Earthlings

In a similar way to Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata’s second novel Earthlings examines the worlds created by people who find that the standards set by wider society don’t quite fit with who they are. It casts a light on the tendency in Japanese society towards rigid compliance and formality over feelings, contrasting the instincts of childhood with the conformity and regulation of adulthood. It also shows up the double standards in society, with a blind eye turned to some behaviours but not others. There are moments of humour and tenderness, but this story is much darker than Murata’s previous book.

Scattered All Over the Earth

I picked up Yoko Tawada’s novel on a whim. I liked the cover. The blurb on the fly intrigued me. The first two paragraphs captivated me. Scattered All Over the Earth explores the nature and meaning of language, the origins of identity, and the myriad ways in which the world can and does change.

The story takes place in a future where the climate crisis has reached the point where entire land masses disappear and the number of people seeking refuge on the remaining continents is increasing. It follows the fortunes of a disparate bunch of people who travel around Europe seeking some kind of meaning to their lives.

The Sound of the Mountain

Yasunari Kawabata’s novel The Sound of the Mountain centres on Ogata Shingo and his relationships with his son Shūichi, daughter-in-law Kikuko, wife Yasuko and daughter Fusako.

Ogata-san, called by his first name Shingo throughout the book, is 62. He is a businessman who lives in Kamakura and commutes to work in Tokyo. His son works at the same company and has the role of minder to his father, who is experiencing memory lapses. Relations between the two are strained for a number of reasons.

Parade

In Parade, four 20-somethings share an apartment in Tokyo, each at a different stage in their life, each searching for something in their own way. Through them and their individual narratives we gain an idea of modern Japanese life, or Tokyo life at least.

Tokyo Redux

I waited 12 years for David Peace to write the final installment in his Tokyo Trilogy, plus an extra year for it to come out in paperback, and somehow another year after buying it to actually read it. Sometimes anticipation makes me wary. I loved Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City. Peace’s writing in this trilogy draws from the style of Japanese authors, particularly Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. It’s a dark and unsettling series, meticulously researched so that his fiction feels like it fills the gaps in the historical record with truth.

Japanese Fairy Tales

Yei Theodora Ozaki’s translated compendium of Japanese fairy tales is a charming read. Published in 1903 and now out of copyright, I got mine from the Kindle store a while ago for free. It’s also available to download or read for free on Project Gutenberg.

In her introduction, Ozaki explains that she wanted to bring the world of Japanese fairy tales to a western audience and her selection of twenty-two stories is based on Sadanami Sanjin/Sazanami Iwaya’s Meiji era collection for children, with a few tales from other sources. Ozaki rewrote the stories into English with a younger audience in mind. While some are gentle in tone, the fact that they are for children is no guarantee that violence and brutality won’t make an appearance. Some of the stories are quite shocking and upsetting in their cruelty. I suppose an argument can be made that nature and the world are cruel and brutal things, and these stories are reflections of that. I don’t think it’s a collection that I would put in front of a child today, despite knowing what I was like as a child and how much I loved spooky stories.

Novellas in November 2022 – How did I do?

I did pretty well with this challenge. It’s the first time I’ve properly done Novellas in November. I’ve tagged the odd novella that I’ve happened to read in November before, but never followed the prompts. I enjoyed it. It made me think about my reading more strategically and helped me to knock six titles off my To Read pile.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Snow Child to 4 3 2 1

December, and the final installation of Six Degrees of Separation for 2022. Kate has chosen a starting book that I haven’t heard of this month, Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. Let’s see where my book hopping takes me this month.

A Pale View of Hills

A Pale View of Hills concerns Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in England, and the story of her past in Nagasaki. It opens with a visit from her daughter, Niki, and a conversation about her older daughter, Niki’s half-sister Keiko. This conversation triggers a memory for Etsuko of when she was pregnant with Keiko and developed a friendship with a strange, independent woman living in a run down old cottage with her young daughter.

Breasts and Eggs

I have been looking forward to reading Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami’s novel about writing that follows a working class woman in Tokyo and her battle to become an author, since I first saw it mentioned in a Must Read list. I treated myself to a copy at the start of the year and now its time has come, swapped into my 10 Books of Summer for Women in Translation Month.