The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - 2003, translated from The Japanese by Allison Markin Powell

 

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 15- hosted by Dolce Bellezza 

The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami - 2003, translated from The Japanese by Allison Markin Powell

This is my 14th year as a participant in The Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Docle Belleza.  Through this I discovered hithertofore unknown to me writers whom I have added to my read all I can lists.  

The requirements of The Challenge, explained in The Website, are simple. Read one book written by a Japanese author and post a link to your comments on the Website.  The Japanese Literature Challenge opened up a fantastic Multi-Dimensional area of literature to me.  You can also meet others who share your interests and perhaps expand the reach of your website.

I have previously read and posted upon two novels by Hiromi Kawakami, Prade and Strange Weather in Tokyo.

In July of 2021  I read Hiromi Kawakami’s delightful novel Strange Weather in Tokyo.   Strange Weather in Tokyo centers on the very slowly developing relationship between a single woman in her late thirties,Tsukiko, and one of her former high school teachers, Sensei,at least thirty years her senior. They run into each other in a bar by accident.  They have frequent unarranged meet ups at the bar, which serves great food along with Saki and beer. She assumes he is a widower.

As time passes a shared love of food, proximity and their history brings them into a more intimate relationship.

This is a very subtly developed story line.  Each character keeps things in reserve.  Both are deeply lonely.

Parade is also about odd bonds formed to combat loneliness.  Here it is with traditional Japanese spirit entities which can only be seen by one person or perhaps also their close companion.  The entities have interesting personalities.

I was delighted to see a third of her novels, all translated by Allison Merkin Powell, The Ten Loves of Mishimo, on sale for $1.95.

This book is structured in a very interesting way, in ten chapters ten different women give an account of their relationship with Mishimo. Mishimo is a now a thirty something business man, single.  We do have accounts of him in his School days also.  Like her other novels, this is about people seeking an escape from loneliness.  Most of the women do sleep with him and all eat with him.  Foodies Will enjoy this.  Every woman has her own vision of him.  None of the relationships endure. The Challenge of The Ten Loves of Mishima is in trying to put together a whole character from fragments.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s most acclaimed and successful authors. Winner of numerous prizes for her fiction, including the Akutagawa, Ito Sei, Women Writers (Joryu Bungako Sho), and Izumi Kyoka prizes, she is the author of The Nakano Thrift Shop, a Wall Street Journal Best New Fiction pick, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Manazuru, among

others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and Granta. She lives in Japan.

Mel Ulm