Twelve Views from the Distance

 

Spread across twelve chapters, Mutsuo Takahashi's, Twelve Views from the Distance, is an absorbing memoir of his childhood years, originally appearing in serialized form in 1969 it was subsequently published as a book the following year, opening with a description of a photographic portrait of his mother the description is expanded in recalling the occasion of it being taken, the falling snow outside associated with her early disappearance, we're reminded that, 'the snow of memory often falls in a warped path'. Rather than pointing or correlating to the events of the external world too explicitly Twelve Views from the Distance is an evocative personal memoir, throughout the twelve chapters or views Takahashi looks over formative moments and examines their rippling after effects. Covering the years from his birth in 1937 to 1952, we learn of his father's, premature death by acute pneumonia exacerbated by overwork, the remaining family's return to his paternal grandparents home in Nōgata, his older sister passed away very shortly after due to meningitis, their deaths came so close they were cremated in the same coffin. Through describing these events Takahashi describes at times in pictorial detail his grandparents home and surrounding neighbourhood and the children he played with, within the house a room that appeared to captivate him was his Uncle Ken'ichi's room, recalling an episode when he was beaten by him for not ceasing to cry, Takahashi observes the intimacy of the punishment, an event that only the two of them were witnesses to, he suspects that the violence that erupted in his Uncle was a venting of emotions arising from other exterior circumstances, his uncle worked on the railroad before his akagami card arrived calling him to the front.  An event that is returned to throughout the chapters is his mother's mysterious disappearance, initally his grandmother had told him she wouldn't be away for long, but it wasn't until a package arrived months later from China that her whereabouts became known to him, when she returned Takahashi observes that something was not the same, degrees of intimacy had changed.

 

As well as giving a broad portrait of his immediate family Takahashi's book is full of instances of his grandparents passing down stories particular to the district, the book subtly reverberates with local legends and stories of neighbours falling into ruination, the wife of a wealthy man who suddenly one day, as if possessed moves out and lives under a bridge, the cry of the slightly menacing Yosshoi bird echoes across the narrative, another figure that is neither it seems too distant is that of Fudō-myōō. As Takahashi grows older he depicts the harsh and at times darkly savage power games played out amongst the groups of children at the schools he attended, malevolence never seems  too distant in Takahashi's narrative either from other children or the possibility from his family, and the backdrop to this is the spectre of the war.  In the chapters The Shore of Sexuality and also to a degree in Princes and Paupers Takahashi remembers the emergence of his burgeoning sexual inclinations, and in Imagining Father gives a portrait with the fragments of memories he has of his father, and connects with the discovery of a piece of copied text that his father had written out that he found hidden away by his mother, in this chapter Takahashi observes that people or presences that are absent can sometimes be the ones that leave the deeper affect.

 

Skies of Blood opens with evocative memories of skies that feature in the memories of his youth, sunlight and blood seem to metaphorically merge in the sky, later in the chapter Takahashi goes onto re-examine the violence endured in his youth -

 

As a little boy, whenever I saw the blood swelling and congealing on the surface of the sky, I would think of Mother. This did not only happen during her absence when I was living with Grandmother or was being passed from one household to another. Even after she returned, I continued to think about her as I watched the sunset. She was often away, and every time she left, I was exposed to the violence of my Grandmother, my aunt, and other adults. That would only make me miss my kind and gentle mother all the more, when she returned, however, I never again found the kindness I had been waiting for. Instead, what confronted me was another kind of aggression. The violence she displayed toward me was something that ran deep in her veins and that even she could not control once it had been awakened. When I encountered violence in my own mother, it only made me yearn all the more for what I believed motherhood should be - eternal kindness.

 

The final chapter, Communities outside the World, Takahashi recounts meetings with those at the peripheries of society and the book closes with a meditation on the location of himself within memory. Throughout reading Twelve Views from the Distance the reader can't help but be infused of the power of narration that emanates from it, either orally as seen being exchanged in many instances within the book, or as in it's entirety in the one that Takahashi has written. Takahashi's collection Poems of a Penisist has recently been re-published by Minnesota University Press. Twelve Views from the Distance is translated by Jeffrey Angles.    

 

Twelve Views from the Distance at Minnesota University Press.           

 

 

 

       

Death by Choice by Masahiko Shimada

 

 

 

Death by Choice opens in the dream state of Kita Yoshio, in it a baby who appears as a judge sentences him to a death of his own choosing, Kita awakens as his plane touches down, returning to Tokyo after visiting his father's grave in Dazaifu. From early on in this well paced novel the premise is outlined quite simply that Kita has reached the decision to kill himself at the end of a week, the novel unfolds throughout chapters diaristically entitled by the passing days, when starting the novel the distant last chapter has the enigmatic title, 'someday', which casts the shadow of a question mark over how Kita's story might turn out. The novel rather than being a stickler for realism reads as a series of juxtapositions of the circumstances in the lives of the people Kita encounters who themselves by varying degrees have some relationship to death, though focusing on death the narrative inadvertently casts a turnaround glance to those living, their lives and values. The novel resembles being somewhere between bucket list and road movie, with ample space given over to moral circumspection, Kita sets out to fulfill some of his deeper desires in his last week, with his life savings to spend money is not much of a problem. After a rather spontaneous and chance meeting with the dubious  Yashiro, (the owner of a film company and a man with many resourceful connections), Kita's first liaison is with a porno star, Mitsuyo, and inadvertently with a group of her friends, one of these, Zombie has attempted suicide four times. Moving onto Atami the three encounter an ageing gangster who tells him of his life and he tries to install in them a sense of an 'enjoy life while you can' approach, this miniature narrative within a narrative has the feel of a morality tale. Another desire Kita would like to fulfill is to meet the star Shinobu Yoimachi, Yashiro begins to organize the meeting, and another is to meet with an ex from his past whom he had nearly married, whilst reading these encounters there's the anticipation  that perhaps one of them will convince or jolt him into changing his mind about his death by choice, as the week progresses Kita observes a countdown, perhaps this is my sixth last ever meal, he notes.

Throughout Kita's encounters Shimada's control of the mood in the narrative is remarkable, Kita seamlessly moves between a complete range of emotions and states of mind, probably one of the most well conceived scenes of the novel is when Kita returns to visit his mother who is beginning to show signs of senility. Looking around the house he notes how things have remained the same, a set of illustrated reference books that he used as a child have been in the same place for twenty years, although Kita's father has been dead for sometime his mother sets his place at the table thinking he'll be returning at any moment, when leaving Kita imagines how he and his father will appear in his mother's imagination - 'Yoshio and his Dad would be there in a corner of her brain, remembering things with an occasional laugh together, smoking, clipping their nails, flipping through the newspaper and easing out an occasional silent fart', despite it's irreverence the scene has a poignancy which is hard to escape. As the week passes the peripheral characters that Kita comes into contact with also have a close proximity to death, when pursuing his ex at a hospital he encounters a couple of patients talking who have a terminal disease, and earlier in the novel he meets an elderly couple who are intending to travel until they drop in what they call their 'fall by the wayside trip', and to make the gulf between life and death increasingly thinner we learn that their son had passed away due to cancer, in these scenes we witness different attitudes and responses to death and are reminded that Kita is heading towards it and most of these characters are trying to avoid it.

Kita's meeting with Shinobu Yoimachi is arranged, a star who's soul is being slowly sucked out and body sold off by those pretending to be her management, she turns to the bible. The two begin to form a genuine empathy towards each other which leads them into feigning her kidnapping by means of escape, as Kita too is trying to evade the parasitical Yashiro, which turns into a national man hunt for them, Yashiro employs an assassin in the shape of a doctor to track them down, which leads the novel's action to Niigata. As with the changing moods of the narrative, Shimada builds the tension within the narrative to climatic degrees and manages to continue to pursue it through the pieces after it has burst, which adds to the build up of the how, when and will of Kita's exit, the novel is probing and has in places a dark satirical edge to it which dips into the sublime when needed, accompanied by an author's afterword in which he explains his motives for writing the novel. Death By Choice is translated by Meredith McKinney.

Death By Choice at Anthem Press

 

Persona - A Biography of Yukio Mishima

 

Recently reading an article in the Daily Mainichi it pointed out that within the space of a year in Japan there had been published 10 non-fiction titles on Mishima, as it's just over forty years since his committing seppuku Mishima still generates a great deal of interest, it probably could quite easily be thought that Mishima remains Japan's most controversial author. Persona, by Naoki Inose, along with Hiroaki Sato is an expansive book,  where as the two previous biographies of Mishima have given more of a straightforward account of his life Persona gives his life and works a much broader contextualisation, although the authors of the previous biographies can relate their personal relationships to Mishima, Persona is afforded with a more detached view, and as we move further away from the events of not only his life but that of the Japan of his day we are treated to a panorama of historical and political events. In the first segment of the book there are detailed portraits and explorations of Mishima's lineage and of his ancestry, this makes for an informing historical study  within itself, as it incorporates the sociological and political upheavals and their implications of the emerging Meiji era, an indelible question that arises and seems to stand out from the various episodes and rebellions of the time being- 'is modernization the same as westernization?', which seems to encapsulate the dilemma of the period, one that would perhaps continue to an extent into the subsequent one. This genealogical portrait leads  us to Hiraoka Kimitake growing up under the watchful eye of his domineering grandmother who installed an appreciation of culture in the young Kimitake, later as he began to write his father was initially very opposed to his writing destroying manuscripts when he found them, although he would receive encouragement from his mother.

As well as describing Mishima's formative years as a writer, initally poetry and then short stories, Persona  offers a glimpse into his influences, like many Japanese writers of the time we learn of his indebtedness to the translator and poet Horiguchi Daigaku, who translated Radiguet, Cocteau and Morand into Japanese. As the narrative of the biography follows Mishima's progress it often sidesteps into explanatory descriptions of political changes and shifting social attitudes that would inform his writing, which often take two or three steps away from the subject before working their way back, these prove to be highly informing and an aid to con-textualize Mishima and his writing. Probably the lengthiest of these is given over in describing the writing of Confessions of a Mask/Kamen no Kokuhaku, events of the novel are contrasted with those that occurred in his real life, the famous scenes of the novel are carefully examined, the medical examination which he failed to pass, the discovery of the painting of The Martydom of St Sebastian by Guido Reni, (later whilst recounting his travels in Europe we learn of when Mishima saw the  painting in the original). Another episode which we get the impression that left a deep and marked impression on Mishima was his meeting and relationship with Mitani Kuniko, the sister of a friend, whom he missed the opportunity of marrying which would be the source of a deep inner regret, subsequently he learned of her engagement on a date that would later become significant, 25th November. The biography illustrates Mishima's prolificness in great detail, if not writing for multiple monthly magazine articles whilst also his novels and plays then we see him travelling to research his writing,  passages from a notebook for one such excursion for The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea is given, in it we read abstract descriptions of the setting, it's fauna, the departure times of the ships, designs of  naval uniforms. After the war Mishima appears to have been on a one man mission to create a literary revival akin to the one that W.B Yeats initiated, Mishima being the antithesis to many writers of the day most notably Dazai, who was at the height of his popularity when Mishima was at the start of the ascension of his, Dazai's suicide acted as a catalyst in Mishima between the concepts of a writer's death with that of the death of a man of action, the distinction between the intellect and the physical is something that seems to have grown wider as his life progressed.

Persona delivers to us a Mishima we are familiar with and also one we are not so, reading the book we recognise the key events and moments in his life but there are also many incidences and details here perhaps not given as much attention to in the previous biographies, the times he spent in New York and also in Persona there is larger emphasis given over in exploring Mishima the playwright. The book originally written for the domestic audience references many titles that have yet to be translated and it provokes speculations  on which of Mishima's books may appear in translation next?, Kyoko's House, Beautiful Star, or the first collection The Forest in Bloom?, it would have to be said that any new translations are long overdue.

Persona at Stone Bridge Press