a desire to get revenge on the mother who abandoned them.  From there they move on to trying to figure out how to destroy all of Tokyo.    Along the way to find their mother the boys have a lot of adventures.   One services the sexual needs of other males in Toxic Town and becomes a champion pole vaulter.   One becomes a well known rock star.   They each fall in love.    All sorts of sexual encounters are described (expect one between two people who care about each other), every body is corrupt, really ugly looking, crazy,  perverted  etc.    One of the boys falls in love with a woman who keeps a two meter alligator as a pet in her small apartment that she has turned into a swamp.   There is unpredictable violence everywhere.

This is a funny book.   It is not high culture and some would say  it is shock literature that you read just to see what crazy thing will happen next.      It does seem written for readers who need constant action and stimulation.   I enjoyed this book.   There is a dark beauty in the world in depicts.   It has a lot to say about the life of people who do not quite fit in perfectly with society.   There are deep themes in this work.

I liked this book.   It is kind of escapist reading in part. Some will see it as not worth their time as there are much better Japanese authors including one who shares Ryu's last name.     I  would endorse it  for those like a wild ride and can shrug off  some scenes that would make a faithful movie of the book X rated and some real violence and harsh treatment of women.  I will note personally that I was annoyed  by references in the novel to women from the Philippines as all being prostitutes (the book uses another word).   I will read other books by Ryu Murakami but I do not really suggest it for someone just getting into the Japanese novel.   If you want a look at the dark side of modern Japan read the works of Kirino first.

I most note the print is very small.  I know small print saves publishers money but I may avoid other books by  the publisher, Kodansha International, as they all seem to have quite small print.

Mel u

Fires On The Plain by Shohei Ooka

Fires On The Plain by Shohei Ooka (1951, translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris, 1957, 246 pages)

Shohei Ooka (1909 to 1988-Tokyo) is know for one  famous book, Fires On The Plain.   He was one of the first Japanese authors to write fiction based on the Japanese experience in WWII.   Ooka was a French scholar and translator.    He translated The Red and the Black and  The Charter House of Parma both by Stendhal into Japanese.   In January of 1944 he was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army and after a brief training was sent to the southern Philippines to fight the Americans and Filipino resistance forces.   In January 1945 he became a prisoner of war of the Americans.

I decided I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw it was about a Japanese soldier's experience in the Philippines in WWII.    A few members of my family still have living memories of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.    

Fires in the Plains is the narrative of Private Tumura.    At the start of the story Tumura has a respiratory illness and is told to leave his company and go a field hospital.    One thing I learned in this novel was just how little regard the Japanese Army officers and leaders had for their men.   If you went to a hospital you had to bring with you enough food to hold you for the projected time of your treatment.   You had to find the food somehow in the countryside.    If you had no food on arrival or were expected not to recover you were not admitted to the hospital.     Tumura has no food and in the eyes of the doctors will not recover so he is denied admission.      Tumura returns to his unit.   His captain, as was the custom, tells him he does not want him in the unit any more as he is ill.   He gives him a grenade to kill himself if he wants and suggests he try to make his way to the coast to see if he can find a ship to take him home.    Tumura, a big city boy, proceeds through the lush and terrifying to him  jungles of the southern Philippines.   He sees  fires in the distance  and he tries to decide if they are signal fires from resistance units or just cooking fires.    As the book proceeds he meets other Japanese soldiers that no longer are attached to a unit.   Some are deserters and some are,  like him, cast outs.    We see his brilliantly depicted descent into madness.    The western media image of the Japanese soldier in WWII is a maniac who cares nothing for his own survival and wants only to die in service to his Imperial God.   Ooka succeeds well in showing that there were many sorts of men in the Japanese army.    Some had been reduced to savages by the war and some carried Stendhal's The Red and the Black  in their rucksack.    The real artistry of this book comes through in showing us a man can be both sorts of persons at the same time.   I will not tell how the book ends but it is very interesting and well done.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in seeing the war through the eyes of a Japanese soldier.   I would say it is near must reading for anyone like myself interested in increasing their understanding of WWII in the Philippines.    However, if someone wants to read just one or a first novel told from the point of view of a Japanese soldier in WWII  then I recommend One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura instead.  

I am very happy Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 4 has begun.

Here is a link to some of my  other reviews of Japanese literature

Mel u