Tag: jaoanese literature challenge 2024

Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada

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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

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

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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.