Tag: JAPANESE LIT

Wildcat Dome by Yuko Tsushima

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Wildcat Dome by Yuko Tsushima

Japanese fiction

Original title – ヤマネコ・ドーム

Translator – Lisa Hofmann -Kuroda

Source – review copy

I have meant to review another book by this writer, who is the daughter of Dazai Osamu and uses a pen name for her books. Her half sister is also a writer and a number of her other family members have been ninvolved in Japanese goverment this book came out later in her writing Career but also linked to the present of the Fukushima Nuclear disaster and also events in the war are all interlinking into this story one that sopans the decades and also crosses reality at times. I must admit that this is a book that lingers with you as a reader, but also requires a closer reading than I did. But i will giver you my take on the book.

Kazu’s thoughts drift back to Yonko, whom he is seeing for the first time in a long while. Though when he thinks about it, he realizes it’s only been about two years. But how long ago that seems now. The truth that Mitch and Hide had stumbled across was so frightening that Yonko and Kazu stopped talking, unable to look at each other or even talk on the phone. They tried to forget, since there was nothing they could do, no matter how much they wished otherwise. For two years, they tried to convince themselves:

I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten. All this time, enveloped in an unnatural silence. As they continued to avoid talking to each other, they hoped their connection might fade on its own. Though perhaps what they really wanted was to escape their own past.

Kazu imagines Yonko running through the city, livid.

She remebers her firend Kazu and later we find out what happened in the past

As I said, this is a book more about modern and post-war Japan than about the characters in the book and the loneliness between reality and dream, like a world that exists. At the heart of the story are two characters, Mitch and Yonko, meeting years after they were both in an orphanage. Alongside another boy called Kazu, the two boys were inseparable as kids. Something happened, and what the book does is link the past of post-war Japan and these feral children, kids of GIs and Japanese women. In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the book presents the two characters facing past events in their present. What Yuko does as well is incorporate a lot of colour themes that recur in the book Orange, which in Japanese is Daidai, meaning the tree and generations. I’m not sure if this is what she meant in the book. It is one of those books, wonderfully written about a long-past tragedy, told through the eyes of a friend. Also, time spent in a dome in their youth, where they saw many things that may have been dream-like events, when they were told about there being a drowning of water and Japan vanishing.

Mitch has gone completely silent now, and there is nothing Yonko can do but hang her head and ponder what that “really bad” thing could be. The sandy mud is on her sleeves now. Her red coat grows heavier by the minute. As soon as they get to the station, she is sure her mother will yell at her for not being more careful. And then Yonko won’t be able to ask her anything at all. What were you all talking about last night, Mom, did something sad happen, she wishes she could ask. But children can’t just go around asking questions of adults— especially questions that might cross the boundaries of the innocent world that adults have constructed for them. Adults are always on guard against children, keeping them far away from their secrets.

Mitch has his own past

As I said, this is one of those books that is more about themes than characters, focusing on loss, loneliness, Japan’s distant past, and its post-war years. About growing up and always being an outsider. Having a secret. But also about the thin line between a child’s dream world and reality, and what that means now and then to those involved. As I said, this book may benefit from being familiar with her body of work a little more. This is the third book by her that I will have read. But perhaps also a little more knowledge than I have of post-war Japan and how being half-Japanese and American would have affected those born in those heady post-war years. There is the spectre of Nuclear war and also Nuclear disaster, as this was written in the aftermath and effects of the Fukushima disaster. Colour also plays a part in her writing. I was reminded of the Trois Couleurs films and the way they used colours to reflect a theme, and I think this has a similar thread running through the film. Have you read this book? What is your take on it?

Under the eye of the big bird by Hiromi Kawakami

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Under the eye of the big bird by Hiromi Kawakami

Japanese fiction

Original title – 大きな鳥にさらわれないよう
Ōkina tori ni sarawarenai yō

Translator – Asa Yoneda

Source – Personal copy

I will hold my hand up now when the long list for the Booker International comes out, and I have read through the list of books that have made the cut. This is the one that appealed least to me. I have read two other books by the writer over the years; I really liked her book The Briefcase, as it was called when I read it for the Man Asian prize many years ago. Now, I am in the mood for sci-fi. I am not a huge sci-fi fan, and speculative fiction has to appeal. The problem with this book is that I may have read it in the middle of all the books, but it is very different from the other books. Plus, I was dreading it in a way, so maybe I hadn’t given it a good enough chance anyway. Fair to say I scored it lowest for the Shadow Booker International. Anyway, here is my take on it for what it is worth lol(I rarely am so unexcited by a book I have read )

Are things going well at the factory? I ask my husband.

He shrugs his shoulders in a way that can be taken as

either uh-huh or nuh-uh.

They say the factory in this region was built around a hundred years ago. The other regions’ factories are around the same age. The very first one was built several hundred years ago, but that one no longer exists. Also, at that time, there was a unit that contained multiple regions, called a country, and that country was named Japan. And as well as Japan, there were countless other countries, each of which had a name. I learned all this from my husband, who enjoys reading old documents.

What was life like back then? I ask him.

The factory and the past what was it like?

 

The book is fourteen stories that roughly link together to make it a novel set in a distant future when men’s DNA has started to unravel, and thus science has begun to splice human DNA with animal DNA. So the species has evolved into various types of men, which is all overseen as the stories unfold by some AI  and watchers. However, they are trying to turn back the tide of man’s decline in a way. This is a story of what happened at the end of man’s time. I struggled to find the thread and saw this done in several other similar books. I’m thinking of The Last Children of Tokyo, which is about just Japanese dying out, but has a similar theme. Sorry, this is so short, there are other fans of this book to read their reviews !

“Things that live are things that die. In time.”

Die. I didn’t understand the meaning of the word until the cat I kept brought in a mouse. The mouse, which had always moved, stopped moving at all, and grew cold before

my eyes.

There were many animals at that house. Cats. Dogs.

Mice. Rabbits. Cows. Horses. Chickens. Bantams. Ducks.

Geese. Peafowl. Dozens of waterbirds bobbed on the big lake in the garden. The one who liked to sit very still and watch the grebes dive was me, the shortest of us three.

“You like that? Just watching those birds go into the wa-

ter?” I asked, and the shortest me nodded.

“Sometimes they dive for a long time, and sometimes

they don’t.”

The mothers always told us how important it was to no-tice things. When the shortest me gave an account of the grebes over dinner, they were full of praise.

“Observe carefully. Never rush to conclusions. But com-mit everything to memory, without neglecting the smallestdetail,” they said.

That first bit here did make me think back to some scenes in Blade runner (the orginal film )

As you can see, this book just didn’t get me.I rarely have this effect with a book, but I can’t say that I loved a book I had to push myself to read through. But that said, I may go back and reread it later and see if a different time makes a difference. I do have a couple of her other books to read as well. For me, this had two ideas that could make it a significant part of the Matrix and also part of Studio Ghibli’s nightmare. I think it would make a tremendous Japanese sci-fi film. But I rarely am hard on a book. But this just isn’t my type of book. I will read sci-fi if it appeals, but this wasn’t a book for me. I would love to know if you liked the book and why? Are you a sci fi or speculative fiction fan?

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

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Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

Japanese fiction

Orignal title – ハンチバック

Translator Polly Barton

Source – Personal copy

This was another book from the longlist i was vaguely aware of , I remember reading when the writer had won the Akutagawa prize a couple of years ago as she was the first disabled writer to win such a big prize in Japan; in fact, in any big book prize worldwide, let’s face it there are not many disabled voices out there in the books we read. So I had this on my radar to read; given the nature of my job, anything that deals with disability and is written from that point of view captured my attention as a reader. As I feel it is a world underrepresented by readers. In some ways, this book is a thinly veiled tale of the writer’s own life, but maybe in HD, can I get away with saying that this is her world turned up to fully steamy!!

Meanwhile, S was leaning up against the tinted glass while the trader sucked on her E-cup tits. The black turtleneck hoisted up around her mouth muffled her moans so they sounded super horny. Her enormous white breasts were glistening and bouncy like ripe Japanese pears. You had to hand it to 2I-year-old college students! Huge but still pert, they really were a flawless set of tits.

No wonder 26-year-old Y was hanging her head, her cheeks reddened by the humiliation of defeat. Although, if I’m being totally honest, I’m not that into big-breasted women. Y’s regular-sized, slightly saggy tits were actually way more up my alley. Yeah, she was really turning me on. I stuck a hand into her panties to find she was already dripping wet. ‘Can 1 fuck you?’ I groaned into her ear. ‘Sure &’! she replied. I grabbed one of the condom packets that had come pirouetting down from the ceiling at just the right moment, and so began

The tale of hers that opens the book

The book opens with our narrator writing one of the erotic stories that she has been publishing under a pseudonym on erotic websites. In her stories, she explores the experiences of sex as a disabled woman and reflects on how it would feel. She lives in a nursing home, a place her parents chose for her, where she tweets and writes. One day, her new male carer suggests that he knows about her secret life as a writer. This revelation adds a twist to the narrative as the fantasy worlds she creates spill into reality. Because of her circumstances, she finds she can prompt this man to act out some of the scenarios she wishes to explore. Her own sexual journey with this young man. It is a tale of power in a way being switched to the way this may happen otherwise.It also shows a subject until recent times, a taboo, and that is the desire of people like our narrator and the writer herself. Trapped in their own way, seeking freedom of their desires!

In American universities, in accordance with the stipulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, not only are digital educational teaching resources the norm, but it’s also compulsory for textbooks to be accessible to the visually impaired through a reader. Japan, on the other hand, works on the understanding that disabled people don’t exist within society, so there are no such proactive considerations made. Able-bodied Japanese people have likely never even imagined a hunchbacked monster struggling to read a physical book. Here was 1, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that 1 read, while all those e-book-hating able-bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.

A remindee of her own personal challenges and how society deals with them!

 

 

The story addresses the theme of feeling trapped in your body; how can she be free while confined to a chair and reliant on oxygen? It delves into the desire to be seen as something other than society’s perception. It highlights the unspoken desires of disabled people, a subject that is only just beginning to gain attention in our society. Something people are only just starting to talk about, so a book like this with is cader and frankness and a straightforward way of dealing with other erotic desires is eye-opening and also refreshing. I think the writer of this book must have a wickedly playful mind if this book is a reflection of her as a person. One of the books that has so far raised its head above the others, and also like some of the other book,s this is the sort of book I hope to see on lists like this books that open up new dimensions for us as readers but also give voice to underrepresented writers as well.

Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki

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Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki

Japanese fiction

Original title – ギフテッド, Gifuteddo

Translator Alison Markin Powell

Source – Personal copy

I moved on to a book that had two reasons I read it. First, it was on the US Republic of Consciousness longlist, but it is also a book that could be on the booker longlist after tossing and turning about the longlist for the book I have decided to do that and the EBRD lists this year, and this means I need to push on and read and clear some of my TBR  books from last year with books that could be on the longlist and this book which has many significant bits in such a short book. A mother-daughter relationship. Being on the edge of society as our writer was, Autofiction, the narrator herself was an adult actress and hostess. So lived in the after-dark world like the narrator of the book.

I’d wait until the very last minute to change my clothes, and even then, I avoided putting on outfits that looked like I was heading to the entertainment district. Whereas normally I’d take an hour to put on makeup and powder my skin, I started doing all that once I was already out. And somehow, the simple and modest guises I put on to keep my mother from stalling me seemed to her liking. There was one time when she said, “You look pretty today.” I was wearing a beige cardigan over jeans. It was the first time my mother had ever complimented my clothing or appearance. But I still ended up going out every night, after the meds had been administered and the questions had been dodged. When I left her as she dropped off to sleep, I hated the sound of the key as I locked the door from the outside.

As she heads out to work trying to blend in

This is a slim book but depicts the last nine days of a strained relationship[ between a mother who could have been a poet but because of her choices in life has had a knock-on effect on her daughter so when she is near the end of her life and she turns upon at her daughter’s apartment. What follows is the eggshell-like connection of these two women over the last few days of her mother’s life. It isn’t about reconnecting. It is about looking back and forgiving their mother; she was cruel. it is about that last connection and days in a was. The daughter shows her pain and tough life via the collection of tattoos she has on her body. As she navigates the night in Tokyo’s red light district, this book is about life, death, and sex in a sleepless part of town where, in this short book, it seems much larger, but with its subtle telling of this last connection, Add to that a loss of as close friend this is [lacked for the size of this book in which no-one really wins.

I’d been sitting in the same posture for two days, fid-ding with my cell phone today, and yesterday flipping through-but not reading various magazines I had bought, so not surprisingly, my lower back and legs were killing me, and I took advantage of my mother dozing off after her midday meds to duck out into the hallway.

Just as I made it downstairs to go smoke a cigarette, my phone rang. The number came up as the hospital, so for a second I thought my mother had died, but they were calling to say she had a visitor. I told them I’d be right back, though since I was already on the first floor, I stepped out the entrance on the east side, took three puffs of a cigarette, and then reluctantly made an appearance at the nurses’ station on the floor my mother’s room was on, the foor where they put the terminal patients.

Her mothers last days and how she deals with it

 

I loved this. For me, this is the sort of book that seems to become more available to us as readers. This book is about subtle emotions and connections told with a slight hand. You can see the writer’s own pain. It is like she cut her wrist and wrote this in her own blood, but the pain is only slightly released. It is about the cruelty of a parent to the child and how that can manifest itself her tattoos are like her ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences These are things that happen in childhood that have a knock-on effect in adulthood and how they can cause someone to like this character get tattoos or drink to much have no barriers etc. there is an excellent video about this, something we are thinking more and more about in my job just as an aside )As I said this remind me of Eve Baltsar, another writer that writes short, hard-hitting books about relationships and of course the mistress of Autofiction Annie Ernaux for the way it is unflinching in its talking about the world they are in. Have you read this book ?

The frolics of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

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The Frolics of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

Japanese fiction

Original title – Kemono no Tawamure

Translator Andrew Clare

Source – Personal copy

I’ve struggled with the books by Yukio Mishima over the time I have blogged. In that time I have read two books by him, the first is The Sailor Fell into the Sea, I really didn’t get on with the other, The Sound of the Waves I enjoyed slightly more, I have several books by him and could read another, but this is a shorter book by him, and also I do like the new penguin cover of the book it is pretty eye-catching. But I struggled with the structure of this book, which seemed very disjointed. I want to love it, and I like the cover of this book. But found it just a book I never felt fully connected to I see it was initially a part work when it came out I can see this as each chapter tens to be a little world in itself but also jumps from time to time. both of which in other books I have read I haven;t mind but just for me as a reader didn;t work in this book.

That summer’s day, which had begun with the assignation at the hospital – Yüko carrying her sky-blue parasol – and which had culminated in the incident at nine o’clock in the evening, took place some six months after Koji had first met Yüko. That is to say, it occurred after he had taken a shop delivery around to Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane, where he first made her acquaintance.

The more frequent their meetings, the more Koji felt driven to despair, right from the start of the days they were scheduled to meet. It was as if a cold torrent was beginning to flow clamor-ously in his innermost heart, and he hated himself more than he had done on any other morning. The request for a date would always come from him, and he would importune her before approval was eventually obtained. Moreover, Yuko would take him along only on shopping excursions, trips out for lunch, or else to a dance if he was lucky, and then she would promptly leave whenever it suited her.

Yuko time with Koji

 

The book takes. Noh play as the books origin. The book follows a trio of characters Yauko a woman that has captured the heart of two men and this is ahwat the book rdeals with is the outfalling of this the two men Koji he had attacked Yuko older husband Ippei  and this lead to him going to prison, So when Koji goes to live with the couple after his release too me just didn’t make sense and how Ippei a violent man that mistreats his wife is as a character. I get the fact the characters in a way have to be this as part of the Noh tradition the extreme nature of the characters. But for me it is a book with lots of violence that jumps around a bit and I just wasn’t grabbed by this book at all

Yüko was wearing a Java calico blouse and yellow slacks and, because of the rocky mountain paths ahead, had on a pair of flat-heeled Moroccan leather walking shoes. Ippei was in a state of disarray. He was attired in a white open-collared shirt and knickerbockers, checkered socks and slip-ons and a large straw hat. At his side he carried a stout stick. Naturally Köji, who wore jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, carried the camera and the basket containing their lunch boxes and tea flasks. At normal walking speed, it ought to have taken them about thirty minutes to the waterfall, but going at Ippei’s pace, Koji estimated it would take at least an hour. In the end, it took some two hours.

Some of the decriptions I d like but that was about it

 

I think it rare I really don’t get on with a book some of this may be my view of the writer himself he was a character that had a very colourful life but was also very right wing and a number of his views are very against my own personal ideas. He wrote on his admiration of Hitler so I do wonder how many of his other books I may be bothered to read. I feel I had to read him as given the current state of the world with Nationaalist politics and right wing values and views seemingly taking over the world. Makes me a Leftist with my views of how we should all help one another and try make our world a little better. I will always struggle like other writers Celine etc , I will try from time to time but II do wonder without some telling me what is so great about his toerh books this will be my last Mishima for a good while. Have you a writer you struggle with due to them as a person and there views in there life ?

The Doctor’s Wife by Sawe=ako Ariyoshi

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The Doctor’s Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi

Japanese Fiction

Original Title: *Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma*

Translators: Wakako Hirinaka and Ann Silver Kostant

Source: Personal copy

 

I move on to the first of two Japanese classics I have read for this year, January in Japan. The first book is based on the true story of a Japanese doctor who was among the pioneers in using anesthetics in 18th century Japan. Sawako Ariyoshi was highly regarded in her time as a writer, and it’s refreshing to read a book by a female author known for addressing social issues that many other writers have avoided.

 

This book offers insight into a complex triangle of relationships: husband to wife, mother to son, and mother to daughter-in-law. We see these dynamics unfold through the life of Rae, the daughter-in-law and wife at the centre of the story. The life of Rae she is the daughter-in-law and wife at the centre of this book. Her view of the Mother in Law who she idolized before she married her son.

Naomichi was saying: “I assure you, Western medicine will be coming to our country very soon. It was predicted by my teacher, Iwanaga Bangen, when I was his student in Osaka. I think he was right. Because I learned Western methods with him, I can talk with confidence about Japan’s medical future, as if I were taking its pulse. In Edo, Dr. Yamawaki Toyo initiated the idea of dissecting the bodies of dead prisoners; the present teacher, Sugita Genpaku, has been pursuing certain Dutch methods which depend on a complete examination of a person’s body before a diagnosis is pronounced; this is different from the Chinese approach which relies heavily on the pulse. Ah! The human body is a creative masterpiece. Just look at our fingertips. What a composition of delicate nerve tissue and fluids! …

His use of herbs is a mix of tradtion and want to use a western technique in a way

As I said, the story follows Kae growing up and how Otsugithe, mother of Seishu, is considered a rare beauty, one of the most beautiful women in the provinces. We see Kae admiring this Ambitious woman. So when her family is approached by Otsugi to let Kae marry her son Seishu, it seems perfect until she then sees the other side of her now mother-in-law, her overbearing nature. She shows how they both help Seishu as he starts to try different herbs, such as a herbal Anthisesis. Some of this is hard to read when he uses Animals. On the other hand, it is interesting to see how far back it was that it was starting to be used or tried as a way to perform simple operations. One Seishu is trying is surgery to remove breast cancer. The two women in his life seem struck being rivals and get jealous of one another when he pays attention to the other one. As we see the young Kae try and take over from her mother-in-law in her husband’s life. But both have given up a lot to be at Seishu’s side as he tries to make a breakthrough.

The normal routine resumed the day atter the wedding.

Okatsu and Koriku did the cooking and laundry under their mother’s supervision while the maid cleaned and cared for the younger children. Shimomura Ryoan performed various duties for the doctor since the women and children were not allowed to so much as touch the drawers containing medical supplies.

Little time, however, was required to prepare the simple meals and straighten up the small house, so that most of the daily tasks were quickly completed. Now, the Hanaokas kept some looms on the veranda and a spinning wheel in a nearby storage area.

When their chores were done, the older girls, skilled at weav-ing, went off and worked at the looms without a break until dinner. Their special weave used dyed threads that Kae surmised must have come from the Matsumotos.

The normal world for a female in these times caught some what here

This book had been on my shelves for too long. I loved the interplay between the three main characters as the two women struggle to find their place and meaning in a male world. Add to that the cutting-edge nature of Seishu research and trying to get a herbal anthesis. The Progress he find will bring to help women with Breast Cancer. But this is at the cost of Animals and, in the end, family members as he tries to make a breakthrough. The moral nature of what he has to do to discover how he can save lives using his discovery.  It also tackles the role of females in Japanese society at the time it is set. Through the two women’s eyes and how they are treated in a male world. Have you read this or any other book based on a partly true story? Or another book by this writer ?

The Full Moon Cafe by Mai Moochizuki

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The Full Moon Cafe by Mai Moochizuki

Japanese fiction

Original title – 満月珈琲店の星詠み

Translator Jesse Kirkwood

Source – Review copy

This is one of the books I read for Women in Translation Month. I have been a fan of the quirky Japanese novels we have seen a lot over the last couple of years. So when I was asked to review this, I said yes as I like a little light read like this occasionally. Mai Mochizuki Has written several books.  she had a series called Alice in Kyouraku Forest series. This is the first of a new series of books set around a mystical cafe that only appears on a full moon. Mai was born and raised in Hokkaido and now lives in Kyoto, where the book itself is set. This is the first of a series of novels. Following the ever-moving Full Moon Cafe as it moves around Koyto, it helps some souls in that city.

I was living in some absurd fairy tale. Maybe I’d fallen asleep? I mean, this kind of thing only happened in dreams. Yes, this had to be a dream. Once I had convinced myself of that, I began to relax slightly.

In response to my question, the three cats exchanged a series of glances, then nodded vaguely.

‘You could say so, yes,’ said the tuxedo cat.

‘Though this isn’t our real form, either. said the Singapura, scratching behind his ear. Just as he was about to go on, the tuxedo cat cleared his throat loudly. The Singapura hastily clapped a paw to his mouth.

‘The Full Moon Coffee Shop has no fixed location,” said the master of the café. It might appear in the middle of a familiar shopping street, by the station at the end of the railway line or on a quiet riverbank.

And at this café, we don’t ask for your order? He put a paw to his chest and bowed cermoniously

As the cafee first appears on a street in Koyto

This book has a bit of everything in it: Cats; of course, Cats are a symbol of good luck in Japan. So when, every full moon, a cafe appears around the Kyoto area that is staffed by Cats and helps someone who in the past has helped a cat, so in turn, they get help. Every appearance also sees them feeding the person they help these make up some of the chapter headings. We meet five people in need of the cafe and the Cat’s help. This involves astrology and sometimes just a little logic and being at the right time at the right place. As we see each person problems solved.AS those clever cats show each other the path they need to take, this is a book that is maybe a perfect autumn read.

I couldn’t forget the cats’ words. After the Age of Pisces came the Age of Aquarius. The age of spirituality – and the internet. A time when the individual was truly respected. In an era like that, maybe I was lucky to be writing game scripts. Maybe this was actually an opportunity – one I shouldn’t let slide.

Even if I wasn’t allowed to include any breathtaking love scenes, I could still write wonderful stories. Instead of just aiming for average, I’d create the best side characters I could.

As long as they made people feel as if they were edging closer to a blissful romance with the main character, then as a writer, I’d have done my job.

And what did I need in order to do it well?

The cats words help a writer think clearer

I like this sort of lighter read; I think we all need a palate cleanser of a book every now and then. This is that sort of book fun. What more could you want than walking and talking cats to a coffee shop they run as well and then throw in astrology? You have a mix of things many people can’t resist. Imagine if Russell Grant and the Baron from Studio Ghibli Cat returned to film (I know he was in another of the films from the studio as a model of the Baron in the shop), opening a magical cafe that appears overnight on a full moon, This would be the book. It is a fun read. I read it in the evening, and for me, that makes it the perfect autumnal read. Sit with some coffee and maybe a dessert like those in the book and over an evening, as the nights draw in, find out the going ons in the Full Moon cafe. Do you have a series or type of book you read that is lighter or as I say a palate cleanser of a book?  Do you like quirky cat books?

Winstons score – B solid book Walking Talking Cats a bit of coffee culture and a feel-good factor what more could you want for a nights reading.

The Bridegroom was a Dog by Yoko Tawada

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The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yoko Tawada

Japanese fiction

Original title – Imumukori

Translator – Margaret Mitsutani

Source – personal copy

You know what? I am slow with my reviews for WIT month. The weather is hot here in the UK. I am going to try and catch up on some reviews the next few days. This caught my eye on holiday last month. I had read scattered all over the world by her. I am always amazed that Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese /German. This particular story has been translated from Japanese. I think the US edition of this book has a couple of other stories thrown in. Still, we have just this one story by her in a nice little hardback book, one of those books that is perfect for reading on a summer evening, a novella about a teacher, a myth she makes up and what happens after that.

‘The Bridegroom Was a Dog'” Miss Kitamura began, and the children listened carefully until the end, but the tale was so long that the younger ones got mixed up when they tried to tell it at home, and the older ones were too embarrassed to repeat it,

so curious mothers were left to piece together the fragments they’d overheard for themselves, but, anyway, the story went like this. Once upon a time there was a little princess who was still too young to wipe herself after she went to the lavatory, and the woman assigned to look after her was too lazy to do it for her, so she used to call the princess’s favorite black dog and say, “If you lick her bottom clean one day she’ll be your bride “

Her weird myth after talking about The Crane Wife

Mitsuko is a teacher at the Kitamura school, which is a cram school, but she is a strange one with a weird set of rules and how she deals with her pupils. The tissues she has a strange habit with them, leading to her being talked about by both the pupils and teachers. But she is good at another job.But when one day, she decides to make up her own myth after talking about one of the most famous Japanese myths, the Crane wife. She twists this to a myth about a bride betrothed to a Dog. But what happens when, a short while later, a young man appears in her life with Cannine-like teeth? Has fantasy and reality crossed over in this tale? When he arrives and says did you get my telegram? I wondered if they still have telegrams in Japan as a small aside. Taro, the young man, starts to enter her world.

The town where all this happened was made up of two distinct areas to the north and south: in the north were the modern housing developments that had sprung up along the railway with the station at its hub, while the southern district that lined the Tama River had prospered since ancient times, and yet many people in the Tama region didn’t even know it existed, even though the public housing complexes that drew people to the north had only been in existence for about thirty years, whereas

the south was really old, with the remains of ancient pit houses discovered near the river-human dwellings that dated back farther than you could imagine –

The town described her

This is one of those weird, quirky books I love from Japan. It does have a bizarre storyline and some really odd sexual and hab it’s in it, but in a way that adds to the quirkiness of this story.Yes, it is bizarre, and maybe in a way, I feel the US edition may be better as it had a couple of other stories, but if you don’t fancy this novella, it means there isn’t anything else. I can see this as one of those books that can divide opinions. For me, the surreal ideas behind it actually brought the main character to life in her job as a cram school teacher, which in itself is a job that is intense and hard for the pupils attending the school. It is a book with little habits and things like that well observed, those quirky bits that can make a narrative, and we don’t always see a person do, but when we do, we can’t miss it if that makes sense. Then I did wonder if it was meant to be a tale set a long time ago with the mention of a telegram unware if Japan maybe still has telegrams or if this is to make it set in a certain time post-war Japan I’m not sure really but if you have a thought on this I’d like to know  I look forward to more books from Yoko. I know another one is due soon. Have you read this quirky tale ? Do you like a really short book you can read in the evening?

Winston score – B quirky, surreal sex may need a couple other stories.

A perfect day to be alone by Nanae Aoyama

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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.

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

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

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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

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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.

This is Amiko , Do You Copy by Natsuko Imamura

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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.

Before the Coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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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