Distant Thunder by Wahei Tatematsu

 

Noticing that another of Tatematsu Wahei's novels appears on a recent JLLP list, (Hidaka, 2002, translated by Philip Gabriel), it prompted me into a reading of Distant Thunder, originally published in Japan as Enrai in 1980, translated by Lawrence J. Howell and Hikaru Morimoto and published by Charles E.Tuttle Company in 1999. The novel was also adapted for a film directed by Kichitaro Negishi, released through ATG in 1981. Described on the cover as A Novel of Contemporary Japan, the novel is now a little over thirty years old, although it's plotting and characters still resonate on into the present day, Tatematsu passed away early in 2010, hopefully Hidaka and more of his novels and writings will be picked up in the future. As well as being a novelist Tatematsu was an environmental activist and his concerns about the environment can be read throughout Distant Thunder, as it studies a small farming community, (the Wada family in particular), whose lives are transformed after they have sold their land to developers.

Most of Distant Thunder is seen through the eyes of Mitsuo, the second youngest son of the Wada family. Mitsuo's father, Matsuzo, has sunk the majority of the money he made into his mistress's unsuccessful bar and also rents an apartment for them. Mitsuo's older brother, Tetsuo, has moved out to Tokyo leaving it just Mitsuo, his mother, Tomiko, and Matsuzo's mother living in the house. Tetsuo calls asking for money to put down on a house, but as Tetsuo left the family home Mitsuo feels Tetsuo is not entitled to any of the money. Mitsuo spends most of his time cultivating tomatoes in the family's remaining hothouse, he sells them at the lowest rate to the local supermarket and also cheaply to the housewives of the newly built apartment complex. Tomiko, his mother, works directing traffic at a construction site along with Mitsuo's friend Koji, Mitsuo is surprised when Tomiko returns from the supermarket one day, her bags full of daikon, What's the world coming to when the farmer buys vegetables from the supermarket?, Mitsuo ponders out loud. Grandma who seems to be largely ignored by Tomiko and Mitsuo is a constant source of stories on how much better things were in the old days, but on the whole her assertions seem to be proved right, and Mitsuo's resentment at the developers increases when two men appear who want to buy the land that the hothouse is on and turn it into a used car lot. Mitsuo has a one night fling with a woman, (Kaede), from the apartments who tells him that she's divorced but later her husband turns up with a warning for Mitsuo, despite this Mitsuo agrees to meet a woman, (Ayako), through omiai, (arranged marriage), Mitsuo feeling that it's time his life begins to take on a more definite shape agrees to the marriage to the relief of both sides. Ayako, at first is uncertain about the match, but seeing how hard Mitsuo works, Ayako's opinion changes. The novel follows Mitsuo as he ambles between time spent with his friend Koji, fishing in rivers full of rubbish and vomit, and time spent in the hothouse cultivating his tomato crop, the flimsy vinyl sheeting spread over it acts as a transparent barrier between himself and the external world, Koji also works his parent's tanbo, (rice field). Mitsuo's father and his mistress, (Chii), is a source of consternation, Matsuzo tries to convince the family that he's made up his mind to return to them and leave Chii, and in what seem to be an earlier attempt to rid themselves of his father's side of the family Mitsuo dumps his Grandma at his father's apartment, but his father brings her back to the family home.

       

Reflecting on the old days, and remembering how hard she and her husband worked the land Grandma asks a rhetorical question, 'Who was it who turned sand into the richest paddies in the village?', seems to provoke the reader into contemplating the difference between the developers make a quick profit philosophy and the farmers who cultivate the land out of necessity, and are part of a continuous tradition. Many moments in the novel sees Mitsuo appointing blame at the development, when Koji also takes up with Kaede and things take a tragic turn, Mitsuo remarks that none of it would have happened if the development hadn't happened, many of the villagers reflect on their life before the complex arrived, the novel is a detailed and well thought out portrait of the effects of modernisation and it's expansion into the country way of life. The novel ends with a lengthy description of Ayako and Mitsuo's wedding ceremony and Mitsuo has a prophetic vision of an uncertain future.

 

Banana Yoshimoto wins Capri Award

It's great to read the news from The Mainichi Daily News and Kyodo News Agency that Banana Yoshimoto has won the Capri Award, an Italian Literary Award. The committee has praised Yoshimoto's 'gentleness and spirituality', and noting that her novels 'always carry a poetic connotation ,while depicting a serious reflection between life and death'. The committee dedicating the 2011 Capri Awards to the Japanese people because of their 'dignity and generosity facing fate's adversity, following the devastating March 11th earthquake'. 'The Lake', has recently been published by Melville House Publishing in a translation by Michael Emmerich, some of the proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to disaster relief.

Monkey Business

For everybody who couldn't make it to the launch of Monkey Business, ( I need to get a copy!), Asia Society have put up an excellent video of writers who feature in the first issue; Hiromi Kawakami and Rebecca Brown read pieces from each other's books, and also Minoru Ozawa and Joshua Beckman read from their haiku. The sessions are introduced by Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen.


For the  - video


To buy - Monkey Business

Musashino

Ima no Musashino/Musashino was written by Doppo Kunikida in 1897, after he and his wife, Nobuko Sasaki, divorced he rented a cottage there, at it's opening Doppo tells us that after reading about the historical Battle of Kotesashi,  that took place in what was Musashi Province,  a desire to visit the place had welled up in him. Musashino is read like a multi layered piece of reflective writing, at first he describes his initial attraction and preconceived impressions of the place, and then he refers back to his notebook entries that he wrote during his visit. A striking feature of the piece is the differing length of the passages and entries Doppo uses, in his introduction the translator David Chibbett points out that Musashino is written in the tradition of zuihitsu, (random jottings), within his piece Doppo quotes passages from a short story by Turgenev, (translated into the Japanese by Futabatei Shimei), called Rendezvous. These longer passages are a contrast to Doppo's own shorter entries, in them he notes his observations of the weather, wind , rain and recalls midnight walks amongst the forest with an almost haiku like simplicity, there is not much reference to his frame of mind until an entry from 24th November 1896; - Not all the leaves have fallen yet. When I look at the distant mountains, my heart is filled with yearning and longs to vanish into them. Doppo charts the labyrinthine network of paths that criss-cross the woods, following them he finds old gravestones deep within them. Subtly he contrasts the woods of the birch trees descibed in Turgenev's piece with those of his native Japan, noting the absence of the oak tree from Japanese literature, autumn seems to be his favourite season and he notes the  re-appearance of greenery as the seasons change. Doppo a reader of Wordsworth and the Romantic poets writes in their style but his stories and writing are filled with characters from Japanese history, Yoshitsune, Rokudai Shojiki, also including a passage from the poet Kumagai Naoyoshi, (1782-1862). Musashino is filled with descriptions of the sounds of the woods and the plains, observations of the shadows of clouds drifting across the fields, although at it's heart the piece has a certain melancholy silence to it, and for it's descriptions of the winds and movement, a certain feeling of stillness is also felt. Nearing the end of Musashino Doppo recounts a walk with a friend, marvelling at the sight of the sun setting over the shoulder of Mt Fuji and describes an impromptu chance of tsukimi , but Musashino for Doppo, at it's ending is infused with the sights and sounds of life glimpsed in the present leaving us with an impression of the eternal.  

Musashino can be found in the collection River Mist and Other Stories translated by David Chibbett, published by Paul Norbury, 1983, Chibbett also included an interesting biography of Doppo, drawing on biographies by Fukuda Kiyohito and Sakamoto Hiroshi, Musashino stands out in this collection being the only non-fiction piece which also includes a number of Doppo's prose poems. Another excellent resource I came across while looking online about Musashi Province and the Kozuke-Musashi Campaign was The Samurai Archives Wiki.

Invalid

Since reading Doll Love/Ningyo ai, Takahashi Takako is an author I've been wanting to return to, Byoshin/Invalid, a brief story from 1978 starts with a phone conversation, a dialogue between a woman and a sick man, throughout the short story Takahashi refrains from naming the two characters. The woman asks how he is feeling, in reply he coughs down the line, the woman begins to imagine his insides; 'But what shape was he in down in the deepest unseeable parts of his body?. She wanted to know the colors, the shapes, the feel and everything else about him'. He tells her he's been listening to Erik Satie, (Gymnopedies), although the true depth of their relationship is left ambiguous to begin with an episode from the past is recalled, another time when he was ill, sitting by the window she had given him a lozenge. Before this episode is recalled though, after further cross inspection by her he confesses to feeling a nausea - It was a nausea that had recently come to roost within his body in the middle of the night, a nausea that could not be eradicated because they did not know it's source, a nausea that seemed to be the riddle that was himself. The phone conversation comes to an end, the narrative continues on down the phone line settling back into a description of the man's apartment that seems to be like a cocoon to the external world, painted entirely white, the stereo playing Satie, There is no more trace of emotion: Only sensation. That is Erik Satie. His illness and the melody of the music fuse. Shifting to describe the woman in her apartment she too is succumbing to a piece of music; Saint-Saens 3rd Symphony, which begins to take her on a journey to her innermost self, consciously and unconsciously, unleashing a tempest. After this, there's a descriptive passage of how she has begun to listen to every word spoken whilst in conversation, she had been able to decipher by listening out closely to single words  repeated by the speaker, she learnt how to reach an understanding of that person's inner workings, she finds that this talent proved useless though, when in the presence of her rapacious feelings for him.

Although the man is young he suffers from back pain, the woman's spirit's soar when she learns of this new cryptic clue to the man, they meet at a hospital where he has an appointment for tests to be carried out, after she questions him at length about this pain he is unable to explain exactly what's wrong, telling her that he had a skiing accident when he was young. Some what disappointed with his descriptions of his pain he tells her it feels different than before, '"How was it different?" She was insistent. She had come so far with him. But she was not tormenting him with her questions: she was the one in agony. There was no way she could escape this agony if she could not find out just how his back hurt him.'. The hospital is described with it's clinical attention at attempting to contain contagion, Takahashi in describing physical ailments also hints at spiritual ailments or those of the inner condition, and at the same time reminding us of the vulnerability of the flesh - The whole building had been made whitely, inorganically bright, as if in the hope of neutralizing the diseases that people carried so protectively inside themselves'. The woman's frustrated temperament at his inability to describe his pain borders hysteria, he describes the pain he endured to walk to the hospital but still she doubts him, she wishes for a machine that is able to measure the pain inside people, throughout the story she yearns to have an endoscopic ability in order to see the pain with her own eyes, later studying X-rays the man had had, she still finds no reassurance, the more she examines them the less she can decipher what the images mean. The story culminates on her disappointed resignation that the doctors can't find a specific reason for his pain. Although the word nausea appears regularly in the story, it's existentialism doesn't appear overtly so, there's an ambivalence to the story which leaves the identity of the invalid of the story open to interpretation, also the nature of the invalidism, whether it's the man's physical condition or something referring to the woman's psychological state. Displaying an almost hysteric desperation for physical evidence of the man's pain, she only appears to know him fully through a full knowledge of his pain, she displays the disappointment and weariness of someone living through the philosophical pain and private language argument, there are many instances in Takahashi's stories that bridge the philosophical and the psychological, Invalid/Byoshin is translated by Van C. Gessel and can be found in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, volume 2.