Three new titles from Anthem Press/Thames River Press

More good news from Anthem Press/Thames River Press who are due to publish another three titles from the JLPP list in May, click the titles to redirect to the publisher's page ~

In Pursuit of Lavender

By Akiko Itoyama Translated by Charles De Wolf

In this novel-length road story, the female protagonist, who is haunted by an audio hallucination –‘twenty ells of linen are worth a coat’ – that plays over and over in her mind, escapes from a mental hospital with a young man. This is the story of their journey together. [NP] The hallucinatory words come from a passage in Marx's Das Kapital, but the protagonist knows nothing of that; nor does she understand what they literally mean. After she starts to hear them, she attempts suicide and is then diagnosed as manic and placed in a mental hospital. Unable to stand life in the prison-like hospital, she makes a daring escape with Nagoyan, another patient. [NP] She is 21 and fluent in the Hakata dialect of northern Kyushu. Nagoyan is a 24-year-old company employee suffering from depression who insists that he is a native of Tokyo, though he is actually from Nagoya. This strange pair, just escaped from their Hakata hospital, struggle with the mental crises that constantly assault them as they head southward in a junky car, picking destinations at whim as they go. On the way, they sightsee, quarrel and yearn for the fragrance of lavender.

A Cappella

By Mariko Koike Translated by Juliet W. Carpenter

Kyoko Noma visits the city of Sendai, where she used to live, and reflects on the events that took place there 20 years earlier, in the second half of the sixties, when the winds of the counterculture student movement were sweeping Japan. This is a tale of intense, heartbreaking love in adolescence, and the tragedy it gives rise to.

Tokyo Seven Roses Vol I  and Vol II

By Hisashi Inoue, Translated by Jeffrey Hunter
 

Tokyo Seven Roses' is set in Japan during the waning months of WWII and the beginning of the Occupation. It is written as a diary kept from April 1945 to April 1946 by Shinsuke Yamanaka, a fifty-three-year-old fan-maker living in Nezu, part of Tokyo's shitamachi (old-town) district. After the war, Shinsuke learns by chance that the Occupation forces are plotting a nefarious scheme: in order to cut Japan off from its dreadful past, they intend to see that the language is written henceforth using the alphabet. To fight off this unheard-of threat to the integrity of Japanese culture, seven beautiful women – the Seven Roses – take a stand.

Very much looking forward to seeing these titles, Itoyama Akiko has been the recipient of the Akutagawa and Kawabata Yasunari Prize and has also previously been nominated for the Noma and Naoki Prize, Charles de Wolf has previously translated Itoyama Akiko's Akutagwa Prize winning story Oki de Matsu which is available to read over at Words Without Borders. In Pursuit of Lavender is the second novel of Itoyama's to be translated, It's Only Talk, translated by Raquel Hill was published by The Japan Times. Mariko Koike, a Naoki Prize winning author, A Cappella is her second novel to appear in English translation, the previous The Cat in the Coffin was published by Vertical Inc. Tokyo Seven Roses: Volume 1 is the first, (as far as I can see), novel of the Tanizaki Prize winning playwright/novelist Inoue Hisashi to appear in translation.

Last Fragments of Winter

 

 

 

The transition of literary works to film is something that's constantly fascinating me, perhaps like most readers I find that often when reading I tend to envision novels, stories, poems in a cinematic way, and reversely when watching films sometimes imagining how they might potentially appear as a written work. Edmund Yeo's 2011 film; Last Fragments of Winter, finds it's inspiration in Kanai Mieko's short story, The Moon, which can be read in the collection; The Word Book, published by Dalkey Archive, 2009, the film fantastically expands on the original story. The film was shown at the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam and is available to watch via their youtube channel until the end of February.

Last Fragments of Winter

Citadel in Spring by Agawa Hiroyuki

Recently looking through some old posts that I'd kept hidden away for an unknown reason I found this post I'd written some years ago on Hiroyuki Agawa's novel, Citadel in Spring, not sure why it hadn't made it to being posted. It seems like an appropriate time to put it up with the very welcome news that Kurodahan Press are due to reissue the novel, along with Osamu Dazai's Blue Bamboo, both of which were originally published by Kodansha International. Although the novel references historical events the narrative avoids from being read in an overtly documentary style, perhaps it could be said that a large portion of Citadel in Spring appears to have been shaped by the author's own experiences.

Citadel in Spring/Haru no shiro, was originally published in Japan by Shinchosha in 1949, and published by Kodansha in this translation by Lawrence Rogers in 1990. It opens in 1941, and through the central character, Koji Obata, a student of Chinese Literature, we see the years that lead to Japan's defeat, culminating in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Like Agawa himself Koji's family is from Hiroshima, and for a while his family have been aware that he and his friend's sister, Chieko, have been close, both families think that possibly they would make a good marriage match, although nothing definite or formal has been said to each other. Koji visits his teacher Mr Yashiro, and they watch as departing soldiers make their way to Ujina Harbour, Koji thinks a lot about the part he will play in the war, and contemplates upon his own mortality. As a student he and his group of friends receive some field training, he comes to the conclusion that he's not afraid that if he has to give his life in this war he will. He meets with Chieko again before leaving for university in Tokyo, and unconventionally she proposes to him, thinking it through he goes with the decision that he wants to see more of life first, his feelings are ambiguous, retrospectively he thinks he might be making the wrong decision by turning her offer down. He hears of the defeat of the Americans in Hawaii along with news of the escalating fighting. He visits his elder brother who lives in Manchuria, and on his return to Japan his graduation is brought forward, and he joins the navy. Getting together with his friends before departing, Kurimura, one of his party confesses to the gathering, 'if the order 'suicide squad, one step forward!' is given I will serenely take one step backward'. After leaving his friends, he visits Chieko again and although they embrace, nothing is planned for their future, Koji feels that she will be waiting for him to return home.

After a brief stint at sea Koji is assigned to code breaking duty, as he was a student of Chinese for a short time he is set to work on decoding signals from China. He gets a visit from Chieko's brother Ibuki, who tells him of his near death experience as the ship he was on went down. Another friend Tanii works on decoding Britain's naval code, a daily search for the repetition of one number among many thousands, the book gives some examples on code breaking of the time, with descriptions of Domic codes. Koji's boss is the unaffected, Commander Ezaki, disinterested in what his staff tells him, he spends most of his time sitting in his office smoking his pipe, (with English tobacco), his favourite novel is Hanshichi, and he reads Ranke's The Great Powers, which he hides in a red cover so it will look like he's reading a classified document if he's caught out, but after Koji detects a British ship Ezaki begins to behave more kindly toward him, taking him more seriously. Koji is transferred to Hankow in China, and the unit hears the news of the Battle of Leyte, they interrogate a captured American serviceman and continue to monitor the movements of B-29 bombers at Chengtu airfield, the code that the Americans are using appears to be unbreakable, eventually though Koji manages to decipher that the bombers are headed their way, during the raid magnesium bombs are dropped on the city, but Koji's unit escapes from any direct hits. Recovering from the raid Koji learns that his new commanding officer will be Kihara, a man from his past, whom he suspected of stealing from his friends - a man he detests. It doesn't take long before the hatred between the two men boils to the surface, Kihara beats Koji after he exposes his crime, but knowing that he's been found out and combined with the uncertainty that the defeat will bring Kihara's morale gives out and he resorts to drinking heavily. Piece by piece news reaches the unit of food shortages, and the fact that the Yamanote district is bombed, eventually they hear of the bombing of  Hiroshima and finally of the announcement of surrender. The novel returns to Chieko, Koji's parents and teacher in Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the bomb, and projects further with Koji contemplating back on the war and it's implications of peace in it's aftermath.
 

Haru no shiro/Citadel in Spring won Hiroyuki Agawa theYomiuri Prize in 1952, other translations of his writings and novels that have appeared in English translation include; Burial in the Clouds, The Reluctant Admiral - Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, (a biography), and also the harder to find novel, Devil's Heritage/Ma no isan, a novel from 1953, set in Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.

 

 

101 Modern Japanese Poems

Another title selected from the lists of the JLPP from Anthem Press is this welcome and wide ranging  anthology of modern Japanese poems originally compiled and prefaced by Makoto Ōoka back in 1998 under the title Gendaishi no kansho 101, translated by Paul McCarthy, it features the poetry of 55 different poets all born within the last century, the selection is introduced by Chuei Yagi, which traces the beginnings of modern Japanese poetry. These poems are all in the form of prose poetry, and are selected from over a period of six decades, the earliest being Toyoichirō Miyoshi's, Prisoner, from 1949 and the most recent is Shuntaro Tanikawa's,  Mt Yokei, from 1993. The decades that are the most well represented here are poems from the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, within these periods there are selections from poets you would expect to see rep-resented; Shuntarō Tanikawa, Ryūichi Tamura, Minoru Yoshioka, Gōzō Yoshimasu, to name a few amongst the many, some of these poems are familiar landmarks; Minoru Yoshioka's Monks, and Shuntarō Tanikawa's Sorrow from his seminal collection, Two Billion Light Years of Loneliness, Tamura's Sinking Temple from Four Thousand Days and Nights, some of these poems have appeared in English translation in previous anthologies and by various translators but this goes some way to show how integral these poems and poets are in the landscape of post war and latter half twentieth century Japanese poetry. There are many poems and poets appearing here for the first time in translation and on an initial reading they could number in being too numerous to list individually here.

The anthology comes with an informing source section at the back, and the poems are presented along with the date in which they appeared in the original which goes some way in assisting to visualize the poems, although this it could be said, depending on the poems subject or concerns, is more relevant in some of the poems than in others, and it brings the added opportunity of an extended contextualization of the poems. In Hitoshi Anzai's Elevator Mornings, (1961), the internal and external are juxtaposed, the narrator's inner observations of a love affair meeting with that of the external world, the office building he works at, his political allegiances, but as the poem ends, he seems to escape from us - And then go shooting up by elevator, To an awfully busy place, without women. Reading these lines we can't help but picture to ourselves the place he is exiting into. The quote by Taka' aki Yoshimoto, (two of his poems are featured in this anthology), in Chuei Yagi's introduction contrasting the shifting types of rhetoric in poetry is something fully displayed and can be read across these fascinating  poems. Themes and subject matters are as varied as there are poets and forms of expression, from the darkly exploratory and psychologically taut portrait of A Crystal Madness by Takasuke Shibusawa, (which reminded me of the fictions of Yutaka Haniya, has won many awards including - the Hagiwara Sakutaro Prize, Takami Jun Prize), to the more subtle and playful but provoking quickness of, Shimiji Clams, of Rin Ishigaki, which will remain to catch the sharpest of reader out. When reading anthologies it's tempting to look for glimpses of any unifying elements but the array of different and varied voices that can be heard here refreshingly defy this approach.

It's interesting to note the lower number of selections of poems from the eighties and the nineties, whether this illustrates a decline in published poetry at the end of the last century I'm not too sure. Amongst the poems featured from this period is Tada Chimako's, First Dream of the New Year, where a dream is described of peeling a tangerine and of being pulled inside by the hand of an elderly man, once inside the narrator describes the cosy interior, and picks another tangerine only to find another hand emerge pulling her inside, the narrator awakes observing ~ My body was steeped in the scent of dazzling gold, this poem is a perfect allegorical portrait of being pulled through the years and illustrates the brevity of memory and the parting observation of the rejuvenative power of a new year, the poem is from Tada's collection from 1986 Bonfire Festival. This expansive anthology is essential and rewarding reading to all those interested in modern Japanese poetry.        

101 Modern Japanese Poems at Anthem Press

Harlequin's Butterfly

Among other great offerings, (which also include translations of Chuya Nakahara by Christian Nagle),  the January 2013 issue of Asymtote features a tantalizing translated extract of Toh EnJoe's Akutagawa Prize winning novel Harlequin's Butterfly, translated by Sim Yee Chiang and Sayuri Okamoto. The extract is also accompanied by an interview between Toh and the translators.

"'Love'" and Other Stories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to anthologies and collections I've a tendency not to read them cover to cover but to slowly read them story by story over a period of time, recently I've read Mishima's short story Tamago/Eggs, (1953), translated by Adam Kabat that was collected in Kodansha's Showa Anthology, a surreal satire that follows a group of students caught in a world of egg shaped authority figures, which is quite at odds with themes that are usually associated with Mishima's stories and novels, also reading Behold My Swarthy Face's recent questions and study guide for Tanizaki's Mr Bluemound, a slight tugging is now pulling me towards a reading of this story.

Fortunately an affordable copy of "'Love'" and Other Stories of Yokomitsu Riichi, translated and introduced by Dennis Keene, (Tokyo University Press), came my way recently, alongside Kawabata Yasunari, Yokomitsu, (1898-1947), is probably one of the most well known exponents of late Taisho/early Showa era modernism, together with other writers they famously formed the group Shinkankakuha. As it's been noted by many observers though  Yokomitsu seemed to keep his distance to any particular school of writing. 'Love and Other Stories' presents eleven of Yokomitsu's stories, including the story Smile/Bisho which was published posthumously the year after his death in 1947, also included is Spring Riding in a Carriage and the much discussed story Machi no Soko/The Depths of the Town, or Depths of the City as it's also often referred to. Reading the stories out of sequence the first that I found myself totally immersed in was After Picking Up a Blue Stone/Aoi ishi o hirotte kara, the narrative of which follows a man tripping on a stone which after he studies it notes it's blue hue, he briefly meets up with his girlfriend before getting the urge to return home to his sister in Kobe. Whilst there they receive a telegram from their mother in Korea informing them that their father has passed away, the narrator crosses over to Korea. On arrival he learns of the financial straits his parents were in due to the fact that they had lent money out, including to their neighbours where the father of the house is suffering from dysentery. The portrait of his parent's neighbour-hood is one of destitution, poverty is rife, a beggar stumbles around the neighbourhood where gangs of youths roam on drugs, the narrator finds that he has to adjust to the role of debt collector to find the funds so that he and his mother can return to Japan. It's while the narrator goes about this that he undergoes a kind of transformation, he breaks off his engagement with his fiancee, and when he picks up the box containing his father's ashes and feels the remainder of his bones knocking the edges Yokomitsu manages to transform his narrator's incredulous feelings about death and his inability to reconcile his father's passing to the point where the reader begins to question the tangibility of life, the narrator does manage to recuperate enough money to get their return fare and on his return he suffers a dissolution of his will and struggles to repress feelings of suicide. Toward the end of the story the narrator comes across a black stone and contemplates on what would have happened if it had been black to begin with, the arbitrariness of the paths life takes, or that of the decisions his characters make that lead them there is a reoccurring element in Yokomitsu's stories.

The following story, The Pale Captain/Aoi taii , sees some of the same events or scenes of After Picking Up a Blue Stone, although from a slightly different perspective, this experimenting quality works to expand the original story to the degree where it could be easy for the reader to begin to question which of them is the original story?. Here the narrative examines the household of his mother's neighbours in Korea to a further degree, the figure of the daughter is referred to almost in passing in After Picking Up a Blue Stone, but here much more detail is filled in her character, the narrator sees the potential of a possible relationship with her and the reason that he broke off his engagement becomes apparent, other plot lines hinted to in the previous story are also given fuller explanation in The Pale Captain, a masochism of the narrator becomes apparent in him when he reduces the daughter to tears as her father's illness has brought him close to death, but there's also the notion that this is an attempt to dissipate their joint grief, although there's also the notion that he is taking advantage of her, he leads her off to a place out of sight. Another key scene in The Pale Captain is toward the end and the narrator is walking in the muddied paths of the neighbourhood, we learn that the beggar has passed away and the narrator morbidly looks around for the death mask imprinted in the mud where the beggar fell face down, looking at the impression of the face, the scene has an over all feeling of a dark sublimity.

Two more of the stories work in the same way of examining the same events and characters from different perspectives, or from different points of time within the same story - Spring Riding in a Carriage/Haru wa basha ni notte and Ideas of a Flower Garden/Hanasono no shiso, Spring Riding in a Carriage follows the narrator as he nurses his wife who is dying of T.B, whilst reading the story it's hard not to see parallels with Hori Tatsuo's Kaze Tachinu/The Wind Has Risen, (Studio Ghibli adaption forthcoming), which must have been written around the same time, although Yokomitsu's approach is not quite so detached to the extent of Hori's. Yokomitsu's fascination with science has been well documented, this can be seen in some of the stories here, his prose sometimes  reads with an almost scientific detachment, which in places reminded me of Abe Kobo, particularly in the industrial setting of The Machine/Kikai, which follows a worker who through a set of shifting circumstances finds himself working in a nameplate factory, at first the narrator scrupulously observes the man who is senior, Karube, and his ingratiating ways, the situation worsens when after a large order is received a worker, (Yoshiki), from a rival firm is used to help them complete the order, suspicions arise that he is stealing the secrets of their work methods. The story also has a slight metaphorical quality to it, the machine as well as referring to the industrial equipment around them also refers to the process of living, or perhaps the struggle of existence, the narrator at various times re-examines his reasons and motives for staying in the job, he doubts the sanity of his boss whom it always seems to be loosing money.

Probably one of the fascinating elements of these stories is of Yokomitsu's ability to transcend and merge different styles, Machi no soko/The Depths of the Town, displays an interesting use of lyrical abstraction, it's essentially a plotless story, the narrative presents a panoramic perspective of a town/city scape, the story is a slow moving pictorial snapshot. The Defeated Husband/Maketa otto offers an in depth psychological portrait of a loveless marriage, seen through the eyes of the husband who we discover is caught between conflicting emotions for three women - his wife, who often cheats on him, a woman who works at a bookstore, and also Kanko, a woman from the narrator's hometown, whom the narrator feels is the only woman who truly ever loved him. Yokomitsu adds a twist to the portrait that every time the man suffers a defeat at the hands of his wife he falls into a cycle of self hatred and loathing, it seems almost impossible for the narrator to break out of this circle. After a visit from an old friend, Mishima, the narrator returns to his hometown and perhaps to potentially take up with Kanko, but this attempt at escape proves futile and he dutifully returns home to a devastating discovery, the story ends with the cycle being broken and the narrator finds himself out on the street, suddenly facing a tall building in front of him which represents his renewed sense of freedom and confidence.

Another story that seems to dip into different styles is The Carriage/Basha, another penetrating psychological portrait follows Yura, a man who is suffering from mental exhaustion due to overwork. Through arrangements made by a friend he takes a trip to an onsen for people suffering from similar complaints. At first he warily observes the other people at the onsen contemplating what maladies each of them suffer from, after a while he meets a man who starts talking to him enthusiastically about the skill of divining the future, later we learn his name is Dr Kona, another character that features is a man who displays erratic behaviour at first referred to as the Tenri man. Slowly another plot line emerges describing a village close by called Yumedono, (Keene notes the name "Dream Hall", also pointing to the octagonal hall of the same name at Hōryū-ji/ 法隆寺 Temple in Nara), which is home to a leper colony, the village is seen as being cut off from the civilised world, but Yura learns of a beautiful young woman who lives there who appears not to be affected by the disease. Through the progression of the story it becomes apparent that the woman is Dr Kona's daughter, Hanae, and as Yura becomes closer to Dr Kona the Tenri man's behaviour becomes more erratic, making advances towards Yura which spurs Yura into numerous conjectures, a scene at the onsen where the Tenri man licks the legs of Yura is one which could possible figure from a scene found in ero guro. Through Yura's hypothesizing he comes to the understanding that perhaps the Tenri man is jealous of his closeness to Dr Kona and Hanae who the Tenri man has feelings for, and also that potentially Dr Kona is trying to arrange it that Yura marries Hanae. At the center of these interests is Hanae, and Yura is left facing the decision to stay or to return to Tokyo, to the point where the carriage comes to return Hanae to the village, leaving him but a moment to make his decision. An important collection which it could be said is somewhat of a travesty to have been allowed to slip out of print.

Through Keene's translations we get an insight into the narrative power of Yokomitsu's stories, and finishing reading them provokes a reading of a number of other books, including -

Yokomitsu Riichi - Modernist - Dennis Keene

Kannani and Document of Flames - Yuasa Katsuei

Topographies of Japanese Modernism - Seiji M. Lippit

Shanghai - Yokomitsu Riichi

An interesting article on Shinkankaku at ejcjs

          

God's Boat by Kaori Ekuni

 

 

God's Boat/Kamisama no boto by Ekuni Kaori, in a translation by Chikako Kobayashi has recently been published Anthem Press, although quite brief the novel is striking for it's being narrated from two perspectives, that of Yoko and her daughter, Soko, opening with a memory of a holiday scene with parents it takes sometime to figure accurately which generation the opening narrator is referring to, throughout this incredibly well nuanced and resonating short novel there are passages where the narrative dips back and reopens again with recollected memories, provoking the reader into contemplating how memory serves us to form impressions of our past, and by turns illustrates how it informs the present as well as how it can map the future, at times the narrative can feel to overlap and begins to read as if it were possibly coming from Soko from a projected point in the future, this gives the novel an absorbing dimension and far reaching field of scope. Yoko and her daughter travel from place to place, Yoko works at bars and restaurants, supplementing her wages by teaching piano, the portrait of Soko and Yoko is a finely drawn one, the intimacies of their domestic life and relationship give the novel an endearing emotional depth, Soko's solitary nights when Yoko is out working she cuddles up with her dolls and rubber robots, setting the alarm so they can spot-switch throughout the night, something that Yoko and Soko do later in the novel with the imaginary presence of Soko's absent father. Slowly emerging through their alternating narratives a picture of Yoko's past emerges, a relationship and marriage to a man simply named as the professor, and also piece by piece, through recollection, information about a 'bone melting love affair' with Soko's father. The details of the dual narratives make an endearing contrast, as Soko goes from school to school we read of her relationships and temporary attachments to friends Rikako and also later with Numata-kun, an overweight boy whose clothes are chosen by his mother which gives him the appearance of being a middle aged man, but it's the simple descriptions and observations of each other that make Yoko and Soko's characters come off the page and stay with the reader each time whilst pausing in reading, appearing at time like diary entries, we read the two perspectives of their events and places that they stay.

 

As the novel progresses there are some enigmatic story lines that begin to appear behind their narratives, the oath that Soko's father made that he will find them again, suggests some abrupt and enforced end to their relationship, Yoko, feels that they have to remain on the move, being 'birds of passage', that if they were to settle, he'd never find them. The analogy that they are adrift on God's boat was one that had me wondering what was being referred to, but Yoko observes, thinking back about her life with and without the man she had the affair with, she finds herself living in a sort of a B.C and A.D, he was my God she admits, the sense of lost love and longing to reunite pours off the page, as she imagines what he is doing in the present. Despite the potential religious  impression of the book's title, the story is one wrought with human fragility. Another enigma that begins to slowly unravel behind the scenes of Yoko's narrative, is her estrangement with her parents, the details of the break with Soko's father remain in mystery, throughout the novel there's a pervading sense that Yoko, by keeping on the move is running away from the social stigma of having an affair and also of her parents disapproval. The narratives follow Soko's journey through various schools as she gets older, from elementary to middle school and she begins to grow weary of constantly relocating and frustrated with her mother for not facing reality, as the two's paths begin to separate, Yoko decides to head back to Tokyo, back to the city and life that over the years she has become estranged from. Finishing God's Boat, comes the realization of reading of two absorbing, parallel rites of passage. 

 

God's Boat is the second novel to appear in English translation by Ekuni Kaori, the other being Twinkle, Twinkle, she was recently awarded the Yasunari Kawabata Prize for The Dog and the Harmonica, this translation was selected for the JLPP.

 

God's Boat at Anthem Press  

 

Many thanks to Anthem Press for providing a review copy.