Category: Japan

A perfect day to be alone by Nanae Aoyama

~ winstonsdad ~ Leave a comment

A Perfect day to be Alone by Nanae Aoyama

Japanese fiction

Original title – Hitori biyori (ひとり日和,

translator – Jesse Kirkwood

Source – Review copy

I take a side step from Booker International with today’s post. I look at a book from Jpan as one of the big missing things from this year’s list was the lack of a Japanese novel. Here we have a book from 2007 from one of the rising stars of Japan. Well, as this is the first Adult novel from this writer to be translated into English, it also won the Akutagawa prize when it came out in 2007. The writer has cited Francoise Sagan and Kazuo Ishiguro as influences on her writing. This book sees a young woman sent to live with a relative as she has just turned 20, and her mother has had to take a job in China, leaving Chizu living with the 71-year-old Ginko and the two cats that live in the ramshackle Tokyo home she has been sent to live at.

When I got back to the house, Ginko was sitting under the kotatsu blanket, doing some embroidery. The blanket’s unusual thickness was explained by the fact that it was actually a series of different blankets: a heavily pilled beige one followed by a brown one, and on top of that a red feather quilt.

“I’m back.”

“Oh, hello again, replied Ginko, pushing the reading glasses that had slipped down her nose into place. Trying to block out the memory of my pathetic exchange with Yohei, I flashed her a good-natured smile as I slipped my jacket onto a hanger.

“Fancy some yokan?”

“Oh, yes please.”

 

The two are in different worlds in a way

The book I read at the same time I saw Perfect Days, the recent Wim Wenders film, not that they have a lot in common, but the main character’s apartment in the film maybe felt like the sort of area the Chizu is sent to live. The book follows the young woman over four seasons as she takes lots of pointless jobs and she collects items from people, but at the heart of the book is a lonely woman making her way through a busy city living with an elderly relative and her cat pictures and her embroidery is a world away from where the young girl wants to be as we see her glimpse others lives, but her own life is lonely and that sort of weightlessness ine feels at that age not knowing where life will go but want it to go somewhere she does the mindless jobs but hasn’t found her path going home to a flat that rumbles as the trains go by. A female coming of age in a modern city.

Today’s event started at seven in the evening. That meant I had to be at the company’s office in Chofu by half five, where I’d get changed, do my makeup, attend a briefing, and then go and get the banquet hall ready.

I hadn’t told Ginko I worked as a hostess. I figured she wouldn’t even understand the concept, so I’d just told her I was washing dishes at a banquet hall. If I’d really talked her through everything the job entailed, shed probably conclude it was some sleazy operation. I didn’t want to have to defend my choices, and in any case I was planning on moving out as soon as I had some cash saved up.

In the meantime, I just wanted to enjoy myself and avoid rocking the boat too much.

Then she takes a job that maybe risky

This is the flip side to a story like Please Look After Mother of Ozu’s Tokyo story, about a younger person lost in the city. There is often talk about loneliness in this modern age with everyone so absorbed in ther smartphones and the world seemingly quicker than it was a few decades ago. What she has captured is the world just as this is happening, the first ripple of what is ahead it is 2007 so smartphones are just taking oiff this is the year iPhone appeared. We have a hint of a case for many a young woman or man in any modern city: loneliness. In fact, the title in Japanese is being alone. I mentioned the film Perfect Days. This is like the niece in that film, a girl lost in her world. Maybe we have a sharp comic, at times, looking at the world. Some great clashes iof generations between Ginko and Chizu. But as the year goes on, we see the character grow till, in the end,, we see a different girl, well a young woman really. I am reviewing this early as it is one of those books that I feel will be popular when it comes out. Have you a favourite tale of loneliness ?

Winstons score – A tokyo story for a modern age a girl lost in the city and lost in herself most of the time.

The Rainbow By Yasunari Kawabata

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

The Rainbow By Yasunari Kawabata

Japanese literature

Original title- 虹いくたび (Niji ikutabi)

Translated by Haydn Trowell

Source -personal copy

In January, I read far more Japanese novels than I could review. This is a new translation from the Nobel prize-winning writer Yasunari Kawabata. He was the first writer from Japan to win the Nobel prize. He was given the prize for his narrative mastery, and his great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind. Is what the Nobel committee said about him as a writer. I have only reviewed one other book by him, and that was Snow Country. So when I saw this new translation of one of his works coming out from Penguin, I made sure I got a copy when I saw one. The tale of the two sisters in this book, having the same father and different mothers in postwar Japan, appealed to me.

Momoko hesitated, afraid of accidentally revealing the secret behind her new hairstyle. With her sister at home, it had become suddenly difficult for her to leave for her rendezvous.

Her emotions getting the better of her, Momoko’s voice turned brash. “Asako. Now that you’re back from Kyoto, there’s something you want to ask Father, isn’t there?” she asked, turning around. “I know. There’s no need to hide it.

It was a lie, wasn’t it, when you said you were going to see a newly married friend?”

“It wasn’t a lie.”

“Oh? So it wasn’t a lie. You went to see your friend, but that wasn’t your main reason for going, was it?”

Asako hung her head.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Momoko paused, softening her tone. “And did you find this younger sister of ours in Kyoto?” Asako stared back, taken by surprise.

The two sisters and the mention of the third out there

The book focuses on the two half-sisters living with the widow’s father. Momoko had lost her mother to suicide, and her m, mother never married after her father got her pregnant. Then n her half-sister Asako had lost her to illness. So, the pair both ended up with the architect’s father. But when Asako gathers from her father, there may even be a third sister, the daughter of a Gheisa in Koyto. In a way, the three of them are reflections of the world they are in post-war Japan. The struggles with Tradition and the future are creeping in as the traditional buildings are overshadowed by the modern city. The quest for this third sister in a way is the thread that runs through this book. The book captures the same world we see in OZus films. In some ways, the sisters could be from a film by the master himself. The two sister clash as Momoko has a boyfriend in many ways she is the most modern and this is a story of family secrets and sibling relationships.Also, how the world they have all known is moving on so quickly.

Since the end of the war, countless villas in the resort town of Atami—the properties of former princes, of former nobles, and of former industrialists—had been transformed into inns and hotels.

The Camellia House was one such villa, having belonged to a former prince who had held the honorary title of Fleet Admiral.

Asako’s father, Mizuhara Tsuneo, pointed out the window of the car as they passed by the entrance. “Do you see those two villas? They don’t really look like inns, do they? That one belonged to a prince, and the one over there belonged to a marquis. The marquis was descended from royalty, but I heard he was wounded during the war. His leg, you see.

Now they say he’s been sentenced to forced labor as a war criminal.”

The world ios changing as the villas change and become other things

I was a fan of Snow Country, and I connected with this book as well. I am a massive fan of post-war novels, wherever they may be, but especially in Japan, which in many ways saw the most significant shift in its world. This is from the same time as Tokyo’s story is set in a way. In fact, the way they all talk is similar to Momoko, who, in a way, reminds me of the son in Tokyo story caught up in the fast-moving modern world as the others are all trailing behind her and all lament the world they have seen gone more. In a way we see how Kawabata feared how quick his country was moving on this was serialised in 1950/52 a year before Tokyo story but his fear is the same as in the fear of the traditional Japan that the younger sister seems so far away from. I like his sparse still, and the world he described that is now gone, you feel. Have you read his books? Where would you go next in his book?

Winston’s score – +B Solid look at post-war Japan through two sisters and their father.

Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Rokusendo no ai (六〇〇〇度の愛),

Translator  -Haydn Trowell

Source – Review copy

I was lucky to get sent this as I had reviewed her other book last year as part of my January in Japan reading. Touring the Land of the Dead was a different book, so when I saw it coming out from Europa, I requested a copy. Maki Kashimada is a member of the Japanese orthodox church she is married to a member of the clergy. In her writing career she has won a number of big prize in Japan including the Akutagawa Prize and this book won the Mishima Yukio Prize. The book has a tip of the hat to the great Duras Hiroshima, Mon Amour.

It was around nine o’clock in the evening when the woman checked into the hotel in Nagasaki. She looked over the pamphlet. The hotel was built and decorated in a Portuguese style, it read. The photos of the mosaic in the courtyard and the stained-glass windows by the stairs caught her eye. She had left her house as though in flight. Her nerves were on edge. She wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while. The only option available to her was to wander around town until sleep bore down on her. She left her bulky suitcase at the front desk. I’m going for a walk, she said. Fierce thirst struck her. She asked if there was anywhere nearby where she could get a drink. The concierge at the front desk suggested a bar in a hotel by the shore, a converted ferry ship. It had a good view of the bay, he told her. For the first time since she had married her husband, the woman went to drink by herself.

Drawn she arrives late in the evening to the hotel where she will soon see the the Youth

The main character is a housewife and on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, she has been haunted by images of the mushroom cloud and what happened on that day. Whilst she is at home with her child this makes her drop her world and leave her child and husband and head to Nagasaki drawn there by some unknown feeling of history a sort of collected memory of that day in Japan and how it still haunts so many. Soon after she arrives she meets a young man a Russian Japanese man she is drawn to this younger man and he has a condition that means he has skin that resembles the skin of survivors of the bomb. This is one of those books with no names he is simply called the youth. She may see in him the spirit and look at those who had survived the events in the city many years earlier and then begin the affair This is a sort of Brief encounter for the Atomic generation those haunted by the bomb and its aftermath a strange affair short passionate then she returns home.

The youth’s mother was born and raised in Moscow. When she was twenty-six years old, she met a Japanese man, an inter-preter, and returned with him to his home country. At that time, she had been a citizen of the Soviet Union, acquiring Japanese citizenship shortly before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The youth was born in Japan.

Based on your age, you must be a university student, the woman said. That’s right, the youth nodded. I just graduated.

This is my graduation trip.

The youth is much younger than the woman as they both head out and study the city they find themselves in.

I think a lot of people found this book hard it is like those films My other half hates a film where there is gaps and things maybe aren’t fully filled in to the viewer. This book has a nod to Duras but also the films of that time in a way Last year in Marienbad the lack of names can drive some readers I have seen Hot so many times it isn’t annoying to me as it once was. I said in a way that reminded me of a Brief encounter a woman sees a man briefly in a fit and fever of passion that ruins high driven by the heat of the Bombs maybe ? She is driven by a sort of collective unconscious of the bombs dropping a spirit of the people sends her into the arms of this man who due to a condition looks like he has been burnt by the bomb that has been haunting her dreams and this is where the nod to Duras is strongest as it has similar scenes of passion in it. I loved this odd little novella. Have you read either of her Novellas?

Winston score – b solid novella about a sudden passion after the haunting images of the bombs destroying Nagasaki

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Japanese fiction

Original title – Onna Men,

Translator –  Juliet Winters Carpenter

Source – Library

I am bringing a new voice to the blog today. I had seen this Vintage cover just before Christmas; someone had posted it somewhere, and I liked it I then looked and found it was a writer I had missed. Privately tutored in literature. She began writing in the late thirties with a play and some early novels. and wrote during the war. Burt was bombed out of her house at the end of the war. She was married to a journalist. She had numerous health struggles in her life, and this novel came out in the fifties when her writing focused on female psychology and Sexuality. This book took its inspiration from the main character from the Tales of Genji.

Yasuko was the widow of Mieko Toganö’s late son, Akio.

Their marriage had lasted barely a year before Akio was killed suddenly in an avalanche on Mount Fuji. After the funeral.

Yasuko had not gone back to her parents but had remained in the Togano family, helping her mother-in-law edit a poetry magazine and auditing Ibuki’s classes in Japanese literature at the university where he was assistant professor. She was also involved in a detailed study of spirit possession in the Heian era, a continuation of research that Akio had left unfinished. Ibuki and others supposed she had chosen this as a way of staying close to her husband’s memory.

Yasuko introduced as her husband dide on Mount Fuji

The novel has a lot of nods to Traditional Japanese culture. It had been split into three sections, each named after masks from the traditional Japanese Noh. The book opens as a two men meet at the station and the y are both in love with a widow they know. Yasuko had lost her husband in an accident. The two men, Ibuki and Mikame, also mention her mother-in-law, an overarching figure in the book. One of them takes the daughter and mother-in-law to see a collection of Masks and costumes. When an incident happens, and they see a particular mask, Yasuko faints. She is torn between two men one is married she likes more but is maybe drawn to the bachelor. She lives with her. mother-in-law and her husband’s twin sister. Then she has nightmares about her husband. The is a lot of reference to classic Japanese text and works, and the mask was a lot of googling. The book has two other parts as the relationship between the widow and her two male friends is also affected by the mother-in-law of her late husband.

They’re at the Camellia House on Fuya Street, said Ibuki. ‘This afternoon Mieko is going to call on Yorihito Yakushiji, the Nö master. He’s showing some of his old masks and costumes, and she’s invited me along.

‘Really? How long has she known him?’

‘It seems his daughter is one of her pupils. Their storehouse is open for its autumn airing, and I’ve heard that some of the costumes are three hundred years old or more. Don’t vou want to come?’

‘Well, old masks and costumes aren’t exactly what I had in mind for today, but then again I would like to see Mieko and Yasuko. I had thought when I came in here, I’d just stop for a minute and then maybe go and look up a friend of mine in the medical school, but I think I will join you, if you’re sure no one will mind.’

They get invited to look at tsome old masks and she is shocked by one of them

This is one of those post war Jpaanese books that maybe deals with the big change in the country I was remind of this woman living with the in laws after her husbands death. But with two men one married the other a bachelor. But then having her mother-in-law sort of playing these all off together was interesting, and I loved the part of the book.I struggled that my knowledge of classic Japanese text and culture isn’t maybe as good as it shou,d be I am aware of the Tales of Genji and knew a little about it but haven’t read it. I may need to read more of these classic works over time and return to this book. I like the recurring theme of masks, which are influential in Japanese culture. I remember watching the Onibaba, a Japanese horror classic where a man in a mask played an important role. This would have made a great film by Japanese master Ozu, who made so many great films of the life of Tokyo’s everyday people and relationships this would have worked. I found I struggled just because I would have loved to have known more about the masks each section was named and how they tied into the story itself. But it is worth reading a story of a widow and a mother-in-law trying to move the piece around her daughter-in-law’s life. Have you read this book or any books by Fumiko Enchi?

Winston’s score of B was interesting and made me want to learn more about the masks and things mentioned in the book.

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Kōjō

Translator – David Boyd

Source – Personal copy

I had decided to mix old and new fiction from Japan for my Japanese literature Challenge this year and this is a reasonable new book I think it came out in the US a while ago, but this edition that came out this year really caught my eye as it matched in with the other book by her they published and had what appears a crow on first sight but then seems like a raven or a darker blackbird. This actually was published in Japanese before the two other books that have been translated into English she had written. Oyamada had worked in several Jobs, one being in a large car factory, which inspired her to write this book. She is also a fan of Kafka and Llosa’s works. It is maybe near Kafka’s book, but it also reminds me of some other writers.

I DIDN’T WANT HIM ASKING WHAT KIND OF WORK IT WAS. I didn’t want to tell him. Fortunately, when I said I was going to be a contract worker at the factory, he didn’t bother asking anything else. He just gave me this look like I should probably report them to the Labor Standards Bureau. I told him I’d be going to work five days a week, starting Monday. “It’s full-time, though?” he asked, then told me to calculate my monthly rate.

“They’lI cover your commute, right?” They would, apparently.

The interview ended and Goto walked me over to the shredder station. It was also in the basement, but farther back. The Print Services Branch Office was a long rectangle with doors on the north and south walls, both of which led to the stairs. On the other side of the door to the north was the reception desk and the space where I’d had my interview.

When she finds out her job as a shredder.

The book is at a sister factory where we meet three workers who all seem to have random jobs in this place and seem to have no connection or idea of what is happening in the factory. This is all told in a flat tone that adds a sister edge to the work as it makes it seem odder and withdrawn in a way. Yoshiko she is an arty student that had been to the factory when she was a child. Goes for a job and is told the perfect job for her is just to be a paper shredder and make her own hours. This seems. odd but as she spends time we hear of washer lizards strange things going on in the main factory elsewhere . Then a moss specialist, as the roof is a living roof of most a nod towards environmental issues. Yoshiko is the moss man, and then his brother becomes a proofreader of factory documents, which are all a little odd. Then, add to these sinister blackbirds hanging around the factory. All ask what their jobs are, what the point of it all is, and what the factory is!

“What kind of work are you doing there?” my brother’s girlfriend asked. Goto warned me about saying too much to out-siders, but I hadn’t come across any document that was worth leaking, that I could possibly be paid for. Any secret worth protecting wasn’t going to end up at the shredder station. Departments would handle anything that sensitive internally. It’s obvious if you think about it. So why not tell her? When I said I work in print support, shredding documents, she jerked back and said, “Seriously? You mean you’re on your feet all day?” Well, I have a chair. I’m sitting most of the time. Of course our chairs are old hand-me-downs from who knows what department.

The factory has so many depatrments and jobs around it

I was reminded of Hrabal with his character in Too Loud, a solitude working with waste paper. Then even Wolfgang Hilbig Dark Factories, a sister, feels what the factory does. This is a huge place, and there is a sense I went around the old Ford factory in Liverpool, and it is like a town itself, and like this book, those in there can feel disconnected from the whole. The tone of the book and how it is narrated recalled Olga Ravn at times, the sense of the voice in her book The Employees, and the sense in that book where who was human and who wasn’t. Add to that a slight touch of dark magic realism. This is one chilling and odd little novella. This is how it feels to be a small cog in a factory. this isn’t the gritty social realism of Saturday night Sunday morning, not the mundane factory line; no, this is the darker side of a jobs that seems to have no meaning in the wider realm of things. Have you read this book?

Winston’s score – +B a solid novella dark and odd in places.

The Cake tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

The Cake Tree in The Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka

Japanese short stories

Original title 戰争童話集（Sensi doca shū)

Translator – Ginny Tapley Takemori

Source – Personal copy

I looked for Japanese books that appealed to me when I went to York. This caught my eye. I loved the title , but I have always enjoyed the pocket-sized, more miniature classics Pushkin does. They are just pretty and easy to carry little books. I hadn’t heard of Akiyuki when I bought the book, but I then decided to Google him; I don’t know about you, but I would like a little background on the writer. It just helps me place them and why they wrote the book they did, etc. I was shocked to discover he was the man who wrote Grave of Fireflies, which, if you haven’t seen, was made into one of the saddest and most touching films that followed two children after the war had ended in Japan. This book is set actually on the day the war ended. That made his appeal to me, but he was also in the House of Councillors and a Chanson singer and TV star. I loved this nugget of information.

The whale had come of age in the winter spanning 1944 to 1945, when the war between Japan and America was drawing ever closer to the Japanese mainland. The humans who’d waved at him were Japanese soldiers on their way to defend Iwo Jima against the Americans and, aware of their impending death, they’d been envious of the peacefully napping whale. The small ship he’d swum alongside was a fishing boat there to detect the American planes as they headed for Japan, while the man in the clumsy little yellow boat was an American pilot who’d been shot down and was hoping against hope that he might be rescued. Far from wanting to kill the whale, they knew they themselves might die at any time and so they were friendly towards him.

The Whale came of age during a war it knew nothing about.

This is a collection of  12 stories all set on the 12th August the day world war two ended. I will mention a few of the stories. They all have a fable-like quality to them. But with that same underlying sadness and remembering what happened in the war, we saw in Grave of Fireflies. The collection opens with the tale of a Sardine whale a female of the species that has ended up alone at the end of the war and has just fallen in love with what it thinks is a male whale but in reality, is a submarine. This leads to shock when she discovers it is a submarine with little men inside not a whale. Then, we have the tale of a boy and his parrot hiding from the American bombers that are going over. He hides away after his mother dies, shocked and unable to talk. His parrot still telling a sad story. This reminds me most of Grave of Fireflies. In others, a mother becomes a kite to save her children. A zookeeper looks after his elephant. They all have fable-like turns in them. This is a touching but heart-wrenching collection.

His mother’s body floated up in the strong breeze that always followed an air raid. “Mama, where are you going?” Katchan called in surprise, but his mother merely smiled at him the same way she always did. Relieved, he ran after her, but then a strong gust of wind suddenly whipped her up and away, higher and higher into the sky. “Mama!” he called again and again, and each time she turned to look back at him. Like a kite her body was drawn up into thePost-blaze sky, and remained there dancing there like and angel until eventually she disappeared from view.

A mother changes to save her children in this fable like short story.

 

I loved this I think even if I hadn’t known he’d written Grave of Fireflies, I’d liked this collection he has a way of using a fable like style of tale with out it seeming to twee or losing its heartwrenching meaning this is a collection that reflects on a country broken and falling apart. At the start of the book, it says that since the early 80s, the 15th of August is now a day of remembrance in Japan. This collection is a remembrance of the war and the cost to Japan, from children losing their parents to broken men returning in a submarine to find a whale falling for the craft. This is a collection for both adults and children. I think he has written it mainly for children. There is nods to traditional folk tales like the wolf looking after the Girl is a classic tale. Have you read this collection or any other piece by this writer?

Winstons score – A this book should be better known.

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama

~ winstonsdad ~ 7 Comments

What you are looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

Japanese fiction

Original title – お探し物は図書室まで

Translator – Alison Watts

Source – Personal copy

What better than a feel-good piece of literature to kick off 2024 for Winstonsdad. A book about the power of books and libraries is even more suitable, and a translation is the icing on the cake, and it is one for the Japanese Challenge 2024. Michiko Aoyama was a newspaper journalist. After her degree, she worked in Australia and then back in Japan. Became a magazine Editor. This book was shortlisted for the Japanese Booksellers Award.It has since been translated into twenty languages. So, I start the year with a feel-good book about a wonderful librarian who knows the exact book to help people out.

The library is also on the ground floor. I pass two meeting rooms and a Japanese-style room at the back of the building beside a small kitchen. The door is wide open with a sign on the wall that says ‘Library. Rows and rows of bookshelves fill an area about the size of a classroom. A counter to the left of the entrance is marked Checkouts and Returns. Near the front counter a petite girl in a dark-blue apron is arranging paperbacks on a shelf.

Feeling shy, I approach her. Excuse me, where are the books on computers?’

Her head jerks up and she blushes. She has huge eyes and hair tied back in a ponytail that swings behind her. She looks young enough to still be at high school. Her nametag says’Nozomi Morinaga’.

Tomoka visit the local library not quite sure why.

What a great job a librarian is! I have always thought about the ability to help readers discover books. So when you read a book about one extraordinary librarian, Sayuri Komachi can help the characters that all visit her ,library in the book. In the four stories, five lives are touched by the books she gives them. The young shop assistant, Tomoka, selling womenswear, sees a dead end and is feeling trapped in her job is given a book that helps her find a way out of her boredom and connect with those around her. Then, a man Rto is in his mid-thirties and works in an office at the furniture factory. she also helps him tap on his genuine passion for antiques, but not able quite to see this as a way out, is given a book she gives him is to help him see the light. That is what the book is about not getting there, but the books they’re given, like all great books, make the readers think or connect with those around them and thus help them make that choice from a young girl to a retired man each at a personal crossroads this is, of course, a story we have seen lots. How will the others be helped by Komachi’s book choices for them? this is subtle book about what happens when people are given a gentle nudge towards the light.

My dream is to quit this job and open my own shop. I’d fill it with the things I like, and never have to talk to anybody except customers who are like-minded antiques lovers. But I can’t quit. I have less than one million yen saved up, which is not enough to start a business, and with all the work I have to do, it’s impossible to find the time for the necessary study and prep. But time is slipping away while I’m stuck in this office grind.

Then Rto wants to escape the 9-5 but will he be able to with Antiques.

This is one of those books that leaves you with a warm feeling as a reader. I’m reminded of the TV shows I loved as a kid: Highway to Heaven, where the character helps someone in need when needed, or Quantum Leap, where a moment in time needs to be changed. But this is subtle. Rather than doing it, this is someone nudging the five characters in the book. That book in their hands is like a map to freedom. They have to do the rest. That is what i love about it so subtle, but the change it can, make shows the power of books and the power of a great librarian. One thinks of people like Nancy Pearl, who has promoted libraries and reading this is like a magical version of that where that book they find is nearly perfect every time for the reader at that time!  Have you a favourite feel good book from Japan ?

Winston score – B solid piece of feel-good fiction that is about the joy of finding the right book and reading it but also how much more a book can do for you: open doors, give you ideas, and set the reader on a brand new path in their lives.

 

This is Amiko , Do You Copy by Natsuko Imamura

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura

Japanese Fiction

Original title – こちらあみ子

Translator – Hitomi Yoshio

Source – Review copy

This is an early book from the Japanese writer Natsuko Imamura she has been nominated three times for the Akutagawa Prize one of the biggest book prizes in Japan. I have reviewed the third book she wasp for the prize for on the blog before the woman in the Purple Skirt which won the prize she has written aa number of other books and won several prizes for her fiction. She lives in Osaka with her husband and Daughter. This is a odd little novel around one odd little girl Amiko and we see her grow into a Teen

AMIKO GREW UP AS THE SECOND CHILD IN THE TANAKA FAMILY until the day she moved out at the age of fifteen. She had a father, a mother, and an older brother who became a juvenile delinquent.

Back when Amiko was in elementary school, Mother taught a calligraphy class at home. The classroom was small and simple, with three long rectangular tables arranged in an eight-mat tatami room where Mother’s mother used to sleep. Now the floor was covered with a red rug from corner to corner.Next to this room was the so-called Buddha room, where the butsudan was placed, and across the hall was the kitchen-dining room. The classroom was connected to a veranda, and that’s where the calligraphy

Her step mother taught Calligraphy this is where she meets the boy she falls for.

I said this is the story of Amiko. I was a few pages in and said to myself Amiko reminds me of some of the people I have looked after and supported she has some condition whether it is Autism or on the ASD spectrum or some other condition. She struggles to read the world around her. She has a trait of obsession early on in the book it is a boy that her stepmother is teaching Calligraphy too this is more than a childhood crush it is obsessive in its nature. That sort of obsession and inability people on the ASD spectrum can have to find it had to read social traits and ticks and emotions or even be unable to hold back their own emotional feelings. She has a walkie talk and this is another thing that makes you think she has autism the obsessive way she uses it is a portrait of a girl but a girl alone for none of those around her seem to see her as a person with Neurodiversity. Her view of the world is strange. Even the flat way at times the story is told it makes it seem like we are in her world at times there is a clinical nature at times to the prose style. A girl misunderstood it makes you wonder how people with Autism fair in Japan she is caught as a naughty bullied child and she isn’t it upset me at times.

But Amiko, who ate like a bird, couldn’t even finish the small bowl before her. With two or three bites left, she threw her pink chopsticks onto the table. Mother tried to offer her some kara-age fried chicken, another favourite of hers, but Amiko shooed away the plate, saying, “No more.” She then grabbed the box of chocolate cookies that Father had given her and placed it on her lap. “This is what I’m having!” she announced excitedly as she opened the lid with a big heart on it. After licking the chocolate coating off the surface of every cookie, she felt so full she could barely breathe.

I loved this description of her eating so many signs of her having some sort of ASD like symptoms

As you can see this girl grows in a third person description which is suited to this type of book it works well in the book The Incident in the Night. That flat way of viewing the world that Autistic way of not being able to see social traits and ticks but also struggling with your own emotions and how to show how you feel about people either seem distant or over the top and stifling at times was caught so well, I loved her little traits like the Walkie Talkies is just perfect and the sort of obsession some would have whether it was that all just talking via text as it is easier. This of course grabbed me as it is my job but I have a neurodiversity condition and can see in hindsight how it has affected me over the years so could connect with Amiko and how people just misunderstood her so much. If you like her other book The Girl in the Purple Skirt which dealt with Obsession really well you will connect with this book. It is also a perfect choice for next month’s January in Japan event it is part of a series of Japanese novellas that Pushkin has brought out by contemporary writers in Japan I have a couple more from the series to review. Have you read any of the books from this writer?

Winstons score – A solid little novella around a young girl growing up with an ASD condition.

Touring The Land of the Dead by Maki Kashimada

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

Touring the land of the dead by Maki Kashimada

Japanese Novellas

Original title –Meido meguri (冥土めぐり)

Translator – Haydn Trowell

Source – Library book

This book has two novellas in it I am only talking about the first novella as the second novella is connected to Junchiro The Makioka sisters a book I have yet to read so I will borrow this again at some point when I have read that book and review the second novella 99 kisses. And this is the first book I have read by Maki Kshimada she has won a number of big prizes in Japan Initially she was into Russian literature and then went on to study French literature and she also became an orthodox Christian priest as well. She is married to a feel priest.

Before finding her current position at the children’s center, Natsuko had been working part-time at the ward office. The job involved hardly anything more than stapling together the bulletin for a group that the office ran for local children who weren’t attending school. She wasn’t an airline stewardess, but she was doing the kind of manual work that as a child she had always wanted, so she couldn’t say that her wish hadn’t come true. Once the bulletin was ready, she would be handed a bundle of papers to staple together.And the person that made that bulletin was Tachi

Natsuko has partime mindless work as she tries to get by

The story is about a couple that is down on their luck in life. Natsuko is living a hard life. In the past when her family had wealth. But that was a couple of generations ago. but the money disappeared when she was a kid and her life became hard she has her mother talking about the past and other family members leaning on her.  then add to that she has a husband who because he has a degenerative disease had to stop working a number of years ago making their life even harder. so when she sees an ad for a spa weekend at a hotel that Her grandfather had visited with her mother she decides it is time she and her husband need time and maybe going there will kick memories of her family’s better times. So Natsuko and her husband Tachi yes he is struggling with illness but as they leave their life , I did wonder at this stage if the book could have taken a darker turn and maybe she had an idea of ending her life and her husband’s.  Whilst she stay in the Hotel Natsuko looks at her world and her life and sees thing differently and her husband’s courage and positive nature rubs off on her. This is a story of a couple reconnecting the world outside who had driven a wedge but when they step back the world changes.

“No,” Natsuko replied sharply. “Not at all. My family is a bit weird. So it’s okay if you don’t want to marry me.”

“Huh?” The pork cutlet that Taichi had been holding in his chopsticks fell to the floor with a silent thud. “But you’re the one I’d be marrying, Nathan. What a strange thing to say! You were so nervous yesterday. You must be exhausted. Let’s put it behind us. Just try to imagine the wedding. You’ll be so beautiful!”

Her family has a number of characters that drag her down and lean on her she is a women drained by life.

Natsuko is at the end when she decides to head to the hotel and you think the book could go another way I was thinking is this a Japanese take on the French Novella beside the sea that saw a mother head to a hotel at a seaside then do something but no this is a bleak tale that then starts to show how the power of being a couple can change things around her husband a burden but a man that has a huge depths he is one of those people that has a condition but then it seemed to unlock a positive attitude so when they get away from the family that with her drunk brother and awful mother in a place that her family had been happy it seems the past and her present as they grow back together over the spa visit. This is an emotional book about how ugly families can be inside but she captures the despair we can feel when the world around you seems like a wall holding us in with no door to get out of the spa is a tunnel memory of a door a different place, but also like a door suddenly is seen and grows over the time there  Have you read this book ?

Winstons score – B – a story that looks to head one way and the it turns.

Women running in the mountains by Yūko Tsushima

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

Women running in the Mountains by Yūko Tsushima

Japanese fiction

Original title -山を走る女, Yama wo hashiru onna

Translator – Geraldine Harcourt

Source – personal copy

Another stop on this year’s  Japan in January is a modern classic from Japan Yūko Tsushima was the daughter of the famed Japanese writer Osamu Dazai although he took his own life when she was just one year old. She published her first book in the mid-twenties and this came in 1979. She went on to write more than 35 novels in her life. she was considered a feminist writer.But she said she liked to write about marginalized people like the mother in this story. she cited Tennessee Williams as an influence on her writing This book drew on her own experience of herself being a single mother. This book is also about a single mother and her first year after birth.

The small bed by Takiko’s feet was occupied by the bundle of baby clothes and diaper covers. She remembered the baby’s first cry that she’d heard toward daybreak. Several minutes after the pain had suddenly faded away, the sound had echoed through the delivery room and she had asked herself if it was the cry of the living thing she’d given birth to. The nurses had seemed to be attending busily to the baby near her feet. Soon it was taken from the room. Takiko was shown its face for a brief moment. It was bright red, but at the same time familiar somehow. She hadn’t seen the baby since.

After she walked through the town to give birth to her son.

The book opens with the main character of the book Takiko she is on her way to give birth to her baby. she arrives and gives birth this is a young woman that had an affair with a married man and then felt the cold shoulder from her parents there relationship is brutal at times as they try to get her to give her son away or even have an abortion to avoid the shame this is a county where there is a small at this time of single mother and most of the single mother there where from divorces and much older than Taiko so they felt she would be shunned. The first weeks after the birth she finds a sort of sisterhood of all those in the hospital ward with their newborns as well. The book follows her journey from her taking her son to the Nursery we get a diary of the events with a nursery view and the way Takiko is at home. The home is hard her father is a hard drinker and abusive but she wants to break free. There is a juxtaposition you see a woman struggling but overtime you see the mother appear this is a novel of a woman blossoming as she finds jobs and gets out of the four walls of her parents house and facing her own mountain, not just the mountain she heads up later in the book as she meets a man with a child a single parent at marvels at him as his son is disabled. This is touching insight into the trouble of being a single mother and the abuse women faced at the time and still.

So this was the house she’d grown up knowing, thought Takiko. The bathroom addition. Redoing the kitchen. The neighbours putting up a two-story apartment wing in their garden so that it loomed over them. Atsushi falling off the veranda–would he have been two at the time? And the time Takiko, then about four, tried to tie a ribbon on the cat they used to have and was scratched from her eyelid to her cheek.

As if on the point of leaving, she couldn’t resist summoning up these memories of her old home.

“Well, anyway, why don’t you lie down? Your bed’s made up.” Her mother appeared from the storeroom-Atsushi’s room–at the back of the house. “Are you hungry? I could make some ramen.”

The family home memories and also was very dark at times

This is an example of I novel the realist movement novel from Japan that had roots back in the late 1800s. She has used her own life experience as a single mother and built a novel around it. This also has a nod to Autofiction as well that great French Genre where writers use their own life to mine for their fiction. She has maybe written a female Bildungsroman about motherhood what we see is that first year a woman determined to have the baby struggle and then it becomes easier over time. She captures how the body feels afterbirth and how the woman re-emerges from the pregnant woman. I did wonder if the Kawano was based in some part on her fellow writer Oe he had a disabled son and they must have crossed paths back in the day. This is an insight into a family a mother  that is determined but struggles, parents full of shame about what happened and then there is the baby a woman going up her own mountain. Have you read any more of her books.

Winston’s score – A – stunning insight into being a single mother and the outfacing from that. Ican’t wait to read more from this writer

Before the Coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

 

Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu kawaguchi

Japanese fiction

Orignal title – コーヒーが冷めないうちに, Kohi ga Samenai Uchi n

Translator -Geoffrey Trousselot

Source – personal copy

I decide to pick a less taxing book for my next January in Japan read and I choose this book that has had a couple of follow-up books written as I had seen it around since it came out a couple of years ago and when I saw a second-hand copy I pick it up with this month in mind it always nice to have something easy to read between those more taxing reads. The book was originally a play before it was rewritten into a novel and has since been made into a film. It won a prize when it was a play the writer has been a member of a theatrical group and a playwright.

The cafe has no air conditioning. It opened in 1874, more than a hundred and forty years ago. Back then, people still used oil lamps for light. Over the years, the cafe underwent a few small renovations, but its interior today is pretty much unchanged from its original look. When it opened, the decor must have been considered very avant-garde. The commonly accepted date for the appearance of the modern cafe in Japan is around

1888 – a whole fourteen years later.

Coffee was introduced to Japan in the Edo period, around the late seventeenth century. Initially it didn’t appeal to Japanese taste buds and it was certainly not thought of as something one drank for enjoyment – which was no wonder, considering it tasted like black, bitter water.

The opening of the second story in the collection. the cafe has been there for a long time!!

The novel is set in a cafe that has been on the back streets of Tokyo for years but this cafe is different as it has a secret you buy your coffee and then you are told by the server that when you drink the coffee before it gets cold and you will be able to travel back in time. The book has four stories of four visitors to the cafe. There first is a tale of a love lost and maybe a chance to stop that lover from going away to the US. Then a nurse Kothake comes in she is trying to find a letter her husband who now has Alzheimer’s had written one of the last things he had done before the worst of his condition had hit this one really hit me I am just a person that has my emotions closer to the surface and this story hit home.I leave the other two for you top find out.

Fusagi had early onset Alzheimer’s disease, and was losing his memory. The disease causes rapid depletion of the brain’s neural cells. The brain pathologically atrophies, causing loss of intelligence and changes to the personality. One of the striking symptoms of early onset Alzheimer’s is how the deterioration of brain function appears so sporadic. Sufferers forget some things but remember other things. In Fusagi’s case, his memories were gradually disappearing, starting with the most recent. Meanwhile, his previously hard-to-please personality had been slowing mellowing.

Kothake husband he had written a letter before he got to bad to remember who he was!

As you may know, I tend to avoid hype books and this is why it had taken me so long tk get to this one I had seen out when it came out and the idea of the book is one I knew I would like the idea of reliving the past the chance to reset maybe even alter what happened is something that has appealed to me a like Adam Duritz said in the song Mrs Potter If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts and this is about that ghost of ones past the echoes we can relieve or reexperience or change stop that lover going find that letter etc the is a small bit of magic realism to this at times. The one problem is the book could have expanded the universe of the book out at times there is a sense of it being A stage play still as all the action is in the cafe which for a play works but in a novel, you could have let fly with the drinking of the coffee and time travel element of the book. This has two follow-up books because the format can run and run it has the same feeling of something like Call the midwife where we glimpse life’s hardest parts and this issue is the same it stirs the emotions of the reader and the second story touched me having lost my stepmother to dementia a similar condition the lose of the person before the loss of a person is so hard to deal with and the chance to reconnect must be reassuring as the want to find the letter. Have you read this or the two follow-up books?

Winstons score – B A tear jerker of a book but if you want a read a little different it is worth trying and can be read in an evening

 

The Chronicles of Lord Asunaro by Kanji Hanawa

~ winstonsdad ~ 3 Comments

The Chronicles of Lord Asunaro by Kanji Hanawa

Japanese Novella

Original title – Asunaroko Huntoki/あすなろ公奮闘記

Translator – Meredith McKinny

Source – Review copy

I should have gotten round to this book earlier from Red Circle had kindly sent me a number of their books they have brought out a number ion short novellas from Japanese I have reviewed two of the other books including another book by the Writer the Late Kanji Hanawa published a number of books in his lifetime. But the two are the only ones that have been translated there is a very good pdf all about his books on the Red Circle website. He won a number of prizes in his lifetime. This book is very different from Backlight, which makes me want to read more books from this writer let’s hope we get a few more in English over time.

Every morning, the young son of a certain feudal lord woken at a fixed hour when the doors and paper screens of his bedroom were drawn open, in undeviating order and with the same predictable clatter. Impassively and regardless of the weather, his gaze fell first on the tasteful courtyard garden beyond the window.

Next, his eyes lifted to the lowest roof of the corner tower and began to count off the pine branches of the round eaves tiles, their gold leaf flaking in patches, before he gave up halfway as he always did.Thus the young lord of the West Castle commence his day

The opening lines of the book. is all as it seems with in the court ?

 

The book is the imagined story of a real-life figure Lord Asunaro was a real figure he was the son of a minor lord in the EDO period of Japanese history this is a strange tale to tell as he isn’t a heroic figure he is a boy that has been kept away at from the upper echelons of the court and he is maybe a little naive he reminded me a little of Prince George in Blackadder if he had a little more of Blackadder’s bile in him. This is a boy that gets to the top but isn’t as he thought it would be as he has been stripped of power he is just a figurehead as he takes over he loves the woman from his first meeting woman to his fathering a lot of children to a number of women in his lifetime and the kids that followed. This short novella sees a man in the shadow of his father, a boy that never grows on the cusp of power. A boy-man on the edge of it. But takes over it is an odd little Novella but a different look at the Japan of the time now samurai or shoguns are just young men not quite equipped for the job. It is hard to tell as this is a subtle tale with little action, but it draws you into Lord Asunaro’s world.

The boy’s instructions in swordsmanship had begun back when he was eleven and still living in the main castle. The Lord himself was not fond of swordsmanship, which perhaps was behind his choosing to assign the now-retired Satomi Eizan as Instructor. Apparently stirred by this, Satomi Eizan grew boastful about a youth spent practising his skills throughout the land, and was inclined to deal with the lad in a rather offhand manner.

‘Okay then, try this,” announced Lord Asunaro one day handing him a pickled white radish while himself took up the wooden sword (The protective gear and light bamboo swords of today’s swordsmanship practice were yet to be invented, and only appeared and gained wide acceptance at the end of Feudal period.

The young man isn’t like other want him to be as shown here this is a time of strong men with swords!

 

I loved this I liked all of the red circle books they are perfect afternoon reads and this is what I did today I had planned to review another book from Japan but just wasn’t ready to so I picked this up as I had planned to read it this month. his is as much a character study as a historic work why should someone born into a position be right for the job as we know here in the UK at the moment we have an heir and his younger brother showing about royal families and their inner workings. As I said the main figure I though of was Prince George from Blackadder but with a darker edge to him but that same not fully grown into the world feel. Have you a favourite book about a royal family? or Have you read any other books by Red Circle?

Winston’s score – B A solid little novella about a historic prince not quite for the job.

 

Black Box by Shiori Ito

~ winstonsdad ~ 5 Comments

Black Box by Shiori Ito

Japanese non-fiction

Original title -Black Box

Translator  – Alison Markin Powell

Source – Subscription edition

I have the last few years start to take out a few subscriptions and one of the publishers I chose is Tilted Axis as they seem to be riding the wave of innovative choices to publish books that we wouldn’t see elsewhere such as this book a Japanese non-fiction work around rape. Thou it is very relevant in dealing with how victims of rape are treated. The book is Shiori Ito own story she was a rising journalist at the time the events in this book happened. She has since focused her work on Gender equality and Human rights issues which both link back to this book and the events that happened to her.

When people hear the word “rape,” many probably imagine a situation in which a woman is suddenly attacked by a stranger in a dark alley.

But in a survey conducted in 2014 by the Cabinet Office of the Japanese government, the percentage of cases in which a woman was forced to have sexual intercourse against her will with a total stranger was only 11.1 percent. The vast majority of cases involve victims who are acquainted with their assailant.

Just 4.3 percent of all assault victims go to the police, and of that percentage, half were raped by a stranger, which makes it seem much more prevalent.

In circumstances where the victim is acquainted with their assailant, it proves difficult to report the incident to the police.

And under Japan’s current legislative system, if the victim was unconscious when the crime occurred, there are tremendous hurdles to prosecuting.

This was true in my case.

From the introduction of the book the shocking stats !!

The title of the book is a reference to something she was told by the police and the reason after she was raped it was hard to prosecute and that is the fact that the events of the evening when she was raped by a senior colleague in a hotel room behind a closed door so only the two people involved in that evening are the witness. The book opens as Shiori Ito talks about her early years growing up how she was drawn into wanting to be a journalist studying then her first internship jabot Nippon TV and then she gets a job at Reuters. Where she begins to work with a senior colleague he is a well-known figure on Japanese tv and he is close to the prime minister so she went out for drinks had too many and appeared drunk ( the fact is she had actually been drugged by her attacker). He then told her to go back to the hotel there was footage of her obviously drugged and dragged into the hotel room by this man. This is where the rape took place what follows this is her trying to get just for what happened that night and showing how hard it can be for females to believe one of the statistics that hit me was showing how high the number of females in the police in a country the more likely it is a prosecution for rape will happen. This is shown in her case Japan has a low number of female officers in their police so even with the film footage it is the fact the events of that evening took place in a closed room. She has since taken civil action against the man and won a case but she is continuing to try and get the laws changed and remove what is called the black box which means so few cases go through.

Before we had finished the second bottle of sake, I went to the bathroom. I came back to my seat, and I recall a third bottle being ordered, but I have no memory of whether or not I drank it. Then, suddenly, I had a kind of strange feeling, and I got up to go to the bathroom a second time. As soon as I was inside, I felt dizzy. I sat down on the toilet with the lid closed and rested my head on the tank. That’s the last thing I remember.

The last thing she remembers on that evening why ? what happened after that ?

The book took Japan by storm she accused the man involved in this case live on tv for what he had done to her this triggered a metoo movement in Japan. She has been in the Time 100 most influential people list. The book is told in a very stark style it is a no holds look at the events of that night and how rough the rape and attack was. Then the horrific lack of police action after this event even with the video footage of her being dragged into the room. We even get an update on the events since the book first came out and her uphill journey to get the views of the police and the way victims of rape are just treated and need to be believed even when the events are in the black box !!. This is a powerful and great second book for this year’s January in Japan. (don’t worry it isn’t all Japanese books this month). The next book links into this well as it is a piece of auto-fiction that follows a male rape and the aftermath of his attack. Have you read this book or any other books that deal with the metoo movement?

Winston’s score- A This is a powerful account of a rape and its aftermath.

Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

~ winstonsdad ~ 4 Comments

 

Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto

Japanese crime fiction

Original title – 点と線, Ten to Sen

Translator – Jesse Kirkwood

Source – review copy

I start the new year with the first of a few books that I am planning to read from January in Japan. This is the debut novel of the renowned Japanese crime writer Seichō Matsumoto he had no real formal education and had studied ancient texts as his education according to the wiki. He was initially a journalist til his wiring took off he was known for writing multiple books on the go hence he waS OFTEN CALLED THE Simeon of Japan, as most of his works were published in parts in magazines. He was also a lifelong activist voicing anti-America and also at times Anti-Japanese sentiments in his writing.

His designated waitress was Toki, for the simple reason that she had been the one to serve him on his first visit. While they were on good enough terms, it seemed their relationship had never gone beyond the walls of the Koyuki.

Toki was twenty-six but with her beautiful pale skin could easily have passed for twenty. Her large black eyes made quite an impression on guests. When one of them addressed her, she would glance up and flash them a smile she knew they would find enchanting. Her oval face and delicate chin gave her a graceful profile.

The opening chapter and how the exec uses just Toki as his waitress.

The book opens with a restaurant and an exec that is due to go for a meal there. As it has been where he seal deals and fixes there over the years and he has always wanted the same waitress Toki. So when one morning her body and a young man called Sayama he works for the government does that have some barring on why he is there. The two are initially assumed to have taken their own lives on the beach of this small town a train ride or two from Tokyo the family are contacted and the death from poison seems straightforward but then there are two detectives and they start to pull apart what happens the local detective Torigai isn’t sure of the events of that night. So he talks to the Tokyo detective Mihara. Then as they start to work back over the train journey and what actually happened that led to these two bodies on the rocky beach. The trip is picked apart. Were they seen by a fruit seller what happened at the stop-over point who off the trains Saw the couple was there anything else that happened on that trip? Is anyone else around on that night.

Torigai was standing in front of the fruit shop at Kashi station.

“Can I ask you something?’

The shopkeeper, a man of about forty who was busy polishing an apple, turned to look at him. Shopkeepers weren’t always the most helpful people when questioned in this way, but when Torigai added that he was with the police, the man became more attentive.

‘How late do you stay open in the evening? asked Torigai.

‘I close around eleven.

In that case, would you be able to see the passengers when they come out of the station at around nine thirty?’

“Nine thirty? Definitely. There’s a train that gets in from Hakata at twenty-five past. The shop isn’t very busy at that time of night, so 1 keep a lookout for potential customers.’

The fruit seller at his shop what did he see that evening if anything?

I loved this it started as thou it was one thing and then we see how the crime and events were pulled apart over the days the trip was worked back. At the end of the book, it said seichō had used the real timetables to plan the events and to follow what happened and of course being Japan there is never a mention of the train running late or being cancelled and this is back in the fifties. The real reason for the deaths appears over time. He has a great pacing to the story as the events are slowly unpicked as we see the night in reverse almost the events worked back to Toki’s workplace at the restaurant which caused their deaths really. This is one of the best-selling books of all time in Japan you can see why it is maybe the perfect crime novel that can be read in a single sitting and I loved the way they just unpicked the train journey and who saw what. Have you read any of his books? I have another on my shelves that I have had for a number of years I hope to read that at some point. I love the cover of this penguin classic and the photo is just perfect. What are you planning to read for January in Japan?

Winston’s score – A Well paced and believable crime novel.