Inter Ice Age 4 by Abe Kobo

 

 

 

Abe's prose has a clinical eye to the detailing and psychology of his characters, the process of how he reveals the scenarios in his novels give them a very controlled momentum, Inter Ice Age 4/Dai Yon Kampyo-ki, one of his earliest novels from 1959 is no exception, perhaps the methodology of his medical training and his experiences in the theatre is shown in his novels. The translation from E. Dale Saunders has aged well, and the novel is complimented with fascinating illustrations from Abe's wife Abe Machi. Like The Face of Another/Tanin no kao, Inter Ice Age 4 has at it's center a scientific experiment, the after effects of it's consequences are uncertain. Inter Ice Age 4 cryptically opens with an underwater eruption, then moves to the scene of passengers on board a ship feeling a slight movement to the water's motion.  Professor Katsumi and his assistant Tanomogi have constructed a machine that can predict the future, at first Katsumi and Tanomogi input financial data and receive predictions about the state of the economy, they plan to showcase the machine using it to predict the next election, but the concerned organisers call it off. Katsumi becomes a celebrity; I anticipated all futures and dispatched villains left to right. 

As it's revealed that each nation has one of these machines a state of silent stale mate comes about with each side not wanting to upset the economic markets and political balance, the machines act as forecaster-come-spy. Katsumi's superiors begin to question the validity and results of the machine so Katsumi and Tanomogi organise a test cast, and a man chosen at random who they find seated in a restaurant is chosen as their guinea pig, they follow him to a woman's apartment but give up the pursuit. Reading the papers the following morning they discover that the man, (Tsuchida Susumu), had been murdered. Worrying that they maybe incriminated in the case, Katsumi and Tanomogi begin to go over their steps, Katsumi receives a mystery phone call from someone informing him that it will be dangerous to pursue the case, Katsumi recognises the voice from somewhere, but can't remember where. They ignore this call and  manage to obtain Tsuchida's body which they will examine using the machine, they manage to tap into Tsuchida's nervous system  observing through the view finder they see what he saw on the night of his murder, but it brings no results other than discovering the woman's name and also that she had an abortion and that the hospital paid 7000 yen to retain the foetus. Later Katsumi is chased by a man tagging him, theres a scuffle but he manages to make his way back to the laboratory where he discovers one of the assistants Wada Katsuko whose behaviour appears suspicious to Katsumi, she confesses that she and Tanomogi have started a relationship, also that she's willing to offer herself to be examined by the predicting machine. When Tanomogi arrives Katsumi suggests that they let the machine record their conversation for analysis, they find it has been recording already.

Katsumi discovers that his wife has also had an abortion although he discovers that she was drugged, when she came around she found that she had been given 7000 yen in change, she remembers a nurse with a mole on her cheek. The relationship between Katsumi and Tanomogi begins to strain, Katsumi begins to suspect that Tanomogi had in actual fact murdered Tsuchida and threatens to call the police, it's difficult to tell if Katsumi is serious or just testing how Tanomogi will react, Katsumi receives another threatening call. When the machine reports a fault whilst analysing data, Katsumi recognises the voice as the one that has been making the calls, that's your own voice that you programmed the machine with Tanomogi informs him. Another sub plot that emerges concerns Dr Yamamoto's laboratory, Dr Yamamoto is a leading figure in the predicting machine project, and Tanomogi begins to talk of seeing mammals with gills, at first mice and rabbits, then cows and pigs, eventually Katsumi is taken to Dr Yamamoto's submarine facility to view these experiments and discovers that humans are also being bred with gills. The reasons for Dr Yamamoto's breeding program become apparent when geological results show that due to global warming and the melting of the polar regions sea levels will rise, Dr Yamamoto's submarine project is a secret bid for the succession of the species. The novel ends seen from the perspective of an inhabitant of the underwater civilisation who goes in search of the remains of the world that was once lived above the waves, where music was heard through the air and not as vibrations through water.

 

Abe's sustained imaginative narratives weave unexpected correlations between the real world and the ones inhabited by his characters. A portion of the narratives between Katsumi and Tanomogi sees them discussing the implications of viewing the future, and while they pursue Tsuchida they contemplate how he would feel if he were to know that his whole life was suddenly about to be revealed to him. Abe devotes a postscript to this novel contemplating perceptions of the future and present further, I too, therefore, believe that I must understand the future not as something to be judged but something rather that sits in judgement on the present. Abe also views time as being continuous as opposed as being divided solely as present and future, this continuity is cut short for some of the characters in the novel, and Abe leaves it up to the reader and in a way to providence as to whether the novel can be read in hope or despair. 

    

The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q

Kurahashi's only novel to appear in English translation was published in Japan in 1969 by Kodansha under the title Sumiyakisto Q no boken, Dennis Keene translated the novel and gives a brief introduction, in it he describes his approach to translating the novel and shares some of Kurahashi's thoughts on her writing. Kurahashi was born in Shikoku in 1935, the same year and isle as Oe Kenzaburo,  both Oe and Kurahashi studied French Literature, and here Keene gives mention to the nouvea roman novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, and notes that Kurahashi's first novel Kurai tabi/Blue Journey, (1961) was often compared to Michel Butor's novel La Modification, (1957), translated into English by Jean Stewart as Second Thoughts - a novel almost solely written in second person narrative. Kurahashi's writing if having to be compared with other Japanese authors it could be said shares aspects with Yutaka Haniya and Abe Kobo, although the starkness of the violence and sexuality of some of Robbe-Grillet's novel's is seen in Kurahashi's shorter fiction, (The Woman With The Flying Head and Other Stories), which I have yet to read. As Kurahashi's translator Atsuko Sakaki discusses in her essay, (Re)Cannonizing Kurahashi Yumiko: Toward Alternative Perspectives For "Modern" "Japanese"  "Literature", (from Oe and Beyond), Kurahashi defended her writing against accusations of plagiarism, there's a satirical element to the novel here and Kurahashi defended her writings describing them as being pastiches, it seems her writing was to a degree overlooked by the literati within Japan, Atsuko Sakaki directs the reader onto another introductory piece about Kurahashi by Dennis  Keene, wherein he has translated from Kurahashi's 1966 essay; Negativity and the Labyrinth of Fiction/Shosetsu no meiro to hitaisei, "I abhor the intrusion of the disorder of 'facts' into the world of words I have constructed. The ironclad rule in reporting facts or events is the clarification of the five W's - when, where, who, what, why-but my stories reject these restrictions entirely and instead build castles in the air. At an uncertain time, in a place that is nowhere, somebody who is no one, for no reason, is about to do something-and in the end does nothing: this is my ideal of the novel", Kurahashi's writing appears to be written within preordained parameters, although given this  under-standing her texts have a liberating aspect, acknowledging that there are limitations to the novel, Kurahashi took it to task to push them to extremes, I've heard Alain Robbe-Grillet's books being described as containing anti-narratives and Kurahashi's novels as anti-novels, I can understand the direction these authors are aiming at, although find it hard to reconcile this when this message is conveyed within a novel or within a narrative, although this it could be said is a retrospective viewpoint. Kurahashi was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize twice, once for Natsu no owari/End of Summer and also for Partei, a satire on left wing politics, satire also abounds in The Adventures Of Sumiyakist Q as well. Dennis Keene points out that sumiyakisto is Japanese for charcoal burner which he notes could be in reference to The Carbonari.

The novel opens with Q, (a sumiyakist member), disembarking from a ferry crossing, he is to be an instructor at H reformatory located on the island, a passage at the start of the novel concerning the ferry after it has dropped him off, suddenly it disappears from view, Q checks his watch and notices that the hands on it stop and start randomly, the time that passes in between these movements could be minutes or eternities, seems to give an inclination that within this story even the normal passing of time is something that maybe cannot be relied upon. He encounters some fishermen and women, (these people are later described as menials by the leaders of the reformatory), on the beach, the women taunt him with sexual obscenities. The island appears to be made up of a barren landscape it's austerity is echoed within the architecture of the remote reformatory, beds and stools are made of simple slabs of concrete and wood, also on the beach is a man who acts as porter at H who guides Q there - Each building was of an unsurpassable plainness of design, each being an unornamated polyhedron, and all varying in height (although the unevenness of the ground could have had something to do with this), and indeed the buildings as a whole looked like the result of a box of toy bricks having been overturned, some scattered here and there, some seemingly piled one on top of the other.  The narrative appears heavily influenced by Kafka,  there's many parallels with Kafka's story In the Penal Colony/In der Strafkolnie, with much of the dialogue seeing the men discussing the quixotic processes of H, walking along the corridors Q is driven on by anxiety and bewilderment, Q meets a man referred to as overseer and they discuss Q's c.v, the overseer knows of a crime that was connected with Q, he's not guilty of this crime, but guilty of another Q confesses, the narrative can be seen to distract from the central plot on a number of occasions, and occasionally appears to come from somewhere  beyond the narrative, their conversation turns to the rector. Q is taken to the room where he will lodge, he'll share with another instructor, a theologian called F, who's body odour almost suffocates Q, F has not much to say except to inform Q that a war between the oppressed and those who run H has started, Q is overcome with sleep, he dreams he is an ant amongst concrete building blocks. The rector is a huge man, once in his office Q tries stepping back to take in his complete form but is unable to, Q finds himself attracted to the rector's nurse Sabiya who performs a complete body shave of the rector. At first the exact details of what Q's job will involve remain unclear, Q learns that at H the instructors are free to do what they like, the definition of what an instructor does is full of vague archaic meanings. Another instructor described as the 'literary man' talks with Q at length about the structure of a novel he's writing, the conversations expand into literary theory, the literary man is trying to write a novel free of determinism. Q has an appointment with the Doktor with reference to an operational procedure that all people new to H have to go through, which Q has heard maybe a vasectomy or castration, in Kafka-esque style when Q asks what this will be, the Doktor cryptically replies you decide what it's to be. Q suspects that the Doktor could be a higher member of the sumiyakist there to observe Q's ability to observe. The instructors, rector, overseer and the Doktor play games, one being the board revolving game, where the winner gets to sleep with the rectors gargantuan wife, and  also the dog races, which turns to being a metaphorical exploration of political and ideological  thinking. Q views everything going on in H from a sumiyakist standpoint, noting down the injustices he sees in a notebook which will appear to be a report to the party.

From the outset of the novel at mealtimes the instructors eat a meat whose origins are from an uncertain source, and as the novel progresses, the rector and Doktor hint that they are eating human meat, (the literary man gives Q a draft of the novel he's writing called Doktor's Notebook - which acts to fill in details within the story that are only hinted at in the actual novel), it becomes apparent to Q that in actual fact the rector, the Doktor, the overseer and instructors have been eating the students/ inmates. Deciding to make plans to put his idea of revolution into action Q questions another instructor about the identity of unruly students, Q learns of Ajita, Ajita came to the reformatory due to his violent background and Q envisions him as an ideal catalyst to kick start proceedings. Going to the students quarters with the literary man, (Mr Bukka), things go wrong and the students take Mr Bukka captive, Q flees. Feeling that things are spinning beyond his control Q confesses what has happened to the rector, hastily Q organizes a meeting of the instructors,  the theology instructor makes an impassioned speech which ends with a brutal invasion by the students. The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q was  published at the end of the sixties while the global student protest movements were active, and whilst reading the novel, H could be seen as being a model of a hypothetical university in which the fiction is worked around, a fuller appreciation of the novel might be had with more background knowledge to the events and student groups, two further novels from this period that I'd like to read eventually would be Nosaka Akiyuki's, The Rioters/Sodoshitachi (1971), and also Takahashi Kazumi's 1966 novel, Jashumon/Evil Spirit. The corpus of the novel it seems concerns exposing the fragility of arguments and rhetoric used by both factions, these in the novel are overrun by the inmates of the reformatory, (representing the non-determinist element in the novel?), who have no real cohesive ideology, and when Q shouts, "Long live Sumiyakism!", the inmates copy him in parrot like fashion not understanding the meaning of what they are saying.

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Record of A Living Being

Like most people I first came to the films of Kurosawa through his jidai-geki/period drama films, it's only been quite recently that I've begun to explore Kurosawa's other titles like Stray Dog/Nora Inu and Drunken Angel/Yoidore Tenshi , the latest of his non jidai-geki ouput I've watched is I Live In Fear/Ikimono no kiroku, the film is often referred to, (Stuart Galbraith IV's mammoth The Emperor and The Wolf :The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Faber and Faber 2002), as Record of A Living Being. Released in 1955 and starring two regulars of Kurosawa's films; Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, Record of A Living Being is an exploration of the anxiety of the cold war era, released soon after Godzilla it relies on none of the metaphor that that film implies, but openly voices the fears of living in the nuclear age. Dr Harada, (played by Shimada), runs his family dentist business, and also works as a mediator at a family court, arriving there after being summoned he's caught in the middle of a heated family argument, slowly the nature of the family disagreement is revealed. The father, Kiichi Nakajima,(played by Mifune), the owner of a family run foundry, to escape from the threat of atomic bombs wants to relocate the family to South America, he has already constructed an underground shelter in Akita province, but discovers that this won't be completely safe. The rest of the family want the court to declare him mentally unsound to prevent the move. At first the negotiations are stuck in stale mate, Kiichi shouts "Baka"! to any of his sons who protest against the move, to discredit their father further they look at each other uncertainly and ask if he's intending to take all the family, referring to his illegitimate children and his mistresses too, Kiichi replies that he'll take everyone, the proceedings nearly end in a brawl. A man arrives from Brazil who's eager to sell his plantation and Kiichi tries desperately to raise the funds, but things go awry, the deal falls through, eventually the court's decision falls in favour of the family. The judge afterwards trying to absolve himself from his own judgement declares that, "It's the H-bomb's fault, it made him this way".

Made in the era of the Bikini Atoll testings and the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident it's not difficult to imagine how directly this film must have spoken to it's audience, the film relates to both the past and the future, it's prophetic message is finely observed and crafted through it's contemporary setting. Throughout the film Dr Harada seems to be the only official who doubts his feelings and misgivings about Kiichi's case and motives, medical testing proves that Kiichi is sane, and many times Kiichi protests his reasons - "It's cowards who tremble and shut their eyes, that's why I'm moving", the consequences of Kiichi's fears become apparent after the ruling, he orders a family gathering and begs his family to come with him, mother too changes her point of view and also begins to beg the family, the emotional scene ends with Kiichi collapsing. While he convalesces the family begin to contemplate changing the will in order to finally solve the problem. The film picks up again with Dr Harada pursuing the Nakajima's to see what has happened only to find that the foundry has been burnt to the ground. In the aftermath Kiichi admits to burning it down, "You wouldn't go to Brazil because of the foundry, so I burnt it down!". The extent of Kiichi's presumed madness is heightened by the protestations of the workers, You don't mind if we starve, he's mad! they shout, and after he's been taken into custody the other convicts mock him, 'H-bombs, you're a fool to care, leave it to the politicians!', they jeer at him. Gilbraith observes Record of A Living Being as Kurosawa's testing out ideas which would be more fully realized in Ran, with Kiichi being an early prototype for the Hidetora/Lear character. Dr Harada eventually tracks Kiichi down to a mental hospital where the Dr there admits 'Maybe I'm not sane as I think I am', Kiichi is viewed as either a madman in a sane world or a sane man in a mad world, Kiichi staring out of the window confuses the sun with the earth, It's burning, it's burning!. Kurosawa ends the film with a finely composed scene of Harada walking down the hospital stairs away from Harada and his daughter walking apprehensively up to visit him.

I Live in Fear at The Criterion Collection

I Live in Fear at The BFI

      

The Devotion of Suspect X

Originally appearing in Japan as Yogisha X no kenshin in 2005, and winning the Naoki Prize of that year, The Devotion of Suspect X has recently been published by Minotaur Books in the U.S and is also forthcoming by Little Brown in the U.K., the translation is by Alexander O.Smith and Elye J. Alexander. Unlike Naoko that has at it's centre a fantastical idea, The Devotion of Suspect X opens with a description of events that lead up to a murder and then presents to the reader the perspective of the police investigation from the moment that the body is discovered and then follows the investigation as they decipher clue by clue, deduction by deduction the circumstance and culprits of the crime, and behind this a cryptic game of cat and mouse between two geniuses. There's a blank in the narrative between the initial aftermath of the murder and the discovery of the body, which the novel is used to slowly unveil to the reader. Ishigami, a private high school maths teacher leaves for work on his bike stopping off at a boxed lunch store on the way, working at the boxed lunch shop is his neighbour, Yasuko Hanaoka, a single mother who has a daughter, Misato. Yasuko had been divorced a few years earlier from her husband Shinji Togashi, although Togashi is not Misato's father, Yasuko's boss jokingly implies that Ishigami fancies Yasuko, that's why he stops by everyday. Out of the blue Shinji Togashi enters the store and begins to harass Yasuko into meeting again, after repeatedly asking him to leave her strength of will gives way and she says she'll meet him after work. When they meet again Yasuko reiterates that she doesn't want to see him again and that he should stop pestering her, despite Togashi saying he is a changed man, Yasuko leaves abruptly. After Yasuko has been home for a while Togashi starts ringing her doorbell, knowing that what he probably wants is money she reluctantly lets him in on the proviso that he leaves after she has given him 20,000 Yen. But on his way out Misato in a rage fuelled by some his comments smashes him over the head, in retaliation he lunges at her, fearing that he will kill Misato Yasuko strangles him with the kotatsu cord. At first Yasuko is going to hand herself into the police but Misato tries to persuade her out of it, the conversation is disrupted by her neighbour Ishigami knocking at the door asking what the noise was about. Yasuko at first manages to disguise the fact of what has happened from him, but Ishigami calls again later revealing that he had actually heard everything, and to Yasuko and Misato's surprise he offers them his help in covering up the murder.

The narrative turns to the police detectives Kusanagi and Kishitani who get a report of a body being found, an attempt has been made on the body to make identifying it impossible, and nearby police find clothes that have been partially burned and a stolen bicycle, these are the circumstances that the detectives slowly piece together. Through their enquires and forensics they learn the identity of the man as being Shinji Togashi. The detectives inform Yasuko of the murder and while they are at her building they bump into her neighbour Ishigami who they also talk to, through a letter in his mailbox Kusanagi notices that Ishigami used to attend Imperial University. Another central character to the police investigation is Yukawa, (whose nickname is Galileo - the name of the Japanese T.V serialization of this novel), a professor of physics, who Kusanagi sometimes refers to for help in solving cases, Yukawa also attended Imperial University and as the case progresses he comes into contact again with Ishigami, as a friend, and at a distance as a suspect. Whilst at university Ishigami earned the nickname 'The Buddha', as he was always hunched over his work trying to solve mathematical problems. The main corpus of the novel traces the police as they try to break the alibi of Yasuko and Misato, which was given to them by Ishigami, who keeps tabs on Yasuko and Misato by phoning them from a public phone booth every night. After time Yasuko begins to wonder why Ishigami helped them the way he has. As the narrative holds back from giving a vital clue and doesn't reveal the chain of events between the murder and the finding of the body the suspense is brilliantly drawn out, and just like in the earlier novel Naoko/Himitsu, Higashino has a great skill at shifting the parameters of these novels at the crucial moments, keeping the reader guessing until the last few pages have been turned.

Mishima and Kawabata Prize announced

The winners of the 24th Mishima Yukio Prize and the 37th Kawabata Yasunari Prize have recently been announced on Shinchosha's website. The Mishima Prize was awarded to Imamura Natsuko for Kochira Amiko, (Here's Amiko), and the Kawabata Prize was awarded to Tsumura Setsuko for Ikyou, (Foreign Land), written after the death of her husband, the novelist Yoshimura Akira. Tsumura Setsuko was born in Fukui  Prefecture in 1928 and has won the Akutagawa Prize in 1965 for Toys, (Gangu) and also the Woman's Literature Prize in 1990.