Sunday 20 September 2009

Self Portraits














'Self Portraits' is a collection of eighteen semi autobiographical stories by Osamu Dazai, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy, who also provides a great introduction and biographical notes at the start of each of these stories. Dazai is probably best known for his two novels 'No Longer Human' 1948 and 'The Setting Sun' 1947. Dazai is described as the enfant terrible of Japanese Literature, who had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the literary establishment, although he found a mentor in Masuji Ibuse, and had forays with the Communist Party, (illegal in his day). This year is the centenary of Dazai's birth, Osamu Dazai being a pen name, he was actually born Tsushima Shuji, in 1909, into a large, wealthy farming family, but from these stories you get the impression that from an early age he found it difficult to fit in. His father died when he was fourteen, and the death of Akutagawa in 1927 affected him dramatically, he began to neglect his high school studies, spending more time at his story writing. In 'My Elder Brothers', Dazai gives us a glimpse of his childhood with his brothers, their attempts at starting a literary magazine, Bunji, the eldest son, became head of the family after the death of their father, and would control Dazai's financial allowance from the family, which Dazai would usually squander away on booze. Two of Dazai's brother's died early, Reiji died of septicemia and Keiji died of tuberculosis. Dazai returns to his relationship with Bunji in the later story 'Garden', when he had to return to the family home, after the house where he was staying in Kofu was bombed.

Covering the major events in Dazai's life, marriage, betrayals, suicide attempts, evacuation from Tokyo during the bombing raids, the house in Kofu where he and his family was staying, that was hit by a bomb, (Early Light), his plan of burying everyday necessities in the garden proved to be a good plan. It also includes pieces on everyday foibles and experiences, like his fear of dogs, and an account of being invited back to a gathering in his home town, which turned into a drunken disaster. 'Merry Christmas' written in 1946 is a moving story of a chance encounter of bumping into the daughter of woman he used to know, Dazai names his character as 'Kasai'. He relates how during the war it was difficult to find booze and that somehow the girls mother always managed to have something to offer him whenever he called. He used to sit with her and get drunk, the daughter seems evasive when Kasai asks after her mother, he decides that he wants to pay her a visit, and when they reach her apartment he calls out her name. The daughter finally tells Kasai that her mother died in the air raids in Hiroshima, and that before she died she cried out his name.
 
One of the larger pieces is 'One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji', the same name as Hokusai's famous series of pictures. It mainly covers the period when Dazai stayed at Tenka Chaya, a tea house near Mt Fuji, in a series of vignettes Dazai offers up moments when the mountain appeared to him, sitting up all night drinking sake, after a 'certain persons' shocking confession, at dawn he went to relieve himself, and through the mesh covering the window he saw a pure white Fuji, standing in the dark little room, stroking the mesh screen and weeping with despair, he recounts. Also after drinking with a group of students, walking home he looses his coin purse, irrate at first, Fuji soon works it's magic on him, and calmly he retraces his steps and finds his purse.

At the beginning of the short piece 'I Can Speak' there's a little question that seemed to stick with me as soon as I had read it, Dazai, or his character asks, 'What is life-the struggle to surrender?, The endurance of misery?', particularly the first bit ' - the struggle to surrender', it seems to capture, for me anyway, how Dazai may have lived his life which is caught in this collection. Dazai is one of those writers that manages to write down any aspect of life's experience and imbue it with something utterly original, through his own struggling, he seems to point to just how important individuality is, no experience is wasted in his writing, as indeed it should be in life.

Recently Aomori Art Museum held an exhibition, celebrating the centenary of Dazai's birth, download the pdf of the handbill to see some examples of Dazai's painting. Also a film to watch out for is 'Villon's Wife' based on one of his short stories, starring Asano Tadanobu and Matsu Takako, you can see a trailer at the film's website.

Contents of Self Portraits -


My Elder Brothers
Train
Female
Seascape with Figures in Gold
No Kidding
A Promise Fulfilled
One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji
I Can Speak
A Little Beauty
Canis Familiaris
Thinking of Zenzo
Eight Scenes from Tokyo
Early Light
Garden
Two Little Words
Merry Christmas
Handsome Devils and Cigarettes
Cherries

Monday 7 September 2009

Beyond the Curve














Trying to get over just how good the 'The Word Book' is, I felt that I wanted to keep going with short story collections, so I thought I'd go with Kobo Abe's 'Beyond the Curve', which includes stories that span from 1951-1966, so covering mainly stories from his earlier output. Abe is well known for his collaboration with film director Hiroshi Teshigahara, who adapted four of Abe's novels. This collection has twelve short stories, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, with illustrations by Shiro Tsujimura, and published by Kodansha International in 1991.

Abe is an author that I feel very comfortable to read, maybe I also mean reliable, the abstract and metaphoric in his writing has always fascinated me. I've not read all of his books yet, but I can't recall any that have let me down or failed to 'deliver'. I think I'm deliberately not reading all of his books in order to leave me something of his to read later on. Starting with, 'The Irrelevant Death', where a man returns to his apartment to find a corpse splayed out on his living room floor. Abe drops us in the middle of the conundrum, is this man someone he knows?, how did he get here?, was he murdered here or did the murderer dump him here?, maybe he's being passed from apartment to apartment, around the block. As the man begins to question his links with the deceased, Abe's fascination with a Kafka like enquiry into innocence and guilt, the proof of innocence, incrimination by association, the man hatches a plan to move the body to another apartment, but will it work?.
 
'Dendrocacalia' is the the story of a man named Common, who after suffering a seizure slowly starts transforming into a plant. He receives an invitation card from the mysterious K, who he thinks could possibly be an ex-girlfriend. After arriving at the coffee shop where they are to meet, the only person to arrive is a suspicious looking man. Common doesn't wait around to talk to him and runs away with the man in pursuit, after loosing the man, Common turns to the local library to do some research into his condition. The assistant at the library miraculously turns out to be the man that gave chase, and Common resigns to the fact that he won't be able to escape him, the man hands Common some books, including Dante's Divine Comedy and then Common consults various figures from Greek mythology, Hyacinth, Syrinx, Clytie, maybe his condition is punishment of some wrong doing that he had committed in the past but he can't think of anything. Time passes and Common receives another letter, this time from the Director of the Botanical Gardens informing him that he should read Timiryazev's book 'Life of Plants', which states that scientifically speaking humans and plants are basically the same, and he offers Common, (or by now as he is known Mr Dendrocacalia), a place in their exhibition as day by day Commons transformation is nearing its completion. Common after some consideration, after being told that he is becoming a sort after specimen, and thinking about his own welfare takes him up on his offer.
 
Another element that reappears through Abe's writing is his use of science fiction, but not in an explicit science fantasy way, but uses to illustrate the absurdity of the age that we live in, and I guess you could add to this the absurdity of the planet we live on too!, he also exposes the fact that human beings have quite a small understanding of what makes the universe tick. In 'The Special Envoy' Professor Jumpei Nara is delivering a talk on the 'Outlook for the Space Age' to a group of uninterested students, so uninterested that they walk out of the hall, a man approaches the professor and informs him that he is indeed a Martian, the professor believes that he's just a madman, but carries on listening to the man. The man continues to tell the professor that he is looking for someone to help accomplish his mission, as they want to start constructing landing stations on Earth. He needs someone from Earth to return to Mars with him on a fact finding mission, and then submit their report to the appropriate authorities back on Earth. The man tells how dangerous it has been for Martians in the past to make contact with people from Earth, many of their kind get dragged to insane asylums. After a while Professor Nara's temper caves in, pushing the man aside runs away and phones for the police who come ten minutes later, and take him away. Nara is left thinking, was he or wasn't he really a Martian?.

Characters in these stories seem to be in search of some concrete evidence of existence, be it a name, or an identity. Or some irrefutable piece of reason that they can fall back upon to prove their purpose or existence. Abe seems to return to the theme of identity throughout his books, questioning what it is, why do we need it?, what would the world be without it. The experimentation in his fictions always succeeds in pulling me into the world as seen by his characters, a place I'll no doubt return to.
 
The stories in Beyond The Curve -
 
An Irrelevant Death
The Crime of S.Karma
Dendrocalia
The Life of A Poet
Record of a Transformation
Intruders
Noah's Ark
The Special Envoy
Beguiled
The Bet
The Dream Soldier
Beyond The Curve


Friday 4 September 2009

The Word Book






 


 
 
 


After starting this blog I've come to realize just how much Japanese literature, (considering the twentieth century alone), there is yet to be translated. So it's great to learn that the Dalkey Archive is adding Mieko Kanai's, The Word Book to the list in their Japanese Literature Series. It's a collection of twelve short stories, originally published in Japan in 1979 under the title 'Tangoshu' by Chikuma Shobo, and is translated by Paul McCarthy. In Japan, Mieko Kanai has published collections of short stories, novels, and has won numerous awards for her poetry, this is her first collection to appear in English.

Mieko Kanai has a detached dream like quality to her prose, but retains a certain exactness to her writing, through these stories she presents an array of characters that seem to be lost in memory. Many of the stories feature memories from childhood, her narratives mingle real events in the character's lives, with recollections, seen or remembered again by the character as an adult, some of the characters here seem to be in a locked groove, repeating or re-enacting scenes or memories from childhood, in a way that sometimes resembles a Kafka like world, it sometimes feels that there is a distant nihilism in her writing. These stories portray lives, lived out as a reflection of incidents in the past or the reflection of their memory. Mieko Kanai has an unnerving ability to dislodge notions of time, memory, dream, her narratives captivate the reader, Kanai can pick up a theme and circle over it, and not waste a single word. Another disorientating aspect about this collection, that gives the whole a unifying feel, is that the character's are rarely named, many of the stories being depictions of family relationships, so when the character's refer to one another it's just, mother, father, brother or sister. In the other stories, characters are distinguished by being referred to as, her or he. I found this to be a really interesting element, and creates a great feeling of intimacy with the characters. In fact the only names here are the names of other authors; Mishima, Yoshioka Minoru, Jun Ishikawa , and also Von Geczy and Leo Reisman , whose songs feature in the story 'The Rose Tango', which tells the story of a violinist of a small band, who is witness to a fight caused when a jealous gangster punches a man for dancing with his girl. But none of the stories are solely about these people. Mieko Kanai, who herself features in the story 'The Voice', a story about an author, (Kanai?), who receives strange, sometimes hostile phone calls from a young aspiring writer/reader, who foresees that Kanai will write a story featuring the phone call they are having, another story that explores the world of authorship.

The last three stories, (Kitchen Plays, Picnic, and The Voice Of Spring), seem to have connecting elements to them, again memories from childhood, a mother's instruction to buy a litre of milk, spindle-tree hedges, train journeys, a visit to a dilapidated basement theatre, milk being spilt, the possibility of a father's infidelity. Kanai mixes the narratives to the degree that it's uncertain to who is actually narrating the story, the father?, the son?. The mirror like labyrinthine quality to these stories is spellbinding, 'Windows', starts with a meditation on authorship, the author (Kanai?) sitting contemplating writing a story on plants, but gets distracted by objections made by the character she is about to create, the character questions the author's knowledge of the character, but slowly the character's story emerges, a memory from childhood, a building, a weapons depot, and a first experience with a camera, a photo album from father with pictures of mother as a young woman, before we were married, his father tells him, the mother he never met. Photography becomes his obsession, wanting to photograph every second, every hour. He returns to the weapon depot building of his youth to photograph it everyday, to witness it slowly deteriorate into a ruin, but then come to be dissatisfied with what a camera can capture, he dreams of the single photograph, which catches the stopping of the instants, separate from time's continuous progression.

The brilliance of this collection completely caught me off guard, explorations of relationships lost, meditations on authorship, examination of events, that skip from dream, to memory, from childhood to adulthood, and pass from generation to generation, memories that seem to hover and exist in some other ethereal realm. I'm already looking forward to another collection.


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