Thursday 23 August 2012

Rivalry by Kafu Nagai



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Recently published in paperback, this translation by Stephen Snyder is the first complete translation of Rivalry/ Udekurabe to appear in English, the translation from 1963 by Kurt Meissner and Ralph Friedrich was taken from an early commercial and incomplete edition of the novel, Snyder's translation includes passages and scenes that were edited out due to their erotic nature. The novel was first serialized in Japan in 1916, whilst reading the novel and almost turning every other page I couldn't help but be confronted with the age old question - what constitutes a classic?. It would be interesting to read a criticism of the novel from a feminist perspective, although Kafu's narrative has a subdued empathy for the women depicted in it, the panorama offered through the portraits of the characters offers an in depth insight into the Taisho age and the receding world of the geisha, the novel  steps out of being a gender study or character study but depicts the human world in all of it's fragility and exhausting desperation, nearly all the characters are wrestling with how fate will treat them. The novel seems to dip into differing genres and narrative styles, sometimes the reading feels fabalistic as if coming from the old world, but then by turns it serves to chronicle Kafu's contemporary world, both exploring the inner world of the main character, Komayo, a bereaved woman and geisha returning to the area she had started off from, and then also moving from character by character it begins to examine each of their worlds and inner thinking. Set predominantly in Shimbashi the action of the novel spills over into Tsukiji and Asakusa,  topographically  the novel is of huge interest, the narrative informs with many references and descriptions of the geisha's world, in particularly the hairstyles and clothing of the geisha. Initially Komayo meets Yoshioka, a man she had known from her past, the relationship though is strained, true intentions remain obscure, through a meeting of another character, Komayo's heart begins to be pulled in another direction.

Although the main narrative follows Komayo's progress, the novel's focus dips in and out of the lives of the orbiting characters, creating a fascinating patchwork of characters representative of the times, the slightly lecherous Yoshioka, the man whom Komayo had a previous relationship, also Jukichi and Gozan who run the geisha house where Komayo is based, and at the beginning they receive a visit from novelist and storyteller Kurayama Nanso, who has a later chapter devoted to him where what appears to be an abandoned house holds an enchantment for the writer, this scene in turn though Kafu uses to make connections with the other pivotal character to the book, Segawa Isshi a famous onnagata actor, who becomes the potential suitor at the centre of the rivalry. Nanso is a curious character with a deep empathy of the passing of the old, the reader can't help from contemplating how much of Kafu could be depicted in Nanso. As the book continues another sub-narrative emerges concerning the sons of Jukichi and Gozan, Shohachi and the wayward Takijiro, another narrative follows Segawa when he meets poet/writer Yamai Kaname, described as the 'Verlaine of Japan', who contemplates writing a novel in the style of The Cathedral by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, through these fragmented but inter joining narratives Kafu opens up an area of narrative space, objectifying the characters and their environment, the prose becomes imbued with a fully realized but questioning and curious nostalgia. The narrative returns again to Komayo facing her fate amidst the competition for Segawa, Kafu shows that sometimes fate can turn and intervene in spite of the human effort exerted in order to shape it, a fascinating novel.

Rivalry - A Geisha's Tale at Columbia University Press              

Friday 10 August 2012

Death Sentences





Originally published in Japan in 1984 Death Sentences/Genshi Gari by Kawamata Chiaki was awarded the Nihon SF Taisho Award in the same year, and has recently been published by the Minnosota University Press in a translation by Thomas Lamarre, (The Anime Machine) and Kazuko Y. Behrens, the narrative of the novel is spread over five chapters with an opening Prologue and a Final Chapter entitled: Oblivion. The novel is sandwiched between an informative  foreword by Takayuki Tatsumi and an expansive and explanatory afterword by Thomas Lamarre, which describes the structure of Kawamata's prose and explores the thematic implications that the novel raises, Takayuki Tatsumi's foreword contextualises  Kawamata's writing, both within the sphere of Japanese Science Fiction writing and also comparatively  with authors of the genre from the West, J.G Ballard, Philip K.Dick, Stanislaw Lem, among others. It could be said that Death Sentences only begins to resemble something that you could call explicit science fiction near it's closing, but the path it takes to get there could quite easily fit into being labelled with the speculative, the novel weaves between genres and timezones giving it a palpable spatial texture. It's hard to talk of Death Sentences without thinking of Koji Suzuki's novel Ringu, which was published a little over a decade after it, it has at it's centre a dangerous death inducing object, in Ringu it was embodied in the videotape, in Death Sentences the object has more of a literary inspired source in being a poem. The novel opens in the modern day with a special unit officer, Sakamoto, tracking down a copy of the poem through a couple in a love hotel, the next chapter leads on to describe the poem's origin and the history of it's author. As Lamarre mentions in the afterword, the sequencing of the events in the novel can feel or read as being subtly  syncopated, the narrative appears to focus into specific segments of the story that has an underlying looping element, the nuances in the book are slight and a reading of Lamarre's afterword explores these in greater detail, Kawamata often switches between first and third person narratives, the whole affect is a highly readable prose.

Much of the narrative of the following chapter traverses back in time and is told through the surrealist Andre Breton as he waits to meet a poet in a Paris cafe, as the clock passes the anticipated hour of their meeting, through Breton's recollections we learn of their initial meeting in New York some years earlier, these first chapters dip in and out of the history of Breton and other Surrealists - Marcel Duchamp, Anton Artaud and David Hare who all come into contact to varying degrees with the poet Hu Mei or as Breton comes to understand his name through Hu Mei writing his name in the air with his fingers - Who May. The poetry he writes is full of arcane obfuscation and include a number of curious words and usages of language that Who May has appeared to have invented, over time Breton's contact with Who May becomes patchy as the poet begins to slip into obscurity. We learn of the suicides and mysterious deaths of many of the surrealists who had come into contact with the poems. The narrative moves again through the proceeding chapters, forward in time to Sakakibara, the owner of a small press who becomes involved with a department store's ambitious exhibition of Surrealist artifacts that have been recently come to light, the centre piece of the proposed exhibition is Breton's travelling trunk, the contents of which contain many manuscripts which until now have remained unseen, amongst them Who May's poems, the effects of the poem again begin to show themselves in the contemporary world. The narrative continues following the poem's dissemination, jumping again via Sakamoto and through a reading of the poem the narrative lands to a Martian setting, the events described by Carl Schmitt, leader of a squad about to lead a raid on a Martian settlement searching again for copies of the poem. An intriguing and symbolic novel and translation that will appeal to the reader on many differing levels.

Death Sentences at University of Minnesota Press