The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa - 2017- translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai - 2021

The Cat Who Saved Books  by Sosuke Natsukawa - 2017- translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai - 2021

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 

This is my 13th  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 was initially drawn to The Cat Who Saved books by Sosuke Natsukawa for a combinations of reasons, I like cats, I like books, the Kindle edition was on sale for $1.95, and it was a best seller in Japan.

 Rintaro Natsuki, a bookish high School student,  is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then a cat named Tiger shows up and insists he assist him in saving books in danger of being lost.  Books need to be read, not just treated as objects.

Tiger and Rintaro enter four mazes.  In one maze we meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, another man who cuts small sections out of books for people to speed read, and a publisher interested only in best sellers. The Final maze leads them into a terrifying confrontation.

I enjoyed this book.  

“SOSUKE NATSUKAWA is a doctor in Nagano, Japan. His first book, Kamisama no karute (“God’s medical records”), a novel drawn from his experiences working as a physician in a small hospital, won the Shogakukan Fiction Prize and received second place at the Japan Bookseller Awards. It sold over 1.5 million copies and was adapted into a hit film in Japan.” From The book

Mel Ulm.

 

The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami - 2005. - translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell - 2016

The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami- 2005.  - translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin  Powell - 2016

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 

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.

The Nakano Thrift shop is not an expensive antique shop, more a place for curios.  Each of the twelve chapters is named after an item sold in the store, how it got there and who buys the item. 

The shop is owned by Mr. Nakano.  The narrative thread on the relationship between Hitomi and Takeo, the  thrift shop’s pickup and delivery driver and buyer.  Hiromi, the narrator of the novel feels an attraction for Takeo but as in Strange Weather in Tokyo it is very subdued and only partially returned.

Mr. Nakano often has lovers.  Hiromi and Takeo share an interest in spying on him, partially for his sister.  She has her own live in boyfriend.  Hiromi and Takeo begin to see each other outside the store.  He tells her he is not especially into sex.

There are lots of food references, facts about the antique business in Japan as well as interesting side characters.

The characters are very interesting.  They have issues forming intimate bonds.

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.. from Europa Publishing

 

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

Parade:A Folk Tale by Hiromi Kawakami - 2002 - translated from the Japanese by Alison Marken Powell - 2019

 My Post on Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

Parade:A Folk Tale by Hiromi Kawakami - 2002- translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell 2019- 

In July of this year 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 found Parade a lot of fun to read.  I do have one practical qualm.  The projected Reading time is 55 minutes but 32 minutes are devoted to extracts from print reviews praising her other work.  I obtained the Kindle edition on sale for $1.95, it is now back up to $6.95.  Personally i would have felt taken advantage of  had I paid that price.

HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first book, God (Kamisama), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Tread on a Snake (Hebi o fumu), and in 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban), which was an international bestseller. The book was short-listed for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize.

Penance by Kanae Minato - 2012 - translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel - 2017

Penance by Kanae Minato - 2012- translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel - 2017

Earlier this month I read Confessions, the Award winning crime novel by Kanae Minato.   Both novels center on the murder of a very young girl, age four in Confessions and 13 or so in Penance.  Each is told from multiple points of view. Both go deeply into how the murder impacts others.

Five girls, about 12, are very close.  They are all from protective families that warn them about strangers.  One day they are shopping. A man says he is having trouble unlocking a dressing room door and, with a promise of ice cream for all, induces one of the girls to go with him to the dressing room.  He murders and rapes her. The description of her body are very graphic to let us feel how disturbed the girls were when they found her body.  We see the reactions of the girls, trying to find adults.  The police quiz them but they can offer no descriptions of the man. We follow the girls for 15 years, see how the trauma impacted them. One murders her husband.  One does not get first period until she was 25.

The mother of the murdered girl is from a wealthy family.  She tells the girls shortly after the murder she will take revenge on them unless they do penance for her death.

Murders are relative to other places uncommon in Japan.  We get a look at parenting styles.  We go to a police station. 

Penance was a fast read, always a shocking event coming.  

Kanae MINATO (湊 かなえ, born 1973) is a Japanese writer of crime fiction and thrillers.

She started writing in her thirties. Her first novel Confessions (告白, Kokuhaku) became a bestseller and won the Japanese Booksellers Award. The movie Confession directed by Tetsuya Nakashima was nominated to 2011 Academy Award. 

She has been described in Japan as "the queen of iyamisu"(eww mystery), a subgenre of mystery fiction which deals with grisly episodes and the dark side of human nature. From Goodreads 

 

Confessions by Kanae Minato - 2008 - translated from Japanese by Stephen Synder - 2014

 

 

Confessions by Kanae Minato - 2008 - translated from Japanese by Stephen Synder - 2014

Winner of the ALA's 2015 Alex Award for the Best Adult Books That Appeal to Teen Audiences

- Nominated for the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

- One of Booklist's Best Crime Novels of the Year

I have not read much in way of Japanese crime novels.  Confessions by Kanae Minato sounded interesting in the Amazon descriptions and has won numerous awards so I decided to give it a try.

The story is told from several perspectives.  The central question is who murdered the four year old daughter of a teacher and what was the motivation for the murder.  The opening chapted centers on the mother giving a speech to her high School students in which she resigns, telling them she knows which of her students murdered her daughter.  Her reasons for not turning them in are simple.  The laws in Japan are very lax on juveniles, even killers get out of Youth confinement with no record by 21.  She has devised a diabolical Revenge. One which puts all The students in danger,

There are also chapters from the point of view of the killer in which he explains his reasons, as well as another student tricked into helping him who thought it was a prank.

I found The characters well developed, i learned 

a bit about School in Japan.  The cruelty of one of the boys is chilling.  We learn enough about the famlies of the boys to try to figure out why they thought it would be fun to kill a four year old girl.

Kanae MINATO (湊 かなえ, born 1973) is a Japanese writer of crime fiction and thriller.

She started writing in her thirties. Her first novel Confessions (告白, Kokuhaku) became a bestseller and won the Japanese Booksellers Award. The movie Confession directed by Tetsuya Nakashima was nominated to 2011 Academy Award.

She has been described in Japan as "the queen of iyamisu"(eww mystery), a subgenre of mystery fiction which deals with grisly episodes and the dark side of human nature. From Goodreads 

Sweet Bean Paste by Tetsuya Akikawa a.k.a Durian Sukegawa - 2013, translated from Japanese by Alison Watts - 2017

 

Sweet Bean Paste by Tetsuya Akikawa 2013, translated from Japanese by Alison Watts - 2017

Tetsuya Akikawa is the pen name of Durian Sukegawa under which Sweet Bean Paste was originally published .

An International best seller

Sweet Bean Paste is very moving, almost heartbreaking at times.

It is set in a confectionary shop in Tokyo, specializing in dorayaki,a very popular pancake with a filling of sweet bean paste.

 The shop is run by Sontaro.  He has a troubled past, he spent two years in prison through his involvement in never quite spelled out shady activities of the shop owner.  He has abandoned his dreams of wanting to be a writer and drinks too much.  He works in the shop to pay back money he owes to the widow of the late owner and to live. He is maybe forty.

He buys his bean paste from vendors, then stuffs the pancakes with the paste.

He does not have any passion for his work. As far as we know, he has no friends, no living family..  He lives in a Spartan apartment.  We do learn a lot about the pastry business.  The owner’s widow goes over the books with him occasionally.

One day a quite elderly woman comes in the shop in response to the “Help Wanted” sign he had put in the window.  He really mostly wanted someone to talk with during the day.  The woman, Tokue, asks for the job.  Sontoaro notices her hands are deformed and feels she Will  have a hard time.  He also thinks she may scare away his customers.  She tells him she had been making bean paste for fifty years and offers to work for a very low wage as she totally  wants the job.  She loves making bean paste.it turns out her paste is simply fabulous.  Business goes way up.  They slowly become close.  Then just before midpoint, a tragic secret is revealed about Tokue’s past.

We learn that at around 14 she was diagnosed as having Hansen’s disease, once called Leporsy.  In those days, victims were confined to sanatariums, not allowed any outside contacts. Then maybe thirty years ago a cure was developed but Tokue knew nothing but living there by now.  She married another victim, they had no children and now she is a widow.  Sontaro is afraid his customers may be turned away if they learn her history.  He decides to hide it. They both gradually become friends with a teenage girl patron. We learn slowly about the history of Sontoro, the  girl and Tokue, they form a Family almost.  Each loving the other as no one else does.  

I really do not want to tell to much of the plot.  There are very sad and very up lifting moments.

I was very moved by this book.  

Durian Sukegawa studied oriental philosophy at Waseda University, before going on to work as a reporter in Berlin and Cambodia in the early 1990s. He has written a number of books and essays, TV programmes and films. He lives in Tokyo. Google Books

Born: June 17, 1962 (age 58 years), Tokyo, Japan

Nationality: Japanese

Books: Sweet Bean Paste

The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga by Junichiro Tanizaki - 1926 Translated by Paul Warham - A Novella

The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga by Junichiro Tanizaki - 1926 Translated by Paul Warham - A Novella

I read this work  in The Penquin Book of Japanese Short Stories 

The Japanese Literature Challenge 14 - Hosted by Dolce Bellezza 

January 1 to March 31. Japanese Literature Challenge 14

My  readings  for JL14 2021 so far

1. “Peony Lanterns” a Short Story by Aoko Matsuda - translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton -2020 - a delightful story you can read online. Linked to traditional stories of Ghosts
2. Before The Coffee Gets Cold by TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI -2020- an international bestseller
3. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa - 1998
4. The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa - 1968
5. The Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata - 2016 - cult favorite
6. UNDER RECONSTRUCTION - A short story by Ōgai Mori - first published 1910 - translated from the Japanese by Ivan  Morris 1968
7. Dream Pictures  - A Short Story by Kenzaburo Óe - 1996

I first begun reading Junichiro Tanazaki in 2009, The first year I participated in The Japanese Literature Challenge.  

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 to 1965) is now  one of my “read all I can” writers.  Were he writing now, his every new  novel would be a bestseller, made into an international movie.  Among my favourite of his novels are Naomi, Some Prefer Nettles and his most now read book, The Makioka Sisters, about four upper Class Japanese sisters in search of a husband, Austen fans love this book.  (Viking Press has  recently published his The Maids, told from the point of views of the maids of the four sisters.  As soon as this is out on Kindle I will read it!). 

The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga, as is a common theme in Tanazaki, treats Janus like attitude of Japan between wars to European and American influences.  It is part a mystery story, as well as a memoir of a Japanese man’s obsession with western prostitutes, his marked preference for them sexually to Japanese women, including his wife.

There are themes of sexual obsession in a number of his works, few depictions of happy enduring marriages.  

The story is narrated by a famous writer, much like the author.  He gets lots of letters, many from aspiring writers seeking his help and also from people seeking advise on personal issues.  One letter from a woman intrigues him.  She has seen in a news paper a picture of the author with a man identified as his friend. She says the man seems to resemble her husband.  He left home three years ago and she has not heard from him.  She says in the letter her husband of many years will disappear peridically for periods of three or four years, never communicating.  Then he returns, looking haggard, and acts the model husband.  Then in a couple of years, announcing his plans, he tells his wife he is leaving and Will be back in three years or so.  He tells her you can try to find me but you never Will.  She lives from his famlies acricultural holdings. She asks the author to tell the  man his daughter is very ill and he needs to return.  The man says the woman is crazy but he seems disturbed.

We learn man is very into brothels stocked with European women. He spends most of his nights in brothels  and seems an owner of one place.  He tells the author of a beautiful Portuguese woman just arrived he should experience.  He speaks French and English.  We along on the brothel visit. Owners of brothels contact him when they get in a new worker they feel he might like.

There is a lot of time in brothels in the story. The man denigrates the sexual interest of Japanese women, saying they  are very dull and plain.

The woman keeps up her contact, insisting new photographs of man the author sent her do look like her husband.  She tells him to see if the man has a certain ring.  When asked about the ring, the man gets very irrate.

The story takes a very interesting turn. 

To those new to Tanazaki i suggest you start with The Makioka Sisters.

 

 

Dream Pictures - A Short Story by Kenzaburo Ôe -

 

Dream Pictures - A Short Story by Kenzaburo  Oe - from July 13, 1998 in The New Yorker

Translated, from the Japanese, by John Nathan.)

Published in the print edition of the July 13, 1998, issue.

The Japanese Literature Challenge 14 - Hosted by Dolce Bellezza 

January 1 to March 31. Japanese Literature Challenge 14

My  readings  for JL14 2021 so far

1. “Peony Lanterns” a Short Story by Aoko Matsuda - translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton -2020 - a delightful story you can read online. Linked to traditional stories of Ghosts
2. Before The Coffee Gets Cold by TOSHIKAZU KAWAGUCHI -2020- an international bestseller
3. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa - 1998
4. The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa - 1968
5. The Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata - 2016 - cult favorite
6. UNDER RECONSTRUCTION - A short story by Ōgai Mori - first published 1910 - translated from the Japanese by Ivan  Morris 1968

You may read today’s story on the website of The New Yorker.

My Prior Posts on Kenzaburo Ôe

I first encountered the work of Kenzaburo Oe in 2009 during JL2.  I knew right away I wanted to read everything by him I could.  Here were my thoughts from long ago on his stunningly powerful story “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears”:

“I cannot really begin to convey the strange and wonderful qualities of this work.   Imagine if Rabelais (Oe was a student of French literature and philosophy at the University of Tokyo), Jean Paul Sarte and William Burroughs collaborated on a work right after eating some very bad blow fish and you have an idea of what 

 The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears   feels like as you read it.   

This work  is about a lot of things and it is about itself.   It is about loss of faith, feelings of profound loss,

survivor's guilt,   and the destruction of old values.   We feel the effects of the war everywhere.

The Japanese culture provided  no role models or cultural archetypes to help them cope with what could not happen, total defeat.   

There is a long established literary tradition of using the insane to say what cannot be accepted by those in fully sunlit worlds.    The narrator of  The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears has very deep roots in western culture.    His ancestors were in the plays of Euripides, his great grandfather was Dostoevsky's  underground man,   he speaks through Crazy Jane.   Oe has stated that he has come to understand the meaning of his own works through reading the poetry of William Butler Yeats.   

I do not mean to convey  that The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears is a closed work that cannot be enjoyed or even followed without great effort.   It can be enjoyed just as a narrative of a crazy person.  As such we will pick up a lot about the aftereffects of the war on Japan.    We will see how the Japanese people felt when they heard the Emperor speak on the radio, and we will learn something about the home front in rural Japan.   The book is also funny-imagine the very straight laced executor of the narrator's estate being threatened with the loss of his work as administrator of the narrator's estate (who appears to have nothing to pass along anyway and probably is not going to die soon either) by a man in underwater goggles.    

My first judgment is that Oe is as deep as the Russians and as careful as Proust and Flaubert and knows as much about people as Dickens.” 

From this start I went on to read on all his works available in translation, including his essays on Hiroshima.  I was so happy to see a new to me short story by Oe on The New Yorker Website.

My primary purpose here is to keep a record of my reading and to let interested parties know of this story.

The New Yorker’s introduction is very articulate:

“The acclaimed Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe has an uncanny talent for melding the real with the imagined and illuminating the inner lives of his subjects. Since 1998, Oe has written for The New Yorker on topics ranging from the historical antecedents of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to an essay contest in which he participated as a youth. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1994, Oe has published more than a dozen books, including “A Personal Matter” and “Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!” Oe has also written at length about the tragic legacy of Hiroshima, and has spent decades as a pacifist and anti-nuclear activist. One of my favorite pieces by Oe is “Dream Pictures,” a masterly short story about a father’s poignant relationship with his disabled son, nicknamed Eeyore. (Oe’s own son, Hikari, was born with a severe brain hernia, and the writer has published a series of novels and other fictionalized accounts about their family. Hikari is now one of the most prominent composers in Japan.) In “Dream Pictures,” the protagonist, a writer, is haunted by feelings of parental remorse and mystified by his son’s impediments, including an apparent inability to dream or recollect his dreams. “As I repeatedly tried to discuss dreams with him, he began to protest adamantly: ‘That’s enough. I want to stop now!’ To my wife, who listened in silence, his resoluteness was terrifying. I suppose she was afraid that the day would come when Eeyore would close his mind to all things in the world, our family foremost among them, with a final, ‘That’s enough. I want to stop now!’ ” Oe writes. The artistry of the story lies partly in its structure. As the narrator struggles to navigate his son’s afflictions, he finds himself exploring the allegorical resonance of dreams and his own heartrending distress in the face of his child’s opaque inner life”

 

—Erin Overbey, archive editor

I thank Dolce Bellezza to adding  Kenzaburo Oe to my reading life.

Mel I