Tag: Japanese literature challenge 17

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.