A blog on Japanese books, mostly untranslated, that deserve a wider audience outside of Japan

Category: Tsujimura, Mizuki

Winner of the 2018 Japanese Booksellers Award

『かがみの孤城』(The Solitary Castle in the Mirror) by 辻村深月 (Mizuki Tsujimura) won the 2018 Japanese Booksellers Award, announced on April 10. Although it wouldn’t have been my choice, it wasn’t a surprise, given the rave reviews from other readers. And it’s always interesting to try and identify the source of a book’s appeal, even if it escapes me personally.

Mizuki Tsujimura at the award ceremony. Source: Jiji Press

I have liked several of Mizuki Tsujimura’s other novels, but at more than 500 pages, this book needed a more aggressive editor—it could have been cut by about half without losing much. I may have not have been her intended audience either, since it seemed to be directed toward young adults. This was in part because her writing seemed more simplistic than in her other novels, and any adult could unravel some of the mysteries about 100 pages before the children did. It was also hard for me to relate to Kokoro, the main character, perhaps because her over-sensitive reactions to every word and look directed at her—while no doubt an entirely accurate depiction of a young girl—became a little tiring.

The description of the book gives the impression that this is an adventure story, with seven children given a year to search in a castle for a key that will grant the finder a wish. However, the actual search for the key was carried out in a half-hearted way –and only mentioned in passing–until the last 50 pages or so. One of the mysteries is why these seven children have been gathered at the castle. All but one have stopped going to school, although they have given up on school for different reasons. None of the children characterized their experiences as “bullying,” and the range of their experiences speaks to the depth of the problem. According to the Ministry of Education’s statistics for the 2014 school year, 26,000 elementary school students and 97,000 middle school students were absent for 30 days or more, the official definition of “school refusal” (the actual figure is certainly higher since the absences of some children are attributed to “medical reasons” to save the child embarrassment and the school its reputation). Both of these figures were up by about 2,000 over the previous year. The reasons given run from bullying to lack of friends and embarrassment over academic performance. The castle gives the seven children a place to feel comfortable and at ease. This search for a sense of belonging is something to which many people, both children and adults, can relate, which probably explains why this book has resonated so much with readers.

My favorite of the books nominated this year was Kotaro Isaka’s “AX”. Kabuto (his nickname among his colleagues on the dark side) is a salesman for a stationery manufacturer by day and a professional assassin by night. He has nerves of steel when it comes to killing, but he is petrified of his wife, and this makes for much of the humor in the book. The book starts with Kabuto talking with his fellow killers-for-hire about the best food to eat when arriving home late after a job. Cup ramen would seem to be the natural choice, but there is a risk of waking up his wife with the sounds he’d make tearing off the plastic wrap, pulling back the lid, and pouring in the boiling water. No, Kabuto informs his respectful disciples, after much trial and error, the only food he has found that is both satisfying and quiet is fish sausage. Kabuto has made such a study of placating his wife that Katsumi, Kabuto’s son, later finds a notebook complete with flow charts that map out possible conversations with his wife and how to respond in a way that will not provoke her.

“AX” is a series of interrelated stories from the time Katsumi is in high school until he is an adult with a son of his own. Kabuto’s attempts to convince the “doctor” who assigns him jobs to let him leave this work, without putting his wife and son at risk, underlie all of these episodes. He is a lonely man, despite his deep love for his family, and almost pathetically grateful for the few friends he makes during the course of this book. However, his profession always gets in the way of these friendships. He makes a friend at a bouldering gym, of all places (they share tips on how to appease their wives), but when they are attacked by a thief on their way to a bar one night, Kabuto is forced to deal with the situation in a way that gives away the fact that he is not just a stationery salesman. This is not exactly a thriller, nor do we get many details about the people he kills and why—his profession is simply a vehicle through which Isaka explores fatherhood and loyalty and sacrifice, with a lot of humor to leaven any heaviness.

I attempted to read 『たゆたえども沈まず』(Fluctuat nec mergitur) by 原田マハ (Maha Harada), but it seemed too formulaic and I gave up after plodding through about 75 pages. I also tried 『百貨の魔法』(The Department Store’s Magic) by 村山早紀 (Saki Murayama), but it was like being trapped in a heavily perfumed room and forced to listen to Muzak versions of classical music.

I quite enjoyed 『キラキラ共和国』 (The Sparkling Republic) by 小川糸 (Ito Ogawa), which sees Hatoko start a new stage in her life with her husband and step-daughter. This is a good one to read in the bath or before bed—nothing prize-worthy here, but a solid comfort read, and there’s always a place for books in that category.

The Booksellers Award has apparently come under criticism for not living up to its original purpose of turning more obscure titles into bestsellers, particularly last year, when Riku Onda won both the Booksellers Award and the Naoki Prize for 蜜蜂と遠雷 (Honey Bees and Distant Thunder). This year they seem to be trying to make up for that with their winner in the translated novel category, Stephanie Garber’s Caraval, translated by Kaoru Nishimoto. The Japanese translation has only sold 9,000 copies in Japan so far, but this award will likely change that.

 

 

Nominees for the 2018 Japanese Booksellers Award

The 10 books nominated for the 2018 Booksellers Award were announced on January 2018. One of the reasons I look forward to this list so much is the sheer variety of the selections. After all, the titles are chosen by bookstore clerks who are eager to promote their favorites, so I think this is as close as we can get to an award given by people who are readers first and foremost. This year the list is as eclectic as ever, with novels about zombies, the intersections between Japanese art and French Impressionism, the struggles of the publishing industry, a murder involving the game of shogi, bullying, a professional assassin, a modern-day scribe, a mysterious brain cancer patient, and a failing department store (with a cat thrown in for good measure).

『AX アックス』、伊坂幸太郎

AX, by Kotaro Isaka

Isaka, a mystery writer who has won many awards, has said that he writes to deal with his constant fear that something horrible is going to happen and that these catastrophes will change Japan irrevocably. “AX” is about a highly skilled professional assassin who continues to take jobs until he has enough money for retirement. In contrast to his professional mien, he cannot stand up to his wife at home and doesn’t even have the respect of his son. While you’re waiting for this to be translated, you could try Isaka’s novel, ゴールデンスランバー, published in an English translation by Stephen Snyder under the title Remote Control, about a young man who is framed for the murder of the Japanese prime minister and tries to escape.

『かがみの孤城』 、辻村深月

The Solitary Castle in the Mirror, by Mizuki Tsujimura

This long novel is about a young girl who has stopped going to school because she is being bullied. One day, she notices that the mirror in her bedroom is glowing, and as she reaches out to touch it, she is pulled through the mirror and into a game, supervised by a young girl wearing a wolf mask. Kokoro and six other children in similar situations have one year to search a castle for a key that will grant the finder a wish. I will read anything Tsujimura writes. I don’t read her books for the plots, I read them for her vivid characters and their relationships with each other. This book is worth reading if only for the back-and-forth between the prickly young girl leading this group and the fragile kids she tries to guide in their search.

『キラキラ共和国』、小川糸

The Sparkling Republic, by Ito Ogawa

This is a sequel to last year’s “Tsubaki Stationery Store,” also nominated for the 2017 Japanese Booksellers Award. This book continues Hatoko’s story and her life in Kamakura, interspersed with the predicaments and letters of the people who come to her for help writing letters.

『崩れる脳を抱きしめて』、知念実希人

Hold Tight to the Collapsing Brain, by Mikito Chinen

Chinen is a practicing doctor who writes mysteries and thrillers set in hospitals. This rather bizarre title is no exception—his other books have titles like “How to Keep a Pet Guardian of Death” (優しい死神の飼い方)and “Hospital Ward: The Masked Bandit” (仮面病棟). This novel is about Usui, a young man completing his medical residency when he meets Yukari, a young girl with brain cancer. They become close, but when he returns to his hometown, he is told that she has died. Billed as a love story wrapped in a mystery, Usui struggles to discover why Yukari has died and whether she ever existed in the first place.

『屍人荘の殺人』、今村昌弘

Murderers at the House of the Living Dead, by Masahiro Imamura

Members of a university’s mystery club travel together to stay at a pension, and find themselves forced to barricade themselves inside on the very first night. The very next morning, one of their members is found dead, in a locked room. This mystery takes some of the elements of a locked-room murder, but adds zombies to the mix. Reviews have been mixed, with my favorite being from someone who wrote that he felt like he had ordered curry rice, and was served with curry udon instead.

『騙し絵の牙』、塩田武士

The Fang in the Trick Picture, by Takeshi Shiota

This novel follows Hayami, a magazine editor at a major publisher, as he desperately tries to keep his magazine from being discontinued. Hayami struggles with internal politics, but also faces the fight within the entertainment industry for our attention. I plan to read this one on the strength of Shiota’s previous novel based on the unsolved Glico-Morinaga case, “The Voice of the Crime” (also shortlisted for the 2017 award).

『たゆたえども沈まず』、原田マハ

“Fluctuat nec mergitur,” by Maha Harada

(The title refers to the Latin phrase used by Paris as its motto since 1358, meaning something like “tossed by the waves but never sunk.”)

In this novel, Harada has used the historical figure Tadamasa Hayashi, a Japanese art dealer who went on to introduce ukiyo-e, woodblock prints and other forms of Japanese art to Europe, as a way to explore the question of why Japan is so fascinated with Vincent van Gogh. Harada believes that the explanation lies in elements of ukiyo-e in van Gogh’s paintings, and although there is no evidence that Hayashi and van Gogh ever met, this novel imagines a friendship between Hayashi and and Theo and Vincent van Gogh that changed Impressionism.

Harada was also nominated last year for『暗幕のゲルニカ』(Guernica Undercover), about Picasso’s Guernica painting.

『盤上の向日葵』、柚月裕子

“The Sunflower on the Shogi Board,” by Yuko Yuzuki

The book starts in 1994 with the discovery of skeletal remains buried with a piece from a famous shogi set (shogi is a Japanese game similar to chess). Naoya Sano, a policeman who had aspired to be a professional shogi player, and veteran detective Tsuyoshi Ishiba try to identify the body. Their search alternates with the story of Keisuke, starting in 1971. Keisuke’s mother has died and his father abuses him, but a former teacher recognizes his unusual talent for shogi and encourages him to leave for Tokyo and become a professional.

This book is especially timely as shogi has been in the headlines a lot lately thanks to the amazing wins of fifteen-year-old Sota Fujii, Japan’s youngest professional shogi player. There has actually been a run on shogi sets, which has to be a first!

『百貨の魔法』、村山早紀

The Department Store’s Magic, by Saki Murayama

This book is a series of interlinked stories about the people who work at a local department store: the elevator girl, the concierge, the jewelry department’s floor manager and the founder’s family. As rumors about the store’s impending closure begin to go around, they all come together to try and save the store—with the help of the white cat who lives there. Murayama’s The Story of Ofudo (about a bookstore, and also involving a cat) was nominated for last year’s award, and I’ve been reading it when I need a respite from my current read, Fuminori Nakamura’s R帝国 (Empire R)—its fairytale atmosphere is a welcome contrast to Nakamura’s dark vision.

『星の子』、今村夏子

Child of the Stars, Natsuko Imamura

The narrator of this novel (which was also nominated for the Akutagawa Prize) is a third-year middle school student, Chihiro. She was born premature and began suffering from eczema when she was a baby. Her parents tried every treatment recommended, but with no effect. Finally, her father’s co-worker gives them a bottle of water labeled “Blessings of the Evening Star,” with instructions to wash her with it. This completely cures her, and her parents become wrapped up in this co-worker’s cult as a result. Although Chihiro’s older sister runs away, Chihiro is able to separate her home life from life outside—at least until she reaches adolescence.

And there you have it. The booksellers have spoken, and now we must do our part and get reading.

The Island Stays with Us

島はぼくらと、辻村深月、講談社 2013

The Island Stays with Us, by Mizuki Tsujimura, Kodansha 2013 [no English translation available]

Elementary school graduates on the island of Saejima have a tradition of drawing pictures (Doraemon, Hello Kitty, Pikachu) and slogans all along the embankment facing the ocean. Kinuka, Genki, Akari and Arata wrote 島はぼくらと(the island stays with us) with a picture of a whale when their class of four graduated.

This graduation is more of a milestone than it would be for other children because Saejima has no high school. If a child wants to attend a high school that is not close enough to the ferry landing, they have to board or live with relatives on the mainland. These four all attend the high school near the ferry, but the rush to catch the ferry means that they are not fully part of high school life. Arata wants to become a playwright but cannot even be a full member the drama club.

Their travel to the mainland every day and the compromises they make mean that these four are not innocents, secluded in some island paradise. Nor is the island itself isolated. In the first chapter, the four handily foil a brash writer who has come to the island to find the “phantom play,” a lost masterpiece that a famous playwright is rumored to have written when he lived on the island. They are not taken in by the writer’s talk of celebrities and night clubs nor his fake alligator bag, and manage to dispose of him before he can make the connection between Fukiko, a young single mother living on the island with her daughter, and the Olympic gold medalist who abruptly disappeared from the public eye several years ago.

Single mothers like Fukiko are a key part of island life. The mayor spends much of his time off the island, appearing on TV and in newspapers to market Saeijima. His role is to encourage both U-turns—one-time locals who return to their hometown—and I-turns—people who leave cities and try to establish roots elsewhere—to move to the island. Although his frequent absences earn him criticism, he believes that the island will close off and collapse as soon as it forgets the outside world. There doesn’t seem much risk of that—the island’s residents seem almost painfully aware of the outside world, both the safety net it provides and the threat it represents in drawing away its children.

One of Japan’s maternal and child health record books

This acknowledgment by both children and parents that they face an early parting is poignantly reflected in the maternity health record book, used in Japan by women and their doctors from pregnancy to record a child’s health and growth. Genki’s mother, a graphic designer who lived on the island only briefly before she left Genki and his father for another man, noticed that island mothers had filled the margins of their books with what were essentially parting words for their children. She redesigned the book to allow more room for these messages before she left.

However, Kinuka does not have the option of leaving the island. She is the daughter of the amimoto, a traditional role passed on through generations. Literally “net owner,” the amimoto is the boss of a team of fishermen who risks his own capital in the form of boats and nets and also supports his amiko (“children of the net”), the households who form the fishing team, during bad seasons. An Internet search led to several academic journals that told me that this system has been around since the late middle ages, when large (and expensive) fishing nets began to be used, requiring more capital, labor and strategy. Even though there are fishing unions now, in (fictional) Saejima, Kinuka’s family has continued to occupy a special place in the island’s hierarchy. Especially among the older generation, people tend to go to the amimoto with their problems before the mayor (which he is not happy about).

Researching amimoto led me to some great archived photographs like this one, taken in 1964. Source: Shikoku Shimbun

Akari’s father died at sea, but the mayor was her father’s “brother,” a custom that the island has had for generations in which young men pledge to be brothers (Akari always thinks it’s a little like yakuza). They can be brother to more than one person, and when they pledge to another brother, this relationship then expands to include their other brothers. These relationships are all interlinked like the mesh of a net. Akari lives with her mother and grandmother, and the island’s aunties and uncles—her father’s “brothers”—helped to raise her. Everyone plays a role in raising the island children, and Akari figures this must be why the island is such a good fit for single mothers.

Such ties within a fixed population developed naturally on an island where this kind of lifeline for emergencies can be crucial. This is particularly true on Saejima, which has an active volcano. The volcano last erupted when Akari’s grandmother and Kinuka’s grandfather were teenagers, just 10 years after World War II. No one had expected anything worse than the war to happen. The amimoto stayed until everyone had been evacuated, and was the first to return when the evacuation order had been lifted. For that reason, the amimoto family members can never leave the island. Not everyone came back after the volcano—some had lost their houses and started over again elsewhere—and the island’s population fell by half.

I don’t mean to give the impression that this book is a social studies lesson in island traditions. The picture comes together gradually over the course of the book through Tsujimura’s stories about Akari, Kinuka, Genki and Arata. In addition to the mystery of the phantom play, which is resolved by the end of the novel, there is the search for a friend of Akari’s grandmother who left the island after the volcano erupted and never returned; the mystery of why Motoki, an I-turner, received an envelope with information about Saejima and an empty house there when he was still living in Tokyo; and the drama around plans to film a documentary about Saejima’s small company of housewives who make and market island specialties. The way Tsujimura ties up the mystery of the phantom play at the end of the novel and links it to Fukushima, where evacuees are just now returning after the nuclear plant disaster, was brilliant and so touching.

Tatobi Island in the Seto Inland Sea; this would just be a completely gratuitous picture of beautiful islands except that Tsujimura set fictional Saejima among islands in the Seto Inland Sea.

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