Forthcoming novels, books and future readings.

There seems to be a good number of novels forthcoming in English translation to be looking forward to, two novels in particular that I'm looking forward to and are hopefully appearing before the end of the year, firstly the novel from Hideo Furukawa and also the translation of an early work, (1926), by Edogawa Rampo which is definitely something I'll be keen to read, a provisional list of titles due to appear over the next few months might look something like this -

We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino, due August 2012, PM Press
Botchan - by Natsume Soseki, (new translation), due October 2012, Penguin Classics
3 Strange Tales by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, due November 2012, One Peace Books
Belka, Why Don't You Bark by Hideo Furukawa, due November 2012, Haikasoru
Body - Asa Nonami, due November 2012, Vertical Inc
Edge - Suzuki Koji, due November 2012, Vertical Inc
Strange Tale of Panorama Island - Edogawa Rampo, due December 2012, Hawaii University Press
Virus - Sakyo Komatsu, due December 2012, Haikasoru
The Gate - Natsume Soseki, due December 2012, New York Review Books Classics
Death By Choice - Masahiko Shimada, due December 2012, Thames River Press
God's Boat - Kaori Ekuni, due December 2012, Thames River Press
Jasmine - Noboru Tsujihara, due December 2012, Thames River Press
Mandala Road - Masako Bando, due December 2012, Thames River Press
A Thousand Strands of Black Hair - Seiko Tanabe, due December 2012, Thames River Press
Gray Men - Tomotake Ishikawa - due December 2012, Vertical Inc

2013 ~

The Tale of Heike - translated by Royall Tyler, due January 2013, Penguin Books
Revenge - Yoko Ogawa, due January 2013, Picador in the U.S, Harvill Secker in the U.K
Kiku's Prayer - A Novel - Shusaku Endo, due January 2013, Columbia University Press
Salvation of a  Saint - Keigo Higashino, due February 2013, Little Brown
The Goddess Chronicle - Natsuo Kirino, due February 2013, Canongate Myths
Botchan - Natsume Soseki, due February 2013, One Peace Books, (a new translation by Glenn Anderson)
The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle - Kobayashi Takiji, due March 2013, Hawai'i University Press
Death-Tech - Kei Urahama, due March 2013, Lantis Media
Sun at Midnight: Poems and Letters - Musō Soseki, due April 2013, Copper Canyon Press
Self-Reference ENGINE - Enjoe Toh, due April 2013, Haikasoru
From the Fatherland with Love - Murakami Ryu, due May 2013, Pushkin Press,
Wasabi For Breakfast - Kometani Fumiko, due May 2013, Dalkey Archive Press
A Cappella - Koike Mariko, due May 2013, Thames River Press
In Pursuit of Lavender - Itoyama Akiko, due May 2013, Thames River Press
New Tales of Tono - Inoue Hisashi, due June 2013, Merwin Asia Publishing
Tokyo Seven Roses, vols. 1 and 2 - Inoue Hisashi, due May 2013, Thames River Press
Day in the Life - Kuroi Senji, due June 2013, Dalkey Archive Press
Evil and the Mask - Fuminori Nakamura, due June 2013, Soho Press
Lizard Telepathy, Fox Telepathy - Yoshinori Henguchi, due June 2013, Chin Music Press
Tales From a Mountain Cave: Stories from Japan's North East - Inoue Hisashi, due September 2013, Thames River Press
Portrait of a Tongue - Yoko Tawada, due September 2013, University of Ottawa Press
Bullfight - Inoue Yasushi - due September 2013, Pushkin Press
Tales of the Ghost Sword - Kikuchi Hideyuki - due September 2013, Thames River Press
The Case of the Sharaku Murders - Katsuhiko Takahashi - due September 2013, Thames River Press
Lost Souls, Sacred Creatures - Four Stories - Nishimura Juko, due September, Thames River Press
The Crimson Thread of Abandon:Stories - Terayama Shuji - due October 2013, Merwin Asia Publishing
Don't Lose Heart - Toyo Shibata - due October 2013, Pighog Press
A True Novel - Minae Mizumura - due November 2013, Other Press
The Book of Tokyo - Short Stories from Urban Japan, edited by Jim Hinks - due November 2013, Comma Press
Light and Dark - Soseki Natsume,  translation by John Nathan, Weatherhead, Columbia University, due November 2013
Night on the Galactic Railroad and Other Stories from Ihatov - Kenji Miyazawa, One Peace Books, due December 2013

Another title that I'm sure will garner a lot of attention is the rather mammoth biography of Yukio Mishima by Inose Naoki, translated by Sato Hiroaki entitled: Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, which is published by Stonebridge Press in November 2012. The biography was originally published in Japan back in 1995, but as the description of the book mentions this is the first biography of Mishima to appear in English for nearly forty years, I'm sure it will be widely reviewed. 3 Strange Tales by Akutagawa Ryunosuke looks like it will contain a story from 1920 that has not appeared in English before, (The God of Aguni/Aguni no Kami). Also before the year is out there's a reissue of Mutsuo Takahashi's Poems of a Penisist, which is also translated by Hiroaki Sato, along with this in November is Jeffrey Angles, (internationaldateline.tumblr.com), translation of Takahashi's 1970 memoir Twelve Views from the Distance, excerpts of which can be read at the excellent Cerise Press, alongside with the original in Japanese, both of these published by Minnesota University Press. Many times it seemed that I missed the opportunity of visiting Ryokan's hut, nr. Tsubame City in Niigata, he's a poet I've been meaning to read for a long time, there's so many editions and translations of his work available, (any advice on which one would be greatly appreciated), but I think I'll seek out a copy of Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi which is due out any day from Shambhala. Another poetry book which looks like it will make essential reading is the anthology, 101 Modern Japanese Poems compiled by Makoto Ooka and translated by Paul McCarthy, a title that appeared through the now sadly defunct JLPP, published by Thames River Press. Genga - Original Pictures - a book that came out back in July collects drawings from Otomo Katsuhiro taken from a recent exhibition is a title I'd like to have a look through, published by PIE Books. Lastly a novel that appeared at the beginning of the year that I think I'd definitely like to catch up with is Domesday by Kei Urahama, translated by Mika Deguichi and John Cairns and published by Lantis Media, a sci-fi novel that received the 2000 Komatsu Sakyo Prize, looks interesting. I'm hoping that there might be more that may appear in the meantime.

Another two older titles to add, both originally published by Kodansha International, which are being republished by Kurodahan Press - Blue Bamboo by Osamu Dazai, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy and also Citadel in Spring by Agawa Hiroyuki, translated by Lawrence Rogers.

We, the Children of Cats

We, the Children of Cats collects together five short stories and three novellas from Tomoyuki Hoshino, 星野 智幸, translated by Brian Bergstrom with one of the stories being translated by Lucy Fraser and is published by PM Press. Hoshino was awarded the Oe Kenzaburo Prize in 2011 for Ore Ore/It's Me It's Me, it would be great to a see a translation of this novel into English in the near future, it looks like a translation of Hoshino's first novel by Brent Lue could be in the pipeline. Oe has said of Hoshino, "I see [in Hoshino] an ability to truly think through fiction that recalls Kobo Abe. This superlative ability makes even the most fantastical details and developments read as perfectly natural", PM Press also publish another novel from Hoshino The Lonely Hearts KIller/Ronrii haatsu kiraa, translated by Adrienne Hurley. Hoshino has also won the Noma Prize and has been nominated for the Akutagwa Prize twice, once for the novella Sand Planet - which is included here, a story Hoshino was inspired to write after watching the documentary Homesick in my Dreams by film maker Jun Okamura, the collection is also accompanied by a preface by Hoshino and an expansive and thorough  afterword from Brian Bergstrom. Hoshino's shorter fictions are at times composed of highly compressed inverse narratives, metaphors often turn inside out, reading them the reader has to usually keep an alert eye out on what is taking place in the allegorical. The pieces here give a wide and varied impression of Hoshino's concerns,  appearance and identity become porous, equational thinking is rethought and reproduces answers that challenge straight forward and preconceived notional thinking. In the opening story Paper Woman, reality and an imagined world converge, the inital narrator, (also named Hoshino), meets an author of a story about a woman who could only eat paper, eventually she herself turns to paper, the projected narrative supercedes over the opening one, the relationship progresses eventually spawning a son - Kazuyoshi. The story is a complex and highly allegorical one about the relationship between literature, author and reader.

In The No Fathers Club, which has also appeared in the recent anthology Digital Geishas and Talking Frogs, an imaginary world is initiated after the narrator watches a game of no ball soccer, a game played with an imagined ball, the description of this game seems to briefly capture in microcosm the spontaneously absurd animation of the modern world, this soccer game leads however to the The No Fathers Club, a club whose members fathers have died prematurely, the club is formed by the narrator and friend Yosuke and then later Kurumi, with whom the narrator seems to form an attachment to, Yosuke eventually leaves the club by stating that his (imagined) father committed suicide. Kurumi and the narrator organise a meeting with their respective fathers. Chino, translated by Lucy Fraser is narrated by a young man who gives up his part time jobs and travels to "a small country below Mexico" intending to join a group of guerrillas, examples of Hoshino's fascination of South America appear throughout many of these stories. The narrator seems to disassociate himself from his fellow Japanese, rich kids travelling on the cheap, pretending at roughing it out. When reaching the village where he's expecting to make contact with the guerrillas he meets a young Japanese woman who has beaten him to it and appears to have assimilated herself into the country, she only acknowledges him in Spanish, the narrator learns of her history and of how it has come about that she has remained in the village, in repeated episodes throughout the story the narrator is mistakenly identified as being a Chino, (Chinese), which provokes explorative questions on the nature of national identities, the story at various times and places brought to mind the fiction of Ikezawa Natsuki. We, the Children of Cats, follows Masako and Naru a young couple as they come under pressure from their family to have a baby, the history and nature of their relationship is partially explained through a series of passages relating a phone conversation they have, their history entwines with recent episodes from Japanese history, the Sarin Gas attack, the Kobe earthquake. The couple's decision not to try for a child is explored and juxtaposed against Masako's gay friend who is desperate to become a father, through a series of comparative reflections resolutions are readdressed, and in the background of this a visitation by a mysterious cat called Soccer. One of the most challenging stories is Air, opening with an excruciating graphic scene of a broken hearted man gripped in an act of self harm, inflicting pain in order to find some evidence of his existence, through the use of motifs consisting of a musical score by Toru Takemitsu and the narrator playing the flute given to him before the man at the centre of his affections,Tsubame, had left for Mexico, the story vividly explores the narrator's sexual identity. Attending a gay rights parade the narrator meets another uncertain participant, the dual nature of his sexuality and identity is represented with descriptions of an invisible physical self, which through his self harm has been tampered with.

The first of the three novellas is Sand Planet, whose main character, Yoshinobu, is a reporter who writes up cases for Saitama Prefecture Police Press, initially following Yoshinobu as he investigates a poisoning of lunch boxes at an elementary school the novella takes in three, or perhaps four other narratives as it progresses and then finishes by linking them together. The main theme of the story is one of redemption and of the re-establishing of life's validity. Whilst investigating the poisoning Yoshinobu receives a call to investigate homeless people in the Urawa Forest, through meeting a local councilors friend, Yayoi Sakai, Yoshinobu learns of the story of her brother, Misao, who had emigrated from Japan after the war. Whilst this narrative is unfolding there runs another developing narrative line of Yoshinobu's own, the story opens with the death of his father and the family's decision of burying him in the garden, once this fact is discovered by their neighbours, the family are punished, Yoshinobu is in the process of redefining his life and it's meaning and through out there are episodes in which he finds solace and a sense of regenerative power through laying with the earth. The narrative moves on, later after Yoshinobu's mother passes away Yoshinobu drives to the forest and witnesses an elderly man talking to himself in a broken verse, of Urashima Taro, the Republica Dominicana, the man seems to be enacting out a performance for an audience of only one. Another of the narratives begins with the story of a group of missing elementary children who are found in the Sayamma Hills who are from the same school that witnessed the poisoning, Yoshinobu tracks down a homeless woman who had looked after the children for one of the nights that they had been missing. She describes that the children refused to speak and showed her a booklet that they self produced telling that they had taken a vow of silence, 'words have reached their end', one of the pages reads. As the narratives begin to appear to relate to each other Yoshinobu writes up his piece and notes to himself in an Abe-esque observation - 'This is the truth. We mustn't let facts deceive us'. The two following novellas collected here are Treason Diary and A Milonga for the Melted Moon. Finishing these stories and novellas is like stepping back from a vista where the world has briefly appeared in it's truer or more original and realigned form, shot through with dynamic paradoxes and an unerring ambition to challenge, taking uncharted routes and reconfiguring truths that do indeed lodge themselves in the reader, unreservedly recommended, my thanks go to PM Press.

We, the Children of Cats at PM Press

Tomoyuki Hoshino's page at PM Press

        

Wind and Stone

This novel by Masaaki Tachihara, (1926-1980), tells the story of an affair between a gardener, Kase, and his clients wife, Mizue, she had first encountered Kase some years previously when he worked as an assistant gardener for her parents. The narrative moves quickly telling the story of Mizue's parents death and that of the suicide of her brother after his business fails, Mizue marries to Shida Eiji and begins to raise a family, after moving into a new home Shida employs Kase through a mutual recommendation. The novel weaves between incorporating informative elements and historical texts from traditional Japanese landscape gardening and exploring the emotional complexities faced by each character as the consequences of the affair begin to take their toll. The narrative follows Kase as he plans and constructs the Shida's garden, this process takes many months to implement and is informed by the changing seasons, in between his visits to see how the garden is growing Mizue begins to feel Kase's presence in the garden, she feels that the stones are his eyes keeping watch over her, and that each time she looks at the garden some new aspect about it occurs to her, elements that she had at first not noticed. Kase is a man with a history which still encroaches into his life, already married twice, although these failed due to his absence whilst away working, Emiko still visits him. When Kase travels to Yamagata to work on the garden of an artist Mizue's feelings begin to reach a new level of turmoil, she is gripped by guilt by their meetings, not so much as a woman but as a mother.

Each chapter begins with Kase reflecting on books from the history of Japanese landscaping including, Sakuteiki, 作庭記, commonly known as The Records of Garden Making, and recalls that as a youth he had runaway to visit the gardens at Tofuku-ji Temple in Kyoto, his thoughts on what he agrees and disagrees with classical gardening align with his feelings on the affair and Mizue. The balance of the perspectives of the characters is quite a panoramic one, within the novel aspects of the characters lives which are not related to the affair come into view, with Shida we encounter him when he is dealing with business relating to his family owned business of curing hams. At an intervention of sorts from his mother, Kase is introduced to another woman in Kyoto, Tamiko, whose husband had recently died, the two families know each other and are trying to arrange the marriage, Kase manages to keep the fact that he is seeing Tamiko from Mizue but this is only temporary. The novel is full of allusions to the traditional, but at its core has a devastating sense of emotional bereftness in the wake of the affair, the novel's characters are reduced to the elemental forces referred to in it's title and through Kase's observations. 

What attracted me to reading this novel was the discovery that Yoshida Kiju had based his film Jyouen on one of Tachihara's novels and with this in mind whilst reading I envisioned reading this to a degree a'la Yoshida, some scenes in particular stood out in particular when seen from this perspective. Tachihara was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize and won the Naoki Prize in 1966, the novel was translated by Stephen W. Kohl.

Wind and Stone at Stone Bridge Press 

more information via Kamakura City website on Tachihara Masaaki

Read as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge 6

New Writing From Japan

Just a quick post to highlight that Words Without Borders July issue is entitled New Writing From Japan, the first of two issues dedicated to new Japanese writing, the second is coming in next months issue, and is guest edited by Michael Emmerich. Featuring fiction from EnJoe Toh, Kurahashi Yumiko, Nakai Hideo and more..

New Writing From Japan at Words Without Borders.

*The second part of Words Without Borders issue of New Writing From Japan has recently gone up with an excerpt from Chichi to Ran/Breasts and Eggs, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, Kawakami Mieko's Akutagwa Prize winning novella which has recently been published in French translation by Actes Sud, so here's hoping. The issue also features translations of Tsushima Yuko, Asa Nonami, Wataya Risa, Motoya Yukiko, Suzumo Sakurai, Nomura Kiwao and again comes with an editorial piece from Michael Emmerich.

(*edited post 01/08/2012)