the briefcase

A novel I've been very much looking forward to is Hiromi Kawakami's second appearance into English translation, after greatly enjoying the poeticism of Manazuru, the prose of The Briefcase has again a subtly understated simplicity to it that enables the reader to find themselves almost unawarely placed into the intricacies of the relationship between, Harutsuna Matsumoto, the ageing retired teacher, and Tsukiko Omachi, one of his former students who is now a woman facing middle age. The story is presented episodically, beginning with a chance meeting between the two again when they order exactly the same dish in a bar they both are eating in, the novel is presented through the perspective of Tsukiko, as the two become reacquainted the narrative begins to reveal episodes from her past, although a woman who has far from lived a sheltered life, we get the impression that she still lives in the same neighbourhood that she went to school in, re-meeting sensei, as Matsumoto is referred to by her throughout the novel, has provoked in her the realization that up til now she had been living a slightly oblivious existence, the world begins to appear in a new perspective.

After a few more meetings Tsukiko is invited to sensei's house, and discovers a collection of ceramic teapots from the boxed lunches that he and his wife bought from railway stations on their travels, background details of sensei's life aren't expanded upon greatly which adds a slightly enigmatic quality to him, although we learn that sensei's slightly bohemian wife passed away after leaving him. The little snippets of information about his characteristics we know are given to us through Tsukiko's observations, his dislike of having someone else pour his drink out for him, and throughout a reading of the novel the question of the contents of sensei's briefcase hovers  at the peripheries of our thoughts. Some of their meetings are pre-arranged and some occur by coincidence, as the relationship develops, it's nature is enigmatic, Tsukiko's growing attachment to sensei becomes apparent in her narrative, an episode when in their favourite bar a drunk begins to ask how many times a week they slept together, begins to provoke the reader into questioning the nature of the relationship. Following the two's outings together sees them go on a market excursion, Kawakami's  narrative  captures  Tsukiko's growing sense that the relationship is slightly absurd when she finds herself asking what is she doing? when she finds herself halfway up a mountain on a mushroom hunting trip with sensei and Satoru, the owner of their favourite bar, the novel is full of fantastic descriptions of Japanese dishes that makes you want to eat and drink while reading.

On another meeting she goes with sensei to a cherry blossom viewing party held at their old school, old teachers and old pupils gather for the party, Tsukiko meets Kojima, a fellow student who has since divorced his wife, the pair leave the party early and Kojima  asks Tsukiko for more dates, but she finds that she's not attracted to him. Meeting with Kojima seems to tap into a whole wreath of nostalgic memories for the pair, although never does Tsukiko admit to ever having had a crush on sensei when she was at school, these passages see Tsukiko  acknowledging the passing of time and the tide of it washing her up on an unfamiliar shore, reminiscing and being with Kojima she observes, 'it seemed like we had ended up within a time that didn't exist anymore'. Tsukiko is a fascinating character study, there is ample room to discuss her psychology at length, it could be said that the reason she develops an attachment to sensei is that she sometimes appears to be in a fragile emotional state at finding herself in an onset of spiritual dilemma in the face of approaching her middle age, but in Kawakami's prose the story can also be read with all the innocence of being a simple love story, although albeit being a slightly unconventional one being one  that spans the generation gap, but this is the truer path of love. If this were a movie there are moments where it could be seen that Tsukiko is caught speaking directly into the camera, the narrative speaks out to us and sees Tsukiko ask the same questions the reader will find themselves asking, the answer perhaps lies in reading this fine translation.

The Briefcase/Sensei no kaban is translated by Allison Markin Powell and published by Counterpoint Press, the novel was awarded the Tanizaki Prize in 2001. The first chapter of The Briefcase, (The Moon and the Batteries), is available to read as a sampler at Granta's online site.

Snakelust by Nakagami Kenji

Snakelust was published by Kodansha International back in 1998, and is a translation of seven stories written by Kenji Nakagami by Andrew Rankin. Nakagami's stories depict the harsh world and lives of the burakumin, often incorporating elements and episodes from his own life, he was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for his short story Misaki/The Cape in 1975, notably Nakagami was the first author born in the post-war period to be given the prize. When moving to Tokyo, unlike many writers Nakagami worked in many manual handling jobs, and would often write in Jazz clubs. Oddly there are more studies of Nakagami in English than there are actual translations of his works. The stories here move between the contemporary and the medieval in their setting, his stories find their expression with a mythic-like quality and share interconnecting motifs, a reading of the short story The Immortal from his short story collection The Kumano Collection sees it also set in Nakagami's native Kumano following a holy man wandering through the forest who encounters a woman, and features a fleeing noble cortege, and includes scenes reminiscent here in the short story Crimson Waterfall.

 

The Mountain Ascetic/Shugen follows a man from Kumano as he tries to establish himself in Tokyo, the opening of the story begins with a description of the mountains echoing with the mingling sound of cicadas and Buddhist chant, coming to a close on the decaying corpse of a nameless monk, still the chant emanates from the pile of bones. The narrative leads on to a description of a man, described as being 'more muscle than brains', a man barely able to contain his passions, a drinker, due to his violent temper his marriage falls apart, and he returns to Kumano. Giving up cigarettes and alcohol the man wanders into the mountains in search of finding some form of reconciliation within himself, whilst walking he experiences three visitations, due to his exhaustion he believes that they could be hallucinations, the first is of a ghostly monk, which he identifies as being his dead brother who had committed suicide aged 24, the second is of a picnic scene with a mother, child and grandmother, the mother is crying. The third is of three men stacking stones lamenting about the misfortune that another of them has met, two of the men appear to be disfigured, one man has no hands, he moves the stones with the stumps of his wrists, another has no legs, the third man is dressed in white, perhaps swathed in bandages. Walking further the man finds himself chanting a sutra over and over, the man recalls his brother and a violent episode towards his wife, his frustration reduces him to tears, eventually he succumbs to sleep. In the night he is awoken by the sound of chimes in the darkness, he finds that it's source is from a monk performing an absolution of sorts. The visions that the narrator saw on the mountain seem swathed in enigma, mountains for Nakagami are places inhabited with spirits and have huge significance in these stories, landscapes that are open to a vast imaginative canvass where his characters find deep spiritual expression, each of the scenes the man sees could be seen to be representing the culminating scene within their own story.

The Wind and the Light/Somoku, in some ways is a companion piece to The Mountain Ascetic, it opens again in a mountain setting, Nakagami sets it near Odaigahara, with a man suffering from arrow wounds stumbling through the forest, coming across another man, at first it's seems uncertain to tell from which person the narrative is coming from, or the time period its set in. The man without the arrow wounds begins to assist the wounded man, after sometime the wounded man begs to be thrown off the cliff. Like the previous story the narrative flicks between the narrator recounting episodes from his past, the flashback sequences here sees the man recall a time in his youth when he had kept pet finches, his memory focuses particularly on a blind bird that he would grab in his fist and almost squeeze to death, and another memory sees him mistakenly open an egg with a living chick inside, he becomes rapt with guilt, he identifies himself with a character from Kamo no Chomei's Hosshinshu. Helping the man down from the mountain he begins to feel the man's pain, this transference of pain and also of spirits is another prominent motif in Nakagami's narratives, the wounded man suddenly bursts into tears asking why is it that he's helping him and begging to be left or killed, in the distance voices can be begin to be heard calling the wounded man. As in the The Mountain Ascetic the narrator has a brother who had committed suicide in the past, and the man suddenly comes to the realization that the wounded man is his brother visiting him with a message.

Snakelust/Jain, a story that was adapted to film by Kazuhiko Hasegawa, was released through A.T.G in 1976 under the title Seishun no satsujinsha/ The Youth Killer, Nakagami wrote the screen play which is a close rendering of this disturbing tale of family dysfunction taken to murderous degrees. In the story Kei's intrusion into the family is felt more prominently than in the film, it could be said that  Jun is tormented by his mother's jealousy which unleashes his pent up rage. Makeup/Kessho sees familiar motifs that appear in this collection, the figure of a brother who had committed suicide features in the background, the narrator works at a timber yard, (the family business in Jain is in lumber), and also the narrator keeps birds, here once he reaches breeding a hundred birds or pairs he then lets them go, watching as they disperse across the neighbourhood. In Kessho the protagonist is a man who is separating from his wife, the narrative is built up with thematically linked observations about the make up worn by key women from his life, his sisters,  mother and wife. The men in Nakagami's stories appear as men with a robust physicality, but as the jacket of the book describes - Again and again Nakagami confronts us with the disturbing fact of man's ultimate helplessness before the power of female sexuality.

Kurenai no taki/Crimson Waterfall and Oni no hanashi/A Tale of a demon are set in old Japan, A Tale of a Demon is a short story of a warrior from Koga deceived by a demon living on the Tatsumi Bridge, which Nakagami sets in the old Province of Omi, (now Shiga Prefecture), who appears to him as a beautiful young woman. Crimson Waterfall, a violent tale set in feudal times follows a noble cortege escaping from warring factions through a forest in Kumano, and is told mainly from the perspective of the princesses bodyguard, the group is made up of him, the princess and two ladies in waiting. The story follows the guard as he lusts after the princess, killing the ladies in waiting when they become separated from her, he tells her that they were caught and killed by the pursuing bandits. At night whilst she sleeps he rather gleefully contemplates her vulnerability, the story ends fulfilling the title's implied bloodiness. The last story is Juryoku no miyako/Gravity's Capital, an erotically charged story where the old and the contemporary begin to converge. From it's opening the story had me completely absorbed - She is standing in the doorway bathed in a stream of early morning sunlight when she says she's seen a god come soaring across the sky and land in the zelkova tree in the middle of the field. This story is largely told through the perspective of Yoshiaki, a construction worker who lives in the mountains who moves from site to site, intending to stay just for a night with a girl he meets. In the morning the girl begins to tell of a Prince that visits her during the night, at first he doesn't believe a word, as the story unfolds and the more he becomes involved with the girl, the more he becomes to realize that she is suffering a form of possession from the ancient Prince. He tries to smother the visions and the voices she hears and sees with his own passion, but putting his ear to her chest he too begins to hear a voice emanating from within her.

Studies in English:

Nakagami, Japan: Buraku and the Writing of Ethnicity
Anne McKnight
University of Minnesota Press, 2011

Negotiating Identity: Nakagami Kenji's Kiseki and the Power of the Tale
Anne Helene Thelle
Iucidicium Verlag, 2010

Out of the Alleyway - Nakagami Kenji and the Poetics of Outcaste Fiction
Eve Zimmerman
Harvard University Press, 2008

Dangerous Women, Deadly Words: Phallic Fantasy and Modernity in Three Japanese Writers
Nina Cornyetz
Stanford University Press, 1999

Works in English:

The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto
translated by Eve Zimmerman
Stonebridge Press, 2008

Snakelust
translated by Andrew Rankin
Kodansha International, 1998

The Immortal
Short story translated by Mark Harbison in the Showa Anthology
Kodansha International, 1985

Works in French:

Nakagami is more widely translated in French than in English, the publisher Editions Fayard publish five of his novels, and Editions Philippe Picquier publish Misaki/Le Cap and also Kiseki/Miracle. 

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Part 2

Since posting on this charity project two more short stories and an essay have been added to the Waseda Bungaku webpage. Nakamura Fuminori, whose Kenzaburo Oe Prize winning novel The Thief is due out in March from Soho Press, has the essay and observational piece 'When the Earthquake Hit', translated by Michael Staley, in which he recounts the day of the earthquake. From Jungo Aoki, who has been described as the Japanese Thomas Pynchon, comes the short story, Special Edition - Sack-toting Turtle Spotted in West Ikebukuro, translated by Ian McDonald, and Yoshikawa Yasuhisa's penetrative short story, Snow Dusk, Death Dusk, is translated by Lucy North.

Please remember to donate something via the Japanese Red Cross or through your country's Red Cross Society.

March Was Made of Yarn - Edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke is published by Vintage in the USA in March, and also in the UK by Harvill Secker.

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature at Waseda Bungaku Department